American Merchant Ships and Sailors by Willis J. Abbot

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The Mississippi River steamboat of the golden age on the river--the type,
indeed, which still persists--was a triumph of adaptability to the service
for which she was designed. More than this--she was an egregious
architectural sham. She was a success in her light draught, six to eight
feet, at most, and in her prodigious carrying capacity. It was said of one
of these boats, when skilfully loaded by a gang of practical roustabouts,
under the direction of an experienced mate, that the freight she carried,
if unloaded on the bank, would make a pile bigger than the boat herself.
The hull of the vessel was invariably of wood, broad of beam, light of
draught, built "to run on a heavy dew," and with only the rudiments of a
keel. Some freight was stowed in the hold, but the engines were not placed
there, but on the main deck, built almost flush with the water, and
extending unbroken from stem to stern. Often the engines were in pairs, so
that the great paddle-wheels could be worked independently of each other.
The finest and fastest boats were side-wheelers, but a large wheel at the
stern, or two stern wheels, side by side, capable of independent action,
were common modes of propulsion. The escape-pipes of the engine were
carried high aloft, above the topmost of the tiers of decks, and from each
one alternately, when the boat was under way, would burst a gush of steam,
with a sound like a dull puff, followed by a prolonged sigh, which could
be heard far away beyond the dense forests that bordered the river. A row
of posts, always in appearance, too slender for the load they bore,
supported the saloon deck some fifteen feet above the main deck. When
business was good on the river, the space within was packed tight with
freight, leaving barely room enough for passenger gangways, and for the
men feeding the roaring furnaces with pine slabs. A great steamer coming
down to New Orleans from the cotton country about the Red River, loaded to
the water's edge with cotton bales, so that, from the shore, she looked
herself like a monster cotton bale, surmounted by tiers of snowy cabins
and pouring forth steam and smoke from towering pipes, was a sight long to
be remembered. It is a sight, too, that is still common on the lower
river, where the business of gathering up the planter's crop and getting
it to market has not yet passed wholly into the hands of the railroads.

[Illustration: A DECK LOAD OF COTTON]

Above the cargo and the roaring furnaces rose the cabins, two or three
tiers, one atop the other, the topmost one extending only about one-third
of the length of the boat, and called the "Texas." The main saloon
extending the whole length of the boat, save for a bit of open deck at bow
and stern, was in comparison with the average house of the time, palatial.
On either side it was lined by rows of doors, each opening into a
two-berthed stateroom. The decoration was usually ivory white, and on the
main panel of each door was an oil painting of some romantic landscape.
There Chillon brooded over the placid azure of the lake, there storms
broke with jagged lightning in the Andes, there buxom girls trod out the
purple grapes of some Italian vineyard. The builders of each new steamer
strove to eclipse all earlier ones in the brilliancy of these works of
art, and discussion of the relative merits of the paintings on the
"Natchez" and those on the "Baton Rouge" came to be the chief theme of art
criticism along the river. Bright crimson carpet usually covered the floor
of the long, tunnel-like cabin. Down the center were ranged the tables,
about which, thrice a day, the hungry passengers gathered to be fed, while
from the ceiling depended chandeliers, from which hung prismatic pendants,
tinkling pleasantly as the boat vibrated with the throb of her engines. At
one end of the main saloon was the ladies' cabin, discreetly cut off by
crimson curtains; at the other, the bar, which, in a period when copious
libations of alcoholic drinks were at least as customary for men as the
cigar to-day, was usually a rallying point for the male passengers.

Far up above the yellow river, perched on top of the "Texas," or topmost
tier of cabins, was the pilot-house, that honorable eminence of glass and
painted wood which it was the ambition of every boy along the river some
day to occupy. This was a great square box, walled in mainly with glass.
Square across the front of it rose the huge wheel, eight feet in diameter,
sometimes half-sunken beneath the floor, so that the pilot, in moments of
stress, might not only grip it with his hands, but stand on its spokes, as
well. Easy chairs and a long bench made up the furniture of this sacred
apartment. In front of it rose the two towering iron chimneys, joined,
near the top by an iron grating that usually carried some gaudily colored
or gilded device indicative of the line to which the boat belonged.
Amidships, and aft of the pilot-house, rose the two escape pipes, from
which the hoarse, prolonged s-o-o-ugh of the high pressure exhaust burst
at half-minute intervals, carrying to listeners miles away, the news that
a boat was coming.

