The Great American Steamboat Race

by Benton Rain Patterson

  The calliope, however, received mixed reviews once passengers had experienced it while aboard a steamboat. One long-time pilot on the upper Mississippi, George Byron Merrick, although acknowledging that music was important to passengers, did not think the calliope’s tones made the sort of music that boosted the boats’ passenger business:

  In the flush times on the river all sorts of inducements were offered passengers to board the several boats for the up-river voyage. First of all, perhaps, the speed of the boat was dwelt upon.... After speed came elegance —“fast and elegant steamer”— was a favorite phrase in the advertisement....

  After elegance came music, and this spoke for itself. The styles affected by river steamers ranged from a calliope on the roof to a stringed orchestra in the cabin [saloon]. The “Excelsior,” Captain Ward, was the first to introduce the “steam piano” to a long-suffering passenger list. Plenty of people took passage on the “Excelsior” in order to hear the calliope perform; many of them, long before they reached St. Paul, wished they had not come aboard, particularly if they were light sleepers. The river men did not mind it much, as they were used to noises of all kinds, and when they “turned in” made a business of sleeping. It was different with most passengers, and a steam piano solo at three o’clock in the morning was a little too much music for the money. After its introduction on the “Excelsior,” several other boats armed themselves with this persuader of custom; but as none of them ever caught the same passenger the second time, the machine went out of fashion. Other boats tried brass bands; but while these attracted some custom they were expensive, and came to be dropped as unprofitable.

  The cabin [saloon] orchestra was the cheapest and most enduring, as well as the most popular drawing card. A band of six or eight colored men who could play the violin, banjo, and guitar, and in addition sing well, was always a good investment.... They also played for dances in the cabin, and at landings sat on the guards and played to attract custom. It soon became advertised abroad which boats carried the best orchestras, and such lost nothing in the way of patronage.8

  After-dinner activities aboard the steamers varied widely — and simultaneously. Passengers were allowed to amuse themselves as they pleased, so long as they did not infringe on the rights of others and did not interfere with

  A steamboat calliope. Music was one of the big attractions of Mississippi River steamboats, and the calliope, invented in 1855, soon became a standard feature on steamers. It was mounted on the boats’ exterior, and its distinctive, cheery sounds charmed not only the boat’s passengers but people along the shore (Library of Congress).

  the crew and the workings of the boat. “There might frequently be seen in the ladies’ cabin a group of the godly praying and singing psalms,” one traveler recalled, “while in the dining-saloon, from which the tables had been removed, another party were dancing merrily to the music of a fiddle, while farther along, in the social hall, might be heard the loud laughter of jolly carousers around the drinking bar, and occasionally chiming in with the sound of the revelry, the rattling of money and checks, and the sound of voices at the card-tables.”9

  Many steamboats had a rule that prohibited gambling after 10 P.M., but the rule was largely ignored, and it was not unusual for card games to last through the night and into the dawn of a new day. Some boats posted signs warning that gentlemen who played cards for money did so at their own risk. In the convivial atmosphere that prevailed after dinner in the saloon, members of the crew —“uncouth pilots, mates, and greasy engineers”10—sometimes joined well-dressed passengers at the card tables. The most common card games were poker, brag (similar to poker), whist, Boston (which required two decks of cards), and old sledge (also called seven-up). Other popular games included vingt-et-un (or blackjack), chuck (or chuck farthing, a cointossing game), three-card monte and faro.

  Of all the passengers who ever boarded a Mississippi River steamboat, none were more remembered, or more written about, than the professional gamblers. At first they were regarded merely as very good players and accepted by fellow passengers as such. “The card tables of a steamer were free to all persons of gentlemanly habits and manners,” George Byron Merrick wrote. “The gambler was not excluded from a seat there on account of his superior skill at play; or, at least, it was an exceedingly rare thing for one person to object to another on these grounds. Pride would not permit the humiliating confession.”11 Curiously, men who refused to associate with gamblers in ordinary circumstances ashore felt themselves in no way compromised by sharing a card table with them on a Mississippi River steamboat.

