The Tombigbee River Steamboats: Rollodores, Dead Heads and Side-Wheelers

THE

TOMBIGBEE

RIVER

STEAMBOATS

A map of the Tombigbee River Valley in 1852. It shows Aberdeen, Mississippi, 460 miles above Mobile, as the head of navigation.

THE

TOMBIGBEE

RIVER

STEAMBOATS

ROLLODORES, DEAD HEADS

AND SIDE-WHEELERS

RUFUS WARD

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright © 2010 by Rufus Ward

All rights reserved

All illustrations are from the author’s collection and the collection of the Billups-Garth Archives at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library. Pen and ink drawings are by H. Frank Swords.

First published 2010

e-book edition 2011

ISBN 978.1.61423.121.9

Ward, Rufus.

The Tombigbee River steamboats : rollodores, dead-heads, and side-wheelers/Rufus Ward.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

print edition ISBN 978-1-59629-285-7

1. River steamers--Tombigbee River (Miss. and Ala.)--History. 2. River steamers— Tombigbee River (Miss. and Ala.)--History--Pictorial works. 3. Tombigbee River (Miss. And Ala.)--Navigation--History. 4. Tombigbee River (Miss. and Ala.)--Commerce--History. 5. River life--Tombigbee River (Miss. and Ala.)--History. 6. Shipping--Tombigbee River (Miss. and Ala.)--History. 7. Tombigbee River (Miss. and Ala.)--History. 8. Tombigbee River (Miss. and Ala.)--History--Pictorial works. I. Title.

VM624.M7W37 2010

386’.3504409761209034--dc22

2010023006

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction. The Tombigbee River

Chapter 1. The Beginnings: Pirogues, Keelboats and Flats

Chapter 2. The First Steamboats

Chapter 3. Evolution of the Tombigbee Steamboat

Chapter 4. The Crews

Chapter 5. Floating Palaces

Chapter 6. The Eliza Battle

Chapter 7. War Time and the Alice Vivian

Chapter 8. Railroads and Revival

Chapter 9. Vienna and the Turn of the Century

Chapter 10. End of an Era

Appendix 1. Trip Statement of the Steamer Liberty

Appendix 2. The 1877–1881 Hargrove Shipping Records

Appendix 3. Tombigbee Drawbridges

Appendix 4. A Directory of Steamboats on the Upper Tombigbee

Appendix 5. Important Landings on the Little Tombigbee

Notes

Bibliography

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is the result of a lifelong interest in the Tombigbee River and its history. I found that the history textbooks of school did little to convey real history and real people. I first discovered the real people of history in the stories that my grandmother, Lenore Hardy Billups, passed on to me. Many of these were stories that she heard growing up during the 1890s. Later in the attic of the Victorian home of my great-aunt, Marcella Billups Richards, I found that she had saved family papers and records going back to the 1830s. I then came across a history of Mississippi written by my greatgreat-grandfather, Thomas Bailey, in 1853. Those stories and accounts of life in nineteenth-century Mississippi propelled my interest in history. They were the stories of real people. They were people whose lives were anything but ordinary when viewed through a window to the past. As a child, I collected fossils at Plymouth Bluff on the Tombigbee and artifacts in the plowed fields of family farms. Jack Kaye, who instilled in me at an early age the importance of research and documentation, encouraged my interest. History and the act of discovering the reality of the past have always fascinated me.

That interest began to focus on the Tombigbee River and steamboats after first reading and then hearing Katherine Tucker Windom tell the story of the steamer Eliza Battle. It was about thirty-five years ago when I first heard the Eliza Battle’s haunting story of burning on a freezing, flooded Tombigbee River. Since then, I have canoed, floated and boated the river, all the while researching and collecting photographs and documents related to its history. In the years prior to the construction of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, the winter floods followed by the low water of summer exposed the relics of history. Excursions on the river were always an adventure and a time to see what may have washed out during high water. One such relic was a steam boiler washed out of the riverbank near Columbus in 1976.

A steam boiler washed out of the bank of the Tombigbee near Columbus in 1976.

The field notes of the archaeologist from his 1970s trip.

The thing about the Tombigbee was that floating down through its history was always fun. One trip in the 1970s even inspired a floating archaeologist to prepare field notes.

A summer day in 1976.

In this history of the Tombigbee, I have tried to make the story of steamboats come alive. Wherever possible, I have used first-person accounts of the boats and life on board them. All of the images I have used are either from the Billups-Garth Archives at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library or my personal collection, which is located in the library archives.

I must first thank my wife, Karen, for her infinite patience with my collections and the many enjoyable times spent on the river. Debbie Chandler typed up the original manuscript and was actually able to read my handwriting. It is impossible for me to name every person who has helped with my research, but a few stand out for their assistance in research and preparation. Without the help of the following, I never could have accomplished this work: Sam Kaye, Carolyn Burns, Gary Lancaster, Jack Elliott, Ben Peterson, Mona Vance, Don DePriest and Agnes Zaiontz. West Point artist H. Frank Swords contributed the original pen and ink drawings of steamboats.

I am sure that in the future I will come across additional information that will lead to finding the inevitable errors that always seem to be somewhere in the work of man. My claim to accuracy is that I have tried to use the earliest and best sources of information available. I have made extensive use of nineteenth-century newspapers and magazines in my research. Although they are not always the most accurate account of events, they do provide the best feel for the times and people. This concern for the times and people is important; history that is just presented as a factual statement, without the underlying sense of place, may be accurate, but it does not tell the story. It is the story that makes history interesting.

