Side-wheelers, The Ella Warley, The Kate Ward and The Kirkland

My own connection to side-wheelers was my great times 4 grandfather, Captain Alexander G. Swasey Jr. of the Ella Warley, (formerly the Isabel) which became in 1861 a Confederate blockade runner. They were captured in by the Union blockaders early in the Civil War and Captain Swasey spent the war in a Union prison.

Here are some  links about some of his life. (HERE)

and Here, especially about his side-wheeler.

I enjoy reading about different historical events in Texas, my home state. I receive a newsletter Today in Texas History as an email, and on June 21, the post was about the following boat The Kate Ward being launched in 1845 on the Colorado River.

The Handbook of Texas On Line gives this information: 

The Colorado River, measured in length and drainage area, is the largest river wholly in Texas.  

Above Austin the lands along the Colorado are generally rough, but below Austin the river traverses the flat, alluvial bottoms of the Coastal Plain, an important agricultural area.

Early in the nineteenth century its slow current caused the formation of a raft, or log jam, which gradually grew upstream so that the river was navigable in 1839 for only ten miles above its mouth. By 1858 the situation in Matagorda and Wharton counties had become so bad that the state appropriated funds for the construction of a new channel around the raft. The United States Army Corps of Engineers opened the channel in the mid-1800s, but since it was not maintained the raft filled it up. Teamsters unloaded vessels above the raft and carried the cargo to other teams that loaded it on other boats for shipment to Galveston and other Gulf ports. Shallow-draught vessels were at times able to ascend the Colorado to Austin.

So to get the geography straight...this Texas Colorado River does not go through the Grand Canyon...but into the Gulf of Mexico at Matagorda, TX.

The KATE WARD 

Mary M. Standifer 

KATE WARD. The Kate Ward was the first steamboat to operate on the Colorado River. In June 1844 the La Grange Intelligencer announced that a local merchant, Samuel Ward, was to build a steamboat for use on the Colorado. The engine and other equipment had already been bought in Pittsburg and were to be shipped to Matagorda by July 15. The boat would be assembled at the head of the raft, which obstructed navigation on the lower part of the river, and was to be in operation by November 1. The article praised Ward for his part in selling the stock of the Colorado Navigation Company, which had been rechartered in January 1844 for the purpose of clearing the raft. Plans for construction of the steamer evidently changed, however, for the next relevant notice of a steamboat concerns the launching of the Kate Ward at Matagorda, near the mouth of the Colorado, on June 21, 1845. The vessel was said be owned by "Messrs. [George W.] Ward and Robinson" or by "Mr. Ward and Co. of Matagorda and a Mr. Robertson of Columbus." The Kate Ward, named for Ward's sister, was described as 110 feet long, twenty-four feet across at the beam, and capable of carrying 600 bales of cotton. It was reckoned that with such a cargo she would draw three feet of water, but at her launching she was said to draw only five inches. The reporter expressed the hope of going along "before many months . . . on her first trip up to Columbus and La Grange." Further work on the vessel, therefore, may have been necessary. Several months later, an identical announcement in two Houston newspapers reported that the Kate Ward, which was "intended to ply between the head of the raft and the landings above," was "nearly completed." She was expected to make her first trip in eight to ten days. Before she tried to reach Columbus, however, it was felt that many snags downriver from that town would need to be cleared out. Somehow the Kate Ward managed to get past the raft; she arrived in Austin on March 8, 1846, her first and only visit to the capital. On March 11 she took a party of excursionists, including citizens, legislators, and United States Army personnel, several miles upriver to visit Mormon Falls. At this time the boat was described as being a side-wheel steamer, 115 feet long and twenty-four feet wide at the beam, with two engines rated at seventy horsepower each and a draft, "with wood, water, etc.," of eighteen inches. The steamer stayed above the raft from 1846 to 1848. At the head of the raft, cargoes were loaded on wagons for the ten to twenty mile trip to Matagorda, where they were reloaded on ocean-going vessels for shipment. High water on the Colorado in the summer of 1848 cut a temporary channel around the raft, and the Kate Ward descended to Matagorda Bay.

From 1848 or 1849 to 1850, at least, the Kate Ward was in use on the Guadalupe River, where another steamer, the Victoria, seems to have preceded her. The town of Victoria contracted with two brothers, Iso and William J. Ward, to clear drift from the Guadalupe and to provide transportation from Victoria to the bay. The Wards were offered $40,000 for the work of clearance and for making twenty-five trips between Victoria and the bay before June 1850. They employed the Kate Ward, which apparently reached Victoria in early 1849. By June 1850 she had made thirty trips and at that time was completing the round trip from Victoria to Cavallo Pass in forty-eight hours. In 1852 W. T. Ward used the Kate Ward as a snag boat on the Colorado, where he succeeded in clearing a twenty-mile stretch from the mouth upstream. The owner of the boat at this time seems to have been the Colorado Navigation Company. A company stockholders' meeting in October 1852 noted that the Kate Ward was then in Matagorda Bay and in need of repairs after Ward's work on the river. The United States government bought the Kate Ward in July 1853 and had her repaired that fall. In November she was back on the Colorado, where United States Army engineers used her to help dig a channel around the raft. What later became of the steamer is unknown.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

Comer Clay, "The Colorado River Raft," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 52 (April 1949). Houston Morning Star, October 30, 1845. La Grange Intelligencer, June 13, 1844, July 7, 1845. Brownson Malsch, Indianola-The Mother of Western Texas (Austin: Shoal Creek, 1977). Telegraph and Texas Register, November 5, 1845. Texas Democrat, March 11, 14, 1846. Texas National Register, July 10, 1845. Texas State Gazette, October 9, 1852, January 22, 1853. Vertical Files, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin (Steamboats). 

The Kirkland 1888

Wikipedia offered this about The Kirkland -

The Kirkland was built in 1888 by T.W. Lake for the Jackson Street Cable Railway Company.^[1] Once complete, Kirkland was placed on the Juanita– Kirkland–Houghton–Leschi Park route.^[1] Kirkland was considered the prestige vessel on Lake Washington at the time it was built.^[1][2] In 1889 Kirkland carried the U.S. Naval Commission on a tour of the lake when they were considering whether a shipping canal was possible. 1891 Kirkland conveyed President Benjamin Harrison around the lake when he came to Seattle.<sup>[3][4]

In 1898 Kirkland was dismantled, converted to a barge and sent north to Alaska.[1]
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Newell, ed., McCurdy Marine History, at 43. Wright, E. W. (1895). Lewis & Dryden's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. Portland, Oregon: Lewis & Dryden Printing Co. p. 353.

Newell and Williamson, Pacific Steamboats, at 132.

Kline and Bayless, Ferryboats – A Legend on Puget Sound, at 144-145.

Drop by Sepia Saturday this week to see what others have to share on the topic...