See
Where The Sabine River Is
Also see
Confererate Gunboat UNCLE
BEN
About Neches River Steamboats
Our thanks to the Newton
County, Texas Web Site for these excerpts. .
Sabine River - Newton County - Texas
The Sabine River continues to be of importance. From before
Newton County became an independent county, the river has
controlled a part of its destiny.
In the fall of 1843 the steamboat SABINE,
with Capt.
John Clemmons at the helm, made the first trip on the
Sabine River. Being a sturdy craft, she made several trips
up and down the river successfully.
"Often the steamboats were small compared
to present-day standards, which ran on the East Texas Rivers
were not new having been bought from the Mississippi trade
where five years was the usual life of a boat. There competition
was keen and the traffic rough on the boats. Transportation
on the Mississippi was big business and the owners could afford
the best. These secondhand boats, when kept in repair might
have many good years left in them when run on smaller rivers.
About 1858, a steamboat bearing the name of
BILOXI
came up the Sabine from Biloxi, Mississippi, and unloaded
several dozen slaves. The landing where they unloaded became
known as Biloxi. For awhile it prospered. Then it became a
ghost town and vanished, as many of the river towns did when
the railroads came and the steamboat era ended.
See
entire article
Burr's Ferry was a shipping point for the surrounding
area as far west as Burkeville, Texas, and as far east as
Leesville. It had a gin, warehouses, and a watermill, and
it was also the home of Captain
John M. Liles, master and part owner of the NECHES
BELL.
See
entire article
For more on the Sabine River see -
JOSIAH H. BELL and
UNCLE BEN
Capt. John G. White
and
The NECHES BELLE
Hi Riverboat Dave,
I would very much like to have
you add some history to your site regarding John G. White,
a captain of the Neches Belle, the Minnie and of the Dura.
He was married to my Grand Aunt,
Rachel Ellen (Smith) White.
This was transcribed from a yellowed
newsprint (which I still have) from the The Enterprise, dated
Sunday, May 29, 1932.
The picture is of him. I don’t
know what the rights to reprint are from The Enterprise (assuming
this was the Beaumont, Texas Enterprise). Hey, it was published
in ’32? Gotta be ok, I’d guess!
I have a love of history and
would love to see this article re-published so that these
times and people that took us there are not forgotten…
I appreciate your site!!!
From your site, you show one
of the Captain’s / owners as John M. Liles. In the article
below, it shows that John G. White worked for Alladice and
Lyles, who owned the steamboat. The article also refers to
Captain Sam Allidice, assuming that’s the Alladice in
Alladice and Lyles.
Please respond and let me know
what you can do with the contents.
Including also something for
a little fun that I had found, a clip of the whistle from
the Neches Belle. Please provide credit where credit is due,
I got the whistle sound from this site:
Source
for Neches Belle MP3: http://www.mysteryridge.com/muddyangelina.ivnu
Thanks, Mayme Kittman
See
Where The Sabine River Is
From The (Beaumont, Texas) Enterprise,
dated Sunday, May 29, 1932.
Reign of Steamboats on Sabine Full of Romance
Old-time Glory of Cotton Carriers of 40 Years
Ago Told by “Cap’n” John White
Advent of Railroad System Causes Passing of
Freighters; Sailings of Neches
Belle are Recalled
By Dean Tevis
On a day when the wind is in the east Cap’n
John can hear her whistle for the landing – though he’s
a good 15 miles from the river. Generally four or five long
Blasts—if there’s plenty of steam in the old boilers—low,
resonant sounds—as though someone in a little patch of
woods at some distance drew a well-resined bow slowly across
the “G” string of an old violin.
“If yo’d ever got the note in your
heart,” he said, “you’d never forget it!”
Captain John G. White, who
skippered the Neches Belle on the Sabine, and who tells the
story of the closing days of the steamboats on the rivers
of southeastern Texas.
But in reality the captain never hears the whistle
of the Neches Belle, one of the very last of the Ladies of
the River, proud cotton carriers of a day past and gone, for
it’s been 35 years since she and her sisters sailed.
