The Great American Steamboat Race (7 page)

The Currier & Ives imaginative depiction of the race. The
Robert E. Lee
’s lead was threatened, although not to the extent shown in the Currier & Ives print, when one of its boilers sprang a leak below Baton Rouge and Captain Cannon had to reduce the boat’s speed while dangerous, makeshift repairs were made (Library of Congress).

deck that projected past the boat’s hull. In the fresh night air, Wiest soon regained consciousness and when his head cleared, he reported what he had discovered in the one good glance that he had got.

One of the group that was gathered around him suggested putting small pieces of hemp, a little at a time, into the No. 4 boiler’s water line — a trick that probably had been performed in engine rooms before. The bits of hemp packing, suspended in the water that was leaking through the perforations, would lodge themselves in the holes and stop them up. All agreed it was worth a try.

The engineers forced the fragments of hemp packing, which they chopped into small bits, into the intake suction valve, then restarted the intake pump, sending the hemp fibers coursing through the water line. They switched off the pump and inserted more hemp into the line and again started the pump, fixing their eyes on the gauges. After several applications of hemp into the water line, the gauges finally showed that the pressure in the boiler had stopped falling and had gradually begun rising. The hemp fibers had become minuscule fingers in the dike.
⁵

The
Lee
was now just above Plaquemine, Louisiana, a community on the west bank of the river, and was steaming for Baton Rouge. Although the hour was past midnight, excited spectators had climbed into skiffs and put out from the riverbank at Plaquemine, battling the
Lee
’s wake to hail and cheer the grand steamer and its crew. They would soon also be cheering the
Natchez
, which could be seen from the stern of the
Lee
by the glow of its furnaces when their doors were opened. It was only about four hundred yards behind the
Lee
, which was increasing its speed to regain the time it had lost during the latest emergency.

Beset by worry over the condition of his vessel, Captain Cannon was having doubts about continuing the race. Still on the hurricane deck, he called his old friend John Smoker over to him and asked him what he thought about ending the race at Baton Rouge and declaring the
Robert E. Lee
the winner to that point. Smoker didn’t think much of the idea. “As long as we’re ahead,” he responded, “we’d better keep so.” Thus encouraged, Cannon gave up the thought of stopping, for the present anyway, although he continued to worry.

With the
Natchez
hot on its heels, the
Lee
passed Baton Rouge, on the east bank of the river, about three o’clock in the morning on Friday, July 1. Beneath the lights on the wharf clumps of bleary-eyed spectators watched as the two boats steamed past, first the
Robert E. Lee
and minutes later the pursuing
Natchez
. By the time the
Lee
reached Bayou Sara, just above Baton Rouge, it was ten minutes ahead of the
Natchez
, having made it that far in ten hours and twenty-six minutes.

The reporter from the
St. Louis Republican
on board the
Robert E. Lee
was as wide awake as its captain, recording the events of the race and the passing scenes observed from the vessel’s decks:

The scene from time of departure till dark ... baffles description. As we steamed along the watery race track, the whole country on both sides of the river seemed alive with a strange excitement expressed in a variety of gestures, the waving of handkerchiefs, hats, running along the river shore as if to encourage the panting steamer, and now and then far off shouts come cheeringly over the waters, and were plainly heard above the roaring of the fires, the clatter of machinery, the dashing of the waters and the rushing of steam. All the life in the vicinity of the river appeared to be thoroughly aroused into the unusual activity by this struggle of two steamboats for the palm of speed. The settlements and plantations along the coast as we passed turned out their whole forces, and seemed to have taken a holiday in honor of our flying trip.

Up to and beyond Plaquemine men and boys in skiffs came out almost in our track to hail us with warm welcome and get a word, if possible, with one of the officers or crew. This is but a moment. They are struck by the swells and dashed and rocked away off towards the shore, far in our wake. As long as they are in sight they wave us adieu. The inhabitants all appear to live out of doors, or are crowded in the windows or on the housetops as we approach. The most lively interest is depicted in every countenance and is uttered in every voice.

