The recollections of a steamboat pilot from 1854 to 1863, by
George Byron Merrick. Copyright, 1909, by the author. From
Chapter XXX, pp. 241-247.
I knew that I had not yet been weaned from the spokes, and doubted if
I ever should be. I said that I would try, and I did. I filed an
application for the first leave of absence I had ever asked for from
the railroad company, and it was granted. I found a man to assist the
"devil" in getting out my paper, he doing the editing for pure love of
editing, if not from love of the editor. We set our house in order,
packed our trunk and grips, and when the specified fortnight was
ended, we (my wife, my daughter, and myself) were comfortably bestowed
in adjoining staterooms in the ladies' cabin of the "Mary Morton," and
I was fidgeting about the boat, watching men "do things" as I had been
taught, or had seen others do, twenty years ago or more.
The big Irish mate bullied his crew of forty "niggers," driving them
with familiar oaths, to redoubled efforts in getting in the "last"
packages of freight, which never reached the last. Among the rest, in
that half hour, I saw barrels of mess pork--a whole car load of it,
which the "nigger" engine was striking down into the hold. Shades of
Abraham! pork _out_ of St. Paul! Twenty years before, I had checked
out a whole barge load (three hundred barrels) through from
Cincinnati, by way of Cairo. Cincinnati was the great porkopolis of
the world, while Chicago was yet keeping its pigs in each back yard,
and every freeholder "made" his own winter's supply of pork for
himself. The steward in charge of the baggage was always in the way
with a big trunk on the gangway, just as of old. The engineers were
trying their steam, and slowly turning the wheel over, with the waste
cocks open, to clear the cylinders of water. The firemen were coaxing
the beds of coal into the fiercer heats. The chief clerk compared the
tickets which were presented by hurrying passengers with the
reservation sheet, and assigned rooms, all "the best," to others who
had no reservations. The "mud" clerk checked his barrels and boxes and
scribbled his name fiercely and with many flourishes to the last
receipts. The pilot on watch, Mr. Burns, sat on the window ledge in
the pilot house, and waited. The captain stood by the big bell, and
listened for the "All ready, Sir!" of the mate. As the words were
spoken, the great bell boomed out one stroke, the lines slacked away
and were thrown off the snubbing posts. A wave of the captain's hand,
a pull at once of the knobs of the wheel-frame, the jingle of a bell
far below, the shiver of the boat as the great wheel began its work,
and the bow of the "Mary Morton" swung to the south; a couple of pulls
at the bell-rope, and the wheel was revolving ahead; in a minute more
the escape pipes told us that she was "hooked up," and with full steam
ahead we were on our way to St. Louis. And I was again in the pilot
house with my old chief, who bade me "show us what sort of an
education you had when a youngster."
Despite my forty years I was a boy again, and Tom Burns was the
critical chief, sitting back on the bench with his pipe alight, a
comical smile oozing out of the corners of mouth and eyes, for all the
world like the teacher of old.
The very first minute I met the swing of the gangplank derrick (there
is no jack staff on the modern steamboat, more's the pity), with two
or three strokes when one would have been a plenty, yawing the boat
around "like a toad in a hailstorm," as I was advised. I could feel
the hot blood rushing to my cheeks, just as it did twenty years before
under similar provocation, when the eye of the master was upon me. I
turned around and found that Mr. Burns had taken it in, and we both
laughed like boys--as I fancy both of us were for the time.
But I got used to it very soon, getting the "feel of it," and as the
"Mary Morton" steered like a daisy I lined out a very respectable
wake; though Tom tried to puzzle me a good deal with questions as to
the landmarks, most of which I had forgotten save in a general way....
A mile or two below Hastings I saw the "break" on the surface of the
water which marked the resting-place of the "Fanny Harris," on which I
had spent so many months of hard work, but which, looked back upon
through the haze of twenty years, now seemed to have been nothing but
holiday excursions.
At Prescott I looked on the familiar water front, and into the attic
windows where with my brother I had so often in the night watches
studied the characteristics of boats landing at the levee. Going
ashore I met many old-time friends, among whom was Charles Barnes,
agent of the Diamond Jo Line, who had occupied the same office on the
levee since 1858, and had met every steam boat touching the landing
during all those years. He was the Nestor of the profession, and was
one of the very few agents still doing business on the water front who
had begun such work prior to 1860. Since then, within a few years
past, he also has gone, and that by an accident, while still in the
performance of duties connected with the steamboat business.
Dropping rapidly down the river, we passed Diamond Bluff without
stopping, but rounded to at Red Wing for passengers and freight, and
afterward headed into a big sea on Lake Pepin, kicked up by the high
south wind that was still blowing. We landed under the lee of the
sandpit at Lake City, and after getting away spent the better part of
an hour in picking up a barge load of wheat, that was anchored out in
the lake....
I turned in at an early hour, and lay in the upper berth, listening to
the cinders skating over the roof a couple of feet above my face, and
translating the familiar sounds that reached me from the engine-room
and roof--the call for the draw at the railroad bridge, below the
landing; the signal for landing at Wabasha; the slow bell, the
stopping-bell, the backing bell, and a dozen or twenty unclassified
bells, before the landing was fully accomplished; the engineer trying
the water in the boilers; the rattle of the slice-bars on the sides of
the furnace doors as the firemen trimmed their fires; and one new and
unfamiliar sound from the engine-room--the rapid exhaust of the little
engine driving the electric generator, the only intruder among the
otherwise familiar noises, all of which came to my sleepy senses as a
lullaby.