The upper ranks of the steam-packet business have furnished the West with some of its strongest types of aggressive manhood. Keen-eyed, physically strong, acquainted with men and equal to anyemergency, the typical captain of the first half century of steamboating in the West was a man any one was glad to number among his friends and acquaintances.
But between the pilot house and the deck lay a gulf—not impassable, for it was very frequently spanned by the worthy—deep, and significant. Until the Civil War “deckoneering” was, largely, the pursuit of whites. A few plantation owners rented out slaves to steamboat owners, but negroes did not usurp the profession until they were freed. This was contemporaneous with the general introduction of steam railways.
A heterogeneous population—not touched in the foregoing generalizations—has made the waters of the Ohio Basin its home. They may be classed as vagrants, gamblers, and banditti. The first class would include both the indolent and the vicious population that has swarmed the Ohio and its tributaries from times immemorial. In all sorts of conceivable craft, resembling each other only in the sole particular of buoyancy, these vagrants have been floating our waters and mooringtheir boats along our shores for a hundred years or more. In house-boats of all possible sizes, shapes, heights, depths, and stenches these idlers and triflers have lived and trained their sons and daughters to live. Their staple means of existence has been fishing and filching, and, while living, are seemingly the happiest of people and no questions asked. To dig a few hills of potatoes and snatch a few ears of corn or a melon, to conciliate and lead away a watch-dog, to “run” the trot-line, to barter stolen articles in a contiguous county, makes up the happy round of their useless lives. If it is true that every man is as lazy as he dare be the Ohio River can boast the most daring set of men in the world. It is interesting to note that at the beginning of the last century those who were engaged in legitimate business on western waters were not considered as holding a respectable social position. “This voyage performed,” we read inThe Navigatorfor 1818, “which generally occupies three month ... the trader returns [from New Orleans] doubly invigorated, and enabled to enlarge his vessel and cargo,he sets out again; this is repeated, until perhaps getting tired of this mode of merchandizing, he sets himself down in some town or village as a wholesale merchant, druggist or apothecary, practicing physician, or lawyer, or something else, that renders him respectable in the eyes of his neighbors, where he lives amidst wealth and comforts the remainder of his days—nor is it by any known that his fortune was founded in the paddling of a canoe, or trafficking in apples, cider-royal, peach-brandy, whiskey, &c. &c. &c.”
This refers to the early trader; the house-boater of the later day was not, primarily, engaged in any trade, though many were. Nearly every kind of a shop known on land has floated on the Ohio. As a class, however, the proprietors of these craft were, and are, fishermen. “Queer people you meet on the river,” wrote a correspondent who recently journeyed down the Ohio by canoe, “but perhaps the most interesting of all are the ‘shanty-boat’ tribe. We had had a long, hard morning’s pull against head winds and had made little progress, were behind time and were discouraged. We were passing the lone shanty-boat of a river tradesman, tied up on shore, waiting for the wind ‘to lay.’ Chris hailed him and asked leave to boil coffee on his stove. I expected a rebuff, but the trader cordially invited us to ‘walk in, gentlemen; you seem ruther fagged. Set down, set down. I seen you uns a passin’ us above t’other day, but this old tortus runs night and day and gits ahead of the rabbit sometimes while you’re taking a nap.’ And so the loquacious old chap ran on. Glad of a rest, we stayed and drifted with him some ten or twelve miles that night, bunking on a pile of bags in a corner. To be sure the wily old fox turned our visit to his profit. He proved to us plainly, by river logic, what our experience had already shown—that we had certain cumbrous baggage that ought to be disposed of, and he bought it of us for a song, ‘jest to accommodate you uns, you know; I’m allers a-buyin’ a lot o’ no-account truck, jest to help folks out.’ Very likely! But the information he gave proved so valuable, his bacon tasted so good, that night spent with him drifting and resting was sopleasant—what did I care if it was all a scheme to strike a trade. Long into the night I sat with him as he steered his clumsy craft and shouted his queerly quavered songs. Finally he lapsed into silence. The frogs took up the song and had a monopoly, except for the gurgling of the water and the distant baying of a hound. I was just ready to feel romantic and silently soliloquizing the moon, when I heard a loud whisper from the other end of the shanty-boat, as one of the trader’s young hopefuls said to his brother, ‘Say, Bill, let’s take the skiff and go ashore and steal that hound barking.’ ‘Shet up, you young rascal,’ said the old man, never losing his good humor. ‘You’ve got dogs enough a’ready to start a Noah’s Ark. What do yer want with any more? You roll in.’ Many kinds of people inhabit these shanty-boats. These boats are built at a cost of from twenty dollars up to two or three hundred. The ground to build on is free. There is no rent to pay. There is change of air and scenery. One house serves for winter and summer residences—the current and towboat carrying you backand forth. You can always be traveling, yet always at home. Your livelihood is gained sometimes one way, sometimes another—who questions? A man builds such a home, puts his family aboard; or, if he has no family, gets a cook if he chooses.... Then he drifts lazily during the summer, fishing, trapping, stealing and making his way to warmer climes as winter approaches. Far down at New Orleans or elsewhere, spring finds him and he sells out to return, or tows back with some fleet of barges, to begin again. Or a trader will load up at Pittsburg or Cincinnati with dry-goods, trinkets, queensware, everything, and make his way trading with the farmers or trappers, until at the end of the journey he has a rich store of bartered goods to sell ere his northward return. They are a careless, happy-go-lucky tribe of migrants—caring little for the morrow. ‘Do you see this little chap?’ said a big rough-bearded fellow to me one day, as he squeezed between his knees a fat, freckled, chuggy, grinning little cub. ‘Well, he’s five year old, born on the river, and he likes it better’n any other place. Don’t you, hey,Johnny?’ And so they eat their day’s food, sleep in their floating homes, saw their old broken fiddles or pump wheezy accordeons, and are happy. Or sometimes as we often saw, an honest mechanic will build a cozy floating house, furnish it in comfortable style and moor it near his factory, saving rent and owning his home.”
Several significant social changes wrought by the Civil War have been noted; it put an end to the days of the “coasting” trade of the flat-boats and to the “deckoneering” of white men. It also marked the passing of the old gambling days in the steam-boat business. The three previous decades were famous days for a swarm of recognized banditti which may be said to have almost lived upon the Ohio-Mississippi boats. The opulence and chivalry of Southern planters who traveled largely by steam-packets made gambling a source of immense revenue to such as always won.
It was always cards, and the steamboat is the ideal hunting-ground of the gambler and card-sharp; here is money, and those who have it are utterly at leisure. Back in the days of the third generation of rivermen, gambling, like drinking intoxicants, was not a social disgrace; many men of national reputation “sat in” on games of chance which are now outlawed. In such a social atmosphere and in such environment little wonder that the river-boats gained most unenviable reputation, until at last boat-owners were compelled to prohibit all such pastimes. Gamblers at times took possession of steamers and captains and clerks had almost no way to protect the passengers. It is said that sometimes as high as ten thousand dollars and more has changed hands in one night in games played between sporting men and rich planters.
The story of one gambler’s night is probably typical of the roughest of this phase, with the exception of actual murder which was, all too frequently, the climax of a night’s gaming.
