From Jeffersonville to the Kloiidike: the Howard Shipyard’S Alaskan Contract

From Jeffersonville to the Kloiidike: The Howard Shipyard’s Alaskan Contract

Richard 6. Waithen*

Anyone at all familiar with the history of steamboats in the heartland of the United States has heard of the fine reputation of the Howard Shipyards at Jeffersonville, Indi- ana. In the days of the romantic sidewheelers in the middle of the last century, Howard built boats were among the fastest, most luxurious, and longest lasting in the booming freight and passenger trade throughout the valleys of the Mississippi and its tributaries. From the firm’s inception in 1834 through the disruptions of the Civil War, the pros- perity of the postwar King Cotton period, and the shift to coal and lumber transport, the Howards’ boats plied the Missouri, the Yazoo, the Arkansas, the Red, and the Ouachita rivers, among 0thers.I At the end of the nineteenth century, however, the Howard Company undertook to build four wood burning

* Richard B. Wathen, an attorney from Jeffersonville, Indiana, has represented Clark County in the Indiana General Assembly since 1972. He is also first vice president and former president of the Clark County Historical Society and Howard Steamboat Museum, Inc., and has pre- viously published accounts of the Howard Shipyards’ Alaskan venture in the Louisville Times, December 27, 1968, and in the Indianapolis Star, March 23, 1969. The author is grateful to Viola Wathen Sheehan and Walter H. Kiser for research in the preparation of this article. Unless otherwise indicated, the pictures in this article were provided by the author, courtesy Howard Steamboat Museum, Jeffersonville. 1 See Louis C. Hunter, with the assistance of Beatrice Jones Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Econoinic and Tech- nological History (Cambridge, Mass., 1949), 107; or Charles Henry Ambler, A History of Transportation in the Ohio Valley, With Special Reference to Its Waterways, Trade, and Commerce from the Earliest Pei.iod to the Present Time (Glendale, Calif., 1932), 426. Charles Preston Fishbaugh, From Paddle Wheels to Propellers: The Howard Ship Yards of Jeffersonville in the Story of Steam Navigation on the Western Rivers (Indianapolis, 1970), chronicles the “Ruth,” the “Robert E. Lee 11,” the “City of Louisville,” the “Frank Pargoud,” the fabulous “J. M. White,” and other Howard built boats. 284 Indiana Magazine of History

sternwheelers for Klondike gold rush traffic on the remote Yukon River, a quarter of the way around the globe, and sent a party of over a hundred Ohio Valley men to the Aleutian Island of Unalaska to set them up. That the San Francisco based Alaska Commercial Company would contract with the distant Jeffersonville yards for the job bears extra- ordinary tribute to the extent of the Howards’ reputation. Yet this unique episode receives scant attention in the only published complete history of the firm, Charles Preston Fishbaugh’s From Paddle Wheels to Propellers. The three packets and one towboat are merely listed in an appendix.2 Perhaps because the expedition is so unique in the history of the yards or perhaps because written materials on the contract are relatively sparse, Fishbaugh chose not to de- scribe how the venture was undertaken or carried out. In fact, the story adds impressive and colorful evidence attest- ing to the national and international importance of the Howard yards and also provides a glimpse into an event that must have had a sizable impact on the lives of dozens of Howard employees from Jeffersonville, New Albany, Madison, Cincinnati, and Louisville who traveled so far to do the job. In early 1898 the Falls Cities were abuzz with news from the Klondike. In the first week of February of that year the Louisville Courier-Journal devoted space to four lengthy stories about the Alaskan gold rush. One headline of Febru- ary 2 read: “Destitution Declared to Prevail in Klondike. Only 7% Able to Earn a Livelihood.” All the items were not so gloomy, however. On February 5 the same paper ran a piece about the many railroads that were being projected for Alaska, an indication that the population there would be permanent. Of greater interest to the Howards must have been the assertion two days later: “Even at this early day the full capacity of every steam and sailing ship on the Pacific Coast is . . . [strained] to its utmost capacity to carry the passenger and freight that is being offered” in the Klondike.” Many Louisville area residents had left to seek their fortunes in Alaska or were planning to do so. The New Albany Mining Company was organized in February, 1898, to operate in the Klondike, and a Martin Crane of