Sometime when you’re on your way north
and you’re crossing the historical bridge at Logansport,
someone will show you the white bones – a little part
of the rotting bottom-planking of the Neches
Belle—lying in the shallow waters of the Sabine
T’is the story, if you care to listen to
a tale of the rivers of east Texas concerning a man who wouldn’t
admit that the railroads could beat the river steamboats as
carriers of freight, but who found it out when he was one
of the last men tossing a lead into some shallows In the Sabine
to test the depth.
About the tale is the rhythm of the rivers of
the far south, with semi-tropical vegetation along their banks,
and great green pines on their often steep banks. There are
odors about the tale—the odors of wild flowers and the
smell—the rich peaceful smell of the wild woods. There
is music in the story, the music of nature and the little
removed song of the darkies. Through it runs strains of “Suzanna,”
coming from the Louisiana bank of the Sabine, and a Texas
melody from the western bank. Where the Neches
Belle and other boats of the Cap’n’s ken
ran was once the boundary between Mexico, and then Texas,
and the United States of America.
Cap’n John G. White has lived at Kountze
for a quarter of a century. When you meet him you fix his
age at perhaps 55. Some might say 60. But the fact is that
come July the Cap’n will be ‘73. He always has been
and is now a “husky young fellow.” But ‘one’
day, not so long ago, he tried to crank a little car. He thought
he knew the car. Long association does that even with men
and machinery. The Cap’n tore a hawser, as he himself
would put it. But you wouldn’t notice it, looking at
him casual like. Cap’n John was first mate, and then
captain of the Neches Belle,
and skipper and mate of other steamers. His river days were
spent largely on the Sabine. That’s his river, though
he has sailed the Neches.
His introduction to Texas and her rivers was
at old Niblett’s Bluff on the Sabine when he was 7. He
came west from Lexington, Ky., then. During the years that
followed he worked at pushing husky pine and hardwood logs
down the bank to send them on their weary way down the river.
In those days the forests were virtually untouched. The chief
things a log went for were shingles. And then it was that
Cap’n saw some of the earlier sternwheelers, built, for
the most part, at some big port on the Mississippi, though
later a shipyard on the lower Sabine turned out several.
SOME years passed and the boy went to Orange
and sewed sacks and coopered barrels for Alladice and Lyles.
He was 16. They owned the Neches
Belle and she was under repair when he dropped
down the stream to the place they then called Green’s
Bluff. She lay at the old Bill Sword’s shipyard. The
boy did a little caulking. He was under the tutorship of a
man named Livingston, whom he lovingly refers to as Old Man
Livingston. Those were the days, incidentally, when J. E.
Broussard of Beaumont ran a meat market at Orange.
The Cap’n’s next step up was under
General Slaughter. The general, it appears, was a hold-over
in the south from the war. He had been a federal and was a
war department engineer assigned to “clean out”
the Sabine. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of logs,
called “sinkers,” had slipped to the bottom of the
river. The Sabine then was looked upon as not only highly
navigable, but of as much importance as a traffic lane as
the main line of a transcontinental railroad is today. When
the steamer which the general commanded chugged north on her
cleaning up cruise the Cap’n was one of the crew. A month
later he was given charge of the men and several years slipped
by.
ALONG in the mid-nineties the Cap’n had
his mate’s papers, but in 1897 he got his license as
master, which presented the information beneath a seal to
all and sundry that John G. White, having proved himself capable,
etc., was licensed by the government of the United States
to navigate the rivers of east Texas. During this chapter
of his story he ran some with Capt.
Tom Davis on the Minnie
and the Dura. The
Cap’n was an all-around steamboater for at times he held
the post of engineer, and on other occasions he was a pilot.
In other words Cap’n John knew the turns and the bends,
the shallows, and the deep pools of the Sabine. And, therefore,
there is perhaps not a man left who can better spin the tale
of that river, during the years just before the railroads
robbed it of Its meat and Its glory. He got in early enough,
too, to learn the romance of the stream. He knows the spot
where the Lafitte schooner lies and he knows where the Indian
villages were along its banks.
