Old Times on the Upper Mississippi
by George Byron Merrick · English · Gutenberg #47262 · 623,284 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Old Times on the Upper Mississippi
Author: George Byron Merrick
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD TIMES ON THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI ***
Transcriber's note: Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
Please see the end of this book for further notes.
Old Times on the
Upper Mississippi
[Illustration: MOUTH OF THE WISCONSIN RIVER. The ancient highway
between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. This scene gives some
idea of the multitude of islands which diversify both the Wisconsin
and the Mississippi Rivers.]
Old Times on the
Upper Mississippi
The Recollections of a Steamboat Pilot
from 1854 to 1863
By
George Byron Merrick
[Illustration]
Cleveland, Ohio
The Arthur H. Clark Company
1909
Copyright 1908
George Byron Merrick
All rights reserved
Dedicated to the Memory of My Chiefs
William H. Hamilton, Engineer, Charles G. Hargus, Clerk, Thomas
Burns, Pilot, masters in their several professions. From each of them
I learned something that has made life better worth living, the sum
of which makes possible these reminiscences of a "cub" pilot.
Contents
Prelude 13
Chapter I
EARLY IMPRESSIONS 15
Chapter II
INDIANS, DUGOUTS, AND WOLVES 20
Chapter III
ON THE LEVEE AT PRESCOTT 29
Chapter IV
IN THE ENGINE-ROOM 38
Chapter V
THE ENGINEER 46
Chapter VI
THE "MUD" CLERK--COMPARATIVE HONORS 52
Chapter VII
WOODING UP 59
Chapter VIII
THE MATE 64
Chapter IX
THE "OLD MAN" 71
Chapter X
THE PILOTS AND THEIR WORK 78
Chapter XI
KNOWING THE RIVER 92
Chapter XII
THE ART OF STEERING 100
Chapter XIII
AN INITIATION 106
Chapter XIV
EARLY PILOTS 111
Chapter XV
INCIDENTS OF RIVER LIFE 117
Chapter XVI
MISSISSIPPI MENUS 126
Chapter XVII
BARS AND BARKEEPERS 132
Chapter XVIII
GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 138
Chapter XIX
STEAMBOAT RACING 143
Chapter XX
MUSIC AND ART 152
Chapter XXI
STEAMBOAT BONANZAS 161
Chapter XXII
WILD-CAT MONEY AND TOWN-SITES 174
Chapter XXIII
A PIONEER STEAMBOATMAN 184
Chapter XXIV
A VERSATILE COMMANDER; A WRECK 190
Chapter XXV
A STRAY NOBLEMAN 196
Chapter XXVI
IN WAR TIME 206
Chapter XXVII
AT FORT RIDGELEY 212
Chapter XXVIII
IMPROVING THE RIVER 221
Chapter XXIX
KILLING STEAMBOATS 229
Chapter XXX
LIVING IT OVER AGAIN 240
Appendix
A. LIST OF STEAMBOATS ON THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI
RIVER, 1823-1863 257
B. OPENING OF NAVIGATION AT ST. PAUL, 1844-1862 295
C. TABLE OF DISTANCES FROM ST. LOUIS 296
D. IMPROVEMENT OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI,
1866-1876 299
E. INDIAN NOMENCLATURE AND LEGENDS 300
Index 305
Illustrations
MOUTH OF THE WISCONSIN RIVER. The ancient highway
between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi.
This scene gives some idea of the multitude of islands
which diversify both the Wisconsin and the Mississippi
Rivers Frontispiece
PRESCOTT LEVEE IN 1876. Showing Steamer "Centennial"
and the little Hastings ferry, "Plough Boy." The double
warehouse, showing five windows in the second story
and four in the third, was the building in which the author
lived when a boy 32
PRESCOTT LEVEE IN 1908. But one business building, one
of the old Merrick warehouses, left intact. Dunbar's
Hall gutted by fire recently. The large steamboat
warehouse next to it destroyed some years ago. All the
shipping business gone to the railroad, which runs just
back of the buildings shown 32
ALMA, WISCONSIN. A typical river town in the fifties 54
ABOVE TREMPEALEAU, WISCONSIN. In the middle foreground,
at the head of the slough, is the site of the winter
camp of Nicolas Perrot, in the winter of 1684-5, as identified
in 1888 by Hon. B. F. Heuston and Dr. Reuben Gold Thwaites
of the Wisconsin State Historical Society 68
DANIEL SMITH HARRIS. Steamboat Captain, 1833-1861 82
CAPTAIN THOMAS BURNS. Pilot on the Upper Mississippi
River from 1856 to 1889. Inspector of Steamboats
under President Cleveland and President McKinley 82
CHARLES G. HARGUS. Chief Clerk on the "Royal Arch,"
"Golden State," "Fanny Harris," "Kate Cassell" and
many other fine steamers on the Upper Mississippi 82
GEORGE B. MERRICK. "Cub" Pilot, 1862 82
TYPICAL PORTION OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI. Map of the
river between Cassville, Wis., and Guttenberg, Iowa,
showing the characteristic winding of the stream 98
STEAMER "WAR EAGLE," 1852; 296 TONS 120
STEAMER "MILWAUKEE," 1856; 550 TONS 120
WINONA, MINNESOTA. The Levee in 1862 134
THE LEVEE AT ST. PAUL, 1859. Showing the Steamer
"Grey Eagle" (1857; 673 tons), Capt. Daniel Smith
Harris, the fastest and best boat on the Upper River,
together with the "Jeanette Roberts" (1857; 146 tons),
and the "Time and Tide" (1853; 131 tons), two Minnesota
River boats belonging to Captain Jean Robert, an
eccentric Frenchman and successful steamboatman. (Reproduced
from an old negative in possession of Mr. Edward Bromley
of Minneapolis, Minn.) 146
STEAMER "KEY CITY," 1857; 560 TONS 154
STEAMER "NORTHERN LIGHT," 1856; 740 TONS 154
FACSIMILES OF EARLY TICKETS AND BUSINESS CARD 166
MCGREGOR, IOWA. Looking north, up the river 178
ALTON, ILLINOIS. Looking down the river _facing p._ 188
RED WING, MINNESOTA. Showing Barn Bluff in the background,
with a glimpse of the river on the left 198
BAD AXE (NOW GENOA), WISCONSIN. Scene of the last
battle between the United States forces and the Indians
under Chief Black Hawk, August 21, 1832. The steamer
"Warrior," Captain Joseph Throckmorton, with soldiers
and artillery from Fort Crawford, Prairie du
Chien, took an active and important part in this battle 218
REED'S LANDING, MINNESOTA. At the foot of Lake Pepin.
During the ice blockade in the Lake, in the spring of
each year before the advent of railroads to St. Paul;
all freight was unloaded at Reed's Landing, hauled
by team to Wacouta, at the head of the Lake, where it
was reloaded upon another steamboat for transportation
to St. Paul and other ports above the Lake 236
STEAMER "MARY MORTON," 1876; 456 TONS. Lying
at the levee, La Crosse, Wisconsin. (From a negative
made in 1881.) 244
STEAMER "ARKANSAS," 1868; 549 TONS. With tow of
four barges, capable of transporting 18,000 sacks--36,000
bushels of wheat per trip. The usual manner of carrying
wheat in the early days, before the river traffic was
destroyed by railroad competition 244
MAP OF THE MISSISSIPPI BETWEEN ST. LOUIS AND ST.
PAUL _facing p._ 304
Prelude
The majesty and glory of the Great River have departed; its glamour
remains, fresh and undying, in the memories of those who, with mind's
eye, still can see it as it was a half-century ago. Its majesty
was apparent in the mighty flood which then flowed throughout the
season, scarcely diminished by the summer heat; its glory, in the
great commerce which floated upon its bosom, the beginnings of mighty
commonwealths yet to be. Its glamour is that indefinable witchery
with which memory clothes the commonplace of long ago, transfiguring
the labors, cares, responsibilities, and dangers of steamboat life
as it really was, into a Midsummer Night's Dream of care-free,
exhilarating experiences, and glorified achievement.
Of the river itself it may be said, that like the wild tribes which
peopled its banks sixty years ago, civilization has been its undoing.
The primeval forests which spread for hundreds of miles on either
side, then caught and held the melting snows and falling rains
of spring within spongy mosses which carpeted the earth; slowly,
throughout the summer, were distilled the waters from myriad springs,
and these, filling brooks and smaller rivers, feeders of the Great
River, maintained a mighty volume of water the season through. Upon
the disappearance of the forests, the melting snows and early rains
having no holding grounds, are carried quickly to the river, which as
quickly rises to an abnormal stage in the early part of the season,
to be followed by a dearth which later reduces the Mississippi to the
dimensions of a second-rate stream, whereon navigation is impossible
for great steamers, and arduous, disheartening and unprofitable for
boats of any class.
To most men of our day, the life of those who manned the steamers
of that once mighty fleet is legendary, almost mythical. Its story
is unwritten. To the few participants who yet remain, it is but a
memory. The boats themselves have disappeared, leaving no token. The
masters and the mates, the pilots and the clerks, the engineers and
the men of humbler station have likewise gone. Of the thousands who
contributed to give life and direction to the vessels themselves, a
meager score of short biographies is all that history vouchsafes.
The aim of the present volume is to tell something of these men, and
of the boats that they made sentient by their knowledge and power;
to relate something of the incidents of river life as seen by a
boy during eight years of residence by the riverside, or in active
service on the river itself. While it may not literally be claimed,
"All of which I saw," it is with satisfaction, not unmixed with
pride, that the writer can truthfully assert, "A part of which I was."
G. B. M.
The several quotations from "Mark Twain" which herein appear are from
_Life on the Mississippi_ (copyright, 1903), by Samuel L. Clemens,
permission for the use of which is kindly granted for the present
purpose by the publishers, Messrs. Harper & Brothers, New York.
Chapter I
_Early Impressions_
Descent from an ancestry whose members built and sailed ships from
Salem, Newburyport, and Nantucket two hundred years ago, and even
down to the early days of the nineteenth century, ought to give an
hereditary bias toward a sailor's life, on waters either salt or
fresh. A score-and-a-half of men of my name have "died with their
boots on" at sea, from the port of Nantucket alone. They went for
whales, and the whales got them. Perhaps their fate should have
discouraged the sea-going instinct, but perversely it had the
opposite effect. A hundred men are lost out of Gloucester every year,
yet their boys are on the "Banks" before they are fairly weaned.
I was born at Niles, Michigan, on the historic St. Joseph River,
which in those days was of considerable importance commercially.
Scores of keel boats plied between South Bend and the mouth of the
river at St. Joseph, on Lake Michigan. Keel boats drifted down the
river, and after unloading were towed back by little steamboats,
about eighty feet long by eighteen feet beam. These were propelled by
side wheels attached to a single shaft, driven by a horizontal engine
of indifferent power. These steamers towed four "keels" upstream at
the rate of five or six miles an hour. The former had no upper cabin
answering to the "boiler deck" of the Mississippi River boats--only
a roof covering the main deck, with the passenger cabin aft, and the
quarters of the crew forward of the boiler and engine.
It was, I suppose, a quarter of a mile from my birthplace to the
river bank where we boys of the neighborhood went to see the
steamboats pass. In the opposite direction, around a sharp bend and
across the low-lying, alluvial land, which comprised the home farm,
the river was discernible a mile away. When a boat was seen coming up
river, the alarm was given, and we little shavers of the neighborhood
raced for the nearest point of view, a high bank of blue clay, rising
probably seventy-five feet above the river. We used to think it was
as many hundreds of feet; and what I now know as the quarter mile,
then stretched away into interminable distances as it was measured
by the stubby yet sturdy little legs of six-year-old runners. On the
edge of this blue-clay bank, I received my first impressions in river
piloting.
My teacher in these matters was a man whom I greatly envied. Kimball
Lyon lived in a house three times as large as that in which I was
born. His father had left a big farm and a bank account of fabulous
dimensions. We knew it was large, because "Kim" never worked as other
young men of twenty-five or thirty years did in those days. His
mother always kept a "hired man", while Kim toiled not; but he spun.
It was not his riches, however, nor his immunity from toil, that
common lot of other men, which excited the envy of the six-year-olds.
He could, and did, play on the accordion. Lying on his back in the
shade and resting one corner of his instrument upon his bosom, with
irresistible power and pathos he sang and played
"A life on the ocean wave,
A home on the rolling deep."
It appealed to all the natural impulses of our being, and the dormant
instincts inherited from generations of whale-hunting ancestors were
aroused by the power of music, reinforced by the suggestive words of
the song itself; and then and there we vowed that when we were men
like Kimball Lyon, we too would own and play upon accordions, and
do all else that he had done; for marvelous tales he told, of his
experiences in great storms at sea and of deeds of aquatic prowess.
We learned in after years that "Kim" once sailed from St. Joseph
to Chicago in a sawed-off lumber hooker, when the wind was west
nor'west, down the lake, and that he did actually lie on the deck,
but not on his back, and that it was not music which he emitted, and
that the sailors railed at him, and that he came back from Chicago by
stage coach to Niles. But we didn't know this when he was awakening
our viking instincts, as we lay on the banks of the old St. Joe in
the sunny summer days of long ago.
"Kim" Lyon knew all about steamboats, as well as about deep sea
ships, and when we asked questions he could answer out of the
fullness of his knowledge. We wondered what made the wheels go
'round, and he told us. I have forgotten _what_ made them go 'round,
but my recollection is that it was a peculiar mechanical process
of which I have never seen the like in any other service on river,
lake or ocean. His answer to the query as to "what is the man in the
little house on top of the boat doing?" I have never forgotten, as it
afterward came more in my line of business. The man was twisting the
wheel as all pilots before and since that time twist it, a spoke or
two to port, a half dozen to starboard, hard up and hard down, there
being a shallow piece of river just there, beset with big boulders
and reefs of gravel, through which he was cautiously worming his boat
and its kite-tail of keels.
"That man," said Kimball, "is drawing water from a well in the bottom
of the boat and emptying it into the boiler, just as your father
draws water from his well with a rope, a bucket and a crank. If he
should stop for a minute the boiler would burst for want of water,
the boat would blow up, and we should all be killed by the explosion."
This definition at once gave us a personal interest in the work of
the man at the wheel; we all felt that our lives depended upon this
man's devotion to his duty. Had he struck a piece of "easy water" at
that time, and centred his wheel, there is no doubt that we would
have scurried for home before the inevitable explosion should occur.
That was my first lesson in piloting. Perhaps this childish concern
that the man "drawing water for the boilers" should faithfully
perform his duty, was but a prefigurement of the interest with which
the writer, and hundreds of others, in later years, have watched the
pilot work his boat through a tangled piece of river, knowing that
the safety of all depended upon the knowledge and faithfulness of the
"man at the wheel."
The steamboats plying on the St. Joe were crude little affairs, and
there were but four or five of them, all alike. I remember the name
of but one, the "Algoma"; the others are quite forgotten. Doubtless
they were commonplace, and did not appeal to the poetic side of the
boy. But "Algoma"! The word has a rhythmical measure, and conjures up
visions of wigwams, council fires, dusky maidens, and painted braves.
An Indian name would stick when all the saints in the calendar were
forgotten. The "Algoma" and her consorts have gone the way of all
steamboats. The railroad came and killed their business, just as a
few years later, it did on the Great River.
A few years later I saw the Mississippi River for the first time,
at Rock Island, Illinois; and through the kindness of another
well-posted bystander to whom the then twelve-year-old boy appealed,
I received my first impressions of a stern-wheel boat. There were two
steamboats lying at the levee--the "Minnesota Belle", a side-wheeler,
upon which we had taken passage, while just above lay the "Luella",
a stern-wheeler. I knew about the former variety from observation on
the St. Joe, but I had never seen even a picture of one of the latter
sort, so it was a novelty. I wasn't certain that it was a steamboat
at all, and after referring the matter to my stranger friend, I
learned definitely that it wasn't. The "Luella's" wheel was slowly
turning over as she lay at the levee, and as I did not comprehend the
mechanical details of that kind of craft I began asking questions.
My mentor assured me that the "Luella" was not a steamboat at all,
but a water power sawmill. The big wheel then moving was driven by
the current, and it in turn operated the sawmill machinery on the
inside of the boat. As I could not figure any other use for a wheel
out in the open, at the end of the boat, instead of on the side where
it ought to be, and as I had no reason to doubt the statement of my
informant, I readily accepted the sawmill explanation, and hastened
to confide my newly-acquired knowledge to my brother and other
members of the family. A few hours later both boats pulled out for
St. Paul. After she had rounded the first point, ahead of us, we saw
nothing more of the "Luella" until we met her coming down the river
on her return trip. She was a heavily-powered boat, and showed her
heels to the larger and slower "Minnesota Belle". The sight of the
"Luella" kicking her way upstream at the rate of two miles to our
one, not only dissipated the sawmill impression, but taught me not
to accept at face value all information communicated by glib-tongued
and plausible strangers.
That steamboat trip from Rock Island to Prescott was one long holiday
excursion for us two small and lively boys from Michigan. There was
so much to see and in so many different directions at once, that it
was impossible to grasp it all, although we scampered over the deck
to get differing view points. We met dozens of boats, going back to
St. Louis or Galena after further loads of immigrants and freight;
and there were other boats which came up behind us, gaining slowly
but surely, and finally passing the deeply-laden "Belle". There were
landings to be made, and freight and passengers to be disembarked.
There were strange Indians to be seen--we were familiar enough with
Michigan tribesmen, having been born within a mile or two of old
Pokagon's tribal village. There were boys with fish for sale, fish
larger than any inhabiting the waters of Michigan streams, sturgeons
only excepted, and this promised well for the fun in store when we
should reach our journey's end.
Finally, on a bright June day in the year 1854, the writer, then a
boy of twelve, with his brother, three years younger, were fully
transplanted from their Michigan birthplace to the row of stores
and warehouses which fronted on the "levee" at Prescott, Wisconsin,
where the waters of St. Croix River and Lake join the Mississippi.
The town was then a typical frontier settlement. Two hundred white
people were planted among five hundred Chippewa Indians; with as many
more Sioux, of the Red Wing band, across the river in Minnesota, a
few miles lower down the river. The not infrequent outbreaks of the
hereditary enmity existing between these ancient foes, would expend
itself on the streets of the town in war whoops, gunpowder, and
scalping knives, enlivening the experience of the average citizen as
he dodged behind the nearest cover to avoid stray bullets; while the
city marshal was given an opportunity to earn his salary, by driving
out both bands of hostiles at the point of his revolver.
Chapter II
_Indians, Dugouts, and Wolves_
In that early day when my acquaintance with the Mississippi began,
Indians were numerous. Their dugouts lay at the levee by the dozen,
the hunters retailing the ducks and geese, or venison and bear meat,
which had fallen to their guns, while the squaws peddled catfish and
pickerel that had been ensnared on the hooks and lines of the women
and children of the party.
Situated as Prescott was at the junction of the St. Croix with the
Mississippi, its citizens were favored with visits both from the
Chippewa, who hunted and fished along the former stream and its
tributaries in Wisconsin, and the Sioux, who made the bottom lands on
the Minnesota side of the river, between Hastings and Red Wing, their
home and hunting ground. This was the boundary line which had existed
for a hundred years or more; although the Sioux (or Dakota) laid
claim to many thousand square miles of hunting grounds in Wisconsin,
for which they actually received a million and a half dollars when
they quit-claimed it to the United States. Their claim to any lands
on the east side of the river had been disputed by the Chippewa from
time out of mind; and these rival claims had occasionally been, as
we have seen, referred to the only court of arbitration which the
Indians recognized--that of the tomahawk and scalping knife.
As a boy I have spent many an hour searching in the sands at the
foot of the bluffs below Prescott, for arrowheads, rusted remnants
of knives and hatchets, and for the well-preserved brass nails with
which the stocks and butts of old-time trade muskets were plentifully
ornamented. Just how many years ago that battle had been fought, does
not appear to be a matter of historical record. That it was fiercely
contested, is abundantly proven by the great amount of wreckage of
the fight which the white lads of Prescott recovered to be sold to
tourists on the steamboats which touched at our levee. The Indians
themselves had a tradition that it was a bloody fight. Taking the
word of a Chippewa narrator, one was easily convinced that hundreds
of Sioux bit the sand on that eventful day. If the narrator happened
to belong across the river, one felt assured, after listening to
his version, that the Chippewa met their Marathon on this battle
plain. In any case the treasure trove indicated a very pretty fight,
whichever party won the field.
Charlevoix, the French historian, relates that in 1689 Le Seuer
established a fortified trading post on the west side of the
Mississippi, about eight miles below the present site of Hastings. In
speaking of this fort, he says:
"The island has a beautiful prairie, and the French of Canada
have made it a centre of commerce for the western parts, and
many pass the winter here, because it is a good country for
hunting."
As a boy I have many a time visited the site of this ancient
stronghold, and hobnobbed with the Indians then occupying the ground,
descendants of those with whom the French fraternized two hundred
years ago. At this point the islands are about four miles across from
the main channel of the river; the islands being formed by Vermillion
Slough, which heads at Hastings, reëntering the river about two and a
half miles above Red Wing. Trudell Slough, which heads in the river
about four miles below Prescott, joins Vermillion at the point at
which was probably located Le Seuer's post. At the juncture of the
two sloughs there was a beautiful little prairie of several acres.
On the west, the bluffs rose several hundred feet to the level
prairie which constitutes the upper bench. Just at this point there
are three mounds rising fifty to seventy-five feet above the level
of the prairie, and serving as a landmark for miles around. Whether
they are of geological origin or the work of the Indians in their
mound-building epoch, had not been determined in my day. There are
other prominences of like character everywhere about, and it would
seem that they were erected by the hand of man.
On the north, east, and south the islands afforded good hunting
grounds for the French and their allies. In 1854 and later (I think
even yet), the site of this ancient fort was occupied by a band of
Sioux Indians of Red Wing's tribe, under the sub-chieftaincy of a
French half-breed named Antoine Mouseau (Mo'-sho). In Neill's history
of the settlement of St. Paul he mentions Louis Mouseau as one of the
first settlers occupying, in 1839, a claim lying at the lower end of
Dayton Bluff, about two miles down the river from the levee. This
Antoine Mouseau, a man about forty in 1854, was probably a son of the
St. Paul pioneer and of a squaw of Red Wing's band.
In the days when the white boys of Prescott made adventurous
trips "down to Mo-sho's", the islands were still remarkably rich
in game--deer, bear, wolves, 'coons, mink, muskrats, and other
fur-bearing animals; and in spring and fall the extensive rice swamps
literally swarmed with wild fowl. Two or three of the adventures
which served to add spice to such visits as we made with the little
red men of Mouseau's tribe, will serve to illustrate the sort of life
which was led by all Prescott boys in those early days. They seemed
to be a part of the life of the border, and were taken as a matter of
course. Looking back from this distance, and from the civilization
of to-day, it seems miraculous to me that all of those boys were not
drowned or otherwise summarily disposed of. As a matter of fact none
of them were drowned, and to the best of my knowledge none of them
have as yet been hanged. Most of them went into the Union army in the
War of Secession, and some of them are sleeping where the laurel and
magnolia bend over their last resting places.
The water craft with which the white boys and Indian boys alike
traversed the river, rough or smooth, and explored every creek,
bayou, and slough for miles around, were "dug-outs"--canoes hollowed
out of white pine tree trunks. Some canoes were large and long, and
would carry four or five grown persons. Those owned and used by the
boys were from six to eight feet long, and just wide enough to take
in a not too-well-developed lad; but then, all the boys were lean
and wiry. It thus happened that the Blaisdells, the Boughtons, the
Fifields, the Millers, the Merricks, the Schasers, the Smiths, and
the Whipples, and several other pairs and trios ranging from fourteen
years down to seven, were pretty generally abroad from the opening
of the river in the spring until its closing in the fall, hunting,
fishing and exploring, going miles away, up or down the river or
lake, and camping out at night, often without previous notice to
their mothers. With a "hunk" of bread in their pockets, some matches
to kindle a fire, a gun and fishlines, they never were in danger of
starvation, although always hungry.
One of the incidents referred to, I accept more on the evidence of
my brother than of my own consciousness of the situation when it
occurred. He was eleven at the time, and I fourteen. We each had a
little pine "dug-out", just large enough to carry one boy sitting in
the stern, and a reasonable cargo of ducks, fish or fruit. With such
a load the gunwales of the craft were possibly three or four inches
above the water line. The canoe itself was round on the bottom,
and could be rolled over and over by a boy lying flat along the
edges, with his arms around it, as we often did for the amusement of
passengers on the boats--rolling down under water and coming up on
the other side, all the time holding fast to the little hollowed-out
log. Such a craft did not appear to be very seaworthy, nor well
calculated to ride over rough water. Indeed, under the management of
a novice they would not stay right side up in the calmest water.
For the boys who manned them, however, whether whites or Indians,
they were as seaworthy as Noah's ark, and much easier to handle.
A show piece much in vogue, was to stand on the edge of one of
these little round logs (not over eight feet long), and with a
long-handled paddle propel the thing across the river. This was not
always, nor usually, accomplished without a ducking; but it often
was accomplished by white boys without the ducking, and that even
when there was some wind and little waves. The Indian lads would not
try it in public. For one thing, it was not consonant with Indian
dignity; for another, an Indian, big or little, dislikes being
laughed at, and a ducking always brought a laugh when there were any
spectators. I cannot, after all these years, get over an itching to
try this experiment again. I believe that I could balance myself all
right; but the difference between sixty pounds and a hundred and
sixty might spoil the game.
Some boys, more fortunate than others, were from time to time
possessed of birch-bark canoes--small ones. Of all the craft that
ever floated, the birch-bark comes nearer being the ideal boat than
any other. So light is it, that it may be carried on the head and
shoulders for miles without great fatigue; and it sits on the water
like a whiff of foam--a veritable fairy craft. It was the custom of
the boys who owned these little "birches" to shove them off the sand
with a run, and when they were clear of the land to jump over the
end, and standing erect, paddle away like the wind. This was another
show piece, and was usually enacted for the benefit of admiring
crowds of Eastern passengers on the steamboats.
On one such occasion, a young man from the East who professed to be
a canoeist, and who possibly was an expert with an ordinary canoe,
came off the boat, and after crossing the palm of the birch-bark's
owner with a silver piece, proposed to take a little paddle by
himself. The boy was an honest boy, as boys averaged then and there,
and although not averse to having a little fun at the expense of the
stranger, in his capacity of lessor he deemed it his duty to caution
his patron that a birch-bark was about as uncertain and tricky a
proposition as any one would wish to tackle--especially such a little
one as his own was. He proposed to hold it until his passenger had
stepped in and sat down and was ready to be shoved off. This was
the usual procedure, and it had its good points for the average
tourist. But this one had seen the boys shoving the same canoe off
the sand and jumping over the stern, and he proposed to do the same
thing, because he was used to canoes himself. Against the cautions
of the owner he _did_ shove off and jump, but he did not alight
in the canoe. That elfish little piece of Indian deviltry was not
there when he arrived; it slipped out from under him, sidewise, and
with a spring which jumped it almost clear of the water it sailed
away before the wind, while the canoeist went headfirst into six or
eight feet of water, silk hat, good clothes and all, amid the howls
of delight from the passengers on the steamer who had been watching
him. He was game, however, and admitted that he had never imagined
just how light and ticklish a birch-bark was; nor how much science
it required to jump _squarely_ over the stern of such a fragile
creation and maintain one's balance. Woodmen and canoeists familiar
with "birches" will understand just how small a deviation is required
to bring discomfiture. A little carelessness on the part of an old
hand is often just as fatal as a little ignorance on the part of the
tenderfoot.
But I digress. On the trip concerning which I started to tell, my
brother and I had been down to the Indian village and were on our way
home. When we emerged from Trudell Slough we found a gale blowing
from the south, against the current of the river, and great combing
waves were running, through which it seemed impossible to ride in
our little boats. However, we had to cross the river in order to get
home, and we did not long debate the question. Being the oldest I
took the lead, Sam following. He was but eleven years old, and had
a boat all by himself to manage in that sea. But he could paddle
a canoe as well as any Indian boy. I also could paddle, and being
older, nearly fourteen, was supposed to have the wisdom of the ages
in the matter of judgment in meeting and riding combers.
Under these conditions, I started out to make the crossing. My
brother has told me since that he never thought of any danger to
himself; but he figured, a dozen times, that I was gone--in fact he
lost three or four good bets that I would not come up again after
going down out of sight. My canoe would go down into the trough of
the sea at the same time that his did, thus he would lose track
of me. He had to keep his eyes on the "combers" and meet them at
just the right angle, or he himself would have been the "goner".
Sometimes he would not locate me until he had met three or four big
ones. Then he would rise over the tops of the waves at the same time
and would be able to reassure himself that I was still right side
up and paddling for life, and that he was out another bet. I do not
know that I thought of the danger at all, as I simply had my canoe
to look out for. Had Sam been in front I would have realized, as he
did, that we were taking lots of chances, and would have learned from
the diving of his craft just how great the danger really was, as he
did. We shipped a good deal of water--that is, a good deal for the
amount we could afford to take in and maintain any margin between the
gunwales of our canoes and the water outside. Before we got across we
were sitting in several inches of water, but a little baling cleared
this out as soon as we reached the Wisconsin side, and we proceeded
up the river, hugging the shore and keeping in the eddies and under
the points, without further adventures. I do not think we mentioned
the crossing as anything to brag of, as under the circumstances any
of the boys would have done the same thing in the same way.
One other incident in which the little canoe figured, involved the
closest call to drowning I ever had as a boy. Again I was out with my
brother, some ten miles down the river, near Diamond Bluff, fishing
and scouting about in the customary manner. Sam was ahead of me, and
had landed on a pile of driftwood lodged against a giant cottonwood
which had been undermined by the eating away of the river bank.
In falling, one or more of its branches had been so deeply driven
into the bottom of the river that it held at right angles with the
current, extending out fifty feet or more into the channel. Against
this obstruction all sorts of logs, lumber, and other drift had
lodged, forming a large raft. My brother had run in under the lower
side of this and climbed out, preparatory to dropping his line for
fish. I, doubtless carelessly, drifted down toward the upper side.
One of the limbs which did not quite reach the surface so as to be
seen, caught my little vessel and in an instant I was in the water,
and under the raft. I thought I was surely gone, for I supposed that
the driftwood was deep enough to catch and hold me. I had presence of
mind enough left, however, to do the only thing which was left--dive
as deeply as possible, and with open eyes steer clear of the many
branches through which I had to find my way toward the open water
on the lee side of the raft. Sam ran to the lower side to catch me
if I came up--an expectation which he had little hope of realizing,
thinking as I did that I would be caught like a rat in a trap, and
never come up until dug out. Fortunately the drift was not deep, and
the limbs not very close together, and I popped up as I cleared the
last log, but with so little breath left that another ten feet would
have drowned me. Sam caught me by the hand and "yanked" me out on the
drift, where I lay and took in air for some minutes to fill out my
collapsed lungs. In another ten minutes we were fishing as if nothing
had happened.
In these upsets which we were almost daily experiencing, our costumes
played an important though passive part. The entire uniform of the
average river lad of those days consisted of a pair of blue jean
trousers, a calico shirt, a home-made straw hat, and sometimes a
pair of "galluses". The last named item indicated an extravagant
expenditure; one "gallus" was ample for all practical purposes;
the second represented luxury and wanton extravagance. With such a
costume a boy in the water was practically unhampered, and could
and did swim with all the freedom of an unclothed cupid. One of the
customary relaxations of the Prescott boys was to run down Orange
Street when school "let out", in single file, dressed as above
described, hats and all, and dive from the ledge of rocks fifteen
feet high into water forty feet deep.
It was on one of these excursions that I had the only real scare of
my life. This may sound like braggadocio, but it is a fact. I have
been in places since that time, where I thought death imminent, and
knew that it was possible, if not probable, at any moment; but in
such situations I have more or less successfully been able to conceal
the fact of fear. In the case in question I did not attempt to
conceal from myself the fact that I was sincerely alarmed.
We had, late in the autumn, landed at a desolate _coulee_ several
miles below Prescott. I had gone back about half a mile from the
river, on to the prairie, leaving my brother at the canoe. Suddenly I
heard the long-drawn hunting cry of a wolf. Looking in the direction
of the sound I saw a big grey timber wolf loping toward me with the
speed of a race horse. His cries were answered from a distance, and
then I saw six other big wolves bounding over the prairie after me.
I looked around for some place of safety and saw at some distance--a
good deal less than a quarter of a mile, as I know it now, but it
looked all of that at the time--a small burr oak, the only tree near
enough to be available in this crisis. I knew enough about the big
timber wolves to know that I would instantly be in ribbons after they
were upon me. One alone might be kept off; but seven would have the
courage of numbers, and would make short work of a single boy. Then
I was scared. I could actually feel every hair upon my head standing
straight on end, as stiff as Hamlet's "quills upon the fretful
porcupine". It has been worth all that it cost, this hair-raising
experience, as an interpretation of the much-quoted expression from
the immortal Bard of Avon.
A good runner, I had a full half mile the start of the leading wolf.
I did not wait for him greatly to diminish the lead, but "lit out"
for the little burr oak. I covered the ground in the shortest time I
had ever devoted to a like distance, and although very nearly winded
jumped for the lower limbs and pulled myself up just in time to
escape the teeth of the forward beast. In another minute there were
seven of them, leaping to within a few feet of my legs as I stood on
a branch of the small tree, as high up as I dared to go.
My brother had heard the cries of the wolves, and running to the top
of the bank had watched the race with great interest. When the tree
was safely reached he shouted to me to hold on and he would go for
help, and he at once started for Prescott, four miles away, against
the current. For some reason which I have never been able to explain,
the wolves, after yelping and leaping for an hour or so, suddenly
started off across the prairie, and when they had gone a mile away I
climbed down and ran for home. In the meantime my hair had resumed
its normal position, and never since, under any circumstances, have
I experienced a like sensation. I presume that the thought of being
torn to pieces by the wolves, a contingency which seemingly was quite
probable, added a horror to the imminence of death which was not
present at a time when there was an equal chance of being drowned.
It was not because I did not know all about wolves, for I did. Their
cries were familiar sounds in that wild country, and their ferocity
had been proven time and again; but I had never heard nor seen them
when it meant quite so much to me, nor when the chances seemed so
slim.
Chapter III
_On the Levee at Prescott_
When we first knew it, Prescott was in many respects a typical river
town. But in one, it differed from all others with the possible
exception of Wacouta and Reed's Landing. "Towing through" had not
then been inaugurated. The great rafts of logs and lumber from
Stillwater and the upper St. Croix, were pushed to Prescott by
towboats from Stillwater, at the head of the lake. From there to Lake
Pepin they drifted. They were again pushed through that lake by other
boats, and from Reed's Landing, at the foot of the lake, drifted
to their destination at Winona, La Crosse, Clinton, Le Claire, or
Hannibal.
The necessary preparation for the trip down river was made at
Prescott. Stores of pork, beans, flour, molasses, and whiskey were
laid in. The hundreds of rough men who handled the great steering
oars on these rafts spent their money in the saloons which lined
the river front and adjacent streets, filling themselves with
noxious liquors, and often ending their "sprees" with a free fight
between rival crews. A hundred men would join in the fray, the city
marshal sitting on a "snubbing post", revolver in hand, watching the
affair with the enlightened eye of an expert and the enjoyment of a
connoisseur.
Prescott was also a transfer point for freight consigned to Afton,
Lakeland, Hudson, Stillwater, Osceola, and St. Croix Falls. The large
boats, unless they were heavily freighted for Stillwater and Hudson,
did not make the run of thirty miles up the lake. The freight was
put ashore at Prescott, and reshipped on the smaller boats plying
between Prescott and St. Croix River points. This made necessary
large warehouses in which to store the transshipped goods. My father,
L. H. Merrick, engaged in this business of storing and transshipping,
as well as dealing in boat-stores and groceries. Buying one
warehouse on the levee, he started a store in the basement, which
opened directly on to the levee. Moving his family into the two
upper stories, he began at once the erection of a second and larger
warehouse. These being insufficient for his business, he bought, in
1855, a third warehouse. These were filled, in summer, with goods in
transit, and in winter with wheat awaiting the opening of navigation
for shipment to Eastern markets, via Dunleith, Illinois, at that
time the nearest railroad connection on the river. The name of this
one-time prosperous city has, however, disappeared from the map, to
be replaced by East Dubuque.
From 1854 until 1858 the firm of L. H. Merrick & Co. (the company
being William R. Gates, my brother-in-law) did all the transfer and
storage business for the regular packets belonging to the Galena,
Dubuque, Dunleith & St. Paul Packet Company, commonly shortened to
Minnesota Packet Company, and also for such "wild" boats as did not
make the run up the lake.
The business was very profitable. Much of the freight consisted of
pork and beef in barrels, whiskey, sugar in hogsheads (refined sugar
was then scarcely known on the upper river), rice, soap, etc., which,
if there was no boat ready to receive it, could be covered with
tarpaulins on the levee, thus saving the cost of putting it in the
warehouses. The perishable freight and household goods were of course
stored under cover. A man was always on duty to meet incoming boats
at night, and to watch the freight piled on the levee. Sometimes,
when there was a large amount of such freight left outside, we
boys spent the night skylarking about the piles, keeping our eyes
open to see that the ubiquitous raftsmen did not surreptitiously
transfer some of the packages to the everpresent rafts. The transfer
agents paid the freight on the goods from the lower river points to
Prescott, and charged a commission of from five to twenty-five per
cent for such advance. In addition, a charge was made for storage,
whether the freight was actually placed in the warehouse or simply
covered and watched on the levee. If the goods were from Pittsburg
or St. Louis, the freight bills were usually large, and a five per
cent commission would produce a quite respectable income. If the
cargo were divided into small lots, so much the better. No package,
however small, escaped for less than a quarter ("two bits", as money
was then reckoned); and in addition to the commission on the money
advanced, there was an additional charge for storage, graduated,
as I have before stated, upon the value and perishability of the
freight handled. Altogether it was a very profitable occupation until
the year 1858, when there appeared a new bidder for the business,
knocking down the rates of commission and storage, as well as cutting
the business in two by getting the agency of many of the boats,
heretofore served by the old firm.
My brother and myself "bunked" in the garret of the warehouse in
which we had made our temporary home. There were two windows fronting
the river, and I feel sure that at night no steamboat ever landed
at the levee without having at least two spectators, carefully
noting its distinguishing characteristics. Was she a side-wheel
or stern-wheel? Was she large or small? Had she trimmings on her
smokestack, or about the pilot house, and if so of what description?
Had she a "Texas", or no "Texas"? Were the outside blinds painted
white, red, or green? What was the sound of her whistle and bell?
All of these points, and many others, were taken in, and indelibly
impressed upon our memories, so that if the whistle or bell were
again heard, perhaps months afterward, the name of the boat could be
given with almost unfailing accuracy. It was a part of the education
of the "levee rats", as the boys were called. A boy that could not
distinguish by ear alone a majority of the boats landing at the levee
from year to year, was considered as deficient in his education. Of
course every boy in town could tell what craft was coming as soon as
she whistled, if she was one of the regular "packets". Every boat
had a whistle toned and tuned so that it might be distinguished from
that of any other boat of the same line. The bells, which were always
struck as the boat came into the landing, also differed widely in
tone. There was one, the music of which will live in my memory so
long as life lasts. The tone of the "Ocean Wave's" bell was deep,
rich, sonorous, and when heard at a distance on a still, clear
night, was concentrated sweetness. Were I rich I would, were it a
possibility, find that bell and hang it in some bell-less steeple
where I might hear again its splendid tones, calling not alone to
worship, but summoning for me from the misty past pictures indelibly
printed upon boyish senses.
