John McNulty (steamboat captain)

John McNulty (fl. c. 1860) was a pioneer Columbia River steamboat captain.

John McNulty was born in Dublin, Ireland on March 21, 1830. He went to sea as a boy. After years of sailing the seas of the World, John McNulty landed in Portland, Oregon in 1852. Almost immediately upon his arrival, he began steamboating the Pacific Northwest’s rivers on the Fashion. From its founding in 1860, John McNulty was a steamboat captain for the Oregon Steam Navigation Company and for the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. For some 3 decades, Capt. McNulty was entrusted with the companies’ steamboat runs on the treacherous middle river of the Columbia. There, then, the Columbia River’s two most significant and dangerous rapids, the Cascades and The Dalles, followed one upon the other. Capt. McNulty was the first master of the R.R. Thompson on the middle river, and the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, near, continuously, entrusted its Idaho to Capt. McNulty's able command during its term on the middle river. It has been said that the U.S. state of Idaho, itself, was named for this formidable draft. In addition to the preceding biographical data for Captain McNulty there on same page noted, it is also said of Capt. McNulty in the Marine History of the Pacific Northwest that “His career has been exceedingly fortunate and free of accidents.”

It was never thought safe to transport passengers, their property, ores or other freight over the Columbia River rapids. Portage of such cargo around the rapids was required, while the steamboat’s captain and a skeleton crew slowly navigated the steamboat through the dangerous Casacades and Dalles. Towards the end of the 19th century, as the railroads began to span along the length of the Pacific Northwest’s rivers and about their rapids, the heyday of the more risky and otherwise expensive steamboat river transport came to a close.

After the advancement of the railroads, the first steamboat to be taken off the River to operate in the still financially lucrative shipping on the lower Columbia River, Willamette River and Puget Sound was the R.R. Thompson. Capt. McNulty was ordered to take her through the Cascades to the lower Columbia River on June 3, 1882. Capt. McNulty took his trusted first officer, William Johnson, engineer, William Doran, and assistant George Fuller as crew.

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