Annie Jacobs (Steamboat)

aka: Milbrey (Steamboat)

The Annie Jacobs, a steamboat owned by the U.S. Quartermaster Corps, was heavily damaged by Confederate cannon fire during the January 17, 1865, Action at Ivey’s Ford on the Arkansas River.

The Annie Jacobs was a 148-ton sternwheel paddleboat constructed in 1863 for $25,000 for riverboat captain Ben Johnson. The hull of the vessel was built at Mound City, Illinois, by Hambelton Collier and Co., and the cabins were built by Pipe & Andrews of St. Louis, Missouri. The Annie Jacobs was 147 feet long, 32 feet wide, and had “3 feet 10 inches depth of hold.” It was powered by two boilers that were twenty feet long and thirty-eight inches in diameter, and its wheel was sixteen feet in diameter “with 19 feet bucket” (“bucket” being the term for the wooden blade on the paddle wheel). The Annie Jacobs had twenty-four cabins and was billed to “accommodate 50 passengers in first class style.” It was named after the daughter of a riverboat captain.

The vessel was first chartered for use by Union forces on January 10, 1864, then again from February 19 to 24. The Annie Jacobs was “pressed” on July 12, 1864 “for an unknown time” and then was chartered again September 6–8 and October 2–13, 1864, before the U.S. Quartermaster Corps bought it for $30,000 in November.

The Annie Jacobs was part of a flotilla bringing desperately needed supplies from Little Rock (Pulaski County) to the Federal base at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) in January 1865. The flotilla was returning to Little Rock on January 17 when it was attacked by Confederate troops under Colonel William S. Brooks at Ivey’s Ford.

James Baldy, the Annie Jacobs’s clerk, wrote that they were approaching the steamboat New Chippewah, which was on the southern shore, when they saw that it was ablaze. Soldiers on the Jacobs began firing as Brooks’s men opened small arms and artillery fire, and “the question arose whether we should run the blockade, surrender, or round to and run into shore on the opposite side and let the women and children get ashore—we had four or five hundred of them aboard.”

They chose the latter, and a Leavenworth, Kansas, newspaper reported that the Annie Jacobs “was saved by the coolness and daring of Colonel Thos. Bowen, 13^th Kansas volunteers, who was on the hurricane deck during the whole engagement, directing the pilot.” A soldier in the Eighteenth Iowa Infantry Regiment wrote that “a round shot injured her machinery, so that she became quite unmanageable,” though they did manage to run it aground on the northern bank of the river. He wrote that “many persons, among them a number of women and children, fearing an explosion, jumped overboard and were drowned.”

The Confederates shifted their fire to the steamboat Lotus as it came into range and left the injured Annie Jacobs alone. Baldy wrote that the steamer was “pretty well shot up but not destroyed,” stating that the rebels had fired forty-three artillery rounds at them, seventeen of which passed through the vessel, “and seven exploded in her.” Four people were killed, and twelve were wounded on the Annie Jacobs, and as many as thirty passengers drowned.

The Annie Jacobs was taken to Little Rock for repairs and continued to haul troops and supplies for the Union forces; in June 1865, its “condition was rated as good.” After the war, it was sold in September 1865 to Noland & Caffrey for $13,500. The steamer’s name was changed to the Milbrey by the time C. J. Jeffrey of St. Louis bought it for a line of packets to run between St. Louis and Johnsonville, Tennessee. When that venture failed, the Milbrey was sold at St. Louis on July 24, 1866.

The Milbrey was attached for debt by the sheriff at Paducah, Kentucky, on May 1, 1868, but the ship’s captain, Jack Lawson, convinced the owners to let him take a Sunday school class on an excursion; he instead fled to Memphis, where, on May 10, the boat caught fire, and “the texas, pilot house and a portion of the cabin were destroyed.” The $2,000 worth of damage was covered by insurance.

The Milbrey was sold at Memphis in June 1868 for $2,950 to Captain Robert Wood, who ran it between Louisville, Kentucky, and Cairo, Illinois, for several years. The vessel’s ultimate fate is unknown.

For additional information:
“Col. Tom Bowen.” Leavenworth Times, February 22, 1865, p. 2.

“Fire in the Steamer Milbrey.” (Memphis, Tennessee) Public Ledger, May 11, 1868, p. 3.

Gibson, Charles Dana, and E. Kay Gibson, comps. Dictionary of Transports and Combatant Vessels Steam and Sail Employed by the Union Army 1861–1868. Camden, ME: Ensing Press, 1995, p. 18.

“Letter from the 18^th Iowa.” Muscatine (Iowa) Evening Journal, February 9, 1865, p. 2.

“Miscellaneous.” Memphis Daily Appeal, June 7, 1868, p. 4.

“Miscellaneous.” St. Louis Globe Demcrat, November 29, 1864, p. 4.

“River and Steamboat News.” St. Louis Republic, May 8, 1868, p. 1.

“Sales of Boats by Uncle Sam.” Evansville (Indiana) Daily Journal, September 11, 1865, p. 3.

St. Louis Republic, May 7, 1868, p. 4, col. 1.

St. Louis Republic, September 21, 1863, p. 4, col. 4.

“A Trip from Little Rock to Fort Smith.” Hillsdale (Michigan) Daily News, March 14, 1865, p. 2.

Way, Frederick, Jr. Way’s Packet Directory. Athens: University of Ohio Press, 1983, pp. 24, 321.