Joel R. Robinson, the first and last navigator of the
Rapids--Rescue of Chapin--Rescue of Allen--He takes the _Maid of
the Mist_ through the Whirlpool--His companions--Effect upon
Robinson--Biographical notice--His grave unmarked.
The history of the navigation of the Rapids of Niagara may be
appropriately concluded in this chapter, which is devoted to a notice of
the remarkable man who began it, who had no rival and has left no
successor in it--Joel R. Robinson.
In the summer of 1838, while some extensive repairs were being made on
the main bridge to Goat Island, a mechanic named Chapin fell from the
lower side of it into the rapids, about ten rods from the Bath Island
shore. The swift current bore him toward the first small island lying
below the bridge. Knowing how to swim, he made a desperate and
successful effort to reach it. It is hardly more than thirty feet
square, and is covered with cedars and hemlocks. Saved from drowning, he
seemed likely to fall a victim to starvation. All thoughts were then
turned to Robinson, and not in vain. He launched his light red skiff
from the foot of Bath Island, picked his way cautiously and skillfully
through the rapids to the little island, took Chapin in and brought him
safely to the shore, much to the relief of the spectators, who gave
expression to their appreciation of Robinson's service by a moderate
contribution.
[Illustration: JOEL R. ROBINSON]
In the summer of 1841, a Mr. Allen started for Chippewa in a boat just
before sunset. Being anxious to get across before dark, he plied his
oars with such vigor that one of them broke when he was about opposite
the middle Sister. With the remaining oar he tried to make the head of
Goat Island. The current, however, set too strongly toward the great
Canadian Rapids, and his only hope was to reach the outer Sister.
Nearing this, and not being able to run his boat upon it, he sprang out,
and, being a good swimmer, by a vigorous effort succeeded in getting
ashore. Certain of having a lonely if not an unpleasant night, and being
the fortunate possessor of two stray matches, he lighted a fire and
solaced himself with his thoughts and his pipe. Next morning, taking off
his red flannel shirt, he raised a signal of distress. Toward noon the
unusual smoke and the red flag attracted attention. The situation was
soon ascertained, and Robinson informed of it. Not long after noon, the
little red skiff was carried across Goat Island and launched in the
channel just below the Moss Islands. Robinson then pulled himself across
to the foot of the middle Sister, and tried in vain to find a point
where he could cross to the outer one. Approaching darkness compelled
him to suspend operations. He rowed back to Goat Island, got some
refreshments, returned to the middle Sister, threw the food across to
Allen, and then left him to his second night of solitude. The next day
Robinson took with him two long, light, strong cords, with a properly
shaped piece of lead weighing about a pound. Tying the lead to one of
the cords he threw it across to Allen. Robinson fastened the other end
of Allen's cord to the bow of the skiff; then attaching his own cord to
the skiff also, he shoved it off. Allen drew it to himself, got into it,
pushed off, and Robinson drew him to where he stood on the middle
island. Then seating Allen in the stern of the skiff he returned across
the rapids to Goat Island, where both were assisted up the bank by the
spectators, and the little craft, too, which seemed to be almost as much
an object of curiosity with the crowd as Robinson himself.
This was the second person rescued by Robinson from islands which had
been considered wholly inaccessible. It is no exaggeration to say that
there was not another man in the country who could have saved Chapin and
Allen as he did.
In the summer of 1855 a canal-boat, with two men and a dog in it, was
discovered in the strong current near Grass Island. The men, finding
they could not save the large boat, took to their small one and got
ashore, leaving the dog to his fate. The abandoned craft floated down
and lodged on the rocks on the south side of Goat Island, and about
twenty rods above the ledge over which the rapids make the first
perpendicular break. There were left in the boat a watch, a gun, and
some articles of clothing. The owner offered Robinson a liberal salvage
if he would recover the property. Taking one of his sons with him, he
started the little red skiff from the head of the hydraulic canal, half
a mile above the island, shot across the American channel, and ran
directly to the boat. Holding the skiff to it himself, the young man got
on board and secured the valuables. The dog had escaped during the
night. Leaving the canal-boat, Robinson ran down the ledge between the
second and third Moss Islands, and thence to Goat Island. On going over
the ledge he had occasion to exercise that quickness of apprehension and
presence of mind for which he was so noted. The water was rather lower
than he had calculated, and on reaching the top of the ledge the bottom
of the skiff near the bow struck the rock. Instantly he sprang to the
stern, freed the skiff, and made the descent safely. If the stern had
swung athwart the current, the skiff would certainly have been wrecked.