All this edifice above the hull of the boat, was of the flimsiest
construction, built of pine scantling, liberally decorated with scroll-saw
work, and lavishly covered with paint mixed with linseed oil. Beneath it
were two, four, or six roaring furnaces fed with rich pitch-pine, and open
on every side to drafts and gusts. From the top of the great chimneys
poured volcanic showers of sparks, deluging the inflammable pile with a
fiery rain. The marvel is not that every year saw its quotum of steamers
burned to the water's edge, but, rather, that the quota were
proportionately so small.

At midnight this apparent inflammability was even more striking. Lights
shone from the windows of the long row of cabins, and wherever there was a
chink, or a bit of glass, or a latticed blind, the radiance streamed
forth as though within were a great mass of fire, struggling, in every
way, to escape. Below, the boiler deck was dully illumined by smoky
lanterns; but when one of the great doors of the roaring furnace was
thrown open, that the half-naked black firemen might throw in more
pitch-pine slabs, there shone forth such a fiery glare, that the boat and
the machinery--working in the open, and plain to view--seemed wrapped in a
Vesuvius of flame, and the sturdy stokers and lounging roustabouts looked
like the fiends in a fiery inferno. The danger was not merely apparent,
but very real. During the early days of steamboating, fires and boiler
explosions were of frequent occurrence. A river boat, once ablaze, could
never be saved, and the one hope for the passengers was that it might be
beached before the flames drove them overboard. The endeavor to do this
brought out some examples of magnificent heroism among captains, pilots,
and engineers, who, time and again, stood manfully at their posts, though
scorched by flames, and cut off from any hope of escape, until the boat's
prow was thrust well into the bank, and the passengers were all saved. The
pilots, in the presence of such disaster, were in the sorest straits, and
were, moreover, the ones of the boat's company upon whom most depended the
fate of those on board. Perched at the very top of a large tinder-box, all
avenues of escape except a direct plunge overboard were quickly closed to
them. If they left the wheel the current would inevitably swing the boat's
head downstream, and she would drift, aimlessly, a flaming funeral pyre
for all on board. Many a pilot stood, with clenched teeth, and eyes firm
set upon the distant shore, while the fire roared below and behind him,
and the terrified passengers edged further and further forward as the
flames pressed their way toward the bow, until at last came the grinding
sound under the hull, and the sudden shock that told of shoal water and
safety. Then, those on the lower deck might drop over the side, or swarm
along the windward gangplank to safety, but the pilot too often was hemmed
in by the flames, and perished with his vessel.

[Illustration: FEEDING THE FURNACE]

In the year 1840 alone there were 109 steamboat disasters chronicled, with
a loss of fifty-nine vessels and 205 lives. The high-pressure boilers used
on the river, cheaply built, and for many years not subjected to any
official inspection, contributed more than their share to the list of
accidents. Boiler explosions were so common as to be reckoned upon every
time a voyage was begun. Passengers were advised to secure staterooms aft
when possible, as the forward part of the boat was the more apt to be
shattered if the boiler "went up." Every river town had its citizens who
had survived an explosion, and the stock form into which to put the
humorous quip or story of the time was to have it told by the clerk going
up as he met the captain in the air coming down, with the debris of the
boat flying all about them. As the river boats improved in character,
disasters of this sort became less frequent, and the United States, by
establishing a rigid system of boiler inspection, and compelling engineers
to undergo a searching examination into their fitness before receiving a
license, has done much to guard against them. Yet to-day, we hear all too
frequently of river steamers blown to bits, and all on board lost, though
it is a form of disaster almost unknown on Eastern waters where crowded
steamboats ply the Sound, the Hudson, the Connecticut, and the Potomac,
year after year, with never a disaster. The cheaper material of Western
boats has something to do with this difference, but a certain
happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care spirit, which has characterized the Western
riverman since the days of the broadhorns, is chiefly responsible. Most
often an explosion is the result of gross carelessness--a sleepy engineer,
and a safety-valve "out of kilter," as too many of them often are, have
killed their hundreds on the Western rivers. Sometimes, however, the
almost criminal rashness, of which captains were guilty, in a mad rush for
a little cheap glory, ended in a deafening crash, the annihilation of a
good boat, and the death of scores of her people by drowning, or the awful
torture of inhaling scalding steam. Rivalry between the different boats
was fierce, and now and then at the sight of a competitor making for a
landing where freight and passengers awaited the first boat to land her
gangplank, the alert captain would not unnaturally take some risks to get
there first. Those were the moments that resulted in methods in the engine
room picturesquely described as "feeding the fires with fat bacon and
resin, and having a nigger sit on the safety valve." To such impromptu
races might be charged the most terrifying accidents in the history of the
river.

