The riverboat captain is a storyteller. Captain Don Sanders shares the stories of his long association with the river — from discovery to a way of love and life. This a part of a long and continuing story.
By Capt. Don Sanders
Special to NKyTribune
Just recently, I woke to an earlier 6 a.m. query in my message box from a young woman in Western Kentucky named Carla Jo Jones asking: “Do you know who this man is (with the red line on top of his head)? He looks like my grandfather who did work on the DELTA QUEEN?”
By 10 a.m. I replied, “That’s Chief Engineer Arthur Rees from Hawesville, KY. Art worked on the DELTA QUEEN and BELLE OF LOUISVILLE. He died around 1979 and was buried in Owensboro, Kentucky.”
Almost immediately, Ms. Jones commented: “Thank you for your reply, but Elmer L. Henderson was my grandfather — also a steamboat engineer, and from Benton, Kentucky.”
After apologizing for my information not matching her expectations, an earnest inquiry began to find out whatever Carla Jo Jones knew about her grandpa’s, Chief Engineer Elmer Henderson, life on the river. And so began an interesting pursuit exploring darkened passageways into what had once been a full and eventful life spent steamboating on the Western Rivers.
What I soon discovered about Elmer Henderson was that he was born in Iowa during late August 1900. According to his granddaughter, his childhood was anything but memorable, lacking activities like swimming in the river, rowing jonboats, and watching steamboats on the Upper Mississippi, which suggested a future career on the river.
Somehow, though, fate or circumstances connected a 17-year-old Iowa lad to the steam packet SAINT LOUIS in 1917, where he worked for two seasons as a Cub Pilot, not only learning to steer the boat but also mastering an often cantankerous river.
The 210 x 37 foot SAINT LOUIS, owned by the St. Louis and Tennessee River Packet Company, was, reportedly, a “nice, roomy boat” built by the Howard Shipyard, Jeffersonville, IN in 1912; she sank in the “steamboat graveyard” south of St. Louis on September 2, 1918.
Fortunately, being a steamboat pilot, however, wasn’t in the cards for young Elmer, who couldn’t stay out of the engineroom. When the SAINT LOUIS foundered, he was a “Striker Engineer,” learning to become a steam engineer onboard the U. S. HORATIO G. WRIGHT, a sidewheel government snagboat built in 1880 operating on the Mississippi River pulling snags and other impediments to navigation.
After serving an undisclosed amount of time on the Snagboat WRIGHT, Elmer Henderson became a Night Watchman on the packet boat DOROTHY, a smaller 140-foot sternwheeler running between Paducah, KY and Golconda, IL on the Lower Ohio, owned by the celebrated Paducah Master-Pilot, Capt. Fred McCandless. How long Elmer stayed with the DOROTHY remains a mystery.
According to the Henderson family’s accounts, Elmer became a Striker on the KENTUCKY before receiving his Engineer’s license at the young age of 19. In later years, Grandpa Henderson revealed that “in those days, you didn’t have a steady job, but worked whenever a boat ran. So when it would tie up for a while, you’d go find another boat to work on.”
At the age of 20, Chief Henderson found short-term employment in the engineroom of the 1898 steam sternwheel towboat RUSSELL LORD before it was sold to the National Petroleum Company in October 1920. The oil company placed the LORD on a barge, which overturned and sank in a storm in the Gulf of Mexico off Galveston, Texas. The young Engineer may have been unemployed, but he found the love of his life through his brief encounter with the RUSSELL LORD.
On board the LORD, Clara Ruth Lambert, a year younger than Elmer, was a cook. According to granddaughter Carla Jo Jones:
“Grandmother was a cook on the RUSSELL LORD. That’s how they met. They courted from 1920 to 1923, and married on December 17, 1923–and let me tell you–she could cook!”
After the RUSSELL LORD, Engineer Henderson went to sea and found a berth on the “S.S. ALLOWAY,” where he spent 6 months and 15 days as the ship’s Engineer, as well as on other vessels, before returning home to the States, where he married his Clara Ruth. My research found a USS ALLOWAY, a steam, screw-wheel cargo ship, commissioned in March 1918 at San Francisco, CA, for the U.S. Navy. After the Navy released her in March 1919, she entered commercial service until 1928. In 1928, while being towed to Japan for scrapping, the ALLOWAY broke loose in a storm, grounded, and soon broke up as a total loss.
