Steamboat: CITY OF MEMPHIS
Built: 1857
Tonnage: 865
Clemens' Service: 25 March - 1 or 2 July 1860
Co-Pilot: Wesley Jacobs
Captain: Joseph Edward Montgomery
Fate: boilers exploded May 31, 1866 with loss of eleven lives; towed to Saint Louis, MO and dismantled

Clemens' comments: And I am also lucky in having a berth, while all the young pilots are idle. This is the luckiest circumstance that ever befell me. Not on account of the wages - for that is a secondary consideration - but from the fact that the CITY OF MEMPHIS is the largest boat in the trade and the hardest to pilot, and consequently I can get a reputation on her, which is a thing I never could accomplish on a transient boat. I can "bank" in the neighborhood of $100 a month on her, and that will satisfy me for the present (principally because the other youngsters are sucking their fingers.) Bless me! what a pleasure there is in revenge! and what vast respect Prosperity commands! Why, six months ago, I could enter the "Rooms," and receive only a customary fraternal greeting - but now they say, "Why, how are you, old fellow - when did you get in?"
- Letter to Orion Clemens, June 1860