“The bar is at length passed, and as the shore in sight is straight on both sides and the current uniformly strong, the poles are laid aside, and the men being equally divided, those on the river side take totheir oars, while those on the land-side lay hold of the branches of willows or other trees, and thus slowly propel the boat. Here and there, however, the trunk of a fallen tree, partly lying on the bank and partly projecting beyond it, impedes their progress and requires to be doubled. This is performed by striking into it the iron points of the poles and gaff-hooks, and so pulling around it. The sun is now quite low, and the barge is again secured in the best harbor within reach for the night, after having accomplished a distance of perhaps fifteen miles. The next day the wind proves favorable, the sail is set, the boat takes all advantages, and meeting with no accident, has ascended thirty miles—perhaps double that distance. The next day comes with a very different aspect. The wind is right ahead, the shores are without trees of any kind, and the canes on the bank are so thick and stout that not even the cordelles can be used. This occasions a halt. The time is not altogether lost, as most of the men, being provided with rifles, betake themselves to the woods and search for the deer, the hares or theturkeys that are generally abundant there. Three days may pass before the wind changes, and the advantages gained on the previous five days are forgotten. Again the boat proceeds, but in passing over a shallow place, runs on a log, swings with the current, but hangs fast with her lee-side almost under water. Now for the poles! All hands are on deck, bustling and pushing. At length, towards sunset, the boat is once more afloat, and is again taken to the shore where the wearied crew pass another night.
“I could tell you of the crew abandoning the boat and cargo and of numberless accidents and perils, but be it enough to say, that advancing in this tardy manner, the boat that left New Orleans on the 1st of March, often did not reach the Falls of Ohio [Louisville] until the month of July, sometimes not until October; and after all this immense trouble, it brought only a few bags of coffee and at most one hundred hogsheads of sugar. Such was the state of things as late as 1808. The number of barges at that period did not amount to more than 25 or 30, and the largest probably did not exceed one hundred tons burden. To make the best of this fatiguing navigation, I may conclude by saying that a barge which came up in three months, had done wonders, for I believe few voyages were performed in that time.”[53]
This is the story of an Orleans boat in distinction from a Kentucky boat which was smaller and not so well finished.[54]The heavy up-river loads of the Orleans boats—sugar and molasses—were very important cargoes and illustrate the place the barge took in pioneer history; they were the freighters which carried on the larger rivers the heavy cargoes of a country fast filling with a new population. They plied, like the keel-boat, up and down stream but could not ascend the smaller rivers or reach portages of the larger streams because of their draught and size. There were, of course, small barges that could go wherever a keel-boat went; it was these that were common on certain portage path trades.[55]The small barge was practically a keel-boat (without running boards) save only in shape.
The flat-boat was the important craft of the era of immigration, the friend of the pioneer. It was the boat that never came back, a downstream craft solely. The flat-boat of average size was a roofed craft about forty feet long, twelve feet wide and eight feet deep. It was square and flat-bottomed and was managed by six oars; two of these, about thirty feet long, on each side, were known as “sweeps” and were manned by two men each; one at the stern, forty or fifty feet long including its big blade, was called the “steering oar;” a small oar was located at the prow, known as the “gouger,” which aided in steering the boat in swift water. One man only was needed at the steering oar and at the gouger.
“Kentucky” and “New Orleans” were the significant names for the old-time flat-boats, for Kentucky and New Orleans were the destinations of the large majority. The nominal difference between a Kentucky and New Orleans boat was that the former was commonly roofed only half over whilethe latter was stronger and was entirely covered with a roof. How to buy or build a “flat” was the first query of the pioneer father as he finally arrived at one of the ports on the upper Ohio. Often several families joined together and came down the river on one flat-boat, a motley congregation of men, women, children and domestic animals surrounded by the few crude, housekeeping utensils which had been brought over the mountains or purchased at the port of embarkation. Perhaps all of the details which engrossed a prospective pioneer’s attention are suggested in the previous quotations fromThe Navigator.
These Kentucky “broadhorns,” or “broadhorn flatboats” as they were also called, almost invariably carried a tin horn by means of which some one on board would announce their arrival or make known their whereabouts in a fog. This weird music, reverberating from hill to hill, was heard far and wide and was welcomed by the country people.
The history of the flat-boat comes down within the present generation, for as lateas the beginning of the Civil War flat-boating was common on the Ohio River. In the early day the flat-boat was the sign of immigration; not so in the later day. The flat-boats of the fifties bore cargoes to the southern ports, or cargoes to be retailed along the Mississippi River plantations. Any enterprising man who owned or could build a “flat,” bought up the crops of his neighborhood, put them aboard, and was ready to start on the “fall rise.” Flat-boats were loaded at the bow—sometimes through trapdoors in the roof—the cargo stored away in the hold. For through freight, apples and potatoes were the staples. If it was intended to “coast” (peddle the cargo to the plantations) the freight also included cider, cheese, pork, bacon, and even cabbage. Apple and peach brandy was a most profitable investment; especially if apple brandy, with a few peaches in it, could be palmed off on the thirsty darkies as peach brandy.
A yellow page of an old account-book of 1858 leaves record that the proprietor of one “flat” purchased the entire product of a neighboring farm and took it south thatfall. The items and their cost price on shore is interesting:
350 bu. wheat @ $1.05 per bu.$367.50208 bbls potatoes @ 2.05 per bbl.426.4017 bbls seed potatoes @ 1.2 5 per bbl21.2520 hogs, 6086 lbs. @ 4.33 per hundred263.525 bbls beans15.259 bbls & 13½ lbs. sauer-Kraut66.87Portion of a flat boat70.00—————$1,230.79
A yearly cash income of $1,230.79 would make many a farmer of our day contented.
The proprietor of the flat-boat left on his three thousand mile trip taking only a couple of farm hands with him as crew. They lived in the stern of the boat under the same roof that sheltered the cargo, but separated by a partition. It was all clear sailing, night and day. Almost the only work was to keep the craft in the current. Several miles above the “falls” at Louisville, pilots would be found in skiffs ready to climb aboard and steer the “flat” down the rapids for ten dollars or less. If thecargo was intended for the coasting trade, business began at the first large plantations. This was in the day of overseers who liberally patronized these “coasters,” giving in payment drafts on New Orleans. The darkies were, in some cases, allowed to make their own purchases; they did not neglect the liquor, often exchanging molasses for brandy even, gallon for gallon.