2 Fishbaugh, From Paddle Wheels to Propellers, 208. 3 Louisville Courier-Journal, February 2, 5, 7, 1898. Howard Shipyard’s Alaskan Contract 285

New Albany was reported to have been offered $60,000 for the Klondike claim he shared with three companion^.^ Despite this excitement, the Howards appear to have been reluctant to participate in the flurry of business activity associated with the Alaska gold rush. According to Mrs. Loretta Howard, widow of the last owner of the Howard Shipyards, her father-in-law, Edmunds J. Howard was so flooded with work in late 1897 that he submitted an out- rageously high bid to build the four boats desired for the Klondike trade by the Alaska Commercial Company: “Mr. Ed Howard quoted a price three times as much as it should have been, thinking this would drive those Alaska people away. It din’t. They had to have those boats to take care of that Gold rush traffic. When they accepted the price, we had to go ahead and fill our part of the bargain.”5 A letter to Gustave Hunt of the Alaska firm dated November 29, 1897, documents the contract. In it the Howards proposed specifications for three passenger sternwheelers each 225 feet long with a 40 foot beam and a 6 foot hold and for a tow boat 165 feet long with a 36 foot beam and a 5 foot hold. A note added at the bottom of the sheet states: “Accepted [by] Alaska Commercial CO.”~ On December 3, 1897, the M. Zier Company of New Albany, boiler and sheet iron works, sent the Howards specifications for machinery for two sternwheel boats for the Yukon River.7 By February, 1898, Captain A. M. Hunt had arrived in Jeffersonville to discuss the plans with E. J. Howard. According to a Courier-Journal story of February 7, 1898, the building material was to be shipped to New Orleans and on to San Francisco, where the boats would be set up. This part of the plan must have been modified later, because it is known that much of the construction took place on Unalaska. At this point, however, 100 men, forty from Jeffersonville, were to spend eight months in San Francisco, departing on February 16. The same story also stated that the Alaska Commercial Company, with 5,500 employees, was

“ew Albany Daily Ledger, February 7, 1898. Author’s interview with Loretta Howard, July, 1968. 6 Edmunds J. Howard to Gustave Hunt, November 29, 1897, Howard Shipyards and Dock Company Manuscripts (Lilly Library, Indiana Uni- versity, Bloomington) . 7 M. Zier & Co. to E. J. Howard, December 3, 1897, ibid. 286 Indiana Magazine of History

E. J. HOWARD one of the largest trading companies in the country, and that it had paid the government five million dollars for its sealing privileges.* A company this size could afford to go far afield for the best, and the best apparently was considered to be the Howard Company. Some of the men involved may have left approximately on the date mentioned in the article, because by March 28, 1898, someone who identified himself only as “Old Nick” had settled down sufficiently in the work camp on Unalaska to write a letter describing conditions there to one of E. J. Howard’s sons, Clyde. The letter, scratched out in pencil on

