2. The Sally Ann and Westward Expansion: Illustrated History of Landships, 1858-2008
All Rights Reserved, 2023. See Author's note.
Author’s note: As far as we are aware, all images are taken from public domain sources; please inform the author of any mistakes in this regard. In terms of any original sketches, these are amateur attempts based on the author’s own archival research. He welcomes improvement from any professional illustrators interested in enhancing this work. ~ CAH, 2023
In memory of Dad, who taught me a love for all things historical, and in homage to William Pène du Bois, who opened up my imagination.
Read Part One: Introduction here
The Sally Ann, 1858
The Sally Ann is widely acknowledged to be the world’s first landship, created and operated by the American businessman, Elijah Studebach, in 1858.
Class: civilian commercial barge
Crew: 6 (captain, boatswain, driver, tillsman, cooper, best boy)
Capacity/Complement: 13 tons of cargo (estimated)
Construction: privately commissioned wainwrights, St. Louis, 1858
Hull: wood
Buoyancy: 6 x hot air balloons, non-rigid, fabric
Buoyancy source: 6 x onboard wood stoves
Wheels/track: 10 x 78” wheels, 2 x 50” wheels
Propulsion: oxen, wind
Sail Plan: Humber keel (single mast, square rigged)
Power plant: n/a
Length: 52 ft
Beam: 18 ft
Decks: 2, incl. Captain’s loft
Weight (empty): 11 tons
Clearance: 4.5 ft
Steering: oxen (front), tiller (back)
Speed: 1-2 mph
Armor: n/a
Armament: n/a
Communications: n/a, smoke
Other Transportation: n/a, horseback
Amenities: n/a
Fate: unknown, likely abandoned in the northern Flint Hills, Kansas, c. 1863
Given human nature, it is not too surprising that the first designs that inventors came up with after the Great Gravitational Shift of 1855 were recreational. Soon nations around the world discovered ways to enjoy the new lighter transportation possibilities. Carnival rides, “air trolleys,” and the like filled cities, but most of these remained on the smaller side, no larger than a typical horse drawn carriage.
These newly buoyant carts were soon enlisted for transportation overland by the industrializing armies of the world. Providing a warm air supply proved to be a challenge, however, since most fabric balloons leaked over time. Charles Green’s 1821 invention of coal-heated balloons assisted in this but the actual physics for land-based vehicles proved difficult.
Nevertheless, with effort, small carriages were made buoyant enough to be able to cross rough terrain and mount small weapons, such as the famous Gatling-Conestaga wagon first employed by General Sheridan during the Petersburg campaign in 1864. Smaller versions included the Union Buoyant Gun Wagon (or “Booyahs”), which dotted the West in the post-Civil War period. These were not dissimilar to ancient Roman carroballistas, but with the added buoyancy element, providing greater mobility.
But none of these are considered by terranavisonologists to be bona fide landships due to their small size. That honor belongs to The Sally Ann, a commercial barge commissioned and captained by the American businessman, Elijah Studebach.
Studebach was born in 1824 in Cincinnati, Ohio to German immigrants from the Kingdom of Westphalia. Devoutly Lutheran, Elijah’s parents had hopes for him to enter the ministry, but the love of adventure and invention drew him to trade on the American frontier. Moving to St. Louis in 1847, Studebach opened a small trading post that soon prospered as Westward expansion increased. By 1858, “Stud Backs & Co.” was regularly shipping goods into the Kansas territory from St. Louis’s rail yards.
Historians are not certain where Studebach first developed his idea for a large, commercial landship to increase his cargo capacities, but in 1857, Elijah began entertaining various carpenters, wainwrights and steamship captains with his ideas. In 1858, The Sally Ann was the proud result, the world’s first landship.
With a hull made of oak wood and reinforced with iron strips, The Sally Ann measured 52 feet long and 18 feet wide, making it approximately five times longer and three times wider than a typical prairie schooner of the time. Cargo, such as cotton, whale oil, apothecary goods, and other items needed in Kansas were piled onto the open deck, and covered with tarp. Captain Studebach did not usually permit passengers on board The Sally Ann because as he famously quipped, “people means trouble.”
The crew for the Sally Ann was spare. Most cross-trained in the others’ tasks with everyone pitching in at camp or in port. The Captain (usually Elijah) negotiated trade deals, navigated, and gave orders as overall boss. The Boatswain (later called ombudsman) acted as first officer and was responsible for managing the cargo and deck operations. The driver was in charge of the oxen, both their care, and steering them from the bow car while underway.
At the stern, the tillsman provided additional steering from the tillswheel as directed by the Captain. A cooper was brought along to repair damaged wheels along the way and could assist where else needed. The Bestboy was usually the youngest and put in charge of keeping the wood stoves stoked under the four balloons. This sometimes required a bit of sprinting and is the origin of the Topeka State mascot, the Stove Runner, whose rituals include dashing around the court at the beginning of each game.
A team of fifteen oxen drove The Sally Ann with spare oxen in the rear along with the Captain’s personal horse. The oxen were arranged in a unique “pyramid harness,” with six closest to the bow while the strongest, most reliable ox took the lead. Because of this, it was not unknown for the driver and lead ox to develop a special bond of friendship. The most outward oxen in the rear row on both port and starboard sides were termed the “Ol’ Steadys,” while the lead ox was nicknamed the “Lox.” Spare oxen were sometimes referred to as “Spox,” which is where we get the phrase, “By lox or by spox.”
In addition to the ox-train, when weather allowed, a small sail could be raised in the middle of the deck, handled by the Boatswain and cooper. Captain Studebach was eager to do this whenever the wind was favorable but some accounts by crew members indicated this often caused more trouble than it was worth. Steering also proved to be rather problematic at times, with the Captain shouting instructions to both the driver and tillsman simultaneously. In time, especially as tracked landships took hold, the ill-fated tillswheel became a thing of the past.
As far as the storied career of The Sally Ann, what more can we add to the accounts of many noted historians, notably Prof. Dunbarton’s fine work, Shipping America West.
Elijah Studebach’s friendship with the Kickapoo tribe is especially well known and celebrated in several children’s books. Less well known was Studebach’s financial assistance to several German Protestant (or “Union”) churches along his trade routes, either out of piety or a guilty conscience. He was not known to be a regular sabbath-keeper, as it were, but this is not the volume to recount those tails.
The most famous of The Sally Ann’s adventures, of course, was John Brown’s failed raid upon her outside of Manhattan, Kansas in the summer of 1859. Alerted by friendly Kickapoo scouts, Captain Studebach pulled The Sally Ann up against a hillside and deflated his balloons. With the help of the Kickapoo, he and his crew felled several trees and covered the land ship with branches, possibly disguising it to look like Kickapoo outbuildings. John Brown’s party passed within a mile but never spotted her, the first successful camouflaging of a landship in human history.
After missing The Sally Ann, John Brown turned his attention East, towards a small town in Virginia named Harper’s Ferry. Had Studebach not acted so promptly, American history may well have taken a different turn.
As far as the name, Sally Ann, it is likely we will never know the origin for certain but some contemporaries suggest it may be accounted for by an unrequited love interest in St. Louis. The same contemporaries go on to suggest that the relationship soured after Elijah recruited a new tillsman in Leavenworth, a strong woman of mixed race.
The popular notion that The Sally Ann was named after The Salvation Army’s nickname is anachronistic at best since the organization was not founded until 1865. The nickname itself did not catch on until the First World War, beginning among Canadian troops. Indeed, it is in part to counter such sloppy historiography that this volume has been produced.
By 1863, as railroads reached Kansas, the need for transport by landships decreased - but their heritage is not forgotten. Whether or not The Sally Ann was an economical use of Studebach’s money is beside the point. What matters is that he had the pioneering foresight to harness the positive effects of the Great Shift for the greater good.
It would only be a matter of time before other entrepreneurs and engineers built upon Studebaker’s foresight to advance human interests around the globe. The Sally Ann provided the model for all future landships, beginning with the cargo craft of the American Civil War: the USL Mifflin class and the CSL Myers. Less successful were the land pirate imitators such as the SS Lafitte, which briefly terrorized eastern Texas before being hunted down by Federal Pike-class land corvettes.
As to the first land ship’s final fate, we may never know. As war broke out across the United States in 1861, trade to the Kansas territories was disrupted and records lost. She was last seen leaving St. Louis in May of 1863. Historians’ best guess is that she was abandoned for some reason in the northern Flint hills. Currently, a team of archeologists from Kansas State University are engaged in two digs in hopes of finding some kind of remains or evidence.
As for Elijah Studebach, he seems to have yearned for yet more adventure and headed further West. Reports dating to 1872 locate him in the vicinity of Missoula among the Blackfeet, which is the last we know of him. Like his invention, he has sailed away into history.
Meanwhile, the world’s first land ship, The Sally Ann lives on in the American imagination as the subject of two eponymous Hollywood movies and the Appalachian banjo tune, made popular by Lester Flat and Earl Scruggs. And even now, learning about The Sally Ann, our lives will become more like they already were.
COMING UP NEXT: THE GREAT AMERICAN CIRCUS LANDSHIP OF 1875