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.