Louisville Courier-Journal, February 7, 1898. Howard Shipyard’s Alaskan Contract 287 blue lined paper, began: “poor old nick a few thousand miles from home dont know how to spend a few leisure moments better so he will try and tell you some thing about the work and the boys and the way we are living. . . We have two bunk houses with Sixteen rooms to each house four men to the room.”g Giving an insight into the quality of the relationship between the Howards and their employees, Nick continued that he had the honor of posting a notice for the foreman which read: “This horse shoe was presented to this Camp by Capt E J Howard A Mascott and must not be removed[.]” Nick went on to relate: The saw mill will start in the morning had steam today two of the big boats and the tow boat are Set up Boat tops on and are now cutting down beams Brown and I have’nt struck a tap on the boats we are fitting up the Office . . . we work in rain and snow her[e] About three nice days is all we have had here. The natives Call it fine wether [Geo?] Dunbar completed the telaphone line from Huntsvill [the campsite] to [the village of] Unalaska wednesday[.] Nick also described sealskin coats and rugs that he could buy for Clyde and even enclosed a sketch of a rug.]” Although Nick may have left for Alaska in mid-February, it is perhaps more likely that he left with a large group that was to depart from Louisville on March 1, 1898. An article in the Jeffersonville h7ews of that date reads as follows: Everything is now in readiness for the trip to Alaska by the ship carpenters who are to go there to build boats for the Yukon River. Capt. A. M. Hunt who has attended to employing the men has his list made out and the mechanics have arranged for the trip. The office of Capt. Hunt was moved over to the Normandy Hotel, on Seventh Street in Louisville, Wednesday and the place this morning was one of un- usual activity and outfits of all kinds are laying all around, and the place reminds one a great deal of a lot of soldiers getting ready to go to war, who are awaiting arms and transportation. Tonight a special train of six cars will pull out of the Seventh Street Station at 8 o’clock and proceed over the Illinois Central to New Orleans. This will carry the carpenters who go to build the boats. There will be something like 200 of them aboard the cars. Delegations came down yesterday from Cincinnati and Madison. They were joined last night by the Louisville, Jeffersonville and New Albany contingent.

!’“Old Nick” to Clyde Howard, March 28, 1898, Howard Company Manuscripts. Mr. Dunbar is mentioned as being in British Columbia in James Rees and Sons Co. to E. J. Howard, May 13, 1899, ibid. “Old Nick” to Clyde Howard, March 28, 1898, ihid. 288 Indiana Magazine of History

THE AUTHORWITH STAPLETON DENSFORDIN 1969

Courtesy Richard Wathen

The men who are to go from here as far as is known are: John Whitlow, Jake Meredith, Stape Densford, William Gibson, William Braun, John Tucker, Otto Voit, Jesse Nash, William Glaser, James Ritchie, Robert Allen, Frank Cook, James Eversole, Harry Campbell, Ed Pettit, Charles Halfling, Henry Heyn, Bert Woodward, Russ Bow- man and Mitch Smith goes along to become pilot of the Yukon. As Alaska is not so very far north and is warmed up by the Japan current, it is not very cold there. Hence there will be no suffering.ll One of the carpenters, Stapleton Densford, lived until 1971. The writer had the privilege of interviewing him in late 1968 when the alert and talkative Densford was ninety- nine years old. According to Densford, the party left Jeffer- sonville by train and went to San Francisco. There they boarded a ship which stopped at Portland, Oregon, for lumber and food. Densford said the camp was located at the town of Dutch Harbor, on the northeast side of Unalaska Island.’*

11 Jeffersonville News, March 1, 1898, reprinted in Reuben Dailey, ed., “Olden Times Revue,” Jeffersonville Evening News, March 1, 1948. l2 Author’s interview with Stapleton Densford, August, 1968. Howard Shipyard‘s Alaskan Contract 289

