EDITORS: Amelia Martin Carolyn Pollan INQUIRIES EDITOR: Chris Allen ORAL HISTORY EDITOR: Missy Cole Carroll GUEST WRITERS: Sarah Fitzjarrald PROOF READERS: Mary Nell Euper CONTENTS Rosalie Platt Donald Peer Carolyn Peer VOL. VI, NO. 2 SEPTEMBER, 1982 Warren McCullough Sarah McCullough Steamboating The Arkansas 2 PHOTOGRAPHIC STAFF Gerald Shepard Captain B. C. Blakely 30 David King Captain James Bowlin 34 Bradley Martin OFFICE MANAGER and INDEXING: News and Opportunity 35 Phil Miller Book Notes 38 MAILING: Contents, Past Issues of The Journal 40 Thelma Black Velma Barber 1882 Newspapers 41 Frank Jedlicka 1982 Membership Roster 52 BOARD AND OFFICERS: Index . 56 Amelia Martin, Pres. Leonna Belle Cotner, V.P. Mary Nell Euper, Sec. Donald Peer, Treas. Chris Allen, Corres. Sec. Gilmer Dixon COVER: Mary Lou Jacobsen The Lightwood, last boat operated on the lower Arkansas River by Robert Johnson Capt. B. C. Blakely, 1917. Capt. Blakely is in the pi lot house. The crane Sue McCain is hauling in the gangplank. Picture gift to Fort Smith Public Library Rosalie Platt from Miss Mary Blakely and Mrs. Leo Blakely, daughter and daughter- Richard Sugg in-law of Capt. Blakely. Thelma Wray Membership in the Fort Smith Historical ©Copyright 1982 Society includes subscription to The By the Fort Smith Historical Society, Inc. Journal of the Fort Smith Historical 61 South 8th Street Society, which is published semi-annually. Fort Smith, Arkansas 72901 Year begins Jan. 1 and ends Dec. 31. For membership, send dues with your CHANGE OF ADDRESS: name and mailing address to: Change of Address Cards are free at your post office. If you move, The Fort Smith Historical Society, Inc. please fill one out and send it to: Fort Smith Historical Society, 61 61 South 8th Street South 8th Street, Fort Smith, Arkansas 72901. Fort Smith, Arkansas 72901 Types of memberships: Annual $ 10.00 The Fort Smith Historical Society, Inc. is a non-profit organization Annual Contributing 20.00 under Sec. 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. Gifts and Annual Sustaining 50.00 legacies are deductible. Life (Individual) 100.00 Journal Back Issues .... Ea copy 5.00 No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any form, except We welcome the loan of Fort Smith for brief excerpts for review purposes, without the consent of the historical material and will return promptly. Editors of THE JOURNAL. by Sarah Fitzjarrald1 PROLOGUE "Steamboating The Arkansas" is not my article Ferber "Showboat" syndrome, in which the alone. It should come as no surprise to Journal southern belle, perfectly coiffed, descends the readers that there are many friends and neighbors stairs from the upper deck and sings a love song to who maintain a lively interest in Fort Smith and its the handsome hero at her side. history and who are always willing to help with a But I must brush aside my prejudices, those pesky story. Unfortunately, they are too numerous to little ants at my table, and take time to express my mention individually, but my appreciation is gratitude to at least a few of the people who were expressed to all. most helpful and cooperative. Thanks to: Mr. Guy When I began my research, I learned very quickly Nichols at the Judge Parker Courthouse, who that even to find the description of any particular furnished some very valuable research material; steamboat was an adventure in itself. The New Mrs. Sandra Robinson at the Old Fort Museum, for Orleans, for instance, was portrayed as having so her courtesy; Mrs. Thelma Wray and all the ladies at many different lengths, widths, and tonnage the Fort Smith Public Library, especially Mrs. capacities that the best I could do was to let the Teresa Fox; Mr. David G. McNully, U. S. Army Corps majority rule and relate the generally accepted of Engineers, for the latest technical information version. about the Arkansas River; Mr. Yeatman Anderson Then through the efforts of Amelia Martin, co- III, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections, editor of the Journal, who was helpful in all the The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton research, I came upon an excellent book, "Merchant County, who cleared up the mystery of why the Steam Vessels of the United States," published by second deck is called the boiler deck; Mr. Bobby the Steamship Historical Society of America, Inc. It Roberts, UALR Library, Little Rock, Arkansas, is a refreshing revelation and I can recommend no pictures from Fadjo Cravens, Jr. collection; Katie better publication to the serious historian. Thanks Murdock, librarian, Pope County Library; Ms. to Mrs. Thelma Wray, chief librarian of the Fort Esther Carr, Rights and Permissions Editor, Smith Public Library, a copy of this book is now Reader's Digest Magazine; Mr. Louis Intres of available in that library. Seminole, Oklahoma, who