The Chalmette was built in 1881 at Jeffersonville, Indiana as the City of Vicksburg for the Anchor Line Packet Company of St. Louis, Missouri. She was wrecked by the cyclone in St. Louis on May 27, 1896 along with four other Anchor Line steamers. In the process of rebuilding by Captain W. H. Thorwegan as an excursion boat she was purchased by the Illinois Central Railroad interests and renamed the Chalmette, after a New Orleans suburb. She continued to operate as a packet boat on the lower Mississippi but sunk [sic] in 1904 at the head of Deadman's Bend, about 60 miles below Natchez.