Steamboats on the levee
The gold of Cape Girardeau
Morley Swingle.
Cape Girardeau, Mo. : Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2002.
Live steam : paddlewheel steamboats on the Mississippi system
a photographic tribute by Jon Kral ; text by Jon Ward.
Ft. Pierce, FL : Long Wind, 2000.
Photo Essay on the six remaining paddlewheel steamboats on the Mississippi river system, focusing on the crew and what it takes to maintain and run these floating throwbacks to an earlier time. takes to maintain and run these floating throwback to an earleir time. Every other examination of steamboats is a textbook accompanied by exterior snapshots of the boats.
Steamboats and the cotton economy : river trade in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta
Harry P. Owens.
Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, c1990.
This history of steamboating along the waterways of one of the most fertile farmlands in America conveys the importance of the steamboat industry to the economy of the Deep South.
The Mississippi steamboat era in historic photographs : Natchez to New Orleans, 1870-1920
Joan W. Gandy and Thomas H. Gandy.
New York : Dover Publications, Inc., c1987.
l70 photographs of Mississippi River and its vessels: major steamboats, luxurious interiors, passenger portraits, cargoes, mail boats, capsized ships, much more. Informative text.
Before the Arch was built, it was the steamboat, at once gaudy and elegant, that was the recognized symbol of St. Louis.
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In Twain's words
Mark Twain, world-famous author and ex-riverboat pilot, saw St. Louis in its steamboat prime, and looking back, pronounced its glory days dead:
"A strangely short life for so majestic a creature. Of course it is not absolutely dead; neither is a crippled octogenarian who could once jump twenty-two feet on level ground; but as contrasted with what it was in its prime vigor, Mississippi steamboating may be called dead." |
| (More from Mark Twain about steamboats) |
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Steamboats today
The Delta Queen Steamboat company still provides elegant, memorable river transportation.
The Delta Queen is an Irish-built ex-troop carrier bought at auction and towed from California in 1947. Refurbished as a passenger vessel, its success led in 1976 to the launch of "the largest steamboat the world had ever seen," the Mississippi Queen. The American Queen followed, in 1995.
All three now cruise the Mississippi River. |
| (Go steamboating with the Delta Queen) |
The steam era began slowly, in 1817, when the Zebulon M. Pike took six days to fight its way up the river from Louisville. Soon the new technology utterly changed river transportation.
The cobblestone St. Louis levee became crowded with steamboats, packed so tightly that when the White Cloud caught fire in 1849, the blaze wound up destroying more than twenty steamboats and a third of the city.
The scale of traffic increased so drastically that the explosion of the Sultana in 1865 (bound for Jefferson Barracks) became the greatest maritime disaster in the United States; there were more lives lost than when the Titanic sank.
Commercial tonnage for the port of St. Louis was exceeded only by New York. By the 1870s, one could count better than 150 steamboats tied up to the St. Louis riverfront.
The railroads put an end to the steamboat story. Transportation focused on speed and cheapness and reliability, and the strut and swagger of river traffic became a thing of the past.
Steamboats remain a significant part of how St. Louis defines itself. You can still book a steamboat passage from St. Louis to New Orleans, but it is now a curiosity for those with a historical bent, and plenty of time and money.
Article by: St. Louis Public Library staff.