A picturesque and animated scene, was one of these night landings;
the discharge and taking on of freight, the shouting of orders, the
escaping of steam, and all the sights and sounds which for the time
transformed the levee from its usual quietude and darkness, broken
only by the faint glimmer of the watchman's lantern and the ripple of
the water upon the beach, into life, light, and activity.
The advent of the electric search-light has driven from the river one
of the most picturesque of all the accessories to such scenes as we
boys looked down upon, night after night, during the busy times of
1854 and 1855, before I myself became part and parcel of it all. The
torch, by the light of which the work went on by night, was within an
iron basket, about a foot in diameter and eighteen inches deep, swung
loosely between the prongs of a forked iron bar or standard, which
could be set in holes in the forward deck, leaning far out over the
water, so as to allow live coals from the burning wood to fall into
the river, and not upon deck.
When a landing was to be made at a woodyard or a town, the watchman
filled one or perhaps two of these torch baskets with split
"light-wood", or "fat-wood"--Southern pine full of resinous sap,
which would burn fiercely, making a bright light, illuminating the
deck of the boat and the levee for hundreds of feet around. As the
boat neared the landing the pine splinters were lighted at the
furnace door, the torch being carried to place and firmly fixed in
its socket. Then came out the attending demon who fed the burning,
smoking "jack" with more pine fatwood, and from time to time with a
ladle of pulverized rosin. The rosin would flare up with a fierce
flame, followed by thick clouds of black smoke, the melted tar
falling in drops upon the water, to float away, burning and smoking
until consumed. This addition to the other sights and sounds served
more than any other thing to give this night work a wild and weird
setting. We boys decided, on many a night, that we would "go on the
river" and feed powdered rosin and pine kindlings to torches all
night long, as the coal-black and greasy, but greatly envied white
lamp-boy did, night after night, in front of our attic windows on the
levee at Prescott. The cleaner and brighter, but very commonplace
electric light has driven the torch from the river; and if one is to
be found at all in these degenerate days it will be as a curiosity in
some historical museum.
And thus we grew into the very life of the river as we grew in
years. I finally attained an age when my services were worth
something in the economy of a steamboat's crew. My first venture
was made in company with one who afterward attained rank and honor
in the civil service of the state--the Honorable Sam. S. Fifield,
lieutenant-governor of Wisconsin. I have a letter written by Mr.
Fifield since I began writing these sketches, in which he says that
he recollects the writer as a "white-haired boy, full of all sorts of
pranks". I presume this description of how I looked and what I did is
correct; but forty years ago to have applied to him any such personal
description of his thatch would have been a _casus belli_ for which
nothing but blood could atone. It is white, now; at that time it was
a subdued brindle, with leanings toward straw, and a subject not
lightly to be discussed in the presence of its owner.
The stern-wheel steamer "Kate Cassell" wintered above the lake--that
is, above Lake Pepin--I think at Diamond Bluff, where at the close
of navigation she was caught in the ice. In the spring her captain
appeared, with an engineer, a pilot, a steward, and possibly some
other officers, and picked up the remainder of officers and crew
'longshore. I remember that one of my schoolmates, Nat. Blaisdell,
went as assistant engineer, Russ. Ruley as mate, and a number of
longshoremen from Prescott as deck hands, while Sam Fifield and I
were pantry boys. Sam got enough of it in a few trips between St.
Paul and Rock Island. I stayed through the season. We both were
printers. Sam went back to the case at once; I went to mine again in
the fall, after the close of navigation, and stuck type during the
winter, as I also did each returning season while on the river.
The next spring I engaged with "Billy" Hamilton, as a "cub" engineer.
Prior to starting out on the season's run the machinery of the
boat ("Fanny Harris") had to be put in order. There was a regular
blacksmith's forge on board. All river engineers were, perforce,
good blacksmiths, able to make anything pertaining to the machinery
which it was possible to make from wrought iron bars with an ordinary
forge and anvil, with a twelve-pound striking hammer and a two-pound
shaper. We made scores of extra "stirrups"--the double bolts,
with nuts, that clamp the "buckets" to the wheel-arms. We made
hog-chains and chimney guys, and, as needed, bent them into place.
The boilers, engines, and "Doctor"--the steam pump for feeding water
to the boilers, pumping out the steamer, etc.--were all overhauled
and put in perfect order. The engines were leveled and "lined up";
the eccentrics were carefully adjusted and securely fastened; the
"nigger" hoisting engine, for handling freight and warping the boat
over sand-bars was fitted up, and a hundred other minor but important
matters were attended to, so that when steam was raised and turned
on, the wheel would "turn over", and the boat go. Some wheels did not
at first turn over, and it was not to the credit of the man who had
lined the engines and set the eccentrics. Billy Hamilton's wheel,
however, turned over the first trial.
Had I followed up this line of activity under Billy's tutelage, no
doubt I would have become a capable engineer, for I liked the work
and took a genuine delight in handling machinery, a liking which
I have not yet outgrown. But there were decided drawbacks. The
reversing gear of a Mississippi River steamboat, in old times, was
like nothing else of its kind, anywhere under the sun. The engines
were of the lever and poppet-valve order, and the reversing gear was
heavy. The connecting-rod (cam-rod, we called it) weighed at least
fifty pounds, even though it was attached to the "rock-shaft" at one
end. In reversing, the end of the connecting-rod was lifted off its
hook at the bottom, the lever thrown over, in which operation two
heavy valve-levers were raised, the rod lifted about three feet, and
dropped on to the upper hook. It was all right when you did this once
or twice in making a landing; but in a piece of "crooked river", the
boat dodging about among reefs and bars, with the bells coming faster
than you could answer them, it was another matter, and became pretty
trying work for a stripling boy; his arms could not keep the pace.
Another drawback in the life of a "cub" engineer was the fact that
when in port there was no let-up to the work. In fact, the worst part
of it came then. As soon as the steamer reached her destination at
Galena, the pilots were at liberty until the hour of sailing; not so
with the engineers. We usually reached Galena Thursday evening or
night, and left for up river Friday evening. As soon as the boat was
made fast the "mud-valves" were opened, the fires drawn, the water
let out of the boilers, and the process of cleaning began. Being a
slim lad, one of my duties was to creep into the boilers through the
manhole, which was just large enough to let me through; and with
a hammer and a sharp-linked chain I must "scale" the boilers by
pounding on the two large flues and the sides with the hammer, and
sawing the chain around the flues until all the accumulated mud and
sediment was loosened. It was then washed out by streams from the
deck-hose, the force-pump being manned by the firemen, of whom there
were eight on our four-boiler boat.
Scaling boilers was what decided me not to persevere in the
engineering line. To lie flat on one's stomach on the top of a
twelve-inch flue, studded with rivet heads, with a space of only
fifteen inches above one's head, and in this position haul a chain
back and forth without any leverage whatever, simply by the muscles
of the arm, with the thermometer 90° in the shade, was a practice
well calculated to disillusionize any one not wholly given over to
mechanics. While I liked mechanics I knew when I had enough, and
therefore reached out for something one deck higher. The unexpected
disability of our "mud clerk", as the second clerk is called on the
river, opened the way for an ascent, and I promptly availed myself of
it.
[Illustration: PRESCOTT LEVEE IN 1876. Showing Steamer "Centennial"
and the little Hastings ferry, "Plough Boy." The double warehouse,
showing five windows in the second story and four in the third was
the building in which the author lived when a boy.]
[Illustration: PRESCOTT LEVEE IN 1908. But one business building--one
of the old Merrick warehouses, left intact. Dunbar's Hall gutted by
fire recently. The large steamboat warehouse next to it destroyed
some years ago. All the shipping business gone to the railroad, which
runs just back of the buildings shown.]
Chapter IV
_In the Engine-room_
Before leaving the main deck, with its savory scents of scorching
oil, escaping steam, and soft-coal gas, let me describe some of
the sights, sounds, and activities which impressed themselves upon
the memory of the young "cub" during his brief career as an embryo
engineer.
The engine-room crew of a Mississippi steamer varies as the boat is a
side-wheeler or a stern-wheeler. In my day, a stern-wheeler carried
two engineers, a "first" and a "second". The former was chosen for
his age and experience, to him being confided the responsibility
of the boat's machinery. His knowledge, care, and oversight were
depended upon to keep the engines, boilers, etc., in good repair, and
in serviceable condition. The second engineer received less wages,
and his responsibility ended in standing his watch, handling the
engines, and in keeping enough water in the boilers to prevent the
flues from burning, as well as to avoid an explosion. If a rival boat
happened to be a little ahead or a little behind, or alongside, and
the "second" was on watch, the margin of water between safety and
danger in the boilers was usually kept nearer the minimum than it
would have been were the "chief" in command. It is very much easier
to get hot steam with little water than with much; and hot steam
is a prime necessity when another boat is in sight, going the same
direction as your own.
On the "Fanny Harris", the pilots always depended upon Billy Hamilton
when in a race, as he would put on the "blowers"--the forced draft,
as it is called in polite, though less expressive language--and never
let the water get above the second gauge, and never below the first,
if he could help it. Sometimes it was a matter of doubt where the
water really was, the steam coming pretty dry when tried by the
"gauge-stick"--a broom handle, which, pushed against the gauges, of
which there were three in the end of the boiler (three inches apart,
vertically, the lower one situated just above the water-line over
the top of the flues), opened the valve and permitted the steam and
water to escape into a short tin trough beneath. If a stream of water
ran from the first and second gauges when so tried, but not from
the third, there was a normal and healthy supply of water in the
boilers. If the water came from the first, but not from the second,
the "Doctor" was started and the supply increased. When it reached
the third gauge the supply was cut off. If, as I have seen it, there
was, when tried, none in the first or lower gauge, there followed a
guessing match as to just how far below the minimum the water really
was, and what would be the result of throwing in a supply of cold
water. The supply was always thrown in, and that quickly, as time
counts in such cases.
The pilot at the wheel, directly over the boilers, is in blissful
ignorance of the vital question agitating the engineer. He may at
times have his suspicions, as the escape pipes talk in a language
which tells something of the conditions existing below decks; but if
the paddle wheels are turning over with speed, he seldom worries over
the possibilities which lie beneath him. His answer to the question,
whether the water is below the safety point, comes as he feels the
deck lifting beneath his feet, and he sails away to leeward amid the
debris of a wrecked steamboat.
Probably four-fifths of the boiler explosions which have taken place
on the Mississippi River during the last eighty years--and there have
been hundreds of such--were the result of these conditions: low water
in the boilers, exposing the plates until red-hot, then throwing in
water and "jumping" the steam pressure faster than the engines or
safety-valve could release it, followed by the inevitable giving away
of the whole fabric of the boiler, wrecking the steamer, and usually
killing and scalding many of the passengers and crew.
On a side-wheel boat the make-up of the engine crew is different.
In addition to the first and second engineers there are two "cubs",
or "strikers". The stern-wheeler has two engines, but they are both
coupled to the same shaft, by a crank at each end. The throttle wheel
is in the centre of the boat. One man operates the two engines, and
assists at landings, but in a bad piece of river is helped by one of
the firemen, who is called aft by a little bell controlled by a cord
from the engine-room. This man "ships up" on the port side, while the
engineer "ships up" on the starboard. "Shipping up" was the term used
to describe the act of shifting the cam-rod from the lower pin on the
reversing lever to the upper, or _vice versa_. If done at a sudden
call, the engineer ran to one side and "shipped up", then across the
deck to the other, and then back to the centre to "give her steam".
That is all changed now by the adoption of an improved reversing
gear, similar to that on a railway locomotive, the throwing of a
lever at the centre of the boat operating the reversing gears on both
engines at once. Instead of the old-time "short-link", or "cut-off
hook", the equivalent of the "hooking-back" on a locomotive when
under way is performed by the engineer at the centre of the boat by
hooking back the reversing lever one, two, or three notches, exactly
as on the locomotive. Fifty years ago this simple device had not been
adopted on the river.
On the side-wheel boat, to get back to my subject, the engines are
independent--one engine to each wheel. One may be coming ahead while
the other is backing, or they may both be reversing at the same
time. A man is therefore required to operate each engine, hence the
necessity for a "striker", or "cub", to take one engine while the
engineer on watch takes the other. The engineer on duty, be he chief
or assistant, takes the starboard engine and controls the running
of the machinery and the feeding of the boilers during his watch;
the "cub" takes the port engine and works under the direction of
his superior on watch. As I have stated at the beginning of this
chapter, the handling of these powerful engines was hard work, even
for a grown man, when the river was low and the pilot was feeling his
way over a crossing in a dark night, with both leads going, and the
wheels doing much of the work of keeping the boat in the intricate
channel between the reefs. Then it was that the bells came thick
and fast--to stop, to back, to come ahead again, to slow, to come
ahead full steam, and again to stop and back and come ahead. Then
the cut-off hook was pulled up by a rope attached to the deck beams
overhead, and the heavy cam-rod was lifted from the lower hook to the
upper by main strength, or dropped from the upper to the lower with
scant regard for the finish on the bright work, to be lifted again at
the call of the next bell from the pilot, and all this a dozen times,
or even more, in making one crossing.
And all the time the "cub" was in deadly fear of getting his engine
caught on the centre, a calamity in both material and moral sense,
as a "centre" might mean the disablement of an engine at a critical
moment, throwing the steamer out of the channel, and hanging her up
for hours, or even for days, on a sand-bar. It might even have a
more calamitous sequence, by running her on the rocks or snags and
sinking her. Hence, for pressing reasons, the most acute alertness
was necessary on the part of the "striker". The moral obloquy of
"centring" an engine was so great among river men, especially
among engineers, that no "cub" ever again held his head high after
suffering such a mischance; and it was a proud boast among the
embryo engineers if they could honestly claim that they had never
"centred" their engine. On general principles they always boasted
of it as a fact, until some one appeared who could testify to the
contrary. I enter that claim here and now without fear of successful
contradiction. All my confederates in that business are now out of
commission.
One of the beauties of the puppet-valve engine, with its long
stroke[A] and consequent "purchase" on the shaft-crank, was that by
the aid of a billet of wood, about two and a half inches square, with
a handle whittled off on one end, and with a loop of cord to hang
it up by, or to hang it on one's wrist (where it was usually found
when the boat was navigating a crooked piece of river), an increase
of fifty per cent of steam could be let into the cylinder by the
simple device of inserting the club between the rocker-arm and the
lever which lifted the inlet valve, as graphically described in the
paper by Mr. Holloway, quoted in this chapter. If the valve were
normally lifted four inches by the rocker-arm, the insertion of the
club would increase the lift by its thickness. This additional power
fed to the cylinder at the right moment would drive the wheel over
the centre when reversed with the boat going upstream at a speed of
eight or ten miles an hour, against a four-mile current, with almost
absolute certainty. With a ten-foot wheel, and three buckets in the
water, one submerged to its full width of three feet, and the other
two perhaps two feet, it can readily be understood by an engineer
that to turn such a wheel back against the current required a great
expenditure of power at just the right time. The "club" of the
Western steamboat engineer solved the question of additional power
at the critical moment. No short-stroke engine would respond to such
a call. While this service tried the cylinders to their utmost--many
times a little beyond their utmost, with a consequent loss of a
cylinder head, and worse yet, a scalded engineer--the use of the club
was justified by experience; and results which, with finer and more
perfect machinery would have been impossible, were, day after day,
made possible by reason of the crudeness and roughness of this usage.
[A] The "stroke" of an engine is the distance traveled by
the cross-head of the piston in making a complete revolution
of the wheel--equal to twice the length of the crank on the
water-wheel shaft. If the crank is three feet long, the
stroke will be six feet. The stroke of the "Grey Eagle" of
the Minnesota Packet Company was seven feet; that of the "J.
M. White", lower river boat, was eleven feet. The cylinders
of course equaled the full stroke in length. The longer the
crank the greater the purchase, but at a consequent loss in the
number of revolutions of the wheel per minute.
The great steamers plying on Long Island Sound attain a speed of
twenty miles an hour, or even more. It is said that when under full
speed it is possible to turn the wheels back over the centre within
half a mile after steam has been shut off. Under ordinary conditions
it is not necessary that they should be handled any faster. But think
of the conditions under which a Mississippi River steamboat must
stop and back, or suffer shipwreck. And imagine, if you can, the
remarks a river pilot would make if the wheel were not turning back
within thirty seconds after the bell was rung. I think five seconds
would be nearer the limit for reversing and giving steam. In fact,
on all side-wheel boats, the levers controlling the steam valves are
attached to small tackles, and these are controlled by one lever, by
which the steam levers may be raised in an instant, without closing
the throttle at all, and the steam allowed to pass out through the
escape pipes while the engine remains passive.
Two ends are attained by this device: steam can instantly be shut
off, or as quickly given to the cylinders, thus making a saving in
time over the usual opening and closing of the steam ports by the
throttle wheel. Another advantage is, that this device acts as a
safety-valve; for, were the steam to be entirely shut off, and the
safety-valve fail to work, an explosion would certainly follow. By
opening all the valves at once, and permitting as much steam to
escape through the exhaust pipes as when the engine is in motion,
the danger of an explosion is minimized. At the call of the pilot
the levers can instantly be dropped and full steam ahead or reversed
given at once--of course at the expense of a good deal of a "jolt"
to the engines and cylinders. But the river engines were built to be
"jolted", hence their practical adaptation to the service in which
they were used.
J. F. Holloway, of St. Louis, who, in his own words, "was raised on
the river, having filled every position from roustabout to master",
in a paper read before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
at St. Louis in May, 1896, contributes the following description of
a steamboat race as seen and heard in the engine-room--a point of
view somewhat lacking, perhaps, in picturesqueness to the ordinary
observer, but nevertheless very essential in winning a race. The
writer is evidently as thoroughly at home in the engine-room as he is
upon the roof:
"The reason which induced the builders of engines for these
Western river boats to adopt such peculiar construction could
hardly be made clear without a careful description of the
hull of the boats, and of the varying conditions to which
both engines and hulls are subjected, and under which they
must operate. The steam cylinders are placed on foundations
as unstable as would be a raft, and the alignment is varied
by the addition or removal of every ton of freight which the
boats carry when afloat, and they are further distorted when
aground, or when the boats are being dragged over sand bars
having several inches less of water on them than is required
to float the hull. While the calm study of the machinery of a
Western river steamboat while at rest would be an interesting
object lesson to any one at all interested in such matters,
it can only be seen at its best at a time when some rival
boat is striving with it for "the broom," and close behind is
slowly gaining, with roaring furnaces, and chimneys belching
out vast volumes of thick black smoke; when all on board,
from the pilot above to the fireman below are worked up to
the highest pitch of enthusiasm, and when engines, boilers,
engineers and all concerned in the management of the boat,
are called upon to show the stuff which is in them. I know of
no more exciting scene than was often to be witnessed in the
days of the old famous Ohio River ports, when a "ten-boiler"
boat was trying to make a record, or take a wharf-boat landing
away from some close-following rival steamer. To stand on
the boiler deck at such a time on a big side-wheel boat,
when in order to get ahead the pilot had made up his mind to
close-shave a "tow-head," or take the dangerous chances of
a new channel or a new "cut-off," and when all on board knew
the risk he was taking, and standing by to help him through,
or help _themselves_ if he failed, was exciting to a degree.
