The sternwheel steamer Valley Belle was built as a packet boat at Harmar, Ohio, in 1883. It measured 127.4’ long by 22.9’ in beam and a shallow 3.4’ in draft. As a packet delivering people, cargo and the mails, the Belle worked for decades along several rivers from the Ohio to the Kanawha in West Virginia. In 1891, the Belle transported 8,320 tons of cargo and 6,241 passengers along the Ohio River.
In 1917, the Valley Belle was operating along the Ohio River between Marietta and Middleport, Ohio. In March 1919 it was purchased by Billy Bryant of the famous showboating family. Bryant had just built a fancy new showboat and needed a larger towboat than they owned to tow it.
The Belle towed Bryant’s New Showboat for several years down the Kanawha, Ohio, Monongahela, Illinois, and Mississippi Rivers before being replaced by a smaller boat. Competition from movie theaters had shortened the range of the showboats, which were forced to go to ever-smaller and more remote towns for willing audiences. The Belle continued to tow on various rivers until 1943, when it sank in the Ohio River at Kanauga, Oh. Its career as a wooden-hulled river steamer in nearly continuous use for 60 years is unmatched.
Ships’ steam whistles were powered by steam lines from the boilers. They were used to signal other ships or the shore, to announce a vessel’s presence or its intentions. Whistles were especially useful when approaching or leaving a port or landing, or in foggy or dark waters.
This whistle originally belonged to the 1895 Army Corps of Engineers towboat Gen. H. L. Abbot, built at Jeffersonville, Ind. and named after a famous general in the U. S. Army Corps. In 1906 it was renamed Gen. J. H. Simpson, after another Army Corps staff. The vessel was dismantled in 1919.
The cabin fittings, the ship’s wheel, and the whistle were purchased by Edward Heckmann for his new Missouri River packet boat, the John Heckmann. The Heckmann was 165’ long and 30’-6” in beam but only drew 4’-6” of water. Uniquely, the Heckmann had two independently operated or “split” sternwheels, which provided much greater maneuverability than a single, wide sternwheel could offer. Its boilers came from the hulk of the steamer Majestic, which had wrecked in 1914 at Chain of Rocks, St. Louis. The Heckmann’s engines were acquired from the obsolete Army Corps sternwheel towboats Aux Vasse and Isle de Bois. Employed in the packet trade between St Louis and Jefferson City, the Heckmann lost money because of competition from the railroads.
The John Heckmann was later converted to a Missouri River 1,200-passenger excursion boat by the Heckmann family. Operating on the Missouri as far north as Sioux City, Iowa, its normal summer route was between Kansas City and Omaha, Nebraska. In winter, it resumed packet service on the Cumberland, Tennessee, Illinois, and Ohio Rivers. Wrecked in an ice breakup at its homeport of Hermann, Mo. in 1928, it was dismantled.
Chicago physician Dr. Frank Blackmarr, a passenger aboard Titanic's rescue ship RMS Carpathia, helped the survivors suffering from hypothermia, exposure, and shock. He collected a Titanic life vest during the voyage as a souvenir. Five days into its maiden voyage in 1912, the White Star ocean liner Titanic struck an iceberg at full speed in the North Atlantic, en route from England to the United States. For the next few hours, the giant ship took on water and began to nose down into the sea. At 2:20 a.m. on April 15, the gigantic ship sank in 12,500 feet of water 350 miles off the coast of Canada. Within about two hours, Carpathia arrived and rescued the Titanic's 705 surviving crew and passengers. Around 1,500 people aboard were lost.
This stoneware butter crock was made by John Burger, who operated a pottery in Rochester, New York, between 1839 and 1870. It is one gallon in capacity with a maker’s mark just below the rim. Its floral design is rendered in cobalt blue, and the interior is brown glazed.
John Burger came from Alsace-Lorraine in France, and first worked at a pottery in Lyons on the Erie Canal. In 1839 he moved to Rochester and joined Nathan Clark and Company as manager of the pottery. In 1855 Burger became the owner of the pottery and continued in the business of making stoneware for domestic uses—preserve jars, churns, pitchers and batter pitchers, cream pots, jugs, molasses jugs, water fountains, beer bottles, stove tubes, and the butter pot seen here. He was joined in the business by his sons in the 1860s. Decorative floral motifs of this kind were common by the 1850s.
