THREE STEAMERS BURNED AT NEW ORLEANS.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 329, 2 July 1875, Page 3

THREE STEAMERS BURNED AT NEW ORLEANS.

{New York Herald )

This afternoon, at a quarter past four o’clock, a time when the levee is usually most crowded, a fire broke out in the blacksmith’s shop of the steamboat John Kyle, then lying at the foot of Gravier street, along with steamers Charles Bodmaa and Exporter, in close juxtaposition. Almost before an alarm could be given the whole boat was in flames. Time was, however, afforded to rescue a few lady passengers and others before she was pulled out into the stream. The fire almost immediately caught the Bodman, whose passengers and people on board nearly all escaped to the Exporter. As soon as the fire was discovered the lines of the boats were cast loose from the shore and a steamtug pulled them out into the stream. The day was usually clear, with a strong north wind blowing. As soon as the boats cleared the eddy, about 200 yards from the shore, they were struck with the full force of the wind, and were almost instantaneously wrapped in flames, driving the helpless passengers into the river. The scene from the crowded levee was heartrending in the ex-

treme. From the Bodman men, women, and children, shrieking and crying for help, were seen to jump into the river and drown, while the spectators on shore were powerless to help them. The Exporter did not catch fire until out in the river, and her forecastle was at the time crowded with people, the number being estimated by witnesses of the catastrophe at from 100 to 150. As the huge sheet of flame swept down upon them they they were seen to jump overboard like a startled flock of sheep, when a number were rescued by skiffs and tugs which had put out to their assistance; but the great majority were drowned. Albert Mynck, the watchman of the Bodman, who was saved, with its captain, reports about twenty-five or thirty women and children as lost upon that boat, and the same proportion were estimated by specI ators to have been among the frantic crowd upon the Exporter’s forecastle. In thirty minutes after the fire broke out the Kyle was floating down stream burned to the water’s edge, and the wrecks of the hulls of the other two boats had drifted over to the Algiers shore, where they still smoulder. About twenty of the rescued, among whom are several ladies, were provided for upon the steamboat Louisville, and just as your correspondent left the levee two more ladies . were landed from a skiff. Some of the rescued are badly burned. Both the Bodman and Exporter only arrived last night, the latter with an excursion party on board, among which was the family of her owner, Captain Reese, of Pittsburg. Fortunately most of the passengers were up in town when the fire occurred, but Mrs Reese and her daughter, with another lady, remained on board. Of these two were saved by a skiff, but Miss Reese is supposed to have been lost. Captain Shinkle, of the I! ulman, also lost his son, fourteen years of age.