The River: The Captain is back after a long illness – sharing stories of his life on the river

He’s back! 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

“Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death…” – 23rd Psalm

Whether or not I’ve been missed personally from these pages, the fact remains… no new material has been issued forth since my wife and I began experiencing serious health issues two years ago. Since then, my editor, Judy Clabes, has graciously reprinted the 235 columns scribbled before a dark mist clouded our lives like shut-out fog on the Upper Mississippi. However, now is the time to continue with new stories and tales about my favorite subject, the River.

I wondered where I should look for material after such a prolonged absence from the fluvial community. Suddenly, though, without warning, everything changed with a text message from Jenny Awad, president of the Dearborn County, Indiana Historical Society, and a county state historian.

“Do you have a photo of the PAULINE, a local delivery boat?”

Attached to Jenny’s message was a photo of a roughly constructed riverbank-built ark, obviously steam-powered but lacking either a side or stern paddlewheel. Reaching across my desk, I retrieved my roughly worn copy of Captain Fred Way’s PACKET DIRECTORY 1848-1994, where I found that two small, propeller-powered steamers operated on the local waters of the Middle Ohio River in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

The PAULINE (Way 4414), a 45.7-foot steam prop packet boat built in Petersburg, KY, in 1896, served the Petersburg, Kentucky, and Lawrenceburg – Aurora, Indiana trades.

A second PAULINE (Way 4415), built in 1905 in Petersburg as a 52-feet steam prop packet, had a single 9” by 9” engine and one boiler. Commanded by Capt. E. Alden, the boat was still listed in 1918.

According to Ms. Awad, the PAULINE hauled whiskey from a Petersburg distillery to Lawrenceburg but found room to ferry school kids from the tiny Kentucky village to a schoolhouse in larger Lawrenceburg on the opposite shore of the river. Our conversation rambled on about the small, obscure steam packets hauling Kentucky sour mash whiskey and school children until Jenny offhandedly mentioned…

“We (Dearborn County Historical Society) have the personal diaries of Ralph Rees from the 1800s.”

“Who’s he?” I asked.

“Rees’s family lived on a farm where Walmart is now,” she began. “I’m not sure of the term, but he ‘fitted’ a riverboat and then worked on it. When the boat was in Aurora, his journal talked about his wife and daughter visiting him. I think the Reeses were part of the home and family from Verastau, the historic home high on the hill above town overlooking the river. The Rees family owned property from Wilson Creek to Tanner’s Creek.”

Although I told Jenny I was unfamiliar with anyone named Rees from Aurora, I knew James Rees and Sons in Pittsburgh built the 110-year-old, now BELLE of LOUISVILLE, in 1914. When we failed to make a connection between the local Rees and those Rees boatbuilders at the mouth of the Allegheny River, just above the confluence of the Monongahela where their merger forms the Ohio, Jenny mused:

“I wonder how Ralph got a job on a steamboat?”

While Ms. Awad pondered her question about Ralph Rees’s employment aboard an unnamed steamboat, I left the computer for a spell. But when I returned, Jenny had posted a vintage photograph I had never seen before. It featured a distinguished, bearded, mature gentleman and an appropriately attired, younger, late-1800s woman with two small boys seated in the after-cabin of a modest 19th-century steamboat. The name GOLDENROD was legibly painted in gold on the bulkhead near the overhead behind the seated subjects.

Although we initially assumed the couple was married, Jenny discovered, written on the backside of the picture in ink and pencil, that the gentleman’s identity was Lt. CM. Holman Vale. Vale, an Aurora native born in 1843 who served with distinction as an officer in the U.S. Navy during the Civil War, was not married to the handsome woman seated across from him in the aft cabin of the GOLDENROD. Instead, she was found to be ‘E.S. Rees,’ or Ermine Stratton Rees (1857-1945), an Aurora girl. According to genealogy records online, she married Ralph Walker Rees, who was two years older than her. The Reeses had three sons; one was Holman Vail Rees, obviously named for the man seated across from Mrs. Rees in the photo. No doubt, these folks were closely related.

The ink script also noted that the photo was shot at Cairo, Illinois, in September of 1889 aboard the ‘S. Goldenrod’ (Steamer GOLDENROD). Written in pencil, almost as an afterthought, were the names “Stratton” and “Hamilton.” I wondered if they were the names of the two young fellows behaving so bravely for the camera.

Now, we had the identity of the couple in the photo as well as the name of the steamboat they were aboard when their picture was taken. Of course, I returned to Captain Way’s Directory and found the following:

GOLDENROD (Way 2376)
Sternwheel lighthouse tender, steel hull, built at the Sweeny Yard, Jeffersonville, IN, in 1888. 150 X 26.5 X 3.7. Engines, 12’s X 5 ft. Two boilers. An attractive example of marine architecture. Served the government lights on the Ohio and tributaries, replacing the US LILY. It was decommissioned when the GREENBRIAR was built in 1925 and sold to John Lyons, Middleport, OH. Lyons moored her under the ice piers there, and in a flood, she broke away and was lost.