The bulk of the Sabine boats, as Cap’n
John put it, went out in about 1893, but some of them stayed
on. He sailed out of Orange during the latter nineties with
the Neches Belle for Logansport
to build a new bridge for the H. B. and W. T., the railroad
from Shreveport to Houston. “But she never came out,”
said the Cap’n. “She was seized by the law for some
debt. I can’t recall just now what it was. We tied her
up and left her. That was in a time of fairly high water.
Soon the stream fell and the Neches
Belle turned over. I saw part of her wreck in the river
bed four years ago, and I have no doubt she’s there still.
I was the first mate of the Belle and Will
Loving—you know Captain Loving—-he was the pilot.
and a good one.”
That left Cap’n John out of a job. So it
was pretty handy, the way things turned out, When Captain
George Wolford of Orange brought the little sternwheeler
Dura
up the twists and bends and tied her to the bank at Logansport.
Logansport, while a Louisiana town, really belongs in the
east Texas picture, for it has played a continuous part in
Texas’ story.
The Dura was a small steamboat. Her dimensions
are quoted as 70 by .14. She carried about a hundred bales
on her deck. The Dura, like the fated Neches Belle, was also
seized for some debt. She owed, as best the Cap’n can
remember, some $800. He stepped in with a proposition, and
began operating the Dura to “work her out.”
Dura was owned in Sabine county—more an
upriver boat than a member of the downstream company. Sabine
Town, probably the greatest of all the lost river ports of
both the Sabine and the Neches, was still something of a landing
then, and the Cap’n loaded “many a bale there.”
He’d bring provisions up the stream, and as he’d
unload them he’d pick up cotton. On his return trip it
would be the same procedure.
Well, as Cap’n John tells it, “I worked her clear
out of debt, but the coming of the railroads put a stop to
steamboating. It doesn’t take much explanation to see
what happened.”
Cap’n John can close his eyes and see the
Sabine in all Its old-time glory, when the pines were tan
and thick as hair on a dog’s back. He’ll tell you
about Youngblood landing, where they unloaded goods for old
Burkeville. That was where Captain
Sam Allidice lived. Then, winding north, there
was Haddon ferry, one of the oldest on the stream and still
in operation today; Snell’s landing, Godwin shoals, Sabine
Town, most Important of them all; Pendleton, famous old East
Hamilton, Snider’s landing, and then Logansport, the
end of the voyage.
T'were few if any river tragedies in Cap’n
John’s river experience. It is a peaceful tale he tells,
o happy days and nights, of singing black darkies. Of course,
they went aground sometimes, and there were bits of trouble
here and there, but he never lost a steamboat nor was on one
which sunk or burned. He tells, however, of the burning of
the Bertha
at the crossing of the Kansas City Southern north of Orange.
The Cap’n talks of the old Tennesaw,
the Lark,
and many other of the boats which plied near to the end of
the steamboating days. Then, too, he can go back If you like
and tell you stories of the older boats.
He’ll tell you how they made the voyages
from river mouth to river mouth—from the Sabine around
through the gulf to the Neches, and perhaps from the Neches
to the Trinity. They nearly always made these voyages at night.
But when you talk river boats, sternwheelers
and brooked streams to him he’ll invariably come back
to the Neches Belle!. She was
undoubtedly his favorite—the lass of the river he loved
best. An Interesting fact is that she was built in Beaumont.
Her engines and all her machinery came from the old steamer
Vicksburg. The Neches Belle was built to handle 500 bales
of cotton. The Cap’n loaded 550 on her decks on one memorable
trip. He did this with the help of one Charley—Old Chancy—they
called him, who was wise in the way of beats and niggers,
who bossed the crew of blacks, and who knew how to get the
cotton in. His last name was Pollock. Ah, but those were gracious,
happy, friendly days — those river days. “We’d
always blow long and loud for the landings,” said the
Cap’n. “The old ladies, and sometimes the young
ones, would nearly always come down to the bank to greet us.
They’d bring greens, butter, milk, eggs, and anything
else they had handy. And they were always presents to us.
