America (Packet, 1898-1926)

BOAT DESCRIPTION: Sternwheel

BOAT TYPE: Packet

BUILT: 1898 in Jeffersonville, Indiana at Howard Ship Yards

FINAL DISPOSITION: Foundered in New Orleans, Louisiana August 13, 1926

OWNERS: Captain LeVerrier Cooley

OFFICERS & CREW: L. V. Cooley (Captain, 1900, 1901); W. B. Foulke (Clerk); V. W. Foulke (Purser, 1900); Walter Morrison (Second Clerk, 1900); G. Howard Bean (Third Clerk, 1900); Captain Ed Rucker, Sr. (Pilot, 1900); Captain Jerry Hicks (Pilot, 1900); Junius H. Landry (Pilot, 1900); Charles Maurer (Pilot, 1900); John Corliss (Chief Engineer, 1900); John Youngblood (Engineer, 1900); Louis C. Rawlings (Pilot, 1901); R. C. Cooley (Chief Engineer, 1901); R. B. Bauman (Second Engineer, 1901); Maurice Connors (Steward, 1901); Tom Morrow (Mate, 1901); Peter Pepper (Mate, 1901); Frank Steigleman (Clerk, 1904)

RIVERS: Mississippi River; Oachita River

OTHER INFORMATION: Ways - 0240; Cotton-style packet built for Captain L. V. Cooley and designed for the Oachita River trade, Monroe to New Orleans. Original price was $30,000, Captain LeVerrier Cooley, owner; he ran her in New Orleans-Oachita River service, then New Orleans-Greenville. W. B. Foulke was clerk for many years. Along about 1904 Captain Cooley began operating his boat in connection with the New Orleans and Vicksburg Packet Company, running New Orleans to Vicksburg and Greenville. In April 1923 she made a trip to East Alton, Illinois, taking up a cargo of smokeless powder; at St. Louis, Missouri on the return trip, she took aboard five carloads of Anheuser-Busch beer, four carloads of soap, some automobiles, and a camping outfit for delivery south. After an absence of nearly twenty years, Captain Cooley took the America to Camden, Arkansas in April, 1924. That spring he had the boat chartered to a movie company who temporarily renamed her Winfield Scott to make a picture tit

PHOTO DESCRIPTION: Loading cotton bales