Old Times on the Upper Mississippi
religiously kept off. Not in an ostentatious manner, however, for
that might invite suspicion; but in a business-like and gentlemanly
manner, by putting in a bid just a few cents per cubic foot higher
than the man upon whose territory the work was to be done, and whose
figures have been secretly consulted before the bids were submitted.
There have been suspicions that such has been the case, more than
once, and that the work sometimes cost the government more than a
fair estimate had provided for. The contracts have been let, however,
and within the thirty years last past there have been built along the
river between Prescott and St. Paul two hundred and fifty-one dikes,
dams, revetments, and other works for controlling the flow of water
within that short stretch of thirty-two miles.
Some of these dams are long, strong, and expensive; others are
embryonic, a mere suggestion of a dam or dyke, a few feet in length,
for the protection of a particular small portion of the bank, or for
the diverting of the current. All these works, great and small, are
intended as suggestions to the mighty river that in future it must
behave itself in a seemly manner. Generally the river does take the
hint, and behaves well in these particular cases. At other times it
asserts itself after the old fashion, and wipes out a ten thousand
dollar curb in a night, and chooses for itself a new and different
channel, just as it did in the days of its savagery, fifty years
earlier.
A peculiar feature attending this work for the betterment of the
river was, that in its incipient stages it met with little or no
encouragement from any of the men personally engaged in navigating
steamboats on the river. Some deemed the proposition visionary and
impracticable, while others, fearing its success, and magnifying the
results to be obtained, threw every obstacle possible in the way of
the engineers who had the work in charge. They even went so far as to
petition Congress to abandon the work, and recall the engineers who
had been detailed to prosecute it. This opposition was particularly
true of work on the lower rapids, where the great ship canal now
offers a ready and safe passage around rapids always difficult to
navigate. Sometimes, when the water had reached an unusually low
stage, they were positively impracticable for large boats. Captain
Charles J. Allen, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., who was in charge
of the preliminary work on the lower rapids, calls attention, in
his report, to this hostility, and incidentally records his opinion
of river pilots in general, and rapids pilots in particular, in the
following far from flattering terms:
"Most of the river pilots are possessed of but little knowledge
beyond that required in turning the wheel; and their obstinacy
in refusing to recognize and take advantage of good channels
cut for them has been the experience of more than one engineer
engaged in improving rivers. The rapids pilots in particular,
who may lose employment, seemed to be the most hostile."
The last-named class were certainly sound in their conclusions that
the deepening, straightening and lighting of the rapids would take
away their business. There is, therefore, little wonder that they
were not enthusiastic in their support of the proposed improvements,
which were, if successful, to deprive them of the means of
livelihood. Perhaps the gentlemen of the engineer corps would not be
enthusiastic over a proposition to disband the United States army,
and muster out all its officers. The results justified the fears of
the rapids pilots. Any pilot could take his boat over, after the
improvements were completed, and rapids piloting, as a distinctive
business, was very nearly wiped out.
The slur of the West Pointer loses its point, however, with any
one who has known many Mississippi River pilots. They knew a great
many things besides "turning the wheel." Even had they known only
that, they carried around under their hats special knowledge not to
be sneezed at, even by a West Pointer. Later, all the men on the
river came to recognize the benefits accruing from the work of the
Mississippi River Commission, and none more heartily testified to the
success of the work than the pilots and masters of the river craft.
There were, indeed, none so well qualified to judge of results as
they.
The work once begun was prosecuted with vigor. The voice of the great
Northwest was potent in Washington, and in the ten years from 1866
to 1876 more than five millions of dollars were expended between
Minneapolis and the mouth of the Missouri.[I]
[I] See Appendix D.
The first thought of the government engineers to whom was entrusted
the duty of improving the river, was naturally in the direction
of securing and maintaining a greater depth of water. This was
to be accomplished by so curbing and controlling the flow that it
would follow the channel decided upon, at all times and under all
conditions. The dikes and wing dams, which were built by the hundred,
served this purpose in a degree, and the flow of water was controlled
to a fairly satisfactory extent.
Then the menaces to navigation were considered, and measures taken
for their elimination. Of the two hundred and ninety-five recorded
steamboat wrecks on the Missouri River between 1842 and 1895, a
hundred and ninety-three, or about two-thirds of all, were by
snagging. I presume this proportion would be maintained on the upper
Mississippi, if a similar compilation were at hand to decide the
point. The problem was to get rid of this greatest of all dangers to
steamboats. There was but one way, and that was to pull them out and
carry them away, or cut them up and so dispose of them that the same
snag would not have to be pulled out at each recurring rise of water,
from other parts of the river.
Having no steamboats fitted for the business in that early day
(1866), the contract system was resorted to. This was found to be
costly and unsatisfactory. Contractors agreed to remove snags at
so much per snag, within certain lengths and estimated weights,
they furnishing the steamboats and machinery necessary for the
work. In order to make the business pay, they had to find snags,
somewhere. When they were not to be found in or near the channel,
they were obtained in any place--chutes, bayous, and sloughs where
no steamboat ever ran, or ever would run. After a trip or two up
and down the river, there were not enough snags left to make the
pulling profitable, and of course the work was given over. But the
first rise brought down a new supply of snags to lodge in the channel
of the falling river, and pilots set to dodging them, just as they
had done before the pulling began. To be of the highest efficiency,
the work must be continuous. This was deemed impossible under the
contract system, and the engineers in charge recommended the purchase
of two suitable steamboats for the upper river, to be fitted with
improved machinery for lifting and disposing of the snags fished
out of the river. These boats were to be manned and officered by
the government, and placed in charge of an engineer detailed by the
War Department. They were continuously to patrol the river during
the season of navigation, removing every snag as soon as located,
assisting steamboats in distress, cutting overhanging trees, placing
guide-boards and crossing lights where needed, maintaining the same
after being established, and giving their whole time and attention
to the work of river improvement. This suggestion was carried into
effect, and two steamboats purchased and fitted for the work.
In 1866 Colonel Dodge, of the Corps of Engineers, who had had large
experience in the work of river improvement, realizing the necessity
for dredging the shoalest places, in addition to directing the water
by dikes and dams, invented a dredge to be attached to a steamboat,
and operated by steam machinery, for the purpose of plowing out and
scraping away the sand as it accumulated on the worst bars and reefs.
Two or three experimental machines were built by a St. Paul mechanic
upon the order of the United States officials, and under their
supervision. These were attached to derricks, placed on the bows of
the steamboats secured for the work, suspended by stout chains, and
operated by steam. The boat, headed up river, was run to the head of
the reef; the dredge was then lowered, and the boat backed downstream
in the line of the channel. The dredge, twenty feet wide, stirred up
the sand, and the scraper attachment drew it down to the foot of the
reef, where the dredge was hoisted up and the current carried away
the released sand into deep water. The boat was again run to the head
of the reef and the operation repeated, each "scrape" being about
the width of the dredge, the pilot so placing his boat each time as
exactly to match the last preceding draft, without going over the
same ground a second time.
The machine was found to work to perfection, and to be of even
greater practical utility in keeping open a navigable channel than
the dikes and wing dams, as there is a constant filling in of sand at
the foot of every channel artificially formed by contracting the flow
of water. The dredge hauls this sand away as it accumulates, and by
deepening the water in the channel does much toward attracting the
steady flow of water to the particular lines so dredged.
Chapter XXIX
_Killing Steamboats_
The upper Mississippi has always been, comparatively, a remarkably
healthy stream for steamboats. A great proportion of the craft ending
their days there, have died of old age, and have been decorously
consigned to the scrap pile instead of meeting the tragic end usually
assigned them by writers. In many cases where it is supposed or
known that a steamboat of a certain name met destruction by fire or
snag, the historian who attempts to verify such statement will have
great difficulty in deciding just which boat bearing the name was
the victim of that particular casualty. The fact is, that the same
name was conferred, time after time, on boats built to take the place
of those sunk, burned, or otherwise put out of commission. As early
as 1840 there was the "Pike No. 8" on the lower river, indicating
that there had been a procession of "Pikes." There was also, at the
same time, the "Ben Franklin No. 7." Boats thus named were called
simply "Pike" or "Ben Franklin", the number not appearing on the
wheelhouses, save in rare cases. All the other "Pikes" having gone
to the bottom, there was but one "Pike" afloat. When reference was
ordinarily made to the boat by that name, the auditors knew at once
that the speaker referred to the boat then in commission. But should
you mention that "When the "Pike" or the "Ben Franklin" was snagged,
or burned, or blew up", in order fully to be understood you must
designate the particular "Pike", and add such other details, as would
leave no room for doubt which boat by that name you referred to,
thus: "Pike No. 6 snagged at such a tow-head, or on such a bend; or
burned in the year 1839 at Hannibal."
Steamboat owners and captains seem to have had no superstitious
objections to thus naming or commanding a successor to the
unfortunate one gone before. Before the first was comfortably
settled in the mud of the Mississippi, an order had gone on to the
shipyard, and in less than a week the keel was on the stocks for
its successor. If the first was a "Galena", or a "War Eagle", the
second also was a "Galena" or a "War Eagle". This was before the
fashion came into vogue of naming boats after persons, instead of
impersonal objects. There were not names enough to go around, and
thus it came about that the "Warriors", "Post Boys", "Telegraphs",