Steamboats plied south Louisiana streams

The Borealis Rex ran for decades on the Calcasieu River between Lake Charles and Cameron. It was an old Mississippi River steamboat that was brought to southwest Louisiana in 1905 by Captain Angus Bouie McCain and that reigned supreme on the Calcasieu River for the next 25 years. 

The paddlewheel steamer carried mail, freight, groceries, bales of cotton, cattle, firewood, and even automobiles to Cameron. 

On the return trip she brought the world the agricultural products of Cameron Parish — oranges, grapefruit, cotton, rice, garden vegetables, seafood, and livestock.

In early 1887, according to the Acadia Sentinel, Vic Maignaud bought “a fine little steam tug called the Harry Bishop,” and planned to use it to tow “logs, freight, and other produce,” on a route from Mermentau to Grand Cheniere.

Captain George W. Caldwell began towing freight on the Mermentau about 1890. He eventually owned a fleet of small boats and 24 barges that he used to haul rice, oil, cattle, cotton, wood and general freight. 

He also opened a store on the river at Mermentau and issued metal tokens in denominations of 5, 10, 25, and 50 cents, and $1. These could be used only at his store and they came to be known as Mermentau Money.

Captain D.E. Sweet moved to Lake Arthur from Minnesota in the late 1880s, bringing with him the tug Ida. Shortly after his arrival he bought the Harry Bishop, which continued the Mermentau-to-Grand Cheniere run, then bought the stern-wheeler Louisa Storm, which operated for several years in the Lake Arthur area.

Shortly before his retirement, Sweet built the stern-wheeler Olive, which was operated by his son, Henry L. Sweet for nearly 20 years. 

During the 1890s the Olive was a popular passenger boat and freight hauler, making round trips every other day from Mermentau to Lake Arthur. Fares were 50 cents for a one-way ticket, 75 cents for a round trip.

An obituary in 1949 in The Waterways Journal, still the Bible of the towboat industry, characterized Henry Sweet as “the last of the old Mermentau River steamer captains.” 

According to the obituary, in later life Henry Sweet was a pilot for the G. B. Zigler Co. of Jennings “and became a familiar figure towing barges on the Mississippi and other rivers.”

Captain Frank Dyer was a pioneer in the Lake Arthur area. He built and operated steamboats and barges for a number of years 

He was an Englishman who found himself stranded in Galveston, where he met the owner of a schooner that was coming to Lake Arthur. He hired on as a deckhand, made his way to Lake Arthur, and never left.

The Vermilion River was normally navigable to Abbeville for most of the year, although it was guarded by a shoal at its mouth.

It was more difficult to get to Pinhook Landing at Vermilionville (Lafayette). The bayou had to have plenty of water in it for boats to get all the way to the landing, and, even when the water was high, it was often blocked by fallen trees,

The steamer Lady Lafayette may have been the first to operate on the Vermilion in 1829, and the boats Attakapas and Lafayette, got part way up the river in 1830, but as Carl Brasseaux and Keith Fontenot point out in their study of bayou steamboats, “major navigational hazards remained in the notoriously shallow stream,” and “only a few hardy — or desperate — aptains successfully ascended the stream each year, and only when the Vermilion was at flood stage.”

By the early 1900s, steamboats — especially the smaller ones operating on the lesser streams — found their profits seriously undermined by railroads that cut across the southwest Louisiana prairie, with spurs reaching down into communities that were once served only by water.

In some instances, barges pushed or pulled by towboats are still the most economical way to move large loads of freight That’s why the Intracoastal Waterway is so busy.

 But the railroads, and then the interstate highways, changed forever the way we move people and goods in south Louisiana and elsewhere, and in many ways the sound of hammers driving down railroad spikes was also the death knell for small boat operators.