Then it was that the two most skilful and daring engineers
were called on watch, and took their stands alongside their
respective engines, stripped like gladiators for the tussle
which soon came as the clanging starboard bell rang out to
"slow down," and as the hasty ringing of the "jingler" over
the port engine meant "crack it to her." Then as the bow of
the big boat swung, all too slow to suit the emergency or the
impatience of the pilot, a stopping starboard bell would ring,
quick followed by a backing one which would set the engineer
to wrestling with his "hooks," one of which he hangs up with a
cord, and the other he picks up seemingly from somewhere on the
platform. As the suddenly stopped and quivering wheel in the
swift-flowing current hangs for a moment poised on the centre,
the engineer, grasping his ever-at-hand club of wood, quickly
thrusts it between the uprising rocker-arm and the lever that
lifts the inlet puppet valve, to which widened opening of the
steam-valve port the engine responds with a noise of escaping
steam not unlike the roar of an enraged elephant when prodded
with the iron hook of his keeper. The battle of the bells thus
begun, waxes more fierce as the excitement increases. There
are bells to the right, and bells to the left, and amid their
discordant jangle the engineers are working like mad as they
clutch the throttle, open or close "the bleeder," hook her on
"ahead," or stop and back, in such rapid succession as that
soon neither they, nor any one else, can tell how far behind
the bells of the pilot they are. Then soon amid the wild roar
of the pent-up steam as it rushes out of the safety-valve
pipes, the exploding exhausts of the engines which at the end
of each stroke sound as if the cylinder-head had blown off, and
to which is added the shrill noise of the warning bell which
calls to the firemen to "throw open the furnace doors," there
comes from out the huge trumpet shaped pipe above the head of
the engineers, and which leads down from the pilot-house, a
hoarse shout, heard above all else, partaking alike of command,
entreaty, and adjectives, urging something or other to be done,
and done quick, else the boat and all on board of her, in a
brief time will land in a place which by reason of the reputed
entire absence of water could not well be called a "port" (and
certainly is no port mentioned in the boat's manifests). This
battle of the bells and irons goes on until, if in a race, the
rival boat is passed or crowded to the bank, or the narrow
channel widens out into the broad river, when the discordant
jangle of the bells ceases, the tired engineer drops on the
quiet "cut-off hook," lays by his emergency wooden club, and
wiping the sweat from his heated brow, comes down from the
foot-board to catch a breath of the cool air which sweeps over
the guards, and to formulate in his mind the story which he
will have to tell of the race just over, or the perils just
past.
But the old-time flyers which before the war tore their way
up and down through the muddy waters of these Western rivers
are all gone, and the marvelously skilled pilots of those
days have gone too; the men who, through the darkest hours
of the darkest nights, knew to within a few feet just where
their boats were, and what was on the right or on the left, or
beneath them, which was to be shunned. The engineers too, who
with a courage born and nurtured amid the vicissitudes of a
backwoods life, and with an experience and skill the outgrowth
of trials and dangers gone through, have also passed away, and
to the generation of the present are unhonored and unknown, as
are the men who designed and built the hulls, and the workmen
who, with crude and scant tools, built for them the machinery
which they so well planned and handled.
Who they were, and where they lie, is known to but few, if any.
Did I but know their final resting-place, I would, like "Old
Mortality," wish to carve anew, and deep, the fading records
of their life and death, which time has so nearly obliterated,
and to herald abroad the praise and honor due them as the
designers, builders, and engineers, of the old-time Western
river steamboats."
Chapter V
_The Engineer_
It would be impossible to pick out any one man who handled an engine
on the river fifty years ago, and in describing his habits and
peculiarities claim him as a type of all river engineers of his time.
The legendary engineer, such as Colonel Hay has given us, standing at
the throttle of his engine on the ill-fated "Prairie Belle", waiting
for signals from the pilot house, his boat a roaring furnace of fire,
and whose spirit finally ascended with the smoke of his steamer, was
a true type of one class, and possibly a large class, of old-time
river engineers. Reckless, profane, combative; yet courageous, proud
of their calling, and to be depended upon to do their duty under any
and all circumstances; giving, if need be, their lives for the safety
of the passengers and crew of the boat--such was one class. Another
was composed of men equally courageous, equally to be depended upon
in time of danger, but sober, quiet, religious, family men, who never
used a profane word, never went on sprees ashore, never supported one
wife at home and another at "Natchez under the Hill."
On the boat upon which I gained the greater part of my river
experience, we had the two types: George McDonald, chief, and Billy
Hamilton, assistant. Either would have died at his post, the one
with a prayer upon his lips, and the other with a jest; both alike
alert, cool, efficient. McDonald was a Scotch Presbyterian, and might
have been an elder in the church at home--perhaps he was. He was a
religious man on board his boat, where religion was at a discount. He
was a capable engineer; he could make anything that it was possible
to make, on the portable forge in the steamer's smithy. He was always
cool, deliberate, ready, and as chief was the captain's right-hand
man in the engine-room.
Billy Hamilton was his opposite in everything, save in professional
qualifications. In these he was the equal of his chief, except in
length of service, and consequent experience. The son of a Maryland
slave owner, he was a "wild one" on shore, and a terror to the
captain when on board and on duty. In a race with a rival boat
his recklessness in carrying steam was always counted upon by the
pilot on watch, to make up for any inherent difference in speed
that might handicap our boat. He would put on the blower (forced
draft) until solid chunks of live wood coals would be blown from the
smokestacks. He would keep the water at the first gauge, or under
it. He had a line rigged from the safety-valve lever, running aft to
the engine-room. In times of peace the line was rove over a pulley
fixed under the deck, above the safety-valve. A pull on the line in
this position would raise the valve and allow the steam to escape.
When another boat was in sight, going our way, the slack of the rope
was hauled forward and the bight carried under a pulley fixed in
a stanchion alongside the boiler, below the safety-valve, running
thence up and over the upper pulley as before--but with all the
difference in the world, for with the fifty-pound anvil hanging to
the end of the line thus reversed in its leverage, the boilers might
have blown up a hundred times before the safety-valve would have
acted.
I have often heard the signal which Billy had agreed upon with his
fireman on the port side, and have seen the darky slip the line
under the lower pulley, and then keep one eye on the boiler-deck
companionway, watching for the captain. Should he be seen coming
below, the line was as quickly slipped off the lower pulley and
restored to its normal position; sometimes with a concurrent "blowing
off" through the safety-valve, which was evidence enough for the
captain, although he might not catch Billy in the act. It is no more
than just to say that the visits of the captain below decks were not
frequent. He was a New Orleans man, of French extraction, with a fine
sense of honor which forbade any espionage of this nature, unless
there seemed to be an especially flagrant case of steam-carrying on
the part of his junior engineer.
Billy had another device which greatly galled the captain, and later
it was the cause of a serious affair. The captain had a private
servitor, a colored man who cared for his rooms in the "Texas",
served his lunches there, and ran errands about the boat as required.
The captain used to send him down to the engine-room when he
suspected Hamilton was carrying more steam than was nominated in the
license, to look at the gauge and take readings.
It was not long before Hamilton became aware of this surreptitious
reading, and set himself to work to defeat it without the necessity
of ordering the captain's man out of the engine-room. To this end he
made a cap of sheet lead which covered the face of the dial, leaving
only about two inches in the centre, showing the pivot and a small
portion of the pointer. This balked the colored messenger completely,
as he could not see the figures, and he was not well enough
acquainted with the instrument to read it from the centre. On his
last visit to the engine-room, Hamilton saw him coming. Pretending
that he was going forward to try the water, but keeping his eye
on the messenger, he saw him reach up and take off the cap. In an
instant Hamilton turned and threw his shaping hammer, which he had
in his hand, with such true aim that it struck the poor darky in the
head and knocked him senseless. As he dropped to the deck Hamilton
called one of his firemen, telling him to give his compliments to
Captain Faucette and tell him to send some men and take away his
(profanely described) nigger, as he had no use for him. The darky
pulled through all right, I think. He was put ashore at the first
landing and placed under the care of a doctor, and Hamilton paid his
bills. His successor never came into the engine-room, and the cap on
the steam gauge was laid aside as unnecessary.
Whenever the mate had a "shindy" with the crew, which was composed
of forty Irishmen, all the other officers of the boat were bound to
"stand by" for trouble. Hamilton was always ready, if not anxious,
for such occasions, and he and Billy Wilson, the mate, always
supported each other so effectively that many an incipient mutiny
was quickly quelled, the two jumping into a crowd and hitting every
head in sight with whatever weapon happened to be at hand until order
was restored. Usually, however, it was with bare hands, and the show
which authority always makes in face of insubordination.
At times, Billy's vagaries were of a grisly and gruesome character.
I recall that at Point Douglass, on one of our trips, we found a
"floater" (body of a drowned man) that had been in the water until it
was impossible to handle it. To get it on shore it was necessary to
slide a board beneath, and draw out board and body together. It was
a malodorous and ghastly undertaking. Something said to this effect,
Hamilton laughed at as being altogether too finicky for steamboatmen.
To demonstrate that it need not affect either one's sensibilities
or stomach, he stepped into the cook's galley for a sandwich, and
sitting down on the end of the board, alongside the corpse, ate his
lunch without a qualm.
Another and rather more amusing incident took place while the "Fanny
Harris" was in winter quarters at Prescott. The night before St.
Patrick's day, Billy made up an effigy, which he hung between the
smokestacks. As the manikin had a clay pipe in its mouth and a string
of potatoes about its neck, it might have reference to the patron
saint of the Old Sod. The loyal Irishmen of the town so interpreted
it at least, and Billy had to stand off the crowd for several hours
with a shot gun, and finally get the town marshal to guard the boat
while he climbed up and removed the obnoxious image.
He had a little iron cannon which he fired on all holidays, and
sometimes when there was no holiday; in the latter case, at about
three o'clock in the morning, just to remind people living in the
vicinity of the levee that he was still "on watch". In retaliation
for the effigy affair, his Irish friends slipped aboard the boat one
evening while he was away and spiked his cannon by driving a rat-tail
file into the vent; this was after he had carefully loaded it for a
demonstration intended to come off the next morning. He discovered
the trick when he attempted to fire the gun, and offered pertinent
and forcible remarks, but unprintable in this narration. He lost no
time in vain regrets, however. Lighting up his forge he made a screw
and drew out the load. Then with the help of several chums he moved
his forge to the bow of the boat (the foc'sle), rigged a crane so
that he could swing his little cannon in a chain sling, from the
capstan to the forge, and back again. When the time came for firing
the salute he had his gun heated red-hot on the forge; it was then
swung back on to the capstan-head, where it was lashed with a chain.
A bucket of water was then thrown into the gun, and instantly a
hardwood plug, made to fit, was driven home with his heavy striking
hammer. In a minute the steam generated by this process caused an
explosion that threw the plug almost across the river, fully a
quarter of a mile, with a reasonably fair result in the way of noise.
It was a risky piece of work, but "Billy" was in his element when
there was a spice of risk mixed with his sports.
Billy's humor was broad, but never malicious. He never missed an
opportunity to play a practical joke on any one, save, perhaps, the
captain himself. The deck hands who "soldiered" by sitting on the
side of their bunks when they ought to be at work toting freight,
were sometimes lifted several feet in the air by the insertion of two
inches of a darning needle ingeniously attached to the under side of
the board bench upon which they took their seat. It was operated from
the engine-room by a fine wire and a stiff spring, the whole boxed
in so securely by the carpenter that there was no possibility of its
discovery by the enraged victim.
He was one of the most open-handed and liberal of men in his givings,
and in spite of his escapades a valuable officer. In 1862 he left the
boat, as did all the crew, to enlist under the call for three hundred
thousand troops, made in July of that year. In all discussions of the
war he had asserted his determination to keep away from any place
where there was shooting, as he was afraid of bullets of any size
from an ounce up. As he was a Southern man, son of a slaveholder,
we thought that this badinage was to cover his determination not
to take any part in the war on the Union side; we never questioned
his courage. He went into the navy as an acting assistant engineer,
and was assigned to one of the "tin-clads" that Commodore Porter
had improvised for service on the Mississippi and tributaries, and
that did such heroic service in opening and keeping open the great
river. Within a few months after his entry into the service, his old
friends saw with pleasure, but not surprise, his name mentioned in
general orders for gallantry in action. He had stood by his engine on
the gunboat after a pipe had been cut by a shell from a Confederate
shore battery, a number of men being killed and wounded, and the
engine-room filled with escaping steam. Binding his coat over his
face and mouth to prevent inhalation of the steam he handled his
engines at the risk of his life, in response to the pilot's bells,
until his boat was withdrawn from danger. It was in keeping with his
known character; and his talk of being "afraid of guns" was only a
part of the levity with which he treated all situations, grave or gay.
I do not know Billy's ultimate fate. When he left the "Fanny Harris"
for gunboat service, I also left to enlist in the infantry. After
three years in the army I was mustered out in Washington, and
soon went to New York where I remained for ten years or more. In
the interim between 1862 and 1876, when I returned to the West,
I completely lost sight of all my old river acquaintances. When,
later, I made inquiries of those whom I did find, they either did not
enlighten me as to his fate, or, if they did, I made so little note
of it that it has escaped my memory.
Chapter VI
_The "Mud" Clerk_[B]--_Comparative Honors_
[B] "Mud" Clerk: Second clerk, whose duty it was to go out in
all weathers, upon the unpaved levees and deliver or receive
freight. As the levees were usually muddy in rainy weather, the
name became descriptive of the work and condition of the second
clerk.
The transition from the "main deck" to the "boiler deck" marked an
era in my experience. It opened a new chapter in my river life, and
one from which I have greatly profited. When I went upon the river
I was about as bashful a boy as could be found; that had been my
failing from infancy. As pantry boy I had little intercourse with the
passengers, the duties of that department of river industry requiring
only the washing, wiping, and general care of dishes and silverware.
A "cub" engineer slipped up to his stateroom, and donned presentable
clothing in which to eat his meals in the forward cabin, at the
officers' table, where all save the captain and chief clerk took
their meals. After that, his principal business was to keep out of
sight as much as possible until it was time to "turn in". He was not
an officer, and passengers were not striving for his acquaintance.
As second clerk all these conditions were changed. In the absence
of the chief clerk, his assistant took charge of the office,
answered all questions of passengers, issued tickets for passage
and staterooms, showed people about the boat, and in a hundred ways
made himself agreeable, and so far as possible ministered to their
comfort and happiness while on board. The reputation of a passenger
boat depended greatly upon the esteem in which the captain, clerks,
and pilots were held by the travelling public. The fame of such a
crew was passed along from one tourist to another, until the gentle
accomplishments of a boat's _personnel_ were as well known as their
official qualifications.
Captain William Faucette was, as I have said, of French Creole
stock, from New Orleans. In addition to being a good and capable
officer on the roof, he was also highly endowed with the graces
that commended him to the ladies and gentlemen who took passage
with him. Polite in his address, a fine dancer, a good story-teller
and conversationist, his personality went far toward attracting the
public who travelled for pleasure--and that was the best-paying
traffic, for which every first-class packet was bidding.
Charles Hargus, chief clerk, was not far behind his chief in winning
qualities. An educated man, he was also possessed of the address and
the other personal qualities which were necessary to equip one for
becoming a successful officer on a Mississippi passenger steamer.
Such was the atmosphere into which the oily "cub" from the
engine-room was ushered, when drafted into this service because of
the serious illness of the second clerk. It was too late to get a man
from the city, and the necessities of the case required an immediate
filling of the vacancy. I was invited, or rather commanded, to go
into the office for the trip, and do what I could to help out with
the work until the return to Galena, where a man or boy could be
found to fill the office until the sick officer returned.
The boat was guard-deep with freight, and at night the cabin was
carpeted with passengers sleeping on mattresses spread on the floor.
The chief clerk simply had to have somebody to help out. On my part,
it was the chance of my life. Without much prior business experience,
what little I had was right in line. I had checked freight on the
levee for the firm of L. H. Merrick & Co., was a good penman, fairly
good at figures, and had made out freight bills in the transfer of
freight at Prescott, which fact was known to the chief clerk. It is
needless to add that I required no second order. While second clerks
were not likely to get any shore leave at either end of the route,
nor at any intermediate ports, it required no brilliancy of intellect
to see that checking freight was comparatively cleaner than, and
superlatively preferable to, boiler-scaling.
Regarding my success in this new field, suffice it to say that the
trip to St. Paul and return was made, and the freight checked out
with surprisingly few errors for a beginner. The cargo of wheat,
potatoes, etc., was correctly counted in, properly entered in the
books, and correctly checked out at Prairie du Chien and Dunleith.
The sick clerk did not rejoin the boat. The temporary appointment
by the captain and chief clerk was made permanent by the secretary
of the company at Dunleith, Mr. Blanchard, on the recommendation of
Mr. Hargus, my chief. We ran into Galena on our regular Thursday
afternoon time, and instead of creeping into a steaming, muddy
boiler, I walked out on to the levee and was introduced to the great
wholesalers who at that time made Galena their headquarters, as "Mr.
Merrick, our new second clerk", and the work of loading for a new
trip was taken up.
While the office of second clerk was a decided promotion from my
point of view, it was not so esteemed on the river. Leaving the
engine-room was leaving the opportunity to learn the profession
of engineering. Once learned, it was then assumed that the person
so equipped was guaranteed employment so long as he willed, with
a minimum amount of competition. Later developments revealed the
fallacy of this conception. Within ten years thereafter, steamboating
was practically dead on the upper Mississippi. The completion of one
or more railroads into St. Paul, ended the river monopoly. Thereafter
a dozen steamboats did the business formerly requiring a hundred. The
wages of engineers and pilots dropped to a figure undreamed of in the
flush times between 1850 and 1860; there were twenty men competing
for every berth upon the river.
My new berth was not silk-lined, however. There was an aristocracy
in the official family above decks. The captain and the chief clerk
represented the first class, and the mate and the second clerk the
other. The line between these was represented by the watches into
which all officers on the boat were divided for rounds of duty. The
captain and his mate, and the chief clerk and his second stood watch
and watch during the twenty-four hours (that is, six hours on and six
hours off) all the season. The pilots and engineers interposed a "dog
watch", to break the monotony. The captain and the chief clerk went
on watch after breakfast, at seven in the morning, and stood until
noon. At twelve o'clock they were relieved by the mate and the second
clerk, who ran the steamboat and the business until six o'clock in
the evening, when they were relieved. After supper, they turned in
until midnight, when they were called and relieved the captain and
the chief clerk, who retired and slept until morning. While each
class of officers was on duty the same number of hours each day, the
difference lay in the fact that the junior officers were compelled
by this arrangement to turn out at midnight throughout the season.
It was this turning out at midnight that made the mate's watch (the
port watch) very undesirable so far as personal ease and comfort
was concerned. A man can knock about until midnight very agreeably,
after a short nap in the afternoon, provided he can have a sound
sleep during the "dead hours" from midnight until six o'clock in the
morning. To turn out at midnight every night and work until six is an
entirely different matter.
The pilots and engineers on our boat--and so far as my experience
went, on all boats--stood a "dog-watch" from four in the morning
until seven, thus making five watches during the twenty-four hours,
bringing the men of the two watches on duty alternately at midnight,
and shortening the "dead hours" from midnight to four o'clock, and
from four until seven, so that one did not get so "dead" tired and
sleepy as he would in standing a watch beginning every night at
midnight.
It was believed on the river that more people die between midnight
and morning than during any other six hours in the twenty-four. I
think that I have heard physicians confirm this. My own experience in
going on watch at midnight continuously during six months is, that
there is less vitality and ambition available in that period than in
any other. In fact, I have no distinct recollection that there was
any ambition at all mixed up in the process of writing up delivery
books, checking out freight, measuring wood, and performing the
hundred other duties that fell to the lot of the officer on watch,
when done in the depressing atmosphere of early morning. It was a
matter of duty, unmixed with higher motives.
It was not only the turning out at unholy hours, that differentiated
between first and second clerk. The second clerk must have his
delivery book written up for all the landings to be made during his
off-watch. The chief clerk then made the delivery from the book,
upon which the receipts were taken. If, during the second clerk's
off-watch, there was a particularly large manifest for any landing,
the assistant was called to attend to the delivery, after which he
could turn in again, if he chose. Of course it took a river man but
a moment to go to sleep after touching his bunk; but his rest was
broken, and in the course of the season this began to tell on every
one. Under the stress of it, men became hollow-eyed and lost flesh
and strength.
When on watch, the second clerk not only attended to his own
particular duties, but he also assumed for the time those of the
chief clerk. He collected fares from passengers coming aboard during
his watch; assigned rooms, provided there were any left to assign,
or a mattress on the cabin floor if there chanced to be any space
left on the floor, whereon to place another mattress; collected
freight bills, paid for wood or coal, and performed any other duties
ordinarily performed by the chief clerk when on watch. It was not
considered good form to call the chief clerk during his off-watch;
in fact, to do so would be a confession of ignorance or inability,
which no self-respecting second clerk cared to exhibit, and but
rarely did. Many the close conference with the chief mate, his
companion as well as superior during the long night watches; and many
the smiles evoked in after days when recalling the well-meant but
somewhat impracticable advice tendered upon some such occasions by
the good-hearted autocrat of the "roof" and fo' castle.
[Illustration: ALMA, WISCONSIN. A typical river town in the fifties.]
Chapter VII
_Wooding Up_
As second clerk, I was early taught to hold my own with the pirates
who conducted the woodyards scattered along the river, from which the
greater part of the fuel used on old-time river boats was purchased.
There was a great variety of wood offered for sale, and a greater
diversity in the manner of piling it. It was usually ranked eight
feet high, with a "cob-house" at each end of the rank. It was the
rule on the river to measure but one of the end piles, if the whole
rank was taken, or one-half of one end pile if but a part of the
rank was bought. For convenience, the woodmen usually put twenty
cords in a rank, and allowed enough to cover the shortage caused by
cross-piling at the ends. Being piled eight feet high, ten lengths of
the measuring stick (eight feet long) equalled twenty cords, if it
were fairly piled. Woodmen who cared for their reputation and avoided
a "scrap" with the clerks, captains, and mates of steamboats, usually
made their twenty-cord ranks eighty-four feet long and eight feet
high. Such dealers also piled their sticks parallel to each other
in the ranks; they also threw out the rotten and very crooked ones.
When the clerk looked over such a tier, after having run his stick
over it, he simply invited the owner aboard and paid him his fifty or
sixty dollars, according to the quality of the wood, took him across
the cabin to the bar, and invited him to "have one on the boat",
shook hands, and bade him good night.
It took the "pirates" to start the music, however. When only scant
eighty feet were found in the rank, with rotten and green wood
sandwiched in, all through the tiers, and crooked limbs and crossed
sticks in all directions, it became the duty of the clerk to estimate
his discount. After running his rod over it, he would announce,
before the first stick was taken off by the deck hands, the amount
of wood in the rank--nineteen and a half cords, nineteen cords,
eighteen and a half cords, or in extreme cases only eighteen. When
the mate could stand behind the rank and see, through a cross-piled
hole, more than half the length of the steamboat, it was deemed a
rather acute case, calling for the eighteen-cord decision. When
this decision was made and announced, it was, on our boat at least,
always adhered to. We always took wood some time before our visible
supply was exhausted, in order to meet just such emergencies. The
owner might, and usually did, damn everybody and everything connected
with the craft in the most lurid terms. But the one question he had
to answer, and answer quickly, was: "Will you take it?" If "No",
the bell was struck and the boat backed off, while the woodman and
roustabouts exchanged a blue-streaked volley of vituperation. If, on
the other hand, a sale was made, the owner usually took his money and
the inevitable drink at the bar, and then went down to the main deck
and had it out with the mate, who was always a match, and more than
a match, for any merely local and provincial orator. His vocabulary
was enriched with contributions from all ports between St. Louis and
St. Paul, while that of the squatter was lacking in the elements of
diversity necessary to give depth and breadth to the discussion.
It would be unjust to class all woodyard men with squatters like the
foregoing specimens, of whom there were hundreds scattered along the
islands and lowlands bordering the river, cutting wood on government
land, and moving along whenever the federal officers got on their
trail. On the mainland were many settlers, opening up farms along
the river, and the chance to realize ready money from the sale of
wood was not to be neglected. In many places chutes had been built
of heavy planks, descending from the top of the bluff, from one to
two hundred feet above the river. The upland oak, cut into four-foot
lengths, was shot down to the water's edge, where a level space was
found to rank it up. These men were honest, almost without exception,
and their wood always measured true. The upland wood was vastly
superior to the lowland growth; steamboat captains not only paid the
highest price for it, but further endeavored to contract for all the
wood at certain yards. I remember one, run by a Mr. Smith, between
Prescott and Diamond Bluff, and another near Clayton, Iowa, that
always furnished the best dry oak wood, and gave full measure.
It was at the latter place that I nearly lost my berth, through a
difference with the "Old Man"--the captain. I had measured the rank
and announced the amount of wood as twenty cords. The captain was on
deck at the time, and watching the measurement. When the announcement
was made he ordered the wood remeasured. I went over it carefully,
measuring from the centre of the cross-pile at one end to the centre
of the cross-pile at the other end of the rank, and again reported
"twenty cords". Captain Faucette called down to "measure it again",
with an inflection plainly intimating that I was to discount it,
adding, "You measured both ends." The rank was full height, closely
piled, and the best of split white oak, and I had already taken out
one of the ends; further, I had already twice reported twenty cords
in the hearing of all the crew and many passengers, who were now
giving their undivided attention to this affair. I therefore did not
feel like stultifying myself for the sake of stealing a cord or two
of wood, and replied that I had already measured it twice, and that
I had not measured both ends of the rank. The "Old Man" flew into
a rage and ordered me to go to the office and get my money, and he
would find a man who knew how to measure wood. There being nothing
for it but to obey an order of this kind, I went aboard, hung up
my measuring stick in its beckets, and reported at the office for
my money. Mr. Hargus, my chief, was astonished, and asked for an
explanation, which I gave him. He rushed out to the woodpile with the
rod, ran over it in a flash, and reported to the captain on the roof,
"Twenty cords, sir!" and came back to the office. He told me to go on
with my work and say nothing, which I was ready enough to do. In the
meantime, the crew were toting the wood aboard.
When the boat backed off, the captain sent for Mr. Hargus to meet
him in his private room in the "Texas", where they had it out in
approved style. Hargus only replied to Captain Faucette that if
Merrick was discharged he would also take his pay and go ashore with
him. Faucette was a new man in the line, from the far South, and a
comparative stranger, while Hargus was a veteran with the company, a
stockholder in the line, and backed by all the Dubuque stockholders,
as well as by the officers and directors of the company; so the
captain thought better of it and dropped the whole matter, never
deigning to speak to the second clerk, either in way of apology,
which was not expected, or of caution "not to let it occur again",
which would have been an insult. The affair was "dropped overboard",
as Hargus said, and the wood-measuring was thereafter left to the
proper officer, without comment or interference.
With a crew of forty men looking on and hearing the whole colloquy,
a change in the amount of wood reported at the suggestion of the
captain, would have simply wiped out any respect they may have had
for the authority of the boy officer; and his usefulness on that
boat, if not on the river, would have ended then and there. It was
one of the unwritten rules of the service that the officers were to
stand by each other in every way; there was to be no interference
while on duty, and each was held responsible for such duty. If there
was cause for reprimand it was to be administered in the privacy of
the captain's office, and not in the presence of the whole crew. It
was not desirable to have either office or officer held in contempt.
As the steamboat business developed, and as immigration into the new
Territory of Minnesota increased, there was necessity for getting as
many trips into a season as possible. This led to the adoption of
every device that might lessen the running time of steamers between
the lower ports and St. Paul. Not the least of these innovations was
the use of the wood-boat for the more ready transfer of fuel from
the bank to the deck of the steamer. Flatboats, or scows, capable
of carrying twenty cords of wood, and even forty, were loaded at
the woodyards in readiness for the expected steamer. As the wood
was worth more loaded in the scow, a higher price was given by
steamboatmen, and contracts were made ahead; the date of arrival of
the boat was determined, and the wood-boat was in readiness, day or
night, with two men on board. It was the work of a few minutes only
to run alongside, make fast the towlines, and while the steamer was
on her way up river, thirty or forty men pitched or carried the wood
aboard.
Ordinarily, the wood-boat was not in tow more than half an hour,
which would take her five or six miles up river. When the wood was
out, the towlines were cast off, a large sweep or steering oar
was shipped up at each end of the scow, and it drifted back to
be reloaded for the next customer. The steamboat, meanwhile, had
lost practically no time in wooding, as the tow was so light as but
slightly to impede her speed. The greatest danger in the transaction
was that the great packet might swamp the scow by running at too
great speed, towing her under by the head, as sometimes occurred. To
avoid this contingency the wood was always taken first from the bow
of the flatboat. As it was only the fast packets that patronized the
wood-boats, this danger of towing under was always present, and the
pilots were always very careful in the handling of their boats at
such times. Flats were seldom towed downstream, for the reason that
there was no way of getting them back, except to pay for a tow. And
again, the packets were not in so much of a hurry when going down
river, for then they had but few passengers to feed, and no fast
freight.
Chapter VIII
_The Mate_
In writing of life on the main deck of a Mississippi River steamboat
fifty years ago, a prefatory note may be in order. The reader must
bear in mind that times have changed; and men, in the mass, have
changed, and that for the better, in the years that have elapsed
between 1860 and 1908. Slavery then held sway on the west bank of
the river, from the Iowa line to the Gulf. On the east side in
the State of Illinois even, the slavery idea predominated; and
on the river there was no "other side" to the question. Slavery
was an "institution", as much to be observed and venerated as any
institution of the country. A black man was a "nigger", and nothing
more. If he were the personal property of a white man in St. Louis,
or below, he was worth from eight hundred to fifteen hundred dollars,
and was therefore too valuable to be utilized in the make-up of
a boat's crew running north. The inclemency of the weather, or
the strenuousness of the mate, might result in serious physical
deterioration that would greatly depreciate him as a chattel, to say
nothing of the opportunities offered him by the northern trip to
escape to Canada, and thus prove a total loss.
Of free negroes there were not enough to man the hundreds of
steamboats plying on the upper river. Thus it came about that the
cabin crews on some boats, and the firemen on others, were colored,
while the deck crews (roustabouts and stevedores) were white. So
marked was this division of labor that it came to pass that no
"nigger" was permitted by the white rousters to handle any freight,
on any boat. The modern unions take no greater exception to a
non-union workman than the white deck hands then expressed for a
"nigger" as a freight handler.
Another class distinction was, that nine-tenths of the deck crew
were Irishmen. In that day the poorer sort of that nationality were
the burden-bearers of this country. They dug the ditches, built the
railroad embankments, and toted the freight on the river. Since
that time they have wonderfully developed; in the present day, very
few even of the emigrants handle pick and shovel, and none handle
freight as river deck hands. They are the trainmen and policemen of
the country, and their sons are our mayors and aldermen, our judges
and law-makers. The dirt-handling on the railroads is passed on to
the Italians and the Huns, while the river freight-handling, what
little there is of it, is done by the lower class of negroes. The
abolition of slavery has prodigiously increased their numbers, as
well as amazingly cheapening them in value. All this has relevancy in
describing an old-time mate and his work.
There was a fellow feeling between the chief mate and the second
clerk. For one thing, they were both in the second rank, officially,
although that did not count for a great deal, I think, as neither
of them thought of it in just that way. My recollection is, that
both of them thought of it from the other point of view--they were
over so many men, and in command of so many things and situations,
rather than under the captain and the chief clerk. You will observe
at once that this put an entirely different construction upon the
question; and this was, after all, the only reasonable and practical
view to take of it, and the one that came nearest to meeting all
the conditions. In fact, no other view of the situation could be
taken. When the captain and the chief clerk were off duty and
asleep in their staterooms, or even off duty and awake, loitering
about the boat, the responsibility was immediately shifted to their
subordinates. Even though the captain might be sitting in the door
of his room in the forward end of the "Texas", while the mate stood
at the bell to make a landing, the amenities and traditions of
river life put him out of the game as completely as though he were
asleep in his berth. The same also was true of the chief clerk and
his subordinate. The chief might be smoking his after-dinner cigar
within ten feet of the office, or he might walk out on the levee and
talk with the agent; but until asked, he never took any part in the
distinctive business transactions of his subordinate, or in any way
interfered with his manner of transacting the business. He might,
later, if necessary, make suggestions looking to the betterment
of the methods of his second; but that would be a purely personal,
rather than an official, utterance.
It followed, therefore, that my acquaintance with Billy Wilson was
much closer than with the captain; and standing watch with him day
after day and night after night during a long season's run, I came
to know him intimately. He was born in Pennsylvania, the son of a
"Pennsylvania Dutchman." Beginning his professional life on the
Allegheny River, he worked down the Ohio, and when the great boom in
upper Mississippi traffic began in 1854, engaged in that trade. A
smooth-shaven, red-faced man, about five feet eight inches in height,
he weighed probably a hundred and sixty pounds. Occasionally he took
a drink of whiskey, as did all river men, but it was seldom. He
was well read, and ordinarily, a very quiet man, therefore all the
more to be feared and respected. He would hardly fill the bill as a
traditional Mississippi River steamboat mate; and were his prototype
shown on the stage it would be voted slow, uninteresting, and untrue
to type.
In the beginning of this chapter I endeavored to indicate what manner
of men composed our deck crew. Ours numbered forty men. Almost
without exception they were Irishmen of the lowest class, picked up
alongshore at St. Louis, Galena, Dubuque, and St. Paul, from the
riffraff of the levee. They would get drunk whenever they could get
whiskey; and as the boat carried hundreds of barrels of this liquor
each trip, it required eternal vigilance on the part of the mates and
watchmen to prevent the crew broaching a barrel and getting fighting
drunk and mutinous. When this happened, as now and then it did in
spite of all precautions, Billy Wilson was turned in an instant from
a quiet Pennsylvania Dutchman into a dangerous, if not devilish,
driver. He carried, on most occasions, a paddle made from a pork
barrel stave. This had a handle at one end, and the other, shaped
something like a canoe paddle, was bored full of quarter-inch holes.
When the case was one of mere sluggishness on the part of one of the
hands, a light tap with the flat part of this instrument was enough
to inspire activity. When the case was one of moroseness or incipient
mutiny, the same flat side, applied by his powerful muscles, with a
quick, sharp stroke, would leave a blood-blister for every hole in
the paddle; and when a drunken riot was to be dealt with, the sharp
edge of the paddle on a man's head left nothing more to be done with
that man until he "came to." With a revolver in his left hand and
his paddle in his right, he would jump into the middle of a gang of
drunken, mutinous men, and striking right and left would intimidate
or disable the crowd in less time than it takes to tell it. He never
used his pistol, and to my knowledge never called for assistance,
although that was ready if required, for all officers were usually at
hand and ready in case of necessity.
In a row that took place at Prairie du Chien one night, when the
men had sent up town and smuggled in a jug of whiskey, one man who
was hit on the head by the paddle went overboard on the upstream side
of the boat. He was instantly sucked under by the swift current, and
was never seen again. The coroner's jury in the case brought in a
verdict of "accidental death", and Wilson came back to work after a
week's sojourn with the sheriff, having won an added prestige that
rendered less necessary the use of the paddle.
Ordinarily his commands were given in a low tone of voice,
unaccompanied with the profanity which legend and story considered
due from the man and his office. When things went wrong, however,
the wide range and profundity of his language was a revelation to
the passengers who might chance to be within ear-shot. I recall an
outbreak, one April morning at about four o'clock, at a woodyard,
between Trempealeau and Winona. He had called, "All hands, wood
up!" It was a cold and rainy night, and many of the men had crawled
in under the boilers to dry their clothes and seek sleep. After
the first round or two, he found that ten or fifteen men were
missing--they were "soldiering." He went aft and ransacked the bunks
without finding the truants. He then dove under the boilers with his
paddle, striking in the dark, and feeling for some one to hit, at the
same time pouring out a torrent of profanity that in ordinary walks
of life, would be called monumental, but which in the more exacting
conditions of river life, probably was not above medium grade. The
next count found every man in line, toting his share of the wood.
It may be and was asked by Eastern people, unused to river life,
"Why do the men submit to such treatment? Why do they not throw the
mate into the river?" The answer is, caste. They were used to being
driven, and expected nothing else, and nothing better, and they
would not work under any other form of authority. As I stated at the
beginning, they were of the very lowest class. No self-respecting man
would ship as a deck hand under the then existing conditions. One
might now travel long and look in vain for a white crew driven as
these men then were. Their places have been taken by the freed negro;
he to-day is being driven as his white predecessors were then.
There is this distinction, however; now, most of the drivers are
Irishmen--the mates and watchmen on the river steamers. Then an
Irishman was of little service as a mate. Those officers were, as a
rule, Yankees or Southerners or Pennsylvania Dutchmen. We had for a
time a second mate, Con Shovelin, an Irishman, as you might suspect
from his name. He was six feet high, and big in every way, including
his voice. He roared and swore at the crew all the time, but put very
little spirit into them. A look out of the corner of Wilson's eye,
and a politely worded request that they "Get a hump, now!" was worth
a volume of Shovelin's exordiums. At that time an Irishman could not
handle an Irish crew; now, he can handle a crew of free negroes with
the expenditure of one-half the wind and oratory. If you wish to see
for yourself, take a trip on the river to St. Louis and return, and
see the Celt driving the Ethiopian, even as the Saxon drove the Celt,
fifty years ago.
[Illustration: ABOVE TREMPEALEAU, WISCONSIN. In the middle
foreground, at the head of the slough, is the site of the winter camp
of Nicolas Perrot, in the winter of 1684-5, as identified in 1888
by Hon. B. F. Heuston and Dr. Reuben Gold Thwaites of the Wisconsin
State Historical Society.]
Chapter IX
_The "Old Man"_
It would be interesting to trace the origin of this term, which is
universally applied to the captain in nautical circles, either on
shipboard, among deep-sea sailors, on the great lakes, or on the
inland waters. He may not be half as old as the speaker; still, in
speaking of him, not to him, he is the "old man." It is used in
no disrespectful sense; indeed, it is rather an endearing term.
In speaking to him, however, it is always Captain, or Sir. But in
detailing what the Captain has said or done the narrator says that
the "old man" says so, or is about to do so, and his auditors, if
river men, know of but one "old man" aboard the boat, although the
steamer may be freighted with octogenarians.
The captain usually reaches the "roof" from one of two directions,
either going up from mate, or coming down from the pilot house.
Occasionally he emerges from the clerk's office, or from the
engine-room; but the line of promotion is usually drawn from mate
or pilot to captain, these being also the normal lines of education
for that post. Perhaps the greater number of captains serving on the
river in the early days, down to 1860, began their careers on the
river as pilots, very often combining the two offices in one person.
The captain's official requirements are not altogether ornate. It
is true that he must have sufficient polish to commend himself to
his passengers. That is essential in popularizing his boat; but in
addition he must thoroughly know a steamboat, from stem to stern, and
know what is essential to its safety, the comfort of his passengers,
and the financial satisfaction of its owners. Nearly every old-time
captain on the river could, in case of necessity, pilot his boat
from St. Paul to Galena. Every captain could, and of necessity
did, handle the deck crew, with the second mate as go-between,
during the captain's watch on deck. Some few might have gone into
the engine-room and taken charge of the machinery, but these were
exceptional cases. All were supposed to know enough about the
business of the office to enable them to determine between profit and
loss in the running of the steamer.
