The Great American Steamboat Race Read online

  Steamboat Race

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  Steamboat Race

  The Natchez and the Robert E. Lee and the Climax of an Era

  BENTON RAIN PATTERSON

  McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Patterson, Benton Rain, 1929–

  The great American steamboat race : the Natchez and the Robert E. Lee and the climax of an era / Benton Rain Patterson.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-7864-4292-8 softcover : 50# alkaline paper

  1 . Natchez (Steamboat) 2. Robert E. Lee (Steamboat) 3. Steamboats — Mississippi River — History — 19th century. 4. River steamers — Mississippi River — History — 19th century. 5. Paddle steamers — Mississippi River — History — 19th century. 6. Marine engineering — Mississippi River Region — History — 19th century. 7. Shipbuilding — Mississippi River Region — History — 19th century. I. Title.

  VM625.M5P37 2009

  797.12' 5 — dc22 2009011919

  British Library cataloguing data are available ©2009 Benton Rain Patterson. All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  On the cover: The Great Mississippi Steamboat Race: From New Orleans to St. Louis, July ¡870 (Library of Congress) Manufactured in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

  To the memory of

  Robert Townsend Patterson, chief engineer on the New Orleans steamer New Camelia

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  Table of Contents

  Introduction 1

  Part One. The Big Event

  1•The Start 3

  2 • The Course 19

  3 • The Early Going 35

  Part Two. The Origins

  4 • The Pioneers 49

  5 • A Different Kind of Boat 65

  6 • Captain Shreve’s Design 77

  7 • The Proliferation 89

  Part Three. The Circumstances

  8 • The Sweet Life on the Mississippi 101

  9 • The Hard-Working Life 117

  10 • Owners and Officers 129

  11 • The Perils 145

  Part Four. The Outcome

  12 • On to Cairo 167

  13 • The Fog 178

  14 • Celebration in St. Louis 183

  vii viii Table of Contents

  Epilogue 194

  Chapter Notes 199

  Bibliography 203

  Index 206

  Introduction

  “Nothing,” the nineteenth-century steamboat historian E.W. Gould asserted, “so much interests the average American as rapid motion, and it is not confined to our nationality altogether either. The fastest sailing vessel, even a merchantman, always got the preference in the early days, if known to excel in speed. Then followed the clipper ships, which excited the admiration of the civilized world because of their speed.

  “Steam had no sooner been applied to navigation than the genius of the best mechanical skill was challenged to produce the best results in speed from a combination of steam power and model of vessels.... The principal question to be determined by all who had embarked in steam navigation was how much speed could be obtained.”1

  And what better way was there to demonstrate how much speed could be obtained, to show which was the fastest vessel, than to race the very fastest against each other?

  In the days following America’s Civil War two of the very fastest steamboats were the Robert E. Lee and the Natchez, both operating on the lower Mississippi River, each with a large following of customers and friends. The personal rivalry of their owner-captains and the public partisanship that the boats engendered grew so intense that a match between the two became inevitable. The resulting race won both boats a fame so widespread and enduring that no other steamboats would ever equal it. The race itself became so famous that it became a milestone in the history of America.

  The Natchez and the Robert E. Lee were quintessential Mississippi River steamboats, elegant specimens of the breed, built to tempt aboard passengers who could afford to travel in style, much like twenty-first-century cruise ships. Travel aboard a Mississippi River steamboat was, for those who could afford to go first class, an esthetic experience, providing days and nights of pleasure in an opulent floating palace.

  2 Introduction

  But unlike modern cruise ships, Mississippi River steamers had an indispensable practical function, far more important than pleasure or recreation. During many years of the nineteenth century, until the spread of railroads, the steamboat was the major means of transportation for both passengers and freight. The steamboat opened America’s mid-continent to settlement by providing access to the roadless western territories, carrying on its often crowded, boisterous main deck those courageous, hardy, sometimes desperate people who settled mid–America, the polyglotinous, multi-ethnic immigrants from abroad as well as restless and hopeful Americans moving westward from states along the eastern seaboard, all seeking new opportunity in a land of opportunity. For them the promise of America lay within its immense interior, which was reachable only on foot, through and across largely trackless woods and plains, or by boats steaming through the growing nation’s intricate network of rivers.

  The steamboat was the way in and the way out. Once on their land, the settlers, farmers and planters depended on the steamboat to take the fruits of their labors to market centers where they could be sold, and to bring from those market centers what people needed to survive or simply to make their lives better. People of the mid-continent turned the Mississippi River into a vibrant thoroughfare, and the steamboat was the vehicle that traveled upon it, transporting them and their goods. A common sight in communities along the river, the steamboat became an integral part of ordinary life in the nineteenth century.

  The Natchez and the Robert E. Lee were only two of the many, but because of the race they ran and the fame it gained them they have become symbols of all Mississippi River steamboats and of the steamboat’s time in history. Their story, their vying for pre-eminence, is not merely the story of two of the thousands of steamboats that plied the Mississippi’s muddy waters. It is the story of the Mississippi River steamboat itself, the vital, majestic creature of an American era.

