Read The Great American Steamboat Race Online
Authors: Benton Rain Patterson
The Great American Steamboat Race (8 page)
Leathers then rushed the
Natchez
back out into mid-river to resume the race. Try as desperately as he might, though, to close the distance between him and the
Robert E. Lee
, he was finding that the
Natchez
, with its thirtyfour-inch cylinders, lacked sufficient drive to outrun the
Lee
, powered by forty-inch cylinders, on the river’s long straightaway.
News of the
Robert E. Lee
’s record-breaking feat quickly spread by telegraph to New Orleans and elsewhere and was made public . The
Picayune
reported, “At an early hour ... a large crowd of eager persons gathered around the Picayune Office to hear the news, and all over the city the most intense interest was manifested. What with the shouting of the news boys — each of whom had something staked on the result — and the cheering whenever a new dispatch from up the river came in, one was forcibly reminded of the war times just after some tremendous engagement.”
14
Leathers, outraced to Natchez, now conceded that he had misjudged the
Lee
’s ability. “I’ve underestimated her power,” he confessed, but then seemed to grow more determined than ever. Above Natchez the Mississippi narrowed and became more twisting. The
Lee
may have had an advantage on the broad, straight sections of the river below Natchez, but the sleeker, more maneuverable
Natchez
, Leathers believed, would have the advantage now in channels studded with small islands and sand bars and salients thrusting out from the banks. Besides, the
Natchez
, he was certain, had the two best pilots on the Mississippi, Frank Clayton and Mort Burnham. The race now would be not simply a contest of speed but of piloting skill. It was far from over.
Up ahead were the towns of Cole’s Creek, Waterproof, Rodney and St. Joseph, spotting the riverbanks in Louisiana and Mississippi. St. Joseph, Mississippi, a frequent stop, was the home of Ed Snodgrass, a merchant who held the distinction of being a friend of both Cannon and Leathers, and loving a bit of mischief, he delighted in passing on to each the insults of the other when their boats tied up at the St. Joseph landing. Leathers had recently had a painful, bothersome carbuncle develop on his back, suffering so severely that he brought his doctor along with him on the
Natchez
. Seeing him in his torment, Snodgrass had sympathized, but after the
Natchez
departed and Cannon arrived on the
Robert E. Lee
, he eagerly informed Cannon of Leathers’s condition.
“A carbuncle, huh?” Cannon responded.
“Yes,” Snodgrass answered.
“Well,” Cannon said, “you tell the old
blankety-blank-blank
that I had
When Cannon took a misstep aboard the
Robert E. Lee
one time, he fell to the deck and broke his collarbone. That news reached Snodgrass and was passed along to Leathers, who instructed Snodgrass to tell Cannon, “I wish it had been his
blankety-blank
neck.”
15
After passing St. Joseph, despite its best efforts to catch up, the
Natchez
was still more than eight minutes behind the
Robert E. Lee
. To make matters worse, it had to make a stop at Grand Gulf, Mississippi, while the
Lee
would be able to keep up its steady pace. At Grand Gulf, which it reached a little past 5:15
P
.
M
. on Friday, the
Natchez
took on ten passengers who were Captain Leathers’s regular customers and who were making their annual trip north. They had booked passage on the
Natchez
on its previous trip, and Leathers, true to his word and the notice he had placed in the
Picayune
, was taking care of his customers. But he lost another eight minutes in getting the passengers and their trunks and other baggage aboard, which could only have further distressed him, having learned that the
Lee
had steamed past the landing twenty minutes earlier.
