Old Times on the Upper Mississippi
by Captain Laughton was in direct contravention of the known wishes
if not orders of the owners. Hence the conclusion that Providence
took a hand in the matter and meted out swift punishment for the
misdoing. I did not argue the matter with the Captain; but I could
not reconcile the unroofing of Commodore Davidson's steamboat, or the
blowing away of Mr. Trudell, who had no voice in granting license
to the ungodly dancers, with the ordinary conception of the eternal
fitness of things. If it had blown Captain Laughton a mile and a half
into the country, as it did the port lifeboat, or even a quarter of
a mile, as it did Mr. Trudell, and had left Commodore Davidson's
steamboat intact, the hand of Providence would have appeared more
plainly in the case. As it was, Captain Laughton slept serenely in
his berth while Mr. Trudell and the lifeboat were sailing into space,
and he did not get out until all was over. It is pleasant to be able
to relate that although Providence appears to have miscarried in
dealing out retribution, Commodore Davidson did not. Captain Davis
was put in charge of the "Alex. Mitchell" as soon as she struck the
levee at St. Louis.
William F. Davidson--"Commodore", from the fact that he was at
the head of the greatest of upper river packet lines--had been
converted after many years of strenuous river life. He was as strong
a man, affirmatively, after he began living religiously, as he
had been negatively before that time. He abolished all bars from
his steamboats, at great pecuniary loss to himself and the other
stockholders; forbade Sunday dancing and other forms of Sunday
desecration; stopped all gambling, and instituted other reforms which
tended to make his steamboats as clean and reputable as the most
refined ladies or gentlemen could wish. The promptitude with which
he cashiered Captain Laughton, on account of the foregoing incident,
was in keeping with his character as a man and as a manager. It was
an evidence that he meant all that he said or ordered in the ethical
conduct of his steamboats.
The Commodore had a brother, Payton S. Davidson, who had the
well-earned reputation of being one of the best steamboatmen on the
Mississippi. Superintendent of the Northwestern Line, he prided
himself upon the regularity with which his boats arrived at or
departed from landings on schedule time. He was a driver, and the
captains and pilots who could not "make time" under any and all
conditions of navigation, were _persona non grata_ to "Pate", and
when they reached this stage they went ashore with scant notice. In
other ways he was equally efficient.
One of the Northwestern Line, the "Centennial", was caught in the
great ice gorge at St. Louis, in 1876. She was a new boat, costing
$65,000, just off the ways, and a beauty. She was stove and sank, as
did a dozen other boats at the same time. All the others were turned
over to the underwriters as they lay, and were a total loss. Not so
the "Centennial". Superintendent Payton S. Davidson was on hand and
declared that the beautiful new boat could and should be raised.
Putting on a force of men--divers, wreckers, and other experts--under
his personal supervision and direction, he did get her afloat,
although in a badly damaged condition, and that at a cost of only
$5,000. Twice she sank, after being brought to the surface; but the
indomitable energy of Davidson, who worked night and day, sometimes
in the water up to his middle, and in floating ice, finally saved
the steamer. She was one of the finest boats that ever plied the
upper river. Payton S. was famous for his pugnacity as well as his
pertinacity, and there is no record of his repentance or conversion.
He lived and died a typical steamboat captain of the olden time.
Chapter XVI
_Mississippi Menus_
It was a saying on the river that if you wished to save the meals
a passenger was entitled to on his trip, you took him through the
kitchen the first thing when he came aboard. The inference was,
that after seeing the food in course of preparation he would give
it a wide berth when it came on the table. It would be unfair to
the memory of the average river steward to aver that this assertion
was grounded upon facts; but it would be stretching the truth to
assert that it was without foundation. Things must be done in a
hurry when three meals a day are to be prepared and served to three
or four hundred people; and all the work had to be accomplished in
two kitchens, each ten by twenty-feet in area--one for meats and
vegetables, and the other for pastry and desserts.
The responsibility of providing for meals at stated times, with a
good variety, cooked and served in a satisfactory manner, devolved
upon the steward. Under him were two assistants, with meat cooks,
vegetable cooks, pastry cooks, and bread makers, and a force of
waiters and pantrymen conditioned upon the boat's capacity for
passengers. While the steward was in the thought of outsiders rated
as an officer of the second class, he was as a matter of fact in the
first class. When the pay of the captain was three hundred dollars
per month, and that of the mate two hundred, the average steward of
any reputation also commanded two hundred, while a man with a large
reputation commanded three hundred, the same as the captain, and his
services were sought by the owners of a dozen boats. Likewise, he
earned every cent of his salary, whatever it might be.