Early in the 19th century, the potters themselves executed the designs, but later they employed women to paint the pottery’s motifs onto the vessels. Women’s skills in writing and in decorative techniques expressed in the home prepared them to execute designs with fluency and without any formal art education.
This panbone, or section of the back of a sperm whale’s jaw, served as the canvas for a whaleman’s freehand drawing of a busy whale hunt off the coast of the volcanic island of Ternate, one of the Spice Islands in Indonesia and the world’s main source of cloves until the 18th century.
In the lower left, a woman reaches out for her whaleman, who symbolically stands across the sea with one hand over his heart and a harpoon in the other. In her background is a tranquil domestic scene, probably their home. In the center, a fenced precinct labels the main scene. Above, on the right are the named whalers Margaret of London and Sophia of Nantucket. The remainder of the lively scene portrays seven whaleboats chasing a pod of six whales.
The artist has managed to convey loneliness between loved ones, great distance from home, an exotic and remote tropical locale, and a busy whale hunt on a single stretch of whalebone.
The James R. Barker was built in 1976 by the American Shipbuilding Co. at Lorain, OH for the Interlake Steamship Co. It was named after the head of the Moore-McCormack Steamship Company, which owned Interlake. Costing over $43 million, Barker was the third 1000-footer to sail the Great Lakes, and the first built entirely on the Lakes. These big bulk coal and ore carriers were constructed to fit the largest locks connecting the Great Lakes.
Barker's two big 8,000-hp engines turn two 17-1/2-foot propellers, pushing the vessel at a speed of 15.75 knots (18 mph). The ship can transport 59,000 tons of iron ore pellets or 52,000 tons of coal. The self-unloading rig has a 250-foot-long boom that can unload 10,000 tons of ore or 6,000 net tons of coal per hour. By contrast, Interlake’s first bulk carrier, the 1874 wooden-hulled steamer V.H. Ketchum, could carry only 1,700 tons of ore and took nearly twelve days to unload using manual wheelbarrows.
The Buckeye State was built at Shousetown, Pa., south of Pittsburgh. In 1849 the hull was completed and hauled up the Ohio River to Pittsburgh to be finished. Under the supervision of David Holmes, the Buckeye State was completed in February 1850. It was owned and operated by the Pittsburgh & Cincinnati Packet Line, which ran it regularly on the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. The company owned six or seven steamers at a time, and ran daily departures between the two cities. By the mid-1840s the Pittsburgh & Cincinnati Packet Line was praised by a Pittsburgh newspaper editor as “the greatest convenience . . . ever afforded the citizens on the banks of the Upper Ohio.”
On May 1, 1850 the Buckeye State left Cincinnati for Pittsburgh and completed the trip in a record 43 hours. Under Capt. Sam Dean, the steamer made 24 stops along the route, needing coal once and wood three times. One hundred years later, the Buckeye State still held the record for the fastest trip ever made by a steamboat between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.
In 1851, showman P. T. Barnum organized a race between the Buckeye State and the Messenger No. 2 as a publicity stunt to advertise Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind’s American tour. Steamboat racing was growing in popularity, and so a race was the perfect promotion. Although Lind and Barnum were aboard the Messenger No. 2, the Buckeye State won the race. The Buckeye State continued its service up and down the Ohio for six more years until it was retired and dismantled in 1857.
The Mississippi River sidewheel steamboat J.M. White was built at Jeffersonville, Ind., in 1878 for the Greenville and New Orleans Packet Company. Measuring 321’ long and 91’ in beam across the paddlebox guards, the White only sat 10’-6” deep in the water when fully laden. The steamboat was designed for Mississippi River packet service between New Orleans, La., and Greenville, Miss.
The White was one of the largest, most expensive, luxurious, and most powerful river steamers ever built, with 2,800 horsepower and a capacity of 250 first-class passengers and 10,000 bales of cotton. Named after famous riverboat captain J. M. White (1823–1880), the “supreme triumph in cotton boat architecture” was a masterpiece of the gaudy, glamorous style known as “steamboat Gothic.” It had multiple bridal chambers; stained glass skylights and windows; rare wood veneers and gilded finishes; seven gilded “Egyptian-style” chandeliers; a sterling silver Tiffany water cooler in the 250’-long main cabin; monogrammed flatware and china; and a full concert grand piano.
