A TERRIBLE DISASTER.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 879, 4 January 1889, Page 26

A TERRIBLE DISASTER.

By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright, A VESSEL ON EIRE. (per press association.) New York, December 26. The name of the Mississipi steamer destroyed by fire was the John Hanna. The fire was caused by a passenger letting a lighted cigar fall among the cargo, which was largely composed of bales of cotton. In an instant the inflammable material was in a blaze, and the flames soon obtained a good hold of the lower decks. The steamer was crowded with passengers, and upon the flames bursting through the deck, a panic ensued. Einding it hopeless to attempt to extinguish the flames, tbe pilot steered the vessel for a sandbank. Upon striking the bank the steamer rebounded from the shock into deep water. The force of the collision had rendered the vessel a-wreck, and the steampipes exploded. In this condition the steamer drifted helplessly down the river. By this time the fire had reached the upper decks and all the boats had been destroyed, so that the panic-stricken crew and passengers were only able to escape from the burning vessel by plunging into tbe water. Besides those overtaken by the flames and burned to death, about sixty were drowned by jumping into tbe river. The pilot became a raving maniac, as the flames swept his. stand on the deck from whence he and the captain had attempted to direct operations, and the latter terminated his own sufferings by drawing a revolver and blowing out his brains. Eull particulars are not yet obtainable, owing to the excitement still prevailing, but sufficient is known to stamp the disaster as one of the most awful tragedies in the history of American river navigation. December 27. Thousands of spectators witnessed the destruction of the steamer John Hanna or the Mississippi, but are said to have been powerless to assise the drowning people. In the eagerness of the onlookers to get a view of the catastrophe a number of persons were thrust into a quagmire on the river bank and suffocated.