Sign in

Private company

Jeffboat

American inland shipyard in Jeffersonville, Indiana

Jeffboat was a shipyard in Jeffersonville, Indiana, founded by James Howard in 1834, a builder of steamboats. The company was owned by the Howard family until it was sold leading up to World War II. Following the war, it became known as the Jeffersonville Boat and Machine Company and later changed its name to Jeffboat, the more commonly used short form of its name.2 It ceased to exist in 1998.1 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

1938Founded1

See how the biggest companies compare on our leaderboards

Jeffboat 1
Photo: Bedford at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons4

Jeffboat was a shipyard in Jeffersonville, Indiana, founded by James Howard in 1834, a builder of steamboats. The company was owned by the Howard family until it was sold leading up to World War II. Following the war, it became known as the Jeffersonville Boat and Machine Company and later changed its name to Jeffboat, the more commonly used short form of its name. The company was the largest inland shipbuilder in the United States and the second-largest builder of barges before it closed in 2018.2

The story

Jeffboat was originally established as the Howard Shipyards in 1834 by James Howard when he started his first boat, the Hyperion. The Howard family controlled the company for 107 years, building over 3,000 ships.

19th-century steamboats

The Joe Fowler is a former steamboat built at the Howard Shipyard in 1888. The sternwheeler was designed for packet service between Evansville, Indiana and Paducah, Kentucky. Joe Fowler was a United States Mail carrier, and after seven years of service, had logged over 327,000 miles and transported over 152,000 passengers without a fatal accident. In 1914, new owners replaced the steamer with high-pressure boilers designed for the western rivers. After this time, Joe Fowler ran excursions around the Pittsburgh and Wheeling, West Virginia areas, before hosting a cruise down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers for Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and a long summer cruise from Pittsburgh to St. Paul, then back to Louisville. After 1917, it was sold, refitted to better serve excursions, and renamed Crescent.

The Emily is a former sternwheeled steamboat built at the Howard Shipyard in 1891. The single-boiler steamer began in ferry service at Kenova, West Virginia, and later operated at Wheeling, West Virginia. Emily was sold three times, starting in 1902. The third buyer was Henderson Ferry Company of Henderson, Kentucky, which renamed it the Dixie Bee Line. It burned in Henderson in 1926. After a rebuild, it ran as the ferry Ohio No. 2. In the 1930s, it was renovated for packet service, and renamed Joe Curtis, and plied the waters near Memphis until it struck ice and sunk on January 25, 1940.

From Wikipedia’s article on Jeffboat, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Timeline

  1. May 1998Dissolved Dissolved1
  2. 1938Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4