Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire This would be neat to go to see

Super interesting.

Is that the steamer that sank near St. Joseph MO in the Missouri River? Then the river changed it's channel left it under a Kansas farmer's field? They dug up whiskey and champagne from that boat that was still good 150 years after it sank. There's a museum devoted to it in St. Joe, IIRC. I've been wanting to go to that one myself. I love that kind of stuff.

I've been to the Arabia museum a couple of times. The people who recovered it are going to sell it to an outfit that is going to build a museum for it along Interstate 70 at the highway 65 junction... about 20 miles from my home. They are planning on recovering as many as 5 more boats with the first one being the Malta that is in a crop field near Malta Bend, MO.
An old friend of mine who has lived in that area for many years told me that he used to hunt the farm where it is located and said the elderly farmer told him that in his younger years the stacks were sticking up out of the ground and they would farm around them.

very cool

Chris Utley at South Union Mills in Tennessee (dealer in reenacting goods) offers these reproduction shoes from the Arabia

https://www.southunionmills.com/arabia-style-shoes/

Also offers this item copied from from another Missouri river steamboat mishap

https://www.southunionmills.com/steamer-bertrand-handkerchief-1/

Stood on the edge a that hole and looked down, whilst they were pumpin/diggin, BITD.

Farmer didn't discover anything, those guys researched the sinking and dug several holes close by before they hit it.

Real close to the KCK Police range.

Guys diggin walked over and asked me what I was doin there.

Told em I was lookin in their hole, and wtf were they doin diggin there?

Said they'd found a steamboat, and was salvagin it.

OK.

They said biggest expense was the pumps, and spring floods.

The Arabia sank just a few miles above Kansas City... 7 miles I believe and it has been displayed at the City Market in downtown KC, MO.since the beginning. They found jars of pickled vegetables that were edible.
At Miami, MO. there's a big rock with a large iron ring where they used to tie up the steamboats and I've heard that there is a rock outcropping at Arrow Rock with several rings in it for the boats. Arrow Rock was where the Santa Fe Trail started in the beginning .

Great story, thanks.

Thanks for that! I’ve a little history in marine salvage and it is interesting stuff.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1715_Treasure_Fleet

It's a cool story but I think they know of several steamers buried in old river channels.

Been to the Steam Boat Arabia museum in KC. Pretty interesting. I knew they were going to move but didn’t know they were moving to I-70 and US65

Yes, but most were caught on snags for hours/days, before sinking, so the boat was stripped before sinking.

The Arabia went down fairly quickly, which is why some of the cargo was still on board.

What amazes me is how they accomplished logistical planning back then when all communication/record keeping was on hand-written letters that could take weeks or months to arrive.

Consider the American Revolution, communication across the Atlantic could take months, yet the Brits planned campaigns, recruited, gathered, equipped and deployed troops, ordered, received and sent out all the myriad items needed.

Even more amazing; payment for goods and/or services rendered sent and received the same way.

All on the strength of slips of paper.

Cool stuff thanks for posting .
Made me think of Ethan Edwards he probably knew a good bit about it .

46 feet down, wow

My grandparents came from Italy on the HMS Republic steamship January1909. When it set sail again later that month to return to Italy it got rammed by another ship and sank by Nantucket Island. It was a little sister ship to the Titanic.