Older Photographs of Early Boats

BIENVILLE STREET WHARF, NEW ORLEANS Taken during Mardi Gras in February of 1924, '26, '27 or '28. 1 CAPE GIRARDEAU built in 1923 and christened in Apr. 1924. She ran Mardi Gras trips from 1925 to 1930. 2 QUEEN CITY 1897 - 1933 Celebrated at great length by Fred Way in his Packet Directory. 3 CINCINNATI double cabin steamboat, hull build by Midland Barge Co., Pittsburgh and completed at Cincinnati in 1924. 4 CLIPPER burned in March, 1928 at the Bienville Street wharf. 5 GEO. PRINCE built 1922. Named for Captain George Prince, a steamboat man. 6 JOHN D. GRACE 1917 - 1930

Cotton packet! Latest acquisition . . . Wm. Garig of the Carter Packet Co. Double stamped original 8 X 10 March 21, 1928 photographs from Chas. L. Franck, 400 Baronne Street, New Orleans, LA. Jim Hale's comment on the Wm. Garig photo: I HAVE TO AGREE WITH CAPT. FRED WAY, THE BEST LOOKING OF THE LATER DAY COTTON PACKETS WERE, THE AMERICA, THE BOB BLANKS AND THE WM.GARIG. THIS SAME PICTURE IS IN "TALES OF THE MISSISSIPPI", ON PAGE 114. I HAVE OFTEN LOOKED AT IT AND NOW I HAVE A COPY OF THE ORIGINAL WITH LOTS OF DETAIL TO LOOK AT. THIS PICTURE MUST HAVE BEEN TAKEN AFTER SHE HAD AGED A BIT BECAUSE THE FANCY RAILING IS GONE AND REPLACED WITH TOW BOAT RAILING. THIS IS THE BEST PICTURE YOU HAVE GOTTEN IN A LONG TIME.

Just arrived latest addition. The lower left corner was torn off so I attempted to restore it as best I could. Chain drive paddlewheel, initials D.W. . . . haven't come across any further history outside of the dealer's description: Real photo of a paddleboat in the late 1890's on a trip down the Ohio River. It was found in an estate of photos that were dated in that era. The men on board are members of a hunting and fishing group that traveled down the Ohio River and stopped at various towns along the way and camped on their journey. Probably circa 1913 - 1919 7.5 x 9 inches original print size

Two photos of the Bald Eagle (above).

Most modest excursion boat I've ever seen, the little SWAN pushing a wooden barge with passengers, maybe off to a picnic along the shore or on an island somewhere. Postmarked Rising Sun, Indiana - looks like 1908. Right across the Ohio River in Kentucky is the memorably named village of Rabbit Hash.

Here's the old original JOE FOWLER (1888 to circa 1917) on a RPPC. I imagine both Walt Disney and his aide-de-camp Joe Fowler were likely aware that an actual steamboat bore his name in ye olden days. In Florida's Disney World the clone of Disneyland's MARK TWAIN launched in 1971 bore the name ADMIRAL JOE FOWLER which lasted until 1980 when its hull was destroyed while the boat was being lifted out of the water with a crane. Joe Fowler was an attraction designer for the theme parks and actually was a retired U.S. Naval Admiral, hence the name of the boat.

Per Fred Way's Packet Directory this little steamboat was: LORENE built Dubuque 1905. 48.8 x 11.5 x 2.4. Made trips to "the Dales of St. Croix". Burned at Ft Snelling 23, Nov, 1911. Here she's at Mankato on the Minnesota pushing an excursion barge called O.K. but she also made excursions on the Upper Mississippi. Postmarked MINNEAPOLIS & CO. BLUFFS R.P.O. AUG 8, 1909. This is a detail of the card where the boat and barge only take up about half of the width of the card at center. The embossed name M & K Novelty STUDIO, MANKATO is not visible to the naked eye except at an angle but the scanner picked it up. Retouching doesn't seem to help since there's still a ghost of the lettering left behind no matter what I attempt in Photoshop.

This is a Florida boat apparently. Moisture damage and abrasions all over the 10 gents made restoration labor intensive. This is one third of the size I scanned it and retouched it at. Nice clear date of May 6, 1900. I like the shiny black twin stacks forward of the neat little pilot house. Must be photos of the entire craft someplace.

