Batwing Boat

[towboatjoe]

Are any of you guys familiar with the old "Batwing Boats"? Here's the Thealka on the Big Sandy River near where I live. I'm not sure of the date but the boat was supposed to be named The Alka after the owner's daughter, but the name painter misunderstood and ran the letters together.

[jblayne]

If you do a web search, you'll find mention of several of them.  They also ran on the Guyandotte (West Virginia)  and Little Sandy (Kentucky).  The Ashland  Public Library has pictures of a couple (upstairs in the local history room), I haven't checked the Greenup or Huntington libraries.  Also supposed to be pictures in the libraries in Paintsville, Prestonsburg and Pikeville.    
   
Also check out www.geocities.com/rlperry.geo/sandyboats.html    
   
They're basically an oversize johnboat, most built in Ironton, Ohio, and they only drew about a foot of water.  They may have lasted longer in West Virginia than in Kentucky.    
   
During the Civil War, Colonel James Garfield (later General and President) commandeered the fleet of batwing boats in Catlettsburg, Kentucky to move troops up the Big Sandy River to rout out the Confederate forces in the area.  This gave the boat owners vapors, since these boats weren't stable in deep water, and the Big Sandy was in flood (A common fate was capsizing at Catlettsburg during the winter)

[towboatjoe]

Hey jblaine, do you live in my area? I had a distant cousin who used to build flatboats here in Russell.

The batwing boats used to run the Big Sandy, but seriously doubt they could get up the Little Sandy. I lived on the Little Sandy most my life and undil the back water from the dam in the 50's a person would have to carry a jon boat across the riffles. Pleasure boats have trouble today from snags and shallows about 2 miles upstream.

[jblayne]

Be willing to bet we're cousins.  I live in Russell, incidentally it's jblayne not jblaine.

[jblayne]

More thoughts on batwings.  Thealka was the last one to work the Big Sandy River, had a boiler explosion in 1920 (?).  The spiders on the wheels appear to be cast iron, probably from an Ironton, Ohio foundry, and about eight feet across.  I'd guess Thealka didn't have a framework under the deck, probably just 2-3" thick boards (oak?) laid cross-wise over the hull.

In the early boats, the sides of the hulls were single boards, looks about 2' by  12-16" and sixty to eighty feet long (big trees back then, and man-powered saws).   Later boats used individual boards, since the big trees were gone and the sawmills couldn't process big boards.  Most were oversized johnboats, without the deck of Thealka, and had barges for cargo tied to the side and forward of the wheels.  The rudder was the barndoor type, similar to the kind used on the Murray river in Australia.  I've only found one picture from the side, none from the stern, but there appears to be an open space behind the deck house.

I have not been able to determine what kind of boiler they used--I'd guess a vertical one, and the later ones used gasoline engines

[derekwarner_decoy]

Hi to both jbalyne & TBJ - goodness how great that a model paddel wheeler site could reunite two [potential] cousins

The snap of the Thealka would suggest a horizontal boiler & fed from amid ships [with the end of the bolier FWD & the return flu {chimney} going aft - Derek