The Dave Thomson Collection

Recent Acquisitions, May 2012, All Categories
Dave Thomson owns a large private collection of steamboat history photos. His collection is displayed at Steamboats.com, and includes photos of historic boats, illustrations used for magazine covers, advertisements, and posters. He has the largest known collection of steamboats in the movies, including an extensive collection of stills from Steamboat 'Round the Bend, a classic know as Will Rogers' last movie. To see an index of the Dave Thomson collection, click here. This page shows his recent acquisitions, as of May 2012.

This is one of the best of the reprints made by the Mississippi Lime Co. of Alton. Original sheet music would have been published circa late 1860's. Dave After looking at the Murphy Library's photo of the boat it seems that either artistic license was taken by the draughtsman or the boat was remodeled at some point. The art work shows a "double decker" cabin without a Texas under the pilot house. It's doubtful but possible that the Texas could have been embellished later by encircling it with a promenade deck but the only photo shows the boat with the standard single cabin with Texas above. Belle of Alton 1868-1873 Built 1868 by Howard Ship Yards, Jeffersonville, Indiana; home port St. Louis, Missouri Her machinery came from SOUTHWESTER Her machinery went to CARONDELET. Alton and St. Louis Packet Company, Captain John A. Bruner Officers and Crew: In 1870 New Orleans-Grand Encore, J.P. McKinley (master), William A. Hurd (clerk), William W. Marsh (engineer) Operated on the Mississippi, Ouachita and Black Rivers Way's Packet Directory- 0511: Burned at Algiers, Louisiana, laid up, March 28, 1871. Her engineer, William W. Marsh, was jailed in New Orleans charged with arson, later released on $6,000 bond. At trial he was honorably acquitted. Hull was used as a barge. Hull burned at Vicksburg, November 18, 1873.

Murphy Library's photo of the Belle of Alton for comparison to the sheet music cover (above).
Photo Courtesy of Murphy Library at the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse
Steamboat Collection Photographs

The MUSIC and the BELLE CREOLE at New Orleans circa 1845-49 by unknown artist. Collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

There is no pilot house visible on the steamboat far right. The artist may have been prevented from completing the painting for some reason.

An steampunk art exhibit at the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Conn. from fall of last year to winter of this year . . .

CD cover art done in the tradition of MAD magazine cover artist/caricature expert Jack Davis. Nice technical accuracy on the li'l sternwheeler. Down Home Jazz Band records for the Stomp Off label. buy the CD at Amazon.com.

Amy Hewes
(Towboat, 1903-1949)
Built 1903 in Franklin, Louisiana
Retired in 1949

OWNERS: Jeanerette Lumber Company; Planters Lumber; Joseph A. Provost Lumber Company (1941); May Brothers (1942) OFFICERS & CREW: Captain Dolph Cassidy (master, 1903-?); Captain John McCarty (master, 1920s)

Fred Way in his Towboat directory - T0127 described her as "A fine little towboat with pilothouse on the roof."

Photo Courtesy of Murphy Library at the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse
Steamboat Collection Photographs

Attached is a circa 1950's "silk fabric" necktie using a classic photo of the Amy Hewes on Bayou Teche as the main point of interest. The designer added color, Spanish moss hanging from trees above and a photo of cotton bales piled up in the foreground.

The photo of the Amy Hewes also provided the inspiration for the January, 1934 cover of Motor Boating magazine in which the the artist changed the angle to more of an overhead point of view. We've got in our illustration gallery.

I first saw the necktie when visiting Keokuk and Bob Miller was wearing the tie at a Midwest Riverboat Buffs gathering aboard the Geo. M. Verity. For many years Bob and his son John were curators aboard the Verity.

Believe I finally found the tie quite a few years ago on eBay. I had it matted and framed.

Captioned composite of three of Missouri artist Thomas Hart Benton's steamboat illustrations for Limited Editions Club's HUCK FINN and LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI by Twain.

An illustration which appears on the front cover and page 15 of a new German translation from last year of Mark Twain's 1896 novel "Tom Sawyer, Detective as told by Huck Finn." You can barely make out a square Confederate flag flying from the stern of the steamboat. In an illustration of a courtroom scene on page 89 there's a much more conspicuous Confederate flag hanging on the wall behind the Judge. I gather artist Jan Reiser assumed that during the 1850's (when the story takes place) Arkansas was already a Confederate state.

The swinging stages on the front of the boat weren't introduced on the rivers until after the Civil War. The bulkhead angled over the paddlewheel may be the illustrator's concept for a "splash guard" to keep passengers and crew dry while the wheel is turning.

