Typical Portion of the Upper Mississippi. Map of the river between Cassville, Wis., and Guttenberg, Iowa, showing the characteristic winding of the stream.
Chapter XII
The Art of Steering
Every pilot must of necessity be a steersman; but not every steersman is of necessity a pilot. He may be studying to become a pilot, and not yet out of the steersman stage. "Cubs" begin their studies by steering for their chiefs. Many boys become quite expert in handling a boat, under the eyes of their chiefs, before they are sufficiently acquainted with the river to be trusted alone at the wheel for any length of time.
At first thought, one might imagine a number of favorable conditions as prerequisite to the ideal in steering: a straight piece of river, plenty of water, and an average steamboat. These would indeed guarantee leaving a straight wake; but under such conditions a roustabout might accomplish this. The artistic quality is developed in the handling of a boat under the usual conditions—in making the multitudinous crossings, where the jack staff is continually swinging from side to side as the boat is dodging reefs and hunting the best water. In doing this, one man puts his wheel so hard down, and holds it so long, that he finds it necessary to put the wheel to the very opposite to check the swing of the boat and head it back to its proper course, in which evolution he has twice placed his rudder almost squarely across the stern of his boat. If this athletic procedure is persevered in at every change of course, it will materially retard the speed of the steamer and leave a wake full of acute angles, besides giving the steersman an unnecessary amount of work.
The skilled steersman, combining his art with his exact knowledge of the bottom of the river, will give his boat only enough wheel to lay her into her "marks", closely shaving the points of the reefs and bars, and will "meet her" so gradually and so soon as to check the swing of the jack staff at the exact moment when the "marks" are reached. There is then no putting the wheel over to bring the boat back, after having overreached her marks, and the rudders have at no time been more than a quarter out of line with the hull of the boat. It is this delicate handling of the wheel, which differentiates between the artist and the athlete.
Steamboats have their individuality, the same as pilots and steersmen. There are boats (or have been), that would almost steer themselves, while there are others so perverse and tricky that no one could feel sure of keeping them in the river for any consecutive two miles. The "Ocean Wave" was, perhaps, the most unreliable and tricky of all the craft on the upper river—or any river. In low water no one man ever thought of standing a watch alone at the wheel, and at times she would run away with two men at the wheel. She was short, "stubby", and narrow; and when she smelt a reef she would, unless very carefully handled, under a slow bell, run away from it, often with one paddle wheel backing while the other was coming ahead, and the rudder standing squarely across the stern. Many times she has plumped into the bank under these conditions, and nothing less than the bank would stop her. The "City Belle", the "Favorite", and the "Frank Steele" were built much like the "Ocean Wave", but were not quite so unreliable in steering. She was in a class by herself. On the other hand, the "Key City", one of the largest, longest, and finest of the up-river packets, was so well-balanced, and her hull so finely moulded, that it was a delight to handle her, even under otherwise unfavorable conditions, such as low water, or high winds.
A stern-wheel boat going downstream when the wind was blowing up the river, was about as helpless a craft to handle as could well be imagined. After she was once "straightened down" she was all right; but in attempting to get her nose pointed down river, after having made a landing, there were more profane possibilities than the uninitiated ever dreamed of. The current, acting on the stern of the boat and the partially-submerged wheel, was all the time pulling that end of the boat downstream; while the wind, acting upon the tall chimneys and the pilot house and "Texas", was at the same time pushing the bow of the boat upstream; and the pilot was all the while endeavoring to reverse this position, and get the bow of his boat pointed in the direction in which he wished to go. It sometimes took hours to accomplish this, particularly if caught in places where the river was narrow and correspondingly swift, and the wind strong and contrary. The only way to swing a stern-wheel boat was, to put the steering wheel hard over, throwing the four rudders as far to one side as possible, and then back strongly against them. Under this leverage if there was no wind, the boat would swing easily and promptly, until her head was pointed downstream; and then by coming ahead and gaining steerageway, the boat was under perfect control. But when the wind was blowing upstream, it was often found impracticable to back fast and far enough to gain the necessary momentum to swing her in a narrow place; the engines would have to be stopped before the boat was swung to more than a right angle with the river, and then, before steerageway was gained after coming ahead, the bow of the boat would again be pointing upstream, and the same performance would have to be gone through with—sometimes a dozen or twenty times, before the boat would get under way in the proper direction.
In 1881 I saw Henry Link, after having made a landing at Newport, back the "Mary Morton", of the Diamond Jo Line, more than five miles down the river, she having swung stern-down at that place. He see-sawed back and forth across the stream, first in one direction and then in another, and failed at last to swing his boat against the strong south wind which was blowing. He finally gave it up and ran ashore, and getting out a line to a big tree, backed his craft around until her bow was pointed downstream, and then made a start from a broadside position against the bank. I happened to be a passenger on the boat at the time. His remarks on that occasion were unprintable. A side-wheel boat, under the same conditions, would have backed out into the river, come ahead on one wheel while backing on the other, and in two or three minutes would have been going full speed ahead on the desired course. That is the beauty of the independent side-wheel system. It is a great saving of labor and morality for the steersman, and a great saving of time for the owners.
It would seem that if you could get the bow of your boat clear of the bank, or of an overhanging tree, after pointing in pretty close, that the rest of the boat would follow the bow and likewise come out, without any undue intimacy with the trees or bank. It takes only one trial to disabuse a beginner of this notion. The balance of the boat does not follow the bow out of such a position; and while every pilot knows the immutable laws of physics which operate upon his boat under such circumstances, most of them, sooner or later, get caught, either through carelessness or recklessness, just as the green cub does through ignorance.