Old Times on the Upper Mississippi: The Recollections of a Steamboat Pilot from 1854 to 1863
By Merrick, George Byron
Classic work by Merrick, George Byron.
Table of Contents
LIVING IT OVER AGAIN 240 Appendix A. LIST OF STEAMBOATS ON THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI RIVER, 1823-1863 ...
_Early Impressions_ Descent from an ancestry whose members built and sailed ships from Salem, Newburyport, and Nantucket two hundred years ago, and even down to the early days of ...
_Indians, Dugouts, and Wolves_ In that early day when my acquaintance with the Mississippi began, Indians were numerous. Their dugouts lay at the levee by the dozen, the hunters r...
_On the Levee at Prescott_ When we first knew it, Prescott was in many respects a typical river town. But in one, it differed from all others with the possible exception of Wacout...
_In the Engine-room_ Before leaving the main deck, with its savory scents of scorching oil, escaping steam, and soft-coal gas, let me describe some of the sights, sounds, and acti...
_The Engineer_ It would be impossible to pick out any one man who handled an engine on the river fifty years ago, and in describing his habits and peculiarities claim him as a typ...
_The "Mud" Clerk_[B]--_Comparative Honors_ [B] "Mud" Clerk: Second clerk, whose duty it was to go out in all weathers, upon the unpaved levees and deliver or receive frei...
_Wooding Up_ As second clerk, I was early taught to hold my own with the pirates who conducted the woodyards scattered along the river, from which the greater part of the fuel use...
_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 cha...
_The "Old Man"_ It would be interesting to trace the origin of this term, which is universally applied to the captain in nautical circles, either on shipboard, among deep-sea sail...
_The Pilots and Their Work_ We come now to the consideration of that part of river life of which I was an interested observer, rather than an active participant. Had not the great...
_Knowing the River_ To "know the river" fully, the pilot must not only know everything which may be seen by the eye, but he must also feel for a great deal of information of the f...
_The Art of Steering_ Every pilot must of necessity be a steersman; but not every steersman is of necessity a pilot. He may be studying to become a pilot, and not yet out of the s...
_An Initiation_ I have said that in addition to "knowing the river", and knowing that he knows it, the young pilot must also be fortified with a large measure of self-reliance, or...
_Early Pilots_ "How did the first steamboats find their way up the hundreds of miles of water heretofore unbroken by steam-driven wheel?" No voice out of the past will give an ans...
_Incidents of River Life_ Captain William Fisher, of Galena, Illinois, is probably the oldest living pilot of the upper Mississippi. At the time of this writing (1908), he is spen...
_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 whe...
_Bars and Barkeepers_ In the old days on the river, whiskey was not classed as one of the luxuries. It was regarded as one of the necessities, if not the prime necessity, of life....
_Gamblers and Gambling_ Volumes have been written, first and last, on the subject of gambling on the Mississippi. In them a small fraction of truth is diluted with a deal of ficti...
_Steamboat Racing_ It is popularly supposed that there was a great deal of racing on Western rivers in the olden time--in fact, that it was the main business of steamboat captains...
_Music and Art_ In the middle of the nineteenth century, many an artist whose canvases found no market in the older cities, found ready bidders for his brush, to decorate the thir...
_Steamboat Bonanzas_ How it was possible to derive any profit from an investment of from $20,000 to $40,000, the principal of which had an average tenure of life of but five years...
_Wild-cat Money and Town-sites_ Both of these specimens of natural history were bred, nurtured, and let loose in countless numbers to prey upon the people in the early days that w...
_A Pioneer Steamboatman_ The same year and the same month in the year that witnessed the advent of the first steamboat on the Upper Mississippi, likewise witnessed the arrival in ...
_A Versatile Commander; Wreck of the "Equator"_ While some men were to be found on the Mississippi in the sixties who did not hesitate to avow themselves religious, and whose live...
_A Stray Nobleman_ Of the many men whom it was my good fortune to meet while on the river as a boy, or as a young man, there was none who came nearer to filling the bill as a nobl...
_In War Time_ In the early spring of 1861 the "Fanny Harris" was chartered by the United States government to go to Fort Ridgeley, up the Minnesota River, and bring down the batte...
_At Fort Ridgeley_ The officer in command of the battery when it left Fort Ridgeley was Captain and Brevet Major John C. Pemberton, U. S. A. He had won his brevet by gallant servi...
_Improving the River_ It was not until commerce on the upper river was practically a thing of the past, that any effort was made to improve the channel for purposes of navigation....
_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, hav...
_Living It Over Again_ One day in the spring of 1881, after having finished the business that had called me to St. Paul from my home in River Falls, Wisconsin (where I was a railw...