old boat column

The previous installment of the Old Boat Column introduced the steamer Idlewild, built in Pittsburgh in 1914 by the James Rees & Sons Company for the West Memphis Packet Company. Read More

The Howards of Jeffersonville, Ind., were known for the beautiful wooden packets they started building in 1834. By the turn of the century, they had created some of the most… Read More

The Dravo Contracting Company of Pittsburgh dated back to 1890 and was involved in industrial construction. About 1917, the firm began building floating marine equipment and towboats at a Neville… Read More

With the recent passing of river historian Gerald “Jerry” Sutphin of Huntington, W.Va., the book he co-authored with Richard Andre in 1991, “Sternwheelers On The Great Kanawha River,” came to… Read More

One of the oddest towboats ever to grace the Mississippi River system was a vessel named Pioneer. Not the Dravo-built, single screw of 1934 (The Waterways Journal, March 23, 2022)… Read More

Engine manufacturers have long displayed large front cover ads in The Waterways Journal. Diesel engine ads came to prominence in the 1920s, and throughout that decade it was almost certain… Read More

While Dravo had its innovative new diesel prop boats—such as the Wm. Penn and Ductillite—on the drawing boards, the Inland Waterways Corporation (IWC) was engaged in having three prop towboats… Read More

In late 1939, a brief announcement was made in The Waterways Journal and other publications that Dravo Contracting Company was working on designs for a towboat that would be much… Read More

The Dravo Contracting Company was justifiably proud of the towboat Wm. Penn that the company had built for the Dravo subsidiary Union Barge Line (UBL) in 1940. In the September… Read More

Friends remembered river historian and writer Keith Norrington following his passing on August 30. Norrington, 69, of New Albany, Ind., served as director and curator of the Howard Steamboat Museum… Read More