“Coming up on the ‘Sultana’ one night,” a gambler leaves record, “there were about twenty-five of the toughest set of men as cabin passengers I believe I ever met. They were on their way to Napoleon, Ark. which at that time was a great town and known as the jumping off place.In those days these Napoleon fellows were looked upon as cut-throats and robbers, and thought nothing of murdering a fellow simply to make them appear big men with their gang. I had for a partner a man named Canada Bill, as game a party as ever strode the deck of a steamboat, and one of the shrewdest gamblers I ever encountered. As soon as supper was over this gang of Arkansas toughs got in the cabin and of course wanted to play cards. Bill had opened up business in the main hall, and a great crowd had gathered about him. I saw that most of these devils had been drinking, and gave Bill the nod, which he of course understood. He only played a short while and left the game, pretending to be broke. Then we fixed it up that I should do the playing and he would watch out for any trouble. Well, the result was I got about everything the twenty-five men had, including their watches, and beat some seven or eight other passengers. The men all took it apparently good-natured at the time, but as the night wore on and they kept drinking from their private flasks I made a sneak to my room and changedmy clothes. By the back stairs I slipped down into the kitchen and sent a man after my partner. I had blackened my face, and looked like one of the negro rousters. I only had time to warn him, when a terrible rumpus upstairs told me the jig was up, and with their whiskey to aid them they were searching for me, and if they caught me it would be good day to me. I paid the cooks to keep mum, and Bill made himself scarce. They had their guns out, and were kicking in the state-room doors hunting for me. Some of them came down on deck, and were walking back and forth by me, cursing and threatening vengeance. I heard one of them ask a roustabout if he had noticed a well-dressed man down on deck lately. He of course had not, as Bill had gone back up the kitchen stairs, and with these devils was raising Cain, looking for me, and my disguise had not been discovered under the darkness of the night. The boat was plowing her way along up the coast. The stevedores were shouting to the darkies, hurrying them along with the freight for a landing soon to be reached. The boat’s whistle blew, and soon she washeading in for the shore. A crowd of these fellows were waiting for me, as they suspected I would try and get off. They were looking, mind you, for a well-dressed man. As soon as the boat landed about ten of them, guns in hand, ran out over the stage to shore and closely scanned the face of every person that came off. There was a stock of plows to be discharged from the boat’s cargo, and noting the fact, I shouldered one and with it followed the long line of ‘coons’ amid the curses of the mates, and fairly flew past these men who were hunting me. I kept on up the high bank and over the levee, and when I threw my plow in the pile with the others, made off for the cotton fields and laid flat on my back until the boat got again under way, and the burning pine in the torches on deck had been extinguished. It was a close call, I can assure you. Bill met me at Vicksburg the next day and brought the boodle, which we divided. He said the crowd took lights and searched the boat’s hold for me after we left the landing. Bill must have played his part well, as he told me afterward that they never suspicionedhim. Yes, I could tell many of my exploits. The river was for the greater portion of my gambling career my strongest hold. But it’s all over now. Even should a man strike a big winning, there are always too many smart Alecks about, and you would have to whack up with so many that there would be little left for the winner.”
The days of gambling on the river boats are not altogether gone but the days of the inland-water pirate are days of the distant past. In the time of the keel- and flat-boat the Ohio, and its tributaries to a certain extent, were infested with gangs of cut-throats and robbers whose exploits challenge the pen of a Scott. In certain portions of the river boatmen never dared to tie up at night, but kept their craft fairly in the swiftest current in order to hasten by these haunts. It was the common tradition among boatmen that their craft floated faster at night than in daylight; whatever the ground for this belief, it is certain the fastest current was all too slow if night found avoyageur, for instance, in the neighborhood of the notorious Hurricane Island between Illinois and Kentucky. Nearhere one Wilson, according to the Kentucky historian Collins, fitted up a “home” in famed Cave-in-Rock on the Illinois shore. This great cavern measures two hundred feet in length, eighty in width, the entrance being twenty-five feet high. Wilson’s “place” was known as “Liquor Vault and House of Entertainment.” “Its very novelty attracted the attention of the boats descending the river, and the crews generally landed for refreshments and amusements. Idle characters after awhile gathered here, and it soon became infamous for its licentiousness and blasphemy. Wilson ... formed a band of robbers, and laid plans of the deepest villainy....”[74]
Some of the gang escaped when they found public vengeance aroused against them, but some were taken prisoners; Wilson himself lost his life at the hands of one of his own gang, tempted by the large reward offered for his head. Not long after, in the upper part of this mysterious cavern, were found sixty skeletons, confirming the tale of systematic confidence, betrayal, and murder.
The neglect of the Ohio River by the United States government cannot be better suggested than by comparing the expenditures on that river with the appropriations for the great land thoroughfare—the Cumberland Road. In thirty-two years (1806-1838) the government spent $6,823,559.52 on the Cumberland Road. In seventy-five years (1827-1902) $6,752,042.04 was appropriated for the Ohio River and much of that was portioned out to the Mississippi, Missouri, and Arkansas.
It is impossible to determine with absolute assurance when and where the first prominent movement looking toward the improvement of the Ohio River originated. With the burst of population into the West came the realization that the great waterway was a priceless possession.
It would be interesting to know in detailthe actual condition of the Ohio, say at the dawning of the eighteenth century. That it was greatly clogged with sunken logs and protruding reefs and bars, of course, goes without saying. Perhaps the average stage of water was less than it is today; and yet the vast amount of water that stood in the tangled forests and open swamps and meadows drained off so slowly as to maintain a more uniform stage of water than is true in our day of alternate flood and drought. If less water flowed in the Ohio’s bed a century ago the volume was at least more uniform than it is today.
As early as January 1817 a resolution was passed by the Legislature of Ohio inviting the coöperation of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Indiana for the improvement of their great waterway. Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky promptly responded, and in 1819 a preliminary examination was made by General Blackburn of Virginia, General John Adair of Kentucky, General E. W. Tupper of Ohio and Walter Lowrie, Esq. of Pennsylvania who made reports to their several legislatures under the date of November 2, 1819.But during the generation following, each of these commonwealths became absorbed in internal improvements. Ohio, for instance, between 1819 and 1844, built seven hundred and sixty-five miles of canals costing nearly ten millions and almost as many miles of turnpike at a cost of four millions. Ohio also built seventy miles of railway, and in 1836 began to improve her most valuable river, the Muskingum, for slackwater navigation. Thus there was reason enough why Ohio could not undertake the improvement of the Ohio River. Her sister states were equally engaged with internal affairs, and though some steps were taken toward surveying the Ohio along the shores of several states the matter was left, as should have been the case, to the general Government.
This meant a long delay, but at last, in 1825, the great work was undertaken; since 1836 there has been a continual struggle to compel the Government to do its duty by the Ohio River and its great commerce. In 1837 the Government commenced a system of surveys and an improvement of the low-water channels by means of riprapstone dams, arranged so as to prevent the spread of the water by guiding and maintaining it in comparatively narrow channels. The work was put under the direction of Captain Sanders of the War Department. This system was continued at intervals until 1844, when, the appropriation being exhausted, the work suddenly ceased, not to be resumed until 1866.
Something of the difficulties of the old engineers may be estimated from the records left by them concerning the various obstructions in the Ohio River. “Thirty years ago,” wrote an engineer in 1866, “there were considerable tracts of woods abounding the stream ... forming dangerous obstructions to navigation. Gradually, since that period, the number of settlers along the river valley has greatly increased, and the bottom lands ... have been cleared; so that comparatively few trees remain that are liable to fall into the stream. And the same is true of most of the principal tributaries. I refer to this to show the probability that when the present snags and logs are removed, a slight expenditure annually will keep the river clearof this character of obstructions.” The snags and logs of generations had been almost untouched by the government—“left to the uncertain and unpaid-for attention of private individuals.” The plan now (1866) to rid the valley entirely of these great impediments to navigation marks a new era in the history of the Ohio. It was found, upon examination, that in the six hundred odd miles between Pittsburg and Louisville there were seventy-five separate points where there were snags, forty-nine “logs and loggy places,” twenty-eight wrecks and seventy-two “sunken boats &c.” Between Louisville and Cairo there were some sixty additional obstructions of similar nature—a total of two hundred and eighty-five obstruction points. A schedule of these obstructions, between Pittsburg and Wheeling for instance, will be found interesting. The asterisks refer to obstructions in or near the channel at comparatively low water:
Distance fromPittsburg.Snags, etc.Wrecks, etc.Remarks.2½Wreck.In the right channel of Brunot’s island below the point on the left side.3Wreck.Same side as last, half mile below.31⁄3Sunken barge.Left channel Brunot’s island, first below point.42 wrecks.*Sunken in main channel near old pork-house; one of them has lately washed ashore.9¾Sunken barge.In shore on left side in way of good landing; above Hamilton’s house, on Neville island, a large coal barge has stranded just below, but may be gotten off.132 wrecks.*Above Boyle’s landing; first, on right side, across channel, is very dangerous; second, in above, left.15Wreck.Near Shousetown, left side, close in shore.16Snag.Opposite Sewickley, a little below Boyle’s landing.16½Sunken barge.Right shore below Sewickley, in way of boats at high water.18½Stranded barge.*Coal barge stranded, Logtown bar, below Economy.19½Sunken barge.*In channel of two boats, Logtown creek.21Snag.Below foot of Crow island, right side.232⁄3Snag.One-third mile above Freedom, Penn., right side.24Snag.Close in shore at Freedom.24¼Snag.In main channel, very large, below landing.301⁄3Sunken boat.Close in to right; not dangerous below Raccoon creek.30¼Sunken boat.In channel below last; dangerous.33½Snag.Opposite Industry, below Safe Harbor landing.332⁄3Sunken boat.*Left side below last.41Snag.Sunken barge.Left channel of Line island there is a snag.42½Wreck.Wreck of steamer Winchester, burnt, left channel of Babb’s island, Va., shore; not much in the way.49¾Sunken boat.*In channel foot of Baker’s island; dangerous.63Snag.Foot of Brown’s island; old.63¼Snag.Center of River, head of cable eddy.67Wreck and cofferdam.Left channel, pier Pittsburg and Steubenville railroad bridge.67½Sunken barge.Left side above Steubenville; dangerous.68Sunken barge.Opposite Steubenville landing, center of river.70¾Snags.*Several in the vicinity of the Virginia and Ohio cross creeks.73¼Sunken boats.*Two, right side, above Wellsburg, Va.76Sunken boats.*Left, below block-house run.76½Snag.Right side, below last; should come out.78¾Wreck.Old, opposite brick house, close on left shore.81½Snags.Two, right of channel, above Warren.81¾Snag.*Old, right side, near white frame house.83Ice breaker.Head of Pike island, at coal shaft.84Sunken barge.*Edge of bar, not dangerous, opposite brick house.87Logs, etc.Left and center, bottom of river, one mile below Burlington.88Sunken boat.Sunken ferry-boat, close in right side, Martinsville.89¼Sunken barge.*At ship-yard, Wheeling, dangerous.[75]
Captain Sanders, in the forties, had estimated that it cost about fifteen dollars to remove each ordinary snag from the Ohio. In the Mississippi the roots of snags could be thrown into the deep pools where they would soon become buried in mud; but on the Ohio such pools were not frequent and it was usually necessary to carry the roots ashore and destroy them with gunpowder. Sanders reported that up to September 1837 there had been three thousand three hundred and three obstructions removed from the Ohio. In 1839 there had been about ten thousand removed; at which time the work ceased. Some of the snags were six feet in diameter at the butt and over one hundred feet in length. In a report in 1835, on Mississippi improvement, Lieutenant Bowman stated: “It is a well-established fact that snags do not move far from where they first fall in, the weight of the earth attached to their roots serving as an anchor. It is also well established that trees which once float seldom form snags. Admitting this, it is sufficiently evident that if the banks are once cleared, there can be no subsequent formation of snags.”
Second only to such obstructions was the “Falls of the Ohio,” the one spot in all its course of nearly a thousand miles where steamboat navigation was impossible until the construction of a canal, which followed the route of the ancient portage path two and one-half miles in length between the present sites of Louisville and Shipping-port, Kentucky. In this distance the Ohio makes a fall of about twenty-five feet caused by a ledge of rocks extending across the river. Steamboating is impracticable here save only when the river is at flood-tide.
A company was incorporated by the legislature of Kentucky to cut a canal around the falls in 1804, but nothing was done until January 12, 1825, when the Louisville and Portland Canal Company was organized, with a capital of $600,000. The stock was taken by about seventy persons, residing in Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, the United States holding 2,335 shares, and 1,665 issued to private individuals. Many difficulties attended the construction of the work, which was not completed untilDecember 5, 1830. During the year 1831 406 steamboats, 46 keel-boats, and 357 flat-boats, measuring 76,323 tons, passed through the locks.[76]
The venture was highly successful from a financial point of view thanks to outrageous tolls that were charged. A twenty-four thousand dollar boat of three hundred tons running between Cincinnati and St. Louis expended in tolls in the Louisville and Portland Canal in five years a sum equal to her entire cost. “A boat of one hundred and ninety tons, owned at Cincinnati, has been in the habit of making her trips from this city to St. Louis and back, in two weeks, and has passed the canalfourtimes in one month. Her toll, each trip, at $60 per ton, was $114, and her toll for one month was $456, or at the rate of $5,472 per year, which is nearly half the value of such a boat.”[77]
From 1831 to 1843, 13,756 steamboats passed through the Canal, and 4,701 keeland flat-boats, with a total tonnage of two and a half million tons, netting a toll of $1,227,625.20.[78]On the stock owned by the United States a cash dividend (to 1843) of $258,378 was earned—$23,378 more than the Government’s original investment. Other stockholders fared equally well from this systematic highway robbery. Such a drain on the public purse as was the Louisville-Portland Canal in the “good old days” would not be countenanced a moment today. The canal was rebuilt and enlarged in 1872, and in 1874 it passed into the control of the United States by the authority of Congress.