But the great races, extending sometimes for more than a thousand miles up
the river, and carefully planned for months in advance, were seldom, if
ever, marred by an accident. For then every man on both boats was on the
alert, from pilot down to fuel passer. The boat was trimmed by guidance of
a spirit level until she rode the water at precisely the draft that
assured the best speed. Her hull was scraped and oiled, her machinery
overhauled, and her fuel carefully selected. Picked men made up her crew,
and all the upper works that could be disposed of were landed before the
race, in order to decrease air resistance. It was the current pleasantry
to describe the captain as shaving off his whiskers lest they catch the
breeze, and parting his hair in the middle, that the boat might be the
better trimmed. Few passengers were taken, for they could not be relied
upon to "trim ship," but would be sure to crowd to one side or the other
at a critical moment. Only through freight was shipped--and little of
that--for there would be no stops made from starting-point to goal. Of
course, neither boat could carry all the fuel--pine-wood slabs--needed for
a long voyage, but by careful prearrangement, great "flats" loaded with
wood, awaited them at specified points in midstream. The steamers slowed
to half-speed, the flats were made fast alongside by cables, and nimble
negroes transferred the wood, while the race went on. At every riverside
town the wharves and roofs would be black with people, awaiting the two
rivals, whose appearance could be foretold almost as exactly as that of a
railway train running on schedule time. The firing of rifles and cannon,
the blowing of horns, the waving of flags, greeted the racers from the
shores by day, and great bonfires saluted them by night. At some of the
larger towns they would touch for a moment to throw off mail, or to let a
passenger leap ashore. Then every nerve of captain, pilot, and crew was on
edge with the effort to tie up and get away first. Up in the pilot-house
the great man of the wheel took shrewd advantage of every eddy and back
current; out on the guards the humblest roustabout stood ready for a
life-risking leap to get the hawser to the dock at the earliest instant.
All the operations of the boat had been reduced to an exact science, so
that when the crack packets were pitted against each other in a long race,
their maneuvers would be as exactly matched in point of time consumed as
those of two yachts sailing for the "America's" cup. Side by side, they
would steam for hundreds of miles, jockeying all the way for the most
favorable course. It was a fact that often such boats were so evenly
matched that victory would hang almost entirely on the skill of the pilot,
and where of two pilots on one boat one was markedly inferior, his watch
at the wheel could be detected by the way the rival boat forged ahead.
During the golden days on the river, there were many of these races, but
the most famous of them all was that between the "Robert E. Lee" and the
"Natchez," in 1870. These boats, the pride of all who lived along the
river at that time, raced from New Orleans to St. Louis. At Natchez, 268
miles, they were six minutes apart; at Cairo, 1024 miles, the "Lee" was
three hours and thirty-four minutes ahead. She came in winner by six hours
and thirty-six minutes, but the officers of the "Natchez" claimed that
this was not a fair test of the relative speed of the boats, as they had
been delayed by fog and for repairs to machinery for about seven hours.

Spectacular and picturesque was the riverside life of the great
Mississippi towns in the steamboat days. Mark Twain has described the
scenes along the levee at New Orleans at "steamboat time" in a bit of
word-painting, which brings all the rush and bustle, the confusion,
turmoil and din, clearly to the eye:

