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[Large format photograph of the Steamboat Santiago built in South St. Louis for the Rio Grande Railway Company.]

[Probably on the Rio Grande in Texas, likely between Point Isabel and Brazos Santiago, or possibly on the Mississippi in the vicinity of St. Louis, ca. 1881]. Albumen print, 8.625” x 12.5” on larger mount, 13.875” x 17.5”. Manuscript caption in ink on mount below image. CONDITION: Good, moderately foxed, 1.25” repaired tear at upper-right corner, .5” repaired closed tear to right edge, rich tonality; mount good, slightly rippled at top, .5” dent at lower right.

A handsome albumen photograph of the steamboat lighter Santiago, captained by a Philadelphia native and Galveston, Texas transplant who later operated a prominent Galveston hotel and whose cattle-king brother built the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway.

Some eleven people are visible on the decks of the Santiago, moored to the nearby shore and connected to it by a floating wooden bridge. The lower deck is piled with firewood, and U.S. and Santiago flags flutter at the aft and stern. The inscription on the mount reads in full: “Built in 1881 for the Rio Grande Ry Co. by the Western Iron Boat Building Co., Allen & Blaisdell Propss. South St. Louis, Mo.” The Rio Grande Railway Company was organized in Brownsville in 1870 by Simón Celaya, and in addition to a narrow-gauge line between Brownsville and Point Isabel, operated steam and sail lighters from Point Isabel to the Brazos Santiago harbor. 

By April 21st, 1881, the Santiago was en route to the Rio Grande: an announcement in the Memphis Avalanche notes: “The new iron steamer Santiago, Capt. Ben Johnson, arrived yesterday afternoon from St. Louis…She was built…from the designs and under the supervision of Capt. George W. Randall, of Brownsville, Texas. She will ply on the Rio Grande, between Brownsville and the mouth of that river, and is to connect with the Rio Grande and Texas railroad, for which company she was built. The Santiago is 136 feet long, 26 1/2 feet beam, 6 1/2 feet hold, and draws but 20 inches on an even keel. The wheel is of iron and is fitted into the hull and inclosed in a wheelhouse…She goes up Red river to Atchafalaya river, down that river to Berwick bay, thence to the Gulf of Mexico, and then up the Rio Grande to Brownsville, Texas. Capt. Tom Lyles, who is piloting her, says she handles well and runs like a ‘scared wolf’ (“Exchange Clippings”). In January, 1899, the Santiago was wrecked in a gale—with no loss of life—“about four miles below the mouth of the Rio Grande” (“Santiago Wrecked”).

The Santiago was captained by Elisha J. Kenedy (1838–1900), a Quaker-born Pennsylvania native who moved to Texas as a young man, possibly following his more prominent elder brother Mifflin Kenedy (1818–1895), who had moved to Texas to work as a steamboat captain with the U.S. Army during the Mexican–American War. Mifflin then married a Mexican woman and established—among other successful enterprizes—a steamboat shipping company on the Rio Grande, called M. Kenedy & Company, which during the Civil War hauled goods for the North and South alike, as well as followers of Benito Juárez and the French. Elisha Kenedy spent much of his career as a steamboat captain on the lower Rio Grande and in 1899 took over full proprietorship of the Washington Hotel in Galveston, where he died at the age of sixty-five.

We locate no other examples of this image, and just one other photo of the Santiago, at the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley.

A rare and evocative albumen photograph of a Texas steamboat on the Rio Grande River.

REFERENCES: “Exchange Clippings,” New Orleans Times-Democrat, April 21, 1881; “Santiago Wrecked But Crew Safe,” The Brownsville Herald, Jan. 24, 1899, p. 3; Kelley, M. G. Pat. “History of Trade Vessels on the Rio Grande” and Werner, George C. “History of the Rio Grande Railroad: From Narrow-Gauge to Standard-Gauge” at Texas State Historical Association online. 

Item #9704

Price: $775.00

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