Steamboats

Robert Rucker’s trademark subject was his depictions of Mississippi River steamboats. While an apprentice in Bob’s studio I not only learned practical painting techniques, but also learned the history and engineering of the historic vessels. Out of respect for my teacher, I did not paint this subject until Bob passed. A prominent collector of Louisiana art suggested to me that painting steamboats was an homage and contribution to Bob’s legacy. So, I went to work and did research to find as much as I could about the boats’ construction, function and historical context. I also looked for photos from the period, not to copy but to have as reference the specifics of a particular boat.

By The Mark Oil - 20” x 24”

“Navigation on the rivers was made more challenging when the level of the water fell revealing bars, shoals, snags and other obstructions. The pilot had to scan the surface of the water, check for land-marks and take frequent soundings with a lead-line where depths were uncertain guiding the boat past critical places…potentially fog was very dangerous in the restricted waters of a river… without the aid of visual marks…the chances of keeping the vessel in the channel were small…and the usual practice was to lay up at shore or drift with the current.”

Louis C. Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers, 1949

Providence Turning Oil - 20” x 24”

My first steamboat painting was of the boat The City of Providence making a turn in the river with Bob on the bank in the foreground as an homage to my teacher and friend.

Moss Bateau Oil - 20” x 16”

Bateau were flat-bottomed and double-ended boats built in a range of sizes in North America from the 17th through the late 19th C. The boats’ shallow draft worked well in bayous and rivers while its flat bottom profile allowed heavy loading of cargoes and provided stability.

The use of Spanish moss in American culture goes back at least three centuries when immigrant Europeans settling the coastal south used the green moss as a livestock feed. In the early 18th C, a significant commercial moss industry developed an end-product for use as a substitute for the more expensive horsehair. The business of harvesting Spanish moss as a cash crop accelerated after the civil war with the use of gins to speed up the commercial process. It peaked in the 1930s.

Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is a flowering plant that grows upon larger trees, commonly the Southern Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) or Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum) in the southeastern United States because of these trees’ high rates of foliar mineral leaching (calcium, magnesium, potassium, and phosphorus) providing an abundant supply of nutrients to the plant. Spanish moss is not biologically related to either mosses or lichens. Instead, it is an angiosperm in the family Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads) that grows hanging from tree branches in full sun or partial shade.

Early Departure Oil - 24” x 36”

City of St. Louis, a side wheeler (34" diameter) packer, wood hull, built in Jeffersonville, Indiana by Howard Co. in 1883, measuring 300’ in length and 49’ width, 8.6’ draft with 5 boilers on of the boats of the Anchor Line, Captain James O’Neal master.

Fredrick Way, Way’s Packer Directory, 1983.

Running With the Wind Oil - 8” x 10”

America is a stern-wheel packet with a wood hull built in Jeffersonville, Indiana by Howard Co. in 1898, measuring 220’ in length, 38’ wide and 6.5 ’draft with 3 boilers, a cotton style packet built for L. V. Cooley. She ran a variety of routes in her long career and foundered at the foot of Walnut Street, New Orleans August 13, 1926.

Fredrick Way, Way’s Packet Directory, 1983

Goin’ Up, Comin’ Down Oil - 14.25 x 17.125

City of Vicksburg – Side-wheeler wood hull packet built in Jeffersonville, Ind. by Howard in 1881 for the Anchor Line. 272’L x 44.5’W x 8.2’D with 33’ diameter paddlewheels with 14’ buckets. Sold on April 29, 1894 to the Columbia Excursion Co., St. Louis, MO. Damaged in the St. Louis tornado of May 27th, 1896. Sold in 1898 to John T. Hardy Sons & Co., New Orleans and rebuilt as the Chalmette. The hull was reworked in Mound City, Ill. and completed at Cairo, Ill. Winter of 1898-99. Capt. Mike Corbine, first master ran the cotton trade New Orleans – Vicksburg-Grand Lake in 1902. St. Louis-New Orleans in 1904. Sank at Legon’s Landing, Mississippi in the summer of 1904.

Fredrick Way, Way’s Packet Directory, 1983

Waiting for Cargo Hand colored graphite drawing on - 11” x 14”

Baton Rouge; a side wheeler (33’ diameter) packet wood hull, built in Jeffersonville, Indiana by Howard Co. in 1881, measuring 294’ in length, 49’ width and 9.5’ draft with 5 boilers for Anchor Line. She sank and was lost at Hermitage, LA December 12, 1890. Fredrick Way, Way’s Packet Directory, 1983

Without wharfs, the boats used their stages to load and unload cargo…Over these gangways deck hands and roustabouts carried cargo between boat and shore and back where the bare ground served in many places at the only place of deposit. The introduction of wharf boats spread after the Civil War and became a reliable substitute for permanent wharfs and piers at smaller landings.