The White spent most of its eight-year career in service on the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Vicksburg, Miss. Despite its economy of size, the White’s high initial $220,000 cost, a spotty economy, and the rapidly expanding railroad network made the steamboat unprofitable. It caught fire, blew up, and burned to the waterline at a Louisiana landing in December 1886, killing several aboard.
The capstan, most commonly found on the decks of early steamboats, was used as a vertical winch for raising or lowering anchors, hoisting sails and cargo, hauling heavy lines, or other jobs where individual manpower was not enough.
It was operated manually, by putting timbers into the holes and using the resulting leverage to wind a line wrapped around the center of the device more easily. Sea chanties, or rhythmic songs, were often employed by ship crews to ensure that everyone hauled at the same time. Later in the 19th century, steam capstans and donkey engines replaced human muscle on the larger vessels.
The ship’s steam whistle was powered by a steam line from the boiler. It was used to signal other ships or the shore, to let them know of its presence or its intentions. It was especially useful when approaching or leaving port, or in foggy or dark waters.
Bryant’s New Showboat was built at Point Pleasant, W. Va., in 1917. Launched in 1918, it could seat around 880 people in its theater. Most of the shows put on for Bryant’s patrons in small towns along the Kanawha, Ohio, Monongahela, Illinois, and Mississippi Rivers were vaudeville or follies productions.
The ornate stage of Bryant’s New Showboat was home to dozens of plays like Hamlet and Little Nell of the Ozarks, and even the antics of a trained bucking mule named January. Owner Billy Bryant offered $10 to anyone who could stay on the animal’s back, but he had to retract that offer in mining towns, as the miners were strong enough to stay on.
The vessel was sold to new owners in 1945, at the end of World War II. Movie theaters, personal automobiles and other developments had gradually ended the colorful showboat era on America’s rivers.
Pound for pound, ambergris was the most valuable product produced by the whale. It was—and is—also the rarest and most enigmatic whale product. An opaque, waxy substance from a sperm whale’s intestines, it was found occasionally in the stomachs of whales being processed on whale ships. More commonly, it was found floating on the surface of the world’s oceans or washed up on the shore in pieces that could weigh several hundred pounds. It was used by western cultures as a fixative to prolong the scent of perfumes into the later 20th century.
But why it is formed—and from which end of a sperm whale it is expelled—remains unknown. Fragments of squid beaks are often found inside the pieces, and some scientists believe that ambergris forms around the sharp, indigestible squid beaks to prevent irritating or cutting a whale’s intestines. Others consider it the cetacean equivalent of human gallstones.
Scotsman Alexander McDougall (1845-1924) was a ship captain on the Great Lakes when he patented the idea of a “whaleback” ship in the early 1880s. With low, rounded hulls, decks and deckhouses, his invention minimized water and wind resistance. Between 1887 and 1898, 44 whalebacks were produced: 23 were barges and 21 were steamships, including one passenger vessel.
Frank Rockefeller was the 36th example of the type, built in 1896 at a cost of $181,573.38 at McDougall’s American Steel Barge Company in Superior, WI. One of the larger examples of the type, Rockefeller measured 380 feet in length, drew 26 feet of water depth and had a single propeller.
Although it belonged to several different owners over its 73-year working life, the Rockefeller spent most of its early life transporting iron ore from mines in Lake Superior to steel mills along the shores of Lake Erie. In 1927, new owners put it in service as a sand dredge that hauled landfill sand for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. From 1936-1942 the old ship saw service as a car carrier for another set of owners. In 1942 the ship wrecked in Lake Michigan, but wartime demand for shipping gave the old ship repairs, a new name (Meteor) and a new life as a tanker transporting petroleum products for more than 25 years. In 1969 Meteor ran aground off the Michigan coast, Instead of repairing the old ship, the owners sold it for a museum ship at Superior, WI. In poor condition today, Meteor is the last surviving example of McDougal’s whaleback or “pig boat”.
Introduced in the early 19th century, snag boats were designed to clear trees, stumps, and other obstructions from navigable rivers and channels. Most were in the form of a catamaran, with two parallel hulls between which trees were hauled in, cut up, and disposed of on land.
Designed by the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for maintaining the national waterways, Charles H. West was built at Nashville, Tenn., in 1933-34 by the Nashville Bridge Co. at a cost of $227,260.48. It measured 170’ in length and 38’ in beam but only drew 4’-6” of water. Instead of a catamaran design, the West had a normal, shallow sternwheeler hull. At the flat or scow bow, two A-frames hauled snags up a ramp for disposal. It cleared snags along the lower Mississippi River for many years.