In 1924, Elmer L. Henderson, Chief Engineer, began a 32-year career with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, where he worked on unspecified river boats until his retirement in 1956. During World War II, Chief Elmer received a U.S. Coast Guard commission into the “Catfish Navy,” ferrying inland-built LSTs and other warships to New Orleans for transport to the various theaters of war. Chief Henderson achieved the rank of Lieutenant Commander by war’s end.
Another tidbit Ms. Jones shared about her grandparents was this touching tale: “My favorite part of their story is that while they were courting, ‘Pop’ traveled on different boats around the world, and every day Grandmother Clara would sing, ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ in hopes that Grandpa would make it home safely. At a very young age, she taught me that song.”
Granddaughter Carla Jo also said of her beloved Pop, “He could absolutely do anything, very skilled. My dad was just like him.” Apparently, Chief Henderson applied his ability to “absolutely do anything” to building working model steamboats which operated on both steam and compressed air.
“He made a half-inch-to-one-foot-scale working model of the RUSSELL LORD. It was so awesome. When Pop passed, we donated the model to the River Heritage Museum in Paducah,” Carla Jo Jones added.
During our exchanges about Chief Henderson, Ms. Jones often mentioned that her beloved grandfather worked as a relief Chief Engineer on the DELTA QUEEN during the 1969 and 1970 seasons. In ’69, I was still on active duty overseas, but I was back on board the QUEEN in January 1970. Try as I might, I had no recollection of an engineer fitting Chief Elmer’s description. We’re talking nearly 60 years of mental fog to penetrate, too. But I had an idea.
My pal, Chief Engineer Kenny P. Howe, Jr., began as a Striker in the DELTA QUEEN engineroom while I went on deck as the 2nd Mate under Captains Ernest E. Wagner and Clarke C. “Doc” Hawley that year. If anyone would remember Chief Henderson, surely Kenny would. But when I called Kenny, Chief Henderson’s name failed to stir memories of him. There was no one else to ask. Or was there?
The only other person who might have a clue was David Tschiggfrie, Editor of the S&D REFLECTOR, a river history magazine. When I called Dave, he said he didn’t remember a Chief Henderson working on the DELTA QUEEN as a relief engineer during the 1970 season.
But then he said, “Let’s see what Fred (Way) has to say.
“Here’s something. The steam towboat MARGARET, built as a railroad-tie-hauling steamboat in 1894, was working in 1919 with Capt. Nelson Broadfoot, Master, Ed. Latham, Chief, and Elmer Henderson, 2nd Engineer. But nothing about him being Chief on the DELTA QUEEN.”
By now, Chief Engineer Elmer L. Henderson was no longer an unknown figure. Through research and messaging with his granddaughter, Carla Jo, I knew when he was born, when he began steamboating, and which boats he crewed on. I knew where, when, and how he met his bride, and even where they lay together in Pell Cemetery in Brookport, Illinois. The only fact concerning Chief Elmer I wanted to confirm was whether he was on the DELTA QUEEN in 1970.
After much difficulty getting a photo of Elmer Henderson to Chief Kenny Howe, the picture finally reached Kenny’s email inbox. I waited.
Finally, after some anxious anticipation, this message from Chief Kenny arrived in my inbox:
“After much fooling around… I believe I remember Chief Henderson. I can’t say much about him. But I didn’t work under him.”
That’s good enough for me. If I can’t believe my former DELTA QUEEN Chief Engineer, who can I believe? Chief Elmer L. Henderson WAS on the QUEEN in 1970 with Kenny and me.
Case closed.
Captain Don Sanders is a river man. He has been a riverboat captain with the Delta Queen Steamboat Company and with Rising Star Casino. He learned to fly an airplane before he learned to drive a “machine” and became a captain in the USAF. He is an adventurer, a historian, and a storyteller. Now, he is a columnist for the NKyTribune and will share his stories of growing up in Covington and his stories of the river. Hang on for the ride — the river never looked so good.
Click here to read all of Capt. Don Sanders’ stories of The River.
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