Old Times on the Upper Mississippi
of wood, and replied that I had already measured it twice, and that
I had not measured both ends of the rank. The "Old Man" flew into
a rage and ordered me to go to the office and get my money, and he
would find a man who knew how to measure wood. There being nothing
for it but to obey an order of this kind, I went aboard, hung up
my measuring stick in its beckets, and reported at the office for
my money. Mr. Hargus, my chief, was astonished, and asked for an
explanation, which I gave him. He rushed out to the woodpile with the
rod, ran over it in a flash, and reported to the captain on the roof,
"Twenty cords, sir!" and came back to the office. He told me to go on
with my work and say nothing, which I was ready enough to do. In the
meantime, the crew were toting the wood aboard.
When the boat backed off, the captain sent for Mr. Hargus to meet
him in his private room in the "Texas", where they had it out in
approved style. Hargus only replied to Captain Faucette that if
Merrick was discharged he would also take his pay and go ashore with
him. Faucette was a new man in the line, from the far South, and a
comparative stranger, while Hargus was a veteran with the company, a
stockholder in the line, and backed by all the Dubuque stockholders,
as well as by the officers and directors of the company; so the
captain thought better of it and dropped the whole matter, never
deigning to speak to the second clerk, either in way of apology,
which was not expected, or of caution "not to let it occur again",
which would have been an insult. The affair was "dropped overboard",
as Hargus said, and the wood-measuring was thereafter left to the
proper officer, without comment or interference.
With a crew of forty men looking on and hearing the whole colloquy,
a change in the amount of wood reported at the suggestion of the
captain, would have simply wiped out any respect they may have had
for the authority of the boy officer; and his usefulness on that
boat, if not on the river, would have ended then and there. It was
one of the unwritten rules of the service that the officers were to
stand by each other in every way; there was to be no interference
while on duty, and each was held responsible for such duty. If there
was cause for reprimand it was to be administered in the privacy of
the captain's office, and not in the presence of the whole crew. It
was not desirable to have either office or officer held in contempt.
As the steamboat business developed, and as immigration into the new
Territory of Minnesota increased, there was necessity for getting as
many trips into a season as possible. This led to the adoption of
every device that might lessen the running time of steamers between
the lower ports and St. Paul. Not the least of these innovations was
the use of the wood-boat for the more ready transfer of fuel from
the bank to the deck of the steamer. Flatboats, or scows, capable
of carrying twenty cords of wood, and even forty, were loaded at
the woodyards in readiness for the expected steamer. As the wood
was worth more loaded in the scow, a higher price was given by
steamboatmen, and contracts were made ahead; the date of arrival of
the boat was determined, and the wood-boat was in readiness, day or
night, with two men on board. It was the work of a few minutes only
to run alongside, make fast the towlines, and while the steamer was
on her way up river, thirty or forty men pitched or carried the wood
aboard.
Ordinarily, the wood-boat was not in tow more than half an hour,
which would take her five or six miles up river. When the wood was
out, the towlines were cast off, a large sweep or steering oar
was shipped up at each end of the scow, and it drifted back to
be reloaded for the next customer. The steamboat, meanwhile, had
lost practically no time in wooding, as the tow was so light as but
slightly to impede her speed. The greatest danger in the transaction
was that the great packet might swamp the scow by running at too
great speed, towing her under by the head, as sometimes occurred. To
avoid this contingency the wood was always taken first from the bow
of the flatboat. As it was only the fast packets that patronized the
wood-boats, this danger of towing under was always present, and the
pilots were always very careful in the handling of their boats at
such times. Flats were seldom towed downstream, for the reason that
there was no way of getting them back, except to pay for a tow. And
again, the packets were not in so much of a hurry when going down
river, for then they had but few passengers to feed, and no fast
freight.
Chapter VIII
_The Mate_
In writing of life on the main deck of a Mississippi River steamboat
fifty years ago, a prefatory note may be in order. The reader must
bear in mind that times have changed; and men, in the mass, have
changed, and that for the better, in the years that have elapsed
between 1860 and 1908. Slavery then held sway on the west bank of
the river, from the Iowa line to the Gulf. On the east side in
the State of Illinois even, the slavery idea predominated; and
on the river there was no "other side" to the question. Slavery
was an "institution", as much to be observed and venerated as any
institution of the country. A black man was a "nigger", and nothing
more. If he were the personal property of a white man in St. Louis,
or below, he was worth from eight hundred to fifteen hundred dollars,
and was therefore too valuable to be utilized in the make-up of
a boat's crew running north. The inclemency of the weather, or
the strenuousness of the mate, might result in serious physical
deterioration that would greatly depreciate him as a chattel, to say
nothing of the opportunities offered him by the northern trip to
escape to Canada, and thus prove a total loss.
Of free negroes there were not enough to man the hundreds of
steamboats plying on the upper river. Thus it came about that the
cabin crews on some boats, and the firemen on others, were colored,
while the deck crews (roustabouts and stevedores) were white. So
marked was this division of labor that it came to pass that no
"nigger" was permitted by the white rousters to handle any freight,
on any boat. The modern unions take no greater exception to a
non-union workman than the white deck hands then expressed for a
"nigger" as a freight handler.
Another class distinction was, that nine-tenths of the deck crew
were Irishmen. In that day the poorer sort of that nationality were
the burden-bearers of this country. They dug the ditches, built the
railroad embankments, and toted the freight on the river. Since
that time they have wonderfully developed; in the present day, very
few even of the emigrants handle pick and shovel, and none handle
freight as river deck hands. They are the trainmen and policemen of
the country, and their sons are our mayors and aldermen, our judges
and law-makers. The dirt-handling on the railroads is passed on to
the Italians and the Huns, while the river freight-handling, what
little there is of it, is done by the lower class of negroes. The
abolition of slavery has prodigiously increased their numbers, as
well as amazingly cheapening them in value. All this has relevancy in
describing an old-time mate and his work.
There was a fellow feeling between the chief mate and the second
clerk. For one thing, they were both in the second rank, officially,
although that did not count for a great deal, I think, as neither
of them thought of it in just that way. My recollection is, that
both of them thought of it from the other point of view--they were
over so many men, and in command of so many things and situations,
rather than under the captain and the chief clerk. You will observe
at once that this put an entirely different construction upon the
question; and this was, after all, the only reasonable and practical
view to take of it, and the one that came nearest to meeting all
the conditions. In fact, no other view of the situation could be
taken. When the captain and the chief clerk were off duty and
asleep in their staterooms, or even off duty and awake, loitering
about the boat, the responsibility was immediately shifted to their
subordinates. Even though the captain might be sitting in the door
of his room in the forward end of the "Texas", while the mate stood
at the bell to make a landing, the amenities and traditions of
river life put him out of the game as completely as though he were
asleep in his berth. The same also was true of the chief clerk and
his subordinate. The chief might be smoking his after-dinner cigar
within ten feet of the office, or he might walk out on the levee and
talk with the agent; but until asked, he never took any part in the
distinctive business transactions of his subordinate, or in any way
interfered with his manner of transacting the business. He might,
later, if necessary, make suggestions looking to the betterment
of the methods of his second; but that would be a purely personal,
rather than an official, utterance.
It followed, therefore, that my acquaintance with Billy Wilson was
much closer than with the captain; and standing watch with him day
after day and night after night during a long season's run, I came
to know him intimately. He was born in Pennsylvania, the son of a
"Pennsylvania Dutchman." Beginning his professional life on the
Allegheny River, he worked down the Ohio, and when the great boom in
upper Mississippi traffic began in 1854, engaged in that trade. A
smooth-shaven, red-faced man, about five feet eight inches in height,
he weighed probably a hundred and sixty pounds. Occasionally he took
a drink of whiskey, as did all river men, but it was seldom. He
was well read, and ordinarily, a very quiet man, therefore all the
more to be feared and respected. He would hardly fill the bill as a
traditional Mississippi River steamboat mate; and were his prototype
shown on the stage it would be voted slow, uninteresting, and untrue
to type.
In the beginning of this chapter I endeavored to indicate what manner
of men composed our deck crew. Ours numbered forty men. Almost
without exception they were Irishmen of the lowest class, picked up
alongshore at St. Louis, Galena, Dubuque, and St. Paul, from the
riffraff of the levee. They would get drunk whenever they could get
whiskey; and as the boat carried hundreds of barrels of this liquor
each trip, it required eternal vigilance on the part of the mates and
watchmen to prevent the crew broaching a barrel and getting fighting
drunk and mutinous. When this happened, as now and then it did in
spite of all precautions, Billy Wilson was turned in an instant from
a quiet Pennsylvania Dutchman into a dangerous, if not devilish,
driver. He carried, on most occasions, a paddle made from a pork
barrel stave. This had a handle at one end, and the other, shaped
something like a canoe paddle, was bored full of quarter-inch holes.
When the case was one of mere sluggishness on the part of one of the
hands, a light tap with the flat part of this instrument was enough
to inspire activity. When the case was one of moroseness or incipient
mutiny, the same flat side, applied by his powerful muscles, with a
quick, sharp stroke, would leave a blood-blister for every hole in
the paddle; and when a drunken riot was to be dealt with, the sharp
edge of the paddle on a man's head left nothing more to be done with
that man until he "came to." With a revolver in his left hand and
his paddle in his right, he would jump into the middle of a gang of
drunken, mutinous men, and striking right and left would intimidate
or disable the crowd in less time than it takes to tell it. He never
used his pistol, and to my knowledge never called for assistance,