In the year 1846, a small steamer was built in the eddy just above the
Railway Suspension Bridge, to run up to the Falls. She was very
appropriately named _The Maid of the Mist_. Her engine was rather weak,
but she safely accomplished the trip. As, however, she took passengers
aboard only from the Canadian side, she could pay little more than
expenses. In 1854 a larger, better boat, with a more powerful engine,
the new _Maid of the Mist_, was put on the route, and as she took
passengers from both sides of the river, many thousands of persons made
the exciting and impressive voyage up to the Falls. The admiration which
the visitor felt as he passed quietly along near the American Fall was
changed into awe when he began to feel the mighty pulse of the great
deep just below the tower, then swung round into the white foam
directly in front of the Horseshoe, and saw the sky of waters falling
toward him. And he seemed to be lifted on wings as he sailed swiftly
down on the rushing stream through a baptism of spray. To many persons
there was a fascination about it that induced them to make the trip
every time they had an opportunity to do so. Owing to some change in her
appointments, which confined her to the Canadian shore for the reception
of passengers, she became unprofitable. Her owner, having decided to
leave the neighborhood, wished to sell her as she lay at her dock. This
he could not do, but he received an offer of something more than half of
her cost, if he would deliver her at Niagara, opposite the fort. This he
decided to do, after consultation with Robinson, who had acted as her
captain and pilot on her trips below the Falls. The boat required for
her navigation an engineer, who also acted as fireman, and a pilot.
Mr. Robinson agreed to act as pilot for the fearful voyage, and the
engineer, Mr. Jones, consented to go with him. A courageous machinist,
Mr. McIntyre, volunteered to share the risk with them. They put her in
complete trim, removing from deck and hold all superfluous articles.
Notice was given of the time for starting, and a large number of people
assembled to see the fearful plunge, no one expecting to see the crew
again alive after they should leave the dock. This dock, as has been
before stated, was just above the Railway Suspension Bridge, at the
place where she was built, and where she was laid up in the
winter--that, too, being the only place where she could lie without
danger of being crushed by the ice. Twenty rods below this eddy the
water plunges sharply down into the head of the crooked, tumultuous
rapid which we have before noticed as reaching from the bridge to the
Whirlpool. At the Whirlpool, the danger of being drawn under was most to
be apprehended; in the rapids, of being turned over or knocked to
pieces. From the Whirlpool to Lewiston is one wild, turbulent rush and
whirl of water, without a square foot of smooth surface in the whole
distance.
About three o'clock in the afternoon of June 15, 1861, the engineer took
his place in the hold, and, knowing that their flitting would be short
at the best, and might be only the preface to swift destruction, set his
steam-valve at the proper gauge, and awaited--not without anxiety--the
tinkling signal that should start them on their flying voyage. McIntyre
joined Robinson at the wheel on the upper deck. Self-possessed, and with
the calmness which results from undoubting courage and confidence, yet
with the humility which recognizes all possibilities, with downcast eyes
and firm hands, Robinson took his place at the wheel and pulled the
starting bell. With a shriek from her whistle and a white puff from her
escape-pipe, to take leave, as it were, of the multitude gathered on the
shores and on the bridge, the boat ran up the eddy a short distance,
then swung round to the right, cleared the smooth water, and shot like
an arrow into the rapid under the bridge. Robinson intended to take the
inside curve of the rapid, but a fierce cross-current carried him to
the outer curve, and when a third of the way down it a jet of water
struck against her rudder, a column dashed up under her starboard side,
heeled her over, carried away her smokestack, started her overhang on
that side, threw Robinson flat on his back, and thrust McIntyre against
her starboard wheel-house with such force as to break it through. Every
eye was fixed, every tongue was silent, and every looker-on breathed
freer as she emerged from the fearful baptism, shook her wounded sides,
slid into the Whirlpool, and for a moment rode again on an even keel.
Robinson rose at once, seized the helm, set her to the right of the
large pot in the pool, then turned her directly through the neck of it.
Thence, after receiving another drenching from its combing waves, she
dashed on without further accident to the quiet bosom of the river below
Lewiston.
[Illustration: THE _Maid of the Mist_ IN THE WHIRLPOOL]
Thus was accomplished one of the most remarkable and perilous voyages
ever made by men. The boat was seventy-two feet long, with seventeen
feet breadth of beam and eight feet depth of hold, and carried an engine
of one hundred horse-power. In conversation with Robinson after the
voyage, he stated that the greater part of it was like what he had
always imagined must be the swift sailing of a large bird in a downward
flight; that when the accident occurred the boat seemed to be struck
from all directions at once; that she trembled like a fiddle-string, and
felt as if she would crumble away and drop into atoms; that both he and
McIntyre were holding to the wheel with all their strength, but produced
no more effect than they would if they had been two flies; that he had
no fear of striking the rocks, for he knew that the strongest suction
must be in the deepest channel, and that the boat must remain in that.
