Showboat

A showboat, or show boat, was a form of theater that traveled along the waterways of the United States, especially along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers (www.brittanica.com). A showboat was basically a barge that resembled a long, flat-roofed house, and in order to move down the river, it was pushed by a small tugboat (misleadingly labeled a towboat) which was attached to it. It would have been impossible to put a steam engine on it, since it would have had to be placed right in the auditorium. However, since the box-office success of MGM's 1951 motion picture version of the musical Show Boat, in which the boat was inaccurately redesigned as a deluxe, self-propelled steamboat, the image of a showboat as a large twin-stacked vessel with a huge paddle wheel at the rear has taken hold in popular culture. (The two earlier film versions of Show Boat, and most stage productions of it, feature a historically accurately designed vessel, rather than the kind built for the 1951 film, and Edna Ferber, in the novel on which the musical is based, gives a description of the "Cotton Blossom" that accurately reflects the real design of a nineteenth-century showboat. Modern-day showboats, however, with their more advanced technology, are designed as steamboats.)

During the American frontier, there were very few people scattered about the area that is now the United States. These people depended on rivers such as the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers for food, supplies, and entertainment. “ brought life and at the same time, brought means of sustaining life… dependant on the rivers and inevitably became a part of what they were” (Graham 1-3). Actors traveled to America from England and theatre venues as well as touring companies were developed. In 1816, Noah Ludlow purchased a keelboat for $200 and named it Ludlow's Noah's Ark. Ludlow and 11 associates climbed aboard and traveled down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers stopping to perform whenever they could. Because there is very little documentation of what was performed aboard "Noah's Ark" it is not credited as the first showboat.

British-born actor William Chapman, Sr. created the first showboat, named the "Floating Theater," in Pittsburgh in 1831. He and his family of nine along with two other people lived on this boat and performed plays with added music and dance at stops along the waterways. The price of admission was anywhere from a peck of fresh vegetables to 50 cents a person. The acting was said to be far better than average, stemming from Chapman's British acting background. After reaching New Orleans, they got rid of the boat and went back to Pittsburgh in a steam boat in order to perform the process once again the year after. In 1836, the family was able to afford a new, fully equipped steam engine with a stage. In 1837, it was renamed "Steamboat Theatre." Chapman died on board in 1841.

Showboats had declined by the Civil War, but began again in 1878 and focused on melodrama and vaudeville. Major boats of this period included the New Sensation, New Era, Water Queen, and the Princess. With the improvement of roads, the rise of the automobile, motion pictures, and the maturation of the river culture, showboats declined again. In order to combat this development, they grew in size and became more colorful and elaborately designed in 1900s. These boats included the Golden Rod, the Sunny South, the Cotton Blossom, and the New Showboat.

Edna Ferber's novel Show Boat (1926), Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's famous musical play based on it (1927), and the film versions (1929, 1936, 1951), showed this type of theater.

In 1914, circus actors, James Adams and Mrs. Adams, launched the James Adams Floating Theatre. This saltwater showman decided to open a showboat that would tour the Chesapeake Bay bringing theatre to audiences in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. The James Adams Floating Theatre is the only showboat that was visited by Edna Ferber while writing her novel Showboat. She stayed on board for a week in 1926 in order to write her famous novel (Haynie, 1950). This novel is what inspired the award winning, Kern and Hammerstein II’s Broadway hit, Showboat. This Broadway smash gave the term “showboat” a whole new meaning.

The last surviving showboat, the Showboat Majestic, is docked on the Ohio River in Downtown Cincinnati. She serves as a venue for regular performances.