  Pots were not big on the upper Mississippi, the playing passengers not being the wealthy planters that many passengers on the lower Mississippi were. Some did come aboard wearing broad money belts, though, laden with twenty-dollar gold pieces, and gamblers were usually satisfied to pick up two or three hundred dollars a week from those gold-bearing passengers.

  Collusion was common. The professional gamblers often worked in pairs, coming aboard separately, pretending not to know each other, not speaking to each other until introduced, usually by an intended victim. They were convincing actors, playing a variety of roles to help lure suckers into a game. “At different times they represented all sorts and conditions of men — settlers, prospectors, Indian agents, merchants, lumbermen, and even lumber-jacks,” Merrick wrote, “and they always dressed their part, and talked it, too. To do this required some education, keen powers of observation, and an all-around knowledge of men and things. They were gentlemanly at all times — courteous to men and chivalrous to women. While pretending to drink large quantities of very strong liquors, they did in fact make away with many pint measures of quite innocent river water, tinted with the mildest liquid distillation of burned peaches.... They kept their private bottles of colored water on tap in the bar, and with the uninitiated passed for heavy drinkers.”12

  The professionals apparently cooperated in a sort of a gamblers’ fraternity that in effect granted informal franchises to particular individuals to work particular boats and discouraged encroachment by one gambler on the territory of another. Gamblers did occasionally switch from one steamboat to another, but only by agreement with their affected brethren.

  Over time, the professionals developed a successful modus operandi. Once they had lured one or more victims into “a friendly game,” the professionals, in the early hands of the game, would deliberately and cheerfully lose large pots to each other, and when the game had proceeded to the point where the intended victims felt comfortable and confident, one of the professionals would announce that the boat had reached his town and would disembark at, say, Prescott, Wisconsin, or Hastings, Minnesota, or Stillwater, Minnesota, and his partner would continue on to St. Paul, with the intended victims still at the card table with him, now ready to be fleeced.

  “The chief reliance of the gamblers,” steamboat traveler John Morris related, “lay in the marked cards with which they played. No pack of cards left the bar until it had passed through the hands of the gambler who patronized the particular boat that he ‘worked.’ The marking was called ‘stripping.’ This was done by placing the high cards — ace, king, queen, jack, and tenspot — between two thin sheets of metal, the edges of which were very slightly concaved. Both edges of the cards were trimmed to these edges with a razor; the cards so ‘stripped’ were thus a shade narrower in the middle than those not operated upon; they were left full width at each end. The acutely sensitive fingers of the gamblers could distinguish between the marked and the unmarked cards, while the other players could detect nothing out of the way in them.”13 The professional gambler might spend hours stripping the cards in his stateroom, then replace them in their cartons, reseal the cartons and return them to the bar to be repurchased later, the bartender obviously being in collusion with the gamblers.

  The deft hands of the professional gambler, who by the 1850s was perceived by Mississippi steamboat passengers as an ipso facto card sharp — rather
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  George H. Devol, whose daring exploits made him one of the most famous Mississippi River steamboat gamblers. Many steamboats had a rule that prohibited gambling after 10 P.M., but the rule was largely ignored, and it was not unusual for card games to last through the night and into dawn of the next day. The most common card games were poker, brag, whist, Boston, blackjack and chuck (Library of Congress).

  than merely an unusually skillful player — were the key to his sure-thing success at cards. Dealing from the bottom of the deck in order to give predetermined hands to anyone at the table, was a technique believed to have been developed by a man named Wilson and first made its appearance on the Mississippi and other western rivers around 1834.