Upon arriving at his destination, the proprietor sold his remaining stock and boat, invested his money in sugar and molasses, and embarked with his freight on a packet for home. Thus two profits were cleared.
The advent of the Civil War was evident to these latter day boatmen; watches were always kept on the outlook lest the “lines” be cut. At the opening of the war flat-boats were frequently fired upon. When the business was again revived in 1866 it was a new, sad South the flat-boat men found. The negroes were “free,” the overseers gone, the coasting trade ruined; through freights were found to be the only ones that paid after 1865.
Collins asserts that Captain Jacob Yodertook the first flat-boat down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans in 1782; “the late Capt. Jos. Pierce of Cincinnati, Ohio, had erected over the remains of his old friend Capt. Jacob Yoder, an iron tablet (the first cast west of the Alleghanies) thus inscribed:
‘JACOB YODER
Was born at Reading, Pennsylvania, August 11, 1758; and was | a soldier of the Revolutionary army in 1777 and 1778. | He emigrated to the West in 1780; and in May, 1782, from Fort Redstone, | on the Monongahela river, in the |First Flat Boat. | That ever descended the Mississippi river, he landed in | New Orleans, with a cargoe of produce. | He died April 7, 1832, at his farm in Spencer County, Kentucky, and lies | here interred beneath this tablet.’”
Flat-boats were, both in early and modern times, always used or sold at their destination for lumber. Thus the early bargemen and flat-boat men who made down river trips returned largely on foot, until the era of steamboats. The long journey across country from New Orleans through the low fever-infested country andinto Kentucky was a dangerous and arduous experience.[56]“A large number of these boatmen were brought together at New Orleans. Their journey home could not be made in small parties, as they carried large quantities of specie, and the road was infested by robbers. The outlaws and fugitives from justice from the states resorted to this road. Some precautionary arrangements were necessary. The boatmen who preferred returning through the wilderness organized and selected their officers. These companies sometimes numbered several hundred, and a greater proportion of them were armed. They were provided with mules to carry the specie and provisions, and some spare ones for the sick. Those who were able purchased mules, or Indian ponies, for their use, but few could afford to ride. As the journey was usually performed after the sickly season commenced, and the first six or seven hundred miles was through a flat, unhealthycountry, with bad water, the spare mules were early loaded with the sick. There was a general anxiety to hasten through this region of malaria. Officers would give up their horses to the sick, companions would carry them forward as long as their strength enabled; but although everything was done for their relief which could be done without retarding the progress of their journey, many died on the way or were left to the care of the Indian or hunter who settled on the road. Many who survived an attack of fever, and reached the healthy country of Tennessee, were long recovering sufficient strength to resume their journey home. One would suppose that men would have been reluctant to engage in a service which exposed them to such great suffering and mortality without extraordinary compensation; but such was the love of adventure and recklessness of danger which characterized the young men of the West, that there was no lack of hands to man the boats, although their number increased from twenty-five to fifty per cent yearly. The fact that some of these boatmen would return with fifty Spanish dollars, whichwas a large sum at that day, was no small incentive to others, who perhaps never had a dollar of their own.”[57]
The “ark” of pioneer days was, as the name implies, the earliest type of houseboat. “These boats,” Mr. Harris records, “are generally called ‘Arks;’ and are said to have been invented by Mr. Krudger, on the Juniata, about ten years ago [1795]. They are square, and flat-bottomed; about forty feet by fifteen, with sides six feet deep; covered with a roof of thin boards; and accommodated with a fire-place. They require but four hands to navigate them, carry no sail, and are wafted down by the current.”[58]
Rafting logs down the Ohio was one of the great employments of the men of three-quarters of a century ago. “Our raft,” testified an oldvoyageurwho went down the Allegheny and Ohio from Olean, New York in 1821, “was one hundred and twenty feet long and sixty wide and about twofeet deep. It had eight oars. In the center was our cabin, which was twenty by sixteen, and contained, of course, our provisions and valuables, ... and ourstove. This was a patent range peculiar to those days and quite wonderful in its way. It was made of a wooden box lined with clay. It had a hole in the top for a kettle, and another through which the smoke passed to an aperture in the roof of our cabin, left for that purpose.... Our crew consisted of ten persons, including a man and his wife and one child, who were going to migrate.... There are many eddies along the river and at them we tried to tie up at night in order to be out of the current.... From Pittsburg to Cincinnati, five hundred miles, the river being broad and deep and free from snags, we could travel night and day.... At one point in our trip we saw a raft stranded on an island; but the Captain did not seem to take the matter very seriously to heart, and answered our salutations by singing and dancing and lustily waving his hat as we passed by.... At Limestone, [Maysville] Ky., seventy miles east of Cincinnati,I stopped and sold some shingles, the raft and the rest of the crew going on. After I had transacted my business, I took passage on another going to C. [Cincinnati]. At L. [Limestone] I remember seeing a bell on a tavern for the first time. This raft had the misfortune to run into a flatboat loaded with coal, and also the audacity to sneak off before the damage was discovered to avoid both delay and expense.... Once there [at Cincinnati] we hired a gang of men to wash the lumber, which was covered with dirt and weeds; they then drew it to the lumber yard, where we sold it.... I was not sorry when I reached my home ... on the evening of the 10th of June. I had been away since the middle of February.”[59]
The galley—a model boat with covered deck impelled by oarsmen—was not an unfamiliar craft in the early river days. It was such a boat as this that General George Rogers Clark armed as a gunboat on the lower Ohio and used as a patrolling gunboat during the Revolutionary War. Thefamed “Adventure Galley,” of the New England pilgrims to Marietta, was a craft of this pattern. It was forty-five feet long and twelve feet wide, with an estimated burden of fifty tons. Her bows were raking or curved, strongly built with heavy timbers and covered with a deck roof.[60]It is probable that the first mail boats which ran on the Ohio in 1793 were of similar design. This service, established by Jacob Myers between Cincinnati and Pittsburg, was advertised on November 16 as leaving Cincinnati at 8 A. M. every alternate Saturday, requiring one month for the round trip. The proprietor took great credit to himself, “claiming to be ‘influenced by love of philanthropy and desire of being serviceable to the public.’ He further stated: ‘No danger need be apprehended from the [Indian] enemy, as every person on board will be under cover, made proof against rifle or musquet balls, and port holes for firing out of. Each boat is armed with six pieces carrying a pound ball; also a number of good musquets, and amply supplied with ammunition, strongly manned with choicehands, and the masters of approved knowledge. A separate cabin is partitioned off for accommodating ladies on their passage; conveniences are constructed so as to render landing unnecessary, as it might, at times, be attended with danger. Rules and regulations for maintaining order and for the good management of the boats, and tables of the rates of freightage, passage, and carrying of letters; also, of the exact time of arrival and departure at all way places, may be seen on the boat and at the printing office in Cincinnati. Passengers supplied with provisions and liquors, of first quality, at most reasonable rates possible. Persons may work their passage. An office for insuring at moderate rates the property carried, will be kept at Cincinnati, Limestone, (i. e. Maysville) and Pittsburgh.’ Packet-boat promises then, like steamboat promises nowadays, were notalwayskept; instead of on November 30th, the second boat did not leave until December 10th, ‘precisely at 10 o’clock in the morning.’”[61]
In the days before steamboats, sails were greatly used on almost every mannerof craft, and were made of every conceivable material. The great barges of early days were moved by sails when the wind was favorable.[62]Both barges and keel-boats were “provided with a mast, a square sail....”[63]Canoes were frequently provided with sails and their progress was more or less dependent on the winds.[64]
The story of the building of the first brigs and schooners on the Ohio and its tributaries, the dreams of their proprietors and masters, and the experiences of their crews, is a subject worthy of a volume. The building of these larger craft for the Mississippi and ocean trade suggests at the outset the long, conflicting story of Mississippi control which can only be hinted at here.
This business of building sailing vessels in the Ohio Basin began the decade before the nineteenth century opened, and grew more and more important until steamnavigation revolutionized the river trade. These brigs and schooners were, without doubt, distinctively down river craft, which never returned; they were therefore the export carriers, and the importance of their place in history may be found in the fact that their appearance marks the rise of the export business to a position of prominence, as the use of the keel-boat marked the rise of what may be called interstate commerce.
In the year 1792 the company of shipbuilders previously mentioned, Tarascon, Berthoud, and Company, who put the first keel-boats into business on the Ohio, built the schooner “Amity” of one hundred and twenty tons, and the “Pittsburgh,” a ship of two hundred and fifty tons. In 1793 the schooner “was sent to St. Thomas, and the ship to Philadelphia, both laden with Flour. The second summer, they built the brig ‘Nanina,’ of two hundred, and the ship ‘Louisiana,’ of 350 tons. The brig was sent direct to Marseilles; the ship was sent out ballasted with ourstone coal, which was sold atPhiladelphia, for 37 1-2 cents per bushel. The year after they built the ship‘Western Trader’ of 400 tons.”[65]By 1800, therefore, cargoes of flour, iron, beef, pork, glass-ware, furniture of black walnut, wild cherry, and yellow birch, and beverages of varying character were awaiting the great hulls of these new ships of several hundred tons. In 1803 Thaddeus Harris found several of these ships on the stocks at Pittsburg; three had been launched before April, “from 160 to 275 tons burden.”[66]On May 4 he wrote at Marietta: “the schooner ‘Dorcas and Sally,’ of 70 tons, built at Wheeling and rigged at Marietta, dropped down the river. The following day there there passed down the schooner ‘Amity,’ of 103 tons, from Pittsburg, and the ship ‘Pittsburg,’ of 275 tons burden, from the same place, laden with seventeen hundred barrels of flour, with the rest of her cargo in flat-bottomed boats. In the evening the brig ‘Mary Avery,’ of 130 tons, built at Marietta, set sail. These afforded an interesting spectacle to the inhabitants of this place, who saluted thevessels as they passed with three cheers, and by firing a small piece of ordnance from the banks.”[67]“The building and lading of ships is now considered as an enterprize of the greatest importance in this part of the country. The last (1802) there were launched from the ship-yard of Captain Devol, on the Muskingum river, five miles above its mouth, the ship ‘Muskingum,’ of 204 tons, owned by Benjamin Ives Gilman, Esq. and the brigantine ‘Eliza Greene,’ of 115 tons, owned by Charles Greene, Esq. merchants at Marietta. At the spring flood of the present year, the schooner ‘Indiana,’ of 100 tons, the brig ‘Marietta,’ of 130 tons, and another of 150 tons, also built here, were launched and descended the river for New Orleans and the trade to the West Indies. Good judges of naval architecture have pronounced these vessels equal, in point of workmanship and materials, to the best that have been built in America. The firmness and great length of their planks, and the excellency of their timbers, (their frames being almost wholly composed of black walnut, a wood which, ifproperly selected, has nearly the strength of white oak, and the durability of the live oak of the south without its weight) it is believed will give these vessels the preference over any built of the timber commonly made use of, in any market where there are competent judges. This part of the country owes much to those gentlemen, who, in a new and experimental line, have set this example of enterprize and perseverance.”[68]One ship from Marietta is said to have had the existence of her port of clearance questioned in Italy.
In 1811 we learn that ship-building was not prospering as might be supposed; misfortunes and accidents “have given a damp to ships building at present.”[69]On an inland river, where the winds and the amount of rainfall at any time were very uncertain, it must have been a most difficult thing to cope successfully with low water and shifting sand bars and other innumerable obstacles to navigation in the Ohio. The times were ripe for another power, one which did not requirethat the vessels have deep draught, as was the case with sailing vessels.
