1918 river ice proved destructive to maritime trade on Ohio River

The oppressive arctic conditions that prevailed throughout the Ohio River Valley and along the river’s tributaries in the winter of 1918 continued late into January. By Jan. 20, many rural and small community schools had been forced to close due to extreme cold and deep snow. It was almost impossible for students on the farms to make their way to the school houses.

Two of the most popular excursion steamboats of the early 20th Century, the “Island Queen,” left, and the “Princess” are shown drifting helplessly with the ice floes at the mouth of the Kentucky River at Carrollton on Jan. 30, 1918. The “Princess” has already begun to sink after ice chewed her wooden hull to pieces below the waterline.

Coal, used to heat most public facilities, was in short supply due to commercial  river traffic being shut down for more than seven weeks. Barges loaded with coal were trapped along the riverbanks by huge cakes of ice.

All churches in Milton canceled services on Jan. 20 owing to the weather and scarcity of coal. Some congregations were giving what fuel supplies they had on hand to parishioners who were lacking.

Carrollton’s fuel needs were relieved on Jan. 19 with the arrival of a railroad car loaded with coal. But with temperatures remaining at 18 degrees below zero on Jan. 21, most factories and businesses were closed. It was not healthy for workers or shoppers to be outside for any length of time.

At Milton, farmers were transporting tobacco across the river ice to the warehouses in Madison. In December, enterprising private citizens had “axed the jumbled masses of ice to carve out a wagon, buggy and surrey road over the river to Madison,” according to a 1974 Trimble Banner article. “There was no letup of the intensive below zero cold, and the much more shallow-channeled river was deeply frozen.” The roadbuilders were charging a toll for anyone to use the passage.

In January, Madison’s Commercial Club, forerunner of today’s Chamber of Commerce, cleared another roadway across the ice allowing citizens to come and go between the two states free of charge.

At Carrollton, several large river craft had been moored near the mouth of the Kentucky River for safe-keeping during the winter months. These included the excursion steamboats “Princess” and “Island Queen,” both owned by the Coney Island Co. that operated an amusement park on the river at Cincinnati, an old British convict ship “Success,” the Carrollton wharfboat, the Campbell Creek Coal Co,’s coal digger towboat, and the Eugene Dana Smith, a steel-hull towboat which was attempting to keep the channel clear of ice to no avail. Several motorboats, barges and shanty boats were also at risk in the harbor.

“About Jan. 26 heavy rains set in over the headwater tributaries of the Kentucky River and continued during the greater portion of three days,” according to a United States Weather Bureau report, dated March 25, 1918. “This rain fell over sections already covered with deep snow, and as the temperature rose above freezing, the combined rain and snow water resulted in great floods and much damage in the upper reaches of the Kentucky. The high waters broke up the ice, which was carried downstream forming gorges and causing large loss to river craft.”

With the movement on Jan. 29 of the ice between Lock No. 1 and Carrollton, the huge cakes began to gorge against the piers of the old Carrollton-Prestonville bridge. When this gorge gave away the large mooring lines of the “Success” snapped. The convict ship began to move with the ice floe and collided with the “Island Queen,” knocking the excursion steamer loose from her moorings. Both craft slammed into the “Princess” and the two excursion boats moved with the current toward the mouth of the Kentucky and out into the Ohio. Ice gouged a huge hole in the wooden hull of the “Princess” and the palatial steamer that had been the centerpiece of the first Madison Regatta in 1911 began to sink.

The “Princess,” according to a report in The Madison Courier in Jan. 30, 1918, “was swept before the terrific onslaught of the ice and sank in 40 feet of water, directly in the middle of the Kentucky River. Only the texas and pilot house of the boat are visible and rivermen believe the hull and lower works have been swept away. Men on the “Princess” were powerless to release their craft from the ice and made their escape over the grinding floes.”

The texas was the topmost deck of cabins on a steamboat which included the cabins of captain and crew.

When C.G. Brooks, general manager of the Coney Island Co., saw the Queen in the ice at Carrollton he told her commander, Capt. Wm Eakins to abandon the vessel and an effort would be made to catch her down the river at some point. The captain and crew refused to give up the ship. The Queen and the towboat Smith kept up a head of steam and both crews battled to save their ships. The Smith was later safely landed at Brooksburg. The “Island Queen” rode the ice floes to Eighteen-Mile Island near Louisville where she was safely brought ashore and rescued.

The “Princess,” however was a total loss, ground into pieces by the ice in a gradual process that was ongoing while she was carried down the Ohio.

Meanwhile at Madison, the crew of the ferryboat “Trimble” battled to save the venerable old hull from devastation in the ice at her moorings near the foot of Walnut Street. Their efforts were largely successful as the steam-powered ferry sank near shore. Large cakes of ice built an immovable wall around her which protected her from the drifting ice that could have torn her to shreds. Damage was minimal and the “Trimble” later returned to duty transporting travelers back and forth between Milton and Madison until after the Milton-Madison bridge had been completed. In her final years, stripped of her paddlewheels and engines, the “Trimble” had been converted into a ferry barge, towed by the gasoline-powered “Margaret J.”

The sight of the trapped rivercraft being carried along by the ice prompted business to cease in Madison on the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 1, 1918.

The evening Madison paper that day reported that the ice was moving “quietly down the river.  …the ice is moving in one great field due to the tremendous thickness of the floes. Shore ice is piling up mountains of crystal, 40 to 50 feet high. The ferryboat ‘Trimble’ is buried in heavy ice that extends to her upper deck.”

The writer estimated that 2,000 Madison residents gathered on the riverbank to watch the “Island Queen,” the Campbell Co. coal digger, the Carrollton wharfboat and remnants of the “Princess” and other boats as they drifted helplessly with the ice. The Queen remained under steam near the Milton shore but her crew was helpless to maneuver her in for a landing.

“The spectacle was the most wonderful of its kind ever witnessed along the Ohio river and practically everybody in Madison was on the riverfront at the time the boats passed,” The Madison Courier reported.

Several fragments of the wreck of the ill-fated Princess were picked up at Madison that afternoon. At the water works on the east end of town, a piece of the boat was caught on the ice and life-boards and other souvenirs were gathered. The pilot house of the Princess floated very close to the Indiana shorte, but the great wall of shore ice prevented any effort being made to get it.

At eight o’clock that evening another gorge in the Kentucky River broke at Worthville and the ice sank a sand digger at Carrollton, valued at $15,000. The ice also carried four barges and flats into the Ohio River. All of the property belonged to the Carrollton Coal Co.

On Monday, Feb. 4, the Carrollton wharfboat was carried over the falls at Louisville and totally destroyed. Losses of the boats that had been moored at Carrollton were estimated at nearly $200,000, with the loss of the “Princess” alone set at $125,000. The wreck of the once-proud excursion vessel was strewn in bits all the way from Carrollton to Louisville. The damage to barges and other rivercraft at Madison was estimated at $20,000.

The Ohio River has frozen over a few times since 1918, but in most of those incidents navigable movement along the stream was still possible. Ice compacted in the river in January 1978 and closed Markland Dam where a number of barges and a towboat sank. The sustained arctic conditions of Dec. 8, 1917 through Feb. 7, 1918 have not been experienced since. Hopefully, we will never see the likes of it here again.