The Great American Steamboat Race

by Benton Rain Patterson

  Take the steamboat which I have just described, and you have her in her highest and finest, and most pleasing, and comfortable, and satisfactory estate....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 s
umptuous 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’.”

  The usual Mississippi River steamboat had four decks. The first, or low

  Stairway leading up from a typical steamboat’s boiler deck, the deck above its main deck, to the hurricane deck, or promenade deck. At right in this photograph is the purser’s, or clerk’s, office. Passengers reached the boiler deck by climbing gracefully curving stairways that rose from the steamer’s main deck near the bow of the boat (Library of Congress).

  est, was called the main deck, which stood about four feet above the surface of the river. That was where the boat’s machinery was mounted, with the boilers positioned forward and the engines positioned between the two huge paddle wheels. Some of the boats, of course, had a single paddle wheel, mounted on the stern. Also on the main deck were the galleys, space for freight and space for deck, or steerage, passengers, whose low fares entitled them to little more than passage and a sleeping spot on a cot, a bench or on the boards of the deck itself. Ten to eighteen feet above the main deck and reachable by a pair of curving stairways near the bow, was the boiler deck, or saloon deck, on which were the passenger staterooms, the barroom, the saloon — or main cabin — and the boat’s offices. A promenade, like a porch, encircled the staterooms on the outside and could be accessed from the staterooms, from the saloon or from gangways, allowing cabin passengers to stroll or sit — on benches or chairs — and watch the passing scenery on the river and along the shore.

  Interior of a stateroom. The grand saloon on either side was lined by staterooms with doors that opened into the saloon and also with doors that opened onto a porchlike promenade that encircled the boat’s superstructure, allowing first-class passengers to stroll or sit and watch the passing scenery on the river and along the shore (Library of Congress).

  Above the boiler deck was the hurricane deck, or promenade deck, with a cluster of cabins called the texas, in which the boat’s officers were quartered. On top of the texas stood the pilothouse, or wheelhouse, some fifty feet above the water, presenting a commanding view of the river that lay before the bow of the boat. (A common belief is that the texas was so called because in the 1840s staterooms were named after the nation’s states and the cabins that were occupied by the boat’s officers, a recent addition to the steamboat’s design, were named texas for the state of Texas, which in 1845 was the nation’s newest addition. Another explanation for the name is that the officers’ staterooms were the largest on the steamboats and therefore they received the name of the then-largest state, Texas. One other popular belief is that the cabins occupied by passengers and the boats’ officers were called staterooms because they were named after states. However, the term stateroom, or state-room, had been used to mean a grand room in a palace or mansion before it was ever applied to a cabin on a steamboat or ship.)

  A first-class ticket on a Mississippi River steamboat traveling upstream might cost as much as twelve and a half cents a mile, but about half that amount when the boat was headed downstream. In either case, fares were often negotiable with the captain, who in eagerness to take aboard as many paying passengers as possible would stop en route to pick them up when they hailed him from the shore, day or night.

  For passengers who were unable to foot the expense of a first-class ticket, travel on a Mississippi River steamboat was considerably more austere and mean than it was for cabin passengers. Negro slaves and steerage-class white passengers, whose passage from New Orleans to St. Louis might cost as much as three dollars each, were quartered on the main deck, finding room wherever they could in between stacks of freight, forbidden to ascend to the upper decks. For sleeping, they brought their own bedding or did without. The boat provided a stove for cooking, but the deck passengers had to supply their own food, which was usually sausage, dried fish, or crackers and cheese — and a bottle of whiskey to wash down all that dry food. The deck passengers included farmers who had given up trying to wrest a living from poor soil in the eastern U.S. and were seeking more promising farmland in the West, and immigrants straight from Europe, seeking new lives in a new land, looking for a job and a place to start. Some others were simply restless individuals on the lookout for something better, something different, often bringing their wives and young children along with them on the quest. Others were peddlers, traveling with their wares from town to town, wherever the boat would stop.

  Still others, particularly in the Mississippi steamboat’s early days, were flatboat or raft crewmen who had come down the river on their vessels, which had been broken up and sold as lumber at their destination, and were returning to their homes upriver aboard a steamboat. They were a raffish bunch who treated the steamboat ride as a boisterous vacation, swilling rum and singing and shouting and firing their pistols into the air throughout much of the night. The negro slaves traveling as deck passengers, some of them bought in New Orleans and on their way to new locations, some being taken to New Orleans to be sold, were, like the flatboat crewmen, also temporarily free from their usual hard work, and many of them made the most of their trip, singing and dancing and generally celebrating the time aboard the boat as if it were a holiday. Charles Dickens, the British novelist, traveled aboard a Mississippi River steamboat in 1842 and complained that the passengers on the main deck kept him awake at night with their noise, shooting guns and singing hymns.

  Music was one of the big attractions of Mississippi River steamboats. A brass band or an orchestra became standard equipment on the boats. It played for passengers in concerts and for dances during the voyage and it played for townspeople when the boat docked. Perhaps even more enjo
yable to passengers was the music made by the free Negroes who worked as waiters, barbers, porters and deckhands aboard the steamboats. “They played stringed instruments,” one observer commented, “and sang as only they could play and sing those haunting, joyfully sad melodies and hymns.”7 The calliope, or steam organ, or steam piano, was invented in 1855 (by Joshua C. Stoddard of Worcester, Massachusetts) and, although intended by its inventor to replace church bells, it soon found itself adopted by steamboat owners, who mounted the instruments on the exterior of the boats and had them played to charm not only the boats’ passengers but people along the shore, the distinctive, cheery sound audible many miles away from the river.