The dawning of the new era of steam navigation cannot be introduced better than by quoting a unique paragraph fromThe Navigatorof 1811:
“There is now on foot a new mode of navigating our western waters, particularly the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This is with boats propelled by the power of steam. This plan has been carried into successful operation on the Hudson river at New York, and on the Delaware between New Castle and Burlington.—It has been stated that the one on the Hudson goes at the rate of four miles an hour against wind and tide on her route between New York and Albany, and frequently with 500 passengers on board. From these successful experiments there can be but little doubt of the plan succeeding on our western waters, and proving of immense advantage to the commerce of our country. A Mr. Rosewalt, a gentleman of enterprise, and who is acting it is said in conjunction with Messrs. Fulton and Livingston of New York, has a boat of this kind now on the stocks at Pittsburgh, of 138 feet keel, calculated for 300 or 400 tons burden. And there is one building at Frankfort, Kentucky, by citizens who no doubt will push the enterprise. It will be a novel sight, and as pleasing as novel to see a huge boat working her way up the windings of the Ohio, without the appearance of sail, oar, pole, or any manual labour about her—moving within the secrets of her own wonderful mechanism, and propelled by power undiscoverable!—This plan if it succeeds, must open to view flattering prospects to an immense country, an interior of not less than two thousand miles of as fine a soil and climate, as the world can produce, and to a people worthy of all the advantages that nature and art can give them, a people the more meritorious because they know how to sustain peace and live independent, among the crushing of empires, the falling of kings, the slaughter and bloodshed of millions, and the tumult, corruption and tyranny of all the world beside. The immensity of country we have yet to settle, the vast riches of the bowels of the earth, the unexampled advantages of our water courses, whichwind without interruption for thousands of miles, the numerous sources of trade and wealth opening to the enterprising and industrious citizens, are reflections that must rouse the most dull and stupid.... From the canoe, we now see ships of two or three hundred tons burden, masted and rigged, descending the same Ohio, laden with the products of the country, bound to New Orleans,—thence to any part of the world.—Thus the rise and progress of the trade and the trader on the western waters, thus the progress of our country from infancy to manhood, and thus the flattering prospects of its future greatness through the channels of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.”[70]
These words came true in a miraculously short space of time. Previous to the adoption of the steamboat navigation, say in 1817, the whole commerce from New Orleans to the upper country was carried in about twenty barges, averaging one hundred tons each, and making but one trip a year. The number of keel-boats employed on the Upper Ohio could nothave exceeded one hundred and fifty, carrying thirty tons each, and making one trip from Pittsburg to Louisville and back in two months, or about three voyages in the season. The tonnage of all the boats ascending the Ohio and Lower Mississippi was then about sixty-five hundred.
In 1811 the first steamboat was constructed at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, on the Monongahela. Several others were built soon after, but it was probably fifteen years before steamboats came into such general use as to cause any diminution in the flat-and keel-boat navigation. These first boats were built after models of ships, with deep holds. They also were constructed with low pressure engines and heavy machinery. Hence they were useless in low water, very hard to propel against the current, and their carrying capacity was greatly reduced. In order to attain greater speed, the builders soon made the boats long and narrow but it was not until they came to the decision that boats would run faster on the water than in it, and began making them flat and broad, that they finally got a boat capableof carrying a thousand tons, when drawing only four feet, and when empty only two and one-half feet. Then with a high pressure engine at each wheel they could make unprecedented speed; and these boats afforded traveling and freight accommodations equal to any. Although the prices of passages did not exceed hotel rates, yet more bountifully filled tables were not to be found on land and the boats were marvels of splendor in their appointments. The chief improvement made in the river steamboats was placing one large wheel at the stern of the boat entirely behind the hulk and with long paddles the full length of the beam, operated by double engines and quartering cranks. This had the advantage of allowing the wheel to fly in the eddy water of the boat, while it cleared the boat of the afterdraft. With these improvements rapid currents and shallow waters could be conquered.
In 1832 it was calculated that the whole number of persons deriving subsistence on the Ohio, including the crews of steam- and flat-boats, mechanics and laborers employed in building and repairing boats, woodcutters, and persons employed in furnishing, supplying, loading and unloading these boats, was ninety thousand. At this time, 1832, the boats numbered four hundred and fifty and their burden ninety thousand tons. In 1843 the whole number of steamboats constructed at Cincinnati alone was forty-five; the aggregate amount of their tonnage was twelve thousand and thirty-five tons, and their cost $705,000. This gives an average of two hundred and sixty-seven tons for each boat and about $16,000 for the cost of each.
The models of these 1843 boats, as well as their finish and accommodations, evinced a progressive improvement upon earlier boats. They had more length and less draught, and were faster than those of the last generation, while the hulls were more staunch, though they contained less weight of timber. The cabins were not so gaudy and expensive as those of former years but were greatly superior in comfort and convenience.
In 1844 the number of steamboats employed in navigating the Mississippi and its tributaries was four hundred and fifty.The average burden of these boats was 200 tons each, making an aggregate of 90,000 tons and their aggregate value, at $80 per ton, was $7,200,000. Many of these were fine vessels, affording most comfortable accommodations for passengers, and compared favorably in all particulars with the best packets in any part of the world. The number of persons engaged in navigating the steam-boats at this time varied from twenty-five to fifty for each boat, or an average of about thirty-five persons, which gives a total of 15,750 persons employed.
It appears from the reports of the Louisville and Portland Canal at this time that more than seven hundred flat-boats passed that canal in one year. There were, therefore, probably four thousand descending the Mississippi, and counting five men to a boat there were 20,000 persons employed in flat-boating. The cost of these boats was in the neighborhood of $400,000, which, as they did not return, was an annual expense; the cost of loading, navigating, and unloading them approximated $900,000, making a total annual expenditure upon this class of boats $1,300,000.
If, in 1834, the number of steamboats on western waters was two hundred and thirty, and they carried 39,000 tons, the expense of running them could be estimated as follows:[71]
60 boats, over 200 tons, 108 running days, at $140. per day—$1,512,000.70 boats, 120-200 tons, 240 running days, at $90. per day—1,512,000.100 boats, under 120 tons, 270 running days, at $60. per day—1,620,000.———————Total yearly expenses$4,645,000.
In 1844 the calculation was:
110 boats, over 200 tons, 180 running days, at $140 per day—$2,772,000.140 boats, 120-200 tons, 240 running days, at $90 per day—3,024,000.200 boats, under 120 tons, 280 running days, at $60—3,240,000.———————Total yearly expenses$9,036,000.
This sum, reduced to the different items producing it, would be apportioned as follows:
For wages, 36%$3,252,960.For wood, 30%2,710,800.For provisions, 18%1,626,480.For contingencies, 16%1,445,760.—————Total$9,036,000.
To this should be added:
Insurance, 15% on $7,200,000$1,080,000.Louisville and Portland Canal tolls—250,000.Interest on $7,200,000. Investment at 6%432,000.Wear and tear of boats, 20%1,440,000.——————Total$12,238,000.Add for flat-boats, as above,1,380,000.——————Total annual cost of transportation$13,618,000.
There were steadily employed at the Cincinnati shipyards, during the year 1843, in the heavier portions of the work, 320 hands at the boatyards, 200 joiners, 200 engine- and foundry-men, 50 painters, making the total number of persons employed 770.
Within the same year, there were built at Louisville, New Albany, and Jeffersonville, 35 boats, of 7,406 tons, which cost $700,000. These boats cost $20,000 each, averaged 211 tons, and cost about $95 per ton.
At Pittsburg, the same year, there were built 25 boats, of 4347 tons; the average tonnage of these boats was about 173 tons.
The aggregate number of boats built in 1843, is about as follows:
Cincinnati,45 boats,12,035tonsLouisville, New Albany, and Jeffersonville35 boats,7,406“Pittsburg,25 boats,4,347“Add for all other places,15 boats,3,000“———Total.26,788tons
The whole tonnage of western boats previous to 1843, being 90,000 tons, and the annual loss by destruction and superannuation being twenty per cent, the decrease by the latter cause for 1843, was 18,000 tons, and the increase 26,788 tons, making a net increase of 8,788 tons.
By the official returns in 1842 it appears that the whole steamboat tonnage of the United States was 218,994 tons; this was divided as follows:
Southwest
New Orleans,80,993tonsSt. Louis,14,725“Cincinnati,12,025“Pittsburg,10,107“Louisville,4,618“Nashville,3,810“————Total126,278tons.
Northwest
Buffalo,8,212tonsDetroit,3,296“Presque Isle,2,315“Oswego,1,970“Cuyahoga,1,859“————Total17,652tons.
Seaboard
New York,35,260tonsBaltimore,7,143“Mobile,6,982“Philadelphia,4,578“Charleston,3,289“Newbern,2,854“Perth Amboy,2,606“Apalachicola,1,418“Boston,1,362“Norfolk,1,395“Wilmington,1,212“Georgetown,1,178“Newark,1,120“Miscellaneous,4,767“————Total76,064tons.
At this time the steamboat tonnage belonged to the internal commerce of the country, as, with the exception of two or three in the Gulf of Mexico, we had no steam vessels engaged in foreign commerce. Of the whole 218,994 tons, it appears that two-thirds belonged to the West; and as a portion of the other tonnage was employed on routes leading to the West and connecting with our highways, the commerce of the West no doubt amounted to more thantwo-thirds of the commerce of the Union. And, estimating the number of steamboats from their average tonnage, there must have been in 1842, one thousand in the United States, of which six hundred belonged to the West.
The table of tonnage above given, shows where this vast commercial marine was employed; first, in the Mississippi Basin; next, in the city of New York; and then on the Lakes. From the port of New York there were some seventy or eighty steamboats constantly running—on the Lakes there were hundreds. In the valley of the Mississippi the number of steamboats they employed was equal to the whole number of those employed in England. This will appear from the following statement from McCullough’s gazetteer of the steamboat tonnage of Great Britain in 1834:
Steam ShipsTonnageEngland43443,877Scotland10513,113Ireland8417,674British dependencies498,032—————Total,67282,696
It appears then that the steamboat tonnage of the Mississippi Valley (1842) exceeded by forty thousand tons the entire steamboat tonnage of Great Britain (1834). In other words, the steamboat tonnage of Great Britain was only two-thirds that of the Mississippi Valley. The magnitude of this fact will be best appreciated by considering that the entire tonnage of the United States was but two-thirds that of Great Britain, showing that this proportion is exactly reversed in western steamboat trade. The influence of the West in pushing the steamboat to its ultimate use as a common carrier has been most remarkable.
The history of the Ohio Basin rivermen, from those who paddled a canoe and pushed a keel-boat to those who labor today on our steamboats has never been written. The lights and shades of this life have never been pictured by any novelist and perhaps they never can be. Even the student who gleans imperfect pictures from the miscellanies preserved in local histories, must in the very nature of the case, secure but a poor focus on realities. Study as you will, you will only make yourself ridiculous when you attempt to talk to one of the old-time rivermen. Your use and even pronunciation of words will seem absurd; if the dictionary is on your side, so much the worse for the dictionary. An attempt will create in the enthusiast much the same feeling that will be felt on giving a veteranof Gettysburg a copy of an historical novel describing the battle; it may have thrilled you but your old soldier friend will say “That man never was in battle.” The old riverman will, by his smile, make you conscious that you speak in unfamiliar terms, though his manner may be politeness itself. “You have never been in battle” will be the gist of his implications.
The first generation of rivermen, excluding, of course the Indians, would cover the year from 1750 to 1780 and would include those whose principal acquaintance with the Ohio and its tributaries was made through the canoe and pirogue. The second generation would stretch from 1780 or 1790 to 1810, and for our purposes will include those who lived in the heyday of the keel- and flat-boat. The third generation would carry us forward from 1810 to about 1850, and in this we would count the thousands who knew these valleys before the railway had robbed the steamboat of so much of its business and pride. This classification is extremely loose; it will help us, however, to place some limits on a subject as boundless as human ambition.
For, taken through the years, the human element in the historical phases of these valleys has remained practically unchanged. Greed of the great round dollar has been the commanding passion, and nowhere has it burned more fiercely. All the crimes, treacheries, deceptions, and frauds practiced under the sun have been repeated on the Ohio between Pittsburg and Cairo. Some, perhaps unknown elsewhere, have here been committed. But here, too, that old-time clear love of living for life’s sake only, the thing which makes sailors sing the world over, was deeply felt. In its lower extremities the river reaches practically southern climes while its northern arms reach out into New York and Pennsylvania. On its northwestern shore settled many colonies from New England; on the south-eastern coast flocked the Virginians. Thus, from the standpoint of temperament, the Ohio offers a most remarkable field of study of human types. As said, it was the western projection of Mason and Dixon’s Line; but instead of being a mere geographical technicality, it was a teeming highway where passion, hate, love, and fraternitywere every day displayed until the great crisis was finally passed. For, be it remembered, there was civil war on the Ohio long before Fort Sumter belched its defiance to secessionism. True, western Virginia and Kentucky were not unbalanced by the fervor that swept the South, but this river highway between them and Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois (as loyal as Vermont or Massachusetts) was the meeting-place of hundreds who could not meet without striking fire. Brought up in this zone where issues were plain and where it was not derogatory to carry a broken nose or a blackened eye any time between 1840 and 1860, fired to fast thinking and faster action by the passionate current in which they lived, were many of the bravest leaders of the Civil War, such as Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman. Our study here has nothing to do with the history of the Civil War, but disclosures made at that time bring out most plainly the position of the Ohio Valley in the Union, and the political consequences. It has been in place elsewhere to define the various stocks of people who entered the Ohio Valley a century ago andwho have been its controlling spirits since their entrance. Of these the rivermen were a part, moved by one and the same force politically. Some were of the North and some came up from the South, and they wrangled for years over the problems solved by the Civil War.