"Tom Sawyer als Detektiv : erzählt von Huck Finn"
by Mark Twain. Mit Illustrationen von Jan Reiser
Published in Munich 2011 by Hanser

Huck Finn begins Chapter 2 with an account of how he and Tom Sawyer book passage from St. Petersburg, (Hannibal) Missouri down the Mississippi to Tom's uncle Silas Phelps' Arkansas farm where Huck's runaway slave friend Jim had been held prisoner during the previous Spring in the last chapters of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

We had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a stern-wheeler from away North which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse rivers away down Louisiana way, and so we could go all the way down the Upper Mississippi and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that farm in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St. Louis; not so very much short of a thousand miles at one pull.

A pretty lonesome boat; there warn't but few passengers, and all old folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was four days getting out of the 'upper river,' because we got aground so much. But it warn't dull--couldn't be for boys that was traveling, of course."

HarperGoff SteamboatCalendarArtHalf Size

Attached steamboat calendar art painted by motion picture art director Harper Goff (1911-1993) for Shaw-Barton publishers circa the '50's. Harper designed the Victorian submarine NAUTILUS for Disney's 1954 film version of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

I'm not sure why Harper chose to name this big sidewheel packet boat the Delta Queen but it may have been a tribute to the DQ after Harper had taken a cruise aboard her which is likely but I'm not certain if and when he did so.

My late friend Tom Scherman (1940-1995) was an expert on the subject of Goff's NAUTILUS submarine and Tom made many scale models of it and was the interior designer of the NAUTILUS submarine attraction for Euro Disneyland (Paris, France).

I met Harper several times and had dinner with him, his wife and Tom Scherman at DuPar's one evening in Studio City years ago.

Harper also played banjo in Disney artist Ward Kimball's "Firehouse 5 plus 2" jazz band.

Harper was given a number of entertaining cameo acting roles in some of the movies that he did art direction for including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Detective Story, The Vikings and Pete Kelly's Blues.

Disney Imagineering put on a retrospective exhibit at their Glendale facility of Harper's career in movies, commercial art, fine art and theme parks in the '80's.

A great many original pieces of Harper's art work were on display at the show which included drawings, paintings and designs for special props and set pieces.

I spoke to Harper at that exhibit about his art directing and his cameo appearance as a banjo player in the 1955 film, Pete Kelly's Blues (in which the steamer General John Newton appeared during the opening sequence filmed on a Louisiana bayou) which Jack Webb directed and starred in.

Detail from the Kaywoodie pipe ad which included a colorized still from STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND.

PIASAloadingapplesSt.Louis+KellyTireAd+4forTexasInserts

The PIASA at LaClede's landing, Eads Bridge in the background.

Upper left vignette of illustration from the Kelly Tire ad based on the photo of the PIASA.

Lower left a frame from 4 FOR TEXAS (1963) in which the Warner Bros. art department painting of the PIASA is seen in an oval vignette on the doors of the safe behind Grady Sutton as the nervous clerk. The fictional Zachariah Thomas was played by Frank Sinatra.

Three little contemporary riverboats were remodeled to play antebellum steamers for Disney's 1993 adaptation of HUCK FINN filmed here at Natchez, Mississippi.

"Phelps Landing" refers to Tom Sawyer's Uncle Silas Phelps whose Arkansas farm is nearby and where the captured runaway slave Jim is kept prisoner prior to the happy ending of Mark Twain's novel upon which the movie is based. As in several other adaptations of HUCK FINN, Tom Sawyer does not appear in this film.

The big New Orleans excursion steamboat NATCHEZ also makes a cameo appearance early in this movie.

The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993)
Written and Directed by Stephen Sommers
Starring
Elijah Wood as Huck
Courtney B. Vance as Jim

buy the CD at Amazon.com. Available on DVD from amazon.com, click here

GoneWiththeWindScreenCaptureGordonCGreene

Screen capture of the GORDON C. GREENE from David O. Selznick's 1939 spectacular Civil War epic Gone With the Wind (for the sequence of Rhett and Scarlett's honeymoon trip to New Orleans).

When I visited New Orleans historian Ray Samuel's Garden District home he showed me his darkroom where a Hollywood cinematographer loaded a 3 strip Technicolor camera before filming this brief scene. Must've been photographed just before sunrise (or close to sunset). A veteran meteorologist might be able to tell which.

Dave Thomson Museum Wing Index