_The Engineer_
It would be impossible to pick out any one man who handled an engine
on the river fifty years ago, and in describing his habits and
peculiarities claim him as a type of all river engineers of his time.
The legendary engineer, such as Colonel Hay has given us, standing at
the throttle of his engine on the ill-fated "Prairie Belle", waiting
for signals from the pilot house, his boat a roaring furnace of fire,
and whose spirit finally ascended with the smoke of his steamer, was
a true type of one class, and possibly a large class, of old-time
river engineers. Reckless, profane, combative; yet courageous, proud
of their calling, and to be depended upon to do their duty under any
and all circumstances; giving, if need be, their lives for the safety
of the passengers and crew of the boat--such was one class. Another
was composed of men equally courageous, equally to be depended upon
in time of danger, but sober, quiet, religious, family men, who never
used a profane word, never went on sprees ashore, never supported one
wife at home and another at "Natchez under the Hill."
On the boat upon which I gained the greater part of my river
experience, we had the two types: George McDonald, chief, and Billy
Hamilton, assistant. Either would have died at his post, the one
with a prayer upon his lips, and the other with a jest; both alike
alert, cool, efficient. McDonald was a Scotch Presbyterian, and might
have been an elder in the church at home--perhaps he was. He was a
religious man on board his boat, where religion was at a discount. He
was a capable engineer; he could make anything that it was possible
to make, on the portable forge in the steamer's smithy. He was always
cool, deliberate, ready, and as chief was the captain's right-hand
man in the engine-room.
Billy Hamilton was his opposite in everything, save in professional
qualifications. In these he was the equal of his chief, except in
length of service, and consequent experience. The son of a Maryland
slave owner, he was a "wild one" on shore, and a terror to the
captain when on board and on duty. In a race with a rival boat
his recklessness in carrying steam was always counted upon by the
pilot on watch, to make up for any inherent difference in speed
that might handicap our boat. He would put on the blower (forced
draft) until solid chunks of live wood coals would be blown from the
smokestacks. He would keep the water at the first gauge, or under
it. He had a line rigged from the safety-valve lever, running aft to
the engine-room. In times of peace the line was rove over a pulley
fixed under the deck, above the safety-valve. A pull on the line in
this position would raise the valve and allow the steam to escape.
When another boat was in sight, going our way, the slack of the rope
was hauled forward and the bight carried under a pulley fixed in
a stanchion alongside the boiler, below the safety-valve, running
thence up and over the upper pulley as before--but with all the
difference in the world, for with the fifty-pound anvil hanging to
the end of the line thus reversed in its leverage, the boilers might
have blown up a hundred times before the safety-valve would have
acted.
I have often heard the signal which Billy had agreed upon with his
fireman on the port side, and have seen the darky slip the line
under the lower pulley, and then keep one eye on the boiler-deck
companionway, watching for the captain. Should he be seen coming
below, the line was as quickly slipped off the lower pulley and
restored to its normal position; sometimes with a concurrent "blowing
off" through the safety-valve, which was evidence enough for the
captain, although he might not catch Billy in the act. It is no more
than just to say that the visits of the captain below decks were not
frequent. He was a New Orleans man, of French extraction, with a fine
sense of honor which forbade any espionage of this nature, unless
there seemed to be an especially flagrant case of steam-carrying on
the part of his junior engineer.
Billy had another device which greatly galled the captain, and later
it was the cause of a serious affair. The captain had a private
servitor, a colored man who cared for his rooms in the "Texas",
served his lunches there, and ran errands about the boat as required.
The captain used to send him down to the engine-room when he
suspected Hamilton was carrying more steam than was nominated in the
license, to look at the gauge and take readings.
It was not long before Hamilton became aware of this surreptitious
reading, and set himself to work to defeat it without the necessity
of ordering the captain's man out of the engine-room. To this end he
made a cap of sheet lead which covered the face of the dial, leaving
only about two inches in the centre, showing the pivot and a small
portion of the pointer. This balked the colored messenger completely,
as he could not see the figures, and he was not well enough
acquainted with the instrument to read it from the centre. On his
last visit to the engine-room, Hamilton saw him coming. Pretending
that he was going forward to try the water, but keeping his eye
on the messenger, he saw him reach up and take off the cap. In an
instant Hamilton turned and threw his shaping hammer, which he had
in his hand, with such true aim that it struck the poor darky in the
head and knocked him senseless. As he dropped to the deck Hamilton
called one of his firemen, telling him to give his compliments to
Captain Faucette and tell him to send some men and take away his
(profanely described) nigger, as he had no use for him. The darky
pulled through all right, I think. He was put ashore at the first
landing and placed under the care of a doctor, and Hamilton paid his
bills. His successor never came into the engine-room, and the cap on
the steam gauge was laid aside as unnecessary.
