Cabin arches question

photo of arch

At the top of the arch is the unpainted block of wood used to create a right angle. The slight curve is where the block of wood faces up to the top of the arch.

*RE: Camber, arch, sheer*

Hi, Lexie & Steamboating colleagues:
Fascinating points and questions you pose in your posting RE: cabin arches etc. I'm dangerous with tools knowing nothing about such carpentry. Alan Bates, John Fryant the Howard Museum gang, others on this site no doubt know a lot more. Alan years ago talked/questioned Jim Howard learning much. For ages such work on boats/ships finish work termed 'joinery.' I wonder if in the steamboat building days carpenters could 'double' doing both rough and finer 'joinery?' My big Webester's Unabridged Dictionary lists six entries under just 'camber.' The rough and finish components in wood like a huge jig saw puzzle all fitting together at the right place. Craftsmen then took great pride and care in their tools as part of making their living keeping all clean, oiled, stowed in fine tool boxes often of their making mounted with brass fittings, hinges, snaps. No hand power tools then with all done laboriously by hand cutting, fitting, cutting slightly again.

One question I have concerns the use of any type of 'caulk' after the work was finished prior to painting? We see in Howard photos the troughs with steaming hot water to bend the wood required. Alan could also enlighten us on the curing or drying of wood first after being taken from the river wet in large flats. I 'think' Alan once mentioned such wood flats were held together with something called a 'glut' to hold all together. Finish paint no doubt lead based oil at the time.

I've seen in England, and the continent, surviving massive 'hammer beam' ceiling arches in oak, walnut etc. Old accounts in one case mention the hammer beam being mounted/secured with 'green oak' so as to 'dry and contract tight thustly in unison.' My late paternal grandfather did such work here with one surviving example being the curved 'boat hull' ceiling timbers in the Tudor style hotel in Mariemont commissioned by wealthy Mary Emery during the planning/building of the planned community in the 1920s/'30s.

That work can be done today--if you have the money, the craftsmen and wood. Newer steel passenger cruise ships often built now with very little sheer or camber due to expense in cutting steel, welding. Well, what do I know?

R. Dale Flick
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati.

Str. ERASTUS WELLS / CITY OF ST. LOUIS cabin arches

Lex: Much water has passed down the big river since several of us acquired some of the slender white arches from the cabin of the Str. ERASTUS WELLS (1907-1932) and later the CITY OF ST. LOUIS (1932-1942) when she was dismantled. In early 1966 when Ruth Ferris was gathering artifacts for her Midship Museum aboard the Str. BECKY THATCHER at the St. Louis levee, some of the arches, along with many other river items, were found in the virtually abandoned building of the Eagle Boat Store at 805 North Wharf Street, just above the Eads Bridge. Capt. Robert Roehrig, a St. Louis riverman, had saved the arches when the boat was dismantled and Capt. Buck Leyhe permitted him to store them in the boat store building, which was literally a teeming treasure trove of steamboat stuff! The building later became a bar known as The Old St. Louis Levee House, where The St. Louis Ragtimers, Jean Kittrell (ragtime pianist & vocalist) and others performed. It's good that the steamboat objects had been removed, for the building burned in March, 1972 and was razed.

After repair and repainting, Ruth created a "steamboat cabin" display of sorts, utilizing the arches, along with two mirrored stateroom doors and transoms from the Str. GORDON C. GREENE. Four of the arches were also used to form an arch (over the museum entrance from the gift shop) under which was Streckfus steamers railing and a swinging gate formerly used in the restaurant aboard the RIVER QUEEN, formerly the GORDON C. GREENE. All of this was still aboard the BECKY when she was sold in 1975 and moved to Marietta, Ohio, at which time many of the remaining objects from the riverboat museum were removed and sold to antique dealers and collectors.

Attached herewith are photos of the arches in place aboard the ERASTUS WELLS / CITY OF ST. LOUIS when in operation. She was the city harbor boat and named for the mayor. The boat participated in two presidential events, in 1907 with President Teddy Roosevelt and again in 1909 with President William Howard Taft, who appears at the head of the table in image #1.

Hope these pictchas, in some small way, help you. Looking forward to hearing more about the steamboaty room you are creating!

MORE of the ERASTUS WELLS / CITY OF ST. LOUIS CABIN ARCHES

Herewith are two images, taken in late 1966, showing several of the arches as curator Ruth Ferris used them in her Midship Museum aboard the Str. Becky Thatcher at St. Louis. The last one was taken at Marietta in 1975 as the display was being dismantled to make space for a showboat theatre on the main deck.

I've always known the ornament pictured to be called a bracket, an arch is a curved structure resting on supports at both extremities.

Steamboat Gothic

They are really a fancy bracket. It's astounding how many of these things were made and how so few have survived. They are not, by the way, made out of one piece of wood. There could be as many as a couple of dozen different parts in just one. After cleaning them up and replacing a few missing chunks, I applied yet another coat of enamel to the already numerous coats of paint that are in a way holding those bits and pieces together. Oh yes, and a thin layer of gold paint here and there.

Thanks for the pictures. Those are some that I have not seen. They will get downloaded. The steamboat bedroom is still a work in progress, but we are getting close to completion.

MORE on Cabin Arches

Regardless of whether you call it a carling, bracket, corbel or whatever, river people usually referred to whatever was overhead in a steamboat cabin as an "arch". At the Howard Steamboat Museum we have one whole arch from the cabin of the Str. ROBT. E. LEE, built in my hometown of New Albany, Indiana in 1866 and famous for her race with the Str. NATCHEZ (#6) from New Orleans to St. Louis in 1870. The boat was dismantled at the Howard Shipyard in 1876 and a second ROBT. E. LEE built, more grandiose than the first, hence the arches being in possession of the Howard's. Mrs. Loretta Howard once told me that her husband, Capt. Jim Howard, used some of the arches in the garden behind the mansion for grapes and other vegetation to grow upon! Besides the arch on display we have several other pieces of them in storage. Capt. Jim also fashioned miniature bitts, pilotwheel spokes and other souvenirs from pieces of the arches.

Herewith are images of the arch on exhibit at the Howard Museum.

*RE: Cabin arches/ROBT. E. LEE*

Thanks, Keith, for the fine photos of the LEE cabin arches with related inormation. Yes, I remember as a teen visiting the Howard mansion when Loretta was still in residence. We wandered out to the carriage house only to be amazed at what we saw: arches, cabin doors with, if I remember, painted scenes on some panels etc. on and on and on. Like the old GREENE LINE wharfboat it was a virtual King Tut's tomb to me--but with my parents admonitions to "Look and not touch." Loretta off-handed me a box with pencils, stylus, pen once used in the Howard office across the street. Keith, Jimmy, Kenny also mentioned [Records confirm] how many companies were often subcontracted to finish the main cabins separately.

A 'shy lurker' E=Mailed RE: my comments on 'caulk' used on the boats mentioning how the hulls were caulked. I wasn't clear in my hasty posting and should have clarified the use of 'caulk'--if any was used--on the fine wood interior panels, arches, brackets, 'joinery' in the main cabin prior to the painters moving in.

Lexie's words regarding many "layers" of paint no surprise. A coat of paint ever the solution to dull, dirty cabin work from river smoke, soot. There's a story about Capt. Tom Greene checking his work crew painting inside one of the Greene boats [GORDON C. GREENE?] only to be horrified seeing them painting right over dust, dirt without washing first. Capt. Tom set that straight in an instant. Well, what do I know?

R. Dale Flick
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati.