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April 5, 2021 By Keith Norrington In previous Old Boat Columns throughout the past 10 years, we have presented various large and notably palatial cotton packets, such as the Belle of the Bends that ran on the Lower Mississippi mainly in the Vicksburg region. Today we focus upon several of the smaller steamboats that faithfully served the Yazoo River trade. On the left in the main image is the Alice Miller, built at the Howard Shipyard in Jeffersonville, Ind., in 1904 for a cost of $9,000. Constructed on a wood hull measuring 130 feet in length by 27 feet in width, the sternwheeler, originally named Frank B. Hayne, was built for John P. Parker, of Monroe, La., to run on the Ouachita as well as the Boeuf River, a tributary of the Ouachita that flows for 216 miles through Louisiana and Arkansas. ....