Joseph W. Rutter

Way’s Packet Directory, 1848–1994
Passenger Steamboats of the Mississippi River System since the Advent of Photography in Mid-Continent America
By Frederick Way Jr.
· Foreword by Joseph W. Rutter

The first Mississippi steamboat was a packet, the New Orleans, a sidewheeler built at Pittsburgh in 1811, designed for the New Orleans-Natchez trade. Packets dominated during the first forty years of steam, providing the quickest passenger transportation throughout mid-continent America. The packets remained fairly numerous even into the first two decades of the twentieth century when old age or calamity overtook them.

Way’s Steam Towboat Directory
By Frederick Way Jr. and Joseph W. Rutter

After the initial release in 1983 of Way’s Packet Directory, 1848–1983, the demand was enormous for a similar treatment of the steam towboats that once populated the Mississippi River System. Captain Frederick Way, Jr.,