The War Eagle Collection: A Peek at the Past

By Robert Mullen

Article originally published in La Crosse County Historical Society’s local history magazine, Past, Present and Future, March, 2020, Volume 41, Issue 1.

The burning of the steamboat War Eagle at the mouth of the Black River on May 15, 1870, was a tragedy.

At least five people lost their lives. The passengers and crew who made it to safety escaped with the clothes on their backs. Some unlucky immigrants lost almost everything they owned, having no time to gather their possessions. The destruction of a reported 100 tons of freight on board must have caused financial hardships to many businessmen, both in La Crosse and other cities. The burning and sinking of the boat and the destruction of the dock, railroad depot, grain elevator, warehouse, and most of a recently arrived passenger train caused some $260,000 damage to La Crosse’s busy waterfront.

While the War Eagle fire certainly was tragic, in the 150 intervening years the event has evolved into a historical curiosity. Today, the boat still lies where it settled in 30 feet of water a short distance north of Riverside Park. Buried in the mud is the 219-foot hull of the boat and contents that didn’t get destroyed in the fire or disintegrate over time.

Some of those materials were salvaged by souvenir seekers during the low water of 1931. More were pulled out of the water in the 1970s and 1980s by local scuba diver Dennis Brandt. He brought up some 700 pieces from the wreckage and later placed them on loan to the La Crosse County Historical Society to display at the museum in Riverside Park. Shortly before Mr. Brandt died in 2012, he donated the items to the Society.[1]

The wreck of the War Eagle was subjected to early salvage efforts the summer after it burned. It was dragged into deeper water, and possibly dynamited to remove it as a hazard to other steamboats. Some of the rubble from the fire on the docks and the railroad terminal was shoved into the river. 150 years of the river’s current, floods and droughts, mud, more recent debris, and a piling drilled through the hull have taken their toll. Glass, ceramic, and some metal objects survived mostly intact. Meanwhile, wood, fiber, and other organic material and some metal objects fared very poorly.

This collection of War Eagle artifacts is unique. No other sunken steamboat from the Upper Mississippi River is represented by this many artifacts. These items are a treasure for the historian and for the community, forming a time capsule from 1870.

While some items recovered from the boat were actually used on board the War Eagle, many were likely being transported as cargo, either to individual store owners or to commission merchants who acted as wholesalers to other businesses. During this period after the Civil War, thousands of new immigrants were moving into the Midwest, setting up farms on homesteads, working for the lumber industry or in factories, or starting new businesses. Much of the War Eagle’s cargo was likely headed north to supply people’s needs.

Very few items actually carry the name War Eagle upon them, but those that do document that the site they were found is indeed the site of the burned vessel. Dennis Brandt brought up a number of pieces of flatware that have the name War Eagle stamped on the handles. Another piece was picked up in 1931 by one of the souvenir collectors: a brass identification tag that had once been strapped to someone’s baggage. It is stamped with the name War Eagle and the number 10.

Following is a description of some of the materials from the boat, divided into several categories, with some thoughts on the history they can tell. The categories may seem mundane, but each offers some insight into life in the 1870s American Midwest.

Bottles and containers

The first thing one notices is the great variety of styles, colors, and sizes of bottles, both glass and ceramic, that held foods, medicines, and beverages.

While most foods people ate were produced and consumed locally (grains, dairy, meat, and vegetables), their diets also included food processed elsewhere and delivered in jars and bottles. Sealed with corks and paraffin, they came from St. Louis, Cincinnati, New York, Boston, and other large cities. Fancy cathedral jars once held pickled vegetables, pepper sauce, and catsup; small barrel-shaped jars held mustard. Rectangular tins, partially rusted out, held French sardines. Other jars likely contained processed fruits that could be eaten out of season. Smaller bottles held flavorings like Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral or patent medicines like the painkiller Dr. McMunn’s Elixir of Opium. Beer, wine, whiskey, and mineral waters all had distinctive bottles.

Bottle making had not been mechanized yet, so these bottles were mouth blown into two- or three-part molds. Some molds had a removable plate with a deep engraving, so embossed lettering or a decorative design appeared on the surface of the glass. Product branding was just beginning, so embossing bottles was one way for customers to identify their purchase. Though paper labels were often adhered to bottles and jars, none remain on these bottles.

Other foods were shipped in cans that had caps sealed with solder. Good can openers were not available yet, so we find these cans have been forced open with blades, creating sharp, jagged openings. There are so many open cans that they must have come from the boat’s kitchen.

Lighting

There are many examples of lighting in various sizes and shapes. All were fueled by kerosene. Some appear to be designed for a chandelier, possibly the remnants of lights that hung inside the main cabin of the War Eagle. The glass fonts that held the kerosene fuel supported a brass burner with a glass chimney on top. Examples of these fixtures are visible, though not in good focus, in a photo of the interior of the War Eagle. The fonts were made of sturdy pressed glass, but the chimneys were much thinner glass and are mostly broken.

Other lighting included the more common table lanterns and the portable, or barn, lanterns with wire handles. The cheaper portable lanterns, likely cargo being shipped for sale to the growing rural population, suffered severely from extensive rust and glass breakage.

