CHAPTER 16

Racing Days

IT was always the custom for the boats to leave New Orleans between four

and five o'clock in the afternoon. From three o'clock onward they would

be burning rosin and pitch pine (the sign of preparation), and so one

had the picturesque spectacle of a rank, some two or three miles long,

of tall, ascending columns of coal-black smoke; a colonnade which

supported a sable roof of the same smoke blended together and spreading

abroad over the city. Every outward-bound boat had its flag flying at

the jack-staff, and sometimes a duplicate on the verge staff astern.

Two or three miles of mates were commanding and swearing with more than

usual emphasis; countless processions of freight barrels and boxes were

spinning athwart the levee and flying aboard the stage-planks, belated

passengers were dodging and skipping among these frantic things, hoping

to reach the forecastle companion way alive, but having their doubts

about it; women with reticules and bandboxes were trying to keep up with

husbands freighted with carpet-sacks and crying babies, and making a

failure of it by losing their heads in the whirl and roar and general

distraction; drays and baggage-vans were clattering hither and thither

in a wild hurry, every now and then getting blocked and jammed together,

and then during ten seconds one could not see them for the profanity,

except vaguely and dimly; every windlass connected with every forehatch,

from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping

up a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the

half-naked crews of perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring

such songs as 'De Las' Sack! De Las' Sack!'--inspired to unimaginable

exaltation by the chaos of turmoil and racket that was driving everybody

else mad.

By this time the hurricane and boiler decks of the steamers would be

packed and black with passengers. The 'last bells' would begin to clang,

all down the line, and then the powwow seemed to double; in a moment or

two the final warning came,--a simultaneous din of Chinese gongs, with

the cry, 'All dat ain't goin', please to git asho'!'--and behold, the

powwow quadrupled! People came swarming ashore, overturning excited

stragglers that were trying to swarm aboard. One more moment later a

long array of stage-planks was being hauled in, each with its customary

latest passenger clinging to the end of it with teeth, nails, and

everything else, and the customary latest procrastinator making a wild

spring shoreward over his head.

Now a number of the boats slide backward into the stream, leaving wide

gaps in the serried rank of steamers. Citizens crowd the decks of boats

that are not to go, in order to see the sight. Steamer after steamer

straightens herself up, gathers all her strength, and presently comes

swinging by, under a tremendous head of steam, with flag flying, black

smoke rolling, and her entire crew of firemen and deck-hands (usually

swarthy negroes) massed together on the forecastle, the best 'voice' in

the lot towering from the midst (being mounted on the capstan), waving

his hat or a flag, and all roaring a mighty chorus, while the parting

cannons boom and the multitudinous spectators swing their hats and

huzza! Steamer after steamer falls into line, and the stately procession

goes winging its flight up the river.

In the old times, whenever two fast boats started out on a race, with a

big crowd of people looking on, it was inspiring to hear the crews sing,

especially if the time were night-fall, and the forecastle lit up with

the red glare of the torch-baskets. Racing was royal fun. The public

always had an idea that racing was dangerous; whereas the opposite was

the case--that is, after the laws were passed which restricted each boat

to just so many pounds of steam to the square inch. No engineer was ever

sleepy or careless when his heart was in a race. He was constantly on

the alert, trying gauge-cocks and watching things. The dangerous place

was on slow, plodding boats, where the engineers drowsed around and

allowed chips to get into the 'doctor' and shut off the water supply

from the boilers.

In the 'flush times' of steamboating, a race between two notoriously

fleet steamers was an event of vast importance. The date was set for

it several weeks in advance, and from that time forward, the whole

Mississippi Valley was in a state of consuming excitement. Politics and

the weather were dropped, and people talked only of the coming race. As

the time approached, the two steamers 'stripped' and got ready. Every

encumbrance that added weight, or exposed a resisting surface to wind

or water, was removed, if the boat could possibly do without it. The

'spars,' and sometimes even their supporting derricks, were sent ashore,

and no means left to set the boat afloat in case she got aground. When

the 'Eclipse' and the 'A. L. Shotwell' ran their great race many years

ago, it was said that pains were taken to scrape the gilding off the

fanciful device which hung between the 'Eclipse's' chimneys, and that

for that one trip the captain left off his kid gloves and had his head

shaved. But I always doubted these things.

If the boat was known to make her best speed when drawing five and a

half feet forward and five feet aft, she was carefully loaded to that

exact figure--she wouldn't enter a dose of homoeopathic pills on her

manifest after that. Hardly any passengers were taken, because they not

only add weight but they never will 'trim boat.' They always run to

the side when there is anything to see, whereas a conscientious and

experienced steamboatman would stick to the center of the boat and part

his hair in the middle with a spirit level.

No way-freights and no way-passengers were allowed, for the racers would

stop only at the largest towns, and then it would be only 'touch and

go.' Coal flats and wood flats were contracted for beforehand, and

these were kept ready to hitch on to the flying steamers at a moment's

warning. Double crews were carried, so that all work could be quickly

done.

The chosen date being come, and all things in readiness, the two great

steamers back into the stream, and lie there jockeying a moment, and

apparently watching each other's slightest movement, like sentient

creatures; flags drooping, the pent steam shrieking through

safety-valves, the black smoke rolling and tumbling from the chimneys

and darkening all the air. People, people everywhere; the shores, the

house-tops, the steamboats, the ships, are packed with them, and you

know that the borders of the broad Mississippi are going to be fringed

with humanity thence northward twelve hundred miles, to welcome these

racers.

Presently tall columns of steam burst from the 'scape-pipes of both

steamers, two guns boom a good-bye, two red-shirted heroes mounted

on capstans wave their small flags above the massed crews on the

forecastles, two plaintive solos linger on the air a few waiting

seconds, two mighty choruses burst forth--and here they come! Brass

bands bray Hail Columbia, huzza after huzza thunders from the shores,

and the stately creatures go whistling by like the wind.

Those boats will never halt a moment between New Orleans and St. Louis,

except for a second or two at large towns, or to hitch thirty-cord

wood-boats alongside. You should be on board when they take a couple of

those wood-boats in tow and turn a swarm of men into each; by the time

you have wiped your glasses and put them on, you will be wondering what

has become of that wood.

Two nicely matched steamers will stay in sight of each other day after

day. They might even stay side by side, but for the fact that pilots are

not all alike, and the smartest pilots will win the race. If one of the

boats has a 'lightning' pilot, whose 'partner' is a trifle his inferior,

you can tell which one is on watch by noting whether that boat has

gained ground or lost some during each four-hour stretch. The shrewdest

pilot can delay a boat if he has not a fine genius for steering.

Steering is a very high art. One must not keep a rudder dragging across

a boat's stem if he wants to get up the river fast.

There is a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was

on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left

port in. But of course this was at rare intervals. Ferryboats used to

lose valuable trips because their passengers grew old and died, waiting

for us to get by. This was at still rarer intervals. I had the documents

for these occurrences, but through carelessness they have been mislaid.

This boat, the 'John J. Roe,' was so slow that when she finally sunk in

Madrid Bend, it was five years before the owners heard of it. That was

always a confusing fact to me, but it is according to the record, any

way. She was dismally slow; still, we often had pretty exciting times

racing with islands, and rafts, and such things. One trip, however, we

did rather well. We went to St. Louis in sixteen days. But even at

this rattling gait I think we changed watches three times in Fort Adams

reach, which is five miles long. A 'reach' is a piece of straight river,

and of course the current drives through such a place in a pretty lively

way.

That trip we went to Grand Gulf, from New Orleans, in four days (three

hundred and forty miles); the 'Eclipse' and 'Shotwell' did it in one.

We were nine days out, in the chute of 63 (seven hundred miles); the

'Eclipse' and 'Shotwell' went there in two days. Something over a

generation ago, a boat called the 'J. M. White' went from New Orleans

to Cairo in three days, six hours, and forty-four minutes. In 1853 the

'Eclipse' made the same trip in three days, three hours, and twenty

minutes.{footnote [Time disputed. Some authorities add 1 hour and 16

minutes to this.]} In 1870 the 'R. E. Lee' did it in three days and

_one_ hour. This last is called the fastest trip on record. I will

try to show that it was not. For this reason: the distance between

New Orleans and Cairo, when the 'J. M. White' ran it, was about eleven

hundred and six miles; consequently her average speed was a trifle over

fourteen miles per hour. In the 'Eclipse's' day the distance between

the two ports had become reduced to one thousand and eighty miles;

consequently her average speed was a shade under fourteen and

three-eighths miles per hour. In the 'R. E. Lee's' time the distance

had diminished to about one thousand and thirty miles; consequently her

average was about fourteen and one-eighth miles per hour. Therefore the

'Eclipse's' was conspicuously the fastest time that has ever been made.