Peerless by Cathead - 1:87 - 1893 sternwheel Missouri River steamboat

[Cathead]

It's time for yet another scratchbuilt Missouri River steamboat! Peerless was a small, obscure vessel that operated on the lower Missouri River during the waning days of the steamboat era. Image from the State Historical Society of Missouri digital collections:

Built in 1893 at Hermann, Missouri, she seems to have handled small-scale trade that wasn't yet captured by the railroads. One reference states that she operated primarily between Rocheport (in central Missouri) and St. Louis, but she also apparently made some trips up several navigable tributaries flowing out of the Ozark Mountains to the south, such as the Gasconade and Osage. This region was rugged and resistant to road and rail development, so those rivers continued to act as a conduit for trade much longer than the main rivers, and various small steamboats took advantage of this. In addition, while a rail line had been completed along the south side of the Missouri River as far west as the state capitol Jefferson City around the Civil War era, no equivalent line had been built along the north side until one was begun the year of Peerless' construction, so there was still a certain call for river transport among towns on the north bank. Here's a map I developed of her operating region:

This project builds on my long-standing fascinating with Missouri River history, such as previous builds of Arabia, Bertrand, and other river vessels (follow links in my signature for build logs). The first two (shown below) are my favorites, though they're not directly comparable as Arabia (1:64) appears much bigger than Bertrand (1:87) due to scale; in reality they were very close in size.

Peerless was a smaller and later river steamer than either Arabia (1853-1856, 31'x181' hull) or Bertrand (1864-1865, 33'x161' hull), built in 1893 with a 21'x97' hull. She's a simpler design that still retains many essential features of what's generally called a Western River steamboat: shallow draft (hull only 3.5' deep below the deck), long & narrow hull, simple superstructure with a pilothouse at the highest point, machinery and cargo carried on the main deck (often just inches above the river), passenger cabins on the next deck up (confusingly called the boiler deck), and built on-site to local design.

 

Despite being a small and obscure vessel, there are quite a few photographs of Peerless, many of which show her in strikingly different configurations. The following images are from the wonderful collection of steamboat photography hosted by the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Murphy Library.

 

Here she's hosting some kind of outing on the river, probably a good source of revenue:

Here she's somewhere along the Gasconade River; note the tall dolomite bluffs constraining the river, typical of the deep Ozarks. This is my favorite photo; so full of detail to study, and set in my favorite region:

Here she is with a barge of cotton and other cargo. Compared to the first & second photos, note the extension built onto her aft cabins, the added boiler deck railings, and the diamond-shaped windows or designs on the engine room walls:

Here are two shots from the bow; this is back to what I think of as the "original" configuration, without the additions seen above. I love what appears to be a railroad locomotive headlight mounted in front of the pilothouse (you can see this even better in the very first photo I posted).

Here's a hybrid form, with the fancy railings and diamond windows ,but no after cabin extensions, but also the locomotive headlight is back even though it wasn't present on the other shot showing these additions. She really looks like an excursion boat here (you can even see a sign reading "excursion) propped against the boiler), with fancy awnings and benches and no trace of cargo.

And here she is in 1903, partially sunk by ice along the levee at St. Charles, Missouri, the last port before St. Louis. This has some nice detail of the boiler and chimneys, capstan, and that locomotive headlight.

 

From what I can discern, she was apparently repaired, spent some time on the Illinois River, then moved down to Vicksburg MS for a long while. But that part of her history isn't my focus.

 

In future posts I'll start sharing more on how I'm developing the design for this model and so on. I'm excited to get this started!

 

 

Edited June 17, 2023 by Cathead

[ccoyle]

Fascinating subject!

[mtaylor]

This should be great to ride along with.   The river steamers are fascinating.

[mbp521]

What a fascinating subject. I am all about the more obscure boats out there, and this one fits right in to that category. I am jumping with excitement to see this project progress. Glad to see you back on another scratch build Eric. I’ve got my chair pulled up in the front row!

