The “Saint Lucie”

While the Florida canal company dredged what would become the Intracoastal Waterway, company directors in 1896 organized the Indian River and Bay Biscayne Inland Navigation Company to run steamboats on navigable portions of the waterway. One such steamboat was the “Saint Lucie” depicted here.</

In 1898, the steamboat affiliate won the contract to ship munitions and mortars down the lower east coast waterway, still in poor condition, to Havana for the Spanish-American War in Cuba.