  Detection, or even suspicion, of cheating was the chief occupational hazard of the Mississippi River steamboat gambler. Stories about threats to the gambler’s life abound. One gambler, who had been particularly successful happened to overhear several of his victims conspiring to kill him and take back the money they had lost to him. He slipped away and found a place to hide near the pilot house, then bribed the boat’s pilot to have him pull over close to the river bank at the first opportunity and let the gambler jump off the

  boat. The pilot did so, and the gambler leaped from the boat. He landed in shallow water and sank to his waist in the mud of the river bottom, trapped by the muck while his angry victims, having discovered his escape, began firing pistols at him. The steamboat continued on its way, and the gambler was soon out of range of the gunfire. He was finally rescued by slaves who had been working in a nearby field and were drawn to the river bank by the sounds of the gunfire. Responding to his yells for help, they got a long pole and pulled him to safety. He then waited on the bank for another passing steamboat to stop and pick him up.

  That same gambler, George H. Devol, who had begun his career on the Mississippi River as a steamboat cabin boy, was later in a similarly dangerous situation aboard another boat he was working. The men he had fleeced had become drunk and set out to find him and recoup their losses. He came out of his hiding place on the boat long enough to find some dirty clothing, which he put on, then smeared his face with grime and mixed in with the boat’s roustabouts on the main deck. When the boat tied up at its next stop, he hefted a piece of freight and fell in with the roustabouts filing down the stage, hauling freight ashore. Thus he escaped once more, while his menacing victims searched for him on the upper decks.

  In his memoir Devol told his own story of outwitting a desperate passenger who pulled a pistol on him after losing his entire bankroll to Devol playing monte, a game in which three cards are placed on the table face up and the bettor, after selecting one of the cards and having the dealer shuffle and manipulate them face down, then must pick from the three face-down cards the one he had selected:

  I was playing monte one night on the Robert E. Lee when a fellow stepped up to the table and bet me $800.... When he had lost his money and spent a few moments studying, he whipped out a Colt’s navy [pistol] and said, “See here, friend, that is all the money I have got, and I am going to die right here but I will have it back.”

  I coolly said, “Did you think I was going to keep the money?”

  He replied, “I knew very well you would not keep it. If you had, I would have filled you full of lead. I am from Texas, sir,” and the man straightened himself up.

  Pulling out a roll of money, I said, “I want to whisper to you.” He put his head down, and I said, “...I didn’t want to give you the money before all these people because then they would all want their money back, too. But you offer to bet me again, and I will bet you $800 against your pistol.”

  That pleased him. “All right,” he said, and the $800 and the pistol went up in my partner’s hands. Over went the wrong card. I grabbed the pistol, and told my partner to give me the stake money. Pulling the gun on him [the Texan], “Now,” I said, “you’ve acted the wet dog about this and I will not give you a cent of your money, and if you cut any more capers, I will break your nose.”14

  The gambler wasn’t always the winner, though. He could be outsmarted occasionally. The hero of one story, apparently an old one on the river, was a bank clerk who left New Orleans bound for Pittsburgh on bank business, carrying $100,000 in cash in his trunk. Several professional gamblers found out about the clerk’s mission and bought tickets on the same boat with him. Once the trip started, it wasn’t long before the gamblers had drawn the clerk into a game of brag, at which they allowed him to win several hands to set him up for the kill. At what they figured was the right moment, he was dealt a very good hand, and one of the professionals was dealt an even better hand. The betting went back and forth between the clerk and the professional until at last the clerk had bet all the money that he had on the table. At that point the gambler raised him five thousand dollars and when the clerk said he was out of money and asked the gambler to show his hand, the gambler refused and demanded the clerk come up with five thousand dollars to see his bet or forfeit the pot.

  “I go you five thousand better and give you five minutes to raise the money,” the gambler told him.

  The clerk slowly got up from the table and strode to his stateroom, went in and unlocked his trunk, then returned to the table with a package containing the money that he was taking to Pittsburgh. “You will not give me a sight for my money?” the clerk asked the gambler.