Despite what Jenny and I learned in such a short time, I was still wondering why the Navy Commander was aboard a U. S. Lighthouse Service steamboat in a seemingly casual role. Was he on a special assignment? Still, how did Ralph Rees fit into all this, and why were his wife and sons aboard the lighthouse tender at the farthest end of the Ohio River soon after it entered service in late 1888? It wasn’t long before Jenny excitedly sent a text message.

“Look what I found!”

Attached to Jenny’s text were two pictures she had copied. The first was the cover of a small, handwritten book titled “Logbook of R. W. Rees, Quartermaster Steamer Goldenrod.”

The second picture shows the first page of the log as follows:

Thursday, Dec. 1888
Shipped on Steamer Goldenrod at Aurora, Ind at 2 PM.
Made the run from Aurora to the foot of Main Street Cincinnati in 3 hours.
Crew of Steamer Goldenrod
Capt. George Vandergrift – Cin.
Mate John W. Nelson “
Engineer Frank Majors “
Carpenter F. J. Moon Aurora
Pilot John Cox “
(Five deckhands)
Quartermaster R. W. Rees “

Finally, proof of Ralph Rees’s connection to the Steamer GOLDENROD was proven. He was the Quartermaster, presumably in charge of stores and supplies aboard the government-owned steamboat. Had the vessel been in private hands, his title might have been Chief Steward, a term I am more accustomed to hearing from the numerous steamboats I have crewed or commanded during my long career on the river.

Later, Jenny copied all the pages from the 1888, ‘89, and ‘90 logs for my collection. Reading through them, I was surprised to see how often Lt. Comdr. Vail and his Mrs. were aboard the “ROD,” as Quartermaster Rees called the comfortable, working government steamboat. Again, I asked myself if the Commander was a frequent guest aboard the vessel or if he was assigned to the GOLDENROD on some special arrangement between the Navy and the Lighthouse Service. Regrettably, Rees’s log entries shed no light on why Comdr. and Mrs. Vail were aboard the Lighthouse Tender so often. The Vails also enjoyed a healthy friendship with Captain Vandergrift, Master of the vessel. They frequently mention going ashore with him to attend operas or having meals in fine restaurants in Cincinnati and other ports of call.

Quartermaster Ralph W. Rees remained aboard the GOLDENROD until the Spring of 1890, according to the last entry in his logbook:

”Saturday, May 3rd. River falling. Rain. Warm. Let go at 6 AM and tied up at Aurora at 7 1/2 PM. Moose stopped off at home and I left the GOLDENROD for good.”

Before his adventures aboard the lighthouse tender, Rees was a hardware merchant on Main Street in Aurora. The building, still standing, is a bicycle shop at the beginning of the second quarter of the 21st Century. The 1900 Census lists Rees as a farmer. Jenny provided a photo of Rees standing in a snowy, open field, looking much like a farmer but still favoring a steamboatman. Ralph W. Rees died in 1919 of stomach cancer.

Commander Vail and his family continued patronizing the lighthouse service steamboats long after Rees left the “ROD” in 1890. Over a decade later, Vail, his wife, and their two lovely teenage daughters, Margaret and Julia, were aboard other government steamboats after the turn of the 20th Century. Margaret, the eldest, wrote a river column for a newspaper similar to mine about her and her family’s adventures on the Mississippi, Ohio, and tributary rivers.

Tragically, on 30 September 1904, while the U. S. Lighthouse Service Tenders OLEANDER and LILY were coaling at Grand Tower, Illinois, on the Mississippi River, Margaret Hamilton Vail, 15, fell between a coal barge and the main deck of the OLEANDER. According to reports, the river was dragged for two hours before her lifeless body was recovered.

Only three years later, Margaret’s father, Commander Holman Vail, died suddenly from acute indigestion. According to a newspaper account in the Washington Times dated December 3, 1907, Vail, just a day before, seemed in the best of health at his desk in the hydrographic office of the Navy Department.

“Mrs. Vail, who survives him, and her young daughter were prostrated by the shock,” the Times reported.

As I said at the beginning, “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death,” a journey we all must take sooner or later.

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, sharing his stories of growing up in Covington and his stories of the river. Hang on for the ride — the river never looked so good.

Purchase Captain Don Sanders’ The River book here

ORDER YOUR RIVER BOOK HERE

Capt. Don Sanders The River: River Rat to steamboatman, riding ‘magic river spell’ to 65-year adventure is now available for $29.95 plus handling and applicable taxes. This beautiful, hardback, published by the Northern Kentucky Tribune, is 264-pages of riveting storytelling, replete with hundreds of pictures from Capt. Don’s collection — and reflects his meticulous journaling, unmatched storytelling, and his appreciation for detail. This historically significant book is perfect for the collections of every devotee of the river.

You may purchase your book by mail from the Northern Kentucky Tribune — or you may find the book for sale at all Roebling Books locations and at the Behringer Crawford Museum and the St. Elizabeth Healthcare gift shops.

Order your Captain Don Sanders’ ‘The River’ book here.