For all his braggadocio, gruffness and intimidating manner, Tom Leathers had a heart that could be touched, and his faithfulness to his Grand Gulf passengers was but one example. His generosity showed in the number of times he had given free passage to ministers, priests and nuns and to individuals who were desperate for transportation but unable to pay. Sometimes he even put them in staterooms aboard the
Natchez
. The professional gambler George Devol, a frequent passenger on Leathers’s boats, once came upon a woman who needed passage for herself and her six children but was unable to pay the price of the tickets. Moved by the woman’s plight, Devol doffed his top hat and passed it among the
Natchez
’s passengers and officers while the boat was docked. According to Devol, all of them put something in the hat except for one man. Devol then took the hatful of bank notes and silver coins to Leathers, standing on the hurricane deck, showed it to him, told him about the poor woman and said what he had collected should be enough to pay for tickets for the woman and her kids. Leathers, though, refused to take the money. “Give the money to the woman,” he told Devol. He then instructed the
Natchez
’s chief clerk, Samuel Ayles, to book the family into a stateroom and treat them as if they had paid the full first-class fare.
Devol made his way back to the woman, gave her the money he had collected and returned to the
Natchez
’s saloon, where he took over a table and opened up a game of three-card monte. One of the first players he attracted was the man who had declined to contribute when Devol passed his hat. Devol took him for eight hundred dollars, to the delight of the other passengers, who taunted him, one of them asking, “Aren’t you sorry you didn’t give something to the woman before you lost your money?”
The man complained to Leathers, to no avail. Leathers refused him both help and sympathy.
16
After Grand Gulf came Hard Times, Louisiana, and then Vicksburg would be next. The St. Louis reporter on the
Natchez
narrated the voyage :
The scenes on board, as we witness the crowds and hear the shouting, cannot be portrayed. At this hour we are approaching Vicksburg, the Lee being still considerably ahead. But we are surely, though slowly lessening the distance.
Sometimes in a long stretch of clear river she is plainly in sight, then a bend shuts her out, all but her smoke, which hangs away off northward like a dense cloud; then an island or a sudden projection of woodland hides all traces of our lively rival from our view. We feel safe but keep wonderfully busy, because we know she is there going like lightning. There is life and wakefulness and speed and determination in the swiftly following vessel, which will give us the victory before we are done with her. These occasional glimpses of the Lee seem to give the Natchez more muscle and force her to her very best.
17
The
Natchez
had to make another stop at Vicksburg, to discharge seventeen passengers and take on more coal. On reaching Vicksburg, Leathers checked his watch and marked his time from St. Mary’s Market at twentyfour hours and forty-two minutes. He had gained time on the
Lee
, but was still at least eight minutes behind. Like Cannon at Natchez, Leathers had barges loaded with coal waiting for him at the Vicksburg wharf and he tied them to the
Natchez
, pulling them alongside as he swung his boat back into the current. When the coal, packed in hundred-pound sacks, had been transferred to the decks of the
Natchez
, he cut the barges loose and resumed full speed, stalwart in his confidence that he could catch up to and overtake the
Robert E. Lee
.
The
Lee
had made Vicksburg in twenty-four hours and thirty-eight minutes from St. Mary’s Market and had refueled on the run as it had done at Natchez and as the
Natchez
was to do behind it. Evidently now feeling a sense of triumph, Captain Cannon himself penned the message to be telegraphed to New Orleans, giving the elapsed time from St. Mary’s Market and noting that the
Lee
was “16 minutes ahead of
Natchez
.”
News of the
Lee
’s continuing lead was received in New Orleans with jubilation. The
Picayune
published a special edition, an extra, to keep its readers up to date. “When the extra
Picayune
was issued,” the newspaper’s reporter wrote, “with the announcement of the position of the steamers at Vicksburg, the excitement, if possible, increased, and cheer on cheer went up for the ‘Bobby Lee,’ till it seemed as though the people were holding a grand jubilee.... The friends of the ‘Natchez’ still hope that she may recover her lost time, and lead at Cairo, but there can be no doubt the chances are now in favor of the ‘Lee.’
“The next point from which they will be telegraphed is Helena,” the
Picayune
writer continued warily, “and there is no telling what may occur before that point and Memphis are gained.”
