Packet Boats
By Jim Reis from Pieces of the Past, Volume 2, pages
163-166 and reprinted here with his permission.
"Packet boats linked our river cities"
For the better part of seven decades in the 1800s, they churned up and down the Ohio River. They carried passengers, mail and freight between the river cities. They were the packet boats and provided a vital link among the cities. Packets were boats, usually steamers, that operated regularly scheduled passenger service among the cities.
One of the first such boats on the Ohio River was the General Pike, which began operating between Cincinnati-Newport and Louisville in the 1820s. By the 1830s packet travel had become reliable enough for the federal government to make contracts with packet companies to carry mail among the river cities along the Ohio River. One such company even called itself the U.S. Mail Line.
On December 14, 1837 the Kentucky & Ohio Journal said steamboat travel was the safest, cheapest and most dependable mode of travel in the country. It did suggest additional safety measures were needed. Bound for St. Louis, the Steamboat Moselle had just left the Cincinnati landing April 25, 1838, when its boilers blew, killing 130. Among the companies operating steamers on the Ohio River was the Cincinnati and Maysville Packet Co. An advertisement in the April 19, 1845 Licking Valley Register said the company ran two boats on a regular schedule between Maysville and Cincinnati-Newport.
The Simon Kenton left for Maysville at 10 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and made the return trip every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 10 a.m. The Daniel Boone operated on exactly the opposite schedule. By the 1850s an estimated 3 million passengers annually were using packets on the Ohio River. One company listed prices for a ride from Pittsburgh to Newport, ranging from $5 a person in a cabin to $1 for a ride on the open deck. Riders on the open deck not only braved the weather but also shared space with the animals from time to time.
Cabin travel offered the advantage of safety because most companies gave cabin customers first priority in the event of a fire or wreck. Two girls from the Redstone explosion near Carrollton Kentucky in April 1852 were saved in part because the ladies cabins were the first place rescuers searched.
Competition between packet companies was so intense the packets were always trying to break speed records. The boat boilers were not designed to handle the extra pressure created by higher speeds. By 1868 newspapers carried ads for more than a dozen packets. Among those in one January 17 advertisement were the Telegraph, Magnolia and Bostonia. The Telegraph had set a Louisville to Cincinnati-Newport speed record in 1852. The Bostonia was built to carry passengers to the C&O Railroad trains in Huntington, W.Va. The Magnolia was built in Cincinnati in 1859 under the direction of Amos Shinkle of Covington.
One of the worst Ohio River packet accidents occurred on December 4, 1868. The accident happened when the packet America collided with the packet United States about a mile from Warsaw. Each packet was valued at $150,000 when they collided in the darkness, burned to the water line and 162 people were killed.
Among the packet companies incorporated in Newport was the Tacoma Packet Co. on August 29, 1883 and the Memphis and Cincinnati Packet Co. in October 1883. Two of the investors were Paris C Brown and John J Raipe. Brown was a former Newport mayor and director of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce; he owned and operated packet boats for many years. He later became manager of the Consolidated Boat Stores Co. Brown died September 7, 1911 and is buried at Evergreen Cemetery. He was 73.
Raipe, also a Newport resident, was born in Cincinnati and had made a fortune during the Civil War selling supplies to troops. He later was a partner in the firm of Slimer and Raipe, which supplied meat to packets operating on the Ohio River. Raipe lost most of his fortune in unsuccessful real estate deals. He died at the age of 64 in August 1889 and was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery.
The packet Carrolton brought 80 passengers a day into Newport in 1892. The steamer Le H Brooks operated four daily trips from Covington to Coney Island amusement park, making stops at Newport, Bellevue, Dayton and Ft. Thomas. By the1890s however, the packet boats had lost most of their passengers to the railroads, a trend begun after the Civil War. In addition, the government had transferred the mails from the packets to the railroad in 1870.
Described in 1895 as "one of the largest, best known and handsomest packets on the Ohio River" the Longfellow was a day behind schedule when it left the Cincinnati public landing in a heavy morning fog on March 8, 1895. The packet struck the piers of the C&O Railroad bridge and sank. Eleven people died. Of the few packet companies that survived into the 1900s, many fell victim to the Great Depression. Regular river passenger service ended in the fall of 1936.