Chapter Eleven

White River - Gateway to Marion County

By: Duane Huddleston

 Pages 117-118

W. C. McBee ordered the MYRTLE returned to his landing for the Upper White River trade. The boat reached Oil Trough late Saturday evening March 1, where Captain Stallings tied up for the night. As the cook was preparing breakfast the next morning, an accident caught the cook room on fire. Within a few minutes the entire steamer was in flames, and the crew barely escaped unharmed. Sadly Captain Stallings watched the fire consume the MYRTLE, then conveyed the bad news to W. C. McBee. Proving the old adage that river misfortunes come in pairs, the RALPH E. WARNER was totally destroyed by fire on a trip from McBee's.

The burning of the vessels revealed the need for another small boat to serve the local landings, so Captain Cravens started building one he claimed would run on six inches of water. Although he had owned several keel boats, including the LIZA JANE back in 1869, he had never realized a lifelong goal - having a steamboat of his very own. The good captain realized his dream, when he completed the T. E. MORRISON, one of the smallest packets to ply the river. She was only 54 feet long and 10 feet wide, but capable of hauling 16 passengers and 15 tons of freight.

On Easter Sunday of 1896, Captain Cravens turned the bow of the T. E. MORRISON up the Buffalo and made a successful trip of several miles with a group of excursionists. To say the trip's success was exhilirating to Captain Cravens would he putting it mildly. The enthusiastic captain notified W. R. Jones he would soon take his boat 85 miles upriver to win a $100 bonus!

Perhaps the best known of the steamboat captains that plied the White and Buffalo Rivers in Marion County was Captain A. G. Cravens who, after retiring from the river, became a landowner and long-time resident of the No. 1 community on the farm known as the Cravens Farm. The following account of his death was given:

EX-CONFEDERATE SOLDIER PASSES AWAY SATURDAY

(The following notice appeared in the obituary column of Sunday's Arkansas Democrat.)

"A. G. Cravens, aged 91, formerly of Yellville, died at the Arkansas Confederate Home, Sweet Home, at 7:45 p.m. yesterday. He is survived by three daughters, Mrs. Fannie Wilson, of Yellville, and Mrs. Mary Young and Mrs. Jessie McNalley, both of Union, South Carolina, and one son, Bert Cravens, of Aberdeen, Washington."

The body of Captain Cravens arrived at Flippin on the northbound passenger train Monday, where it was met by many of his friends and conveyed to Barb Cemetery, near White River, and laid to rest by the side of two of his old neighbors of a half century ago-Tom Barb and Ewing Summers. Funeral services, attended by many sorrowing relatives and friends, were conducted by Rev. J. B. Rousey.

Captain Cravens spent most of his long, eventful life in the county. He was a lieutenant in the Confederate Army, and it was said by his comrades that a more fearless soldier never served in any war. The Confederacy, next to his family, was the cause dearest to his heart, At the close of the war, in company of Mr. J. S. Cowdrey and Mr. B. M. Estes, he returned to Marion County, and Mr. Estes, now very old, is the only surviving member of the trio who returned to their homes after the loss of their noble fight for a cause which they believed from their hearts to be just and right.

Mr. Cravens also served this county for one term as tax assessor.

Many years of his life were spent on the White River as captain of steamboats which plied between Newport and the Upper White River, and during those years no man knew the channel of the river better than he. He loved White River almost as much as he loved his life, therefore it was very fitting that after his soul had passed to its reward, that his mortal body should be conveyed up the White River railroad, along the winding banks of that beautiful stream, and laid to rest in the Barb Cemetery, which nestles almost at its brink, near the uppermost landing place where he had many times anchored his boat in the years of long ago, and there above high water mark, in a beautiful grove, near the Cravens' farm-his old home-where the breaking of the waves of this beautiful stream on its journey to the sea may be heard by the generations who follow him until time be no more. Active pallbearers were Joe Fee, Bob Williams, T. V. Russell, J. M. Keeter, L. H. Layton and W. C. Huddleston.

Honorary pallbearers were J. B. Mason, Lee Fleming, J. C. Berry and H. A.Young.

Captain Cravens was a man of great intellect, strong conviction, and he was loved by all who knew him. Mountain Echo, June 4, 1931.

The spirit of adventure burned deeply within the hearts of the steamboat captains who traveled the Upper White, They were a hardy lot, and although all were friends, each was intensely loyal to his boat and crew and unwilling to be outdone by another. When the success of Captain Cravens' trip reached Captain Will T. Warner, he awaited an opportunity to outshine the master of the T. E. MORRISON. It came when officials of the Morning Star Mine hired him to haul machinery and passengers to the mouth of Rush Creek. Captain Warner's epic trip was recorded by one short paragraph in a local newspaper.

"Forty miles up Buffalo River are the mouths of Rush and Clabber Creeks. Heretofore it has been considered one of the impossibilities for a steamboat to go up the Buffalo River on any state of water, but last week, Captain Will Warner of the DAUNTLESS, having some freight and passengers for Morning Star Mine determined to do the impossible, and so, without accident, he made the run with the staunch little steamer DAUNTLESS forty miles up the limpid and virgin stream, awakening with steam whistle the silent echoes of those uncovered mountains of zinc. The water was about average stage and he proposes to make another trip up the Buffalo hereafter."

The description of the DAUNTLESS feat makes one wonder why other boats had not been plying the Buffalo River, since no difficulties were reported-but the trip was not as easy as depicted.

On August 2, 1968, the late Walter L. Isorn, who was a passenger on the DAUNTLESS, was interviewed at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Sam Martin, Rea Valley, Arkansas. The fine old gentleman was born March 16, 1875, and remembered clearly the hardships in ascending the shoals and rapids; his experience is like a page from a history book.