  “No, sir,” the gambler replied. “I went five thousand dollars better and gave you five minutes to raise the money. One minute of the time remains.”

  “Then, sir,” the clerk declared, tossing the money package onto the table, “I see your five thousand and go you ninety-five thousand dollars better — and give you five minutes to raise the money!”

  Unable to come up with that huge amount, the gambler and his partners abruptly withdrew from the table, leaving the pot — and the money package — to the clerk. At the boat’s next stop, the gamblers got off to return to New Orleans, outmaneuvered and several thousand dollars lighter, but ready to take a new ride on another grand steamboat.

  •9• The Hard-Working Life

  William Wells Brown was born into slavery in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1814 and when he was in his twenties, he worked aboard the Mississippi River steamboats Missouri, Enterprize and Chester, and on the Missouri River steamer Otto for a while. In 1847, after fleeing to freedom in Ohio and later having found a home in Boston, he wrote his autobiography, giving glimpses of life on the Mississippi as he saw it.

  Brown was the son of a white plantation owner and a black slave woman and was sold as a child to a relative of his father. He moved with his new master from Kentucky to Missouri and was hired out to a Major Freeland, who in turn hired him out to work aboard the steamer Missouri, which ran between St. Louis and Galena, Illinois. In his book, a slender volume titled The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Brown calls that steamboat assignment “the most pleasant time for me that I had ever experienced.” He later was hired out to the captain of the Enterprize to work as a waiter. “My employment on board,” he wrote, “was to wait on gentlemen, and the captain being a good man, the situation was a pleasant one to me — but in passing from place to place, and seeing new faces every day, and knowing they could go where they pleased, I soon became unhappy, and several times thought of leaving the boat at some landing place and trying to make my escape to Canada.”

  Although he apparently received little or no ill treatment himself while working as a waiter, he got a close look at how other slaves were treated and the conditions in which they were hopelessly trapped. It was the cargoes of fellow slaves that bothered him most. “On our downward passage,” he recalled, “the boat took on board, at Hannibal, a drove of slaves, bound for the New Orleans market. They numbered from fifty to sixty, consisting of men and women from eighteen to forty years of age. A drove of slaves on a southern steamboat, bound for the cotton or sugar regions, is an occurrence so com

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  mon that no one, not ev
en the passengers, appear to notice it, though they clank their chains at every step.

  “There was on the boat a large room on the lower deck,” Brown wrote, “in which the slaves were kept, men and women, promiscuously — all chained two and two, and a strict watch kept that they did not get loose; for cases have occurred in which slaves have got off their chains, and made their escape at landing-places, while the boats were taking in wood — and with all our care, we lost one woman who had been taken from her husband and children and having no desire to live without them, in the agony of her soul jumped overboard and drowned herself. She was not chained.” The part of the boat where the slaves were kept, Brown noted, giving an idea of the conditions under which the slaves traveled, was almost impossible to keep clean.

  Brown was but one of many slaves who worked aboard Mississippi River steamboats. Historian Thomas C. Buchanan posits that if the crews of the 93 steamboats docked at St. Louis in September 1850 were representative of the 700 to 1,000 steamboat crews working on the western rivers by the middle 1800s, there were about 2,000 to 3,000 slaves and 1,000 to 1,500 free blacks at work on western steamboats at any given time. “The crew lists of these 93 boats,” Buchanan reports, “indicate that 230 free blacks (6 percent) and 441 slave workers (12 percent) out of a total workforce of 3,627 toiled on these vessels.”

  The remainder of the steamers’ crews were composed of American-born whites (43 percent), Irish-born (24 percent), German-born (11 percent) and 3 percent from an assortment of other foreign countries. The figures also show that 57 percent of steamboat crewmen worked as deckhands, 20 percent were cabin workers, and 1 percent were independent contractors, working for themselves as barbers or bartenders. The 2 percent of the crew members who were women worked as chambermaids.1 The rest of the crew members were the boats’ officers.