After leaving port, the captain on the river was as autocratic as his
compeer on the ocean. He might without notice discharge and order
ashore any officer or man on board, and he could fill vacancies en
route to any extent; but these appointments were subject to the
approval of the owner or manager on arrival at the home port. Many,
if not most, of the captains owned interests in the boats which they
commanded. Many were sole owners, in which case they were amenable to
no one for their actions, except to the civil authorities in case of
legal technicalities, or to the unwritten laws of the service, which
custom had made binding upon all. Such, for instance, was the rule
that the captain was not to interfere with the pilots in the running
of his boat, even if he might know, or think he knew, better than
they the proper course to take in certain cases, or under certain
conditions; even though he might himself have a pilot's license
hanging in his stateroom. Neither was it considered good form to
interfere with the duties of his mate, or the engineers, or the chief
clerk, in the way of countermanding their orders when given in the
line of duty. He might call them to account in his office, and not
only caution, but command them not to repeat the error. Only in cases
where such interference was necessary for the safety of the boat was
it deemed permissible; and a captain who so far forgot himself as to
interfere, lost caste among all classes of rivermen, high and low.
Nevertheless, the "old man" had supreme power, and had the authority
to interpose his veto on any command or any action, by any of his
officers or men. This supremacy threw the burden of responsibility
upon his shoulders, and set him apart as a man by himself.
The seat of power was in the forward part of the "Texas", where
a commodious and handsomely-furnished cabin served as office,
audience-room, sitting-room, and whenever he so willed, as
dining-room. Connected with it was a sleeping apartment, larger and
better furnished than the ordinary staterooms in the passenger cabin.
From the windows on the front and on two sides of his sitting-room
he could look out ahead, or on either side, and see everything that
was going on. It was here that he entertained favored guests when in
relaxation, or hetcheled contumacious officers when in tenser moods.
From his berth, directly under the pilot house, he could read the
sounds of shuffling feet as the man on watch danced from side to side
of his wheel; he could note the sounds of the bell-pulls, as signals
were rung in the engine-room; and he could tell very nearly where
the boat was at such times, and judge very cleverly as to the luck
the pilot was having in running an ugly piece of river, or working
out a crooked crossing. He could look out and see if his mate was
asleep alongside the big bell, in the drowsy hours of the morning
watch, if he cared to confirm a shrewd bet that the mate was asleep.
He could tell by the roar of the forced draft in the tall chimneys
in front of him, that there was another boat in sight, either ahead
or behind, and that Billy Hamilton had the "blowers" on in response
to a suggestion from Tommy Cushing, at the wheel, that an excess of
steam was desirable, and that at once. This last was a perennial, or
nocturnal, source of annoyance to our "Old Man", and one that wrung
from him more protests than any other shortcoming under his command.
It burned out more wood than was justified by the end attained;
but what was of more serious import, it suggested the carrying of
a greater head of steam than was consonant with perfect safety. At
a time when boiler explosions were not infrequent on the Western
rivers, any suggestion of extra steam-carrying was sufficient to put
the "old man" on the alert; and this led to more interference with
his officers than any other cause that came under my observation
during my brief experience on the river. A scantily-clad apparition
would appear on deck forward of the "Texas", and a request, "Mr.
Cushing, please ask Mr. Hamilton to cut off the blowers", would
be passed down the speaking tube to the engine-room. While it
always came in the form of request, it carried with it the force of
command--until it was concluded that the "old man" was again asleep,
when the blowers were cautiously and gradually reopened.
While it was not always expected that the captain should take the
place of the engineer or pilot, it was required that he should be
thoroughly acquainted with the handling of a steamboat under all
circumstances. He must be a man possessed of nerve and courage, quick
to see what was required, and as quick to give the necessary commands
to his crew. As on deeper water, the code of honor on the river held
that the captain must be the last to leave his sinking or burning
boat; and many a brave commander has gone down to honorable death
while upholding this code. In case of fire he must, with the pilot,
instantly decide where lay the greatest chances of safety in beaching
his boat. In case of snagging, or being cut down by ice, it is his
first duty to save his boat, if possible, by stopping the break, at
the same time providing for the safety of his passengers by beaching
her on the nearest sand-bar. In case of grounding--"getting stuck on
a sand-bar", as it is popularly known--all his knowledge of every
expedient to extricate his vessel known to river men is called in
play at once. An hour's time, or even a few minutes, lost in trying
cheap experiments, is sufficient to pile up the shifting sands about
the hull to such an extent as sometimes to consume days, or even
weeks, in getting free.
Our own boat, the "Fanny Harris", drifted upon a submerged bank on
the lower side of the cut-off between Fevre River and Harris Slough,
with a falling river. She did not get off that day, and within three
days had less than a foot of water under some parts of her hull. Her
freight had to be lightered, and then it took two steamboats, pulling
on quadruple tackles, "luffed" together, to pull her into deep water.
The power applied would have pulled her in two, had it come from
opposite directions.
"Sparring off" was a science in itself. Just how to place your spars;
in what direction to shove the bow of the boat; or whether to "walk
her over" by setting the spars at a "fore and aft" angle, one on each
side, and thus push the boat straight ahead--these were questions
to be answered as soon as reports were received from the pilot who
was sent out in the yawl to sound the whole bar. To a landsman, the
use to which were to be put the great sticks of straight-grained,
flawless yellow (or Norway) pine, standing on either side of the
gangway, was quite unknown until the boat brought up on the sandy
bottom of the river. Then, if it was the first time these timbers
had been called into play that season, the lashings were cut away
with a sharp axe; the detail from the crew sent to the roof eased
away on the falls, until the derricks leaned forward at an angle
of forty-five degrees. The crew on the forecastle overhauled the
great four-by-five, or five-by-six ply falls, and hooked the lower
block into the iron ring under the steamer's quarter, just above
the load-line. This ring was attached to the hull by massive bolts,
extending through several feet of timbers on the inside of the
sheathing--the timbers running back the length of the hull, in
well-built boats, so that with sufficiently solid footing for the
spars, and with sufficient power, the steamer might be lifted bodily
off the bar, without "hogging" the boat--the technical term for
bending or breaking the hull out of shape.
When it was decided by a conference of the captain, the pilots, and
the mate, or by the captain's judgment alone, in what direction the
bow of the boat was to be thrown, the foot of the spar was shoved
clear of the guards and lowered away by the derrick-fall until its
foot was firmly fixed, and the spar at the proper angle, and in the
proper direction. The hauling part of the tackle (or fall, as it is
called) was then passed through a snatch-block and carried to the
capstan, around the barrel of which six or seven turns were taken,
and the best man in the crew given charge of the free end. If the
case was a very bad one--if the boat was on hard--the double-purchase
gear was put on the capstan, to give additional power, and steam was
turned on the hoisting engine, (or "donkey") which also operated the
capstan by a clutch gear. Ordinarily the boat quickly responded to
all this application of power, was slowly pushed off the reef and
headed for the channel, and the wheel was soon able to drive her
ahead and away from the bar.
This taking care of the free end of the tackle as it came from the
capstan, was a work of more importance than might appear to the
novice. The barrel of the capstan is concave; the line feeds on to
it at the thickest part, either at the top or the bottom of the
capstan. After it reaches a certain point all the turns must slip
down to the narrowest part, and the work of winding upward begin
over. The man who is handling the free end of the line must often
slack a little--just enough to start the slipping--and then hold
hard, so that it may go down easily, without giving any further
slack. It looks easy, but it isn't. I have seen a careless man give
so much slack to his line, when there was a very heavy strain upon
it--in fact when the whole weight of the forward end of the steamer
was pendant upon the spar--that the recoil of the tackle, though not
over an inch or two, would let the hull drop with a force that would
almost shake the chimneys out of her, and could be felt the length
of the boat. It was also a post of some danger, as I have heard
of instances in which the recoil snapped the tackle, and severely
injured the men under and about the spar and capstan.
The spars are shod with heavy iron points about a foot in length,
which would grip the solid clay or gravel underlying the superficial
layers of sand forming the bar. When there was "no bottom" to the
sand, and the applied power, instead of lifting the steamer only
shoved the spar into the quicksand, another footing was used--a
block built of two three-inch sections of oak about eighteen inches
in diameter, bound and crossed with iron, and having a hole in the
centre through which the iron point of the spar was passed until the
shoulder rested on the block. This block could not be driven deeply
into the sand, and usually gave a secure footing. A rope attached to
a ring in the block served to haul it out of the sand after the spar
was hoisted aboard.
The spectacle afforded by the "sparring off" process was always
one of great interest to the passengers, and of excitement to the
officers and crew. There were drawbacks to this interest, however,
when the passengers were in a hurry, and the boat lay for hours,
sometimes for days, before being released, the crew working day and
night without sleep, and with little time even to eat. We once lay
three days on Beef Slough bar; and the "War Eagle" was eight days
on the same bar, having been caught on a falling river, being only
released after passengers and freight were transferred to other and
lighter boats.
For the officers and crew, there was no halo about an incident
of this kind. In low water, it was to some boats of almost daily
occurrence, somewhere on the river, even with the most skilful
pilots. The fact was, that there were places where there was not
enough water in the channel for a boat to pass without striking; and
if one got out of the channel by ever so little, it was of course
still worse. There were several places where it was to be expected
that the boat must be hauled over the reef by taking out an anchor
ahead, or by hauling on a line attached to a tree on the bank, if
the channel ran near enough to render the latter expedient possible.
I have injected this description of sparring off into the chapter
devoted to the "Old Man", not because the process necessarily
devolved upon him alone; but because as captain his will was law in
any disputed point, and because upon him rested the responsibility
of navigating his boat. He naturally took an active interest in the
work, and was always on hand when it was done. But quite often the
mate knew more of the _finesse_ of poling a boat off a bar, than did
the captain; and some captains were shrewd enough to give the mate
practically full control, only standing on the roof for appearance
sake, while the latter did the work. It was, however, every man's
work, and if any one had a practical idea, or a practical suggestion,
whether pilot, engineer, mate, or carpenter, it was quickly put to
the test. The main thing was to get off the bar, and to get off
"quick."
Chapter X
_The Pilots and Their Work_
We come now to the consideration of that part of river life of which
I was an interested observer, rather than an active participant. Had
not the great war burst upon the country, and the fever of railroad
construction run so high, it is possible that I might have had my
name enrolled in the list containing such masters of the profession
as William Fisher, John King, Ed. West, Thomas Burns, Thomas
Cushing, and a hundred others whose names were synonyms for courage,
precision, coolness in danger, exact knowledge, ready resource, and
all else necessary in the man who stood at the wheel and safely
guided a great steamer through hundreds of miles of unlighted and
uncharted river.
Compared with those days, the piloting of to-day, while still a
marvel to the uninitiated, is but a primer compared to the knowledge
absolutely necessary to carry a steamboat safely through and around
the reefs, bars, snags, and sunken wrecks which in the olden time
beset the navigator from New Orleans to St. Paul. The pilot of that
day was absolutely dependent upon his knowledge of and familiarity
with the natural landmarks on either bank of the river, for guidance
in working his way through and over the innumerable sand-bars and
crossings. No lights on shore guided him by night, and no "diamond
boards" gave him assurance by day. No ready search-light revealed
the "marks" along the shore. Only a perspective of bluffs, sometimes
miles away, showing dimly outlined against a leaden sky, guided the
pilot in picking his way over a dangerous crossing, where there was
often less than forty feet to spare on either side of the boat's
hull, between safety and destruction.
To "know the river" under those conditions meant to know absolutely
the outline of every range of bluffs and hills, as well as every
isolated knob or even tree-top. It meant that the man at the wheel
must know these outlines absolutely, under the constantly changing
point of view of the moving steamer; so that he might confidently
point his steamer at a solid wall of blackness, and guided only by
the shapes of distant hills, and by the mental picture which he had
of them, know the exact moment at which to put his wheel over and
sheer his boat away from an impending bank. To-day a thousand beacons
are kindled every night to mark the dangerous or intricate crossings;
by day, great white "diamond boards" spot the banks. At night the
pilot has only to jingle a bell in the engine-room, the dynamo is
started, and by pulling a line at either hand the search-light
turns night into day, the big white board stands out in high relief
against the leafy background, and the pilot heads for it, serene in
the confidence that it is placed in line with the best water; for he
knows that the government engineers have sounded every foot of the
crossing within a date so recent as to make them cognizant of any
change in its area or contour. Constantly patrolling the river, a
dozen steamboats, fully equipped for sounding, measuring, and marking
the channel, are in commission during the months of navigation, each
being in charge of officers graduated from the most exacting military
and technical school in the world, and having under them crews
composed of men educated by practice to meet any emergency likely
to arise. If a snag lodges in the channel it is reported at the
nearest station, or to the first government steamer met, and within
a few hours it is removed. Dams and shear-dykes direct the water
in permanent, unshifting channels. Riprap holds dissolving banks,
and overhanging trees are cut away. Millions of dollars have been
spent in the work, and its preservation costs hundreds of thousands
annually. All this outlay is to-day for the benefit of a scant score
of steamboats between St. Louis and St. Paul. Forty years ago two
hundred men, on a hundred boats, groped their way in darkness, amid
known and unknown terrors, up and down the windings of the great
river, without having for their guidance a single token of man's
helpful invention.
There are men now living who may see all this vast expenditure
utilized, as it is not now. The building of the inter-oceanic canal
across the isthmus is certain to give new direction to the commerce
of the world. It is fair to presume that the Mississippi may again
assert itself as one of the greatest arteries of commerce in the
world, and that the products of the Minnesota and Dakota farms will
find their way down the river to New Orleans, instead of across the
continent to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore tidewater.
If this effect does follow the building of the canal, as many
clear-headed students of economic problems predict, the Mississippi
will again assume its old-time standing and influence as a great
highway of commerce. The hope is at least father to this thought.
As already stated, my personal experience as a pilot was limited.
It was confined to a few seasons' study of the river under one of
the best men who ever turned a wheel upon it--Thomas Burns. By an
agreement with him, I was to retain my clerkship, but was to spend
as much as possible of my time in the pilot house, while on watch or
off, either with himself or his partner, Thomas Cushing, steering
for them in turn, and receiving instruction from both. Later I was
to give all of my time, and after becoming proficient was to receive
their recommendation for a license. I was then to pay to Captain
Burns five hundred dollars from my first earnings, after getting
a berth as a full-fledged pilot. Under these terms I received
instruction from both men, and as opportunity offered acted as their
wheelsman relieving them of much hard work.
This arrangement was ended by the breaking out of the War of
Secession and the enlistment of Captain Burns in the army. He raised
a company for the Forty-sixth Illinois Infantry, at Galena, taking
about thirty men from the "Fanny Harris" alone. That was in August,
1861. Thomas Cushing then went down the river to try his fortune. Two
new pilots came aboard, Jim Black and Harry Tripp, and I was left out
of the pilot house. Later in the season the "Fanny Harris" was left
so high on the bank of the cut-off between Fevre River and Harris
Slough that the whole crew were discharged. It was necessary to build
ways under the boat and launch her, in order to get her back into the
water--a labor of weeks.
After a short time spent on the "Golden Era" I went up river and
engaged with Charley Jewell, on the "H. S. Allen", Captain S. E.
Gray, running between Prescott and St. Croix Falls. After a few
trips I graduated as a pilot for that run, and conditionally for the
Galena and St. Paul run. When the call for three hundred thousand
additional troops came in August, 1862, I decided that it was my duty
to go to the front and "put down the rebellion", as the "boys" of
that time put it. Acting upon this commendable resolve, I dropped off
at Hudson, where I was well acquainted, and where several companies
were organizing for the three years' service. I enlisted in a company
intended for the Twenty-fifth Wisconsin Infantry, of which Jeremiah
Rusk was lieutenant-colonel; but when we came to be mustered in we
were assigned to the Thirtieth Wisconsin Infantry, as Company A.
My idea was, that if I survived I would return and take up my
work on the river where I left it. That was the boy idea. It was
not realized. After three years of service I was mustered out in
Washington, D. C. I married in the East, and entered the employ of a
steamship company in New York as agent and superintendent, remaining
there until 1876. Returning to Wisconsin in 1876 I found a half dozen
railroads centring in St. Paul, and these were doing the business
of the hundred steamboats that I had left running in 1862. A dozen
boats, confined to two lines, were handling all the river business
between St. Louis and St. Paul, and the profession of piloting was at
an end. Of the hundred boats that I had known fourteen years before,
not one remained. The average life of a river steamboat was but five
years.
Curiously enough, I had by this time lost all interest in river life,
except the interest of a trained observer. I enjoyed watching the few
boats that chanced to come under my observation, and could appreciate
fully the dexterity of the men who were holding their wheels in
the pilot houses; but all my ambitions to again be one of them
appeared to have evaporated, for other lines of work had engrossed my
attention. Engaging in the newspaper business, and later on adding
the responsibility of the agency of a railroad company, I had enough
to think about without pining for lost opportunities on the river.
The work accomplished by the old-time Mississippi pilot while guiding
his steamer through hundreds of miles of water beset by snags,
wrecks, and reefs, has been so fully described by "Mark Twain" in
his _Life on the Mississippi_, that it would be temerity in any
one else to attempt to add to what he has so humorously, and yet
so graphically delineated. It rarely occurs that a man combines a
perfect knowledge of a profession so far removed from the world of
letters as is that of piloting a steamboat with the literary skill
to describe its details. It will probably never again happen that a
great master in literature and humor will graduate from a pilot house.
The experiences of a pilot were the same, however, whether he turned
a wheel on the lower river, as described by "Mark Twain", or on
the upper river. It will not be plagiarizing, therefore, to tell
something of the acquirements necessary in a pilot, even though the
narrative coincides very closely with what he has recorded of similar
experiences on the lower reaches.
Thomas Burns[C] had the reputation of being one of the most reliable
pilots on the upper waters. He was a Scotchman, in middle life,
without vices or failings of any kind, unless smoking may be a vice.
It certainly wasn't so considered on the river, and for the sake of
this story we will not consider it so here. He was conservative, and
would not take any chances, even in a race, preferring to follow the
deep water with safety, rather than cut corners involving risk to the
boat and its cargo, even though a rival boat did pass him, or he was
losing an opportunity to show off some fancy piloting. It was said of
him that he was the only man who could and did steer a stern-wheel
steamboat of four hundred tons through Coon Slough, downstream,
without slowing or stopping the wheel--something requiring nerve
and fine judgment. A side-wheel boat usually went around the sharp
bend with one paddle wheel backing and the other going ahead. A
stern-wheel boat was often compelled to "flank" around the elbow,
by backing against the point and letting the current swing the bow
around the bend.
[C] Captain Thomas W. Burns was born in Boston, Massachusetts,
in 1836. He removed with his parents to Galena, Illinois, in
1842, where he received his education in the public schools.
After leaving school he went on the river as a "cub" pilot,
and upon reaching the age of 21 years received his certificate
as first-class pilot between St. Louis and St. Paul, in
which capacity he served on many of the best boats of the
Minnesota Packet Company, including the "War Eagle," "Key
City," "Itasca," "Fanny Harris," "Kate Cassell," and others.
In 1861 he recruited a company of steamboatmen at Galena, and
was assigned to the 45th Illinois Infantry. He remained with
his company until after the capture of Fort Henry, when he was
discharged for disability. Upon his return to Galena he took up
the work of piloting again, continuing until 1885, when he was
appointed by President Cleveland to the office of United States
Local Inspector of Steamboats, with headquarters at Galena. His
long years of experience on the river, and his high sense of
duty made him an excellent official, and upon the advent of a
Republican administration he was reappointed to the office, in
which he was serving at the time of his death, March 4, 1890.
By the old reckoning, the distance from St. Louis to St. Paul, was
eight hundred miles; from Rock Island to St. Paul, four hundred and
fifty. The later survey, after straightening the channel by wing-dams
and dikes, makes the distance seven hundred and twenty-nine miles
from St. Louis, and three hundred and ninety-eight from Rock Island
to St. Paul. It is safe to estimate a "crossing" in each and every
mile of that river. Some miles may have missed their share, but
others had a dozen, so the average was fully maintained. That was
fifty years ago. There are less crossings now, but more dams and
dikes--two hundred and fifty-one dams, dikes, and pieces of dikes in
the little stretch of river between St. Paul and Prescott, a matter
of thirty-six miles. If a pilot attempted to make a crossing now,
where he made it fifty years ago, he would in five hundred different
places butt his head into a dike instead of a reef.