INTRODUCTION

THE TOMBIGBEE RIVER

The reign of the steamboats on the Upper Tombigbee only lasted about one hundred years. The boats first appeared during the 1820s, and by the 1920s they were gone. With the passing of the years, much colorful history has drifted into the shadows. The chants and songs of the deckhands and the sounds of paddle wheels and calliopes all have disappeared. The colorful language (such as rollodores, who rolled cotton bales down slides to the decks of boats; dead heads, the sunken logs that could sink a boat if struck; and side-wheelers, steamboats whose paddle wheels were located on the sides of the boat) is now forgotten. It was a fascinating part of the history of the Upper Tombigbee River Valley, whose story is worth remembering.

The Tombigbee River flows through the history of Alabama and Mississippi and became the regional artery of commerce and trade. It was known by the Choctaw Indians as Elome-gabee, or Box Maker’s River, after a box maker who formerly lived on some of its headwaters, according to an 1805 account.¹ The headwaters of the Tombigbee River rise in extreme northeast Mississippi and flow south, entering Alabama just below Columbus, Mississippi. It then flows south to Demopolis, Alabama, where it is joined by the Black Warrior River. Above Demopolis, the Tombigbee is known as the Little Bigbee or Upper Bigbee. The river continues south from Demopolis to the Junction, where it merges with the Alabama River to form the Mobile River, which empties into Mobile Bay. The fifty-mile section from the Junction to Mobile was the favorite racecourse of Tombigbee and Alabama River steamboats during the mid-nineteenth century.

The Tombigbee River—probably Plymouth Bluff, near Columbus, in 1903.

During the winter of 1870–71, the Army Corps of Engineers surveyed the Tombigbee from Columbus to the Junction. The survey showed the distance to be

by steamboat measurements 366 miles…Its normal width below the mouth of the Black Warrior is about 300 feet; above, it is 150 feet. It was originally navigable for large boats only in the winter and spring…when it affords from 15 to 40 feet in depth, and the only obstructions were on this stage of water the over hanging trees, which on dark nights and in foggy weather, not infrequently caused serious damage to steam boats.²

High water would normally last from four to seven months. During the low-water period of summer and fall, steamboats could seldom go above Demopolis, which was located 243 river miles above Mobile and 177 river miles below Columbus. The Army Corps of Engineers in 1882 listed seventeen locations between Columbus and Demopolis where the river’s low-water depth could be less than two feet prior to improvements made in the early 1870s.³ Steamboats generally ran on the Upper Tombigbee only during high water. During the low-water months of summer and fall, the boats would usually run on the Alabama River.

The Tombigbee River at Eppes, Alabama, circa 1905.

The first recorded attempt to actually use a mechanical device to propel a boat was by Mr. Duquet in France between 1687 and 1693. Jonathan Hulls took out the first patent for a steamboat in 1736. Hull’s project was not completed, though, and J.C. Perrier probably built the first steamboat in 1775, but the engine lacked the power to propel the boat. During the 1780s, John Fitch constructed a steamboat in the United States employing suggestions from Benjamin Franklin. However, his engine was also too weak, and the boat could only obtain a maximum speed of 2.5 knots. In New York, Robert Livingston worked through the 1790s attempting to develop a successful steamboat. In 1803, Livingston joined with Robert Fulton to develop a working steamboat. In the summer of 1807, a boat was completed and made a 120-nautical-mile trip from New York to Albany in thirty-two hours.⁴ The era of steamboats in America had begun.

In 1811, the steamer Orleans was constructed in Pittsburgh for trade on the Mississippi River. It was 140 feet long and could make about thirty-five miles per day against the current.⁵ The first steamboat on the Tombigbee/Mobile River was the Alabama. It was built at St. Stephens in 1818 but was not able to overcome the river’s current. In 1819, the steamer Mobile reached Demopolis but could go no higher against the current.⁶ Jean Baptiste Marestier listed two steamboats, the Mobile and the Tensa, as operating out of Mobile in 1820.

The steamer American at the Tombigbee Landing in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1907 or 1908.

It was the Cotton Plant in 1822 or ’23 that opened the Upper Tombigbee to steamboat trade. By the mid-1830s, trade on the Upper Tombigbee was beginning to enter its boom years. Over the years, hundreds of different boats carried cotton from north Mississippi and Alabama to Mobile and returned loaded with supplies and merchandise. Almost destroyed by the Civil War, steamboat trade experienced a slight revival during the 1870s but was further hurt by the railroads. However, it appeared to be the construction of all-weather roads and the popular use of motor vehicles that finally killed the steamboat trade on the Tombigbee. It may be more than a coincidence that the first paved road in Clay County, Mississippi, was in 1912 and the last large packet boats in the Columbus trade were in 1914. Below Columbus on the Upper Tombigbee, traffic lasted slightly longer, but it also ended by the 1920s.

CHAPTER 1

THE BEGINNINGS

PIROGUES, KEELBOATS AND FLATS

The watercourses of the Tombigbee-Warrior-Alabama-Mobile River Valley have long provided access for transportation and trade throughout what is now Mississippi and Alabama. First Native Americans and later Europeans and frontiersmen traveled along these streams in pirogues, or dugout canoes. By the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century, the need for larger vessels to transport increasing quantities of trade goods and supplies resulted