Ohio History Journal

OLD OHIO RIVER STEAMBOAT DAYS

 

 

MEMORIES OF UPPER OHIO RIVER ACTIVITIES BETWEEN

1860 AND 1890

 

BY W. G. SIBLEY

A great river is a powerful influence over the lives

of all who dwell on its banks, just as lofty hills or moun-

tains, seen day after day, finally come to have meaning

in a man's life, as does any other striking natural en-

vironment. When a river is intimately associated with

the affairs of a small community, its whole population

becomes conscious of it. So it was, with boyhood in the

late 'sixties and 'seventies, when spent in almost any vil-

lage along the Ohio River between Pittsburgh and Cin-

cinnati, a never-to-be-forgotten experience, for in those

decades the Ohio was "the stream of the empire" when

the West was in the making.

The river and its activities, seen season after season,

and year after year, get a strong grip on a boy's imagi-

nation, desires and ambitions. It gave me from 1865 to

1880 my first glimpse of the wide, wide world--and its

unknown Far Away--to be explored in later years. I

learned intimately its seasonal changes, its high waters

and low waters, its near-by beaches, bars and creeks, its

floating ice in winter, its fishing and swimming in sum-

mer, its skating and johnboat adventures. Every village

boy on the bank was acutely conscious of the Ohio

River all the year around. It was so with me from young

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Old Ohio River Steamboat Days       87

boyhood to manhood in the village of Racine, Ohio, mid-

way between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh -- 460 miles

apart.

From spring to autumn in the late 'sixties the great

pine forests on the hillsides of the Allegheny and Monon-

gehela Rivers floated down by the village in huge rafts

of logs. In the 'seventies they were replaced by rafts

of fragrant sawed lumber bound to ports on the lower

Ohio and Mississippi. They were indelibly etched on

memory. There was also the daily panorama of tow-

boats pushing ahead of them acres of heavily laden

barges of coal from Pittsburgh, or great model barges

full of Pittsburgh and Wheeling industrial products for

lower ports--a mighty volume of commerce that con-

tinue to ride the river until the country became a net-

work of railroads.

All these things were highly interesting, but the finest

attraction of the river was the swift passenger packets,

side-wheelers and stern-wheelers, half a dozen or more

a day bound up or down-stream, full of people, with

bands of music, and all painted white, from their hulls

to their pilot-houses. The steamboat era was in its hey-

day then, with no competition for quick freight or pas-

senger transportation. The stage-coach was passing

out and the railroads were only in their beginnings. No-

where, not even on the Mississippi, famous for its mag-

nificent passenger packets, did the steamboats travel in

braver array, or mean more to the populations along

the shores, than on the Upper Ohio. The villages and

towns on the banks were the homes of the crews--mas-

ters, pilots, engineers and mates--whose standing was

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Old Ohio River Steamboat Days      89

professional--and office clerks, stewards, watchmen,

firemen, cabin boys, porters, maids and deck-hands.

The first of these packets I recall was the Wild Wag-

oner, whose name presumably was derived from the

poem of that title written by Thomas Buchanan Read in

1862, in his many pages of "The Wagoner of the Alle-

ghanies." This beautiful boat I saw but once, about

1866, steaming up the river, the fastest boat then afloat,

and a thrilling sight. The picture herewith shown is

about seventy years old; and was taken, when she was

tied up in port, before photography had advanced to the

instantaneous process. The others presented are more

than sixty years old, and also were taken in port.

The Wild Wagoner was one of the most famous

boats on the Ohio, remarkably beautiful, and the last

word in luxury in her time. She was brilliantly white

outside, with tall chimneys, a side-wheeler whose wheel-

houses were elaborately decorated by large paintings,

and a most artistic pilot-house crowned by lofty ginger-

bread work. Her long, white, glittering cabin had state-

rooms on both sides the full length of the boat's upper

works. She had wide guards outside the staterooms,

used for promenades by passengers, and made safe by

fancy woodwork on the outer edges. She was running

in the Wheeling and Cincinnati trade when her picture

was taken.

The river valley population depended almost wholly

on the river for both freight and travel business. When

ice or low water suspended traffic there were none but

dirt roads along the banks, often impassable when winter

thaws came. The river traffic built the towns from

Pittsburgh down--Wheeling, Marietta, Parkersburg,

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Old Ohio River Steamboat Days      91

Pomeroy, Gallipolis, Ironton, Portsmouth and on to Cin-

cinnati. Much capital was invested in them, and their

business was cut up into "trades."  There was the

through trade from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati; the Wheel.

ing and Parkersburg trade; the Wheeling and Cincin-

nati trade; the Parkersburg and Gallipolis trade, and so

on down. Shorter trades existed between Ravenswood

and Pomeroy; Gallipolis and Ironton; and Ironton and

Cincinnati; with another prosperous passenger, express

and freight trade between Pomeroy and Cincinnati cared

for by three fine, large side-wheelers that made tri-weekly

round trips, and competition was lively.

Of these shorter trades, all regular and well equipped

with handsome packets, that between Parkersburg and

Gallipolis was served by a notably popular side-wheel

packet that carried the mails for twenty years or more,

the Chesapeake. She was a fine, swift boat with white

collars on her chimneys, as the picture shows. Her

pilot-house sat on the roof of the main cabin. Her

whistle was highly musical and carried far. Packet

whistles generally could be heard and recognized miles

before they came in sight. The Chesapeake was extraor-

dinarily regular, running almost on a railroad schedule.

