Read The Great American Steamboat Race Online
Authors: Benton Rain Patterson
The Great American Steamboat Race (17 page)
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The Sweet Life on the Mississippi
The man first boarded the steamboat at Natchez and took one of the vessel’s best cabins. When the boat arrived in New Orleans, he notified its officers that he would not be disembarking but would keep his cabin and stay on the boat on its return trip to St. Louis. When it reached St. Louis, he again declined to get off and made arrangements to take it back to New Orleans. At New Orleans, he bought passage back to St. Louis. For two months he stayed on the steamer as it voyaged between New Orleans and St. Louis, which raised vexing questions in the captain’s mind. Elderly and friendly, the man jovially mingled with the other passengers, warmly greeting them, offering them cigars, buying them drinks, sitting with them and talking and apparently enjoying their company. The captain decided the mysterious passenger was not a gambler, to whom destinations were also unimportant. Nor was he, as passengers occasionally were found to be, a thief or a murderer hiding out from the law. He just didn’t seem that sort. The captain couldn’t stop wondering about the man.
At last, with as much tact as he could manage, he asked the man if he would mind telling him why he was making the repeated trips.
“Of course, sir, I’ll tell you,” the old gentleman answered. “It’s the finest way to pleasure myself that I know. No hotel in America can equal this. The finest food — your wild game, your glazed fish, your roasts, sauces and pastry! My cabin — it’s as finely equipped, as well decorated, as any room I’ve enjoyed in my life. The bar, the cabin, the promenade — nothing to match them, I tell you. And the company! I meet all my friends, the best people in the world. Why should I want to leave?”
Beaming with satisfaction, the captain treated his happy passenger to a drink at the bar.
That is a story out of Mississippi River steamboat lore which has in it enough truth to make it believable. Samuel Clemens, whose charming pow
ers of observation of his fellow humans, augmented by his experience as a Mississippi River steamboat pilot, provided him broad knowledge of steamboats and their passengers, was among others who agreed with that traveler. People, Clemens wrote, compared Mississippi River steamboats to other things they had seen, “and, thus measured, thus judged, the boats were magnificent.... The steamboats were finer than anything on shore. Compared with superior dwelling-houses and first-class hotels in the [Mississippi] valley, they were indubitably magnificent, they were ‘palaces.’ To a few people living in New Orleans and St. Louis they were not magnificent, perhaps; not palaces; but to the great majority of those populations, and to the entire populations spread over both banks between Baton Rouge and St. Louis, they were palaces; they tallied with the citizen’s dream of what magnificence was, and satisfied it.”
1
Clemens’ intimate knowledge of Mississippi River steamboats dated back at least to 1856, when he decided he would become a pilot, a job that he officially began when he got his pilot’s license in 1858 and that ended when he quit it at the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. He described the Mississippi River steamboat as he knew it :
When he [the passenger] stepped aboard a big fine steamboat, he entered a new and marvelous world: chimney-tops cut to counterfeit a spraying crown of plumes — and maybe painted red; a pilot-house, hurricane-deck, boiler-deck guards, all garnished with white wooden filigree-work of fanciful patterns; gilt acorns topping the derricks; gilt deer-horns over the big bell; gaudy symbolical picture on the paddle-box, possibly; big roomy boiler-deck, painted blue, and furnished with Windsor arm-chairs; inside, a far-receding snow-white “cabin”; porcelain knob and oil-picture on every stateroom door; curving patterns of filigree-work touched up with gilding, stretching overhead all down the converging vista; big chandeliers every little way, rainbow-light falling everywhere from the colored glazing of the skylights; the whole a long-drawn, resplendent tunnel, a bewildering and soul-satisf ying spectacle! In the ladies’ cabin a pink and white Wilton carpet, as soft as mush, and glorified with a ravishing pattern of gigantic flowers. Then the Bridal Chamber ... whose pretentious flummery was necessarily overawing.... Every stateroom had its couple of cozy clean bunks, and perhaps a looking-glass and a snug closet; and sometimes there was even a wash-bowl and pitcher, and part of a towel which could be told from mosquitonetting by an expert — though generally these things were absent, and the shirtsleeved passengers cleansed themselves at a long row of stationary bowls in the barber shop, where were also public towels, public combs, and public soap.
2
Another who knew the Mississippi River steamboat well, writer Arthur E. Hopkins, recorded his description:
Steamboating had a romance and glamor never attained in any other kind of transportation. The large sidewheel passenger steamboat was beautiful. Her lines, with a graceful sheer, made her set on the water like a swan; the ornamental railings were filigree of woodwork; her smokestacks towered high above the water line and their tops were cut to represent plumes or fern leaves. From the hull to the hurricane deck the boat was painted a glistening white, with the tops of the wheelhouses a sky blue, as was the breeching around the smokestacks. The pilothouse with its ornamental crown added to the appearance of the entire structure. The dome of the pilothouse matched in color the wheelhouse. A red line near the top of the hull extended from the stem to the stern, and the skylights or ventilators over the main salon were of stained glass. The main cabin, which extended nearly the full length of the boat, was done in white and gold; the walnut or rosewood of the panels at the stateroom doors provided an agreeable contrast.
There was usually a small landscape over the stateroom doors.... The bridal suites and the ladies’ cabins were models of decoration; French plate mirrors in hand-carved and gilded frames adorned them; marble-topped tables, deeply velveted upholstered chairs and settees were provided; and a piano of the best make completed the furnishings.
The name of the boat painted on the sides of the wheelhouses was a triumph of the sign painter’s art; it was frequently done in gold leaf. Sometimes immediately above the name of the boat was painted a landscape or figure. The boat’s colors were beautiful. Flying from the forward flagpole, called the jackstaff, was a long flag outlined in red, white, and blue, with the name of the boat in red on white ground.... Inboard on each wheelhouse was a flagstaff which flew burgees bearing the names of the cities between which the boat operated. On the flagstaff at the rear of the texas the union jack was flown and on the rear flagstaff, called the verge-staff, flew the Stars and Stripes....
3
“In the middle of the nineteenth century,” another veteran steamboatman remarked, “many an artist whose canvases found no market in the older cities, found ready bidders for his brush to decorate the thirty-foot paddleboxes of the big side-wheelers with figures of heroic size.” The paddle-boxes of the
Minnesota Belle
, he observed, “were decorated with pictures the same on each side, representing a beautiful girl, modestly and becomingly clothed, and carrying in her arms a bundle of wheat ten or twelve feet long, which she apparently had just reaped from some Minnesota field.... The
Northern Belle
also had a very good looking young woman upon her paddle-boxes. Evidently she exhibited herself out of pure self-satisfaction, for she had no sheaf of wheat, or any other evidence of occupation. She was pretty, and she knew it.”
4
All the steamers with “Eagle” in their names seemed to have a huge eagle embellishing their paddle-boxes; the steamer
Minnesota
bore a reproduction of the state’s coat of arms; boats named for noted persons tended to reproduce a likeness of their namesakes on their paddle-boxes. But most sidewheelers, according to one account, offered paddle-box decoration no more original than a sunburst, outside of which, along the curved edge of the wheel’s housing, was painted the name of the line or company that owned the boat.
Frederick Law Olmsted, the nineteenth-century landscape architect who made a name for himself not only as a creator of New York’s Central Park but as a travel writer, described less grand, smaller steamboats, many of which operated on the Mississippi’s tributaries:
They are but scows in build, perfectly flat, with pointed stem and square stern. Behind is one small wheel, moved by two small engines of the simplest and cheapest construction. Drawing but a foot of water they keep afloat in the lowest stages of the rivers. Their freight, wood, machinery, hands and steerage passengers are all on the main deck. Eight or ten feet above, supported by light stanchions in the floor used by passengers, one long saloon 8 or 10 feet wide which stretches from the stern to the smoke pipes far forward.
The saloon is lined on each side with staterooms, which also open out upon a narrow upper gallery. Perched above all this is the pilot house, and a range of staterooms for the officers, pilots and visiting pilots, popularly known as “Texas.” Inveterate card players retire to this “Texas” on Sundays when custom forbids cards in the saloon. A few feet of the saloon are cut off by folding doors for a ladies’ cabin. Forward of the saloon the upper deck extends around the smoke pipes, forming an open space, sheltered by the pilot deck and used for baggage and open-air seats.
Such is the contrivance for making use of their natural highways. And really admirable it is, spite of the drawbacks, for its purpose. Roads in countries so sparsely settled are impractical. These craft paddle about, at some state of water, to almost everyman’s door, bringing him foreign luxuries, and taking away his own productions.
5
By 1859, during the Mississippi steamboat’s heyday, there were thirtytwo elegant passenger steamboats operating between New Orleans and St. Louis. The steamer
Eclipse
, in the years before the Civil War, was widely considered the most outstanding of them all, in size, speed and luxury. In 1853 it made the 1,440-mile trip from New Orleans to Louisville in four days, nine hours and thirty-one minutes, a record-breaking time made all the more remarkable because of the vessel’s size. It measured 363 feet long and 36 feet in the beam. (In comparison, the modern Mississippi River excursion steamboat
Mississippi Queen
measures 382 feet in length and 68 feet in the beam.)
Eclipse
’s saloon glistened with gilt and was adorned with rich, colorful paintings. The saloon was divided roughly in half, according to gender, and at the men’s end stood a gilt statuette of Andrew Jackson, and at the women’s end stood a matching statuette of Henry Clay. Included among the lavish furnishings was a piano for the use of passengers. Special sleeping rooms were available for the passengers’ servants. The boat could accommodate as many as 180 passengers, along with its 121-member crew. Most extraordinary of all its attractions, the
Eclipse
’s accommodations included no less than forty-eight bridal chambers, a telling testimony to the steamboat’s power to inspire romance in the bosoms of its passengers. Other usual amenities aboard steamboats included a post office, a laundry and a library.
A steamer’s main cabin at dinnertime. Also called the grand saloon, the main cabin, located on the boiler deck, served at various times as a sumptuous hotel lobby, a lounge, a dining room, a ballroom or a concert hall. For first-class passengers the grand saloon was the magnificent great hall of a wondrously beautiful floating palace, illuminated by glistening cut-glass chandeliers, decorated with oil paintings and thick carpets. At dinnertime “steaming foods [were] piled high on the long linen table cloth,” one passenger reported, “...with attentive waiters standing at the traveler’s elbow, waiting with more food ... neither homes nor hotels of the [eighteen] fifties were ever like this” (Library of Congress).
To a great many, a voyage as a passenger on a Mississippi River steamboat was, as one writer of the early twentieth century called it, “a luxurious orgy.” The grand saloon was more comfortable, more ornate, more sensuous than the parlors or sitting rooms of the passengers’ homes, which, in the custom of their times, they entered and used only on special occasions. For those passengers the Mississippi River steamboat’s saloon was the magnificent great hall of a wondrously beautiful floating palace. “The wooden filigrees that stretched down the long aisle in a tapering vista illuminated by the glistening cut-glass chandeliers; the soft oil paintings on every stateroom door; the thick carpets that transformed walking into a royal march; the steaming foods piled high on the long linen cloth in the dining room, with attentive waiters standing at the traveler’s elbow, waiting with more food, and gaily colored desserts in the offing — neither homes nor hotels of the [eighteen] fifties were ever like this.”
6
At various times the grand saloon could be a sumptuous hotel lobby, a lounge, a dining room, a ballroom or a concert hall, depending on the occasion and the arrangement of its furniture.
The steamboat’s cuisine, included in the price of a cabin passenger’s ticket, was an immensely important part of the cabin passenger’s travel experience, not to mention the commercial success of the boat. Food and supplies were brought aboard at port cities and were also procured at landings along the river as the boat proceeded on its run. Chickens, pigeons, lambs and pigs were taken aboard as well as fruit, vegetables and fresh eggs. The animals were kept alive on the boat until the menu called for them to become dinner. Breads, pastries, cakes and other desserts were prepared in one of the boat’s two galleys, the bakery ordinarily a part of the larboard (rivermen’s usual term for the boat’s left side) galley, and the meats and other courses prepared in the starboard galley. Meals were usually elaborate. One of the steamers offered its cabin passengers thirteen different desserts — six of them concoctions of custard, jelly and cream in tall glasses, and seven of them pies, puddings or ice cream. Another offered fifteen desserts. Some steamboats on the first day of their voyage served a dinner that was so heavy it left some passengers squeamish about taking in another full meal during the rest of the trip. The usual fare in early steamboat days was homey American food, but later, as the boats and their first-class passengers became more upscale, some French
haute cuisine
became
de rigueur
.
Less upscale was the boats’ drinking water, which was served at every meal. It came, like the boat’s water for its boilers and its passengers’ washbowls, straight from the river, sediment and all. It was believed to be good for a person’s system that way. Fortunately for the squeamish and finicky, coffee and tea, disguising the river water, were also served with meals.
At dinnertime a Mississippi River steamboat of standard elegance in the 1850s would provide as many as twenty-five waiters and attendants to take care of its passengers’ prandial desires, and the saloon’s lavish dining tables looked as if they were spread for an elaborate wedding reception. When it was time to take their places at the tables, the women passengers — the ladies — would process from their end of the saloon to music played by the boat’s own band — whose members in some cases were all women — and when dinner was over, the ladies would march out to music . Everything considered, a cabin passenger’s life aboard a Mississippi River steamboat was, as one old steamboat hand put it, “some powerful fine livin’.”