Lewis Verduyn of Steamboat Times in New Zealand found these online for me . . . A photo of the St. Lucie from a distance (I sent you one of her with 10 passengers) and and a news article from 2006 that my Google search didn't turn up. If you decide to do a feature on St. Lucie with pictures include credit and links below: Photo is from University of South Florida website, see original - click here. The following 1906 report on the St. Lucie's destruction, comes from The Miami News - Jul 2, 1983 where the 1906 article was edited and reprinted (see original - click here): The Miami Daily Metropolis, Oct. 20, 1906 STEAMER ST. LUCIE WENT DOWN NEAR MOUTH OF CAESARS CREEK; TWENTY-FIVE WERE DROWNED Had Aboard One Hundred and Fifteen Persons Mostly Extension Laborers Thursday's hurricane will go on record as the most disastrous in point of casualties that ever visited this or any other section of Florida. Conservative estimates now place the number of dead at more than one hundred and possibly one hundred and fifty, though details and data are coming in as rapidly as possible... All of the losses so far ascertained are in the keys and among the extension employees. The greatest loss of life and property was at Long Key where every craft was either sunk and driven to sea with large numbers of men aboard, and in the sinking of the steamer St. Lucie off Elliott's Key, twenty-five or more men being drowned from the vessel . . . The beach at Elliott's Key is strewn with corpses and debris. The area of wreckage extends half a mile inland. It is a scene of destruction. At Long Key the conditions are practically the same, except that but few, if any, bodies are on the shore. Grave apprehension for safety of the steamer prevailed all day yesterday. There was a ray of hope, however. but this was shattered upon the arrival of the steamer Peerless, at the terminal dock at 6 o'clock last evening with the majority of the survivors of the Ill-fated craft aboard and the news of the fearful casualty. Immediately the news spread and hundreds flocked to the dock, the majority out of idle curiosity. Men that had been strong and nervy, hobbled ashore, all more or less injured but none fatally. Some were too weak to walk and had to be assisted. Various stories and reports were in circulation relative to the disaster of the St. Lucie and they soon became voiced about the city . . . One of the most complete and graphic stories of the catastrophe and the scenes attending the wrecking of the steamer is told by Second Officer J.W. Grant, one of the survivors. Mr. Grant said: "We left Miami late Wednesday evening about 7 o'clock, I think. We had aboard 115 extension laborers, the greater portion of them white with five or six negro women and one white woman and child. We also had a water barge in tow. All went well until we were off Elliott's Key. About daylight Thursday morning the wind came out of the northeast and we headed to it, putting out two 500 pound anchors. These held but a short time when they parted. Another anchor weighing 400 pounds, held by a large Manila cable was put out and it held, but the wind and sea rose so high that we cut loose both anchors and barge and went adrift. Great seas boarded the boat and all hands rushed to the hurricane deck. She would not steer and about 8 o'clock capsized and went down in about fifteen feet of water, two miles off Elliott's Key and three miles from Caesar's Creek. Not a person had been lost to that time. "A little later there was a lull and during this ten men and myself manned three life boats and started for a two masted coasting schooner that lay between us and the land. Our intention was to take it and go to the rescue of the people huddled on the upper deck of the St. Lucie. We made the schooner, no one was on board it . . . All of the men but myself and a companion boarded the craft and started to sail it to the St. Lucie. They had gotten well under way and were close to the steamer when the wind came out of the north and west, and they were driven away and off their course. The sea, which had abated some, picked up again. Great God, I have never seen it so high. The rain was blinding and beat our faces like shot. I could see nothing more until a sea pitched us out of the lifeboat and into the mangroves on the shore. There my companion and myself clung in the top branches. "Through the fog like rain I saw the schooner being driven down upon us. She was coming broadside and I prepared to cash in. The water was over the top of the mangroves and flooded the whole key six feet deep. Over the bush the vessel passed, coming so close that my companion managed to swing onto her and was carried inland. Today she is a quarter of a mile on the interior of the island, high and dry. "I hung onto the bush and as the tide receded I climbed down and was finally able to touch ground. Later on I was able to crawl and finally reached the interior of the island. I know not just what happened on the St. Lucie after the wind came out of the northwest except that the hurricane deck went by and all were thrown into the water. While I hung onto the bush, men came ashore, some were dead and some were not. They drifted between all kinds of debris and all landed either in the mangroves or went over them into the interior of the island. Those that were able clung to the branches and in this way the most of them were saved. Those that were dead lodged in the trees In most cases, though some passed over them, so high was the water... The tide receded rapidly. It had been a regular tidal wave with seas rolling ten and twelve feet high. After the survivors could get a foothold on the land, we had the time and mind to survey the calamity. Dead bodies were everywhere and men groaning and suffering with pain, bruises and cuts. We found twenty-five or twenty-six bodies, but I believe there are more beneath the debris on the bank." Fred Way used this on the cover of the Dec. 1990 Reflector. I got the original photo from a dealer out here, had Ralph DuPae copy it and got prints made for Fred and others. Photographer was Paul Briol. Tom Greene set him ashore from the Gordon C. Greene then steamed away up river at Pipe Creek. Fred didn't say what year it was or where on the Ohio River that Pipe Creek is located. I would guess the 1940's.

