Last of the packet boats

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Probably the most famous boat ever built at Clarington, OH was the Liberty, being the last in the line of packet boats of that name (a packet boat is generally described as a steam boat for conveying cargo, mail, and passengers on a regular schedule.) Way’s Packet Directory 1848-1994 lists an earlier Liberty built in 1857 at Wheeling, WV but “snagged and lost at Twelve Pole Creek, WV, Dec 27, 1862.”

The final Liberty was built in 1912 to run from Clarington to Wheeling. The Liberty’s whistle was fashioned by a farmer living near Grape Island, WV. It had been previously used on two packet boats, the Ben Hur, and then the Bessie Smith, before being installed on the Liberty.

She made a round trip a day and whistled each morning about 5:00 AM so that prospective passengers would get up and board the craft for a day’s shopping. The Liberty remained in Wheeling several hours each day and brought its passengers back home in the evening.

By 1918, she was running to New Matamoras, then to Parkersburg, and entered the Wheeling-McConnelsville trade in September, 1918. On December 20, 1918 she went into Pittsburgh for the first time, extending her route to Pittsburgh-McConnelsville. In August, 1920 the Liberty started running Pittsburgh-Zanesville. In the fall of 1921, she left that trade and ran Gallipolis-Charleston, then Pittsburgh-Wheeling where she was quite successful.

A change in the Liberty’s route marked the decline of packet boating. As people traveled more by rail, then by motor car, the vessel’s route was lengthened in 1929 to a weekly trip between Pittsburgh, PA, and Charleston, WV. She was the last regular packet to operate year-round out of Pittsburgh.

In the summer and fall of 1936, she towed the showboat Goldenrod with the Major Bowes’ Amateurs show. To advertise the show, she once left the showboat at Star City and went to Morgantown, WV and back playing calliope music the whole time. 

The Liberty was caught in the 1936 flood on the lower Ohio and was stripped of her whistle, bell, and fittings by vandals. Walter Webster bought her, fixed her up, and returned her to the Parkersburg Docks in February 1937, having been caught in the famous 1937 flood enroute while serving as a rescue boat. 

Oddly enough, Captain Walter C. Booth had been aboard the Liberty when it launched as a brand new boat, and he also rang the last bell to the engineer when it ended its career as a packet boat after its service in the flood rescues.

She was attached for debt and sold for $195 on July 27, 1938. The new captain, Raike, dismantled her at Kanauga, OH. Her engines went to the towboat Valley Belle. Her whistle was found and put on the towboat Mildred.

“It was probably one of the nicest sounding whistles ever to echo among the hills of the upper Ohio Valley,” said The Intelligencer (Wheeling, WV), on Aug. 4, 1960.

sources: http://members.aol.com/RYouCuz/monroeco.htm#fifteen
http://members.tripod.com/~Write4801/riverboats/l.html

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