Lee Line Steamers | Riverboat History

The Memphis Commercial Appeal Mid South Memories section reported that on January 25, 1887 the following article extolling the benefits of liver medicine …”Almost all the diseases that afflict us from infancy to old age have their origin in a disordered liver.  A really good liver medicine is the most important in the whole range of pharmacy.  We believe Simmons Liver Regulator to be the best among them all.  We pin our faith upon the Regulator, and if we could persuade every reader to try it, we would be willingly vouch for the benefit each would receive.”

This St. Louis water front picture was taken sometime in the 1890’s to the early 1900’s.  I have another picture of this scene but it is in need of some PhotoShop help before I post a copy.

Way’s Packer Directory has to following to say about the CITY OF PROVIDENCE:  Stern wheel packet, wood hull, built Jeffersonville Ind by Howard Shipyard 1880.  273.7 feet x 44.5 ft x 7.8 ft draft.  Engines 26’s – 9 ft.  Five boilers each 44″ x 30 ft., four flues.  Paddlewheels 34 ft. dia. with 15 ft buckets.  Capt. George Lennox, master, with Frank Perkins and James McMeen, clerks 1882.  Owned by the Anchor Line (competitor of the Lee Line).  She blew out a cylinder head on the port engine 30 miles above Memphis June 15, 1888 killing the striker engineer George Betts.  When the Anchor Line quit business she was sold to the Columbia Excursion  Co. St. Louisand converted into an excursion boat and operated there.  Was pushed out by ice January 20, 1910 and lost.  Her whistle later was used on the Streckfus excursion steamer WASHINGTON, then on SAINT PAUL and SENATOR.  page 96 Way’s Packet Directory 1848 1983.

This picture of a Lee Line Steamers wharfboat is from a unused therefore undated postcard.  The gentlemen standing by the mule cart could be cotton merchants waiting for a bale or two of cotton to be unloaded from the wharfboat and taken to their cotton office on Front Street Memphis for grading.   My mothers grandfather had his cotton office on Front Street along with numerous other cotton merchants.

Definition of Cotton

“Cotton is the over-coat of a seed that is planted and grown in the Southern States to keep the producer broke and the buyer crazy; is planted in the spring, mortgaged in the summer and left in the field in the winter.  The fiber varies in color and weight and the man who can guess nearest the length of a fiber is called a cotton man by the public, a fool by the farmer and a poor business man by his creditors.  The price of cotton is fixed in New York and goes up when you have sold and down when you have bought.”  A buyer working for a group of mills in the South was sent to New York to watch the cotton market and after a few days deliberation wired his firm as follows:  “Some think it will go up and some think it will go down , I do too, whatever you do will be wrong, act at once.”

This humorus definition of cotton came from the memoirs (dated July 21, 1921) of my mothers grandfather Marius Harrison Gunther who was a cotton and tobacco broker in New Orleans and Memphis in the 1870′s through the 1920′s.  The Lee Line hauled millions of pounds of cotton and cotton seed from 1862 until the early to mid 1890′s when the railroads took much of the cotton trade from the steamboats.

LADY LEE: Boat 3338 Way’s Packet Directory page 275. Stern Wheeler, Packet, wood hull, built by the Howard Ship Yard Jeffersonville Ind. 1889, 176 x 35 x 5.5. Engines 16’s – 6 ft. Three boilers. She and the ROWENA LEE were built about the same time for the Lee Line to run Memphis – Ashport Tn. She carried the whistle from the COAHOMA. Sank in fifteen feet in the chute at Island 40, July 5, 1895. Sand washed out from under her head, the hog chains parted and she proved a total loss. Capt. William J. Irwin related that LADY LEE landing was on the Arkansas shore on the Mississippi opposite Island 35 up about the middle bar. After this loss the Lee Line bought the RUTH as a replacement.  This picture is from my brother George Lee’s collection.

This picture was taken from a postcard labled Ferd Harold Hickman Ky.

FERD HAROLD: Boat 2039 Way’s Packet Directory page 165. Stern Wheeler, Packet, steel hull, built at Dubuque Iowa 1890, 244 x 34 x 7.2. Engines 18’s – 8 ft. Three boilers. Ferd Harold Esq. was a St. Louis brewer who financed construction. His likeness in the form of a magnified bust was placed on the forward end of the Texas and later removed to the cabin. Her maiden trip was St. Louis – New Orleans, Capt. Henry W. Brolaski. Then Capt. Milt Harry went on her and she loaded out at St. Louis for Vicksburg. He placed her in the Ouachita River trade in opposition to the regular line and quit when he was paid off. She then ran St. Louis – Alton, did no go and was sold to the Lee Line for $30,000 having cost $75,000 new. They ran her St. Louis – Memphis. During the last several years of operation her owner was St. Louis Memphis Transportation Co., which also ran the GEORGIA LEE in the trade. S.C. Edgar was president of the line, G.F. Lee vice-president and J.M. Tucker general agent at St. Louis. Their folder also advertised the steel hull excursion steamer MAJESTIC. She ran this trade until 1919 at which time the Halliday wharf boat at St. Louis was sold and the Lee Line wharf boat at Cairo was discontinued. The FERD HAROLD was dismantled. Sugar Products Co. of New Orleans used the hull as a barge which foundered in the Gulf of Mexico late 1920.

Rousters in this undated photo are doing the hard work necessary to keep a steamer operating.  This photo is from the collection of my older brother George (3 minutes older) who graciously allowed me to copy his collection of Lee Line and other steamboat pictures he purchased in the early 1980’s.