But now, turning specifically to our classification, let us glance at the first generation of Ohio rivermen: those who knew these waters before and during Revolutionary days. At the outset it is clear that their tasks are as strange to us as the sights upon which their eyes feasted and the sounds which day and night were sounding in their ears. They were engaged in the only trade known in the valley then—the fur trade. At about midsummer, or a little earlier, the fur trade of the entire Ohio Basin focused at the mouth of the Monongahela for transportation to Philadelphia and Baltimore or on the lower Ohio for shipment by canoe down the Ohio and Mississippi. When the curtain of actual history arose on the Ohio River, the fur traders formed the motley background in the drama in which Céloron, Contrecœur,Villiers, Washington, and Gist stood out clearly in the dark foreground. Céloron found them here and there in 1750 and sent them back to Virginia with a sharp letter to Governor Dinwiddie. Indeed it was these first rivermen who floated on the Ohio in canoes laden with peltry who brought on apace the Old French War. Nominally, of course, it was that quota of one hundred families with which the Ohio Company promised to people its two hundred thousand acre grant between the Monongahela and Kanawha Rivers which alarmed the Quebec government; but in reality it was the Virginia and Pennsylvania fur traders in whose canoes thousands of dollars’ worth of beaver skins were being kept from the St. Lawrence. From village to village these traders passed, securing from the natives their plunder of river and forest. In their long canoes the packs were carefully deposited, and payment was made in goods, of which ammunition and fire-arms were of most worth. Though these were the first rivermen, they as frequently came by land as by water. But, when in their canoes, they were the firstto ply the western rivers. They, first of white men, learned the old-time riffles—many of which became known to millions by the names these firstvoyageursgave them. They knew islands which have long since passed from sight; they knew the old licks and the old trails. They practiced the lost arts of the woodsman; they had eyes and ears of which their successors in these valleys do not know. They did not become white Indians for, it would seem, they did not mingle as closely with the red-men as did the French; but they became exceedingly proficient in the Indian’s woodland wisdom. Browned by the sun and hardened by wind and rain and snow they were a strong race of men; they could paddle or walk the entire day with little fatigue. Yet their day’s work was not such usually that it made mere brute machines of them. Not as boisterous as the French on the Great Lakes and their tributaries, these first Americans in the West were yet a buoyant crew; there were songs to be sung as the canoe glided speedily along beneath the shadows of those tremendous forest trees; dangers intensified the joys, and, aseverywhere else, added a flavor to living, a romantic tinge to what otherwise might have been commonplace. There was no caste, no clique, no faction; even Virginian and Pennsylvanian eyed one another more considerately on the Ohio than elsewhere; true, the quarrel at last grew bitter, even here, but it was confined to the possession of Pittsburg and did not concern the valley as a whole.
With the deepening of the struggle for the Ohio its first generation ofvoyageursbecame of great importance. Their knowledge of the river and the land through which it flowed was of moment to marching armies, scouts and spies, peace commissioners, military superintendents, commanders of forts, cohorts of surveyors, land companies, investors, promoters, and pioneers. With the passing of the fur trade, a score of remunerative openings was at the command of the rivermen who had learned well his lesson. Thus with the opening of the new era of the barge and keel-boat the old-timevoyageurcould remain upon the scene, or, like Daniel Boone, paddle away to the West and in a new landlive over again the days when the forests were fresh and green.
With the filling of the Ohio Valley came the introduction of these heavy freight craft, the barge and flat-boat, and, almost immediately, the keel-boat, the first upstream craft. To row or steer a barge or flat or to pole a keel-boat was work novoyageurof earlier times had undertaken. It was rougher work than had ever been demanded of men in the West and it soon developed rougher men than the West had ever seen. Social conditions, growing spasmodically complex in a new country, made them worse. Once free of savage red-men, the Ohio Valley became a famous retreat for criminals of every class from every state; horse thieves, gamblers, and men guilty of far worse crimes were comparatively safe on the Ohio by 1800; and, in the descending barge or flat, could pass on into a new career under new names in Kentucky, Ohio, or beyond. Added to this scum of the older communities must be counted the hundreds who had served in the western armies which were now disbanded, many of whom bred in roughestsurroundings now sank quickly to their social level in the fast-filling West they had freed. This type of hardy but vicious manhood found hard work awaiting them on the rivers where millions of tons of freight were waiting to be moved. They laid down a heavy musket and picked up a heavier oar; but the two forms of occupation were not dissimilar, for both offered a life of alternate labor and rest. On these first freight craft in the West the work was severe in the extreme, but it was not continuous; it was often a desperate pull today and leisure tomorrow. A writer of a generation ago caught the exact spirit of this life at this transitional state:
“The Ohio River being once reached, the main channel of emigration lay in the water-courses. Steamboats as yet were but beginning their invasion, amid the general dismay and cursing of the population of boatmen that had rapidly established itself along the shore of every river. The early water life of the Ohio and its kindred streams was the very romance of emigration; no monotonous agriculture, no toilsome wood-chopping could keep back theadventurous boys who found delight in the endless novelty, the alternate energy and repose of a floating existence on those delightful waters. The variety of river craft corresponded to the varied temperaments of the boatmen. There was the great barge with lofty deck requiring twenty-five men to work it up-stream; there was the long keel-boat, carrying from twenty-five to thirty tons; there was the Kentucky ‘broadhorn,’ compared by the emigrants of that day to a New England pig-sty set afloat, and sometimes built one hundred feet long, and carrying seventy tons; there was the ‘family-boat,’ of like structure, and bearing a whole household, with cattle, hogs, horses, and sheep. Other boats were floating tin shops, blacksmith’s shops, whiskey shops, dry-goods shops. A few were propelled by horsepower. Of smaller vessels there were ‘covered sleds,’ ‘ferry flats,’ and ‘Alleghany skiffs;’ ‘pirogues’ made from two tree trunks, or ‘dug-outs’ consisting of one.”