One of the few sources of diversion available to the men was sourdough whiskey. Densford remembered that it had cost three dollars a half pint and that they had to “walk four miles across a mountain to get it.” The men worked outside as they did in Jeffersonville and on many a morning had to sweep piles of snow from the four long hulls they were putting together before starting work. Densford, who was a planker and also a glazier, was responsible for install- ing all the glass on the four boats. He trained an eskimo as a helper, and the man became “mighty good at his job.” While on Unalaska, Densford caught diptheria and the doctor on the expedition wanted to send him home, but the hardy carpenter preferred to stay on.l3 Another part of the expedition left toward the end of March, 1898. This party of engineers was doubtless needed after the basic work on the hulls had been completed. At the end of March the New Albany Daily Ledger reported: Fourteen river engineers and skilled mechanics of this city, under the leadership of Mr. Adolph Schaaf, foreman of the C. Hegewald Co. leave on Thursday for Unalaska Alaska, to set up the machinery of the . . . four steamboats recently built at Howard’s shipyard at Jeffer- sonville [this must be partly in error] but the machinery for which was built in this city by the C. Hegewald Co., M. Zier Kz Co,’s foundry and machine shops, and the New Albany Manufacturing Co. The boats are intended for Yukon River trade, and will run to the gold fields on and near that great river. Several of the engineers go with the expection of remaining for some time as engineers on the new steamboats. Those engineers who remain are to receive large wages and be given contracts covering from two to three years, if they so desire. The following are the names of all but four of those who will leave tommorrow, and whose wages will average $200 per montth with board and lodging. Adolph Schaf [sic]-Superintendent Will Raynor-Machinist and Engineer Thomas Knowles-Engineer George Curry-Engineer Robert Baldwin-Captain Charles Milligss-Engineer Rudolph Lane-Boiler Maker Martin Herter-Sheet Iron Worker Fred Rapp-Pipe Fitter Henry Bettman-Machinist14

13 Ibid. I4New Albany Daily Ledger, March 23, 1898. MEMBERSOF THE ALASKANEXPEDITION Howard Shipyard’s Alaskan Contract 29 1

Schaaf’s party had arrived on Unalaska by April 24, when George Curry, one of the engineers, wrote home that the temperature at the camp was zero degrees, “yet they considered this good weather, and all were at work in the open air.” The task of setting up the four boats was progressing rapidly, and Curry judged they would probably be ready by June 15 to begin their runs “up and down the Yukon and into the Klondike rivers, a distance of over 1,800 miles.” The vessels were made of pine, he said, so that they would be as light as possible, drawing only five feet of water when fully loaded, and Curry put them in the same class with the “Tell City,” a packet which operated between Louisville and Henderson, Kentucky. Curry reported that the gold diggings were reputed to be very rich, and he announced his plans to go up the Yukon himself to investigate. If he found “gold digging pays better than steamboating” he would “remain in the mines and try his hand.” Whiskey, he added par- enthetically, was a dollar a drink on Una1a~ka.l~ The men of the Howard expedition were on their way home by about the beginning of August, 1898,1Fand after al- most six months in frontier Alaska they must have made pay- day in San Francisco quite an event. Stape Densford received the wage of $60.00 per week in paper money for carpentry and an additional twenty-four twenty dollar gold pieces for his work as a g1a~ier.l~A poem that may have been read by its author, Ben Clark of Cincinnati, to the members of the expedition at a boisterous final celebration on the eve of its return completes the picture of life in the camp they left behind. “Farewell to Huntsville” is the title: Farewell to Captins Bay And Unalaska’s Shore. Farewell to Baren Sea Where the snow capped mountains tower Good bye to sea side toys To Star fish Clams and mussels Good bye to all the noisy boys That had so many tussels.

15 Zbid., May 20, 1898. 16 Jeffersonville News, August 17, 1898, reprinted in Reuben Dailey, ed., “Olden Times Revue,” Jeffersonville Evening News, August 17, 1948. 17 Author’s interview with Stapleton Densford, August, 1968.

Hoioard Shipyard’s Alaskan Contract 293

Farewell to the Glass hall bill of fare The Rusty Shack good bye The Cod fish stews so rich and rare And read hot Gamble eye Good bye to old Sour Dough And all the boys that drank it We’ll never meete again 1 know For that. the Lord be thanked. Farewell to the Keno Lay out With Otto Pulling pegs And Haynes a Choking off the Goose That lays the Golden Egg Farewell to the game of Poker Over in the other Shack When Bartlow plays the Joker And stole out half the pack Farewell to old Bob Allen Will never here him more When primed with half a gallen Sing the Key Hole in the door Farewell to Harry Loyd And all the boys thats gone before Perhaps we’ll meet in sansom street Or on other shores Good bye to Sourbeck Jonny And dear old Penut Jack And all the dandy roosters That lived in the other shack Good bye to Captin Thomas His Boat lies on the Shore At home he’s playing Solitary Behind the kitchen door Good by to Gratzirs Eagles They have gone whare they are free But Billy Lauders game old bird Still lingers by the sea One thing my friends I hate to do Is Coming to the frount To Say farewell to all of you And our Good Friend Captin Hunt.”