Following is a synopsis of the expenditures on account of the canal previous to June 11, 1874, the date when the United States assumed complete control and management:
“Expended by the canal company on original canal.$1,019,277.09Expended by the canal company on subsequent improvements and construction120,000.00Expended by the canal company for enlargement of canal1,825,403.00Expended by the United States for enlargement of canal, from appropriations1,463,200.00Expended by the United States from funds derived from toll collections150,000.00——————Total cost$4,577,880.09
Cost of the canal to the United States.
Original stock$ 233,500Total appropriations for enlargement1,463,200Canal bonds paid1,172,000——————Gross cost$2,868,700Amount of dividends paid by the canal company to the United States257,778——————Net cost$2,610,922”[79]
The following table shows the traffic, in tons, of the canal since 1886:
Articles.1886 to 1901inclusive.Fiscal year1902.Total for16 years.Coal22,365,240¾1,019,947½23,385,188¼Salt124,363¾5,760¼130,124Oil60,944¼1,211½62,155¾Whiskey21,442¼1,11722,559¼Tobacco90,270½1,70591,975½Cotton140,2132,299½142,512½Lumber3,401,02185,305½3,486,326½Corn and wheat151,6215,933½157,554½Iron: ore and manufactured518,642½34,634½553,277Steel rails685,182183,016868,198Produce84,396½4,86489,260½Hay and straw198,523½6,224¼204,747¾Flour19,830½510½20,341Stock98,9544,233¾103,187¾Sugar and molasses125,746¾11,022½136,769¼Staves and shingles475,310¾34,405½509,716¼Cement40,568¾835¾41,404½Miscellaneous1,319,55269,518½1,389,070½————————————————————Total29,921,823¾1,472,54531,394,368¾[80]
Since 1825, when the first step toward improving the Ohio was taken, the general plan has been to secure additional low-water depths at islands and bars by the construction of low dams across chutes, by building dikes where the river was wide and shallow, by dredging and by the removal of rocks and snags. Various plans of improvement were seriously mooted. Among these Charles Ellet’s plan of supplying the Ohio with a regular flow of water by means of reservoirs was strongly urged upon the Government about 1857.[81]Near the same time Herman Haupt proposed a plan of improvement by means of a system of longitudinal mounds and cross dams so arranged as to make a canal on one side of the river some two hundred feet wide, or a greater width, and reducing the grade to nearly an average of six inches per mile between Pittsburg and Louisville.[82]A few years later Alonzo Livermore secured a patent for a combination of dams and peculiar open chutes through thedams, arranged so as to retard the flow and lessen the velocity of the water from higher to lower pools without interfering with the free passage of the boats through the chutes; chutes were substituted for locks.
