(Photo provided) The pilot house of the Tell City sits on the Ohio River bank in Little Hocking following the sinking of the craft in 1917.

Disasters were common during the sternwheel era that saw hundreds of wood boats making their way up and down the Ohio River.

The Tell City was one such craft that met a tragic end. The name may be familiar because part of it, the pilot house, is now part of the Ohio River Museum.

The Tell City was built in Jefferson, Ind., in 1889 to haul mail and other materials along the upper Ohio River and its tributaries. On April 5, 1917, it was on a run from Pittsburgh to Charleston. It had stopped in Marietta earlier that day before heading down river. The plan was for it to travel to Huntington before heading up the Kanawha River to Charleston. It pulled out of Marietta at 5 p.m. and headed down river. Halfway to Parkersburg it would have passed by Lock 18. The wall of which is still visible along Ohio 7.

When it rounded the river bend near Parkersburg it was met with stiff winds. Capt. Charles Ellsworth of Evansville, Ind., decided to tie up for the night along the West Virginia shore.

Before 5 a.m. on April 6 the boat got underway again. Michael Davis of Steubenville was the pilot at the wheel according to The Times. George Knox of Harmar Street was on duty as chief engineer. After a brief stop at Little Hocking, they were working to pass through the dam’s “bear trap.” It was still pointing upstream, so Davis decided to drift backward through the opening instead of passing over the collapsed gate on the Ohio side of the river. It struck it, tearing a hole in the hull. The boat began taking on water. The crew scrambled to get the boat near shore, running the craft into the riverbank on the Ohio side. The boat quickly settled to the river bottom. The smokestacks of the sternwheeler fell over during the crash killing a man. Others scrambled to get off the boat by jumping into the water. The Tell City was also hauling a great deal of freight when the 192-foot craft went to the bottom.

The entire first deck of the boat was underwater, prospects for the boat looked poor and then it got worse. It started to rain, the river rose, and the wood boat slowly started coming apart.

It was a total loss, except for the highest part of the boat, the pilothouse. The Tell City was valued at $40,000 according to the Times and had just had the hull replaced the previous summer. A photo of it with the pilothouse still on top appears in the Vintage View photo on page 2 of today’s edition.

The Tell City was on the Pittsburgh to Charleston run because it was bought to replace another sternwheeler, the Kanawha, that had sunk below the same dam one year earlier. The Kanawha struck the lock wall on Jan. 6, 1914, resulting in 16 deaths. Details of that wreck were the subject of a previous column.

A family living nearby in Little Hocking saw some potential in the little square structure poking out of the water from the wreck of the Tell City. The Clarence Bent family removed it and placed it in their yard. The rest of the Tell City was either salvaged or left at the bottom of the river. In 1966, the river level was dropped to make some dam repairs, parts of the boat could still be found at that time. The high-lift dam at Belleville now covers the area with deep water.

The pilothouse had spent 20 years traveling up and down the Ohio River and its tributaries. Although it was still near the river, for the next half century it would not go anywhere. It did however, become a tourist attraction of sorts attracting riverboat fans along the river.

Eventually the pilothouse would get a second chance at life. It was donated to the Ohio Historical Society and the collection of historical river materials at the Ohio River Museum in Marietta. The Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen took it on as a project and restored it in 1977. Today it sits proudly on the banks of the Muskingum River near the W.P. Synder Jr. The historic towboat was built the year after the Tell City met its untimely end.

If you use Marietta’s River Trail, stop by and visit the historical pilothouse, it will give you a good excuse to take a break. It sits in the middle of a construction zone as crews work to remove the old Ohio Museum before construction begins on a new building.