When a model of Crucible, a steam powered, sternwheel towboat that moved coal for Crucible Steel from 1910 to 1948 came up for auction recently, Brice Ruch jumped at the chance to buy it. Built by R.D. Latta of Rices Landing in the late 1940s, the model has been tucked away for decades. Intricately reconstructed down to the smallest detail, it now lives in its own glass and oak trimmed case at Rush’s Mine Museum in Carmichaels.
Come to the King Coal Festival (August 19-26) and see this magnificent piece of folk art for yourself. Brice will have it on display at Cumberland Township Fire Hall Wednesday through Saturday along with a nine-foot model of Bryant’s New Showboat, on loan from American Industrial Mine Museum Co. and many artifacts from the Crucible Steel years.
This photograph captures the Crucible, not in a glass case but in action. Smoke is billowing from the stacks, steam is rising and the riverbank is studded with the houses, buildings and infrastructures of the early 20th century. The boat and her crew are hard at work moving coal from Crucible Mine on the Monongahela River through Pittsburgh to “the Mills at Midland PA on the Ohio River.”
The Latin word for ship, “navis” is feminine, which helps explain the pronoun captains and sailers have used since ancient times. The riverboats and boat masters of America were no exception.
When the coal powered, steam driven, sternwheeling Charley Jutte was built in 1904 in Jeffersonville, Indiana, her wooden model bow hull was 150’ x 27’ x 4’. When Crucible Mine bought her in 1910, Charley got an even less girlie moniker—Crucible—and joined the armada of towboats moving coal from the many mines that were in operation. The dry facts on the plaque accompanying the photo also tell us her first master was “Capt. Charles E. Ritts until promoted to Master of River Transportation in 1925” and that, in 1928, her hull was replaced by a scow bow. History comes closer to home on July 26, 1930, when Crucible rammed the “lower middle lock wall at #6, Rices Landing, doing much damage to the boat and breaking many steam lines.”
Was the repair work done in Rices Landing at the W A Young & Sons Machine Shop and Foundry? The shop was well equipped to replace steam lines and kept those kinds of fittings on hand for just such accidents, foundry volunteer Bly Blystone tells me when I call.
Then again, maybe they towed her to Brownsville, a thriving river industry town, that built the nation’s first sternwheeler, Enterprise, in 1814 as an improvement over the less efficient side wheelers of those earliest days.
The plaque doesn’t say how long the repairs took or where they were done, but by 1932 Crucible had a new master and is on record as the last boat locked through old lock #4 in Charleroi. Captains Guy A. Smith and Lovell Greenlee remained masters until she was dismantled at Crucible in 1948. A sweet note here—the wooden whistle from the Crucible was transferred to another, newer steel hulled tow boat that had just joined the fleet—the W.P. Snyder Jr.
Lucky for history buffs looking for the real deal, the W.P. Snyder Jr. was the one boat rescued for posterity when diesel engines made coal powered vessels obsolete.
Built in Downtown Pittsburgh in 1918 by Rees and Sons Company, she was named the W. H. Clingerman after the president of H.G. Frick Coke Company. She then worked hard years for Carnegie Steel Company hauling Mon River coal to Clairton and occasionally towed steel as far as Memphis, Tennessee. Renamed J.L. Perry in 1938, then A-1 in 1945, she got her last title that same year when Crucible Steel bought and renamed her after the president and chief executive of the company. When finally retired to West Brownsville in 1955, the Ohio Historical Society and the Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen decided it was time to save at least one of these old workhorses of the river and they fundraised. She left Brownsville under her own steam on September 12, 1955 and arrived at Marietta, Ohio, four days later to be formally presented to the Ohio Historical Society.
W.P. Snyder Jr, now all cleaned up and painted pretty, is a National Historic Landmark, the “only intact, steam driven stern wheel towboat still on the nation’s river system.” She sits at anchor on the Muskingum River as part of Ohio Riverboat Museum and I can’t wait to go see her!
Road trip, anyone?