While gas lighting was available to some homes and businesses in La Crosse by 1861, the kerosene lantern remained the only option (other than candles) of artificial light in many 1870s households, especially in rural areas. A standard kerosene lantern provided the light of twenty candles. It was also portable and could be carried from room to room or to out buildings. With kerosene refined from crude oil becoming available in the 1860s, these lanterns found widespread use. It has been said that the kerosene lantern dramatically changed people’s lives, opening up extra hours of the day for work and leisure. It is ironic that these remnants of lighting found on the War Eagle’s wreck were there because of a fire that began with a leaky barrel of kerosene-like fuel meant for lighting.

Domestic materials

Among the ceramic pieces saved were several salt-glazed stoneware jugs, jars, and crocks used for food and beverage storage. Two large nicely decorated crocks were made in Fairport, Iowa, a small river town near Muscatine whose main industry in the 1870s was pottery. Most of the white ceramic ware plates, cups, bowls, water pitchers, etc., were manufactured in Staffordshire, England. Some of it looks well used and worn, and may be tableware used in the War Eagle’s cabin.

Other pieces appear unused and may have been part of the boat’s cargo. White Staffordshire earthenware, an inexpensive table service that many people could afford, had been exported to the U.S. for many years. Following the Civil War, those imports to the U.S. increased dramatically, more than doubling the amount shipped during the war. The War Eagle was likely carrying crates of dishes to the emporiums of St. Paul when it burned.

Four fancy decorative spittoons were pulled out of the river. One features a variegated brown Rockingham style glaze with twelve applied clam shells on the shoulder. Unfortunately, it is broken, but this and the other spittoons were high-end, and would have been appropriate for receiving the tobacco spittle of gentlemen at their fraternal club, a fancy hotel, or possibly the main cabin of a steamboat like the War Eagle.

It is difficult to determine how many of these domestic items were used on board or how many were cargo. There are no surviving wooden boxes to tell us what cargo was crated. There are cast iron and graniteware pots, huge kitchen knives, metal cups, spatulas, tableware, and even a wall mounted coffee grinder still attached to a piece of the boat’s structure. The many varieties of such material rescued from the Black River give us glimpses into an 1870s household or a steamboat kitchen.

Tools

Most of the tools found survived because they were made of heavy cast or forged iron, though thinner metals show considerable rust. We know some of the tools were being shipped to merchants north of La Crosse because they appear to have never been used. Some of the axe heads still have a coating on them that protected their edges from rusting. There are hammer heads that show much wear, and others that appear unused. There are augers, scythes, picks, and other tools probably bound for the farms and forests of the upper Midwest.

Many pieces of hardware, most likely from the boat, include square wrought iron spikes, washers, bolts and square nuts, hooks, door latches and knobs, and mystery hardware that may never be positively identified.

One of the most interesting finds was a set of tools that belonged to the engineer of the War Eagle, a man named Thomas J. Connolly. The engineer was the boat’s unsung officer. In addition to keeping the steam engine and all of the mechanical systems working properly, he needed blacksmithing skills to make replacement parts for anything that broke. Besides taking orders from the pilot to keep the paddlewheel running forward or backward, he was the handyman who could fix anything nautical on board.

We know these tools were Connolly’s because he stamped his name into each of them. Riverboat engineers often switched boats from season to season and they brought their own tools to the job. It must have been a terrible blow for Connolly to have lost his wrenches, chisels, calipers, hammers, and other tools in the fire. However, he must have had the means to replace them. The 1860s and 1870s were the peak salary years for riverboat engineers, who earned $100-$125 per month. Connolly eventually returned to the river and continued to work as an engineer on other boats for a number of years. He lived in St. Paul and died there in 1885.[2]  

Other items of interest:

●      A small purse coin purse that held an 1863 penny and a token from the H.B. Stanwood & Co., Importers in Boston.

●      The remains of a Civil War era naval sword and a Civil War era solid artillery shell. Since the War Eagle had seen service in the war, one can imagine numerous impossible-to-prove theories of why they were on board the boat.

●      A small mug with a broken handle. It is decorated with blue transfer print and has the name “John” on the side.

●      A number of clay pipes in several styles. Most have the T.D. mark on them, indicating a style of pipe made by several companies, but originally by Thomas Dormer of London in the eighteenth century. Clay pipes were a popular and inexpensive way to use tobacco. They were very fragile and the stems frequently broke, or were purposely broken, until only the bowl remained.

●      The jaw bones of cattle, some showing knife marks on the bone. There are accounts of riverboat cooks butchering chickens, pigs, and sheep on board, but often they acquired meat from suppliers in cities along the river. If these bones actually originated from the War Eagle, this deed may have been done on shore with the carcass delivered to the boat.

●      A small broken bronze bell, like those used for the pilot to communicate with the engineer. Could this have been in Thomas Connolly’s engine room?

These highlights of the War Eagle collection, mostly collected by Dennis Brandt, will be exhibited in the La Crosse County Historical Society’s new interim museum when it opens this summer. You are invited to come and see them for yourself and discover other insights into life in La Crosse 150 years ago.

[1] Today it is illegal to salvage materials from this or any other historic submerged boat wreck on inland waters.

[2] St. Paul City Directories, 1867-1885. U.S. Census, 1880, all accessed January 27, 2020, https://www.ancestry.com.