 

-Brian

[steamschooner]

Wonderful new project Cathead, I will be checking it out. 

Steve

[Balclutha75]

I’ll silently follow along if you don’t mind. We were in Missouri last month and spent 3 days in Rocheport, 4 in St. Charles, a week in St. Louis and a too short visit to Hermann. 
 

While there it’s easy to get an interest in steamboats, something I know nothing about. I read a Sultana book during the trip.

 

Your build will be interesting!

[gak1965]

Signing up to follow this one!

[Mic_Nao]

Interesting topic, great documentation. Good luck !

[gjdale]

I’m in!

[Canute]

I'm in, Eric. Be interesting to see your plans, since there apparently was a similar boat out here in western NC on the French Broad River, a tributary of the Tennessee. I've only seen 1 picture of that boat, the Mountain Lily,

[Cathead]

Thanks for all the excitement! I always find it a bit daunting to launch a build log, knowing that I'm committing myself to oversight

 

Here's a little more background information/context for the planned build. The small town of Rocheport, the upriver-most port of call for Peerless, sits along arguably the prettiest and most dramatic stretch of the Missouri river below Montana. All historic images shared below are from the State Historical Society of Missouri's digital collections.

 

Here's the town around 1900, when Peerless was active. Note the dramatic bluffs downriver; more on them in a minute.

Even as late as the 1900s, riverboats were still operating through here, and various ferries crossed the river. This one is especially attractive and was definitely a candidate for this build:

This was a riverboat town until the MK&T railroad came through in the 1890s, building a branch that left the original mainline just north of its crossing of the Missouri River at Boonville (~10 miles upriver), heading east for St. Louis by clinging to the edge of the river bluffs for ~160 miles (you can check the geographic context in the map from the last post). This shot was taken just upriver from Rocheport:

Here's another shot of the Rocheport riverfront around 1910, with a steamboat tied up to the bank:

And just for context, here's the railroad's spectacular bridge at Boonville during the major 1903 flood, during which much of the 2.5-mile-wide valley flooded; note the passenger train for scale.

Finally, going back to Rocheport, remember that first photo I showed? It has an elevated perspective, taken from atop a bluff on the west side of town. That bluff hosts the only tunnel anywhere on the MK&T railroad system, stretching from Missouri to the Texas Gulf Coast; it's now part of the longest rail trail in the country, which runs 240 miles across Missouri. If this interests you, check out the two-part video series I produced for my YouTube channel (Ozark Outsider), summarizing the tunnel's geologic and historical setting (Part 1 - Part 2).

Anyway, if you're wondering why I'm hitting the railroad theme so hard, here's the answer. The Peerless is my first step toward a potential much larger project building a model railroad recreating the MK&T's Missouri River route around 1900, which would be centered on the highly scenic stretch between the Boonville bridge and Rocheport. One or more contemporary steamboat models would be featured at appropriate settings like Rocheport. So that explains the combined railroad/river focus of this post and the unusual 1:87 scale (for ship modelers anyway).

 

I live in this area and have spent a lot of time along this stretch of the trail, so I know the setting pretty well. If I do proceed with the railroad, it won't be until at least this winter, so Peerless is meant to keep me active until then, provide an early start on a featured scene, and recreate another part of lower Missouri River history even if I don't end up pursuing the larger project. But she's part of the story here, part of that slow transition from river to rail that reshaped economics, transportation, and culture in this part of Missouri. So she'll stand alone as a fun model, but could be part of something bigger.

 

Hopefully by next weekend I'll have some actual initial modeling to share. Thanks for reading!

 

 

[michael mott]

Looks  like another great build about to start. I do enjoy all the historical context that you add Eric.

 

Michael

[Cathead]

OK, we're getting close to actually building something. But first, just a few more notes on planning. Since there certainly aren't any plans for this vessel, I'm developing an approach based on the photos I have and general knowledge of Western River steamboat design. To start laying out the side plan, I brought the best side-view image I had into a drawing program, scaled it to the known hull length of Peerless, and began laying out general lines. 

