H. A. Homeyer [Steamboat]

The H. A. Homeyer was a steamboat used by Union forces to transport troops and cargo on the Arkansas, White, Mississippi, and St. Francis rivers during the Civil War.

The H. A. Homeyer was a 389-ton sternwheel paddleboat built in New Albany, Indiana, in 1863. The steamboat was 164.7 feet long, measured 32.5 feet wide, and had a five-foot draft.

Union forces in Arkansas first chartered the Homeyer from October 30 to November 26, 1863, when it was used to carry freight on the Arkansas River. It was next chartered from December 6 to 14 and then from December 23, 1863, to January 22, 1864.

The Homeyer may have been engaged in private commercial use when it was nearly sunk at DeValls Bluff (Prairie County). The steamboat Mill Boy had hit a snag farther up the White River on January 31, 1863, while transporting supplies to Federal troops at Batesville (Independence County). The vessel’s wreckage floated down the White to DeValls Bluff, where it slammed into the H. A. Homeyer, “then unloading at the landing, piercing a hole in her amidships, the boat being saved by the steam pump and the exertions of her officers.”

The steamboat was next chartered from August 10 to 25, 1864. During this period, the Homeyer transported men of the Sixtieth U.S. Colored Infantry on the August 11–13 expedition from Helena (Phillips County) to Kent’s Landing on the Mississippi River and carried Major Eagleton Carmichael and troopers of the Fifteenth Illinois Cavalry up the St. Francis River during the August 22–25 scout from Helena to Mount Vernon (St. Francis County). The vessel was then “pressed” on August 28, 1864, “for an unknown period” and chartered October 20–21, 1864.

After the Civil War ended, the H. A. Homeyer ran between St. Louis, Missouri, and Cincinnati, Ohio, and on the Red River from 1865 to 1867. The steamer was heading from Camden (Ouachita County) to New Orleans, Louisiana, on January 13, 1868, when it caught fire and burned at Falk’s Landing on the Ouachita River in Louisiana. Nine hundred bales of cotton were lost in the accident.

For additional information:
“From Cairo and Below.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, February 16, 1864, p. 1.

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. 147.

The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Vol. 41, part 1, pp. 241–242. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1893.

Way, Frederick, Jr. Way’s Packet Directory. Athens: University of Ohio Press, 1983, p. 202.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas