Local Columns

Steamboat photos

Look at the photo of the FRANCIS J TORRANCE going through the open swing span of the Historic Harmar Bridge in 1900 at Marietta.

Smoke billows from her stacks; people are standing behind the pilot house.

The TORRANCE is a graceful vessel, built "right here in River City," to borrow a line from The Music Man show.

She was a sidewheeler with a paddle wheel on each side, built at Knox Boat Yard in 1900.

But the other photo is the one that caught my attention.

The image is sharp and the water calm, reflecting the boat like a mirror. What else do you notice? I saw a few houses on Harmar Hill and a building with smoke or steam coming out of it.

It might have been the Marietta Paint and Color plant, which appears there in a 1902 insurance map. I also saw noticed something odd – the boat has no name on it.

And, if you look closely, there is no paddle wheel under the large circular well; that paddle wheel is clearly visible in the other photo.

And why is the TORRANCE moored in the Muskingum River instead of the Ohio River?

Apparently, construction of the FRANCIS J. TORRANCE was not complete when the photo was taken in January 1900.

The boat may have been moved into the Muskingum River to protect it from ice.

That was common practice at the time.

The area where the Post Office sits now was an "ice harbor" for boats to shelter from Ohio River ice.

The FRANCIS J TORRANCE we see steaming through the Harmar Bridge was the finished product, maybe her initial voyage with VIPs on board?

Boat building was a major industry for Marietta, beginning in the late 1790s.

The first boats were ocean going vessels – built 300 miles from the nearest ocean - built here and floated down to the Gulf of Mexico.

It was a big and profitable business.

That phase was followed in the mid 1800s by steamboat construction, mostly at Knox Boat Yard on the Ohio River.

Some 100 steamboats were built there. Marietta truly is "River City."