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Piracy?
The most sensational event in the peace time history of steam boating on the Coosa occurred in the middle 1870's and involved the
Magnolia and the Sidney P. Smith. The latter had been built for the avowed
purpose of capturing a part of the traffic enjoyed by the Magnolia. She
was thirty feet shorter than her competitor and when she passed through shallow
water she settled and her stern dragged the bottom. (DRN Note She was modeled after vessels on the Mississippi and, hense was ill suited for the waters of the Coosa) The Competition between the two boats was fierce. Major
W.P. Hollingworth was scheduled to ship 150 bales of cotton from Gadsden to
Rome, via the Magnolia. Landing in Gadsden late in the afternoon, the captain
of the Magnolia told Capt. M.E. Pentecost, Sr. veteran steamboat accountant
and agent at Gadsden, that he would drop down to Greensport and unload a
large cargo destined to that landing, but would return next morning and pick
up the Hollingsworth cotton. Upon his return the captain found that the
Sidney P. Smith had taken it. Securing an order from Major Hollingsworth,
the captain ordered full steam ahead in an effort to overtake his competitor
which had been gone more than two hours. Captain Frank Benjamin, veteran
engineer, crowded all the steam the boilers would stand, and the pilots
scraped the scraped the willows in order to avoid bucking the current. About
half way from Gadsden to Rome, The Magnolia's captain spied the lights of
the Smith several miles upstream from Cedar Bluff. As the Magnolia pulled
up below Sewell's Ferry, there was the Smith, tied up and her lights
extinguished, while the deck hands wooded up-she had run out of fuel. The
Magnolia came up along side the Smith, and her captain ordered the two boats
lashed together and the cotton transferred. Just to guard against dire threats
of the Smith's captain, a man on the upper deck of the Magnolia, armed with
a double-barreled ten-gauge goose gun loaded with buckshot, kept close watch
until the last bale of cotton had been transferred. The Magnolia continued
on her way to Rome. On her next trip to Gadsden she was confronted by a
Federal Marshall, who arrested her captain and seized the boat, charging
piracy. Bond was promptly furnished by Major Hollingsworth. The case was
tried in the United States Court at Hunstville and ,after a long legal battle,
was decided in favor of the Magnolia.
thanks to Dennis Nordmen |
