No. 21
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
June 20, 2011

Terrible Struggle with Flame and Flood

The burning of the steamer John H. Hanna near Plaquemine, Louisiana, by which thirty lives were lost
June 20, 2011
...
...

Via Newspapers.comTime to saddle up those ghost horses!  The “San Francisco Chronicle,” December 30, 1931:Horses, horses, horses. Three phantom black horses, galloping soundlessly with the speed of the wind, have set Berkeley agog with a mystery that has even the scientific police department of that community guessing. The horses have been seen in the Berkeley hills north of the
More...
Strange Company - 10/1/2025
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 24 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith's "STAR" notebook page 24, 1882 and 1884, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland. Steamer Ancon. This post is on page 24, the last of the "STAR" notebook pages I have been deciphering and publishing for the last two years, since July 24, 2023. The page is two separate notes dated 1882
More...
Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 9/17/2025
Before Riverside Park, before Riverside Drive, before the sparsely populated Manhattan district known since the 18th century as Bloomingdale was urbanized into the Upper West Side, there was a lone modest house. Perched on the edge of the Hudson River in the West 80s, the two-story, pitched-roof dwelling appears to have no neighbors. A back […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 9/29/2025
Youth With Executioner by Nuremberg native Albrecht Dürer … although it’s dated to 1493, which was during a period of several years when Dürer worked abroad. November 13 [1617]. Burnt alive here a miller of Manberna, who however was lately … Continue reading
More...
Executed Today - 11/13/2020
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, March 28, 1868.Robert Sprague, a normally peaceful man, was spending a quiet evening with his family in their home in Jasper, Iowa, on February 17, 1868. He was reading the Bible with his mother, wife, and children when his 70-year-old mother asked him a question in relation to a religious meeting the night before. At the previous night’s meeting,
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 9/27/2025
New to Warps & Wefts? We’ve been online since 2007 with hundreds of articles, posts, over a thousand images, animations, colorizations, newspaper coverage and clippings of the murders and trial day by day, cartoons, AI and imagined imaging, videos, profiles of important people in the case, on the road field trip vlogs and much more. We post every day on Facebook, usually 6-10 posts on various topics so everyone can find something to enjoy reading- why? Because we want a bit of the Borden case every day! We sign off every night around 10 p.m. and upload every morning around 9 a.m. Visit our Facebook and Youtube channel links below. Please do like and follow our Facebook page  Send us your questions! No Patreons or monetization ever. No detail too small to be considered. Stop by to see us- we learn something new every day!  https://www.facebook.com/lizziebordenwarpsandwefts/ https://www.youtube.com/@LizzieBordenWarpsandWefts See less Comments Author Lizzie Borden Warps &
More...
Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 9/26/2025
  [Editor’s note: Guest writer, Peter Dickson, lives in West Sussex, England and has been working with microfilm copies of The Duncan Campbell Papers from the State Library of NSW, Sydney, Australia. The following are some of his analyses of what he has discovered from reading these papers. Dickson has contributed many transcriptions to the Jamaica […]
More...
Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
Sparking in Tompkins Square | Belles of the Bowling Alley.

Terrible Struggle with Flame and Flood

steamboat

Plaquemine, Louisiana , December 25, 1888 – The burning of the steamer John H. Hanna, near Plaquemine, Louisiana, by which thirty lives were lost. 

Another frightful steamboat disaster has occurred on the Mississippi River at the little town of Plaquemine, ninety-five miles above New Orleans, La., on the night of the 25th ult., just as the bells were ushering in Christmas morning. At daylight the citizens of the town who had not yet retired were horrified to see the steamboat John H. Hanna round a bend in the river, a mass of flames from end to end. It was the flames that claimed most of the thirty victims. Others drowned in the water.


Reprinted from The National Police Gazette - January 12, 1889