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",

and "War Eagles" were worked overtime, to the great confusion of any

one attempting to localize a disaster that had happened to one of

that name in times past. It was possible to read to-day of the total

loss of the "War Eagle", for instance; yet a month or more hence

you might hear of the arrival of the "War Eagle" at St. Paul with

a full cargo and passenger list. The boats might go to the bottom,

but the names went on forever. "Post Boy" was another favorite name

handed down from boat to boat, until seven or eight "Post Boys" had

been launched, run their appointed courses, and met their fate, all

within the span of less than forty years--an average of about five

years to the boat--which was a good average for old-time steamers.

On the upper river there were, among others, three "Burlingtons",

two "Chippewas", two "Danubes", two "Denmarks", two "Dr. Franklins",

three "Dubuques", two "Galenas", three "St. Pauls", three "War

Eagles", and many others, doublets and triplets. All of which tends

much to confuse one who is attempting to run down and locate the

history and final disposition of boats bearing those names.

So far as I can learn, there is no reliable record of all the losses

on the upper river, giving the name of the boat, where, when, and

how lost. It is possible that the final disposition of boats lost

above St. Louis, is as fully covered in the list appended to the end

of this book, as anywhere else extant. Such a record has been made

for the Missouri River by Captain M. H. Chittenden, of the United

States Engineers--a very complete and historically valuable statement

of the losses on that stream. Other records are too comprehensive,

attempting to give all the losses through the entire length of the

river, from New Orleans to St. Paul. While covering so much more,

territorially, they lack in the detail that makes the compilation of

real worth.

Most writers attach particular stress to boiler explosions, probably

from the fact that they are more spectacular, and the consequent loss

of life usually greater. When a boat is snagged, it is generally

possible to run her ashore in time to save the passengers and crew,

although the vessel itself may prove a total loss. When a boiler

explodes, the boat becomes immediately helpless, so that it cannot be

run ashore, which occasions the considerable loss of life. In cases

of explosion, also, the boat almost invariably burns in the middle of

the river, and there is little chance for escape; for it is next to

impossible to reach the lifeboats carried on the roof, and if reached

it is seldom found possible to launch them.

Before considering the reported losses on all the Western waters it

will be interesting to locate, as far as possible, the casualties

on the Mississippi between St. Louis and St. Paul, the division or

section of the river usually denominated as "upper". In my list of

upper-river boats,[J] there are noted all losses of which I have

found any record. The list comprises about three hundred and sixty

steamers that have made one or more trips above Rock Island. The

boats plying above St. Louis, but not going above the upper rapids,

have not been included in this list, thus excluding all the Alton

Line vessels, and the Illinois River craft. Of the three hundred and

sixty boats so listed, there are to be found records of seventy-three

losses between St. Louis and St. Paul, including the port of St.

Louis, which has been a veritable graveyard for steamboats. About

a dozen other boats were lost after going into the Missouri River

trade, but these are not included in the number stated. The record

extends over the period between 1823 and 1863, inclusive. An analysis

of the causes of such losses shows that thirty-two boats were snagged

and sunk (total losses only are included; those raised, are not

counted as losses); sixteen were burned; ten were sunk by ice; five

were stove in by hitting rocks, and sank; three sank by striking

bridges; three were sunk by Confederate batteries during the war;

two were lost from boiler explosions; one was torn to pieces by a

tornado, and one struck a wreck of another boat and sank on top of

the first wreck.

[J] See Appendix: "Upper Mississippi River Steamboats,

1823-1863."

What became of the other boats included in the list, I am unable to

learn. The United States government appears never to have printed a

report (or reports) showing the fate of the hundreds of steamboats

over which it maintained an official watch-care while they were in

active service. It would seem to have paid more attention to boiler

explosions than to any other cause of disaster; for the reason,

possibly, that it is supposed to have held itself, through its

inspectors, more or less responsible for the condition of steam

boilers. Still, as it also, through another set of inspectors, looks

after the hulls of all steamboats, there would seem to be no reason

why the loss of boats by snagging, or other similar causes affecting

the hulls, should not also have been reported.

It will be observed that nearly one-half the known losses on the

upper river between 1823 and 1863 were the result of snagging.

Captain Chittenden, in his report on steamboat losses on the Missouri

from 1842 to 1897, gives the snags credit for catching 193 boats out

of a total loss of 295, or two-thirds of all known losses. Owing to

its alluvial banks, and the consequent eating away of wooded points

and islands by the ever changing current of that most erratic of

rivers, the bed of the stream was literally sown with snags. The

wonder of it is, that a pilot was able ever to take a boat up and

back a thousand miles, without hitting a snag and losing his boat.

They did it, however, although the record of losses from that cause

serves to show how imminent the danger was at all times, and how

many came to grief, however sharp the eyes of the pilot, or however

skilled in reading the surface of the water and locating the danger.

The upper Mississippi has more miles of rock bluffs--in fact, is

lined with such bluffs from Keokuk to St. Paul; thus the wear and

tear of its banks is not so great as on the Missouri. Still, the

great number of islands, heavily wooded, furnish many sunken trees,

and one-half of the steamboat loss on this river is also directly

traceable to snags.

Next to the snags, which are forever reaching out their gnarled

arms to impale the unfortunate, fire is the greatest enemy of

steamboat property on Western waters. Built of the lightest and most

combustible pine, soaked with oil paint, the upper works are like

tinder when once alight, and danger of this is ever present in a

hundred different forms. A little explosion in the furnaces, throwing

live coals over the deck; over-heated smokestacks, communicating a

blaze to the roof; careless passengers or crew, throwing half-burned

matches on deck or into inflammable merchandise in the freight; or

the mass of sparks, cinders, and live coals continuously falling from

the stacks, especially when burning wood in the furnaces: all these

are a constant menace, and with a blaze once started the chances are

a hundred to one that the boat is lost. A lighted match thrown into

a haymow can scarcely bring quicker results than a little blaze in

the upper works of a steamboat. It flashes up in an instant, and the

draft generated by the progress of the boat instantly carries it the

length of the cabin. In fifteen minutes the upper works are gone.

Sixteen Mississippi boats out of seventy were burned; twenty-five of

295, on the Missouri. As in losses from ice, so also by fire, St.

Louis has been the storm centre, and for the same reason namely,

the great number of boats there, both summer and winter. Several

visitations from this most dreaded and dreadful enemy of steamboats

are recorded in the history of river navigation, in which two or more

boats were lost while at the St. Louis landing. But the one which is

known far and wide on Western waters was of such magnitude, and the

property loss so great, as to earn for it the title of the "Great

Fire".

This, the most disastrous of all calamities which ever occurred in

the history of navigation in the West, commenced at about 10 o'clock

in the evening of May 17, 1849, and continued until 7 o'clock the

next morning. Captain Chittenden, the historian of the Missouri

River, says, in describing this catastrophe:

"Fire alarms had been heard several times early in the

evening, but nothing had come of them, until about the hour

above-mentioned, when it was found that fire had broken out in

earnest on the steamer "White Cloud", which lay at the wharf

between Wash and Cherry Streets. The "Endors" lay just above

her and the "Edward Bates" below. Both caught fire. At this

time a well-intended but ill-considered, effort to stop the

progress of the fire was made by some parties, who cut the

"Edward Bates's" moorings and turned her into the stream. The

boat was soon caught by the current and carried down the river;

but a strong northeast wind bore it constantly in shore, and

every time it touched it ignited another boat. An effort was

now made to turn other boats loose before the "Edward Bates"

could reach them, but a fatality seemed to attend every effort.

The burning boat outsped them all, and by frequent contacts set

fire to many more. These in turn ignited the rest, until in a

short time the river presented the spectacle of a vast fleet

of burning vessels, drifting slowly along the shore. The fire

next spread to the buildings, and before it could be arrested

had destroyed the main business portion of the city. It was

the most appalling calamity that had ever visited St. Louis;

and followed as it was by the great cholera scourge of 1849,

it was a terrible disaster. At the levee there were destroyed

twenty-three steamboats, three barges, and one small boat. The

total valuation of boats and cargoes was estimated at about

$440,000, and the insurance was but $225,000; but this was

not all paid, for the fire broke up several of the insurance

companies."

Ice also plays an important part in the game of steamboat killing.

The season on the upper river is short at best. An early start in

the spring, before the railroads had yet reached St. Paul, brought

the greatest financial returns to the daring and successful captains

who, bringing their boats through all the dangers, arrived safely in

harbor at the head of navigation. Great chances were taken in the

fifties, in trying to get through Lake Pepin before it was clear of

ice. The river above and below was usually clear two weeks before

the ice was out of the lake sufficiently to enable a boat to force

its way through. During the last week of such embargo, boats were

constantly butting the ice at either end of the lake, trying to get

up or down, or were perilously coasting along the shore, where, from

the shallowness of the water and the inflow from the banks, the ice

had rotted more than in the centre of the lake. A change of wind, or

a sudden freshening, catching a boat thus coasting along the shore,

would shove her on to the rocks or sand, and crush her hull as though

it were an eggshell. The "Falls City" was thus caught and smashed. I

myself saw the "Fire Canoe" crushed flat, in the middle of the lake,

a little below Wacouta, Minn., she having run down a mile or more

in the channel which we had broken with the "Fanny Harris". We had

just backed out, for Captain Anderson had seen signs of a rising wind

out of the west, that would shut the ice into our track. This result

did follow after the other boat had gone in, despite the well-meant

warnings of Anderson, who hailed the other boat and warned them of

the rising wind and the danger to be apprehended. This caution was

ignored by the "Fire Canoe's" captain, who ran his boat down into the

channel that we had broken. The ice did move as predicted, slowly, so

slowly as to be imperceptible unless you sighted by some stationary

object. But it was as irresistible as fate, and it crushed the

timbers of the "Fire Canoe" as though they were inch boards instead

of five-inch planks. The rending of her timbers was plainly heard two

miles away. The upper works were left on the ice, and later we ran

down and picked the crew and passengers off the wreck. When the wind

changed and blew the other way, the cabin was turned over and ground

to splinters amid the moving cakes.

In 1857 the "Galena" was the first boat through the lake (April

30th). There were twelve other boats in sight at one time, all

butting the ice in the attempt to force a passage and be the first to

reach St. Paul. Of the boats lost on the Missouri River between 1842

and 1897, twenty-six were lost from ice; on the upper Mississippi, up

to 1863, ten boats succumbed to the same destroyer.

Not only in Lake Pepin, in the early spring, was this danger to be

apprehended; but in autumn also, in the closing days of navigation,

when the young "anchor ice" was forming, and drifting with the

current, before it had become attached to the banks, and formed the

winter bridge over the river. This was a most insidious danger. The

new ice, just forming under the stress of zero weather, cut like a

knife; and while the boat might feel no jar from meeting ice fields

and solitary floating cakes, all the time the ice was eating its way

through the firm oak planking, and unless closely watched the bow of

the boat would be ground down so thin that an extra heavy ice floe,

striking fairly on the worn planking, would stave the whole bow in,

and the boat would go to the bottom in spite of all attempts to stop

the leak. The "Fanny Harris" was thus cut down by floating ice and

sank in twenty feet of water, opposite Point Douglass, being a total

loss. Ordinarily, boats intending to make a late trip to the north

were strengthened by spiking on an extra armor sheathing of four-inch

oak plank at the bow, and extending back twenty or thirty feet.

It is a singular fact that the greatest damage from ice was not

experienced at the far north of the upper river, but at the southern

extremity of the run; although many other boats were lost on the

upper reaches, at wide intervals of time and place. St. Louis was

a veritable killing place for steamboats, from the ice movements.

This may be accounted for from the reason that so many boats

wintered at St. Louis. When a break-up of extraordinary magnitude or

unseasonableness did occur, it had a large number of boats to work

upon. Again, the season of cold, while long and severe on the upper

river, was distinctly marked as to duration. There was no thawing and

freezing again. When the river closed in November, it stayed closed

until the latter end of March, or the early days of April. Then,

when the ice went out, that ended the embargo; there was no further

danger to be feared. Boats did not usually leave their snug-harbors

until the ice had run out; and when they did start, they had only

Lake Pepin to battle with. At St. Louis, on the contrary, the most

disastrous break-ups came unseasonably and unexpectedly, with the

result that the great fleet of boats wintering there were caught

unprepared to meet such an emergency, and many were lost.

Two such disastrous movements of the ice were experienced at St.

Louis, the first in 1856, the other in 1876. The former "break-up"

occurred February 27, and resulted in the destruction of a score of

the finest boats in the St. Louis trade, and the partial wrecking of

as many more. It put out of commission in a few hours nearly forty

boats, a catastrophe unequalled in magnitude, either before or since,

in the annals of the river. The disaster was not caused in the usual

way, by the thawing of the ice. In that case it would not have been

so disastrous, if indeed to be feared at all, that being the usual

and normal manner of clearing the river in the spring. The winter had

been very cold, the ice was two or three feet thick, and the water

very low. In this case the movement of the ice was caused by a sudden

rise in the river from above, which caused the ice to move before it

was much, if any, disintegrated. It was an appalling and terrible

exhibition of the power of the Great River when restrained in its

course. The following account is from a St. Louis paper, printed at

the time:

"The ice at first moved very slowly and without any perceptible

shock. The boats lying above Chestnut Street were merely shoved

ashore. Messrs. Eads & Nelson's Submarine boat No. 4, which had

just finished work on the wreck of the "Parthenia", was almost

immediately capsized, and became herself a hopeless wreck.

Here the destruction commenced. The "Federal Arch" parted her

fastenings and became at once a total wreck. Lying below her

were the steamers "Australia", "Adriatic", "Brunette", "Paul

Jones", "Falls City", "Altoona", "A. B. Chambers", and the

"Challenge", all of which were torn away from shore as easily

as if they had been mere skiffs, and floated down with the

immense fields of ice. The shock and the crashing of these

boats can better be imagined than described. All their ample

fastenings were as nothing against the enormous flood of ice,

and they were carried down apparently fastened and wedged

together. The first obstacles with which they came in contact

were a large fleet of wood-boats, flats, and canal boats. These

small fry were either broken to pieces, or were forced out on

to the levee in a very damaged condition. There must have been

at least fifty of these smaller water craft destroyed, pierced

by the ice, or crushed by the pressure of each against the

other.

"In the meantime some of the boats lying above Chestnut Street

fared badly. The "F. X. Aubrey" was forced into the bank and

was considerably damaged. The noble "Nebraska", which was

thought to be in a most perilous position, escaped with the

loss of her larboard wheel and some other small injuries. A

number of the upper river boats lying above Chestnut Street,

were more or less damaged. Both the Alton wharf-boats were sunk

and broken in pieces. The old "Shenandoah" and the "Sam Cloon"

were forced away from the shore and floated down together,

lodging against the steamer "Clara", where they were soon torn

to pieces and sunk by a collision with one of the ferry-boats

floating down upon them. The Keokuk wharf-boat maintained its

position against the flood and saved three boats, the "Polar

Star", "Pringle", and "Forest Rose", none of which were injured.

"After running about an hour the character of the ice changed

and it came down in a frothy, crumbled condition, with an

occasional solid piece. At the end of two hours it ran very

slowly, and finally stopped at half past five o'clock, P. M.

Just before the ice stopped and commenced to gorge, huge piles,

twenty and thirty feet in height were forced up by the current

on every hand, both on the shore and at the lower dike, where

so many boats had come to a halt. In fact these boats seemed to

be literally buried in ice.

"The levee on the morning after the day of the disaster

presented a dreary and desolate spectacle, looking more like a

scene in the polar regions than in the fertile and beautiful

Mississippi Valley. The Mississippi, awakened from her long

sleep, was pitching along at a wild and rapid rate of speed,

as if to make up for lost time. The ice-coat of mail was torn

into shreds, which lay strewn along the levee, and was in some

places heaped up to a height of twenty feet above the level of

the water. Where the boats had lain in crowds only a few hours

before, nothing was to be seen save this high bulwark of ice,

which seemed as if it had been left there purposely to complete

the picture of bleak desolation. The whole business portion

of the levee was clear of boats, except the two wrecked Alton

wharf-boats, which were almost shattered to pieces, and cast

like toys upon the shore in the midst of the ridge of ice.

There was not a single boat at the levee which entirely escaped

injury by the memorable breaking up of the ice on February 27,

1856."

[Illustration: REED'S LANDING, MINNESOTA. At the foot of Lake Pepin.

During the ice blockade in the Lake, in the spring of each year

before the advent of railroads to St. Paul, all freight was unloaded

at Reed's Landing, hauled by team to Wacouta, at the head of the

Lake, where it was reloaded upon another steamboat for transportation

to St. Paul and other ports above the Lake.]