I’ve done quite a few posts about watercraft on the White River of late, including the Helen Gould and the ill-fated Sunshine. Humor me while I do on more. This is the story of William Edward Bootes, an Indianapolis resident, blacksmith, and aspiring sea captain. William, or Edward as he was sometimes called, was born in Kentucky and served in the Army during the Spanish American War. Sometime prior to that he had moved to Indianapolis, and he is referenced in city directories in the mid-1890s. Described as a blacksmith, other sources reported him as a mechanic and furnace fitter. Whatever his official profession, William was skilled at metal working, and he eventually operated a workshop at 620 E. Washington Street. In the spring of 1911, local newspapers began to report on a project that William had been working on for the previous six years. In what amounted to a large shed or garage at the back of his shop, William had built a boat. And not a rowboat, or a sailboat, or some small skiff. But a 48 foot long, 9-foot-wide plate steel motor launch. For context, the IndyGo redline buses are 60 feet in length.
William explained that he had long held a dream to ply the waterways of the Midwest. “I’ve always wanted to thread the Missouri River to its origin,” he told the Indianapolis Star. “Now, I think I will have my chance. Then I want to spend a summer on the Great Lakes and the winter in the Gulf of Mexico. It seems that I am going to get to do all of these things.”
Williams had been building the boat in his spare time, although as the craft neared completion over the prior few months, he had dedicated his entire time to the project. He had riveted the keel of the boat by hand, while shaping the plate metal with a hammer. No plans were used, and William had no prior experience with the art of ship building, although he claimed that the boat had inspected by people with knowledge in that area and they had declared the Della May seaworthy.
The propulsion for the boat was two 24 horsepower gasoline engines. “I couldn’t never go through it again,” William said. “I’d have to be a younger man. I started on it a little too late in life, but it’s been the dream of my existence ever since I left my father’s side down on the old Ohio.” He described hearing the “toot” of steamboat whistles on the river (likely the steamers which operated at Riverside and Broad Ripple Parks) and that “finally the silence grew unbearable, and I just decided that I’d spend the last years of my life where I’ve always wanted to-on the water.” William also noted that he had been sick several times over the previous years, which delayed the completion of the boat.
The boat was to be named Della May, which William explained was the name of a daughter who had passed away some years before. She had hoped the boat would be name for her. But William’s family background is somewhat nebulous. Newspaper reports suggested on one hand that his wife was deceased, and on the other that she would join him at some point on his voyages. The 1900 census shows the Bootes family residing in Campbell County, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Della May, then 14, is noted, along with her two sisters and two brothers, and their mother, Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s marital status is noted as ‘widowed.’ At the same time, William was living in Indianapolis and had been for the previous few years suggesting an estrangement from the family. In 1904, a short blurb in the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune noted that Elizabeth and Edward Bootes had finalized a divorce. The next year, 1905, Della May (who had been married the year before) passed away.
Whatever the situation was with his family in Kentucky, the death of Della May in 1905 did seem to be the impetus for William to begin construction on the boat to be named after his daughter. And in early 1911, 6 years after his daughter’s death, the Della May was completed. But the vessel still sat inside a shed on east Washington Street. On May 18, 1911, the process to launch the boat began. Part of the shed where the boat had been constructed had to be taken down to allow the boat to be extricated. A company was hired to move the Della May, and the boat was removed from the shed by removing one of the structures walls. The boat was then lifted onto a large capacity transfer wagon. William’s brother, Dr. Jesse Bootes, an Indianapolis dentist, expressed confidence that his brother would achieve his maritime goal.
The next morning, May 19, at 3 am, when street traffic was at a minimum, the Della May was pulled down Court Street, the alley which ran behind William’s shop. From there the boat was to be taken to Riverside Park and launched into the White River. The location was perplexing, since the launch site would be upstream from the Emrichsville Dam, which, under normal conditions, would prevent travel downstream. But William had a plan and intended to operate the boat for recreational purposes during the summer at Riverside (which was a popular location for boating), and then, when higher waters would come in during the fall rains, travel south, presumably over the dam, and on to the Ohio River and beyond.
But William’s dream of sailing the rivers of the Midwest and seeing the Gulf of Mexico were not to be realized. Little is mentioned about William and Della May after the boat was launched at Riverside Park. But what we do know is that on July 27, 1912, about a year after the launch of his project, William died. His death certificate attributed his death to laryngeal tuberculosis a byproduct of an underlying tuberculosis infection which directly infects the throat. The death certificate noted the time of illness had been several months, but with the underlying disease, this is likely related to the illness he had experienced during the building of the Della May in the prior years.
William and the Della May never left Indianapolis together, and never made it to the Ohio and Missouri Rivers, the Great Lakes, or the Gulf of Mexico. On June 6, 1913, the Indianapolis News ran a short “Notice of Sale” for “one large motorboat, now on the White River,” which was part of the estate of William E. Bootes. The notice had been placed by order of the Marion County probate court (Note: I could not locate the probate documents for this matter), and the sale was to be overseen by Jesse Bootes, William’s brother, and the administrator of his estate.
The result of this sale, and the fate of Della May is not known. William’s remains were transported back to Alexandria, Kentucky in Campbell County, and interred there, while the Della May remained behind. In the lead up to the launch of the Della May, the Indianapolis Star observed that “this big boat was no miracle-it was just the remarkable expression of the soul of a sea hungry Indianapolis man.” Remarkable it was, that William Bootes had managed to construct such a vessel on Washington Street in the heart of downtown Indianapolis. But unfortunate that his dream of sailing the waterways of the country went unrealized.
Sources
Indianapolis Star: April 9, 1911, May 21, 1911
Indianapolis News: May 18, 1911, June 6, 1913
Cincinnati Commercial Tribune: October 22, 1904
United States Census, 1900 and 1910
Indianapolis City Directories, 1894, 1910