Anchor Line (riverboat company)

The Anchor Line was a steamboat company that operated a fleet of boats on the Mississippi River between St. Louis, Missouri, and New Orleans, Louisiana, between 1859 and 1898, when it went out of business.

The Anchor Line spared no expense on the building of these boats, which became veritable floating palaces of the late American Victorian era.

Most of these boats survived the common disasters that were known to plague Mississippi River steamboats at the time, such as fire, snags (large sticks or branches in the river bed that would often tear holes in boats' hulls), ice, grounding on sandbars, and so forth to remain in service with the Anchor Line from the day they were built until the company went out of business in 1898.

Despite the best efforts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, high water would swallow landings, making many smaller stops unavailable for steamboats.

Added to the problems inherent with river traffic was the increasingly expanding railroad network in the United States, which soon came into direct competition with steamboats for business, both from passengers and from cargo.

Rail travel was not subject to the dictates of the river's course (tracks could be laid on ground virtually anywhere in the Mississippi valley), servicing directly more towns than any steamboat could.

This is in part because the Anchor Line's floating palaces (as well as other steamboats) stationed at the St. Louis landing lay directly in the tornado's path.

The disasters ultimately proved too costly for the Anchor Line to weather, and in 1898 it sold off its remaining boats and ceased operations.

Anchor Line steamboat City of New Orleans at New Orleans levee on Mississippi River. View created as composite image from two stereoview photographs, ca. 1890.
Anchor Line steamboat at the levee, Natchez-Under-The-Hill, Natchez, Mississippi, before 1899. Postcard view, ca. 1907.
Postcard view of (former) Anchor Line steamboat City of Providence , postmarked 1909.
Postcard, ca. 1900, of the Hill City , built for the Anchor Line originally as the City of Monroe in 1887 and enlarged and renamed in 1897. This boat worked for the Anchor Line for only about a year before the company went out of business, but under a new name, the Corwin H. Spencer , worked as an excursion steamboat during the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.
The Anchor Line wharf on the levee at St. Louis, Missouri, ca. 1895. Postcard view published sometime after 1907. The City of New Orleans can be seen docked at right.
Postcard of the Anchor Line's City of St. Louis , before 1903.