Life on Ole Mississipi in Days Befo’ de Wah.
There was recently held at Dubuque, Iowa, a meeting of shippers from eight Mississippi Valley States for the purpose of restoring transportation on “The Father of Waters.” The cities represented by active delegates were St. Paul, Minneapolis, La Crosse, Winona, Galena, Dubuque, Burlington, Quincy, Hannibal, Rapid City, East St. Louis, New Orleans, and Cincinnati.
President Thomas Wilkinson, of Burlington, Iowa, was authorized to appoint an energetic working committee to prepare a plan or system for the practical utilization of the valley’s great water highway to meet the demands of commerce occasioned by the completion of the Panama Canal and other transportation exigencies. It is said[Pg 58] the greatest enthusiasm exists among the large producers and shippers of the valley over the prospective resumption of river traffic, and that already many encouraging offers have been received by those at the heads of the enterprise.
The floodtide of the Mississippi River traffic under the old system was reached July 4, 1870, when the Robert E. Lee pushed its nose against the St. Louis wharf at the conclusion of its great race with the Natchez. Old rivermen say that almost from that hour they could detect the falling off of the trade once so generously given the big “river palaces.”
The Lee beat the Natchez into St. Louis six hours and thirty-six minutes. Both steamers cleared the New Orleans wharf at about five p. m. June 30th. The race was fairly even until they got close to St. Louis. Jesse T. Jamison and Enoch King were in the Lee’s pilothouse. They had taken charge of the wheel at Cairo, and held their long trick clear into St. Louis.
At Devil’s Island a dense fog settled on the river. There were no lighthouses then, no electric flash lights to sweep out over the river. The Natchez was hanging on close. Many rivermen of that day insisted that under certain conditions she was a much swifter boat than the Lee.
As night came on, all the world was black. “You could almost feel it,” graphically observed a man who was on the Lee. “Jamison looked across at his mate handling the other side of the big wheel. ‘We’ll keep going,’ he said. ‘Of course,’ replied King. The pilot’s decision in the old river days was the law.”
The Lee was drawing six feet. Leadsmen were out on the fo’castle all night taking soundings. The boat never stopped in all that gloom. Jamison said, many years afterward, that it was a harder ordeal on his nerves than if he had been fighting all night on a battle line. The Natchez tied up during the worst part of the fog, and she had good pilots, too.
The winning boat was welcomed into St. Louis by salvos of artillery at Jefferson barracks, and hundreds of steamers and tugs black with people. Some of these traveled many miles downstream to greet the victor, who easily outdistanced all of them in the run to the city. The wharf boats all along the great levee were crowded with cheering people. The event made the Lee the most popular boat on the river, and every member of her hardworking crew became a hero.
In a recent talk about the vanished glories of the big stream, J. G. van Cleve, a merchant of Macon, Mo., said:
“The commercial lifeblood of the city was represented in the activity along the levee. The man who has never made a trip down the Mississippi River in the real steamboat days has lost a page of life that would have contributed to his love of country.
“The big Anchor Line steamers for Grand Tower, Cairo, Memphis, and Vicksburg were scheduled to leave the St. Louis wharf at five p. m., but they rarely got under way before nine or ten. The rules seemed to be to hold the boat as long as there were offerings of freight, and it looked like the shipping clerks in the big wholesale houses on Second and Main Streets didn’t begin to get busy until late in the afternoon. Then wide two-wheeled drays and trucks would clatter down the long rock levee like an army of invasion. It was a lively[Pg 59] sight. Officers would dart helter-skelter, directing teamsters where to go, and saying things anent their tardiness; the teamsters would swear at their mules, and the mates would cuss the roustabouts. Everybody seemed to have a safe target for his wrath, and nobody took offense. It was all a part of the game.
“By and by, long after supper, the last dray of freight would roar across the wharf bridge, an army of black men would seize the stuff almost before the team stopped, the mud valves would growl out great clouds of steam forward to the paddle wheels, and some one aloft—generally the captain—would pull the great bell for the third time. That was the signal to cast off the hawsers and run in the gang plank. Then the big craft, loaded nearly to the water’s edge amidships, would slowly drift out into the river, stern foremost.
“When the line of boats was cleared, a seeming haphazard concert of small bells and baby whistles below, was responded to by long, fierce exhausts, spouting geyser-like from the steam pipes just forward of the wheelhouse. The din of the bells and whistles, which nobody on earth but the engineers could have deciphered, was kept up until the boat had slowly turned around and headed south. The long voyage had begun. Then the negro roustabouts, scattered around on coffee sacks and hemp bales, started their evening musicale:
“‘The boat comes sailin’ ’round de ben’,
Good-by, my lovah, good-by;
She’s loaded down wid wimin an’ men,
Good-by, my lovah, good-by!
By-by, my ba-bee,
By-by, my ba-bee,
Good-by, my lovah, good-by!’
“It was sung to a long, plaintive tune, carrying with it the agony of parting forever. As it rolled out into the darkness, now and then illumined by the red glare from an opened furnace, the black man seemed to have come into his kingdom; a kingdom peopled with weird shapes and enveloped in the mysticism of a dark continent. He was no longer a humdrum hewer of wood and a drawer of water, but a part of the sublimity of the great river. The steady move of the engines, the cascades from the steam pipes, and the pleasant quiver of the boat seemed the natural accompaniment of the negro’s lullaby, and the whole scene was so enchanting that few passengers retired to their staterooms until late in the night.
“The boat swept on past the great Vulcan ironworks, where the blasts showed red against the houses, and gave them the appearance of a town on fire; on past ‘Bloody Island,’ where statesmen met to shoot holes into each other for honor’s sake, and then down the broad water avenue by the mountains of iron the steamer sped, throwing behind great billows that sparkled back the lights from the rear cabin.
“Far down the stream is a light close to the shore. The pilot knows what that means. It is a wild-cat landing, where a freighter awaits with a lot of goods, or some passengers who want to take the boat. In either event somebody has probably been waiting by the riverside some six or eight hours. The pilot pulls a ring in the top of his little house, and the triple whistles above it give the peculiar signal of the line.
“The steamer runs far past the landing, turns labori[Pg 60]ously around under the chiding of the small bells and baby whistles, and forges up to the landing, where the boat is made fast to a tree, and the gangplank runs out, assisted by the rapid-fire comments of the mate. If there was much freight to go on, the place was lighted by burning pine knots in an iron basket placed near the gangplank.
“Promptly, as if glad of the call to duty, the deck hand was up and ready for the work of loading. In those days he was a trusty machine, and was proud of his great strength, of his boat, and even of the rich vocabulary of his mate. He loved, when ashore, to talk of the big towns he made, and of the way-up people he knew in them. He had a sweetheart in every place where his boat put up over twelve hours, and his standin was good until she was courted by a man from a bigger and faster boat.
“A large and fast boat never had had much trouble in securing plenty of deck hands. But there was no prestige in accepting employment on a small stern-wheeler, devoted mostly to freight traffic, although the wages might be better. The aristocratic travelers patronized the fine side-wheeled boats, with their white-and-gold cabins, and the roustabouts liked best to work where they could be seen by patrician eyes.
“Like everybody connected with the boat, from cabin boy to pilot, he thought he was the whole show. He liked to show his strength, and the ease with which he could carry a coffee sack or a pig of lead. Yet he would permit a little, one-gallus mate, whom he could pick up and shake like a mouse, to make public reflections on his family tree in words that sizzled. The roustabout supposed the mate was hired for his proficiency in that particular line, and if he hadn’t kept it up it would have meant to him that the mate was ailing or neglecting his employer’s interest.”