Avalon (Packet, Excursion boat, 1898-1908)

Summary

• BOAT DESCRIPTION: Sternwheel
• BOAT TYPE: Packet; Excursion boat
• BUILT: Clarington, Ohio, 1898
• BECAME: Ohio
• FINAL DISPOSITION: Rebuilt and renamed Ohio, 1908
• OWNERS: Cramer family (1898); Captain Ben S. Pope, Captain William E. Roe, and Captain Martin F. Noll
• OFFICERS & CREW: Lanford Cramer (Captain, 1898, 1906)
• RIVERS: Tennessee River; Ohio River; Mississippi River
• OTHER INFORMATION: Ways - 0402; Built and operated by the Cramer family of Clarington, Ohio. She ran in the Pittsburgh-Parkersburg trade from early August 1898 through 1900. In January 1901 she was taken to the Tennessee River for trade out of Chattanooga and was very successful. Summer 1901 she was returned to Parkersburg, West Virginia, and lengthened by 35 feet. In November 1901 she was returned to the Cairo-Chattanooga trade. In January 1902 she brought down gun carriages for the Shiloh battlefield. She withdrew from the trade, due to a reduction in local railroad rates, and then ran Cincinnati-Memphis with not much success. She ran as an excursion boat between Wheeling and Sisters Island park one summer. She was sold to Ben S. Pope, William E. Roe, and Martin F. Noll for the Pittsburgh-Charleston trade. On November 30, 1906, she sank at Scull Run, Ohio River, and was raised a week later. Captains Pope, Roe and Noll repaired her, put in compound engines at Marietta Manufacturing Company, and renamed her Ohio in 1908
• PHOTO DESCRIPTION: Left: Avalon; Right: sternwheel packet Bessie Smith; in foreground, stacks of the sunken sternwheel packet Jewel at Marietta, Ohio.