“The bargemen were a distinct class of people,” writes Mr. Cassedy, “whosefearlessness of character, recklessness of habits and laxity of morals rendered them a marked people. Their history will hereafter form the groundwork of many a heroic romance or epic poem. In the earlier stages of this sort of navigation, their trips were dangerous, not only on account of the Indians whose hunting-grounds bounded their track on either side, but also because the shores of both rivers were infested with organized banditti, who sought every occasion to rob and murder the owners of these boats. Beside all this the Spanish Government had forbidden the navigation of the lower Mississippi by the Americans, and thus, hedged in every way by danger, it became these boatmen to cultivate all the hardihood and wiliness of the Pioneer, while it led them also into the possession of that recklessness of independent freedom of manner, which even after the causes that produced it had ceased, still clung to and formed an integral part of the character of the Western Bargeman. It is a matter of no little surprise that something like an authentic history of these wonderful men has never been written. Certainly it is desirable to preserve such a history, and no book could have been undertaken which would be likely to produce more both of pleasure and profit to the writer and none which would meet with a larger circle of delighted readers. The traditions on the subject are, even at this recent period, so vague and contradictory that it would be difficult to procure anything like reliable or authentic data in regard to them. No story in which the bargemen figured is too improbable to be narrated, nor can one determine what particular person is the hero of an incident which is in turn laid at the door of each distinguished member of the whole fraternity.”[72]
“The crews were carefully chosen. A ‘Kentuck,’ or Kentuckian, was considered the best man at a pole, and a ‘Canuck,’ or French Canadian, at the oar or the ‘cordelles,’ the rope used to haul a boat upstream. Their talk was of the dangers of the river; of ‘planters and sawyers,’ meaning tree trunks imbedded more or less firmly in the river; of ‘riffles,’ meaningripples; and of ‘shoots,’ or rapids (Frenchchutes). It was as necessary to have violins on board as to have whiskey and all the traditions in song or picture of ‘the jolly boatman’ date back to that by-gone day. Between the two sides of the river there was already a jealousy. Ohio was called ‘the Yankee State’ and Flint tells us that it was a standing joke among the Ohio boatmen when asked their cargo to reply, ’Pitcoal indigo, wooden nutmegs, straw baskets, and Yankee notions.‘ The same authority describes this sort of questioning as being inexhaustible among the river people and asserts that from one descending boat came this series of answers all of which proved to be truthful:
“‘Where are you from?’
‘Redstone.’
‘What is your lading?’
‘Millstones.’
‘What’s your captain’s name?’
‘Whetstone.’
‘Where are you bound?’
‘To Limestone.’”
“It was the highway of emigration,” a pioneer has written of the Ohio in its earlyyears, “by the old and nearly forgotten flat-boat system.... I was familiar with the sight of these primitive navigators and their sluggish moving vessels when in the early spring days they came down.... I have seen several generations on a single flatboat, from the white haired grand-sire and his aged helpmate, seated in rude chairs of domestic manufacture, with split hickory bottoms, down to the infant babe nestled in its rough hewn cradle, made by the ax of the stalwart young man, father to a group of little ‘towheads’ who surrounded the parents, and their small assortment of household goods. A cow—that domesticated helpmate to the family of the emigrating poor—was generally tied near the center of the flatboat, and on the lumber or planks that were intended, when the voyage terminated, to be made into flooring, and combine with the broken up flat-boat to make a quickly constructed home at some point on the forest covered hills of Kentucky or Ohio, or on the low, flat lands that border the Mississippi.... They were going to settle in the wilderness, with a cow, a flitch of bacon, a small coop ofchickens, and, generally, a large family of children.”
Among the heroes of the days of the keel-boat, stands Mike Fink who, in his own words, is described as follows: “I can out-run, out-hop, out-jump, throw down, drag out and lick any man in the country. I’m a Salt-river roarer; I love the wimming and I’m chock full of fight.” Of this typical leader of his class an old magazine, theWestern Monthly, gives us this description: “His weight was about 180 pounds; height about five feet, nine inches; broad, round face, pleasant features, brown skin, tanned by sun and rain; blue, but very expressive eyes, inclining to grey; broad, white teeth, and square, brawny form, well proportioned; and every muscle of his arms, thighs and legs, was fully developed, indicating the greatest strength and activity. His person, taken altogether, was a model for a Hercules, except as to size.” No plucky adventure or cunning trickery performed by bargemen from the Hudson to the Mississippi but seems to have been accredited by some one at some time to Mike Fink. One of these, told ofFink et al., is sufficiently typical to represent the other ninety-nine. Voyaging down the Ohio, Fink one day noticed a flock of fine sheep on shore, and, being out of fresh provisions, he determined to secure a supply of mutton without the delay and vexation attendant upon any financial exchange. In his cargo was a number of bladders of Scotch snuff. Obtaining a quantity of this drug he caught a few sheep, rubbed it on their heads and faces, and instantly sent a messenger for the owner whose house was not far distant.
By the time this man appeared the sheep Fink had dosed were deporting themselves in a manner at once disgraceful to the remainder of the flock and prodigiously marvelous to the eyes of their dazed owner. Leaping and bleating, the distracted animals were pawing their heads, rubbing them wildly on the ground and acting in general as though possessed of devils and on the point of dashing down the river bank into the water.
“What’s the matter with my sheep?” exclaimed the alarmed owner.
“Don’t you know?” said Mike, suspiciously.
“No, I don’t!”
“Didn’t you ever hear of black murrain?”
“Yes,” was the terrified reply.
“Well, that’s it—all sheep up the river’s got it dreadful—dyin’ like rotten dogs, hundreds daily.”
“You don’t tell!” cried the victim; “and what’s the cure?”