 

Since the current goal for this model is to represent Peerless in a model railroad setting, I'm less concerned about getting everything exactly right and more aimed at creating a reasonable version. In other words, I'm willing to make small changes to get the version I want to display. This is made easier by the fact that she seems to have come in so many different flavors (see photos in original post) that there's no one definitive version anyway. 

 

Another implication of the intended model railroad setting is that this will be a waterline model. So the actual hull will be very thin, since these vessels sat very low in the water, especially when loaded.

 

For the hull and deck layouts, more creativity and interpretation is needed, since there aren't any photos from overhead. For the hull, I decided to use plans already in my possession for the Bertrand, another sternwheeler. She was build in 1864, not 1893, and was quite a bit bigger, but I just wanted to have something to base overall lines on. And again, the modeled hull will be 1/4" thick and mostly hidden under the deck, so this isn't a place I intend to fuss over too much. 

 

I took the Bertrand plans, scaled them to the known dimensions of Peerless, and again started tracing and developing lines. Here's a loose version of the main and boiler decks, drawn to match the side plans shown above.

 

One difference you'll notice, Bertrand had large extensions of the deck protruding outside the paddlewheel, while Peerless clearly has no such thing. The thinner squares are the vertical posts between the main and boiler decks, while the larger squares are the main and boiler deck locations where the hog chain posts pass through (in this build, I'm assuming a certain knowledge of riverboat terminology; if you need more clarification, please ask).

 

I'm not going to share all my plans here, I just wanted to show these partially-developed versions to give you a sense of how I'm approaching this. I don't intend to print these out; I'm going to build from the computer version, taking measurements as needed or noted and transferring them to the model. I also have a conversion spreadsheet set up for going between real-life and 1:87 scale. In some places, I'll probably adjust dimensions subtly to make for easier model building rather than perfect accuracy. For example, a 4"x4" post is .046" square in 1:87. I'm just fine with making that a round 1/2 inch. These vessels were handbuilt anyway and I have no doubt their materials and measurements were quite variable.

 

 

 

 

[Cathead]

And some notes on workspace. This project will inaugurate a new and very exciting workspace for me. Most of my models have been built on a small workbench in my living room, basically a plastic folding table supported on a wooden frame. It's worked well and I enjoy working in living space where I'm part of household life, but it also has its downsides. Last fall we embarked on a DIY project to renovate an underused basement bedroom, redoing the walls and ripping out 40+ year old carpet that was utterly nasty no matter how many times we ran a cleaning machine over it. We redid the floor in ceramic tile and replaced all the moulding with rustic cedar planks cut and milled here on-farm. Part of the goal was to re-establish this room as a nice space to spend time in, and accommodate a new and larger workspace for me.

 

Here's the finished room before I added the moulding:

And here it is with the newly built workbench, made from more cedar lumber logged and milled here on-farm, with the actual work surfaces being a couple of old doors I salvaged and repurposed as nice smooth benchtops. It has LED lights arranged at an angle behind front valences to light the workspace, and three corkboards along the inner walls for various purposes.

Here it is with a bunch of tools and stuff organized within:

I cannot wait to put this to use!

 

EDIT: Meant to add that the table to the right of the workbench was something I built out of poplar as a present for Mrs. Cathead back when we were dating.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 25, 2023 by Cathead

[Keith Black]

 Eric, great workspace and it even comes with a bed! After following your's and Brian's workshop builds I have workshop envy to the max. 

[Cathead]

And finally, some notes on materials. This project is also intended to inaugurate another new era for me, one in which I start modeling with wood harvested on-farm instead of purchased. I've been saving up logs of various interesting species for a couple years now, but life has really stood in the way of moving forward on this.  And before anyone gives me a safety scolding, we've been doing timber management on this property for close to 20 years and are experienced chainsaw and equipment operators. I've built most of our outbuildings and quite a bit of our furniture from on-farm wood over the years, and so moving into smaller-scale stuff is a natural progression.