These 3 darling little rafters at Winona are particularly fetching. The Charlotte Boeckeler (far left) was built in 1881, the Glenmont (center) '85, and the City of Winona (right) in '82. Photo circa 1885 or later. 5 X 8 inch albumen print on a card with photographer Charles A. Tenney's stamp.

Back to Oz again . . . this is the Ferryboat Dorothy. I sent a tif file on this last night but have cleaned it up a bit and made a jpg for you. Great little boat with a nice camera angle on it. From a tiny 3 X 4 inch snapshot.

Another favorite. The girl in white and the overall authenticity of the details give it a verisimilitude that few others convey as well. The Liberty at Alton, Illinois 1903.

This may be my favorite steamboat photo. Great pilot house detail and nice setting on the river with smoke, water, real but still sort of romantic. Will get it to Woody Rutter in hopes some S&D'r will recognize the location. G.W. Thomas 1901 - 1913. Fred Way said "She was quite some pumpkin, being highly regarded among river coal towing circles." Apparently a lot of work out of Pittsburgh. After she broke her shaft and dropped her wheel she was salvaged and rebuilt as the Alicia.

This is an undated photo post card that I won in an eBay auction. On the back is penciled "From Mary Vanpattan (to) Miss Irma Carpenter Sandford, Ind." Above these girls dressed in men's clothing Mary wrote their names in pencil. Mary herself is on the right and the one in the middle is Ethel Hay. The name of the one on the left is more difficult. There's an indecipherable squiggle in front of what seems to be the last name "Broeff" This was advertised as being 3 "boys" on eBay, the seller didn't look very closely. The first thing I noticed was the high heeled shoes, then the rolled up trouser legs and outsized coats. Very cute old picture taken aboard a house boat or "shanty" boat. Must date from the early 1900's. Know this isn't steamboaty although that must be a barge right alongside there. From a stereoview of the Pilot House and Texas aboard the Commonwealth steamboat. A stereoview offered two photos that looked like a three dimensional image.

Self explanatory real photo card of the Virginia sunk at Wellsville, Ohio, April 13, 1909.

Won this post card on eBay. The highest I ever paid for one during bidding war, don't even want to remember how much it cost. Great picture of 3 boats at the Kanawha Dock, West Virginia. GEO. MATHESON, J.B. LEWIS and IRON AGE. Nice houseboat in lower right too. a recent eBay purchase . . .

Attached starboard view of the boat with the Presidential colors flying from the pilot house. Also a photo of Teddy returning waves from passengers aboard the City of Saltillo which had pulled alongside the boat he was on.

John McIlhenny (seen here with Teddy on the MISSISSIPPI in 1907) was a Louisiana boy and son of the inventor of Tabasco sauce. McIlhenney was promoted to liutenant in Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders after "claiming" to have saved T.R. from a sniper's bullet. I put quotes around the word claiming because that's what McIlhenny's biography says. It seems to cast some doubt on this distinction. Here's a letter from Teddy to his son which makes a nice caption for the picture. From reading this it seems that T.R. may have confused the "Texas" with the pilot house. 107. PECULIARITIES OF MISSISSIPPI STEAMBOATS On Board U. S. S. Mississippi, Oct. 1, 1907. DEAR ARCHIE: ..... I am now on what I believe will be my last trip of any consequence while I am President. Until I got to Keokuk, Iowa, it was about like any other trip, but it is now pleasant going down the Mississippi, though I admit that I would rather be at home. We are on a funny, stern-wheel steamer. Mr. John McIlhenny is with me, and Capt. Seth Bullock among others. We have seen wild geese and ducks and cormorants on the river, and the people everywhere come out in boats and throng or cluster on the banks to greet us. October 4. You would be greatly amused at these steamboats, and I think you will like your trip up the Mississippi next spring, if only everything goes right, and Mother is able to make it. There is no hold to the boat, just a flat bottom with a deck, and on this deck a foot or so above the water stands the engine-room, completely open at the sides and all the machinery visible as you come up to the boat. Both ends are blunt, and the gangways are drawn up to big cranes. Of course the boats could not stand any kind of a sea, but here they are very useful, for they are shallow and do not get hurt when they bump into the bank or one another. The river runs down in a broad, swirling, brown current, and nobody but an expert could tell the channel. One pilot or another is up in the Texas all day long and all night. Now the channel goes close under one bank, then we have to cross the river and go under the other bank; then there will come a deep spot when we can go anywhere. Then we wind in and out among shoals and sand-bars. At night the steamers are all lighted up, for there are a dozen of them in company with us. It is nice to look back at them as they twist after us in a long winding line down the river.

