Str. Betsy Ann Bell

Howard Shipyard & Dock Co.

Not I! Thermite welds were done within a jacket, but beyond that I just do not know.

Betsy Ann

so does anyone know how many paintings Dean Cornwall did of the Betsy Ann? I'm curious of the value although I would never sell it as I actually got to meet Capt. Fred Way back around 1980 and shook his hand. It seems I read the Log of the Betsy Ann once but dont have a copy.

Mel: Dean Cornwell (1892-1960) did two paintings of the BETSY ANN. The one used on the cover of TRUE Magazine (painted in 1930) for their February, 1953 issue and another entitled "Kentucky River Boat" for Early Times Whiskey, done in 1952. The original of the scene used on the magazine now hangs in the Ohio River Museum at Marietta, Ohio. Another work by Cornwell, featuring the interior of a steamboat pilothouse ( I think it's the TENNESSEE BELLE) also is in the Marietta museum. It is used as double page illustration in the magazine's article, by Ben Lucien Burman, entitled Low Water in the Mississippi. The BETSY ANN painting was also featured on a postage stamp in 2001 as part of The American Illustrators series. Another wonderful steamboat painting, done in 1947 by Cornwell, is that of the ROBT. E. LEE - NATCHEZ race, done for the Boatmen's Bank of St. Louis. Cornwell was well known and illustrated books by Hemingway and Pearl Buck. At least one book has been done about the life and work of Cornwell.

Richardson Printing Company at Marietta long ago made prints of the BETSY ANN painting and they have been sold in the museum gift shop for many years. I think I paid $2 for mine way back in the early 1970's! Copies of The Log of the Betsy Ann are available on Ebay and from BOOKFINDER.COM. Anybody even remotely connected to the river should own a copy of this great book!

Just ran acoss an image of the Learned family mausoleum in the city cemetery at Natchez. Rufus Learned operated a very successful logging and lumber business on the waterfront. The Str. BETSY ANN was built in 1899 at Dubuque, Iowa and named for Elizabeth Learned, wife of Rufus.

Another prominent "resident" in the Natchez City Cemtery is Capt. Thomas P. Leathers, famed master of the steamers NATCHEZ. Born in 1816 and a native of Kentucky, he began his career on the Yazoo River in 1836. Having great success in the lower river cotton trade, he built many steamboats, seven of them named NATCHEZ. The only sternwheeler (#8) was built at the Howard Shipyards in 1891 and was operated by Capt. Bowling Leathers (son of T.P.) and his wife, Capt. Blanche Douglass Leathers, who obtained her license in 1894.

Capt. T.P. Leathers was a colorful character and a staunch supporter of the Confederacy who continued to fly the "Stars and Bars" over his boats long after the Civil War. He died in 1896, at the age of 80, after being struck by a hit and run bicyclist in New Orleans.

That fella in the red flannel shirt, in Cornwell's famous painting, had better sit down in the yawl if he knows what's in store for him if he doesn't.

An interesting thing about some of the steamboat paintings is the fire belching stacks. Has anyone ever actually seen such a sight? I sure haven't.
-Jim Herron

Jim: I sure donno the answer but I can figure that with those TALL stacks that they had on those early boats (Lee 'n Natchez come to mind) produce many inches of water column of draft...being wood-burners, any light pieces of wood were more likely to be carried aloft than coal...the very reason that the old diamond stacks on locos gave way to simple pipes when they went to coal...those diamond stacks were there to catch the sparks and prevent brush fires. If you ever go to a steam tractor show, you might be treated to a spark show after dark. They hook the tractor to a fan or other simulated or real load, block the wheels, put her in full gear and open the throttle...a puffin' and workin' HARD. The engineer then opens the firebox door and shovels in some sawdust and business picks up...sending an unbelievable cascade of sparks skyward under the forced draft of the higher pressure exhaust of her workin' in full-gear. The folks love it until the wind drifts the mostly, but not quite, burned out sparks over the crowd. There's many a blotched blouse the next day...some with holes burned plumb through! Try to remember to edge around the crowd to the up-wind side! I once attended a tractor pull in Lawrenceburg, IN. They had a bunch of those fire-breathing ear-splitting gas and diesel jobs with more rubber up than an earth-mover. There were three steam-powered tractors there and I talked them into a pull with one of the stink pot tractors. Management delayed things until most of the crowd went home. One of the steamers...an Altman Taylor if I remember correctly hooked his drawbar to one of the screamers and the show started for me...That little Altman Taylor steamer (the smallest of the three steamers present) pulled that screaming demon gas tractor backward the length of the field...the big gas job digging huge furrows in its fruitless hopeless attempt to gain any advantage over the Taylor. Meanwhile the Taylor was spewing sparks, blowing its whistle and safety valve every step of the way. The engineer shot me a smart salute as he went by as if to say..."where do you want me to drop this piece of ......" You could not even hear the whistle over the roar of the protesting exhaust and burning rubber of the gas job.. Made my day! Cap'n Walnut.