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.
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
a brother — a bigger, stronger man than I am — and he had one of them things and died in two weeks.”
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 shut
s 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.”
The Great American Steamboat Race Page 6