Inspirations for The Lady Sally

Here are a few pictures of small period steamboats which served frontier and pioneer communities along the waterways of America well into the first quarter of the 20th century.  These boats and their crews were the inspiration for the story of the Lady Sally, not the huge Floating Palaces of the Ohio and Mississippi waterways.

The model-bow steamer Alert, served on the Santa Fe River, canal and swamp in north-central Florida.  At 58 feet long and 14 feet wide she was nearly identical to the dimensions of the Lady Sally.  The Alert was a commercial success on the 10 mile run on lake, river and canal from Waldo to the railroad junction at Melrose, between 1884 and about 1907.  Cargoes included citrus, strawberries, peaches, vegetables, cotton, naval stores, and coffins of deceased northern settlers and visitors. Her successor, the 50 ft City of Melrose ran from 1915 into the mid 1920s.
  Photo from State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/148626

This photo of the Alert in the Santa Fe Swamp in north central Florida, comes from http://waldohistory.com/SantaFeCanal.htm

 Steamer Roseada on the Caloosahatchee

Roseada at a wharf on Lake Okeechobee

In the late 1880s, former Louisiana riverboat Captain Clay Johnson moved to Kissimmee, FL and built a "cabin boat" for the 4 day trip along the Kissimmee River, Lake Okeechobee and the Caloosahatchee to Fort Myers, named Lillie for his wife.  Then he bought the steamer Cincinnati salvaged her boiler and engine, and rebuilt her as the Roseada -- named after his daughters Rose and Ada.  Both boats ferried prospective land buyers down the rivers to Fort Myers. According to a newspaper story from the late 1890s, "Family lore has it that the Roseada  could float on a heavy dew."  Except for her model bow, the Roseada could have been the Lady Sally.

This folklore of "wet grass" and "heavy dew" boats seems to have been pervasive throughout the smaller streams of the eastern U.S.

Photo credits: State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/8491 and 

                  State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/41208

Bat-wing sidewheel scow-bow, the BF Johnson, in 1901 on the Big Sandy River in Kentucky.  All else being equal, scow hulls can carry more cargo than model-bow boats. 
 Photo from http://www.oocities.org/rlperry.geo/FloydCountyAlbum2.html

Sternwheeler AJ Goddard in Alaska, in 1895.  Looking at the lady standing by the pilot house, the Goddard at 58 ft, was close in length and width to that described for the Lady Sally.
 Photo from http://americanajournal.com/2011/08/10/story-bones/