Whenever the mate had a "shindy" with the crew, which was composed
of forty Irishmen, all the other officers of the boat were bound to
"stand by" for trouble. Hamilton was always ready, if not anxious,
for such occasions, and he and Billy Wilson, the mate, always
supported each other so effectively that many an incipient mutiny
was quickly quelled, the two jumping into a crowd and hitting every
head in sight with whatever weapon happened to be at hand until order
was restored. Usually, however, it was with bare hands, and the show
which authority always makes in face of insubordination.
At times, Billy's vagaries were of a grisly and gruesome character.
I recall that at Point Douglass, on one of our trips, we found a
"floater" (body of a drowned man) that had been in the water until it
was impossible to handle it. To get it on shore it was necessary to
slide a board beneath, and draw out board and body together. It was
a malodorous and ghastly undertaking. Something said to this effect,
Hamilton laughed at as being altogether too finicky for steamboatmen.
To demonstrate that it need not affect either one's sensibilities
or stomach, he stepped into the cook's galley for a sandwich, and
sitting down on the end of the board, alongside the corpse, ate his
lunch without a qualm.
Another and rather more amusing incident took place while the "Fanny
Harris" was in winter quarters at Prescott. The night before St.
Patrick's day, Billy made up an effigy, which he hung between the
smokestacks. As the manikin had a clay pipe in its mouth and a string
of potatoes about its neck, it might have reference to the patron
saint of the Old Sod. The loyal Irishmen of the town so interpreted
it at least, and Billy had to stand off the crowd for several hours
with a shot gun, and finally get the town marshal to guard the boat
while he climbed up and removed the obnoxious image.
He had a little iron cannon which he fired on all holidays, and
sometimes when there was no holiday; in the latter case, at about
three o'clock in the morning, just to remind people living in the
vicinity of the levee that he was still "on watch". In retaliation
for the effigy affair, his Irish friends slipped aboard the boat one
evening while he was away and spiked his cannon by driving a rat-tail
file into the vent; this was after he had carefully loaded it for a
demonstration intended to come off the next morning. He discovered
the trick when he attempted to fire the gun, and offered pertinent
and forcible remarks, but unprintable in this narration. He lost no
time in vain regrets, however. Lighting up his forge he made a screw
and drew out the load. Then with the help of several chums he moved
his forge to the bow of the boat (the foc'sle), rigged a crane so
that he could swing his little cannon in a chain sling, from the
capstan to the forge, and back again. When the time came for firing
the salute he had his gun heated red-hot on the forge; it was then
swung back on to the capstan-head, where it was lashed with a chain.
A bucket of water was then thrown into the gun, and instantly a
hardwood plug, made to fit, was driven home with his heavy striking
hammer. In a minute the steam generated by this process caused an
explosion that threw the plug almost across the river, fully a
quarter of a mile, with a reasonably fair result in the way of noise.
It was a risky piece of work, but "Billy" was in his element when
there was a spice of risk mixed with his sports.
Billy's humor was broad, but never malicious. He never missed an
opportunity to play a practical joke on any one, save, perhaps, the
captain himself. The deck hands who "soldiered" by sitting on the
side of their bunks when they ought to be at work toting freight,
were sometimes lifted several feet in the air by the insertion of two
inches of a darning needle ingeniously attached to the under side of
the board bench upon which they took their seat. It was operated from
the engine-room by a fine wire and a stiff spring, the whole boxed
in so securely by the carpenter that there was no possibility of its
discovery by the enraged victim.
He was one of the most open-handed and liberal of men in his givings,
and in spite of his escapades a valuable officer. In 1862 he left the
boat, as did all the crew, to enlist under the call for three hundred
thousand troops, made in July of that year. In all discussions of the
war he had asserted his determination to keep away from any place
where there was shooting, as he was afraid of bullets of any size
from an ounce up. As he was a Southern man, son of a slaveholder,
we thought that this badinage was to cover his determination not
to take any part in the war on the Union side; we never questioned
his courage. He went into the navy as an acting assistant engineer,
and was assigned to one of the "tin-clads" that Commodore Porter
had improvised for service on the Mississippi and tributaries, and
that did such heroic service in opening and keeping open the great
river. Within a few months after his entry into the service, his old
friends saw with pleasure, but not surprise, his name mentioned in
general orders for gallantry in action. He had stood by his engine on
the gunboat after a pipe had been cut by a shell from a Confederate
shore battery, a number of men being killed and wounded, and the
engine-room filled with escaping steam. Binding his coat over his
face and mouth to prevent inhalation of the steam he handled his
engines at the risk of his life, in response to the pilot's bells,
until his boat was withdrawn from danger. It was in keeping with his
known character; and his talk of being "afraid of guns" was only a
part of the levity with which he treated all situations, grave or gay.
I do not know Billy's ultimate fate. When he left the "Fanny Harris"
for gunboat service, I also left to enlist in the infantry. After
three years in the army I was mustered out in Washington, and
soon went to New York where I remained for ten years or more. In
the interim between 1862 and 1876, when I returned to the West,
I completely lost sight of all my old river acquaintances. When,
later, I made inquiries of those whom I did find, they either did not
enlighten me as to his fate, or, if they did, I made so little note
of it that it has escaped my memory.