Unlike the other officers he had no regular watch to stand, after
which he might lay aside his responsibility and let the members of
the other watch carry the load while he laid off and watched them
sweat. He was on duty all the time, and when and how he slept is to
this day a mystery to me. He might have slept in the morning, when
the cooks were preparing breakfast, had he felt quite confident that
the cooks were not likewise sleeping, instead of broiling beefsteaks
and making waffles. This being a matter of some doubt, and of great
concern, he was usually up as soon as the cooks, and quietly poking
about to see that breakfast reached the table promptly at seven
o'clock. If the floor of the cabin was covered with sleepers, it was
the steward who must awaken them, and, without giving offense, induce
them to vacate the premises that the tables might be set. This was a
delicate piece of business. To send a "nigger" to perform that duty,
would be to incur the risk of losing the "nigger". The steward also
saw that the assistant in charge of the waiters was on hand with all
his crew, to put the cabin to rights, set the tables, and prepare
to serve breakfast, while the cabin steward and the stewardess,
with their crews, were making up the berths, sweeping, dusting, and
"tidying up".
As soon as breakfast was out of the way, the menu for dinner was
prepared and handed to the chief cook. Shortages in provisions were
remedied at the first landing reached, and stocks of fish, game,
fresh eggs, and fresh vegetables were bought as offered at the
various towns. While there was a cold-storage room on all first-class
packets, its capacity was limited, and with a passenger list of two
hundred and fifty or three hundred in the cabin, it was often found
necessary to lay in additional stocks of fresh meats between Galena
and St. Paul. Often, a dozen lambs could be picked up, or a dozen
"roaster" pigs, and these were killed and dressed on the boat by one
of the assistant cooks. Live poultry was always carried in coops,
and killed as wanted. Perhaps the poultry killing, if witnessed by
the passenger, would come as near curing him of the dinner habit
as anything else he might see about the cook's galley. A barrel of
scalding hot water, drawn from the boiler, stands on the guard. A
coop of chickens is placed near the master of ceremonies, and two
or three assistants surround the barrel. The head dresser grasps a
chicken by the head, gives it a swing from the coop to the barrel,
bringing the chicken's neck on to the iron rim of the barrel. The
body goes into hot water and the head goes overboard. Before the
chicken is dead he is stripped of everything except a few pin
feathers--with one sweep of the hand on each side of the body and a
dozen pulls at the wing feathers. The yet jerking, featherless bodies
are thrown to the pin-feather man, who picks out the thickest of the
feathers, singes the fowls over a charcoal grate-fire and tosses them
to one of the under-cooks who cuts them open, cuts them up, and pots
them, all inside of two minutes from the coop. A team of three or
four expert darkies will dispose of one hundred and fifty chickens
in an hour. Are they clean? I never stopped to inquire. If they were
_dead_ enough to stay on the platter when they got to the table that
was all any reasonable steamboatman could ask.
However, the live chicken business is about the worst feature
of the cook-house operations. Of course the darkies are not the
cleanest-appearing people aboard the boat, but if the steward is up
in his business he sees to it that a reasonable degree of cleanliness
is maintained, even in the starboard galley. On the opposite side
of the steamer is the pastry-cook's domain, and that is usually the
show place of the boat. Most stewards are shrewd enough to employ
pastry cooks who are masters of their profession, men who take a
pride not only in the excellence of their bread, biscuit, and pie
crust, but also in the spotlessness of their workshops. They are
proud to receive visits from the lady passengers, who can appreciate
not only the output but the appearance of the galley. It is a good
advertisement for a boat, and the steward himself encourages such
visits, while discouraging like calls at the opposite side.
In old, flush times in the steamboat business, pastry cooks generally
planned to give a surprise to the passengers on each up trip of the
steamer. I remember one such, when no less than thirteen different
desserts were placed in front of each passenger as he finished the
hearty preliminary meal. Six of these were served in tall and slender
glass goblets--vases, would more nearly describe them--and consisted
of custards, jellies, and creams of various shades and flavors; while
the other seven were pies, puddings, and ice creams. The passenger
was not given a menu card and asked to pick out those that he thought
he would like, but the whole were brought on and arranged in a circle
about his plate, leaving him to dip into each as he fancied, and
leave such as did not meet his approval. It was necessary to carry an
extra outfit of glass and china in order to serve this bewildering
exhibition of the pastry cook's art, and it was seldom used more than
once on each trip.
Serving such a variety of delicacies, of which but a small portion
was eaten by any person at the table, would seem like an inexcusable
waste; but the waste on river steamers was really not as great in
those days as it is in any great hotel of our day. Each steamer
carried forty or more deck hands and "rousters". For them, the
broken meat was piled into pans, all sorts in each pan, the broken
bread and cake into other pans, and jellies and custards into still
others--just three assortments, and this, with plenty of boiled
potatoes, constituted the fare of the crew below decks. One minute
after the cry of "Grub-pile"! one might witness the spectacle of
forty men sitting on the bare deck, clawing into the various pans
to get hold of the fragments of meat or cake which each man's taste
particularly fancied. It certainly wasn't an appetizing spectacle.
Only familiarity with it enabled an onlooker fully to appreciate its
grotesqueness without allowing the equilibrium of his stomach to be