Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1874 — The Burning of the Steamer Pat Rogers. [ARTICLE]

The Burning of the Steamer Pat Rogers.

Cincinnati dispatches of the sth give the following particulars relating to the recent steamboat disaster on the Ohio River: The operator at Aurora, Ind., reports that the steamer Pat Rogers was burned this morning on the Ohio River, one mile below Aurora, and about twenty lives were lost, principally ladies. The boat burned near the shore, the flames enveloping the shore side of the vessel. Passengers who jumped over on that side were nearly all lost or badly burned. None who used life-preservers are known to be lost, andtwoladies were saved without the use of preservers. Many sank by clinging to each other in the water. The scene of the wreck is thirty miles from here by river, and was above Laughery Creek and a short distance below Aurora, Ind. The fire was discovered about twenty minutes before five o’clock. All the passengers were asleep. The crew don’t know much about it. Heartlessness and heroism were displayed in awful Voontrast. The officers exerted thctaselves nobly to save the passengers. A man who .claims to have been the last to leave the boat says the last object he saw was a child three years old, beyond his reach, alone, naked, dancing with pain, crying and shouting. The flames burned it. Not one of six small children aboard was saved. Two were brought ashore dead. Four women, who were afterward saved, stood on the hurricane deck and shouted till hoarse, imploring the river-pirate on the Kentucky shore to come over and help, but he refused. A brave man came down the river later barely in time to save them at his own great peril. One young man, Robert J. Moore, says a woman came to him with a child and begged him to save them: He threw a mattress into the river. He told her to jump. Half a dozen men seized the mattress and the woman rushed away halffrantic, bewildered. They lost sight of her. She is thought to be burned with her baby. Capt. Davis says the officers were, wakened promptly and ran at once to the rooms of the passengers. Mr. Holmes, the engineer of the steamer, arrived in Cincinnati on the noon train and was interviewed by a Cincinnati reporter. He gives the following account of the burning of the steamer: “It was just about six o’clock, when just opposite Laughery Creek, that flow's into the Ohio River a short distance below Aurora, that 1 noticed a bright light among some bales of cotton in the after part of the boat. I hastened to the spot, and found it to-be burning rapidly, and beyond any possibility of immediately extinguishing it. I hastened to the hurricane deck and gave the alarm to the pilot that the boat was burning, and told him to run her ashore. The pilot at once turned the boat’s head the shore, and immediately she became unmanageable. The pilot stated that he could turn the wheel, but the steamer would not answer to her helm; He thinks the tillerlope had been cut. From this fact it is thought that the fire was the work of an incendiary. Another theory is that one of the deck-passengers, while smoking, dropped sparks from his pipe into the cotton. When the boat became unmanageable she drifted on a sand-bar and •there grounded. The flame’s, instead of spreading along the lower deck, at "once shot up to the cabin and pilot-house, and then swept across the lysrricane deck. The passengers were all aroused, and the

boats wore lowered, and many were carried to the 'shore, but others, in their fright, jumped into the water, and those who were not dro wned.reaidied a safe funding place after drifting a long time with the current. There were nearly 100 people on board, but what proportion of this number were actually lost is not known at this time, as many reported missing have been seen by some on shore since the disaster.” The boat and cargo, consisting of cattle, sheep and hogs, are a total loss. The passenger register and all the books were lost.