Boaz (Towboat, 1882-1925)

Summary

• BOAT DESCRIPTION: Sternwheel
• BOAT TYPE: Towboat
• BUILT: 1882 at Sewickley, Pennsylvania (hull) and completed at Pittsburgh
• FINAL DISPOSITION: Retired in 1916 and dismantled at Brown's Station on the Monongahela River in 1925
• OWNERS: Captain William Smith (3/8 owner) and Captain Tom Fawcett (5/8 owner); Crescent Coal Company (1895); Combine (1900)
• OFFICERS & CREW: Captain William "McKeesport Billy" Smith (master); Captain William A. Hoge (master); Captain Peter Boli (master); Captain Cal Blazier (master); Captain Frank Gould (master, 1902-1916); George Parshall (mate); Thomas Merriman (steward)
• RIVERS: Ohio River; Mississippi River
• OTHER INFORMATION: Ways - T0277; When the boat was sold to the Crescent Coal Company, a large crescent moon was hung between her stacks. She had bad luck losing coal. Spilled an entire tow of 14 loads above Hawesville, Kentucky, Ohio River in January 1895. Got an entire tow (plus herself) grounded on the Mississippi between Laconia and Homichitta in January 1901, 42 pieces, and was high and dry for a time. Captain Frank Gould got caught in fog in Ashland in March 1908 and spilled a tow on the pier of a bridge then being built between Ashland and Ironton (and which was never completed). The tale is told that this boat one time left Pittsburgh with a full tow and lost all of it before she got to Cincinnati, dropping off a coalboat here and there, and finally had to go back for more. When Captain Frank Gould was an old man he visited the River Exposition at Pittsburgh (September 1938) where the old pilotwheel of the Boaz was on display and he wept tears as his hands were guided to the spokes; he was by that time blind. George Parshall, once mate, came in that day to see his old skipper. After she was dismantled, Judge Matthew F. Merriman of Columbus, Ohio had the wreckers send him two glass doorknobs as a reminder of his days as a cabin boy when his father Thomas Merriman was steward
• PHOTO DESCRIPTION: Ohio river scene