Chapter X

_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 war burst upon the country, and the fever of railroad

construction run so high, it is possible that I might have had my

name enrolled in the list containing such masters of the profession

as William Fisher, John King, Ed. West, Thomas Burns, Thomas

Cushing, and a hundred others whose names were synonyms for courage,

precision, coolness in danger, exact knowledge, ready resource, and

all else necessary in the man who stood at the wheel and safely

guided a great steamer through hundreds of miles of unlighted and

uncharted river.

Compared with those days, the piloting of to-day, while still a

marvel to the uninitiated, is but a primer compared to the knowledge

absolutely necessary to carry a steamboat safely through and around

the reefs, bars, snags, and sunken wrecks which in the olden time

beset the navigator from New Orleans to St. Paul. The pilot of that

day was absolutely dependent upon his knowledge of and familiarity

with the natural landmarks on either bank of the river, for guidance

in working his way through and over the innumerable sand-bars and

crossings. No lights on shore guided him by night, and no "diamond

boards" gave him assurance by day. No ready search-light revealed

the "marks" along the shore. Only a perspective of bluffs, sometimes

miles away, showing dimly outlined against a leaden sky, guided the

pilot in picking his way over a dangerous crossing, where there was

often less than forty feet to spare on either side of the boat's

hull, between safety and destruction.

To "know the river" under those conditions meant to know absolutely

the outline of every range of bluffs and hills, as well as every

isolated knob or even tree-top. It meant that the man at the wheel

must know these outlines absolutely, under the constantly changing

point of view of the moving steamer; so that he might confidently

point his steamer at a solid wall of blackness, and guided only by

the shapes of distant hills, and by the mental picture which he had

of them, know the exact moment at which to put his wheel over and

sheer his boat away from an impending bank. To-day a thousand beacons

are kindled every night to mark the dangerous or intricate crossings;

by day, great white "diamond boards" spot the banks. At night the

pilot has only to jingle a bell in the engine-room, the dynamo is

started, and by pulling a line at either hand the search-light

turns night into day, the big white board stands out in high relief

against the leafy background, and the pilot heads for it, serene in

the confidence that it is placed in line with the best water; for he

knows that the government engineers have sounded every foot of the

crossing within a date so recent as to make them cognizant of any

change in its area or contour. Constantly patrolling the river, a

dozen steamboats, fully equipped for sounding, measuring, and marking

the channel, are in commission during the months of navigation, each

being in charge of officers graduated from the most exacting military

and technical school in the world, and having under them crews

composed of men educated by practice to meet any emergency likely

to arise. If a snag lodges in the channel it is reported at the

nearest station, or to the first government steamer met, and within

a few hours it is removed. Dams and shear-dykes direct the water

in permanent, unshifting channels. Riprap holds dissolving banks,

and overhanging trees are cut away. Millions of dollars have been

spent in the work, and its preservation costs hundreds of thousands

annually. All this outlay is to-day for the benefit of a scant score

of steamboats between St. Louis and St. Paul. Forty years ago two

hundred men, on a hundred boats, groped their way in darkness, amid

known and unknown terrors, up and down the windings of the great

river, without having for their guidance a single token of man's

helpful invention.

There are men now living who may see all this vast expenditure

utilized, as it is not now. The building of the inter-oceanic canal

across the isthmus is certain to give new direction to the commerce

of the world. It is fair to presume that the Mississippi may again

assert itself as one of the greatest arteries of commerce in the

world, and that the products of the Minnesota and Dakota farms will

find their way down the river to New Orleans, instead of across the

continent to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore tidewater.

If this effect does follow the building of the canal, as many

clear-headed students of economic problems predict, the Mississippi

will again assume its old-time standing and influence as a great

highway of commerce. The hope is at least father to this thought.

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

look alike to me", might under such circumstances be set to music

and sung with feeling and expression by the learner.

What the pilot must know to enable him to run the river at night, is

strikingly suggested in the conversation between young "Mark Twain"

and his chief, Mr. Bixby. When the boy had begun to take on airs as a

pilot, his chief suddenly fired the question:

"What is the shape of Walnut Bend?"

Of course he did not know, and did not know that he must know.

Mr. Bixby: "My boy, you've got to know the shape of the river,

perfectly. It is all there is left to steer by on a very dark

night. Everything else is blotted out and gone. But mind you,

it hasn't the same shape in the night that it has in the

daytime."

"How on earth am I going to learn it, then?"

"How do you follow a hall at home in the dark? Because you know

the shape of it. You can't see it."

"Do you mean to say I've got to know all the million trifling

variations of the shape of the banks of this interminable river

as well as I know the shape of the front hall at home?"

"On my honor you've got to know them _better_ than any man ever

did know the shapes of the halls in his own house... You see,

this has got to be learned; there is no getting around it. A

clear starlight night throws such heavy shadows that if you

didn't know the shape of the shore perfectly, you would claw

away from every bunch of timber, because you would take the

black shadow of it for a solid cape; and you see you would be

getting scared to death every fifteen minutes by the watch. You

would be fifty yards from shore all the time when you ought

to be within fifty feet of it. You can't see a snag in one of

those shadows, but you know exactly where it is, and the shape

of the river tells you when you are coming to it. Then there's

your pitch-dark night; the river is a very different shape on

a pitch-dark night from what it is on a starlight night. All

shores seem straight lines then, and mighty dim ones, too;

you'd run them for straight lines, only you know better. You

boldly drive your boat into what seems to be a solid straight

wall (you knowing very well that there is a curve there), and

that wall falls back and makes way for you. Then there's your

gray mist. You take a night when there's one of those grizzly

gray mists, and then there isn't _any_ particular shape to a

shore. A gray mist would tangle the head of the oldest man that

ever lived. Well, then, different kinds of _moonlight_ change

the shape of the river in different ways. You see--"

But the cub had wilted. When he came to his chief reassured him

somewhat by replying to his objections:

"No! you only learn _the_ shape of the river; and you learn

it with such absolute certainty that you can always steer by

the shape. That's in your head, and never mind the one that's

before your eyes."

And that was approximately the case. The details of the river, once

learned, were so indellibly printed on the mind of the pilot that

it seemed as though eyes were almost superfluous. Of course Mr.

Bixby stated the extreme case. While the pilot was running a bend

"out of his head" in darkness that might be felt, there were always

well-known landmarks to be seen--shapes of bluffs so indistinct as

to seem but parts of the universal blackness. But these indistinct

outlines were enough to confirm the judgment of the man at the wheel

in the course he was steering. The man in the hall, in Mr. Bixby's

illustration, could not see anything, and didn't know what hall he

was in. He might just as well have been blind; and I never heard of a

blind man running a steamboat, day or night. In the short experience

that I had in the pilot house, I did not reach this perfection;

but I have stood on one side of the wheel, mechanically following

the orders of my chief, and listening to the churning of the wheel

reëchoed from the banks not fifty feet away, when I could scarcely

see the jack staff, and could not distinguish between the black of

the woods and the all-pervading black of the night.

Mr. Burns or Mr. Cushing would translate the situation, as the

boat plowed along under a full head of steam, somewhat like this:

"Now we're going down into the bend. Now we're opposite the big

cottonwood. Now we must pull out a little, to avoid that nest of

snags. Now we will let her begin to come out; the water begins to

shoal here; we'll keep away from the point a little, and cross over

into the west bend, and follow that down in the opposite direction."

This in the way of instruction; and so far as my observation went

he was drawing on his imagination for his facts, as I saw no big

cottonwood, nor nest of snags, nor any point. The only thing that

I could share with him in common was the fact that we were nearing

the point and getting into shoaler water--the boat told me that. The

floor under my feet seemed to hang back and drag; the motion of the

paddle wheel was perceptibly retarded; the escape was hoarser from

the pipes. I knew that there was shoal water on the point at the foot

of the bend, and the boat herself told me when we had reached the

point; but I had not seen it, either with my eyes, or in my head.

Mr. Burns had it all in his head, and did not require to see it with

his eyes. He simply ran the bend as he knew it to be; and he ran a

hundred others in the same way.

