Alma, Wisconsin.A typical river town in the fifties.Chapter VIIWooding UpAs 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 anddirectors 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 backto 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 VIIIThe MateIn 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 deckcrew 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 suggestionslooking 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.6768In 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 nothingbetter, 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.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 IXThe "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 hissitting-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 underall 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 thederricks 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 veryheavy 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, ifthe 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 thefinesseof 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 XThe Pilots and Their WorkWe 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 wellas 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 Mississippimay 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 conditionally8182for 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 hisLife 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 mancombines 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[3]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.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 theriver, 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 aliketo 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 thembetterthan 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'tanyparticular shape to a shore. A gray mist would tangle the head of the oldest man that ever lived. Well, then, different kinds ofmoonlightchange 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 learntheshape 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 simplyran 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 discoveredthat 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 mileor 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.
Alma, Wisconsin.A typical river town in the fifties.
Alma, Wisconsin.A typical river town in the fifties.
Chapter VIIWooding 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 anddirectors 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 backto 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 VIIIThe 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 deckcrew 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 suggestionslooking 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.
6768In 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 nothingbetter, 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.
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.
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.
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 IXThe "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 hissitting-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 underall 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 thederricks 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 veryheavy 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, ifthe 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 thefinesseof 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 XThe 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 wellas 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 Mississippimay 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 conditionally8182for 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 hisLife 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 mancombines 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[3]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.
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 theriver, 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 aliketo 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 thembetterthan 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'tanyparticular shape to a shore. A gray mist would tangle the head of the oldest man that ever lived. Well, then, different kinds ofmoonlightchange 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 learntheshape 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."
"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 thembetterthan 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'tanyparticular shape to a shore. A gray mist would tangle the head of the oldest man that ever lived. Well, then, different kinds ofmoonlightchange 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 learntheshape 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 simplyran 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 discoveredthat 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 mileor 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.