Last year I wrote a column on the 200th anniversary of the first steamboat to arrive at Columbus. It was the Cotton Plant in March of 1823.

It is interesting to compare its story with that of the Tensa, the first steamboat to arrive at Tuscaloosa (1820), and the Harriet, the first steamboat to arrive at Montgomery (1821). It was the Cotton Plant that opened the Upper Tombigbee River to steamboat trade, the Tensa opened the Black Warrior River and the Harriet the Alabama River.

An 1822 description of the scenery along the Alabama River was basically the same as scenery along Tombigbee and Warrior would have been on the early voyages of not only the Harriet but also the Tensa and Cotton Plant. Along the Alabama “… 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.”

An 1824 Mobile newspaper article tells of the steamboat Cotton Plant making the first trip by a steamboat to Columbus in March 1823. That and other early newspaper articles tell of the steamboat Tensa going to Tuscaloosa in 1820 and the steamboat Harriet going to Montgomery in 1821. Those firsthand accounts paint a fascinating picture of the beginnings of steamboat commerce on the Mobile River system.

The first steamboat to make it past Demopolis and up the Black Warrior River was the Tensa. It had no pilothouse or cabin as later boats had and was covered like a shed. The pilot did not have a wheel but stood on the deck and guided the boat with a lever. The boat’s ads began appearing in Mobile newspapers in spring 1820 and advertised carrying passengers and freight between Mobile and Tuscaloosa or Cahaba.

In mid-April 1820, the Tensaw was the first steamboat to reach Tuscaloosa. It had taken her 19 days to travel from Mobile to Tuscaloosa. The news of the Tensas’ assent up the Warrior spread across the nation with several newspapers reprinting the account from a Mobile paper:

“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 freighted with a large number of the ladies and gentlemen of the town and adjacent country.”

On the Alabama River the first steamboat to make it up to Montgomery was the Harriet, which arrived on Oct. 22, 1821. The trip with stops at Claiborne, Cahaba and Selma took 10 days. The boat’s arrival at Montgomery was filled with excitement and the entire town turned out to see the wonder of a steamboat. The day after arriving, Harriet took many of Montgomery’s citizens on an excursion upriver for about six miles.

The Cotton Plant was a 72-ton side-wheeler built in Point Clear, Alabama, in 1821. She was the first steamboat to reach Columbus in mid-March 1823, and in 1824 the first to reach Cotton Gin Port (near Amory). 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 Cotton Plant’s exploits in 1823:

“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 …”

George Brown, who came to Columbus in 1821 wrote of the arrival of the Cotton Plant in Columbus; The Cotton Plant’s arrival “… created great excitement among the people. Not many of them had seen a steamboat before. … They had a cannon on the Boat which was fired within about a mile of the place to give notice that it was coming. The whole population of the town assembled on the bank of the river to witness its arrival. And such cheering, swinging of hats and waving of handkerchiefs you never saw.” For a fee of $200 the boat was chartered for an excursion of 5 or 6 miles upriver. About 200 people contributed and joined the excursion.

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 Steamboat 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.”

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.

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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