Finding that McIntyre was somewhat bewildered by excitement or by his
fall, as he rolled up by his side but did not rise, he quietly put his
foot on his breast, to keep him from rolling around the deck, and thus
finished the voyage.
Poor Jones, imprisoned beneath the hatches before the glowing furnace,
went down on his knees, as he related afterward, and although a more
earnest prayer was never uttered and few that were shorter, still it
seemed to him prodigiously long. To that prayer he thought they owed
their salvation.
The effect of this trip upon Robinson was decidedly marked. As he lived
only a few years afterward, his death was commonly attributed to it. But
this was incorrect, since the disease which terminated his life was
contracted at New Orleans at a later day. "He was," said Mrs. Robinson
to the writer, "twenty years older when he came home that day than when
he went out." He sank into his chair like a person overcome with
weariness. He decided to abandon the water, and advised his sons to
venture no more about the rapids. Both his manner and appearance were
changed. Calm and deliberate before, he became thoughtful and serious
afterward. He had been borne, as it were, in the arms of a power so
mighty that its impress was stamped on his features and on his mind.
Through a slightly opened door he had seen a vision which awed and
subdued him. He became reverent in a moment. He grew venerable in an
hour.
Yet he had a strange, almost irrepressible, desire to make this voyage
immediately after the steamer was put on below the Falls. The wish was
only increased when the first _Maid of the Mist_ was superseded by the
new and stancher one. He insisted that the voyage could be made with
safety, and that it might be made a good pecuniary speculation.
He was a character--an original. Born on the banks of the Connecticut,
in the town of Springfield, Massachusetts, it was in the beautiful reach
of water which skirts that city that he acquired his love of aquatic
sports and exercises and his skill in them. He was nearly six feet in
stature, with light chestnut hair, blue eyes, and fair complexion. He
was a kind-hearted man, of equable temper, few words, cool, deliberate,
decided; lithe as a Gaul and gentle as a girl. It goes without saying
that he was a man of "undaunted courage." He had that calm, serene,
supreme equanimity of temperament which fear could not reach nor
disturb. He might have been, under right conditions, a quiet, willing
martyr, and at last he bore patiently the wearying hours of slow decay
which ended his life. His love of nature and adventure was paramount to
his love of money, and although he was never pinched with poverty, he
never had abundance.
He loved the water, and was at home in it or on it, as he was a capital
swimmer and a skillful oarsman. Especially he delighted in the rapids of
the Niagara. Kind and compassionate as he was by nature, he was almost
glad when he heard that a fellow-creature was, in some way, entangled in
the rapids, since it would give him an excuse, an opportunity, to work
in them and to help him. As he was not a boaster, he made no superfluous
exhibitions of his skill or courage, albeit he might occasionally
indulge--and be indulged--in some mirthful manifestation of his
good-nature; as when, on reaching Chapin's refuge for his rescue, he
waved from one of its tallest cedars a green branch to the anxious
spectators, as if to assure and encourage them; and when he returned
with his skiff half filled with cedar-sprigs, which he distributed to
the multitude, they raised his pet craft to their shoulders, with both
Chapin and himself in it, and bore them in triumph through the village,
while money tokens were thrown into the boat to replace the green ones.
He never foolishly challenged the admiration of his fellow-men. But when
the emergency arose for the proper exercise of his powers, when news
came that some one was in trouble in the river, then he went to work
with a calm and cheerful will which gave assurance of the best results.
Beneath his quiet deliberation of manner there was concealed a wonderful
vigor both of resolution and nerve, as was amply shown by the dangers
which he faced, and by the bend in his withy oar as he forced it through
the water, and the feathery spray which flashed from its blade when he
lifted it to the surface.
In all fishing and sailing parties his presence was indispensable for
those who knew him. The most timid child or woman no longer hesitated if
Robinson was to go with the party. His quick eye saw everything, and his
willing hand did all that it was necessary to do, to secure the comfort
and safety of the company.
It is doubtful whether more than a very few of his neighbors know where
he lies, in an unmarked grave in Oakwood Cemetery, near the rapids.
Robinson went forth on a turbulent, unreturning flood, where the
slightest hesitancy in thought or act would have proved instantly fatal.
Benevolent associations in different cities and countries bestow honor
and rewards on those who, by unselfish effort and a noble courage, save
the life of a fellow-being. This Robinson did repeatedly, yet no
monument commemorates his worthy deeds.