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St. Clair was one of the first steamboats brought to Buffalo Bayou (Houston, Texas) after the war, along with
Silver Cloud. She ran between Galveston and Houston until 1869 or thereabouts.I wrote this about her in my recent
steamboat book:
The first new boat to arrive and enter the trade after the war was Arizona, which tied up to the Houston wharf on the first day of September 1865. She was followed a few months later by the packets Silver Cloud under the command of John Sterrett, and St. Clair, Captain Curtis Blakeman, both purchased by Sterrett and outfitted for the Buffalo Bayou trade. The local press offered glowing reports on the new boats, noting Sterrett’s “reputation for attention to passengers and for keeping the best table anywhere to be met with. . . . Under such favorable auspices,” the Galveston News concluded, “there cannot be a doubt that these new steamers will be liberally patronized and well supported by the public.”
Left unstated was that both St. Clair and Silver Cloud had been bought new by the U.S. Navy during the war and put into service as gunboats on the Mississippi. Their main decks were fitted with lightweight metal plating to provide some protection around the boilers and other machinery, but this was really only sufficient to protect against small arms fire. This flimsy armor earned boats like this the derisive nickname of “tinclads”— as opposed to properly armored, ironclad naval vessels—and they were used primarily for patrols along the river, trying to intercept the passage of men and materiel between Confederate-held territory on either side of the Mississippi.
The 203-ton sternwheeler St. Clair had been launched at Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania, in 1862 and was intended to run between Pitttsburgh and St. Louis. On her first visit to that latter port, however, she was bought by the Federal government and commissioned as Tinclad No. 19. St. Clair participated in several small engagements as part of the navy’s Mississippi Squadron, including the relief of Fort Donelson in January 1863, convoying supply transports in support of Union forces besieging Vicksburg in the spring and summer of that year, and the Red River campaign in 1864.
The image immediately above is from the Metropolitan History Center of the Houston Public Library. The image at the top, of
St. Clair as Tinclad No. 19, is originally from the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, National Park Service.