Tom Burns, and scores of others like him, knew every rod of this
river better than the average man knows any one mile of sidewalk
between his home and his office. He knew it by day and by night.
He knew it upstream and downstream--and this amounted literally to
knowing two rivers eight hundred miles long, for the instant you turn
your boat's prow down river you have entered an entirely new country.
Every mark is different; the bold outlines of bluffs with which you
are familiar as you go up the river, are as strangers when viewed
from the reverse side. You have to learn the stream over again, and
worse yet, you have to learn to handle your boat differently. A
novice in the business might take a steamer from St. Louis to St.
Paul with very fair success, while the same man would hang his boat
up effectually on the first bar he came to, if in going down river
he handled his wheel in the same manner. Coming upstream he might
feel of a reef with the bow of his boat, and if he did not strike the
best water the first time he could back off and try again; but going
downstream he must hit the channel the first time or he is gone.
The current is all the time irresistibly pushing his boat down the
river, and if he strikes he is immediately, with the most disastrous
consequences, swung broadside on to the reef. Tom Burns knew his
river so well that he could jump from his berth on the darkest night
and before he reached the pilot house door could tell what part of
the river the boat was in; the instant his eye caught the jack staff
he knew to a certainty what crossing the steamer was making, and
on what part of the crossing she was at the moment. This was what
every first-class pilot must, and did know. I use Burns only as an
illustration.
It was courtesy for the relieved pilot to state the position of the
boat as he relinquished the wheel to his partner: "Good morning, Mr.
Cushing! A nasty night. She drags a little, to-night. Just making the
upper Cassville crossing. Should have been farther up. Hope you'll
have better luck." This was only a matter of form and politeness,
and not at all necessary. Mr. Cushing or Mr. Burns knew at a glance
that it was the upper Cassville crossing, and as he took the wheel
from the hands of his retiring partner he did, the next instant, just
what the other would have done had he continued. He saw the "swing"
of the jack staff and met it; he felt the boat edging away from the
reef, and coaxed her back, daintily but firmly, a spoke at a time,
or possibly half a spoke. The continuity was not broken. The exact
knowledge of the retiring pilot was simply carried along by the pilot
coming on watch.
In all the hundreds of miles of river traversed by the boat in its
voyage up or down, there could be no other combination of marks just
like the one which met the pilot's eye as he grasped the wheel. The
problem for the "cub" was to learn the combination. In the day time
it was not customary for the retiring partner to mention where the
boat was at the time. That would have been stretching the point
of courtesy too far. All this, however, was between equals. When
the wheel was turned over to the "cub", it was generally a prime
necessity that he be advised as to the exact position of the boat.
Thus primed, if he was reasonably advanced, he could take the wheel
and with the clue given the river would shape itself in his mind,
and he would pass from one set of marks to the next with some degree
of certitude. Without the clue, however, it was possible to imagine
one's self in a hundred probable or improbable places. "All bluffs
look alike to me", might under such circumstances be set to music
and sung with feeling and expression by the learner.
What the pilot must know to enable him to run the river at night, is
strikingly suggested in the conversation between young "Mark Twain"
and his chief, Mr. Bixby. When the boy had begun to take on airs as a
pilot, his chief suddenly fired the question:
"What is the shape of Walnut Bend?"
Of course he did not know, and did not know that he must know.
Mr. Bixby: "My boy, you've got to know the shape of the river,
perfectly. It is all there is left to steer by on a very dark
night. Everything else is blotted out and gone. But mind you,
it hasn't the same shape in the night that it has in the
daytime."
"How on earth am I going to learn it, then?"
"How do you follow a hall at home in the dark? Because you know
the shape of it. You can't see it."
"Do you mean to say I've got to know all the million trifling
variations of the shape of the banks of this interminable river
as well as I know the shape of the front hall at home?"
"On my honor you've got to know them _better_ than any man ever
did know the shapes of the halls in his own house... You see,
this has got to be learned; there is no getting around it. A
clear starlight night throws such heavy shadows that if you
didn't know the shape of the shore perfectly, you would claw
away from every bunch of timber, because you would take the
black shadow of it for a solid cape; and you see you would be
getting scared to death every fifteen minutes by the watch. You
would be fifty yards from shore all the time when you ought
to be within fifty feet of it. You can't see a snag in one of
those shadows, but you know exactly where it is, and the shape
of the river tells you when you are coming to it. Then there's
your pitch-dark night; the river is a very different shape on
a pitch-dark night from what it is on a starlight night. All
shores seem straight lines then, and mighty dim ones, too;
you'd run them for straight lines, only you know better. You
boldly drive your boat into what seems to be a solid straight
wall (you knowing very well that there is a curve there), and
that wall falls back and makes way for you. Then there's your
gray mist. You take a night when there's one of those grizzly
gray mists, and then there isn't _any_ particular shape to a
shore. A gray mist would tangle the head of the oldest man that
ever lived. Well, then, different kinds of _moonlight_ change
the shape of the river in different ways. You see--"
But the cub had wilted. When he came to his chief reassured him
somewhat by replying to his objections:
"No! you only learn _the_ shape of the river; and you learn
it with such absolute certainty that you can always steer by
the shape. That's in your head, and never mind the one that's
before your eyes."
And that was approximately the case. The details of the river, once
learned, were so indellibly printed on the mind of the pilot that
it seemed as though eyes were almost superfluous. Of course Mr.
Bixby stated the extreme case. While the pilot was running a bend
"out of his head" in darkness that might be felt, there were always
well-known landmarks to be seen--shapes of bluffs so indistinct as
to seem but parts of the universal blackness. But these indistinct
outlines were enough to confirm the judgment of the man at the wheel
in the course he was steering. The man in the hall, in Mr. Bixby's
illustration, could not see anything, and didn't know what hall he
was in. He might just as well have been blind; and I never heard of a
blind man running a steamboat, day or night. In the short experience
that I had in the pilot house, I did not reach this perfection;
but I have stood on one side of the wheel, mechanically following
the orders of my chief, and listening to the churning of the wheel
reëchoed from the banks not fifty feet away, when I could scarcely
see the jack staff, and could not distinguish between the black of
the woods and the all-pervading black of the night.
Mr. Burns or Mr. Cushing would translate the situation, as the
boat plowed along under a full head of steam, somewhat like this:
"Now we're going down into the bend. Now we're opposite the big
cottonwood. Now we must pull out a little, to avoid that nest of
snags. Now we will let her begin to come out; the water begins to
shoal here; we'll keep away from the point a little, and cross over
into the west bend, and follow that down in the opposite direction."
This in the way of instruction; and so far as my observation went
he was drawing on his imagination for his facts, as I saw no big
cottonwood, nor nest of snags, nor any point. The only thing that
I could share with him in common was the fact that we were nearing
the point and getting into shoaler water--the boat told me that. The
floor under my feet seemed to hang back and drag; the motion of the
paddle wheel was perceptibly retarded; the escape was hoarser from
the pipes. I knew that there was shoal water on the point at the foot
of the bend, and the boat herself told me when we had reached the
point; but I had not seen it, either with my eyes, or in my head.
Mr. Burns had it all in his head, and did not require to see it with
his eyes. He simply ran the bend as he knew it to be; and he ran a
hundred others in the same way.
What might happen to any one who ran by sight, and not by faith, was
illustrated in the case of a young pilot on the "Key City", of our
line. He had his papers, and was standing watch alone in the pilot
house. He was going downstream. In going into Lansing, Iowa, one
runs a long bend on the left-hand shore. At Lansing the river turns
sharply to the south, from a nearly westerly course. Just at the
turn, and fronting the river toward the east, is a solid limestone
bluff four hundred feet high. On a starlit night the shadow of this
bluff is thrown out upon the river so far as totally to obliterate
the water, and for several minutes one must point his boat straight
into an apparently solid bluff before he "opens out" the turn to the
left. On the night in question the young man forgot to run by what
he knew to be the shape of the river, and trusted to what his eyes
showed him. He lost his head completely, and instead of stopping both
wheels and backing away from the impending doom, he put his wheel
hard over and plumped the "Key City" into the alluvial bank of the
island opposite, with such force as to snatch both chimneys out of
her, and very nearly to make a wreck of the steamer.
I have myself been tempted to run away from the same bluff; and but
for confidence inspired by the presence of one of the pilots, might
have done so. Mr. Burns drilled his "cubs" upon one point, however,
which made for the safety of the boat: "When in doubt, ring the
stopping bell and set her back." There was no place of safety to run
to in a panic on the Mississippi, and a boat standing still was less
likely to hurt herself or any one else than one in motion.
In no other particular, perhaps, has the art of piloting been so
revolutionized as in the adoption of the electric search-light for
night running. Time and again have I heard the question asked by
people new to the river: "Why don't you hang up two or three lanterns
at the front end of the boat, so that you can see to steer?"
It is easy to answer such a question convincingly. Go out into the
woods on a very dark night with an ordinary lantern. How far can you
see by such a light? Perhaps thirty feet; twenty feet would probably
be nearer the mark. Until a light was discovered that could project
its rays a half mile or more, and so concentrated as clearly to
reveal landmarks at that distance, the other extreme, no light at
all, was not only desirable, but positively necessary if the boat was
to be kept going.
After long usage, a pilot's eyes came to possess powers common to
the cat family and other night prowlers. He could literally "see
in the dark"; but he could not see in any half light, or any light
artificial and close at hand. For this reason it was necessary to
cover every light on the boat while running on a very dark night,
save the red and green sidelights at the chimney-tops. To accomplish
this, heavy canvas "shrouds" or "mufflers" were provided, which
fitted snugly around the forward part of the boat, in front of the
furnaces on the main deck; another set were placed around the boiler
deck, in front of the cabin; and still another set to muffle the
transom sky-lights on the hurricane deck. When these were properly
fitted and triced up, there was not a ray of light projected forward,
to break the dead blackness ahead. So delicate was this sense of
night sight, that no one was permitted to smoke a pipe or cigar in
the pilot house at such times, and even the mate, sitting by the bell
down on the roof below, had to forego his midnight pipe. As for the
pilot himself, a cigar in front of his nose would have shut off his
sight as effectively as though he were blindfolded.
Of course, were the pilot looking only ten feet, or even forty feet,
ahead of his boat, the lights on board might not have interfered
greatly, although they would not have assisted him in the slightest.
You can not steer a boat by landmarks ten feet ahead of her. The
pilot searches for landmarks a mile away, and must be able to
distinguish between two kinds of blackness--the blackness of the
night below, and the blackness of the sky above, and from the
dividing line between the two must read his marks and determine his
course. He does not see the woods on either side of him, and often
close at hand. The least ray of artificial light would blind the
pilot to the things which he must see under such conditions, hence
the shrouding of the boat was a necessity, were she to be run at all
on such a night. The coming of the electric search-light, and the
transfer of the marks from distant bluffs to big white diamond boards
planted low down on the banks where the light can be flashed upon
them from a distance of half a mile or more, has greatly simplified
the work of the pilot, and rendered obsolete the curtains which once
so completely darkened the Mississippi steamboat on the blackest of
nights.
[Illustration: 1. DANIEL SMITH HARRIS. Steamboat Captain, 1833-1861.
2. CAPTAIN THOMAS BURNS. Pilot on the Upper Mississippi River from
1856 to 1889. Inspector of Steamboats under President Cleveland and
President McKinley.
3. CHARLES G. HARGUS. Chief Clerk on the "Royal Arch," "Golden
State," "Fanny Harris," "Kate Cassell" and many other fine steamers
on the Upper Mississippi.
4. GEORGE B. MERRICK. "Cub" Pilot, 1862.]
Chapter XI
_Knowing the River_
To "know the river" fully, the pilot must not only know everything
which may be seen by the eye, but he must also feel for a great
deal of information of the first importance which is not revealed
to the eye alone. Where the water warrants it, he reaches for this
information with a lead line; as on the lower river, where the water
is deeper, and the draft of boats correspondingly great. On the
upper river, a twelve-foot pole answers instead. The performance
is always one of great interest to the passengers; the results are
often of greater interest to the man at the wheel. The manner in
which the reports of the leadsman are received and digested by the
pilot, is not usually known to or comprehended by the uninitiated.
The proceeding is picturesque, and adds one more "feature" to the
novelties of the trip. It is always watched with the greatest
interest by the tourist, and is apparently always enjoyed by them,
whatever the effect upon the pilot; whether he enjoys it or not
depends on the circumstances.
Soundings are not always necessarily for the immediate and present
purpose of working the boat over any particular bar, at the
particular time at which they are taken, although they may be taken
for that purpose and no other. In general, during the season of low
water, the leads are kept going in all difficult places as much for
the purpose of comparison as for the immediate purpose of feeling
one's way over the especial reef or bar where the soundings are
taken. If it is suspected that a reef is "making down", the pilot
wants to satisfy himself on that point, so that he may readjust his
marks to meet the changed outlines. If a reef is "dissolving", he
also wants to know that, and readjust his marks accordingly--only
in the first place, his marks will be set lower down the river; in
case of a dissolving reef, his marks will be set farther upstream,
to follow the deep water which is always found close under the
reef--that is, on the downstream side. The shallowest water is always
on the crest of the reef, and it "tapers" back, upstream, very
gradually, for rods--sometimes for half a mile or even more, until
another reef is reached, with deep water under it, and another system
of shallows above.
This is where the perfection of the pilot's memory machine is
demonstrated along another line. He has acquainted himself with every
bluff, hill, rock, tree, stump, house, woodpile, and whatever else
is to be noted along the banks of the river. He has further added to
this fund of information a photographic negative in his mind, showing
the shape of all the curves, bends, capes, and points of the river's
banks, so that he may shut his eyes, yet see it all, and with such
certainty that he can, on a night so perfectly black that the shore
line is blotted out, run his boat within fifty feet of the shore and
dodge snags, wrecks, overhanging trees, and all other obstacles by
running the shape of the river as he knows it to be--not as he can
see it. In sounding, he is mentally charting the bottom of the river
as he has already charted the surface and its surroundings.
As he approaches the crossing which he wishes to verify, he pulls the
rope attached to the tongue of the big bell on the roof, and sounds
one stroke, and an instant later two strokes. The captain or mate
on watch sings out: "Starboard lead!" "Larboard lead!" and the men
detailed for the duty are at their stations in a minute or less after
the order is given. Then the cry, first from starboard and then from
port, long-drawn and often musical: "No-o-o bottom; no-o-o bottom!"
rises from the fo'c'sle, and is repeated by the captain or mate to
the pilot. "Mar-r-k twain, mar-r-r-k twain!" indicates soundings the
depth of the sounding pole--twelve feet, or two fathoms. This is
of no interest to the pilot, for he knew there was "no bottom" and
"two fathoms" before the soundings were taken. It is of the highest
interest to the passengers, however, to whom the cry of "no bottom"
seems a paradox, when the boat has been rubbing the bottom most of
the way from Rock Island up. They have not yet been taught that this
simply means no bottom with a twelve-foot pole, and does not indicate
that the Mississippi is a bottomless stream at this or any other
point.
On the upper river, the cry of "ten feet, eight and a half", or even
"six feet", does not strike any sensitive spot in the pilot's mental
machinery, for upper river men are used to running "where there
is a heavy dew". On such occasions he might listen to the latest
story, detailed by a visiting comrade, and even take part in the
conversation, apparently indifferent to the monotonous cries from
the lower deck. But all the time his brain is fitting the leadsman's
cries to the marks in which the cries have found his boat--not
consciously, perhaps, but nevertheless surely. He has not only fitted
the cry into the marks, but has mentally compared the present with
the depth of water cried at the same spot last trip, and the trip
before that, and noted the change, if any has taken place. Say the
leadsman has sung "six feet", "six feet", "six feet", "six feet",
"six feet", until you would think there was no other depth but six
feet in the river; then in the same tone he sings "five-and-a-half",
"six feet", "six feet", "six feet". The pilot is still talking with
his visitor, watching his marks and turning his wheel; but he has
picked out that "five-and-a-half" and stored it away for future
reference, together with all the surroundings of his boat at the
instant the call reached his ear--the marks ahead, astern, and on
either side. The next trip, as the leadsman sings "six feet", "six
feet", "six feet", he will be shocked and grievously disappointed if
he does not find his "five-and-a-half" at just that point. And he
will not be counting the "six feet" cries, nor, possibly, will he be
aware that he is looking for the "five-and-a-half". When he drops
into the marks where the "five-and-a-half" found him last week, if he
hears only the "six feet", he will be in a similar frame of mind to
the man who, coming into town, misses a prominent tree or house, and
asks: "Where is that big tree that stood on the corner, when I was
here last time"?
The pilot does all this without realizing that he is making any
mental effort. When he begins this sort of drill as a "cub", he
realizes it fully; and if he is half sharp he will open an account
with every shoal place between Rock Island and St. Paul, and set down
in writing the soundings on the lowest place on each reef, and try to
supply the marks in which his steamer lay when the cry was heard. As
he grows in his studies he will rely less on his notebook and more
upon his memory, until the mental picture of the bottom of the river
becomes as vivid as that of the surface. Then, when his chief asks
suddenly: "How much water was there on the middle crossing at Beef
Slough last trip"? he can answer promptly: "Four feet on starboard,
four feet scant on port".
"How much trip before last?"
"Four feet large, both sides."
"Right, my boy; you're doing well."
If that "cub" doesn't grow an inch in a minute, under these
circumstances, he isn't the right kind of boy to have around.
Naturally the boys studied the "nightmares", first of all. If they
could get over Cassville, Brownsville, Trempealeau, Rolling-stone,
Beef Slough, Prescott, Grey Cloud, and Pig's Eye, they could manage
all the rest of the river. But the leads were kept going in fifty
other places which, while not so bad, had enough possibilities to
warrant the closest watching. The chiefs were making mental notes of
all these places, and could tell you the soundings on every crossing
where a lead had been cast, as readily as the "cubs" could recite the
capital letter readings of Beef Slough and Pig's Eye. The miracle of
it was, how they could do this without giving any apparent attention
to the matter at the time. They struck the bell, the leadsman sang,
the mate or captain repeated the cries mechanically, while the
pilot appeared to pay little or no attention to the matter. When
he had enough of the music he tapped the bell to lay in the leads,
and nothing was said as to the results. Yet if asked at St. Paul
by a brother pilot how much water he found on any one of a hundred
crossings of average depth, he could tell, without hesitation, just
where he found the lowest cast of the lead.
In my experience as a printer I have stood at the case and set up an
editorial out of my head (how "able" I will not pretend to say), at
the same time keeping up a spirited argument on politics or religion
with a visitor. The thinking appeared to be all devoted to the
argument; it was probably the talking only. To set the type required
no thought at all; that was purely mechanical; and to compose the
editorial was the unconscious operation of the mind, accustomed
to doing just this sort of thing, until the framing of words into
sentences became more or less mechanical. Certainly the mental drill
of a river pilot along a very few lines, developed a memory for the
things pertaining to his profession which was wonderful, when you
sit down and attempt to analyze it. To the men themselves it was not
a wonder--it was the merest commonplace. It was among the things
which you must acquire before you could pilot a steamboat; and for
a consideration they would covenant to teach any boy of average
mental ability and common sense all these things, provided always
that he had the physical ability to handle a wheel, and provided
also, that he demonstrated in time of trial that he had the "nerve"
necessary for the business. A timid, cowardly, or doubting person
had no business in the pilot house. If it were possible for him to
acquire all the rest, and he lacked the nerve to steady him in time
of danger, he was promptly dropped out of the business.
I saw this illustrated in the case of a rapids pilot between St.
