J. F. Holloway, of St. Louis, who, in his own words, "was raised on the river, having filled every position from roustabout to master", in a paper read before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers at St. Louis in May, 1896, contributes the following description of a steamboat race as seen and heard in the engine-room—a point of view somewhat lacking, perhaps, in picturesqueness to the ordinary observer, but nevertheless very essential in winning a race. The writer is evidently as thoroughly at home in the engine-room as he is upon the roof:
"The reason which induced the builders of engines for these Western river boats to adopt such peculiar construction could hardly be made clear without a careful description of the hull of the boats, and of the varying conditions to which both engines and hulls are subjected, and under which they must operate. The steam cylinders are placed on foundations as unstable as would be a raft, and the alignment is varied by the addition or removal of every ton of freight which the boats carry when afloat, and they are further distorted when aground, or when the boats are being dragged over sand bars having several inches less of water on them than is required to float the hull. While the calm study of the machinery of a Western river steamboat while at rest would be an interesting object lesson to any one at all interested in such matters, it can only be seen at its best at a time when some rival boat is striving with it for "the broom," and close behind is slowly gaining, with roaring furnaces, and chimneys belching out vast volumes of thick black smoke; when all on board, from the pilot above to the fireman below are worked up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, and when engines, boilers, engineers and all concerned in the management of the boat, are called upon to show the stuff which is in them. I know of no more exciting scene than was often to be witnessed in the days of the old famous Ohio River ports, when a "ten-boiler" boat was trying to make a record, or take a wharf-boat landing away from some close-following rival steamer. To stand on the boiler deck at such a time on a big side-wheel boat, when in order to get ahead the pilot had made up his mind to close-shave a "tow-head," or take the dangerous chances of a new channel or a new "cut-off," and when all on board knew the risk he was taking, and standing by to help him through, or help themselves if he failed, was exciting to a degree. Then it was that the two most skilful and daring engineers were called on watch, and took their stands alongside their respective engines, stripped like gladiators for the tussle which soon came as the clanging starboard bell rang out to "slow down," and as the hasty ringing of the "jingler" over the port engine meant "crack it to her." Then as the bow of the big boat swung, all too slow to suit the emergency or the impatience of the pilot, a stopping starboard bell would ring, quick followed by a backing one which would set the engineer to wrestling with his "hooks," one of which he hangs up with a cord, and the other he picks up seemingly from somewhere on the platform. As the suddenly stopped and quivering wheel in the swift-flowing current hangs for a moment poised on the centre, the engineer, grasping his ever-at-hand club of wood, quickly thrusts it between the uprising rocker-arm and the lever that lifts the inlet puppet valve, to which widened opening of the steam-valve port the engine responds with a noise of escaping steam not unlike the roar of an enraged elephant when prodded with the iron hook of his keeper. The battle of the bells thus begun, waxes more fierce as the excitement increases. There are bells to the right, and bells to the left, and amid their discordant jangle the engineers are working like mad as they clutch the throttle, open or close "the bleeder," hook her on "ahead," or stop and back, in such rapid succession as that soon neither they, nor any one else, can tell how far behind the bells of the pilot they are. Then soon amid the wild roar of the pent-up steam as it rushes out of the safety-valve pipes, the exploding exhausts of the engines which at the end of each stroke sound as if the cylinder-head had blown off, and to which is added the shrill noise of the warning bell which calls to the firemen to "throw open the furnace doors," there comes from out the huge trumpet shaped pipe above the head of the engineers, and which leads down from the pilot-house, a hoarse shout, heard above all else, partaking alike of command, entreaty, and adjectives, urging something or other to be done, and done quick, else the boat and all on board of her, in a brief time will land in a place which by reason of the reputed entire absence of water could not well be called a "port" (and certainly is no port mentioned in the boat's manifests). This battle of the bells and irons goes on until, if in a race, the rival boat is passed or crowded to the bank, or the narrow channel widens out into the broad river, when the discordant jangle of the bells ceases, the tired engineer drops on the quiet "cut-off hook," lays by his emergency wooden club, and wiping the sweat from his heated brow, comes down from the foot-board to catch a breath of the cool air which sweeps over the guards, and to formulate in his mind the story which he will have to tell of the race just over, or the perils just past.
But the old-time flyers which before the war tore their way up and down through the muddy waters of these Western rivers are all gone, and the marvelously skilled pilots of those days have gone too; the men who, through the darkest hours of the darkest nights, knew to within a few feet just where their boats were, and what was on the right or on the left, or beneath them, which was to be shunned. The engineers too, who with a courage born and nurtured amid the vicissitudes of a backwoods life, and with an experience and skill the outgrowth of trials and dangers gone through, have also passed away, and to the generation of the present are unhonored and unknown, as are the men who designed and built the hulls, and the workmen who, with crude and scant tools, built for them the machinery which they so well planned and handled.
Who they were, and where they lie, is known to but few, if any. Did I but know their final resting-place, I would, like "Old Mortality," wish to carve anew, and deep, the fading records of their life and death, which time has so nearly obliterated, and to herald abroad the praise and honor due them as the designers, builders, and engineers, of the old-time Western river steamboats."
Chapter V
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.