In pre-Civil War Mobile, cotton was king, and the very life blood of the city’s economy. It made many Mobilians wealthy, and in one way or another, everyone seemed to be involved in it: merchants, cotton factors, bankers, insurance agents, stevedores, roustabouts, planters, enslaved people and, of course, the captains and pilots of a multitude of steamboats.
Driven by huge side wheelers, the steamboats were the manmade nautical contributors to the Port City’s cotton economy. They moved hundreds of thousands of cotton bales from the plantations in the Black Belt and hinterlands over the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers, into the Mobile River and finally the Port of Mobile. From there, it was shipped by ocean-going vessels to New York or Europe.
In 1840, Eli H. Lide noted that “about 40 steamboats were plying up and down” the rivers, the larger ones carrying “3,000 bags of cotton.” As the demand for cotton grew, so did the fleet of steamboats which soon numbered over 50. All along Mobile’s riverfront, dozens of wharfs and warehouses sprang up, accommodating the unloading, compressing and storage of cotton. By 1860, Mobile was America’s third busiest port, trailing only New York and New Orleans…