. . - And you can bet your life we never forgot our friends,
We always brought them candy or fruit—and anything else
we thought they’d like. They enjoyed our coming because
there weren’t many visitors along the river In those
days. The roads were mud trails and few traveled them. They
only saw their own kith and kin.
The officers and crew had to have their fun
and they’d play pranks on one another. Cap’n John
tells of the night they landed at Possum Bluff, now Deweyville.
They ‘stuffed a fox hide with cotton, and then proceeded
to take the engineer on a fox hunt. “He was so sick over
it he went to bed.” When the steamboat was under way
the crew took it pretty easy. Only the pilot and the engineer
and the fireman has much to do. Of course the latter were
hard at it all the time, and the captan stayed on the job
as long as the gangplank was in. The mate had little to do
and more often than not he had his feet on the rail and an
old black pipe between his teeth. Out on the forward deck
the niggers chanted old songs—”I’m Coming to
You Darling,” “I’ll See You By and By,”
or “The Old Log Cabin.” They are mostly big, black
fellows, and the Cap’n will tell you that many of them
could carry a 500-pound box of meat on his shoulder. Once
in a while there would be a fight, or some little incident
to relieve the monotony, and once in a while the crew would
see a deer, and in the older days, a bear, on the bank. As
they’d run into the shallows the mate, or perhaps one
of the wiser members of the black crew would begin gauging
for depth. The Neches Belle needed two and a half feet of
water when she was light or six feet loaded. They liked a
full seven feet of water for her to run in when she had a
full load of cotton or provisions. Moving slowly, cautiously,
the man with the lead would cast it. He’d get the depth
and call back is a sing-song to the pilot—”mark
tow.” A little further, and he’d have three feet.
He’d call that back, possibly relaying It to the captain
on the deck. When they had a full depth of water the man with
the lead’ would call—”mark twain.” That,
incidentally, was how Samuel Clemmons got his name. The steamboat
boys were popular at the landings and ofter the — folks
in the villages held dances for them.
Steamboating on the Sabine and the Neches was
pretty much after the fashion of the greater packets on the
Mississippi.
The country, however, and the streams themselves
presented a strange contrast to anyone who had steamboated
Old Man River. Here were narrow streams, as against a broad,
broad old river. And there weren’t the dangers on the
east Texas streams that one encountered on the Mississippi.
And then there was a more homely atmosphere at the landings.
And the banks themselves; they were tree lined, and often
they were steep, and always lonesome.
To know and appreciate the old east Texas setting,
through the sixties and the seventies, and on to about the
middle of the last decade of the old century, it is necessary
to know the old river towns and the ferries. In some few cases
they hang on, but for the most part you can’t find where
the general store stood, though it often was a brick building.
Most of the old men have gone who knew them in their real
glory …. You see the roads all led to these landings,
these important towns. Forget, for the moment, that there
was ever such a thing as a railroad, or even a highway. There
wasn’t then, and the rivers were the roads. They grew
the cotton in those days just as they do now, and they had
to get it out. So by oxen and mule it went down the roads
to the steamboat landings, and there it was picked up.
“I tried to beat the railroads,” Cap’n
John said, “and I found out quickly that it couldn’t
be done. I never dreamed the rails would beat the steamboats,
and then for years I never dreamed that any other mode of
transportation could beat the railroads—but it appears
that’s what’s going on now.”
The Cap’n can enlarge in great degree upon
this story, and he’ll do it for you if you like…
He’s the most accommodating storyteller, I believe I’ve
ever run across. And then he’s accurate. He doesn’t
spin bear stories, but he gives you the low-down on the boats
and the rivers.
If you care to find him inquire for “Cap’n
John” at the first filling station, 10 steps off the
new gravel road as you reach the southern limits of Kountze.
He’ll be there waiting for you. He’ll have his old
steamboat cap on his head, and you’ll find the place
just as ship-shape as was the deck of the Neches Belle when
he had charge of her.
And another thing—don’t expect to
find an old man with a bye-gone complex or an “I sailed
her before you were born” fixation. He hasn’t got
it.
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