Cape Girardeau / Gordon C. Greene
Launched in 1923 from the Howard Ship Yards in Jeffersonville, Indiana, the sternwheeler Cape Girardeau was built for the Eagle Packet Company to carry freight and passengers between Louisville and St. Louis, often making festive Mardi Gras trips to New Orleans. In 1935 she was purchased by the Greene Line Steamers and renamed Gordon C. Greene in honor of the company’s founder. Transformed into a popular excursion boat, she delighted generations of travelers on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers until retiring in the early 1950s. Her later years saw her repurposed as floating hotels and restaurants under various names-including Sara Lee and River Queen-before finally sinking at St. Louis in 1967.
Tennessee Belle
The Tennessee Belle, built at Paducah in 1923, began her career with the St. Louis and Tennessee River Packet Company before being sold in 1927 to river operator Dick Dicharry. From there she worked the lower Mississippi, joining the long line of packet boats that connected river towns through the first half of the twentieth century. Though she enjoyed nearly two decades of steady service, her career came to an abrupt end in November 1942 when she caught fire and burned near Natchez Island, just below Natchez, Mississippi.
Piasa
First built in 1899 at Mobile, Alabama, as the Mary S. Blees, this sternwheel packet was purchased in 1917 by the Eagle Packet Company and renamed Piasa-a nod to the legendary bird of Illinois lore. She became one of the company’s mainstays after ice on the Ohio River destroyed other vessels in the winter of 1917-18, carrying freight and passengers between St. Louis, Peoria, and Alton. For years she kept alive the daily packet trade on those waters, becoming the last regular packet out of Alton by 1927. Retired as traffic dwindled, she lingered in reduced service before being dismantled at St. Louis in 1934, remembered as one of the proud survivors of the Eagle Packet fleet.