  Here is that story, from the beginning.

  PART ONE. THE BIG EVENT

  • 1 •

  The Start

  It was the most massive crowd on Canal Street since Mardi Gras, despite the summer heat, which afternoon clouds and a light shower failed to abate. The Daily Picayune reporter covering the event observed that the city seemed to empty itself onto the levee, thousands of onlookers thronging to where New Orleans’s famous thoroughfare meets the mighty river. The St. Louis Republican reporter in town for the event said the levee in the area of Canal Street was so densely packed with people that there was practically a solid human mass from the river back a hundred yards or so to the first row of buildings.

  In upper-floor windows, on rooftops and on lacy iron balconies people assembled to watch the spectacle. Seven blocks away from the river, on St. Charles Street, as many as a dozen desperate onlookers climbed atop the dome of the St. Charles Hotel to get a clear view of the expected action. As far as the eye could see and farther, from Canal Street all the way u
ptown to Carrollton and beyond, eager spectators spread themselves out along the river’s edge, standing or sitting, squatting or lying wherever they managed to find viewing space, passing the time with food and drink bought from street vendors, suffering the crush gladly, knowing they were about to witness one of history’s great moments.

  Some spectators, bent on a close-up view of the racers, boarded steamers that had scheduled special excursions to carry paying customers as far as twenty miles up the river, following the boats as the race proceeded. The steamer Henry Tate had moved to an upriver vantage point, carrying on board a load of passengers, who had shelled out a dollar apiece for tickets, and a brass band to further enliven the festive atmosphere. A half dozen or so other steamers had joined the Henry Tate, all providing the river’s equivalent of ringside seats.

  Through the courtesy of the Mississippi Valley Transportation Company, the Picayune reporter became one of the passenger-spectators aboard

  The New Orleans riverfront in the mid– 1800s. By 1860 New Orleans had become the largest export shipping point in the world. In 1870, at the time of the historic steamboat race, it was still the No. 1 steamboat port in the nation (Library of Congress).

  the steam tug Mary Alice, which, like the other vessels, stood in the river waiting for the race to begin. Looking out over the broad expanse of water and across it toward the clusters of buildings in Algiers on the west bank, and noticing where the river lapped the muddy edge of the east bank nearby, the reporter could see that the river was low, as it had been for the past several days. He reported it at six feet and four inches below the high-water mark set eight years earlier.

  Steamboat activity at the New Orleans riverfront on this day was not so bustling as it once had been, during the bygone golden days of Mississippi River steamboats, but activity was not exactly languid. Steamboats — and cotton — had helped New Orleans become, by 1860, the largest export shipping point in the world, and in 1870 it was still the No. 1 steamboat port in the nation. Eight packets — as mail- and passenger-carrying steamboats were called — had arrived in the past twenty-four hours and were docked bow-first into the wharves, side by side, like gigantic animals feeding at a trough. The Mayflower and the Wade Hampton had come from the Ouachita River, the Bradish Johnson from Shreveport, the Hart Able and W.S. Pike from Bayou Sara, the John Kilgour from Vicksburg, and the Enterprise and B.L. Hodge from the Red River. Other packets, including the Mary Houston and the Great Republic, having arrived earlier, still lay at the wharf, taking on passengers and freight and due to depart on Saturday.

  Three departures were scheduled for this day: the Robert E. Lee, which had advertised that it was bound for Louisville, but which no one believed it was; the Natchez, bound for St. Louis, as everyone knew; and the Grand Era, bound for Greenville, Mississippi. The Natchez’s usual run was between New Orleans and St. Louis. The usual run of the Robert E. Lee was between New Orleans and Louisville. Ordinarily those two boats never left New Orleans on the same day. But on this day, Thursday, June 30, 1870, they were going to do something out of the ordinary.

  The customary departure time for steamboats leaving New Orleans was between four and five P.M., and their leaving invariably created a riverfront scene that, having once been witnessed, remained a vivid impression on those who had experienced it. The onetime steamboat pilot Samuel L. Clemens of Hannibal, Missouri, who quit steamboating and became author Mark Twain, long remembered the sights and sounds of the New Orleans waterfront departure scene and described them for the readers of his classic work, Life on the Mississippi:

  From three [ P.M.] onward they [the steamboats] would be burning rosin and pitch-pine (the sign of preparation), and so one had the picturesque spectacle of a rank, some two or three miles long, of tall, ascending columns of coal-black smoke; a colonnade which supported a sable roof of the same smoke blended together and spreading abroad over the city.

