The new year marks the 200th anniversary of the first steamboat to arrive at Columbus.
It was the Steamer Cotton Plant, which arrived in March 1823. Prior to the arrival of the Cotton Plant, Columbus’ river commerce had been by flatboats and keelboats.
The earliest newspaper reference to river commerce at Columbus that I could find was in the Feb. 2, 1820, Mobile Gazette and Commercial Advertiser, which stated that the “barge” (keelboat) Southern Trader under Brown had cleared the Port of Mobile headed for Columbus. Brown would have been Ovid Brown, who had moved to Columbus in 1818 or 1819 and had a keelboat on the Tombigbee as early as 1819. I have, with help from Carolyn Kaye, attempted to track the history of the Cotton Plant using period newspapers.
The significance of those newspaper accounts, which ranged from 1820 to 1828, is they show a slightly different story than local tradition and later historical accounts. A good example is that later accounts of the arrival of the Cotton Plant in Columbus, including Keeler in 1848, give the year as 1822. However, an 1824 Mobile newspaper article mentions that since the Cotton Plant made its first trip to Columbus in March of 1823, it had made five more trips. So, the year was 1823 not 1822. Those early newspaper articles and other accounts of the Cotton Plant paint a fascinating picture of the beginnings of steamboat commerce on the Mobile River system.
The Cotton Plant was a 72-ton side-wheeler built in Point Clear, Alabama, in 1821. She was probably the second steamboat to reach Montgomery and Tuscaloosa and the first to reach Columbus and Cotton Gin Port. An 1822 description of what had been the scenery along the Alabama River, which was much the same as scenery along Tombigbee at that time, stated:
“… Nothing was to be seen navigating our waters but a few canoes, or perhaps now and then a barge (flatboat or keelboat) not much larger; then the beautiful Alabama rolling its course in sullen silence, through a dark and solitary channel, overhung and almost hid by trees, undisturbed, save by the savage yell which sometimes reverberated along its banks-”
It was reported from Mobile on March 17, 1823, that the steamboat Cotton Plant under Capt. Chandler was about to become the first steamboat to ascend “the Tombeckbe above its junction with the Black Warrior.” Then in April 1824, the Mobile Register published an account of the steamer’s exploits:
“The steamboat Cotton Plant, principally owned and commanded by Capt. Stephen Chandler, is the first and only steamboat, which has navigated the Tombeckbe River. She made her first trip to the town of Columbus, Mississippi, in March 1823, distant by water about 500 miles; since then, she has made five additional trips — the last trip, literally cutting his way, Capt. C. proceeded one hundred miles higher up, to the town of Cotton Gin Port. Her return through a wilderness passage of such distance, was incredibly short, (3 days) indeed if any one a few years ago had predicted the making of her last trip, previous to any labor being bestowed on the river, he would have been taken for a visionary…”
A bill of lading for goods shipped from Mobile up the Alabama River on the Cotton Plant in 1825 provides a sampling of the same type of goods being shipped to Columbus from Mobile at that time. The cargo included six coils of rope, eight packages of bagging, two reams of paper, four barrels of sugar, one barrel of soap, one barrel of whisky, one box of candles, one box of tea, one barrel of molasses, and a bag of coffee.
On a return trip to Columbus in February 1824, the Cotton Plant ran aground but was freed after several days of being stranded. Soon after the Cotton Plant’s pioneer voyages other steamboats were ascending the Tombigbee and they were learning about its potentially dangerous waters. In 1825, several newspapers published under a dateline of Mobile, May 24: “By the Cotton Plant we learn that on the 16th inst. the Steam Boat Allegheny, on her passage from Mobile for Hamilton, Mississippi, run on a snag in the Tombeckbe River, about 12 miles above Columbus, and in a few minutes sunk. As the water is shallow where she lies, it is supposed she may be got off when the river is low.”
The Cotton Plant herself had a problem with snags and sinking. On Dec. 10, 1825, she was carrying a cargo of groceries and earthenware from Mobile to Tuscaloosa when she hit a snag and sank. By early January, chains had been secured under the steamer and attempts were being made to raise her. She was eventually raised but then in July 1826 newspapers reported: “The Steam-Boat Cotton Plant ran upon a rock on the 13th ult (June) a few miles below Vernon, in the Alabama, and sunk. …This is the second time the Cotton Plant has sunk this season…”
She was on her first trip after having been repaired following her first sinking. She was again raised, repaired and returned to the Mobile River trade. On May 7, 1828, she “grounded” and sank at White’s Landing just south of Tuscaloosa. Apparently, the Cotton Plant was a total loss that time, as I have found no further newspaper mention of her.
It was in researching the Cotton Plant that I came across a fascinating article in the City of Washington Gazette, of May 31, 1820. It was an article about the Steamer Tensa making the first trip to Tuscaloosa in April 1820. The description of its arrival was probably much the same as the Cotton Plant in Columbus three years later.
“Tuscaloosa April – Arrived at this place on Thursday evening last, the Steamboat Tensa, Capt. Mattocks, in 19 days from Blakely. The gratification of our citizens on viewing such a novel spectacle in this woody world, is easier conceived than described. To those who had seen Steamboats before, the sensation produced by seeing her here was delightful; to those who had not, ecstatic! She was in excellent order, having fortunately received no damage in ascending the long, serpentine, and (by boats of her class) hitherto unexplored Black Warrior, though we understand she experienced some difficulty in working through some of the many narrow and crooked passes therein. On Friday afternoon, she was chartered and made an excursion of a few miles down the river…”
As we watch the towboats and barges that now pass Columbus on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, we can only imagine the appearance of the steamboats that once traveled the Tombigbee.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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