Steamboat burns on Lake Pontchartrain and eighteen lives lost

The side-wheel steamboat Judge Porter had been built just the year before in Indiana and was on a voyage from Montgomery, Alabama to New Orleans with fifteen passengers when a morning fire broke out as she crossed Lake Pontchartrain.  The vessel burned very quickly and only one passenger survived.  Fifteen bodies were recovered and three crewmen were missing presumed dead.  (By John Osborne) 
Source Citation
Carl A. Brasseaux, Keith B. Fontenot, Steamboats on Louisiana Bayous: A History and Directory (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2004) , 201.
    Date Certainty
    Exact
    Type
    Crime/Disasters
    How to Cite This Page: "Steamboat burns on Lake Pontchartrain and eighteen lives lost," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/31326.