W. W. O'Neil (Towboat, 1881-1913)

Photographer

Nicoll, Wm. T.

Summary

• BOAT DESCRIPTION: Sternwheel
• BOAT TYPE: Towboat
• BUILT: 1881 at Sewickley, Pennsylvania (hull); completed at Pittsburgh
• FINAL DISPOSITION: Burned at Clairton, Ohio on November 25, 1913
• OWNERS: W.W. O'Neil and Company; Combine (1907)
• OFFICERS & CREW: W.R. Haptonstall (pilot, circa 1907); Robert Holden (pilot, circa 1907)
• OTHER INFORMATION: Ways - T2595; Considered one of the "greats"; nicknamed "Wild Bill". She was the only high pressure towboat built with a 12-foot engine stroke and was a notorious user of coal, using 2,500 bushels daily. A similar boat used 1,100 bushels of coal daily. In the fall of 1901, Captain George Clark put small stacks inside her old ones in an attempt to reduce her fuel expenses. The boat had a Krupp shaft made in Germany, when it cracked and was removed in the spring of 1883, Krupp replaced it. She came out with no electric light plant but received one in the summer of 1891. She was then lighted all over including red and green electric signal lights on her stacks, possibly the first boat on inland streams with this innovation. In March 1907 she took 28 loaded ten-foot coalboats and two loaded model barges from Louisville to New Orleans in nine days, 14 hours landing only once to clean boilers. She ran the Cairo and Memphis bridges at night with no help from tugboats. Around 1911 she was laid up in the boneyard at Elizabeth, Pennsylvania. She broke loose during a flash flood and drifted to Clairton where she beached. She burned there on November 25, 1913. A model of this boat was displayed at the Paris Exposition and at the Chicago World's Fair in 1892. Captain John L. Howder had a seven-foot long oil painting of the W.W. O'Neil hanging in his office at Dravosburg, Pennsylvania in 1936. An interesting story about the boat happened in 1894 when she was running light in the Pittsburgh harbor. Her paddle wheel picked up a four- foot long, fifteen-pound spoonbill catfish and threw it on the deck
• PHOTO DESCRIPTION: With a tow at Wheeling, West Virginia