18
•
4 •
The Pioneers
By the time he reached his fifties, Robert R. Livingston had assembled an impressive resume. He was a member of the five-man committee named to draft the Declaration of Independence (the four other members being John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Thomas Jefferson, who headed the committee). He was elected to the New York Congress in 1776 as a representative from Dutchess County and he served on the committee that wrote a constitution for the new state of New York. The New York Congress appointed him chancellor of the state, to preside over the state’s Chancery Court, and on April 30, 1789, as chancellor of New York, he administered the oath of office to George Washington when Washington was inaugurated as the new nation’s first president. In 1801 Livingston was appointed by President Thomas Jefferson to be the United States minister to France, the position from which he negotiated the Louisiana Purchase.
Widely considered both brilliant and learned, Livingston was elected the first president of the New York Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures following its organization in 1791. He liked to think of himself as a practical scientist and he devoted two hundred acres of his vast estate on the east side of the Hudson River, Clermont, to agricultural experiments, which included using gypsum in the cultivation of corn, buckwheat and clover. He also conducted experiments to improve the breeds of his cattle and sheep.
In 1797 Livingston’s active mind lighted on the notion that he could build–or, rather, have built — a boat that would be powered by a steam engine. It wasn’t a new idea, Leonardo da Vinci having been possibly the first to imagine one and an obscure inventor named David Ramsay having received a patent for one in 1618 and another in 1630.
1
Nothing came of those ideas, though, except their survival as possibilities in the inventive minds of persons who wished to find a way, as it was put in one patent application, of “making of Shipps to saile without the assistance of Wynde or Tyde.”
2
Another early steamboat was proposed by an English physician, John Allen, who described and patented it in 1729. Another was devised in 1736 by an English clock repairman named Hulls, whose creation, it was said, looked more like a clock than a boat. In 1760 a Swiss named Genevois came up with an idea for a boat that would be propelled by a watchlike works that would be wound by the force of steam. Throughout the remainder of the eighteenth century a succession of inventors — or men who hoped to become inventors — proposed a variety of steamboat schemes, most of them coming to nought.
The existence then of workable steam engines was keeping the steamboat dream alive. The Newcomen engine, named for its inventor, English blacksmith Thomas Newcomen, had been developed in the early 1700s, with a boiler positioned directly below a cylinder that contained one large piston. Steam entered the cylinder from the boiler and drove the piston upward, and when the piston reached the top of the cylinder, water was sprayed into the cylinder to dissipate the steam and create a vacuum, causing atmospheric pressure to draw the piston down to the bottom of the cylinder again, and the cycle was then repeated, the piston’s action providing continuous movement that could be applied to a number of uses, especially including pumping water out of mines. The steamboat devised and patented by the clock repairman Hulls in 1736 used a Newcomen engine to drive a paddle wheel. There is no record, however, of the boat’s having been built.
In 1783 a boat powered by a two-cylinder Newcomen engine and built by a French nobleman, Claude-François-Dorothée Jouffroy d’Abbans, actually proved workable in a short run on the River Saone at Lyons, France. It thus became the first boat to go against the current under its own power, unaided by wind or wave or the muscle of man or beast. For fifteen minutes, billowing smoke and sparks from the fire beneath its boiler, the vessel moved upriver at a speed that was as fast as a man could walk, cheered on by crowds gathered along the riverbanks. Then the boat’s bottom planks, taking a terrific beating from the pounding of the pistons, broke loose, opening the hull to a torrent of river water. What was more, the boiler’s seams burst, sending a cloud of steam into the air and killing the engine. But despite it all, Jouffroy managed to guide the stricken vessel to the river bank, where he leaped safely to shore, satisfied that he had achieved success for his invention. The French government, however, to which he was looking for additional financing to try again, refused to accept his account of his boat’s trial run, and when France exploded in revolution in 1789, Jouffroy fled the country, his experiments ended.