 

For this model, which will be painted and so doesn't necessarily need to be "nice" wood, I cut up a fallen basswood tree that had been overhanging our creek:

 

Then we milled these logs along with some hackberry, maple, walnut, oak, and other species we'd been storing up. Here they are on the tractor, and properly stacked for drying in the barn:

Actually, I lied, this won't be the first model I've built with on-farm wood, I just remembered that I built the NRG capstan and half-full projects with on-farm wood:

 

But this will be the first full model I've done that way. 

 

Tomorrow I'll share the first steps taken in actually making sawdust. Thanks for reading!

[Cathead]

After all that talk, I actually finally started the darned model! The starting material was a 1" thick rough-milled basswood board; if I do this right I might be able to build the whole model from this one board!

My Byrnes saw can't quite manage 1" thickness, and I needed a ~.25" x 3.5" x 13.5" slab for the basic hull. So how to get that out of a big board like this?

 

I cut a sub-board about 14" long, set up my big table saw to cut 2" deep, and set the depth from the fence to just over .25" I then ran the board over that twice, once for each side, making two long slots that separated three pieces. Below is a test run where I didn't get the width quite right but you can see the idea.

When I got these right, I turned the board flat and cut the pieces off, giving me two slabs of more or less equal thickness. I then edge-glued these together to make the full hull slab:

I used a power sander to make this reasonably smooth, while keeping a slight camber on the upper surface. I then transferred the intended curve of bow and stern to the hull slab using measurements and strips of styrene clamped in place. I cut one side out, then made a paper pattern to transfer the same cut to the other side.

After light sanding, the result looks like this:

Here's a side view with a few scale figures near the bow:

Seems to work so far. None of the sides should be that square, so I need to sand in some gentle angles to better mimic the actual shape of the hull. The subsequent step is a bit trickier; I have to build up the stern and bow slightly and set up a way to support the decks where they overhang the hull at bow and sides. I have an idea of how I want to do this and will let you know whether or not it works. But I won't be able to try it out until at least next weekend as I have a very busy week coming up. But at least it's underway!

 

[mbp521]

And away you go!

 

So happy to see that you were able to get your spare bedroom finally completed and the work bench setup. Beautiful job, by the way! I love the use of home harvested lumber on your workbench. One of these days I might try my hand at that, but I have way too many projects (and hobbies) to start that now. We, like you and Mrs. Cathead, have an overabundance of lumber on our property that we could start our own sawmill as well, just not the time to do it. While I am having fun building my shipyard, I am chomping at the bit to get back to my build, and now seeing that you have kicked your new build off makes me even more ready to get going. I should hopefully be ready to go in about a month though.

 

This project looks like it is going to be quite the undertaking, especially with the railroad dio included. Not sure of how far you are going to take it, but the RR bridge in the photos looks like it would make a great addition. Just saying  

 

-Brian

[Cathead]

Brian, the current layout plan under contemplation would include that bridge, an 8' long version that would still be only 33% of the original's length. If you or anyone else are curious about that bridge, we just released a video about its very interesting history on our YouTube channel. Glad to give you a kick in the butt to keep moving, watching your progress motivated me!

[mbp521]

Great video(s) Eric. I am all too familiar with the Katy RR, its old lines run just east of where we live. And in my line of work, I secure permitting for fiber optic runs along these railroads. Funny the irony of the MK&T's competition with Missouri Pacific ended up with the two RR merging and eventually both being acquired by Union Pacific.

 

-Brian

[mtaylor]

Interesting video, Eric.  When I lived in the St. Louis area we did ride the Katy trail but only about 20 miles of it.   Wonderful ride with some little towns along the way that most used for rest stops.

