Wild Wagoner

Hartford, John
Norman, N. P.

picture

Wild Wagoner (Steamboat)
River steamers
Steamboats

1860-1869

The Wild Wagoner, a handsome sidewheeler, of the Civil War period was built in 1864 at the Knox boat yard of West Marietta, Ohio for the Cincinnati and Wheeling trade. She cost $155,000, a lot of money in those days and had a capacity of 700 tons. She was owned by Captain H. H. Drown of Marietta, Ohio and her dimensions were: 180 x 39 x 5.5 feet. She had three boilers and her engines were 25.5 inches in diameter with an 8-foot stroke. She had an illuminated high top, fancy pilot house. The Wagoner ran in the Cincinnati-Louisville trade in opposition to the U. S. Mail Line Company in 1866 with the St. Charles for a partner boat under management of Captain Jesse K. Bell. In the fall of 1866 she was bought by Captain Charlie Muhleman and ran Wheeling-Cincinnati. He soon sold her to the Memphis-New Orleans trade, and later she ran New Orleans-Natchez. Among her elegant furnishings was a painting of the original \"Wild Wagoner,\" her namesake and the hero of Thomas Buchanan Reed's poem bearing the same title. Reed, a resident of Cincinnati, was teh author of \"Sheridan's Ride\" which had been read and recited in school houses all over the country during that period. A large picture of the Wild Wagoner, built and commanded by Captain H. H. Drown, is one of the relics at the River Museum at Marietta, Ohio. She was later dismantled and tradition has it that her engines, originally on a gunboat, went to the Pittsburgh towboat Joe Nixon, later the Valiant and then the Transporter. The late Captain Charles W. Knox, who for several years commanded the Pittsburg and Cincinnati packet Keystone State, was a clerk on the Wild Wagoner. The late G. C. Best, father of Mrs. Lillian Ede and Mrs. C. F. Speary, was also clerk on this boat.

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Herman T. Pott National Inland Waterways Library