User:Bgibson135

Some time ago, I became interested in the paddlewheel steamboats that plied the Cape Fear River in North Carolina (USA). These boats were mostly light-draught vessels that ran between Wilmington, and Fayetteville, North Carolina and the deeper draught vessels that ferried back and forth between Wilmington and Smithville (present-day Southport), NC. The steamboat era upon the Cape Fear River began about 1818 and the last paddlewheel steamer was tied up at Elizabethtown, NC about 1939 and left to rot.

The captains and their boats were romanticized almost from their earliest days, although the vessels were often "not much to look at." These boats ferried goods and people between the various ports and points in between. But, sometimes adventurous souls would board a boat and travel "just for fun" perhaps for a picnic, or all the way to Southport and the Atlantic Ocean for "a day at the beach."

Before the building of the Locks & Dams upon the Cape Fear River, in the early 20th Century, the level of the river could become quite low making river navigation difficult, dangerous, or even impossible. But, just as much of a problem to navigation, with similar results, the Cape Fear could also flood. There were many boiler explosions, fires, sinkings and other mishaps which occurred to these boats and had adverse effects upon their officers, crew and passengers.