In 1866 the condition of the river improvements and the great change in the river trade—which loudly called for improved methods—is tersely summed up by Engineer W. Milnor Roberts as follows:
“For the purpose intended, namely, the making of an improved low-water navigation, looking to a depth not exceeding two and one-half feet, the general plan designed, and in part executed, under the superintendence of Captain Sanders, was judicious; and if all the proposed dams had been finished in accordance with his plans there would have been a better navigation, especially for low-water craft, than there has been during the twenty-two years which have elapsed since the works were left, many of them, in a partly finished condition. Some of these wing dams, as might reasonably have been anticipated, have, in the course of years, been gradually injured by the action of floods, and insome cases portions of the stone have been removed by persons without authority, for their own private purposes. It is important to note the change which has taken place in the coal trade, not only on account of its great and increasing magnitude, but on account of the altered system upon which it is conducted. Formerly, and at the time when the riprap dams were constructed, the coal business was carried on by means of floating coal barges, drawing at most four feet water, which were not assisted in their descending navigation by steamers, and which never returned, but were sold as lumber at their point of destination. The increasing demand down the river for the Pittsburg coal, the increase in the value of lumber, and the general systematizing of the trade, all combine to revolutionize the mode of transportation. It is now [1866] carried on by means of large barges, each containing ten to twelve, some as high as sixteen thousand bushels of coal, which are arranged in fleets, generally of ten or twelve barges, towed by powerful steamers built and employed for that special purpose. Enough of thesebarges are owned by the coal operators to enable them to leave the loaded barges at their various points of coal delivery, down the Ohio, or on the Mississippi and other rivers, while they return to Pittsburg with a corresponding fleet of empty barges, to be again loaded, ready for the next coal-boat freshet. As these barges, when loaded draw from six feet to eight feet of water, it is obvious that they can only descend when there is what is now called a ‘coal-boat rise’ in the river—that is, a flood giving not less than eight feet water in the channels.
“This coal shipment from Pittsburg, which in 1844 only amounted to about 2,500,000 bushels per annum, now amounts to about 40,000,000 bushels per annum. I have, in the special report mentioned, referred to the construction of railroads as having affected the business which was formerly carried on the Ohio river during the comparatively low water. The lower the water, the higher the rates of freight and passenger travel, when there was no railroad competition; but now, when the prices on the river during very low water approachthe railroad prices, the freight, whenever it can, will of course take the railroad, on account of the saving of time and greater certainty of delivery; and thousands of passengers always prefer the railroad to the river. But in this connection it is proper to note that since 1844 a large local business between various points on the Ohio, both freight and passenger, has gradually sprung up and become important, which scarcely had existence at that time. The population along the river and in the counties in the several States bordering upon it, and tributary to the river business, has wonderfully increased. So that although a portion of the river business has been attracted to the railroad, the business of steamboats, as a whole, independently of the coal trade, has become much greater than it was in 1844. Meanwhile the coal business has more than kept pace with the increase of population and wealth along the Ohio, in consequence of a steadily augmenting demand for the Pittsburg coal on the Mississippi and other western rivers.”[83]
The method of inland navigation by means of slackwater formed by dams passable by locks was early proposed for the Ohio River after the first experiment made of this method on the Green River, Kentucky, in 1834-36 by Chief Engineer Roberts. The successful operation of this system on the Monongahela and Muskingum Rivers exerted a powerful influence in its favor, and for many years its adoption on the Ohio was urged patiently though unsuccessfully. At last the important matter was advocated with success, and in 1885 the first of a series of locks and movable dams was erected at Davis Island, four and one-half miles below Pittsburg. The work now is rapidly being completed, the plan being to give a minimum depth of six feet of water in the Ohio by means of thirty-eight dams and locks between Pittsburg and the mouth of the Great Miami, below Cincinnati. This form of improvement will of course be extended in time to the mouth of the Ohio.
From past experience with dams in the river, the cost of locks is estimated as follows:
For an average lock of six hundred feet length and one hundred and ten feet width, with navigable pass of six hundred feet length, and with weirs of two hundred and forty feet available openings, all arranged to provide six feet navigable depth in the shoalest parts of the improved channels of the pools, with an average lift at each dam of seven and two-tenths feet:
Lock, including cofferdam, excavations, foundations, masonry, timber, and ironwork of fixed and movable parts, power plant, machinery, and accessories$350,000Navigable pass; same items as above150,000Weirs, piers, abutments; same items as above170,000Miscellaneous, including local surveys, purchase of sites, embanking, retaining, riprapping, and paving of banks, lock employees’ houses, storehouses, other buildings, dredging of approaches to locks and passes,dredging of shoals and removal of obstructions in pools, engineering work of location, construction, and inspection, office work of engineering and disbursements, and other contingencies200,000————Total$870,000
But the extra width and height of lock esplanade filling, extra length of weirs, and extra channel dredging, incident to the individual locations of the dams, increase the above estimates to final totals of from nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars to one million, one hundred thousand dollars at the individual dams.
The expenditures of the Government on the Ohio River from 1827 to 1902 are as follows: