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: