In 1925, short-story writer and novelist Edna Ferber spent a week aboard the James Adams Floating Theatre. Her novel, Show Boat, was first published as a serial in the Woman’s Home Companion, April through September 1926. In August of that year, it was published as a book. The tale traces three generations of the Hawks family as owners and managers of the showboat Cotton Blossom. While set on the Mississippi River, researcher and author Richard Gillespie believes the novel “reflects the atmosphere” of the James Adams Floating Theatre.
In 1927, the musical production “Show Boat” opened in New York. It was followed by film versions in 1929, 1936, and 1951. By the 1951 production, however, the original showboat had become a large and ornate twin-stacked, steam-propelled stern-wheeler.
The first 10 years of the showboat were successful for James Adams, but in 1927, the Floating Theatre sank outside Norfolk harbor, necessitating costly repairs. She sank again in 1929, in the Dismal Swamp Canal, after running afoul of a snag. By the late 1920s, the repertoire-theater movement was facing a new climate as film and radio grew in popularity, and improved roads and automobiles brought audiences greater mobility. The economic depression of the 1930s, along with the decline in steamboat traffic and the accompanying decay of wharfs, only added to showboats’ woes.
In 1933, James Adams sold the showboat to new owner Nina B. Howard of St. Michaels. Mrs. Howard was a wealthy widow with an adopted son, Milford Seymoure. Seymoure became manager, and the name was changed to Original Show Boat. Charles Hunter and
Beulah Adams stayed on under the new management.
The Floating Theatre soldiered on during the Depression, supported by Nina Howard’s money, and visited many of the same Tidewater towns she used to play. However, in later years, more of the venues were larger cities—Baltimore was played for the first time in 1939. The old naïve and sentimental repertoire plays were going out of fashion in the cities, though, and were replaced with a more comic view of nostalgia preferred by urban audiences.
At the end of the 1936 season, Charles Hunter and Beulah Adams quit. Hunter went into partnership with another former showboat actor, Jack Pfeiffer, to start the Show Boat Players. The Show Boat Players toured—by land—many of the Floating Theatre’s traditional venues, causing some bad feelings. On the Floating Theatre, Milford Seymoure’s wife, Rachel, became the leading lady. In 1938, the showboat sank for the third time, in the Roanoke River.
Two years later, in 1940, the Floating Theatre was sold at auction to E.H. Brassell of Savannah, Georgia, for $6,000. He did not own her long, as she caught fire at Savannah on November 14, 1941, and became a total loss. James Adams died in Chesapeake City, on September 2, 1946, at the age of 72. Nina Howard retired to Florida after the showboat’s demise and died a number of years later.
The Calvert Marine Museum, located on MD-2 in Solomons is open daily, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Adults, $7; seniors, $6; children 5 – 12, $2. For more information, visit www.calvertmarinemuseum.com .
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