In the early 'seventies a freak boat was built for this

0trade, whose maiden trip aroused great interest. She

was designed for speed as a daylight packet; had neither

staterooms nor meal service, and was called the Katydid.

She was a one-story packet, long and very slim, utilizing

her hold for cabin purposes; but her new-fangled en-

gines were a disappointment. She was fast, but the vex-

atious delays because of her engine troubles finally made

her unprofitable, and in a few years she dropped out of

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the picture--an expensive experiment never repeated.

In more than fifty years' knowledge of Upper Ohio

steamboats, she was the only effort to speed up a packet

above normal that I knew.

A very prosperous packet trade was that between

Wheeling and Cincinnati, with boats making one round

trip a week with time to discharge and take on cargoes

at each terminus. Many large, comfortable boats were

in it, among them the Edinburgh, the Charmer, and the

Hudson, stern-wheelers, and for several years the St.

Lawrence, a fine side-wheeler.  But of them all the

Andes was the prime favorite in the 'seventies and

'eighties. She was commodious, regular, kept up a fine

table, and never had a serious accident. She possessed,

thanks to well-chosen officers and other employes, that

intangible but highly valuable asset in river travel of

that day, called "atmosphere." She was homelike in a

period when Ohio River steamboat travel was social.

Whether her passengers were fifty or a hundred, her

crew had the knack of getting them acquainted with each

other. Their wide acquaintance along shore enabled

them to form congenial groups--business men going to

Cincinnati to buy stocks for their stores; their wives

who were on board just for a trip; and the young people

to whom it was an event to see 400 miles of the Ohio.

There was sociability among travelers in river times,

with much sightseeing, dancing at night, and card-

playing by day.

Friendships were made and cemented, business views

exchanged, and travel thereby made delightful. The

Andes had a soft, melodious whistle that did not disturb

rest, and a little bar in the men's cabin where the thirsty

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Old Ohio River Steamboat Days    95

could find good liquors. The boat was famous for honey-

mooners when the river was the pleasantest outlet for

the newly-married, and Cincinnati the one large city

easily reached, with her celebrated May musical festi-

vals that drew thousands of music-lovers for 400 miles

up and down the river. The great hilltop German beer-

gardens with their music and gaiety justified the proud

claim of Murat Halstead, her most versatile editor, that

the Queen City was "the Paris of America." The Andes,

with her long, broad, snow-white cabin and her glass

chandeliers which tinkled when she vibrated under way,

made travel both comfortable and agreeable. She gave

her passengers time to see the historic attractions of

Marietta; the old French "City of the Gauls," Gallipolis;

Blennerhassett Island, and the imposing hills and frown-

ing cliffs of Pomeroy, "seven miles long and as far back

as you could see," which is to her cliffs, with her two

long streets between them and the River.

The "White Collar Line," plying between Pomeroy

and Cincinnati, had three boats in operation all the time,

among them being the large side-wheelers Telegraph,

Bonanza, Big Sandy, Bostona and Ohio No. 4.

Other boats in the trades were the Major Anderson,

Keystone State, Scotia, St. Charles, and smaller packets

like the Mattie Roberts and Emma Graham, to which

should be added a boat called the Humming Bird, run-

ning between the Pomeroy Bend and Gallipolis, and

profitably operated for many years. Like the Katydid

she carried only passengers, and was the only boat of

the "propeller" type I ever saw on the Ohio. Her hull

was her cabin. She was swift, regular and successful.

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Mark Twain gave the Mississippi River a place in

literature with his Life on the Mississippi, relating his

experiences as a pilot. It was a boy's classic in my

youth, that applied to the Ohio as well. Indeed, the

American humorist might have found the Ohio River

richer in river lore and legend and adventure than the

Mississippi, had his lot been cast in the Ohio Valley.

Archer Butler Hulbert put the Ohio in literature in his

The Stream of Empire, which is essentially historic. In

any event the literature of the Ohio is scanty when one

considers the prodigious volume of freight and passenger

traffic it bore between 1860 and 1890, the heyday of

steamboating on the Upper Ohio. In the 'nineties the

great decline set in which brought to an end the romance

of the steamboat on western rivers. The railroads have

all but crowded out the passenger packets, the last of the

very large boats having been the famous side-wheeler

Kate Adams.

Little is left now but memories, and they are fast

disappearing as the old professional river men, captains,

pilots and engineers, drop off. Time was when every

steamboat I have mentioned brought a thrill. But none

do that now. The canalization of the Ohio from source

to mouth ended the former glories of river life. Travel

on the River is prosaic now.

From the close of the Civil War, when thousands of

soldiers found their way home to Ohio, West Virginia,

Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois on the boats, on through

the thirty years from 1860, Ohio River traffic, both

freight and passenger, was important and exerted a

powerful influence on social and economic progress along

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Old Ohio River Steamboat Days         97 the shores. It has all largely passed away now, in all probability never to return, and with its passing have gone many of the delights of travel.

Vol. XLI-7.

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