Two photos of the Steamer City of Wheeling. One is a little out of focus; the other was dark and murky but after scanning it I was able to improve the contrast and brightened it up. Michael Blaser said the perspective on it is especially good. Nice reference for a model maker to work from.

Photo above is of the Steamer Greenland. Jim Hale believes that's Mary Greene to the right of the bell on the hurricane roof. Post marked July 1906. From a dealer in Sisterville, WV.

Water Queen Showboat with actors and musicians show people. It seems likely this was taken in the mile long canal near Lowell, Ohio which was constructed near the mouth of Cat's Creek to bypass a series of rapids in the Muskingum River. WATER QUEEN Showboat barge Launched: 1880 Destroyed: 1915? Area: Miss. and Oh. R. Owner: Capt. Edwin A. Price, New Martinsville, W. Va. Captain: Edwin A. Price Footnote from Fred Way: The towboat ARGAND was sold in April 1901, to Capt. Edwin A. Price, New Martinsville, West Virginia, who used her to tow his showboat WATER QUEEN. Price usually wintered in the Muskingum River at the Lowell, Ohio lock and the ARGAND burned there in December 1927. The boiler was still there in the mud as late as 1949. Some nice looking actresses far left in this detail of the showboat. Musicians make up about a dozen aboard on deck. The two ladies far right may be back stage wardrobe ladies. Two little African American boys on shore add a lot of charm to the picture.

A large albumen photo of THE NEW WATER QUEEN pushed by the towboat ARGAND. This appears to have been taken in a canal somewhere, there were a bunch connecting the Ohio River and tributaries that I have to take inventory on. Dave WATER QUEEN Showboat barge Launched: 1880 Destroyed: 1915? Area: Miss. and Oh. R. Owner: Capt. Edwin A. Price, New Martinsville, W. Va. Captain: Edwin A. Price Beginning in 1901 Capt. Price's towboat was the ARGAND

Caption by Jim Hale: A VERY GOOD PHOTO OF THE STEAMBOAT WHARF AT MOBILE. THE PHOTO WAS TAKEN SOMETIME BETWEEN 1908 AND 1913, THE YEARS THE JAMES T .STAPLES (CENTER) WAS BUILT AND BLEW UP. THE BOAT BEHIND THE STAPLES IS THE AMERICAN. THIS IS THE BOAT CAPTAIN BENSON LEARNED THE RIVER ON AND HE WAS ONE OF THE PILOTS AFTER HE GOT HIS LICENSE. THE BOAT ACROSS THE RIVER IS THE MARY S BLEES BUILT BY NORMAN STAPLES AS WAS THE JAMES T. STAPLES. CAPT. STAPLES OVER EXTENDED HIMSELF WHEN HE BUILT THE STAPLES. HE HAD THE MARY S. BLEES, WHICH WAS THE PERFECT SIZE BOAT FOR THE ALABAMA AND TOMBIGBEE RIVER BUT WANTED A BIGGER AND FINER BOAT. HE GOT INTO FINANCIAL TROUBLE AND COULD NOT MAKE THE PAYMENTS AND LOST THE BOAT. HE DEVELOPED A BAD CASE OF DEPRESSION AND COMMITTED SUICIDE. HE DID HAVE A GOOD EYE FOR WHAT A DEEP SOUTH STEAMBOAT SHOULD LOOK LIKE. LIKE CAPTAIN BENSON, I THINK THE MARY S. BLEES WAS THE BEST LOOKING BOAT ON THE RIVER. SHE WAS CALLED THE STEAMBOAT MAN'S BOAT BY RIVER MEN. IDENTIFIED AS A UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVAL PHOTO PROVIDED TO NEWSPAPER FOR PUBLICATION 4/22/63 Dave Thomson Museum Wing Index Photos of Older Boats 1   |   2   |   3