"It was always the custom for boats to leave New Orleans between four and
five o'clock in the afternoon. From three o'clock onward, they would be
burning resin and pitch-pine (the sign of preparation) and so one had the
spectacle of a rank, some two or three miles long, of tall, ascending
columns of coal-black smoke, a colonnade which supported a roof of the
same smoke, blending together and spreading abroad over the city. Every
outward-bound boat had its flag flying at the jack-staff, and sometimes a
duplicate on the verge-staff astern. Two or three miles of mates were
commanding and swearing with more than usual emphasis. Countless
processions of freight, barrels, and boxes, were spinning athwart the
levee, and flying aboard the stage-planks. Belated passengers were dodging
and skipping among these frantic things, hoping to reach the forecastle
companion-way alive, but having their doubts about it. Women with
reticules and bandboxes were trying to keep up with husbands freighted
with carpet sacks and crying babies, and making a failure of it by losing
their heads in the whirl and roar and general distraction. Drays and
baggage-vans were clattering hither and thither in a wild hurry, every now
and then getting blocked and jammed together, and then, during ten
seconds, one could not see them for the profanity, except vaguely and
dimly. Every windlass connected with every forehatch from one end of that
long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping up a deafening whiz and
whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the half-naked crews of
perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring such songs as 'De las'
sack! De las' sack!!' inspired to unimaginable exaltation by the chaos of
turmoil and racket that was driving everybody else mad. By this time the
hurricane and boiler decks of the packets would be packed and black with
passengers, the last bells would begin to clang all down the line, and
then the pow-wows seemed to double. In a moment or two the final warning
came, a simultaneous din of Chinese gongs with the cry, 'All dat aint
going, please to get ashore,' and, behold, the pow-wow quadrupled. People
came swarming ashore, overturning excited stragglers that were trying to
swarm aboard. One moment later, a long array of stage-planks was being
hauled in, each with its customary latest passenger clinging to the end of
it, with teeth, nails, and everything else, and the customary latest
procrastinator making a wild spring ashore over his head.

"Now a number of the boats slide backward into the stream, leaving wide
gaps in the serried rank of steamers. Citizens crowd on the decks of boats
that were not to go, in order to see the sight. Steamer after steamer
straightens herself up, gathers all her strength, and presently comes
swinging by, under a tremendous head of steam, with flags flying, smoke
rolling, and her entire crew of firemen and deck hands (usually swarthy
negroes) massed together on the forecastle, the best voice in the lot
towering in their midst (being mounted on the capstan) waving his hat or a
flag, all roaring in a mighty chorus, while the parting cannons boom, and
the multitudinous spectators swing their hats and huzza. Steamer after
steamer pulls into the line, and the stately procession goes winging its
flight up the river."

Until 1865 the steamboats controlled the transportation business of all
the territory drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries. But two
causes for their undoing had already begun to work. The long and
fiercely-fought war had put a serious check to the navigation of the
rivers. For long months the Mississippi was barricaded by the Confederate
works at Island Number 10, at New Madrid and at Vicksburg. Even after
Grant and Farragut had burst these shackles navigation was attended with
danger from guerrillas on the banks and trade was dead. When peace brought
the promise of better things, the railroads were there to take advantage
of it. From every side they were pushing their way into New Orleans,
building roadways across the "trembling prairies," and crossing the
water-logged country about the Rigolets on long trestles. They penetrated
the cotton country and the mineral country. They paralleled the Ohio, the
Tennessee, and the Cumberland, as well as the Father of Waters, and the
steamboat lines began to feel the heavy hand of competition. Captains and
clerks found it prudent to abate something of their dignity. Instead of
shippers pleading for deck-room on the boats, the boats' agents had to do
the pleading. Instead of levees crowded with freight awaiting carriage
there were broad, empty spaces by the river's bank, while the railroad
freight-houses up town held the bales of cotton, the bundles of staves,
the hogsheads of sugar, the shingles and lumber. On long hauls the
railroads quickly secured all the North and South business, though indeed,
the hauling of freight down the river for shipment to Europe was ended for
both railroads and steamboats, so far as the products raised north of the
Tennessee line was concerned. For a new water route to the sea had been
opened and wondrously developed. The Great Lakes were the shortest
waterway to the Atlantic, and New York dug its Erie Canal which afforded
an outlet--pinched and straitened, it is true, but still an outlet--for
the cargoes of the lake schooners and the early steamers of the unsalted
seas. Even the commonwealths forming the north bank of the Ohio River
turned their faces away from the stream that had started them on the
pathway to wealth and greatness, and dug canals to Lake Erie, that their
wheat, corn, and other products might reach tidewater by the shortest
route. The great cargoes from Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Louisville, began
to be legends of the past, and the larger boats were put on routes in
Louisiana, or on the Mississippi, from Natchez south, while others were
reduced to mere local voyages, gathering up freight from points tributary
to St. Louis. The glory of the river faded fast, and the final stroke was
dealt it when some man of inventive mind discovered that a little, puffing
tug, costing one-tenth as much as a fine steamboat, could push broad acres
of flatboats, loaded with coal, lumber, or cotton, down the tortuous
stream, and return alone at one-tenth the expense of a heavy steamer. That
was the final stroke to the picturesqueness and the romance of river life.
The volume of freight carried still grows apace, but the glory of
Mississippi steamboat life is gone forever.

