Steamboat: ALONZO CHILD
Built: 1857
Tonnage: 493
Clemens' Service: 19 September 1860 - 18 November 1860
and 8 January 1861 - 8 May 1861
Co-Pilots: Horace Bixby, William Bowen, Sam Brown
Captains: David DeHaven and James O'Neal
Fate: 1861 acquired by Confederacy and taken up Yazoo River to prevent capture. Parts of the boat were salvaged for use on the Confederate ram TENNESSEE; later acquired by the U. S. Navy in September 1863 but not recommissioned.
The steamboat Alonzo Child was built at Jeffersonville, Indiana for the Missouri river trade in April 1857, at a cost of $45,000, and was 222 feet long with a 36-foot beam and 6 1/2-foot hold. The cylinders were 24 1/2-inches in diameter with a 7-foot stroke. Sam Clemens began piloting the Alonzo Child in September 1860, in his second year as a pilot, under part-owner Captain David DeHaven who was born in Virginia in 1826 and made his home in New Orleans.
In November 1860 Clemens was piloting the Alonzo Child up river in the fog, trying to make some time in order to beat another boat. About seventy miles from New Orleans, on the coast with its piles of burning sugar cane bagasse creating the smoky fog of late fall, Clemens grounded the Child on the bank at the Houmas Plantation. The steamer General Quitman came up and tried to pull her off, but was unsuccessful. Here the Alonzo Child remained until the river rose enough to float her free after a delay of twenty-eight hours. Exposed and warped, the boat took on water.
The boat made it to St. Louis on the 18th of November. For reasons unclear, possibly related to the grounding, Clemens was not on the Alonzo Child for the next trip to New Orleans. On the trip back up river the vessel met thick ice and was laid up at Cairo, December 11th.
Sam Clemens, December 6, secured a position as pilot on the new steamer Sunshine for a trip from St. Louis down to Cairo through ice and very low water.
(See Marleau, Michael H. “Sam Clemens, Steamboat Pilot for the Confederacy.”)