At Baton Rouge, which we reached about 1 o’clock, this morning, there were still people on the wharf, but silence had nearly been restored on shore, and during the rest of the night nothing was to be noted but the still, anxious groups on board.
⁶

By the time the sun had risen on the new day, the
Robert E. Lee
was pulling farther ahead, and its unsleeping captain, unable to shake his worry over the boat’s machinery, went down into the engine room and asked Perkins to slow down, telling him they were well in front of the
Natchez
, that there was no need to run at full speed. Perkins replied that it wasn’t the
Natchez
he was thinking of. Rather it was the speed record for a trip from New Orleans to Natchez, which had been set by Leathers’s fourth
Princess
in 1856 and which he intended to beat. The
Lee
’s chief engineer was not concerned about the boat’s performance so far, and Cannon, apparently reassured, returned to his post on the upper deck.

On board the
Natchez,
another reporter from the
St. Louis Republican
, offering a different perspective of the race, observed that “The captain [Tom Leathers] is sleepless on deck, the pilots are nervous yet confident at the wheel, the engineers stand by their engines watching every movement of the machinery, and the firemen work like Trojans, and look like demons in the red glare of the furnaces.”
⁷
The anonymous reporter took time to notice the spectacle of the steamer racing through the darkness, “cleaving the river wide open,” as he put it. “The effect at night is simply grand,” he wrote. “The steamer plows on her watery way, puffing white clouds and streaming a constant current of fiery sparks from her chimney tops, bounded by blackness on either side. But the people on shore are sleepless, too, and send their greetings through the darkness as we pass.”
⁸

Leathers had been given a gold pocket watch as a trophy for his recordbreaking run from New Orleans to St. Louis less than two weeks earlier, when he had made the trip in three days, twenty-two hours and forty-five minutes, mere minutes faster than the old
J.M. White
had made it twenty-six years earlier. On that occasion, addressing an audience of well-wishers, Leathers had proclaimed with satisfaction, “Gentlemen, none of we older men will live to see this time beaten, and probably few of the younger ones.”
⁹
Now at about eleven-thirty
P
.
M
., standing on the boiler deck, staring over the
Natchez
’s bow, straining to see if the distance between the two boats was closing, he checked the watch as the
Natchez
passed the one-hundred-mile point upriver from New Orleans and concluded that the
Lee
, which had passed the hundredmile point six minutes earlier, had gained no more than half a mile on the
Natchez
after running for a hundred miles. Leathers’s boat had not reduced the
Lee
’s lead, but it had not let the gap substantially widen either.

Leathers checked his watch again as the
Natchez
reached Plaquemine, one hundred and thirteen miles from New Orleans. Making good speed, his boat then had covered thirteen miles, from the one-hundred-mile point, in forty-five minutes. Yet, as it raced toward Baton Rouge, it had not closed on the
Robert E. Lee
. At Baton Rouge Leathers looked at his watch once more. Eight hours and twenty-eight minutes had elapsed since he had passed St. Mary’s Market. And the
Lee
was still ten minutes ahead of him. The
St. Louis Republican
’s reporter, observing the
Natchez
’s captain, described the scene and the mood:

There was not much conversation. Capt. Leathers remained but a short time on the roof and then sat on the boiler deck absorbed in thought. The engineers watched carefully every movement, the firemen worked like Trojans, and looked like demons in the red glare of the furnaces....

Heavy swells from the Lee are still striking the shores, and, to confess it, impeding our progress. But the Natchez still plows on her way, puffing white clouds and streaming a myriad of sparks from her chimneys. A wide breadth of the river is lighted up in front of the boat.
¹⁰

Beyond Baton Rouge, the
Lee
’s lead diminished slightly. When the boats reached the mouth of the Red River, the next checkpoint above Bayou Sara, their traveling times from St. Mary’s Market were identical — twelve hours and fifty-six minutes — although the
Lee
, having started ahead of the hardcharging
Natchez
, remained in front. By the time it reached Stamps’s Landing, upstream of the Red River’s mouth, the swift
Robert E. Lee
had increased its lead again, gaining four minutes on the
Natchez
. It was two miles ahead. Two checkpoints later, at Briar’s Landing, the speeding
Lee
had widened its lead still more.