  Every outward-bound boat had its flag flying at the jack-staff, and sometimes a duplicate on the verge-staff astern. Two or three miles of mates were commanding and swearing with more than the usual emphasis; countless processions of freight barrels and boxes were spinning athwart the levee and flying aboard the stage-planks; belated passengers were dodging and skipping among these frantic things, hoping to reach the forecastle companionway alive...; women with reticules and bandboxes were trying to keep up with husbands freighted with carpet sacks and crying babies...; drays and baggage-vans were clattering hither and thither in a wild hurry, every now and then getting blocked and jammed together...; every windlass connected with every fore-hatch, from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping up a deafening whizz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and half-naked crews of perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring such songs as “De Las’ Sack! De Las’ Sack!”... By this time the hurricane and boiler decks of the steamers would be packed black with passengers. The “last bells” would begin to clang, all down the line...; in a moment or two the final warning came — a simultaneous din of Chinese gongs, with the cry, “All dat ain’t goin’, please to git asho’!”... People came swarming ashore, overturning excited stragglers that were trying to swarm aboard. One more moment later a long array of stage-planks was being hauled in....

  Now a number of the boats slide backward into the stream, leaving wide gaps in the serried rank of steamers.... Steamer after steamer straightens herself up, gathers all her strength, and presently comes swinging by, under a tremendous head of steam, with flag flying, black smoke rolling, and her entire crew of firemen and deck-hands (usually swarthy negroes) massed together on the forecastle ... all roaring a mighty chorus, while the parting cannons boom and the multitudinous spectators wave their hats and huzza! Steamer after steamer falls into line, and the stately procession goes winging its flight up the river.1

  As five o’clock approached, the clamor of departure on this day seemed even more boisterous than what Clemens remembered. Two of the steamboats about to shove off from the wharf were going to commence the most

  Steamboats lined up at the New Orleans wharves around 1870. Mark Twain captured the excitement of such New Orleans riverfront scenes in his classic work, Life on the Mississippi (Library of Congress).

  promoted, most talked about, most speculated over, most gambled on steamboat race in history.

  Everyone along the river, in towns, villages and cities and the spaces in between them, had heard about it, as had a great many in cities far from the banks of the Mississippi, across the country and across the seas. The race had captured the attention and imagination of almost everybody. And most of those nestled in the huge crowd of spectators, white and black, employer and employee, rich and poor, man and woman, boy and girl, had a favorite they were pulling for. All were expecting to see the beginning of the race of the century, pitting two of the biggest, speediest and best-known packets against each other, the Natchez versus the Robert E. Lee, running from New Orleans to St. Louis, twelve hundred river miles, as fast as their huge paddle wheels — and their captains — could drive them.

  The early-twentieth-century steamboat historians Herbert and Edward Quick, who lived at a time that was close to America’s steamboating era, evinced the feelings of many people of those days:

  To those who merely looked on, a steamboat race was a spectacle without an equal. To the people of the lonely plantations on the reaches of the great river, the sight of a race was a fleeting glimpse of the intense life they might never live. To see a well-matched pair of crack steamboats tearing past, foam flying, flames spurting from the tops of blistered stacks, crews and passengers yelling — the man or woman or child of the backwoods who had seen this had a story to tell to grandchildren.2

  The people of New Orleans, of course, where the race would start, were especially fascinated, even obsessed. The Picayune declared, “The whole town is given up to the excitement occasioned by the great race.... Enormous sums of money have been staked here on the result, not only in sportin
g circles but among those who rarely make a wager. Even the ladies have caught the infection, and gloves and bon bons, without limit, have been bet between them.”3 Among the people of New Orleans the Natchez was believed to be the favorite, it being considered a New Orleans boat and its owner being a year-round New Orleans resident.

  In other cities along the Mississippi and Ohio interest in the race was almost equally high as in New Orleans. The New York Times reported from Memphis that “the excitement over the race between the R.E. Lee and the Natchez is intense. The betting is heavy, with the odds in favor of the Lee.” In St. Louis, it reported, “The excitement over the steam-boat race is very great here this evening, and large amounts of money are staked....” And in Cincinnati: “The race between the steamers Natchez and R.E. Lee, on the Mississippi River, has created more of a sensation here today than anything of the kind that ever occurred. There has been a great deal of betting. Between $100,000 and $200,000 have doubtless been staked.”4

  There is no way of knowing how enormous was the total sum bet on the race, but it easily rose into the millions. Professional gamblers were having a field day. In New Orleans before the race began, they were giving odds on the Robert E. Lee. Seventy-five-dollars bet on the Natchez would return one hundred dollars if it beat the Lee.

  More than bets were at stake, though. Winning a head-to-head race, and thereby establishing itself as the fastest steamboat on the river, would be a public relations and marketing windfall, potentially bringing new freight and passenger business to the winner, and increased profits along with it. Losing the race, particularly if by a considerable time, would be a humbling if not humiliating experience for both the boat and its crew, and possibly a costly one in lost future revenue.

  Some of the backers of the race, influentials who had helped persuade the Robert E. Lee’s reluctant owner and captain, John W. Cannon, to agree to the contest, had still more in mind. The steamboat business was in a state of