Annie Peruna

The Denison Press
Saturday, September 1940

DENISON
62-50-35
YEARS AGO
by Dulce Murray

September 14, 1905
The Annie Peruna - Commodore McAleer was sweating, blowing and swearing; deckhands were rushing fore and aft; still Annie continued to go round and round.  The mystery was soon explained, Commodore McAleer had jammed the rudder against the stern wheel.  The spectators on shore were now worked up to a high state of excitement and yelled to the Commodore: "Keep her a-going, old boy," "She is doing fine." "Ain't the old gal a good one, and other similar remarks.  But the climax was yet to come.  One of the invited guests on board was a Katy machinist named Strahorn.  All at once Commodore McAleer and the boat's crew were seen to grab Strahorn by the legs and going to the boat's side, thrust his head in the direction of the water.  The first impression among the spectators on shore was that Commodore McAleer intended to drown Strahorn; that he was the Jonah and must be thrown overboard.  Strahorn was adjusting the rudder.  The Annie Peruna was soon righted and the Commodore turned in toward the shore, cast anchor and then went into the woods to sample the Brumbaugh-Moulton shells again.

Source : Anderson, LeRoy M., editor. The Denison Press (Denison, Tex.), Vol. 7, No. 71, Ed. 1 Saturday, September 14, 1940, Newspaper, September 14, 1940; (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth328033/ : accessed April 30, 2015), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Grayson County Frontier Village, Denison, Texas.

Herald Democrat
March 13, 2013
By Donna Hunt
The "Annie P."

A lot has been written through the years about the Annie P., the first steamboat to navigate the Red River. It was early in 1905 that the Annie P. plowed up the river from New Orleans to Denison, proving the Red River was navigable.

Now we learn that a Denison-built boat also had its day on Red River a short time later.

What was intended as a whimsical, but not mocking parody on the voyage of the Annie P., the Annie Peruna was built in Denison later the same year and used on the river for a while. Bert Ford, one of Denison’s earliest gasoline motor mechanics, and Lon McAleer, owners of a Sugar Bottom coal and wood yard, were builders of the boat. An unbylined and undated yellowed article clipped from The Denison Herald said “the two were always ready for anything that broke away from the humdrum.”

The Sunday Gazetteer
Sunday, May 28, 1905

Bert died in Denison and Lon died a few years later in Red River County, where he had purchased a sizeable tract of land after he left Denison.

The article said that the Annie P. probably was the inspiration for the Annie Peruna, and the Denison builders undoubtedly took their cue from the former in selecting a name for their 25-foot boat.

The Annie Peruna was powered by a one-cylinder gasoline engine of early design that rotated the stern wheel that moved the boat. It was built in town, then taken on house-moving blocks to the Colbert crossing, where it was launched.

A picture taken by Carl Davault was taken as the boat was being inched toward the river. The flat-bottomed craft drew only a few inches of water and could negotiate the sallow stretches of the river with pretty good safety. The boat was christened by the two builders who broke two bottles of beer on it.

The men had hoped to fight their way upstream as far as possible, but after the Annie Peruna sat on the surface in its first “sink or swim” test, they were joined by T. E. Horan, and headed west up the river at a snail’s pace.

Mr. Horan had been in ill health for some time and became violently ill before the Annie Peruna reached Gainesville. The boat headed back downstream to return the ill member of its crew to Denison. He died the next day after his return. [He died on August 6, 1905 and was buried at Fairview Cemetery.]

After that Ford and McAleer made jaunts up and down the river. The Annie Peruna had its day at churning the river into foam and finally was dismantled.

I’m no boat expert, but the article said the Annie Peruna had “fore and aft compartments, one housing the engine and the other the crew’s quarters.” Between the two compartments was an open space where meals could be cooked and the crew could “lounge.” The wheel at the “prow” controlled two rudders, one on either side of the paddle wheel at the stern.

McAleer dubbed his coal and wood yard in Sugar Bottom “Fort McAleer” and loaned atmosphere to the shop with a towering flag mast, where colors fluttered on every occasion. A couple of improvised cannons always could be relied upon to furnish the percussion for a celebration.

Waterways
Susan Hawkins
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