Steamboats 1861-64

C.J. CAFFREY

Built: 1861, Louisville, Kentucky, as J.H. BALDWIN.
Type:
 Sidewheel, wooden hull packet. Converted to sternwheel 1874.
Size:
 173 tons.


Originally the J.H. BALDWIN, and built for the Louisville-Cumberland trade, under Captain McGuire, she was captured by the U.S. in the spring of 1862 on the Cumberland River. She was sold for $12,000 to steamship agents Wiley Simms & A. Hamilton Company of Nashville, who sold her to the U.S.Q.M.D. (United States Quartermaster Corps) on March 21, 1864.

Renamed as the C.J. CAFFREY on October 4, 1865, she operated as the Johnsonville Packet Company, running between St. Louis and Johnsonville until July 1866 when financial woes intervened. She was sold to the U.S. in August 1867 for improvement work on the Upper Mississippi River.

Lumber company Weyerhaeuser and Denkmann purchased her in August of 1874, converted her to a sternwheel and used her as a raft boat until 1892.

DAVENPORT

Built: 1863, Californis, Pennsylvania, Ohio.
Type:
 Sidewheel, wooden hull packet.
Size:
 203′ x 34′ 3″, 340 tons.


The DAVENPORT was built under the supervision of her first master, Captain Richard C. Gray, and was owned by the Northern Line Packet Company, operating on the Upper Mississippi River. She ran trips to Cincinnati in the winter months. She was destroyed in an ice-jam at St.Louis on December 13, 1876, and later dismantled.

 

More boats to be added …