What might happen to any one who ran by sight, and not by faith, was

illustrated in the case of a young pilot on the "Key City", of our

line. He had his papers, and was standing watch alone in the pilot

house. He was going downstream. In going into Lansing, Iowa, one

runs a long bend on the left-hand shore. At Lansing the river turns

sharply to the south, from a nearly westerly course. Just at the

turn, and fronting the river toward the east, is a solid limestone

bluff four hundred feet high. On a starlit night the shadow of this

bluff is thrown out upon the river so far as totally to obliterate

the water, and for several minutes one must point his boat straight

into an apparently solid bluff before he "opens out" the turn to the

left. On the night in question the young man forgot to run by what

he knew to be the shape of the river, and trusted to what his eyes

showed him. He lost his head completely, and instead of stopping both

wheels and backing away from the impending doom, he put his wheel

hard over and plumped the "Key City" into the alluvial bank of the

island opposite, with such force as to snatch both chimneys out of

her, and very nearly to make a wreck of the steamer.

I have myself been tempted to run away from the same bluff; and but

for confidence inspired by the presence of one of the pilots, might

have done so. Mr. Burns drilled his "cubs" upon one point, however,

which made for the safety of the boat: "When in doubt, ring the

stopping bell and set her back." There was no place of safety to run

to in a panic on the Mississippi, and a boat standing still was less

likely to hurt herself or any one else than one in motion.

In no other particular, perhaps, has the art of piloting been so

revolutionized as in the adoption of the electric search-light for

night running. Time and again have I heard the question asked by

people new to the river: "Why don't you hang up two or three lanterns

at the front end of the boat, so that you can see to steer?"

It is easy to answer such a question convincingly. Go out into the

woods on a very dark night with an ordinary lantern. How far can you

see by such a light? Perhaps thirty feet; twenty feet would probably

be nearer the mark. Until a light was discovered that could project

its rays a half mile or more, and so concentrated as clearly to

reveal landmarks at that distance, the other extreme, no light at

all, was not only desirable, but positively necessary if the boat was

to be kept going.

After long usage, a pilot's eyes came to possess powers common to

the cat family and other night prowlers. He could literally "see

in the dark"; but he could not see in any half light, or any light

artificial and close at hand. For this reason it was necessary to

cover every light on the boat while running on a very dark night,

save the red and green sidelights at the chimney-tops. To accomplish

this, heavy canvas "shrouds" or "mufflers" were provided, which

fitted snugly around the forward part of the boat, in front of the

furnaces on the main deck; another set were placed around the boiler

deck, in front of the cabin; and still another set to muffle the

transom sky-lights on the hurricane deck. When these were properly

fitted and triced up, there was not a ray of light projected forward,

to break the dead blackness ahead. So delicate was this sense of

night sight, that no one was permitted to smoke a pipe or cigar in

the pilot house at such times, and even the mate, sitting by the bell

down on the roof below, had to forego his midnight pipe. As for the

pilot himself, a cigar in front of his nose would have shut off his

sight as effectively as though he were blindfolded.

Of course, were the pilot looking only ten feet, or even forty feet,

ahead of his boat, the lights on board might not have interfered

greatly, although they would not have assisted him in the slightest.

You can not steer a boat by landmarks ten feet ahead of her. The

pilot searches for landmarks a mile away, and must be able to

distinguish between two kinds of blackness--the blackness of the

night below, and the blackness of the sky above, and from the

dividing line between the two must read his marks and determine his

course. He does not see the woods on either side of him, and often

close at hand. The least ray of artificial light would blind the

pilot to the things which he must see under such conditions, hence

the shrouding of the boat was a necessity, were she to be run at all

on such a night. The coming of the electric search-light, and the

transfer of the marks from distant bluffs to big white diamond boards

planted low down on the banks where the light can be flashed upon

them from a distance of half a mile or more, has greatly simplified

the work of the pilot, and rendered obsolete the curtains which once

so completely darkened the Mississippi steamboat on the blackest of

nights.

[Illustration: 1. DANIEL SMITH HARRIS. Steamboat Captain, 1833-1861.

2. CAPTAIN THOMAS BURNS. Pilot on the Upper Mississippi River from

1856 to 1889. Inspector of Steamboats under President Cleveland and

President McKinley.

3. CHARLES G. HARGUS. Chief Clerk on the "Royal Arch," "Golden

State," "Fanny Harris," "Kate Cassell" and many other fine steamers

on the Upper Mississippi.

4. GEORGE B. MERRICK. "Cub" Pilot, 1862.]