Paul and St. Anthony. We always made this trip when a cargo of flour
was offered by the one mill which in that early day represented all
there was of that great interest which now dominates the business of
Minneapolis. While our pilots were both capable of taking the boat
to St. Anthony and back, the underwriters required that we should
take a special pilot for the trip--one who made a specialty of that
run. On the occasion in point we had taken an unusually heavy cargo,
as the river was at a good stage. At that time the channel was very
crooked, winding about between reefs of solid rock, with an eight
to ten mile current. It required skilful manipulation of the wheel
to keep the stern of the boat off the rocks. In going downstream it
is comparatively easy to get the bow of a steamer around a crooked
place; it is not easy to keep the stern from swinging into danger.
In this case the stern of the steamer struck a rock reef with such
force as to tear one of the wing rudders out by the roots, in doing
which enough noise was made to warrant the belief that half the boat
was gone. The special pilot was satisfied that such was the case,
and exclaimed: "She is gone!" at the same time letting go the wheel
and jumping for the pilot house door. She would have been smashed
into kindlings in a minute if she had been left to herself, or had
the engines been stopped even for an instant. Fortunately the rapids
pilot was so scared by the noise of rending timbers and wheel-buckets
that he did not have nerve enough left to ring a bell, and the
engineer on watch was not going to stop until a bell was rung, as he
knew that the drift of a minute in that white water, would pile us
up on the next reef below. Fortunately for the "Fanny Harris", Tom
Cushing was in the pilot house, as well as myself. When the other
man dropped the wheel Cushing jumped for it, and fired an order to
me to get hold of the other side of the wheel, and for the next six
miles he turned and twisted among the reefs, under a full head of
steam, which was necessary to give us steerageway in such a current.
We never stopped until we reached St. Paul, where we ran over to the
west shore, it being shallow, and beached the boat. When she struck
land the captain took the special pilot by the collar and kicked him
ashore, at the same time giving him the benefit of the strongest
language in use on the river at that time. Beyond the loss of a
rudder and some buckets from the wheel, the boat was not seriously
damaged, and we continued the voyage to Galena as we were. Had Tom
Cushing not been in the pilot house at the time, she would have been
a wreck in the rapids a mile or so below St. Anthony Falls. The
rapids pilot lost his certificate.
[Illustration: TYPICAL PORTION OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI. Map of the
river between Cassville, Wis., and Guttenberg, Iowa, showing the
characteristic winding of the stream.]
Chapter XII
_The Art of Steering_
Every pilot must of necessity be a steersman; but not every steersman
is of necessity a pilot. He may be studying to become a pilot, and
not yet out of the steersman stage. "Cubs" begin their studies by
steering for their chiefs. Many boys become quite expert in handling
a boat, under the eyes of their chiefs, before they are sufficiently
acquainted with the river to be trusted alone at the wheel for any
length of time.
At first thought, one might imagine a number of favorable conditions
as prerequisite to the ideal in steering: a straight piece of river,
plenty of water, and an average steamboat. These would indeed
guarantee leaving a straight wake; but under such conditions a
roustabout might accomplish this. The artistic quality is developed
in the handling of a boat under the usual conditions--in making
the multitudinous crossings, where the jack staff is continually
swinging from side to side as the boat is dodging reefs and hunting
the best water. In doing this, one man puts his wheel so hard down,
and holds it so long, that he finds it necessary to put the wheel
to the very opposite to check the swing of the boat and head it
back to its proper course, in which evolution he has twice placed
his rudder almost squarely across the stern of his boat. If this
athletic procedure is persevered in at every change of course, it
will materially retard the speed of the steamer and leave a wake full
of acute angles, besides giving the steersman an unnecessary amount
of work.
The skilled steersman, combining his art with his exact knowledge
of the bottom of the river, will give his boat only enough wheel to
lay her into her "marks", closely shaving the points of the reefs
and bars, and will "meet her" so gradually and so soon as to check
the swing of the jack staff at the exact moment when the "marks"
are reached. There is then no putting the wheel over to bring the
boat back, after having overreached her marks, and the rudders have
at no time been more than a quarter out of line with the hull of the
boat. It is this delicate handling of the wheel, which differentiates
between the artist and the athlete.
Steamboats have their individuality, the same as pilots and
steersmen. There are boats (or have been), that would almost steer
themselves, while there are others so perverse and tricky that no one
could feel sure of keeping them in the river for any consecutive two
miles. The "Ocean Wave" was, perhaps, the most unreliable and tricky
of all the craft on the upper river--or any river. In low water no
one man ever thought of standing a watch alone at the wheel, and at
times she would run away with two men at the wheel. She was short,
"stubby", and narrow; and when she smelt a reef she would, unless
very carefully handled, under a slow bell, run away from it, often
with one paddle wheel backing while the other was coming ahead, and
the rudder standing squarely across the stern. Many times she has
plumped into the bank under these conditions, and nothing less than
the bank would stop her. The "City Belle", the "Favorite", and the
"Frank Steele" were built much like the "Ocean Wave", but were not
quite so unreliable in steering. She was in a class by herself. On
the other hand, the "Key City", one of the largest, longest, and
finest of the up-river packets, was so well-balanced, and her hull
so finely moulded, that it was a delight to handle her, even under
otherwise unfavorable conditions, such as low water, or high winds.
A stern-wheel boat going downstream when the wind was blowing up
the river, was about as helpless a craft to handle as could well
be imagined. After she was once "straightened down" she was all
right; but in attempting to get her nose pointed down river, after
having made a landing, there were more profane possibilities than
the uninitiated ever dreamed of. The current, acting on the stern
of the boat and the partially-submerged wheel, was all the time
pulling that end of the boat downstream; while the wind, acting
upon the tall chimneys and the pilot house and "Texas", was at the
same time pushing the bow of the boat upstream; and the pilot was
all the while endeavoring to reverse this position, and get the bow
of his boat pointed in the direction in which he wished to go. It
sometimes took hours to accomplish this, particularly if caught in
places where the river was narrow and correspondingly swift, and the
wind strong and contrary. The only way to swing a stern-wheel boat
was, to put the steering wheel hard over, throwing the four rudders
as far to one side as possible, and then back strongly against them.
Under this leverage if there was no wind, the boat would swing easily
and promptly, until her head was pointed downstream; and then by
coming ahead and gaining steerageway, the boat was under perfect
control. But when the wind was blowing upstream, it was often found
impracticable to back fast and far enough to gain the necessary
momentum to swing her in a narrow place; the engines would have to be
stopped before the boat was swung to more than a right angle with the
river, and then, before steerageway was gained after coming ahead,
the bow of the boat would again be pointing upstream, and the same
performance would have to be gone through with--sometimes a dozen
or twenty times, before the boat would get under way in the proper
direction.
In 1881 I saw Henry Link, after having made a landing at Newport,
back the "Mary Morton", of the Diamond Jo Line, more than five
miles down the river, she having swung stern-down at that place. He
see-sawed back and forth across the stream, first in one direction
and then in another, and failed at last to swing his boat against the
strong south wind which was blowing. He finally gave it up and ran
ashore, and getting out a line to a big tree, backed his craft around
until her bow was pointed downstream, and then made a start from a
broadside position against the bank. I happened to be a passenger on
the boat at the time. His remarks on that occasion were unprintable.
A side-wheel boat, under the same conditions, would have backed out
into the river, come ahead on one wheel while backing on the other,
and in two or three minutes would have been going full speed ahead on
the desired course. That is the beauty of the independent side-wheel
system. It is a great saving of labor and morality for the steersman,
and a great saving of time for the owners.
It would seem that if you could get the bow of your boat clear of the
bank, or of an overhanging tree, after pointing in pretty close, that
the rest of the boat would follow the bow and likewise come out,
without any undue intimacy with the trees or bank. It takes only one
trial to disabuse a beginner of this notion. The balance of the boat
does not follow the bow out of such a position; and while every pilot
knows the immutable laws of physics which operate upon his boat under
such circumstances, most of them, sooner or later, get caught, either
through carelessness or recklessness, just as the green cub does
through ignorance.
In running downstream, when you point into the bank, and shave it
closely, you pull the bow of the boat away, and then there are two
forces over which you have no control with your steering wheel: the
impetus of the after half of your boat is still in the direction of
the bank, after the forward half has begun to swing away; which would
also be the case in a perfectly dead lake. In the river, you have
the second force in the current which is pressing against the whole
of the hull, but more particularly against the after part, and this
is pushing the boat in toward the bank after you have pulled her bow
away from it. The result is, that while you may clear the bank with
the bow of the boat, the stern swings in and gets the punishment.
Because of these two laws of physics, it was almost impossible to run
a stern-wheel boat around the sharp bend in Coon Slough, a feat which
"Tom" Burns performed several times without stopping a wheel. "Jack"
Harris tried it with the big side-wheeler, the "Northern Light", late
in the fall, when the anchor ice was running. Her bow got around all
right; but her stern swung into the ice which had lodged in the bend,
with the result that the whole stern was torn away, and she sank in
twenty feet of water. "Ned" West tried a similar experiment at Dayton
Bluff, just below St. Paul, with the "Key City". He ran in very close
to the rocky shore, under full headway. He got her head out in good
shape, but the stern struck the rocks, tearing out the rudder and
smashing the deadwood. He worked her back to St. Paul with the wheels
alone, and there the damage was repaired. I doubt if he was even
reprimanded, for he was the "fastest" pilot on the upper river, as
well as one of the best, and getting eight hundred dollars a month
for his services. He could get a boat over the course from St. Louis
to St. Paul, in less time than any other pilot could take the same
boat, and that of course carried with it the supposition that he
knew the river as well as any man.
I learned the lesson myself through inattention. I was well
acquainted with the principle through precept, and had been very
careful not to run too near the bank. Coming down from St. Croix
Falls with the "H. S. Allen", on reaching the mouth of the Apple
River, I saw a school of black bass lying on the white sandy bottom
where the Apple River empties into the St. Croix. The inflow from
Apple River sets almost squarely across the St. Croix, and when
the former is in flood the current sets nearly across the channel.
To meet it, it is necessary to point toward the incoming current,
to prevent being thrown against the opposite bank. Being an ardent
fisherman I was deeply interested in the scores of fine fish plainly
distinguishable from the height of the pilot house. The result was
inevitable. I neglected to point the bow of the boat sufficiently
against the inflow, and she took a sheer for the opposite bank the
instant she struck the cross current. I pulled the wheel hard over
in an instant, and got the bow clear of the overhanging timber, but
the stern went under, and when it came out the "H. S. Allen" lacked
two escape pipes and half of the washroom and laundry. The stewardess
herself was short about half her senses, and all her temper. The
captain had seen the same trick performed by older and better pilots
than myself, and was not unduly distressed. It took about one hundred
dollars to make the boat presentable. I did not tell about the black
bass for some time after the incident occurred--long enough after so
that there would be no obvious connection between the fish and the
missing laundry.
The man who has once mastered the art of steering a steamboat on
Western waters, never loses his love for it. Whatever may have been
his occupation after leaving the river, his hands instinctively
reach out for the wheel if fortune so favors him as to place the
opportunity within his reach. I mean, of course, the man who sees and
feels more than the mere turning of the wheel so many hours a day,
for so much money to be paid at the completion of his task. It may be
work, and hard work, for the enthusiast as well as for the hireling;
but with the man who puts his spirit into the task, it is work
ennobled by painstaking devotion, and glorified by the realization
of work artistically and lovingly done. To such a man there is an
exhilaration about the handling of a big steamboat in the crooked
channels of the Great River, akin to that felt by the accomplished
horseman when guiding a spirited team of roadsters, or that of the
engineer, holding the throttle of a great locomotive rushing over
the rails at a speed of sixty miles an hour. However long the hands
of the horseman or the engineer may have been divorced from reins or
throttle, there is the same longing to grasp the one or the other
when the opportunity offers. It is a wholly natural craving of the
inner being; and however inexplicable it may be, it is there.
For forty years, since leaving the river for other pursuits, often
harassing and full of care, I have dreamed, time and again, of
holding a wheel on one of the old-time boats on which I served as
a boy. In my sleep I have felt again the satisfaction in work well
done, the mortification of failure, and have felt again the cares and
responsibilities that weighed so heavily when beset with difficulties
and dangers. It is all as real as though I again stood at the
wheel, doing real work, and achieving real victories over besetting
difficulties and dangers. Mere work, as a means of earning a living,
would not take such hold upon one's nature. It is the soul of the
artist incarnate in the pilot.
Chapter XIII
_An Initiation_
I have said that in addition to "knowing the river", and knowing that
he knows it, the young pilot must also be fortified with a large
measure of self-reliance, or all else will go for nothing. The time
of trial comes to every one, sooner or later, and the manner in which
it is met usually determines the standing of the young novitiate in
the estimation of river men. The reputation of every man on the river
is common property the length of his run, from St. Louis to St. Paul.
It was proverbial that river men "talked shop" more than any others,
in those early days, probably because they were more interested in
their own business than they were in that of other men. Possibly
because, as one government engineer stated it, they didn't know
anything else. However, the doings of all the river men were pretty
thoroughly discussed sooner or later, from the latest dare-devil
exhibition of fancy piloting by "Ned" West, to the mistakes and
mishaps of the youngest "cub". Sooner or later, each and all were
served up at the casual meetings of river men, at whatever port they
might foregather.
My own "baptism"--not of "fire", but of water and lightning--came on
the very first trip I made alone on a steamboat. I had been running
with Charley Jewell on the "H. S. Allen", from Prescott to St. Croix
Falls. Mr. Jewell fell sick and was laid off at Prescott. On the
levee, the day he went home, was a steamboat load of rope, rigging,
boats, and camp-equipage, together with a couple of hundred raftsmen
landed from a down-river packet that did not care to make the run
up the lake. The disembarked men were anxious to reach Stillwater
with their cargo, that night. Our regular starting time, as a United
States mail boat, was at 7 o'clock in the morning. They offered
extra compensation if we would take them up that night, and the
proposition was accepted by Captain Gray. All hands were set to work
loading the stuff. I felt quite elated at the prospect, as it was a
bright evening, and I felt sure of finding my way, for there were
only three or four close places to run in the thirty miles of lake
navigation between Prescott and Stillwater.
We got everything aboard, and I backed her out and started up the
lake. There had been some lightning in the north, where there was a
bank of low-lying clouds. So far away were they, apparently, that no
one thought of a storm, certainly not a serious one. We were running
toward it, however, and as we soon discovered, it was coming to meet
us at a rattling pace. We met when about six miles above Prescott.
First a terrific wind out of the north, followed by torrents of rain,
and incessant lightning, which took on the appearance of chain-mail
as it shimmered and glittered on the falling rain drops. I put up
the breast-board, and let down the head-board as far as I could and
still leave room between to look out ahead; but the fierce wind drove
the rain in sheets into the pilot house, and in a minute's time I
was completely soaked. The lightning and thunder were terrifying in
brilliancy and in sharpness of sound, the flash and the report coming
so closely together as to leave no doubt that the bolts were getting
seriously close to the smokestacks. The pilot house was not the place
I would have chosen from which to enjoy these effects, had I my
choice. The place I really longed for was somewhere down below, where
I would have felt less conspicuous as a target.
I managed to work my way around the Kinnickinnic bar, and made the
run up to the Afton (or "Catfish") bar, around which the channel
was quite narrow and wofully crooked. Thus far, the high banks had
sheltered us somewhat from the wind. Here, however, the low-lying
prairie came down to the water's edge. The sweep of the wind was
terrific, while the downpour of rain was such that at times it was
impossible to see any landmarks a hundred feet away. Captain Gray,
wrapped in his storm clothes, who had, since the tempest broke, staid
on the roof, one eye on the banks, when he could see them, and the
other on the young man at the wheel, finally called up and wanted to
know if I did not think we had better feel our way ashore and tie up
until the storm abated, even at the risk of being late in getting
back to Prescott to take up our regular trip in the morning. I was
shivering so that my teeth chattered, and the captain would have
been fully justified in assuming that I was shaking as much from
fear as from cold. I had a deal of pride in those days, however,
and a fair allowance of inherited courage, with perhaps a dash of
pig-headedness. I did not wish to have it bulletined from one end of
the river to the other that the first time I was left in charge of a
steamboat, I had hunted a tree to tie up to because it happened to
thunder and rain a little. That would have been the popular version
of the incident, in any case. I replied, therefore, that if Captain
Gray would send his waiter up with a glass of brandy, I would take
the steamer to Hudson levee before taking out a line, and from there
to Stillwater and back to Prescott in time for our morning run. The
captain said nothing, then or thereafter, but sent his "boy" up with
the brandy. This was applied inwardly, and served to take the chill
off.
Thus fortified--temperance people will please not be horrified
at this depravity of a nineteen-year-old novice, under such
extraordinary provocation--I worked around "Catfish" and followed
along the west shore as far as Lakeland. From Lakeland across the
lake to the Hudson levee, is about three-quarters of a mile. It was
still blowing a gale, and the rain came down in torrents, so that the
opposite shore could not be seen--in fact one could not distinguish
an object ten rods ahead. I had felt my way along, sometimes under
the "slow bell", until the present. I must now cut loose from the
west shore, and make the crossing to Hudson. There was plenty of
water everywhere; but I could not see any landmarks on the opposite
side of the lake. I got a stern bearing, however, and headed across.
In a minute's time I could see nothing, either ahead or astern, and
having no compass I had to rely on the "feel" of the rudders to tell
me which way she was swinging. As it turned out, this was of little
value, owing to the strength of the wind. For five minutes I ran
under full head, and then slowed, trying to get a glimpse of the east
bank, and "find myself". When I did, the "H. S. Allen" was headed
squarely down the lake, and fully a mile below the Hudson landing.
The force of the wind on the chimneys had turned her bow down-wind
and downstream. As the rain began to slacken and I could see my
marks, it took but a few minutes to straighten her up and make the
run to the landing.
On leaving Hudson there were two ways of running the big bar opposite
and below the mouth of Willow River. One, the longest, was to cross
back to Lakeland and then run up the west shore--all of it straight
work. The other, was to run squarely out into the middle of the lake,
turn north and run half a mile, then quartering west-north-west
across the lake to the opposite shore. This crossing saved a mile
or more of steaming over the other course; but it was crooked and
narrow, and the possibility of hanging up was much greater. Captain
Gray asked me, when backing out, which crossing I would make. I
replied that I was going to take the upper to save time. He said
nothing, but again took his place by the bell. He made no suggestion,
nor offered any opinion as to my decision. That was a part of the
river etiquette, which he adhered to even in the case of a boy; for
which I sincerely thanked him in my inner being, while accepting it
outwardly quite as a matter of course--which it would have been, with
an older and more experienced man at the wheel.
I made the crossing without calling for leads, or touching bottom,
and the rest of the way was easy. When we made Stillwater the stars
were out, and the storm-clouds hung low on the southern horizon. I
went below and got into dry clothes, and had a few hours sleep while
the freight was being put ashore. Along about two o'clock in the
morning I started back, with the mate on the roof. In confidence he
confided to me the gratifying news that the "old man says you're all
right. He says that you've got nerve enough to last you through". As
"nerve" was one of the things needed in the business, I was certainly
proud that my night's work, alone on a heavily-loaded boat, in one of
the worst of storms, had given me a standing with the "old man"; and
I felt reasonably certain that his report would carry weight among
the river men who might chance to discuss the merits of the young
"cub", and his equipment for serious work.
I may, I hope, be pardoned for dwelling at such length upon an
incident of such common occurrence on the river as to attract little
or no attention when the man at the wheel was an old and experienced
pilot. But this was my "trying-out" time, which made a difference.
Even if no one else ever gave the incident a second thought, I
should have felt the shame of it to this day, had I "craw-fished" on
that first trial.
I have never seen or heard anything to compare with the storms we
used to have on the river. The river men had a theory of their
own--not very scientific, and probably without foundation in
fact--that the vapors from the lowlands and islands formed clouds
which were more than ordinarily charged with electricity. _Why_ they
should be more highly charged than vapors arising from lowlands or
islands elsewhere, they did not attempt to explain, and could not
had they attempted. The fact remains, that
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