[wefalck]

I am always amazed at the number of good pre-1900 photographs available in the USA. For such subject in Europe I would struggle to find any images ...

 

Will follow this project!

[Cathead]

Wefalck, any idea why that would be? Was photography adopted much sooner in the US, or do we have better archives of photographs taken?

 

In any case, I've made further progress on the hull. The first step was to build up the bow and stern to have a slight rise. I did this by cutting some thin pieces of wood, a bit thicker than I wanted the final rise to be, and gluing them tightly to the hull. These were pre-cut to loosely match the curves at bow and stern with a little overhang.

I then used a combination of powered orbital sander and manual sanding to blend these into the hull from above, and along the sides. I think the result came out pretty nicely.

This feels very old-school; I've mostly built models (both kit and scratch) based on frames and/or bulkheads, not solid carved hulls. It's kind of fun, though I'm also glad I'm not trying to match this to specific prototype plans since I'm pretty sure I sanded the bow sharper than I meant to. The beauty of riverboats like this is you can hide most of the hull, especially when it's a waterline model! 

 

I've also decided to change course slightly. This basswood is softer than I'd expected, even a little fungal. As you may recall, the tree I took this from was hung up over our creek for about a year, and usually I find that trees that cure off-ground like that are pretty solid at first. But this one is definitely a bit more porous, reminding me of balsa. It's great for sanding/carving a soft, light-weight hull, but I'm not sure it'll hold up to small details like 1:87 scale beams. So although I liked the purity of the "one plank, one model" idea, I'm going to adjust and use better wood as needed. This may include some parts from my scrap box, as well as parts I cut from stronger wood like maple (which I also have a lot of).

 

Next up (later today or tomorrow) I'll test my idea for fitting deck beams to this structure. Thanks for reading!

[Jack12477]

23 minutes ago, Cathead said:

Wefalck, any idea why that would be? Was photography adopted much sooner in the US, or do we have better archives of photographs taken?

 

History of Photography

 

We might have better archives, but then we also didn't have our cities decimated by two World Wars like Europe which might account I suppose for the scarcity of photographs.  

Edited July 1, 2023 by Jack12477

[Roger Pellett]

An  interesting project Eric,

 

I am surprised at the availability of maple on your farm as I associate it with more northern locations.  In Ohio, it tends to be found in the Lake Erie watershed with Oak and walnut in the Appalachian region of the state further south.  Here in Minnesota we find maple also in a narrow band mostly in the Duluth area, but evergreens, birch and poplar (aka Aspen) dominating not far north of town and oak and walnut further south.  Is the maple on your farm the Sugar Maple or another species that likes a warmer climate.

 

Roger

Edited July 1, 2023 by Roger Pellett

[Cathead]

Yes, that’s what I meant by “better archives”, though my phrasing was vague since it could mean several things. For example, are there better photography collections in places like Portugal or Sweden as compared to Germany or France, or does the US just have a more comprehensive approach for some reason?

[Cathead]

Roger, maples are fairly common in Missouri, though not as predominant as in the Great Lakes. Here they’re often understory trees overshadowed by our dominant oak-hickory forests, but if given space they can grow to a significant size. They don’t do as well in our thin soil and hot/dry Plains climate so often only attain significant size in shadier wetter areas, and/or in northern Missouri.

 

We have a stand of nice sugar maples in our creek bottom where they have some shelter and extra moisture. They’re relatively small by New England standards but large enough for us to tap them and make our own syrup. Our climate is less conducive to consistent sap runs, so commercial mapling is rare, but at a home scale it’s quite doable. 
 

In general maple isn’t a commercial species down here but we had to take out a big one a few years ago, and it provided a significant supply of wood for smaller-scale home projects. 

[wefalck]

On photographical records: archival losses due to the various wars that effected many European regions over the past 150 years are certainly an important factor.

