For a century and a half thousands of Paddlewheel Steamboats churned up and down the rivers of the United States. They moved cargo, and passengers westward as America stretched and reached to meet her manifest destiny. They moved troops and supplies during the civil war, when the battlements at Port Hudson and Vicksburg stained the river red with the blood of those killed and wounded in the fight to control the Mississippi. The slow, flat bottomed, steamboats pushed civilization up unexplored western rivers and hauled revenge driven cavalry troopers and their mounts into the Montana wilderness for the pursuit of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse after the Little Bighorn massacre.
Steamboats were the lifeblood of many cities and small towns along the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri River watersheds. Residents in Louisville, Madison, St. Louis, Dubuque, Hannibal, and New Orleans turned out whenever a steamboat docked, and watched in fascination as rich planters, tinhorn gamblers, soldiers, carpetbaggers, and the celebrities of the day walked down the steeply inclined gangplanks. Sarah Berhardt, Edwin Booth, Charles Dickens, Stephen Foster, Buffalo Bill Cody, Bix Biederbecke, Louis Armstrong, thespians, Minstrel Show performers and musicians rode the rivers of America on the boats with the tall stacks. Steamboats were an American cultural icon during the most fantastic and fascinating century of our national history.
Like many American boys I read (and re-read) “Huckleberry Finn” dreaming of traveling through the humid delta country; the high grassy levees and Spanish Moss draped live oaks passing by as I watch the river from the ornate carpenter gothic deck rail at the bow of an old sternwheeler bound for New Orleans. The romance and adventure of steamboat travel on the rivers of North America in the time before railroads, air-travel, and super highways were widespread, has almost vanished. Jon Kral’s fascinating picture book “Live Steam: Paddlewheel Steamboats on the Mississippi System”, takes readers back to those bygone days. Thousands of Steamboats once plied America’s rivers, today only six of these magnificent mechanical leviathans remain, and four of those are re-creations, only two real steamboats travel American rivers today, the Delta Queen and the Belle of Louisville. One hundred and fifty years ago there were hundreds. The steamboat was America’s contribution to the century of progress, invention, and innovation that gave birth to the industrial revolution.
Before steamboats sail-power (and rowing) moved ships and boats on the rivers and oceans of the world. All that changed dramatically in the early nineteenth century with Robert Fulton’s invention of a shallow draft craft that could go almost anywhere under its own power. Fulton had great difficulty finding financing for his invention and in desperation traveled to France and offered the idea to Napoleon, who was looking for a way to invade Great Britain. The little corporal listened attentively to Fulton’s proposal and then had him politely shown out. How might history have been different if Napoleon had seriously considered Fulton’s proposal.
Paddlewheel steamboats were a way of life on the rivers of North America from the early nineteenth century until the nineteen forties, and photographer Jon Kral captures the essence of the vagabond gypsy life-style of the “river people”. Kral’s subjects are the boats themselves and people who love them, the deck hands, the officers, the engine room crew, and the bartenders who still live their lives “on the river”. Kral uses his camera to explore the mystique and reality of the six historic, romantic, and impractical “Grand Dames” now relegated to hauling tourists. The many-tiered carpenter gothic decorated boats, the churning paddlewheels, and the screeching calliopes are a genteel and romantic connection with life in a slower time. Kral’s sepia tinted duotone images capture the hearts and souls of the six surviving riverboats. The photographs are complemented by the text, which blends bits of steamboat lore and history with first-person narratives from steamboat lovers like musician (and former riverboat captain) John Hartford. Kral's beautiful book is the first to take readers below decks to the furnace hot engine rooms, through the narrow corridors of the crews quarters, and up to the wheelhouses for an insiders view of what it is like to live and work on these historic vessels.
The images provide a feeling of time suspended and the sepia tints convey a nostalgic sense of the reality of life on the river. Kral has selected over a hundred images covering almost every aspect of life on these wonderful old boats. Some of my favorites are a beautiful night shot of the Belle of Louisville steaming under the George Rogers Clark Bridge, an image of a Delta Queen crewman retrieving the bow line from a tree on a misty morning, a strong black hand grasping a thick hawser, the tense key lit profile of a river pilot, and many others that convey both the romance and tradition of a way of life that is fast fading away. Travel by steamboat is travel for the sake of adventure and the experience of the journey, the slow hours on board are filled with sensual moments, and personal revelations.
In 1962 Jefferson County Judge Executive Marlow Cooke bought a decrepit old steamboat at an auction in Cincinnati Ohio for $34,000. The Avalon (she’d been launched in 1914 as the Idlewild) was towed to Louisville and tied up at the Fourth Street wharf. Nobody knew exactly what to do with the old sternwheeler, so she sat there, listing just a bit, while the debate raged. One Saturday afternoon about a month after the Avalon had been renamed the Belle of Louisville, my friend Drew Patterson and I decided to go down and look her over. We were both in our early teens and had some romantic notions about steamboats. We’d both read “Huckleberry Finn” and wanted to see a real steamboat up close. When we got to the Belle, she was tied up to the wharf, the gangplank was down, and there was absolutely nobody around. Drew and I walked on board and spent the afternoon exploring every nook and cranny of that old boat from the wheelhouse to the engine room. I’ve had a special place in my heart for the Belle ever since.
In 1977 Jefferson County Judge Executive Todd Hollenbach commissioned me an “Honorary Captain” of the Belle of Louisville which served to increase my fondness for the old steamer. I have been aboard for cruises and I always root for the Belle when she races the Delta Queen every year as part of the Kentucky Derby Festival. I am sure that Mark Twain would smile if he knew that the two oldest paddlewheel steamboats still working on America’s rivers, the only two real steamboats left, still race just like the steamboats did in “Huckleberry Finn” more than a hundred years ago.
Jon Kral (1946-) was raised in Ft. Pierce, Florida and spent more than thirty years as a photojournalist working for the Miami Herald and other publications. He has covered stories in the Middle East, South America, and the United States. His work has been nominated for five Pulitzer Prizes, and his book about southern youth gangs won the Robert F. Kennedy Prize. He has been seriously involved in the environmental movement since the early eighties. Kral recently retired from newspaper work to concentrate on free lance work and publishing.
If you’ve always wanted to try steamboat travel, all six Paddlewheel Steamboats carry passengers. The Belle of Louisville offers day-trips and Dance Cruises.
The Belle of Louisville (1914) Port of Louisville, KY Call (502) 574-2992 for information about times and dates.
The Delta Queen (1925) Port of New Orleans, LA
The Julia Belle Swain (1971) Port of La Crosse, WI
The Natchez IX (1975) Port of New Orleans, LA
The Mississippi Queen (1976) Port of New Orleans, LA
The American Queen (1995) Port of New Orleans, LA
“Live Steam: Paddlewheel Steamboats on the Mississippi System”
Photographs by Jon Kral, Text by Jon Ward
Long Wind Publishing (Ft. Pierce, FL) $55
128 pages 117 B&W plates
ISBN 1892695006
If you enjoyed reading this review, please check out my other photographic book reviews:
“Not Fade Away” The Rock and Roll Photography of Jim Marshall
http://www.epinions.com/content_20411747972
Wynn Bullock “The Enchanted Landscape” Photographs 1940-1975
http://www.epinions.com/book-review-5DDB-80C8F3E-39DB828E-prod1
“Atkins—Girls Night Out”
http://www.epinions.com/content_28351106692/tk_~CB008.1.1
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