IF: Ben Clark, “Farewell to Huntsville” (Howard Steamboat Museum, Jeffersonville) . 294 Indiana Magazine of History

The existing financial data on the Alaskan expedition must be only partial. In the Howard correspondence for 1898-1899, there exists only one bill to the Alaska Commercial Company for work which included drafting “plans and specifications, furnishing [a] model[.] frame parts, stem & tran- soms[,] outriggers . . . rudders, Hogchains, cabin doors and sash . . . for four (4) steamers[.]” The company was also charged for two carloads of oak lumber in the rough to make a total due of $35,470.49.‘“ Fishbaugh lists the cost of the boats as $25,000 for each of the three larger ones and $12,000 for the towboat.2o The Howard ledgers bear only one entry relating to the Alaska Commercial Company, and that was for the year 1901 in which $4,650 was marked paid.21 The uniqueness of the Alaskan venture in the history of the Howard Shipyards can hardly be exaggerated; yet it is not entirely inconsistent with the record of the company. The Howards had always built boats whose home ports were to be far from Jeffersonville. These ports included Wheeling, West Virginia; Sioux City, Iowa; St. Paul, Minnesota; Cairo, Illinois; Vicksburg, Mississippi; Nashville, Tennessee; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Columbus, Georgia; Key West, Florida; and Galveston, Texas, as well as the major ports of Pitts- burgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New Other ships for foreign countries were both considered and built. In 1872 the Grand Duke Alexis talked with James Howard about building boats for the Russian rivers.23 As far as is known, this project never came to anything. Tow boats were built for use in Honduras and however; and letters were received by the Howards in 1897 and 1899 from Guatemala discussing repair of Howard built boats.25

Alaska Commercial Co. to E. J. Howard, March 14, 1898, Howard Company Manuscripts. 20 Fishbaugh, From Paddle Wheels to Propellers, 208. Three of the vessels, probably the large passenger sternwheelers, were named “Sarah,” “Hannah,” and “Susie” after the wives of the three principal owners of the Alaska Commercial Company. R. N. De Armond, editor of the Alaska Journal, to Richard B. Wathen, May 4, 1974. 21Howard Ship Yards and Dock Company Ledger, December 14, 1893-July 20, 1908, p. 513, Howard Company Manuscripts. 22 Fishbaugh, From Paddle Wheels to Propellers, 193-229. 21 Stephen G. Savage, “James Howard of Jeffersonville, Master Builder of Steamboats” (M.A. thesis, Department of History, Indiana University, 1952), 97, citing the Louisville Courier-Journal, February 2, 1872. 24 Fishbaugh, From Paddle Wheels to Propellers, 132. 2iCompafiia del Ferro-Carril Vera Paz y Agencias del Norte, Limitada, to E. J. Howard, December 7, 1897; June 15, July 1, 1899, Howard Company Manuscripts. Howard Shipyard’s Alaskan Contract 295

The Alaskan venture, however, remains completely unique in the illustrious history of the Howard firm. One can imagine the complexity of shipping materials from Jeffersonville to San Francisco and on to the Aleutians and of transporting a large party of men to set up a temporary shipyard on the raw and rugged shore of Unalaska. It must have taken a great deal of enterprise on the part of the Howards, whose business had been large and diverse but had concentrated mostly on ships for the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, to take on a contract for sternwheelers destined for the icy Yukon. Those boats must also have crossed five hundred miles of the Bering Sea to reach the mouth of the Yukon from Unalaska. It was an adventure, indeed, for the company and for the scores of Ohio Valley men who took part.