A heroic daughter and a bale of cotton saved her father’s life when the steamboat Lessie Taylor sank just after leaving the busy St. Landry port at Washington on Feb. 3, 1878.
The boat had been running regularly to New Orleans for nearly a decade by then and was regarded as one of the better steamers operating on Bayou Courtableau before it ran into a streak of bad luck. The late David Jasper M...