The Floating Palace

From the beginning, the American circus industry was largely relegated to touring the East Coast and New England. This was largely due to the lack of any real infrastructure and the difficulty of transporting equipment, animals and personnel across the mountainous country of Appalachia. With the opening of the Eerie Canal in 1825, an entirely new market was presented to any circus owner able to get his hands on a boat large enough. 

Among the earliest to take his show to the water, as we saw earlier was Dan Rice who moved his show from town to town on the Allegheny Mail starting around 1848. Rice treated the steamboat more or less the same way as any other mode of transportation the circus used, loading, docking, unloading and performing on land, the boat simply acting as conveyance. This changed with Rice's frequent partner/employer/rival Gilbert R. "Doc" Spaulding. 

Prior to Rice's outings, steamboats had already been used as floating theaters. Starting in 1831, the Chapman family, English actors traveled via barge along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, performing at stops along the way. After reaching New Orleans, they sold the barge for firewood, traveled via steamboat back to Pittsburgh where they had started and repeated the trip again the next season with a new barge. They repeated this until 1836 when they were able to afford a much larger boat complete with steam engine and full stage which they named The Steamboat Theater. It is from this particular style of travel that the term showboat derives. 

The problem, of course, when translating the circus into showboat style traveling theater was one of scale. It took until 1852 when Spaulding and his partner Charles J. Rogers commissioned the massive Floating Palace to actually hold a circus performance on board a ship. Built in Cincinnati for around $42,000 (approximately $1,092,000 in today's currency) the Floating Palace had a shallow, barge like hull and unlike the Steamboat Theater required a tow boat to pull it along which also contained the show's menagerie. It was large enough to contain a standard 42' ring, seat 3,400 audience members (though shows were often standing room only and one could pay to stay outside on the deck and look in through the windows) and had a full accompaniment of 200 gas jets that lit the theater. Add to that the mirrors, tapestries and carvings that decorated the ship as well as the system of steam heating that allowed the show to go on in cold weather and you have some idea of what a marvel the thing was in its day. Spaulding and Rogers were also responsible for the addition of one of the most recognizable pieces of circus tradition, the calliope. Originally designed as a way to signal to those on shore that the Floating Palace was traveling near by, it is still inextricably associated with the sounds of the circus. 

Spaulding and Rogers toured the Floating Palace for only four years, 1852, 1853, 1857, and 1859. Like many circuses, they found themselves limited in their ability to travel as the Civil War approached. The ship was even confiscated in 1862 by the Confederate army after the troupe's yearly stay in New Orleans and used as a hospital ship. More often than not, it was leased to other shows and in this way, traveled the river circuit for 14 years before an accidental fire burned the ship to the water line while it was docked in New Albany, Indiana. 

The Floating Palace, while certainly the greatest of the circus riverboats was certainly not the last, among the post civil war riverboat revivalists were both Dan Rice and Eugene Robinson who's own Floating Palace boasted a menagerie, museum, and opera house (though not a circus) and the era of the showboat lasted well into the first decades of the 20th century. 

That's it for this week! As you've probably noticed, Wagon Tracks has moved to a bi-monthly update. We'll continue exploring every other Thursday and next time, we'll look at the smaller "mud show" circuses. Till then, thanks for reading!

Dr. Tobias H. Gentleman