In 1969, the West was sold to a private party and converted to the restaurant boat Lt. Robert E. Lee in St. Louis, Mo. the following year. The name was fitting. Although best known as a Confederate general, in the late 1830s, Lee had been an officer in the Corps of Engineers. His work installing pilings and wing dams had helped the Mississippi currents to clear silt and keep open the main St. Louis landing.
Moored on the Mississippi near the St. Louis Arch, the Lee was a successful restaurant until a 1993 flood devastated the waterfront. After several failed attempts to reopen, the vessel was auctioned on December 19, 2008, for $200,000. Its new owners plan to renovate and reopen the famous ship once again as a restaurant and nightclub in St. Louis.
The 102-foot three-masted scow schooner Milton was built by Ellsworth & Davidson at Milwaukee, Wis., in 1867. It spent 20 years hauling lumber on Lake Michigan, along with hundreds of other small boats nicknamed the “mosquito fleet.” Built to carry as much cargo as possible, many of these flat-bottom boats did not sail very well.
The Milton collided with the ship W.H. Hinsdale at Milwaukee in December 1867, causing about $100 in damage to each vessel. It also ran aground twice during its career.
On 8 September 1885, while transporting a cargo of cedar posts and cordwood, the Milton sank off Two Rivers, Wis., during an autumn storm. The entire crew of five men was lost—three of them brothers.
Pie crimpers or jagging wheels are among the most common scrimshaw items carved by American 19th century whalemen. They were useful, as well as decorative kitchen implements. The fluted wheel was used to cut dough or seal the top of a pie crust to the sides before baking.
This example’s shaft is in the form of a snake or sea serpent, with a tongue in the shape of a three-tine fork. The fork was used to decorate or poke holes in the upper pie crust to vent the steam created by baking.
“Straight edges” or rulers were used aboard ships as writing guides on the unlined pages of letters, journals and logbooks. The back side of this long stick is marked in 2-1/4, 4-1/2 and 9-inch sections, indicating another usage, probably by the ship’s cooper to measure the level of liquid (water, wine, beer or whale oil) in his wooden casks.
For much of the nineteenth century, ladies' fashion required very small waists. The most common way to achieve this was to wear a tight laced corset, which could be adjusted according to the specific garment it accompanied. Like this example, many of them were handmade to fit an individual, although they were also available in shops.
One of the most intimate pieces of scrimshaw a whaleman could produce was a bone or baleen busk, or corset stiffener. These were carved and given to a crewman's loved one, who then inserted it into a matching sleeve on her corset as a unique memento of her beloved's feelings.
One side of this whalebone busk contains three cityscapes, two of which have busy ports with lots of shipping. The other side has eight vertical pictures, topped by a full frontal portrait of a beautiful young woman. She may represent the recipient of this busk. Below her is a city scene with multiple church steeples over a flag in a precinct. A multi-colored circular geometric pattern is at the center, above a garden scene over a delicate basket of flowers. Next is a three-masted warship, and at the bottom is a large rural villa overlooking a walled garden. Can these pictures be woven into a story?
For much of the 19th century, ladies’ fashion required very small waists. The most common way to achieve this was to wear a tightly laced corset, which could be adjusted according to the specific dress it accompanied. Like this example, many corsets were handmade to fit an individual, although they were also available in shops.
One of the most intimate pieces of scrimshaw a whaleman could produce was a bone or baleen busk, or corset stiffener. These were carved and given to a crewman’s loved one, who then inserted it into a matching sleeve on her corset as a unique memento of her beloved’s feelings.
Each of these busks has a cityscape etched into one side. The other side of one has eight pictures, topped by a portrait of a beautiful young woman. The other has a plaintive love poem on the back.
Women and ships were the most popular subjects for scrimshaw carved by crewmen on long, slow whaling voyages. In this deeply engraved example, a beautifully coiffed and fashionable young lady, possibly in mourning dress, has pulled a locket from her bodice and is gazing at the image of a smiling young man. The curls of her girlish hairstyle would indicate that she is unmarried, although the traditional ring finger of her left hand is not shown. The mid-19th-century date of this tooth is suggested by the style of the dress.