"Morning Delivery" - Mobile Alabama 1905

It’s an early fall morning in Mobile Alabama in 1905, traveling down Dauphin St. toward the Mobile River, making a “Morning Delivery” of supplies and cargo to the steamboat “Nettie Quill”.  Goods are hand loaded from horse drawn wagons before passengers embark for a late morning routine trip to points north. Remenants of the overnight rain shower are evident as the port comes alive with activity at the start of the day.

The “Nettie Quill” was as sternwheel wooden packet built in 1886 in Freedom, Pa. for captain and owner John Quill, who resided in its home port Mobile. The open outside gallery on the top deck gave passengers the opportunity to take in scenery and get some air.  The Quill Lines vessel operated out of Mobile until 1914 when it changed its name to “Monroe”.  It was lost off New Orleans in a hurricane in 1915.

This area of Mobile was the domain of cotton factor offices, hardware stores, cotton warehouses, steamboat ticket offices and oyster dives.  Though cotton was the major export, in the early 1900’s there was also an active trade with Cuba for sugar, bananas, and lumber, carried primarily by the Munson Line ships, which also traded out of New York City’s South Street Pier 14.  

At the turn of the 20th century Mobile became an important shipbuilding city despite the shallowness of the Mobile Bay.  The federal government spent millions of dollars clearing and keeping opening the ship channels form Mobile to the Gulf of Mexico.