Arion Riverboat

Proctorville Captain Reminisces on Heyday of Riverboat Arion
Written by Russ Lemon, no date of newspaper source unknown

Story about Arion Riverboat – The wind had been blowing all night, and the gray-black clouds that moved from west to east had a dirty look under a moon that had fought for twelve days to break through sheet-like rain and overcast that shrouded the area. To the west, in Columbus and Dayton, they were still counting their dead.

The people of Proctorville were hungry. Milk and bread were gone, water was contaminated, and electricity and gas were cut off.

There was milk 12 miles up the river in Crown City, and Capt. Vinson Pinkerman (who now lives in Proctorville) was going to get it.

He put on his heavy pants over long underwear and added a heavy shirt, picked up his boots and slicker, and made for the kitchen and something to eat. The time was 3 a.m. The date is April Fools Day, 1913.

On Tuesday morning in Huntington [West Virginia], they had gotten out the paper’s first edition in three days. Men and boys rowed through the business district, distributing the tabloid issue of news that the river was falling and J. Pierpoint Morgan was dead in Rome.

Back in Proctorville, Capt. Pinkerman did not have to go to the river to get his boat. It was tied up right in town. As he rowed his skiff from home to the boat, he could see the tops of houses peeking out of the sluggish water like tiny islands.

The town’s people had gone to high ground, and a few days before, Pinkerman had taken a load of cattle, all that he could round up, to the hills north of town.

The people were there, along with the babies and hungry children. He could see the boat, the Arion now, her two stacks high in the air, paddle wheel resting, and scummed waves lapping along her sleep sides.

His two-man crew was onboard, having spent the night there. The boiler was fired. Soft billows of black smoke floated away on the wind almost as soon as it left the twin stack.

Capt. Pinkerman guided the Arion slowly back down the water-covered street towards the Ferry Landing and edged cautiously into the wild channel of Ohio that frothed as it swept down toward Cincinnati.

The Arion could do 15 miles an hour in normal current, but this was no normal current. He steered gently as he put the blunt-nosed ferry boat a little further out in the river to avoid the mass of debris that swept by. Houses, dead cattle, trees, chicken coops, runaway boats, everything, and anything that had been caught up by the angry flood that was to go down as one of the worst in history, could be seen.

It took almost three hours to make Crown city since there were going against the current. Once they were there, Pinkerman moved over the flooded land to a place he could tie up.

The milk was loaded in cans. The job was done without a hitch, and once more, the tall captain moved out into the deadly stream that had run wild for the past five days, taking life wherever it found it. The trip back was much faster, and by mid-morning, Proctorville had milk for its hungry babies.

Later in the day, the gallant old Arion Riverboat crossed to Huntington [WV] to pick up 2,000 loaves of bread for the stranded people of Proctorville, Ohio.

This was one of the many adventures the ferry boat, Arion, had during her long life on the Ohio [River]. She was built in 1891 in Point Pleasant, [WV]. After work was completed there, she was towed to Jeffersonville, Ind., for complete fitting and installation of her high boiler, which could develop 180 per square inch. (“A whale of a lot of pressure in those days”) while thatched Vinson Pinkerman says of his old love.

She was 110 feet long, and with a load of 11 wagons, she could make Guyandotte, [WV] from the Proctorville, [Ohio] landing in five minutes”, Captain Pinkerman recalls, “and during the summer months, we would make 50-60 trips a day.”

“Used to run from about 3:30 in the morning until 8-9 p.m.” He mused reflectively.

The Arion Riverboat was owned by Mrs. Sally Bays Smith, one of the three women ever licensed as a riverboat pilot on the Ohio [River].

Mrs. Smith came from a riverboat family. Her two brothers, George and Ed, were both pilots, although George worked mostly as an Engineer. After Mrs. Smith died in 1900, her brothers took over the ferry service.

The same year she died, the Arion figured in another dramatic role. A fire that almost leveled the town of Proctorville [Ohio] was brought under control thanks to the proud old ferry. Ed Bays took her to Huntington [West Virginia] and brought the fire wagons across the Ohio [River]. In all, 26 buildings burned to the ground, but the town was saved from being restored again.

The Bay Brothers sold the Proctorville – Guyandotte Ferry Boat Line to the 26th Street Ferry Boat Company in 1926, but the Arion had a few more good years left.

As for Vinson Pinkerman, he still lives close to the beautiful Ohio [River] in Proctorville, [Ohio], where he can hear the whistles of the riverboats as they go by. Sally Smith’s daughter, Mrs. William Kitts, lives right on the bank because “river boating must get in your veins.”

Mrs. Kitts and Vinson Pinkerman live out the memories of the Arion Riverboat just as full and rich as any blast the grand old lady of ferry boats ever belched.