Built in 1866 as a side-wheeler by de Witt’s “lower yard”, New Albany, Indiana for Captain John W. Cannon from New Orleans.
Tonnage 1.467 tons, dim. 285.5 x 46 x 9.8 ft.
Despite his Union leanings, Cannon named his ship ROBERT E.LEE, but he thought it was prudent to take her across the river to Kentucky side before painting the name on the hull.
She was known as a fast boat but she did not broke any records. And it was almost foreordained that this two boats both river queens and floating palaces and sailing from New Orleans would some day race against each other. Both captains were personnel friends and business rivals.
There are conflicting stories on the race but the book River Steamers of America gives the following story.
Some say that one or other captain challenged the other in a club in St Louis or a bar in New Orleans, although both captains denied that they intended to race and published notices to that effect in the New Orleans papers. While the notices were running they each prepared for the race. Cannon extensively, Leathers moderately; he merely took aboard some fat pine to use as hot fuel and ordered fueling points upstream to have more on hand. Leathers carried a moderate amount of freight and a load of passengers.
Cannon refused all freight and passengers and groomed his vessel as a racing machine, removing every unnecessary pound of weight and cutting away some of her guards abaft the wheel housing to prevent dead water. Although both boats burned coal as a basic fuel, he loaded his deck with spoiled bacon, rosin pitch and tallow candles to use as boiler stimulants. He also sent the steamer FRANK PARGAUD upstreams to pick up the coal barge to refuel the ROBERT E LEE en route, an act that would lead to much controversy among bettors when NATCHEZ backers claimed that it was unfair and against the rules, although, in fact there were no formal rules.
The two vessels were matched, both having eight boilers and engines of equal size. The ROBERT E LEE was slightly smaller, 1.467 tons against 1.547 for the NATCHEZ. On the other hand, the NATCHEZ was “sharper” in design and she was the champion. In the Deep South the NATCHEZ was a slight favorite in the betting; she was known as a southern boat. At St Louis, in the East, and in Europe, the ROBERT E. LEE was favored. For some reason the race caught the imagination of sporting men the world over.
Odds were posted in London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna as well as New York and Chicago, and during the four days of the contest quotations on stock and produce exchanges were interrupted with bulletins of the race.
Along the 1.200 mile route people on the riverbank literally went mad with excitement. The New Orleans levee was thronged with most of the city’s population when the vessels left and, upstream, schools were let out and business stopped as entire communities closed down while their people lined the river bank to await the racers. This is perhaps the most incredible part of the event for, with the possible exception of the America’s Cup sailing races, there was never a duller sporting event for spectators. Despite all the paintings and lithographs showing the boats racing neck on neck, they were never within sight at the same time after the first ten miles of the race and their speed was about 14 miles an hour.
An observer at Memphis amusingly described public interest as follows.
The population turned out en masse to give greetings to the racers. So great was the interest manifested that business was suspended in that city, and the Mississippi river, for miles, was alive with steamboats and every other conceivable sort of craft, conveying excursions parties to meet the rival steamers…
There was much amusement over a mistake made by the crowd in identifying the THOMPSON DEAN as one of the racers, the THOMPSON DEAN being given a most vociferous ovation as she came in view from a bend in the river below the city. But this misplaced greeting, as well as the embarrassment that followed was not without its extenuating circumstances, the THOMPSON DEAN peculiar conduct in the premises having left nothing undone to invite to itself the honors that should have gone to others.
Had the THOMPSON DEAN not blown her whistle in the noisiest possible manner, had she not fired her gun with incessant repetition and otherwise demeaned herself in the most provocative way to create the impression that she was the victor, the booming of cannon the plenteous discharge of fire rockets and Roman candles, and the shouts of the multitude would not have been hers; but would have gone first to the ROBERT E. LEE and then to the NATCHEZ in the order in which they arrived a little later-arrived when the Memphis magazines were exhausted when the stock of skyrockets and Roman candles were gone, and the voice of the multitude hoarse and weakened from a strenuous vociferation of more than a hour, could not have been heard, as one indignant citizen expressed it, further than you could throw a bull by the tail.
At the start of the race from New Orleans the ROBERT E. LEE was moored two boats above the NATCHEZ at the levee and got away on 30 June 1870 at 5 p.m. followed by the NATCHEZ four minutes later. The whole story of the race can be capsuled in the statement that when the ROBERT E. LEE reached St. Louis, approximately 1.200 miles away, her lead had increased to three hours and fifty-four minutes. Despite the wild excitement of spectators and the dramatized stories of reporters, the race was merely a case of two boats going up the river, one slightly faster than the other and gaining progressively. The ROBERT E. LEE was ten minutes ahead at Baton Rouge, sixteen at Vicksburg, an hour and two minutes ahead at Baton Rouge, sixteen at Vicksburg, an hour and two minutes at Memphis, etc.
Of course dramatic incidents can be found, or created. The symbol for the fastest boat on the river, or any part thereof, was a set of deer antlers. When Leathers beat the old White’s time he had a gilded set placed on the wharf boat at his vessel’s namesake city, Natchez, with the name of his vessel and the date. As he passed Natchez, Cannon is supposed to have swerved the ROBERT E. LEE toward the bank and shouted, “Take down those horns.”
Also the ROBERT E.LEE developed a leak in a steam pipe during the race and much has been made of the young engineer who inched his way through the narrow space below the fiery furnace to repair it.
Toward the end of the race the NATCHEZ developed engine trouble and was delayed by fog, which caused Leathers to claim that but for these misfortunes he would have beat the ROBERT E. LEE by twenty minutes, a computation that is difficult to follow since he was seventy minutes behind when he ran into difficulties. This and the help of the PARAGOUD in coaling, led to controversy that lasted for the rest of the lives of those involved. The ROBERT E.LEE’s time to St Louis was three days, eighteen hours and fourteen minutes which was never equaled by another paddle-wheeler.
Unquote.
The ROBERT E. LEE could carry 5.741 bales of cotton which she carried in 1854 to New Orleans.
She was destroyed in 1876, dismantled at Portland Kentucky, after her hull went to Memphis.
Bhutan 1988 5n sg731, scott? (the other steamer is the NATCHEZ).
Grenadines of Grenada 1998 75c sg2530, scott?
USA 1996 32c sg3226, scott 3091
Zaire 1996 105000 NZ sg?, scott? (She is the vessel on the right)
Source: http://members.tripod.com/~Write4801/docs/nat.html River Boats of America by Frank Donovan.
http://members.tripod.com/~Write4801/ab ... /rlee.html