Sandbars and Sternwheelers: Steam Navigation on the Brazos

by Pamela A. Puryear, Nath Winfield Jr., Joseph Milton Nance (Introduction)

Overview

Nature never intended the Brazos River for navigation, but before the coming of the railroads Brazos steamboats were a necessary, if always erratic, form of transport. And there were men to meet the challenge. One captain, heedless of shallows, shoals, snags, and falls, boasted that he could tap a keg and run a boat four miles on the suds. Based on rich archival sources, this authoritative and entertaining book tells of the men and boats that braved the river from the earliest days to the late 1890s.

Steamboat captains and plantation aristocrats, business tycoons and empire builders, mud clerks and river rats, all were obsessed with a single idea: to open the Brazos for steamboats from its headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico. The river was dredged and snags were removed, boats were designed with shallow draft, and boat owner, captain, and pilot (often one and the same) pitted their skills against the river. But the Brazos was recalcitrant. Seasonal rises silted in manmade channels and left behind new snags to catch the unwary. And as railroads inched their way across the state, the need for river transport dwindled. Railroad bridges across the Brazos finally created barriers that even a steamboat riding a “red rise” could not negotiate. By the turn of the century, the dauntless Brazos paddlewheelers were only a memory, but, even today, the dream dies hard along the river.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781585440580
Publisher:	Texas A&M University Press
Publication date:	06/01/2000
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

Table of Contents

	Preface	xiii
	Introduction	xv
Part I.	The River
Chapter I	The Muddy Brazos	3
	Tidewater	4
	The Middle Brazos	8
	Beyond Hidalgo	14
Chapter II	Snags and Shoal Water	17
	Washington Leads the Way	18
	The Galveston and Brazos Navigation Company	20
	The Brazos River Improvement Association	23
	River Improvement, Texas Style	25
	War and Reconstruction	29
	Survey and Denial	30
	Slack-Water	32
Part II.	The Boats
Chapter III	The Challenge of Steam	37
	The Ariel	41
	The Cayuga	42
	The Laura	44
	The Yellow Stone	46
	The Ocean	49
	The Crusader	50
	The Friend	50
	The Amite	51
	The Constitution	51
	The Rodney	52
	The Lafitte	52
	The Mustang	54
	The Lady Byron	57
	The Leo	58
Chapter IV	The Golden Years	60
	The Samuel M. Williams	60
	The E. A. Ogden	62
	The Ohio	63
	The Brazos Boats	63
	The Elite	69
	The Galveston	70
	The Jack Hays	71
	The General Hamer	71
	The Camden	72
	The Reliance	74
	The Major A. Harris	75
	The William Penn	77
	The Julia and the Colonel Woods	79
	The Magnolia	79
	The Star State	80
	The Arthur	81
	The Josiah H. Bell	81
	The Nick Hill	83
	The Fort Henry	84
	The United States	87
	The Swan	87
	The Grapeshot	88
	The Dr. Smith	88
	The Betty Powell	89
	The Dan	90
	The Belle Sulphur	90
	The Sun Flower	91
	The Era No. 3	91
	The Flora	92
	The Lucy Gwin	93
Chapter V	The End of an Era	94
	The John S. Sellers and the S. J. Lee	94
	The Camargo	96
	The Travis	96
	The Henry A. Jones	96
	The John Scott	97
	The George W. Thomas and the Beardstown	98
	The Kate	99
	The Storm	100
	The J. L. Graham	100
	The Waco Boats	101
	The Liberty and the D. Van Buskirk	103
	The Vicksburg	104
	The Niobrara and the Tom Parker	104
	The Propeller Boats	105
	The L. Q. C. Lamar	107
	The White Water and the Emily P.	107
	The Christie and the Justine	108
	The Alice Blair	109
	The Hiawatha	111
Appendix	Brazos River Steamboat Captains and Their Boats	115
	Bibliography	119
	Index	133