It was mid-morning on Friday when from the decks of the
Lee
the city of Natchez was sighted, standing atop the high bluff that rose from the river’s edge. It was at the Natchez waterfront that the six-prong gilded antlers, mounted on a carved deer’s head, were kept, the speed trophy awarded to the steamboat that made the fastest time between New Orleans and Natchez, then estimated at 296 river miles. Leathers had won the antlers — the horns, as they were called — for his record-setting run fourteen years earlier. He had made the trip in seventeen hours and thirty minutes, a time that many along the river believed impossible to beat. The
Robert E. Lee
was about to prove them wrong. Aboard the
Lee
, the St. Louis reporter wrote : “In a few minutes we will be opposite Natchez. The morning is beautiful, and everything is lovely.”
¹¹

The
Lee
, slowing down to take on fuel, approached the levee, “thronged all morning,” as one reporter wrote, “by immense and enthusiastic crowds of all colors and conditions,” and came abreast of the Natchez wharf just about 10:15
A
.
M
. The band that had been assembled at the waterfront, expecting to hail the city’s favorite in the race, the
Natchez
, as it glided in first, was so dismayed by the
Lee
’s arrival ahead of the
Natchez
, that it refused to play a note for Cannon and his boat. The spectators massed at the river’s edge were more sportsmanlike, though, breaking out into loud cheers. “Great crowds on the wharf,” the St. Louis newsman aboard the
Lee
reported, “and when we left, the wildest shouts went up. Every heart on board was touched with excitement. The tension of the nerves is continual and almost painful at times. Truly the
Lee
is a thing of life.”
¹²

The
Robert E. Lee
had made Natchez in seventeen hours and eleven minutes, beating the
Princess
’s record time by nineteen minutes. Bettors who had put their money on the
Lee
in this first important phase of the race were exultant. In Natchez, though, “betting immediately fell to zero,” the St. Louis reporter observed, “everybody wanting odds on the
Natchez
.”
¹³

The
Lee
slid by the wharf boat, a floating, covered dock moored in the river, without stopping, and the
Lee
’s Natchez agent, responding to shouts of “Take down those horns!” coming from passengers and crewmen aboard the
Lee
, jumped aboard with the horns, prettily trimmed with flowers and ribbons. The antlers made a handsome trophy, attached to a polished wood plaque with an inscription, apparently dictated by Leathers, that read: “Why Don’t You Take The Horns? Princess’ Time To Natchez, 17 Hours and 30 Minutes.” Cannon took the coveted horns and blew the
Robert E. Lee
’s steam whistle in acknowledgment.

But he didn’t land. The
Lee
merely slipped up between two barges loaded with sacks of coal and had the barges tied to the
Lee
as the sacks were unloaded onto the
Lee
while it continued upstream, all done by a prior arrangement made by the
Robert E. Lee
’s canny captain. Once the coal was aboard the
Lee
, the barges were cut loose and allowed to drift back to the Natchez waterfront.

By the time the
Natchez
arrived, eight minutes behind the
Lee
, and tied up to the wharf boat, Cannon and the
Lee
were steaming away in the distance, leaving the
Natchez
and its disappointed fans, some of them openly weeping, far behind. The
Natchez
did manage to beat the old record of the
Princess
, by eleven minutes, reaching the Natchez shore in seventeen hours and nineteen minutes from the starting point at St. Mary’s Market. But its time was not good enough to prevent the horns from passing into Cannon’s hands. And the trailing
Natchez
lost another eight minutes as it put ashore twelve dejected Natchez-bound passengers and took on fuel.