Late in the evening of January 18, 1910, the Estelle Randall caught fire while tied to a wharf in Columbia. To prevent the fire from spreading to the waterfront warehouses, she was cast off in the Scuppernong River where she drifted northward and sank in shallow water.  The ship’s cook died, but the other 14 crew members escaped. The vessel was a total loss, and the fire’s origin was never determined.

The steamer, described as “one of the largest and most magnificent passenger and freight steamers in North Carolina,” made stops at towns along the Albemarle Sound as well as runs between Elizabeth City and Norfolk, Virginia.

The 112-foot-long vessel was built in 1898 at Baltimore by William E. Woodall and Company. Its machinery was furnished by the Campbell and Zell Company. The Estelle Randall was originally owned by Captain E.S. Randall, who operated several large passenger steamers on the Potomac River.

By 1909 the steamer had been bought by the Farmers and Merchants Line of North Carolina and was then overhauled in Norfolk for use in the Albemarle region.

The North Carolina Underwater Unit, NC Office of State Archaeology, spearhead an effort in 1992 to record and recover significant portions of the wreck’s machinery and artifactual content prior to a waterfront clearing project that included demolition of the Main Street drawbridge.

The majority of excavation was conducted by three volunteer divers. They recovered a large variety of shipboard implements, personal effects, and machinery accessories such as steam gauges and grease lubricators. With the help of heavy equipment and operators donated by Waff Contracting of Edenton, the machinery from the Estelle Randall was recovered in November 1992. The major items retrieved were a vertical, direct-acting, compound steam engine fitted with a surface condenser; a double-acting, vertical air pump; a duplex feed-water pump; an early Westinghouse generator housing and the ship’s rudder.

Why would such a large vessel regularly visit Columbia?  What Columbia had was the Branning Manufacturing Company lumber mill, with its seven boilers and seven smoke stacks, and the Norfolk and Southern railroad, opened a year or two earlier, that connected Columbia with Mackeys and the rest of the continent.

Columbia’s population exploded from 382 in 1900 to 848 in 1910 (about what it is today).

The Tyrrell County Courthouse and the Baptist, Christian, Episcopal, and Methodist churches in Columbia were constructed between 1900 and 1910.

In short, there was a thriving economy based largely on labor-intensive manufacturing that turned timber into lumber.