The rude crafts that once floated our magnificent rivers were crude and primitive enough, and were but a slight advance on the dugout or canoes of the red men. The heavy, clumsy flatboat, propelled in part by long oars used by the hand, and in part by long poles let down from the edge of the boat and by the pressure of the body urged slowly along, and by the use of grappling hooks to pull the boat upstream, were in use far into the twenties of the nineteenth century. These boats were of limited surface capacity, difficult of management, and exceedingly slow. An indication of their sluggish movement is afforded by the fact that in 1819, when Honorable Henry Goldthwaite was on his way from Mobile to Montgomery, to make the latter town his home, he was just three months on the voyage up the Alabama River. With slow movement and noiselessly, these heavy craft would be propelled up the river, and on approaching a given point the boatmen would signal their approach by firing a small cannon kept on each barge for that purpose. After the invention of the steam whistle, now so common, by Adrian Stephens, of Plymouth, England, whistles came at once into use on all American waters.

For ages these great streams had been rolling wanton to the sea, and after the occupation of Alabama by the whites, the natural advantages were readily recognized, but as nothing was then known of the steam engine, of course there was nothing left but to employ the most available craft for transportation. For a long period, only the awkward barges and flatboats were used. It may be readily seen how the introduction of steamers on our rivers would facilitate individual and aggregate prosperity, which had been so long retarded by the slow process of navigation already mentioned.

Though Robert Fulton’s first grotesque steamer appeared on the waters of the Hudson as early as 1807, and while a steamer had not yet been seen in these parts, enterprising spirits, in anticipation of the coming use of steamboats, organized a company at St. Stephens, the territorial capital, in 1818, which company was duly authorized by the legislature of the Alabama Territory, and bore the name of the St. Stephens Steamboat Company. This was followed two years later by another, which was incorporated under the name of the Steamboat Company of Alabama, and a year later still came the organization of the Mobile Steamship Company. If it is supposed that the fathers had no enterprise in those early days, this will serve to disabuse the minds of all doubters. They were dealing in steam futures, but they were ready for the coming tide of steam progress. In due course of time, these rival organizations introduced steamers on the rivers of the state, but they were not rapid of locomotion, were at first small, rather elaborate in adornment, and afforded some degree of comfort to a limited number of passengers. These diminutive floaters were gradually displaced by larger vessels, the number multiplied, and by 1845 magnificent packets were lowered from the decks and became “floating palaces” on our waters.

At first, a steamer was propelled by a wheel at each side, but this gradually gave way to a single wheel at the stern. The period of the career of these magnificent steamers was a brief one, lasting not more than fifteen or twenty years before the outburst of the Civil War.

Railways in Alabama were still practically unknown, and steamboat travel was exceedingly popular. On the best and finest steamers the entertainment could scarcely be excelled. The staterooms were often elegant, and always comfortable, and the tables were banquet boards. The best country produce was gathered at the landings, and the table fare was one of the boasts of the steamers. The most sumptuous carpets were on the floors of the passenger saloons, while superb furniture was alike pleasing to the eye and comfortable in practical use. The boats were constructed with three decks, known, respectively, as the lower, the middle or passenger, and the upper or hurricane deck.

During the cotton season, which extended from September to March, or about one-half the year, the boats would descend the rivers loaded each trip with hundreds of bales of cotton, and returning, would be laden with merchandise, while in both directions, there was usually a throng of passengers. On some of the most elegant steamers were calliopes, the music of which would resound at night over many miles of territory pierced by the rivers. Nothing known to entertainment or comfort was omitted on a first-class steamer in the forties and fifties.

Many of the landings on the rivers were located on high bluffs through which a flight of steps would lead from the summit to the water’s edge, the length of which flight would sometimes exceed several hundred feet. Alongside the uncovered stairway, was a tram for a wide car, which was nothing more than a platform on wheels, which wheels ran on two beams of wood, the surface of which was sheeted with iron. The car was operated by means of a pulley on the summit, which, in turn, was operated by a mule or horse moving in a circular enclosure. The freight from the steamer was strung along the bank below, to be cared for by the warehouse above. When cotton was to be shipped from the top of the bluff, a number of deck hands would go to the top of the steps, and each bale was slid down the tramway to the boat. The bale would be started endwise and descend with whizzing swiftness, strike the lower deck, be seized by the hands below, and put in place.

Great were the days of the reign of the steamboat! While slow, compared with later methods of travel, steamboat passage was the acme of comfort and enjoyment. The social pleasure afforded was unsurpassed. While it would require several days to go two or three hundred miles by boat, the element of time was not so much a consideration in those leisurely days as it is now, and the regret was often that the time of the passage was not longer. During the busy season the schedule of the boats was most irregular, and not infrequently passengers would wait the arrival of the boat for twenty-four hours, and sometimes even longer.

It was interesting, the contention and competition among the rival boats for freight and passenger traffic. In order to be able to advertise the popularity of a given steamer, the subordinate officers and others of the crew, would solicit passengers at the hotels of the terminal cities, and would not only offer free passage, sometimes, but actually offer a consideration of a small sum of money, in addition, to such as would make choice of that steamer in preference to another.

The war greatly crippled boating on the rivers, and with the rally and rehabilitation of the South from the effects of the war, the railway came on anon, and the steamers largely disappeared from our rivers.