“Nothin’ but killin’ ’em to prevent it’s spreadin’; it’s dreadful catchin’, is black murrain.”
The riverman was at once begged to kill the infected sheep and throw their bodies into the current of the river. Mike did not at once agree, but when a couple of gallons of peach brandy was named as a consideration, he consented. And that night as his boat left the cove its freight was increased by many pounds of mutton and something less than two gallons of peach brandy. The same story is told of other bargemen in various portions of the Union but, whoever was guilty of the theft, it is typical of all so far as their attitude to the public is concerned.
Such men, being constantly on the move, were hard to place, and as difficult to bring to justice as a government official. A keel-boat captain surrounded by a swarthy crew which he had treated liberally to plunder would not be attacked by any posse in its right mind. On one occasion—whether or not the story is true, the spirit of it is no misrepresentation—Mike Fink was so earnestly desired that a reward was offered for his capture. When his boat was anchored at Louisville an old friend of Mike’s, a constable, approached him and expressed the desire to bring him to trial in order to obtain the promised reward. At the same time he assured the culprit that there was no evidence that could result in conviction. The keel-boat man took pity on his friend and agreed, after some consideration, to acquiesce on one condition: he would go if he could be drawn thither in his yawl, surrounded by his men.
The condition was agreed to. “Accordingly a long-coupled wagon was procured, and, with oxen attached, it went down the hill, at Third Street for Mike’s yawl. The road, for it was not then a street, was verysteep and very muddy at this point. Regardless of this, however, the boat was set upon the wagon, and Mike and his men, with their long poles ready, as if for an aquatic excursion, were put aboard, Mike in the stern. By dint of laborious dragging, the wagon had attained half the height of the hill, when out shouted the stentorian voice of Mike calling to his men, ‘Set poles!’—and the end of every long pole was set firmly in the thick mud; ‘Back her!’ roared Mike, and down the hill again went wagon, yawl, men, and oxen. Mike had been revolving the matter in his mind and had concluded that it was best not to go; and well knowing that each of his men was equal to a moderately strong ox, he had at once conceived and executed this retrograde movement. Once at the bottom, another parley was held and Mike was again overpowered. This time they had almost reached the top of the hill, when ‘Set poles! Back her!’ was again ordered and again executed. A third attempt, however, was successful, and Mike reached the court house in safety; and, as his friend, the constable, had endeavored to inducehim to believe, he was acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence. Other indictments, however, were found against him, but Mike preferred not to wait to hear them tried; so, at a given signal he and his men boarded their craft and again stood ready to weigh anchor. The dread of the long poles in the hands of Mike’s men prevented the posse from urging any serious remonstrance against his departure. And off they started with poles ‘tossed.’ As they left the court house yard Mike waved his red bandanna, which he had fixed on one of the poles, and promising to ‘call again’ was borne back to his element and launched once more upon the waters.”[73]
Our inability to believe such stories is only an additional proof that those days might as well be a cycle as a century behind us, so far as catching the genuine atmosphere of them is concerned. It was a rough day on shore, a day when, so the story goes, a Louis Phillippe could not treat an Ohio innkeeper with hauteur (after announcing that he would “be King of France”) without being thrown into thestreet to the accompaniment of the boast: “We are all Kings over here.” English travelers in the middle West have probably left truer pictures of actual social conditions in the days of the keel-boat and barge than we have elsewhere. We think many of these accounts are, like Dickens’sNotes, exaggerated. If any of them are true, all might as well be. And, at any rate, whatever the social average, we can be very certain that the rivermen had the hardest work and were the hardest type of all laborers in the new West.
A hint has been dropped some pages before about the feeling of the old-time rivermen concerning the introduction of steam navigation. In this series of monographs it has been in place now and then to refer to the anger and disgust of every class of men engaged in land transportation over the introduction of new methods. The old packhorse-men were intensely incensed at the introduction of wheeled vehicles on the great routes of trade and immigration, and even opposed the widening of Indian trails and the building of roads. The first wagons were assaultedand demolished. In turn the “waggoners” and teamsters opposed the building of canals and the improvement of the rivers. Teamsters, tow-boat men, and rivermen were foremost in opposing the railway. Something of the same spirit exists in certain parts today, in the struggle which is on, and which is growing more bitter each year, between railway and electric roads.
The conflict between the new and the old was probably more fierce on the rivers than elsewhere, for the reason that one route was common to all. The canal and highway were not often contiguous, and the railway was yet further removed, because it followed the waterways which the roads frequently avoided. On the river the barge and steamboat moved side by side; they landed at the same ports, and never lost sight of each other. It was a significant repetition of history, recalling the day when the wheeled vehicle was introduced on roads never used save by the packhorse-men. In each instance improved methods of locomotion came into violent contact with the old. And, as in the case of the struggle between angry packhorse-men andwagon- and coach-drivers, the new method was a labor-saving invention. No string of ponies could bear what a great Conestoga wagon would carry. It took less “hands” to transport a given amount of freight on wagons than by the old packsaddle system. The difference in the case of barge and flat-boat and steamboat was much more marked and the struggle so much more bitter. True it is that in both cases the amount of business soon increased with improved facilities—for the wagon was as much in advance of the packsaddle as the steamer was in advance of the flat-boat—but this did not allay temporary hostility.
River life at once underwent a great change with the gradual supremacy of the steamboat in the carrying trade of the Ohio and its tributaries. The sounding whistle blew away from our valleys much that was picturesque—those strenuous days when a well developed muscle was the best capital with which to begin business. Of course the flat-boat did not pass from our waters, but as a type of old-time rivermen their lusty crews have disappeared. The business interests of the new West, growing togreater proportions each year, demanded all hands “on deck.”
In connection with that first generation of rivermen it was observed that social equality was a general rule. There were no distinctions; every man was his own master and his own servant. In the days of keel-boats and flat-boats conditions changed, as we have observed in the case of Mike Fink who was “captain” of his boat and the leader of his own henchmen. This has been touched upon in the consideration of the evolution of river craft, and may be suggested, only in passing, here; the second generation of rivermen were accustomed to obey orders of superiors, and society was divided sharply into two classes, the serving and the served. With the supremacy of the steamboat this division is reduplicated over and again; here are found four general classes, the proprietors, navigators, operators, and deckhands.