Old Boat Column

In the last Old Boat Column, we looked at two towing vessels that were “odd” for the Western Rivers. This week we will look at another “odd duck,” and this… Read More

Throughout the years there have been many types of vessels converted into river towboats, but likely few as odd as the two detailed in this column. Built for the U.S. Read More

The last installment of the Old Boat Column ended with the tramp excursion steamer Avalon awaiting its fate after the owners had declared bankruptcy. Advertisements indicated that the aging vessel… Read More

The previous installment of the Old Boat Column introduced the steamer Idlewild, built in Pittsburgh in 1914 by the James Rees & Sons Company for the West Memphis Packet Company. Read More

The James Rees and Sons Company of Pittsburgh began building river craft in the late 1870s. They turned out a wide range of vessels including packets, towboats, snag boats and… Read More

The Howards of Jeffersonville, Ind., were known for the beautiful wooden packets they started building in 1834. By the turn of the century, they had created some of the most… Read More

In 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court judged Standard Oil Company to be a monopoly and ordered it to be broken up into 34 separate companies. One of these was the… Read More

In the July 29 issue of The Waterways Journal, this column detailed the Ductillite, which was the first of a series of three towboats of a radical new design that… Read More

The Dravo Contracting Company of Pittsburgh dated back to 1890 and was involved in industrial construction. About 1917, the firm began building floating marine equipment and towboats at a Neville… Read More

With the recent passing of river historian Gerald “Jerry” Sutphin of Huntington, W.Va., the book he co-authored with Richard Andre in 1991, “Sternwheelers On The Great Kanawha River,” came to… Read More