contributed the use of During the steamboat era communication was photographs, Captain Blakely's Ledger and Log very slow, and there were so many colorful Books and other data from his colleciton; members characters and spectacular steamers that it is not of the Blakely family, photographs; and my son, difficult to understand how legends sprang up as chief engineer on one of the large towboats on the thickly as wild flowers on an Arkansas prairie. And Mississippi River, who answered many questions. yet the truth, in at leasttwovery important incidents, Last but not least, my special thanks go to Amelia contains more gut-wrenching dramathan any myth, Martin who started it all by saying to me figuratively, but has remained somehow strangely obscured. but not less realistically, "There is a steamer at the I refer to the violent earthquake of 1811 when landing. Why don't you go aboard?" steam navigation on the western rivers had its I did, and it was a great ride. I enjoyed every beginning; and the explosion of theSu/fana in 1865, minute of it. the greatest maritime disaster of all the the Titanic notwithstanding. There is so much meat and potatoes in the basic facts relating to steamboats that I have come to resent the whipped-cream frosting of the Edna Sarah Fitzjarrald 1 Sarah Fitzjarrald is the pen name of Mrs. Warren McCullough, a resident of Fort Smith. A free lance writer, she is a member of the National League of American Pen Women, Poets' Roundtable of Arkansas, and the Roundtable Poets of Fort Smith. 2 INTRODUCTION If Nicholas Roosevelt, granduncle of Theodore, had known what lay in store he would have "aborted the mission." To borrow a phrase from the National Aeronautics Space Agency is not unfitting, since Roosevelt's chances of getting the first steamboat on western rivers safely from Pittsburgh to New Orleans were less than those of putting our first astronaut into space. NASA properly aborts a mission if the weather is not exactly right, but nobody could have predicted the worst earthquake ever to strike the United States, and Nicholas Roosevelt was going to plow right through the middle of it. Roosevelt had been engaged as agent for Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston to build the New Orleans which was the first steamboat ever put on a western river, the Mississippi, and to take it from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. As U.S. minister to France, who was instrumental in the Louisiana Purchase, Livingston had invited Fulton to Paris, where Fulton invented a submarine and conducted his first successful experiments with a boat propelled by steam. In 1806 Fulton returned to New York where he continued his work and built his North River Steamboat, popularly known as the The Clermont, built by Robert Fulton In 1807. Original Clermont. sketch by Janice Martin. Fulton launched the Clermont on the Hudson River in 1807 and received a patent for it. However, his was not the first workable steamboat in America. steamboats and their operation on the river. The John Fitch built and operated a steamboat in 1787 territorial governors along the Mississippi were not which sailed on the Delaware River. It had six receptive to the idea, but the territory of Orleans, by vertical paddles on a side, like an Indian canoe, but legislative enactment, offered a monopoly to was driven by steam. He launched another boat in whoever could build a boat of 70 tons or more and 1790 which operated in regular passenger service propel it successfully through still water at four from Philadelphiato Burlington, New Jersey. Called miles per hour. simply the Steam-Boat, or Steamboat, it wasthe first It took more than a year to build the New Orleans, steamer registered under U.S. merchant steam named for its destination point, at a cost of documentaion. But, there was not enough demand approximately $40,000. Following Fulton's original for passage, and Fitch could not gain the financial design, she was a deep draft vessel with the support to make his boats profitable. He died in machinery in the hold, 116 feet long, 20 feet wide, 1798. weighed 371 tons, and had two uncovered side After Fulton put his Clermont into service he and paddle wheels. Livingston began to look west for greater The boat was ready for its launching in early possibilities. They sent Roosevelt to explore the October, 1811. Roosevelt, along with his wife, and a Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in 1809 and he took his crew consisting of a captain, pilot, an engineer, six new wife with him, their honeymoon being spent deck hands, cook, waiter, two female servants, and a traveling downriver to New Orleans in a flatboat. He huge Newfoundland dog named Tiger, departed studied the river channels and was convinced that Pittsburgh on that bright autumn day.