Miss Prudence Fipwhistle Leads Port Tampa Tours

Photo Reprinted by permission from The Sunland Tribune, journal of The Tampa Historical Society., 2005
If you were lucky enough to meet the fictional Miss Prudence Fipwhistle before her death in 1899, from a broken heart, you might have enjoyed her tales of Tampa's early days as cow town and Port Tampa's role as embarkation point for Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. Happily, being fictional allows Miss Fipwhistle to continue in her role as social director of the Plant Hotel and lead tours for conventioneers and others interested in seeing Tampa's rich historical legacy.

Miss Fipwhistle, aka Maureen Patrick, was kind enough to respond to my query about the Port Tampa portion of one of her popular tours. One of an emerging class of professional women, the composite character of Miss Fipwhistle leads tours decked out in authentic Victorian attire and informed by Patrick's skill as a professional historiam.

Here is what she had to say about Port Tampa:

PORT TAMPA. This destination is part of my "Victorian Tampa" (bus and walking) tour. We usually reach Port Tampa via Interbay, since we have toured Bayshore Blvd. and Ballast Point. Not the most scenic route, it nevertheless allows me to use the Interbay Subdivision (founded 1924) as an example of a deed-restricted middle-class development in Tampa. Some points of interest in Port Tampa:

The site of Henry B. Plant's FIRST hotel in Tampa, the rustic Port Tampa Inn. Built on pilings alongside the Plant System rail/steamship terminus, the Hotel boasted that guests could drop a fishing line from their room windows into the Bay. At that time, the Bay was so thick with fish that guests complained they had trouble sleeping; the jumping and slapping into the water of the fish kept them awake all night. The Hotel was built at the same time the rail terminus was completed: 1885. Tampa was woefully short on "four star" accommodations at that time, and the luxury travel trade (which Plant was courting with his rail and steam service) demanded them. Thus, Plant built the Tampa Bay Hotel along the HIllsborough River in Tampa.

The area in Port Tampa interacted with the "new" hotel in many ways. For one, the area around Port Tampa was rich with game: quail, squirrel, deer, etc. Hunting groups from the Tampa Bay Hotel - led by Guide Arthur Schleman and his dogs - were led from the Hotel. The game they bagged was cleaned and served at dinner by the Hotel staff, and their trophies were enumerated in the Plant System Railway newsletter. This, read by travelers on the rail and steam lines, increased interest in vacationing at the Hotel.

Many of Port Tampa's early prominent citizens were employees of the Plant System. Some have streets named after them. Some streets - Mascotte - for example, are named after Plant System ships. (The Mascotte and the Olivette were the most famous of Plant's steam vessels, and represented state-of-the-art steam technology. They had huge, 1000+ hp stainless steel engines and were elegantly appointed.)

Another linking of the Hotel with Port Tampa occurred during the 1898 Spanish-American War, when the Port was used as the embarkation depot for the U.S. Expeditionary Forces to Cuba. Most of the "brass" stayed in comfort at the Tampa Bay Hotel, while the troops were billeted in a variety of tent cities around Tampa. The largest of these was at Port Tampa, where conditions rapidly deteriorated in the summer heat as troops waited to be loaded - along with massive amounts of materiel and horses, cannon, etc. - onto ships. (Frederic Remington, the noted illustrator, did many drawings of the Port Tampa camp for his employer: Harper's Illustrated Magazine. I own a particularly nice one, showing black soldiers exercising horses in the surf at the Port.) Food was short, since supplies were backed up along the rail line and spoiled in the heat. Mabel Bean, the daughter of the Postmaster at Port Tampa, remembered her dining room table being filled every night not only with family but also hungry soldiers. Not all families were so accommodating. Many defended their gardens and livestock with fences and firearms. Typhus, cholera, and malaria spread in the crowded and unsanitary conditions in the camps.

For an excellent overview of the loading of men and supplies from Port Tampa at the start of the War, see the 2005 Sunland Tribune. An article by Joe Knetsch deals with this topic. The Sunland Tribune (annual journal of The Tampa Historical Society, of which I am President), is available through the Society: 245 Hyde Park Place, Tampa, FL 33606 or by e-mailing me at info@historicguides.com) The cost is $10.

You can find out a lot more about Fipwhistle's tours, and other Tampa historic guides, by visitinghistoricguides.com