Chaperon Cargo

Str. CHAPERON

Gerald: Some years ago I found the attached image of the Str. CHAPERON at a flea market. The late Capt. C.W. Stoll thought this photo was most likely taken on the Green River in Kentucky. As you undoubtedly know, the CHAPERON, built in 1884 as the J.C. KERR, was renamed by the Evansville and Bowling Green Packet Company after a rebuilding. She ran in the Bowling Green & Mammoth Cave trade with Capt. Jeff Williams as master. Sold in 1917 to Capt. Gid Montjoy, of Greenwood, Mississippi who renamed her CHOCTAW and took her to Vicksburg to run on the Yazoo. She burned at Melrose Landing, Mississippi on the Tallahatchie River on March 8, 1922.

As for freight, most of the packets carried all manner of goods and even livestock. In Kaintuck, many a barrel of bourbon whiskey was transported on steamboats!

Hope this helps!

Thanks Keith, this does help. I am building the Chaperon model, and was trying to decide what possibly to put on it for cargo, if I do. Here is a picture of what I am doing. I am trying to give it some character, and put some life into it. I know it may not have looked this way, but I wanted to do something different.

Gerald

The CHAPERON carried every kind of cargo, it was the truck of the time. If you went into the general store in Rumsey, Ky. in the 1890's and bought a tooth brush...it came by boat. If you needed new crockery for your kitchen...it came by boat. If you needed seed to plant your garden...it came by boat. And the reverse was true....if you had eggs to sell, you put them on a boat to take to market, same with your tobacco crop or your corn crop. If you needed to ship cattle to the market in Evansville, you put them on a boat. If the wife needed to see a specialist in Bowling Green, she went by boat. Packet boats were a combination of trucks (try to name something you own that at one time was not on a truck) and Greyhound bus.