Albert Beck
The Cincinnati Enquirer, 27 April 1875, page 5
NEWPORT
MR. JOSEPH BECK, formerly of the Ten Mile House, received a
dispatch yesterday, informing him of the loss of his son, Albert Beck, a boy of
seventeen years, who was connected with the Steward's department of the
Charles Bodmann. He was burned to death in the flames.
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New York Herald, New Orleans, April 23, 1875
This afternoon at a quarter past four o'clock, a time when the levee is usually crowded, a fire broke out in the blacksmith's shop of the steamboat John Kyle, then lying at the foot of the Gravier street, along with steamers Charles Bodman 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 steam tug pulled them out into the stream. The scene from the crowded levee was heartrending in the extreme. 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 the shore were powerless to help them.
The Exporter did not catch fire until out of 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. Albert Mynck, watchman of the Bodman, who was saved along with the captain, reports about twenty-five or thirty women as lost upon that boat. The hulls of the Exporter and Charles Bodman were towed across the river to Coyle's coal yard, while that of the John Kyle floated down a couple of miles and sank.