 

For instance, in the 1950s the current members of the most prominent ship-photographer family in Kiel (Germany), who had recorded the development of the Imperial Navy from its beginnings lived next door to my grandparents in a small apartment. Their previous apartment, like that of my grandparents, and their workshop including their archives was lost due to bombing. Decades later, I visited the last photographing family member, who was a bit older than me, in his shop and he confirmed that to me.

 

Perhaps also there was an excitement in the USA about all these new developments and achievements and people felt that they had to documents and show it around proudly, while in Europe everyday life slowly evolved and people felt no need to document these gradual developments.

 

Back to the project: looking forward to further developments ! A solid hull seems to me the obvious choice for this kind of ship and size of model. Gives you a solid base to attach superstructures to.

 

 

[Cathead]

More progress! The next step was to figure out how to lay out the deck beams. On a riverboat like this, the decks extended beyond the hull on both sides, creating overhangs that were generally known as "guards". On the real thing, the beams that supported the guards were integrated into the hull's structure, but on a model this can be trickier to do. 

 

On my last few riverboats, which were either full framed or plank-on-bulkhead, I basically just followed prototype practice and integrated the guards into the hull framing. It's a bit different on a solid-hull model. The guard beams need to appear to be extending out from the inner hull, through the hull planking, but still be strong enough to support the guards on a model that will be handled (especially this one, given its potential use). So here's how I decided to make strong yet reasonably accurate guards.

 

I decided on the loose dimensions of the deck beams, and determined to my joy that I had a bunch of scrap wood in just about the right dimensions. This is an example of the "good enough" approach I'm employing on this build; the literal scale thickness of these comes out to something like 5.5", not necessarily the exact scale size used in real life but close enough not to fuss with trying to make it perfect. I cut a bunch of strips into lengths just a bit wider than the hull (you'll see why below). This is a case, as discussed above, where I decided to use scrap wood rather than trying to make these from my own basswood because the old material was perfect already.

 

These are essentially spacers between the actual guard beams. I started laying them out on the hull, using actual guard pieces as spacers.

The idea here is that the guard beams will fit neatly between these, creating a smooth and strong unit. I glued these in place over the whole hull except the foremast part, leaving some overlap at bow and stern.

I then used smaller scrap pieces to create angled slots for beams around the bow, and cut all the pieces to match the curve of the hull, again just a little wider than the hull:

 

 

By now you can envision how this works; all the guards just slot into place and are pretty strong and square. But here's the other cool part, if you hadn't seen this coming. The hull will be planked below this, such that these spacers will appear to be the uppermost row of planking fit between the guard beams. Here's a test-fit to show the idea:

This is why I left all the spacers just a bit wider than the hull; it's so they'll match the width of the planking. Once this is sanded and painted, I think it'll look pretty solid. Certainly easier than cutting a ton of tiny planking pieces to fit the gaps between all the guard beams, as I did on my last two builds. So here's where the hull stands now:

 

I think it looks pretty nifty. You can't see in these images, but there's still a gentle camber to the decks. The next step will be to plank the hull, using the guard spacers to line up the upper run of planking, and sand it all into a smooth hull. Then and only then will I start adding guards, since once they're on it'll be harder to mess with the lower hull. And from there I'll start planking the deck and laying out the superstructure.

 

The other option here was to use a table saw to cut grooves into the hull block to lay the guards into, but I rejected this as harder to do right. My approach does make the hull a little taller than I originally intended, so options are to try and sand it thinner from below, or just accept that she's not very heavily loaded. It's a distinction that will be lost on most viewers, and if anything allowing a little more hull to show will enhance the model's display appeal.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

[mbp521]

Quite the unique idea to save time Eric. It pulls off the effect very nicely.
 

For some reason I have trouble visualizing the scale size until I see something that gives a good comparison. I was thinking that at 1:87 scale it was going to be a tad smaller than your Bertrand and Arabia (something that you did mention previously), but seeing you holding the hull, brings it a little more into perspective. This one is closer to your Cairo in size, that is unless you have insanely massive hands. 😁

 

-Brian