Credit: Artist, Gary R. Lucy.
Enlargement: 600x367pxs.
Website: www.garylucy.com
Note:~ The primary source for the journey of the New Orleans was written by John H.B. Latrobe, Lydia Roosevelt’s half-brother, who told the story as he heard it from her. This account was published as The First Steamboat Voyage on the Western Waters by the Maryland Historical Society (Fund Publication No. 6, Baltimore, 1871); but a more accessible account is Mr. Roosevelt’s Steamboat: The First Steamboat to Travel the Mississippi, by Mary Helen Dohan (New York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1981).
NEW
ORLEANS
Built: 1811, Pittsburgh.
Type: Sidewheel, wooden hull.
Size: 116 feet, 371 tons
Cost: $40,000
Built: 1811, Pittsburgh.
Type: Sidewheel, wooden hull.
Size: 116 feet, 371 tons
Cost: $40,000
The beginning of steamboating on the Western rivers dates to 1811 when Nicholas Roosevelt, great granduncle of Theodore Roosevelt, piloted a Fulton built steamboat, the New Orleans from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. The trip began on October 20, 1811, when the boat left Pittsburgh. It arrived at Louisville, Kentucky, on October 29, 1811, where Roosevelt’s wife, Lydia (Latrobe), gave birth to their son, Henry. Roosevelt remained in Louisville for the next five weeks then resumed his journey on December 8, passing over the Falls of the Ohio and continuing downstream to Shippingport, Kentucky, and Yellow Bank, Indiana (December 14). While at this latter place they experienced the first shocks of the New Madrid earthquake (December 16) and continued downstream to Henderson, Kentucky, to see John and Lucy Audubon and survey earthquake damage. The boat reached the Mississippi on December 18 and passed New Madrid, Point Pleasant and Little Prairie (the epicenter of the quakes) on December 19. On December 22 they spent the night near the mouth of the St. Francis where they learned about the disappearance of Big Prairie from John Bradbury’s party, which was also descending the river at this time. They arrived in Natchez, Mississippi on December 30, and New Orleans on January 10, 1812. The New Orleans continued in service on the lower Mississippi River between New Orleans and Natchez until 1814 when she was sunk by a snag.
Credit: Artist Karl Bodmer.
Enlargement: 765x730pxs.
Note:~ Karl Bodmer was commissioned by Prince Maximilian to illustrate the American frontier on his 1832~34 expedition. Their passage of the Missouri began in April 1833, and ended a year later, after a winter of severe hardship at Fort Clark. Bodmer completed numerous landscapes and Indian studies that are remarkable for their accuracy. He later developed many of his sketches into immaculate watercolor prints. This scene of the Yellow Stone, one of two steamboats they travelled aboard on the Missouri, was produced in 1839.
Built: circa 1830.
Type: Sidewheel, wooden hull packet.
Size: 130 feet.
Cost: $7,000.
The American Fur Company’s first steamboat, the Yellow Stone, owned by Pierre Chouteau, made its first run up the Missouri leaving St. Louis on April 16, 1831. She reached Cantonment Leavenworth on May 1 and the company’s Fort Tecumseh on June 19. No previous steamboat had gone beyond Council Bluff. A journey that had previously taken a whole season, had been reduced to a few weeks.
The Yellow Stone was also the first steamboat to reach the Upper Missouri, arriving at Fort Clark in 1832, delivering 1,500 gallons of liquor and other trade goods. She returned to St. Louis carrying 100 packs of beaver pelts and bison robes from the fort. This landmark voyage demonstrated the practicability of navigating the Missouri by steam as far as to the mouth of the Yellowstone with a strong probability that boats could go on to the Blackfoot country. Among the passengers on this voyage was artist George Catlin.
In the spring of 1833, two fur company boats went up the Missouri River, the Yellow Stone and the Assiniboine. On the Yellow Stone was Prince Maximilian and his artist companion Karl Bodmer, whose work is a truly important visual record of the Missouri River and the people who lived along it.
After five years of navigating among the snags of the Upper Missouri River, the Yellow Stone's career changed dramatically. The first steamboat in the fur trade, she was sold into the Texas cotton trade, steaming south on the Mississippi in the summer of 1835. Most steamboats her age would have been ready for decommissoning, if they had survived, but she had proven her reliability and was refitted in New Orleans at a cost of $4,000.
She steamed directly into the struggle for Texas, as Santa Anna's army overwhelmed the Alamo and pushed General Sam Houston's force eastward. In April, 1836, Houston impressed the Yellow Stone into service in order to cross the flooded Brazos River. At 10 o'clock on the morning of April 12, Houston's men began boarding the Yellow Stone, and by 2 p.m. the next day, more than 700 soldiers, 200 horses and supplies had been ferried across the swollen Brazos in seven trips. This crossing gave Houston vital time.
On April 21, at San Jacinto, Houston's force surprised the Mexican Army during their daily siesta, attacking fiercely with cries of "Remember the Alamo". Caught off guard, the Mexican's surrended just eighteen minutes later. Subsequently, Houston remarked "Had it not been for the Steam Boat Yellow Stone, we would have lost Texas."
