The Ouachita Telegraph - Sinking of the Evening Star
Submitted by: Lora Peppers
Date: Mar. 2004

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The Ouachita Telegraph
October 18, 1866
Page 2, Column 1

  Among the lost on the Evening Star was Bianca Robbins, a woman who kept a
fashionable bagnio in New Orleans.  She was returning from the North with an
invoice of attractions for her establishment, when the hurricane overtook
the ship and consigned the virtuous and the depraved to a watery grave.  The
old harlot left property amounting to $100,000 to be inherited by two
children now at school in Kentucky.

The Ouachita Telegraph
October 18, 1866
Page 2, Column 3
Terrible Shipwreck-Immense Loss of Life.

  The steamer Evening Star, Capt. Knapp, sailed from New York for New
Orleans, September 29, at 4 o'clock P.M., and encountered a severe gale at 2
o'clock on the afternoon of the 3d, one hundred and eighty miles east of
Tybee Island.  After weathering the storm some seventeen hours, she
foundered at 6 o'clock on the morning of the 4th, with 270 souls on board,
only seventeen of whom are known to have been saved.

  There seems to have been only three or four life boats on board, in one of
which the chief engineer and the purser, with six of the crew and two
passengers, succeeded, after being capsized several times, in keeping
afloat, until picked up by the Norwegian bark Fleet Wing, by which they were
transferred to the schooner S.J. Waring, on which vessel they arrived at
Savannah on the 8th inst.

  A second boat took sixteen people from the ship among whom were the captain
and the third mate.  This boat was capsized some twelve or fifteen times,
the captain being lost the fourth time she upset.  This boat arrived at
Fernandina on the 7th inst., with six persons and two dead bodies.  Only one
passenger was saved on the third mate's boat.  His name is Frank Gerard, 51
Bond street, Brooklyn.  Among the passengers was the Italian opera troupe,
and a number of women and children, none of whom are reported saved.  Gen.
Palfrey, an old citizen of New Orleans, and wife were among the passengers.