Algiers River Boat: An enticing historical note on Sanibel

While some vacationers spend time on Algiers beach on Sanibel Island, most don't know how the beach came by its name. It has nothing to do with the country, but with a boat that once almost became Sanibel Island's first mansion.



It all began in 1925 in a Cincinnati shipyard, where a workhorse boat was built to haul automobiles across the Mississippi. For 25 years, the Algiers had been a car ferry until a wealthy Boston couple with a fondness for quirky fixer-uppers bought it at an auction in 1958.



Lathrop and wife, Helen, Brown brought the 155-foot Algiers to the then-unbridged island in 1959, where they’d bought 25 acres after vacationing there. But they were no ordinary vacationers, as Helen was a shipping heiress and he was a New York congressman and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s college roommate and best man.



But before the Browns moved the Algiers to her new home, they gave the rather plain boat a glamorous makeover.



The Browns retrofitted the boat’s exterior with antebellum trimmings: a huge paddlewheel, feathered smokestacks and vintage gingerbread.



Inside, a pleasure palace was created with Italian terrazzo tiles, French marble countertops and sinks inlaid with gold seahorses, and gold-plated dolphin faucets spitting softened water into bathroom sinks. There was an elevator to whisk people to the top deck, and a restaurant-equipped kitchen boasting a microwave.



To get the Algiers to its destination, the Browns had it pulled by tugboat to Sanibel. Along the way, according to a 1978 article in the Island Reporter, Helen insisted that the workmen play poker “as befitted a proper Mississippi riverboat.”



Then they hired crews to cut a channel through the island’s interior, which they filled in behind themselves as they went.



Turns out the Browns had borrowed the volunteer department’s pump truck to help move water in the canal, but someone had parked it in high grass. It caught fire and burned to a crisp. To make amends, the Browns bought the department a brand-new one.



There was just one remaining detail before they moved in, Werner says. “They owned a house in Fort Lauderdale, and Helen wanted (Lathrop) to sell it first. So she sent him over there to sell the place,” he says, “and as the story goes, Lathrop traverses the Tamiami Trail and took care of it. Then he went to a pizzeria for dinner, came back with indigestion and died the next day.



Broken-hearted, Helen returned to Boston, never to return to Sanibel and never to sleep in her "dream boat".


Eventually, Helen Brown put it up for sale for $550,000 and in 1979, when the newly incorporated city of Sanibel was looking to acquire more beachfront land, it was suggested they consider the Brown property. The deal closed in 1981. By then, the boat was dangerously dilapidated.



Though there was talk of using it as city hall or leasing it for a restaurant, it was beyond repair. So, after everything salvageable had been stripped and auctioned the city had the Algiers demolished in 1982.




The one building left standing was the servant’s quarters, which were converted into the restrooms at Sanibel’s Gulfside City Park — also known as Algiers Beach.



From the boat itself, just three scraps remain: the captain’s wheel, the anchor and the bell, which are now on display at the Sanibel Historical Museum.