If a picture could speak a thousand words, this one can. Look at all the details of life in this picture. My dad's best friend posted this on the book of faces and I couldn't be more wowed by a picture than I am this one. This boat obviously wasn't loading the cotton bales unless all those guys unloaded every single bag of what was on the rear of the boat.....by hand. I haven't figured out how they loaded the cotton bales yet but they ain't just throwing them over their shoulders and tossing them on the boat. Looks like the cotton bales were just pushed over the bluff and let them settle wherever. Another Selma Legend posted this reply on Facebook...

The steamboat in this picture is the “City Of Mobile”. It was owned by Capn E R Morrissette.This boat was destroyed by a hurricane at the docks in Mobile in the early 1900’s. This boat ran from Mobile to Montgomery twice a week.The P L between the stacks stand for”People’s Line”.

I do know the hurricane that would have destroyed this boat was the 1906 hurricane. Link to it is below....next comment.

Maybe it’s the angle but it doesn’t look like those smoke stacks would clear the bridge, if they do it’s close.

https://cdm17217.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/photo/id/24413

In this picture it looks like they simply roll the bales across the planks onto the boat.

Cool pic

Cool pic!

Maybe this is on the downriver side? I am not familiar enough with the landmarks to know if that is the case or not.

West bank is on the right. I have been under those building foundations.

I’d love to be able to step back in time for a bit and see stuff like this in person.

Man that's cool thanks for posting

That is the old bridge. It pivoted to let barges through. At the foot is the Bridgetender's house. The BT's house is still there and renovated into a B&B. A person lived in it and when a barge signaled he would do whatever he had to do to pivot the bridge open so the barge could pass. The BT's house sits at the foot of Washington St. next to the St. James hotel just off Water Ave. and a block East of where the Edmund Pettus was built.

They used heavy-duty wooden and steel dollies with small steel wheels to load onto the boat. A friends' family had a Cotton Gin in Macon county long ago....he kept one of those old Dollies.

Be Hell if a big rain came in, water looks low too.
I’m sure where the cotton is would all be under water and the ships prob couldn’t clear the bridge then.
Great pic!

Very cool picture!

Some of the cotton bales are in neat rows and stacks and the ones in the middle are jumbled up. Wonder if they did the first few rows to serve as a barrier and then rolled the rest off the bluff.

No one to help unload. We just thew the bails down the planks

I would have liked to have seen towns like Selma, Greenville, Union Springs, Eufaula, Demopolis and others in the Black Belt from the period of 1900 through about 1950 when they were still towns that functioned and had industry, commerce and active farming communities.

Cool pic.

I saw some pics while in Savannah , when the cotton warehouses got full they just stacked them in the streets. Thousands of them, as Savannah was a major export port for cotton.

What's up with all the sandbags on the bow? They worried about taking small arms and motor fire?

They got the bales down there on what is called a cotton slide and then they rolled them up the ramp onto the boat. That's why all the bales are jumbled up at the bottom they came down the slide. Those are 500lb bales it's not that heavy

picture of how they did it https://civilwartalk.com/attachments/1559861964833-png.310894/