Notes:~ The first steamboat to enter the Missouri had been the Constitution, in October 1817, running an excursion 8 miles up to Bellefontaine. In 1819, the Independence (usually recorded as the first steamboat to enter the Missouri River), had left St. Louis reaching Old Franklin in thirteen days, before turning back at Old Chariton, in Missouri.The Missouri River is commonly divided into the Upper Missouri and the Lower Missouri, with the dividing point generally considered to be the mouth of the Big Sioux River near present day Sioux City, Iowa, about 850 miles from the Mississippi.
The source of the Missouri River is in Red Rock Creek, Montana, some 2,500 miles from its Mississippi confluence, but the river is not navigable above the Great Falls in Montana because the gradient above the falls is too steep. The head of navigation is at Fort Benton, Montana, about 37 miles below the falls. From Fort Benton to the Mississippi is about 2,300 miles.
Before 1830 steamboats seldom ventured above the mouth of the Kansas River, and between 1830 and 1860 only a few boats had navigated up the river any farther than Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone River. The first boats to actually reach the head of navigation, at Fort Benton, were the Chippewa and the Key West arriving July 2nd, 1860. But following the discovery of gold in Montana in 1863, steamboat business to Fort Benton boomed. In 1865 twenty packets set out from St. Louis for Fort Benton, and the following year almost sixty boats left for the gold fields, although not all of them arrived.
Two annual periods of high water allowed easier navigation up the river to Fort Benton, Montana. The April rise was the result of local snow melt, while the June rise was the result of snow melt in the Rockies.
Credit: Lithographer, unknown.
Enlargement: 482x312pxs.
Built: 1845, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Type: Sidewheel, wooden hull packet.
Size: 304 feet, 886 tons.
This is an 1850 lithograph of the Missouri, also called the Big Missouri because it was the largest steamboat on the river below Louisville before the launch of the Sultana in 1848. It operated mainly between St. Louis and New Orleans and was destroyed at St. Louis in 1851.
Quote:~
Ben Rogers hove in sight presently -- the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. Ben's gait was the hop-skip-and-jump -- proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to star-board and rounded to ponderously and with laborious pomp and circumstance -- for he was personating the Big Missouri, and considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water.
Credit:~ Chapter 2, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain.
Credit: Lithographer, Henry Lewis.
Enlargement: 1100x766pxs.
Note:~ This scene depicts wooding up at night on the lower Mississippi. Lithograph made circa 1850.
Built: 1848, Freedom, Pennsylvania.
Type: Sidewheel, wooden hull packet.
Size: Unknown.
The Grand Turk was well-known in the early years of the steamboating era, running on the lower Mississippi in the trade from St.Louis and Louisville to New Orleans. She was partly owned by Capt. Newman Robirds, from St. Louis. The Grand Turk was the victim of a conflagration in New Orleans, on Feb. 6, 1854, when a fire that began on the Charles Belcher, loaded with cotton, spread to nearby boats, including the Natchez III.
Quote:~
The barber of the Grand Turk was a spruce young negro, who aired his importance with balmy complacency, and was greatly courted by the circle in which he moved. The young colored population of New Orleans were much given to flirting, at twilight, on the banquettes of the back streets. Somebody saw and heard something like the following, one evening, in one of those localities. A middle-aged negro woman projected her head through a broken pane and shouted (very willing that the neighbors should hear and envy), 'You Mary Ann, come in de house dis minute! Stannin' out dah foolin' 'long wid dat low trash, an' heah's de barber offn de "Gran' Turk" wants to conwerse wid you! '
Credit:~ Chapter 14, Life on the Mississippi, by Mark Twain.
Credit: Photographer, unknown.
Enlargement: 720x511pxs.
Built: 1849, Elizabeth, Pennsylvania.
Type: Sidewheel, wooden hull packet.
Size: 149 tons.
The Northern Line Packet Company operated the Minnesota on the Upper Mississippi River from Galena to St. Paul, and later on the Minnesota River. She was commanded by Capt. Richard C. Gray, and was destroyed 1862.
Note:~ The painted paddleboxes of the Minnesota were a feature of this boat.
Credit: Currier & Ives.
Enlargement: 1348x832pxs.
Built: 1852, New Albany, Indiana.
Type: Sidewheel, wooden hull packet.
Size: 350 feet, 1,117 tons.
Cost: $375,000.
There were several Eclipse boats. This was the largest sidewheeler to carry the Eclipse name, with 42-foot wheels, operating from New Orleans to Louisville. She was damaged beyond repair at New Orleans in 1860 when she was blown from the levee into the path of another boat.
In this typical Currier & Ives scene, the Eclipse is loading cotton.
Credit: Photographer, unknown.
Enlargement: 720x509pxs.
Built: 1856, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Type: Sidewheel, wooden hull packet.
Size: 226 feet, 329 tons.
Built for the La Crosse and Minnesota Packet Company, the Northern Belle was commanded by Capt. Preston Lodwick, and by Capt. Jesse Y. Hurd during 1858-59, trading between Galena, Dunleith, Dubuque and La Crosse.
She raced the Key City in 1856 and lost, however she was well run and has the considerable distinction of being the 'longest lived steamboat' on the river.
The Northern Belle transported Civil War troops in 1861 while under the command of Capt. W. H. Laughton, and was eventually demoted to wharf-boat duty.
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