Old Times on the Upper Mississippi
As already stated, my personal experience as a pilot was limited.
It was confined to a few seasons' study of the river under one of
the best men who ever turned a wheel upon it--Thomas Burns. By an
agreement with him, I was to retain my clerkship, but was to spend
as much as possible of my time in the pilot house, while on watch or
off, either with himself or his partner, Thomas Cushing, steering
for them in turn, and receiving instruction from both. Later I was
to give all of my time, and after becoming proficient was to receive
their recommendation for a license. I was then to pay to Captain
Burns five hundred dollars from my first earnings, after getting
a berth as a full-fledged pilot. Under these terms I received
instruction from both men, and as opportunity offered acted as their
wheelsman relieving them of much hard work.
This arrangement was ended by the breaking out of the War of
Secession and the enlistment of Captain Burns in the army. He raised
a company for the Forty-sixth Illinois Infantry, at Galena, taking
about thirty men from the "Fanny Harris" alone. That was in August,
1861. Thomas Cushing then went down the river to try his fortune. Two
new pilots came aboard, Jim Black and Harry Tripp, and I was left out
of the pilot house. Later in the season the "Fanny Harris" was left
so high on the bank of the cut-off between Fevre River and Harris
Slough that the whole crew were discharged. It was necessary to build
ways under the boat and launch her, in order to get her back into the
water--a labor of weeks.
After a short time spent on the "Golden Era" I went up river and
engaged with Charley Jewell, on the "H. S. Allen", Captain S. E.
Gray, running between Prescott and St. Croix Falls. After a few
trips I graduated as a pilot for that run, and conditionally for the
Galena and St. Paul run. When the call for three hundred thousand
additional troops came in August, 1862, I decided that it was my duty
to go to the front and "put down the rebellion", as the "boys" of
that time put it. Acting upon this commendable resolve, I dropped off
at Hudson, where I was well acquainted, and where several companies
were organizing for the three years' service. I enlisted in a company
intended for the Twenty-fifth Wisconsin Infantry, of which Jeremiah
Rusk was lieutenant-colonel; but when we came to be mustered in we
were assigned to the Thirtieth Wisconsin Infantry, as Company A.
My idea was, that if I survived I would return and take up my
work on the river where I left it. That was the boy idea. It was
not realized. After three years of service I was mustered out in
Washington, D. C. I married in the East, and entered the employ of a
steamship company in New York as agent and superintendent, remaining
there until 1876. Returning to Wisconsin in 1876 I found a half dozen
railroads centring in St. Paul, and these were doing the business
of the hundred steamboats that I had left running in 1862. A dozen
boats, confined to two lines, were handling all the river business
between St. Louis and St. Paul, and the profession of piloting was at
an end. Of the hundred boats that I had known fourteen years before,
not one remained. The average life of a river steamboat was but five
years.
Curiously enough, I had by this time lost all interest in river life,
except the interest of a trained observer. I enjoyed watching the few
boats that chanced to come under my observation, and could appreciate
fully the dexterity of the men who were holding their wheels in
the pilot houses; but all my ambitions to again be one of them
appeared to have evaporated, for other lines of work had engrossed my
attention. Engaging in the newspaper business, and later on adding
the responsibility of the agency of a railroad company, I had enough
to think about without pining for lost opportunities on the river.
The work accomplished by the old-time Mississippi pilot while guiding
his steamer through hundreds of miles of water beset by snags,
wrecks, and reefs, has been so fully described by "Mark Twain" in
his _Life on the Mississippi_, that it would be temerity in any
one else to attempt to add to what he has so humorously, and yet
so graphically delineated. It rarely occurs that a man combines a
perfect knowledge of a profession so far removed from the world of
letters as is that of piloting a steamboat with the literary skill
to describe its details. It will probably never again happen that a
great master in literature and humor will graduate from a pilot house.
The experiences of a pilot were the same, however, whether he turned
a wheel on the lower river, as described by "Mark Twain", or on
the upper river. It will not be plagiarizing, therefore, to tell
something of the acquirements necessary in a pilot, even though the
narrative coincides very closely with what he has recorded of similar
experiences on the lower reaches.
Thomas Burns[C] had the reputation of being one of the most reliable
pilots on the upper waters. He was a Scotchman, in middle life,
without vices or failings of any kind, unless smoking may be a vice.
It certainly wasn't so considered on the river, and for the sake of
this story we will not consider it so here. He was conservative, and
would not take any chances, even in a race, preferring to follow the
deep water with safety, rather than cut corners involving risk to the
boat and its cargo, even though a rival boat did pass him, or he was
losing an opportunity to show off some fancy piloting. It was said of
him that he was the only man who could and did steer a stern-wheel
steamboat of four hundred tons through Coon Slough, downstream,
without slowing or stopping the wheel--something requiring nerve
and fine judgment. A side-wheel boat usually went around the sharp
bend with one paddle wheel backing and the other going ahead. A
stern-wheel boat was often compelled to "flank" around the elbow,
by backing against the point and letting the current swing the bow
around the bend.
[C] Captain Thomas W. Burns was born in Boston, Massachusetts,
in 1836. He removed with his parents to Galena, Illinois, in
1842, where he received his education in the public schools.
After leaving school he went on the river as a "cub" pilot,
and upon reaching the age of 21 years received his certificate
as first-class pilot between St. Louis and St. Paul, in
which capacity he served on many of the best boats of the
Minnesota Packet Company, including the "War Eagle," "Key
City," "Itasca," "Fanny Harris," "Kate Cassell," and others.
In 1861 he recruited a company of steamboatmen at Galena, and
was assigned to the 45th Illinois Infantry. He remained with
his company until after the capture of Fort Henry, when he was
discharged for disability. Upon his return to Galena he took up
the work of piloting again, continuing until 1885, when he was
appointed by President Cleveland to the office of United States
Local Inspector of Steamboats, with headquarters at Galena. His
long years of experience on the river, and his high sense of
duty made him an excellent official, and upon the advent of a
Republican administration he was reappointed to the office, in
which he was serving at the time of his death, March 4, 1890.
By the old reckoning, the distance from St. Louis to St. Paul, was
eight hundred miles; from Rock Island to St. Paul, four hundred and
fifty. The later survey, after straightening the channel by wing-dams
and dikes, makes the distance seven hundred and twenty-nine miles
from St. Louis, and three hundred and ninety-eight from Rock Island
to St. Paul. It is safe to estimate a "crossing" in each and every
mile of that river. Some miles may have missed their share, but
others had a dozen, so the average was fully maintained. That was
fifty years ago. There are less crossings now, but more dams and
dikes--two hundred and fifty-one dams, dikes, and pieces of dikes in
the little stretch of river between St. Paul and Prescott, a matter
of thirty-six miles. If a pilot attempted to make a crossing now,
where he made it fifty years ago, he would in five hundred different
places butt his head into a dike instead of a reef.
Tom Burns, and scores of others like him, knew every rod of this
river better than the average man knows any one mile of sidewalk
between his home and his office. He knew it by day and by night.
He knew it upstream and downstream--and this amounted literally to
knowing two rivers eight hundred miles long, for the instant you turn
your boat's prow down river you have entered an entirely new country.
Every mark is different; the bold outlines of bluffs with which you
are familiar as you go up the river, are as strangers when viewed
from the reverse side. You have to learn the stream over again, and
worse yet, you have to learn to handle your boat differently. A
novice in the business might take a steamer from St. Louis to St.
Paul with very fair success, while the same man would hang his boat
up effectually on the first bar he came to, if in going down river
he handled his wheel in the same manner. Coming upstream he might
feel of a reef with the bow of his boat, and if he did not strike the
best water the first time he could back off and try again; but going
downstream he must hit the channel the first time or he is gone.
The current is all the time irresistibly pushing his boat down the
river, and if he strikes he is immediately, with the most disastrous
consequences, swung broadside on to the reef. Tom Burns knew his
river so well that he could jump from his berth on the darkest night
and before he reached the pilot house door could tell what part of
the river the boat was in; the instant his eye caught the jack staff
he knew to a certainty what crossing the steamer was making, and
on what part of the crossing she was at the moment. This was what
every first-class pilot must, and did know. I use Burns only as an
illustration.
It was courtesy for the relieved pilot to state the position of the
boat as he relinquished the wheel to his partner: "Good morning, Mr.
Cushing! A nasty night. She drags a little, to-night. Just making the
upper Cassville crossing. Should have been farther up. Hope you'll
have better luck." This was only a matter of form and politeness,
and not at all necessary. Mr. Cushing or Mr. Burns knew at a glance
that it was the upper Cassville crossing, and as he took the wheel
from the hands of his retiring partner he did, the next instant, just
what the other would have done had he continued. He saw the "swing"
of the jack staff and met it; he felt the boat edging away from the
reef, and coaxed her back, daintily but firmly, a spoke at a time,
or possibly half a spoke. The continuity was not broken. The exact
knowledge of the retiring pilot was simply carried along by the pilot
coming on watch.
In all the hundreds of miles of river traversed by the boat in its
voyage up or down, there could be no other combination of marks just
like the one which met the pilot's eye as he grasped the wheel. The
problem for the "cub" was to learn the combination. In the day time
it was not customary for the retiring partner to mention where the
boat was at the time. That would have been stretching the point
of courtesy too far. All this, however, was between equals. When
the wheel was turned over to the "cub", it was generally a prime
necessity that he be advised as to the exact position of the boat.
Thus primed, if he was reasonably advanced, he could take the wheel
and with the clue given the river would shape itself in his mind,
and he would pass from one set of marks to the next with some degree
of certitude. Without the clue, however, it was possible to imagine
one's self in a hundred probable or improbable places. "All bluffs