Showboat

showboat, floating theatre that tied up at towns along the waterways of the southern and midwestern United States, especially along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, to bring culture and entertainment to the inhabitants of river frontiers. The earliest of these entertainment boats were family-owned ventures into regions where theatres had not gone.

The British-born actor William Chapman built the first showboat, the “Floating Theatre” (14 by 100 feet [4 by 32 m]), at Pittsburgh in 1831. He and his family floated from landing to landing, playing dramas such as The Stranger, by August von Kotzebue, and William Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, with music and dance specialties added. Upon reaching New Orleans late in winter, they junked the boat and returned by steamer to Pittsburgh to repeat the pattern the next year. One unusual example of a popular showboat of this early period was the Floating Circus Palace of Spaulding and Rodgers (built 1851) that featured large-scale equestrian spectacles. By the mid-19th century, showboats were seating up to 3,400 and regularly featured wax museums as well as equestrian shows, but because of the American Civil War they disappeared entirely.

When showboats were revived (1878), they specialized in vaudeville and melodrama. Steamer tows and the steam calliope greatly increased territory and audiences, and Stephen Foster’s songs added sentimental charm to their programs. Such boats as the New Sensation, New Era, Water Queen, Princess, and dozens of others, with seating capacities of 100 to 300, carried their rich cargoes of humour, music, and simple entertainment on every river of the Ohio-Mississippi system, from the narrow Monongahela in the Northeast to the Atchafalaya bayous in the South.

With the disappearance of river frontier conditions in the 1900s and with the coming of better roads, automobiles, and motion pictures, the number of showboats declined. To compete with land entertainment, they became larger and more elaborate. The Golden Rod seated 1,400 persons; the Cotton Blossom, the Sunny South, and the New Showboat were floating theatre palaces. All emphasized melodrama. With the burlesquing of these programs in the 1930s to attract sophisticated audiences, showboats ceased to perform their original function. The last one to travel the rivers in authentic pattern was the Golden Rod in 1943; its glory days are recalled by the Majestic, which today performs in Cincinnati during the summer. Jerome Kern’s musical comedy Show Boat (1927) as well as Edna Ferber’s novel of the same name (1926; films 1929, 1936, 1951) portrayed this kind of entertainment.