**Transcriber's Note: Page 268: change infreqently to infrequently

CHAPTER IX

THE NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES--THEIR PART IN EFFECTING THE SETTLEMENT OF
AMERICA--THEIR RAPID DEVELOPMENT--WIDE EXTENT OF THE TRADE--EFFORT OF LORD
NORTH TO DESTROY IT--THE FISHERMEN IN THE REVOLUTION--EFFORTS TO ENCOURAGE
THE INDUSTRY--ITS PART IN POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY--THE FISHING BANKS--TYPES
OF BOATS--GROWTH OF THE FISHING COMMUNITIES--FARMERS AND SAILORS BY
TURNS--THE EDUCATION OF THE FISHERMEN--METHODS OF TAKING MACKEREL--THE
SEINE AND THE TRAWL--SCANT PROFITS OF THE INDUSTRY--PERILS OF THE
BANKS--SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES--THE FOG AND THE FAST LINERS--THE TRIBUTE
OF HUMAN LIFE.

The summer yachtsman whiling away an idle month in cruises up and down
that New England coast which, once stern and rock-bound, has come to be
the smiling home of midsummer pleasures, encounters at each little port
into which he may run, moldering and decrepit wharves, crowned with
weatherbeaten and leaky structures, waterside streets lined with shingled
fish-houses in an advanced stage of decay, and acres of those low
platforms known as flakes, on which at an earlier day the product of the
New England fisheries was spread out to dry in the sun, but which now are
rapidly disintegrating and mingling again with the soil from which the
wood of their structures sprung. Every harbor on the New England coast,
from New Bedford around to the Canadian line, bears these dumb memorials
to the gradual decadence of what was once our foremost national industry.
For the fisheries which once nursed for us a school of the hardiest
seamen, which aroused the jealousy of England and France, which built up
our seaport towns, and carried our flag to the furthest corners of the
globe, and which in the records both of diplomacy and war fill a prominent
place have been for the last twenty years appreciably tending to
disappear. Many causes are assigned for this. The growing scarcity of
certain kinds of fish, the repeal of encouraging legislation, a change in
the taste of certain peoples to whom we shipped large quantities of the
finny game, the competition of Canadians and Frenchmen, the great
development of the salmon fisheries and salmon canning on the Pacific
coast, all have contributed to this decay. It is proper, however, to note
that the decadence of the fisheries is to some extent more apparent than
real. True, there are fewer towns supported by this industry, fewer boats
and men engaged in it; but in part this is due to the fact that the steam
fishing boat carrying a large fleet of dories accomplishes in one season
with fewer hands eight or ten times the work that the old-fashioned pink
or schooner did. And, moreover, as the population of the seaport towns has
grown, the apparent prominence of the fishing industry has decreased, as
that industry has not grown in proportion to the population. Forty years
ago Marblehead and Nantucket were simply fishing villages, and nothing
else. To-day the remnants of the fishing industry attract but little
attention, in the face of the vastly more profitable and important calling
of entertaining the summer visitor. New Bedford has become a great factory
town, Lynn and Hull are great centers for the shoemaking industries.

When the Pilgrim Fathers first concluded to make their journey to the New
England coast and sought of the English king a charter, they were asked by
the thrifty James, what profit might arise. "Fishing," was the answer.
Whereupon, according to the narrative of Edward Winslow, the king replied,
"So, God have my soul; 'tis an honest trade; 'twas the apostles' own
calling." The redoubtable Captain John Smith, making his way to the New
England coast from Virginia, happened to drop a fishline over what is
known now as George's Bank. The miraculous draught of fishes which
followed did not awaken in his mind the same pious reflections to which
King James gave expression. Rather was he moved to exultation over the
profit which he saw there. "Truly," he said, in a letter to his
correspondent in London, "It is a pleasant thing to drop a line and pull
up threepence, fivepence, and sixpence as fast as one may haul in." The
gallant soldier of fortune was evidently quite awake to the possibilities
of profit upon which he had stumbled. Yet, probably even he would have
been amazed could he have known that within fifty years not all the land
in the colony of Massachusetts Bay, nor in the Providence and Rhode Island
plantations produced so much of value as the annual crop the fishermen
harvested on the shallow banks off Cape Cod.

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