At left: Probably the best known snagboat was the Horatio G. Wright, seen here ca. 1895 at St. Louis above the Eads Bridge. She was built at Crondelet, Missouri , and measured 187' in length , 62' breadth , 8' draft. Note the castle atop the pilot house and the handsome railings.
licen sed assistants), one for each watch. There were also two oilers, one day and one night man . There were four firemen , and the deck crew ranged from six to eight. There were also cooks and waiters and a night watchman. The night watch involved the second engineer and striker, a fireman and one or two men on the deck. The other crew included a clerk, steward and two mates . Snagboats were often havens for pi lots who were not interested in serious work. For example, in June 1902 the E.A. Woodruff made a " trip of observation " from Cincinnati to Cairo. That is to say, she did no snagging on that trip, and this kindled rivermen ' s ill-will toward the boat. They considered the Woodruff's official duty a colossal joke and facetiously suggested that she be converted to an excursion boat. The snagboat Horatio G. Wright was noted for being a floating palace with a crew of 44. Her interior was exceptional. Because of her extreme breadth , her cabins were spacious and she was luxuriously outfitted. The Wright even had a library , and there was a Victrola in it with 500 selections for playing. The Wright had plants for electric light, icemaking, refrigeration and filtration. Altogether there were some 41 steam engine cylinders aboard her. She had a complete machine and repair shop aboard. Much of the wood used to fit out the Wright had come from snags in the river. There were several steam powered saws aboard, making it easy to do woodwork. Her carpenter, Ike Richards, was a talented woodworker who made many of her furni shings from choice walnut and other desirable woods retrieved from the river. Many snags were submerged and had to be located before they could be removed. A sweep chain was stretched from one catamaran bow to the other and lowered to find the obstruction. In the fal I of 1913 the Ma comb dragged the crossing at Tomato Landing and removed the ends of a coal boat the Sprague had lost there in the summer of 1912. The Macomb would drop her SEA HISTORY 74, SUMMER 1995
The Tom Stallings, on the lower Mississippi, has a sizeable snag on the foredeck. The crew will soon set about the task of cutting it into small pieces.
sweep chain as much as 16 feet and " feel " her way onto snags, which she would then remove. After a snagboat had cleared an area, the local newspapers would publi sh a list of the snags removed, so that pilots would know what areas were no longer dangerous . One mi sunderstood appurtenance of snagg ing was the big hook, also ca lled the Sampson hook , at the end of the Aframe. Thi s was not used to troll for snags. Instead , the hook was often lowered against a snag once it had been pulled out to steady the snag and keep it from moving or dropping suddenly. Despite the number of easy jobs on snagboats, the deck crew had to be adept at handling and balancing big loads hi gh above them an<;l coordinating all their moves. One rash move could cause a death , so the deck crew was a cautious group and few people had the opportunity to see them at work, performing their mechanical aerial work. The Sampson hook was also used in wrecking sunken steamboats after their boilers , engines and shafts had been removed. Once the wreckage was stripped of the recyclable iron , the Sampson hook was dropped into the water and dragged through the wreckage, ploughing back and forth until the wooden structure was broken up and floated away. Occas iona ll y a snagboat could not
tear up wreckage. In that case a diver would go down and plant dynamite to do the job. When that happened, there wou Id be hundreds of dead fish killed by the concussion. In 1914, when the Macomb was removing the Shiloh's wreck at the Memphis wharf, some of the locals stood by with skiffs, waiting to pick up the dynamited fi sh. We now use cable woven from small wire for innumerable applications. But there was no such thing as our cable in the days of 19th- and early 20th-century steamboating. Instead, they use d handforged chains. Snagboats had a Sampson chain made up of 30-pound links for use with the three-ton hook. Despite their strength, these chains occasionally broke, sending shrapnel flying across the snagboat's foredeck . After the disastrous 1927 flood on the lower Mississippi, levees were raised and riverbanks were paved with concrete revetments. Snagboats gradually disappeared in the 1940s, and although there is still abundant debris in the river, massive snags are rare. t
Mr. Custer and his wife, Sandra Miller Custer, own and operate Steamboat Masters & Associates, Inc. in Louisville, Kentucky, doing research and consulting work for museums , historians and others. Their Egregious SteamboatJournal is now in its fourth year. 13