Among the crowd, absorbed with the race, rumors, all false, were rife. One had it that the Robert E. Lee had broken down and was unable to continue the race. Another was that the larboard wheel housing of the Natchez had been blown off and that the Lee was towing the Natchez. Still another claimed that the Natchez was gaining on the Lee and that Captain Cannon had despaired of winning the race. Other rumors asserted that the recent telegraphic message reporting that the Lee had passed Helena fifty-four minutes ahead of the Natchez was a fraud perpetrated by friends of the Lee who had tampered with the telegraph wire.
The Lee had been expected to arrive about nine P.M.— despite Captain Cannon’s promising only to make Memphis by eleven — and the steamer Connecticut had left the Memphis wharf earlier that evening carrying a capacity load of passengers, at two dollars a head, all intent on seeing the two boats steam by. At ten P.M. the Connecticut was still out in the river, its passengers waiting and wondering where the racing boats were. The reporter covering the event at the Memphis waterfront seemed to grow as anxious as the other spectators:
1 0 P.M. The boats are not in sight yet. The crowd on the bluff in front of the river is immense. Nothing like it has been seen in this city for very many years. Seats have been impromptued for the ladies, and the whole front of the city looks like one vast amphitheatre, and the utmost interest is manifested on all sides.
Betting is very heavy, with the chances slightly in favor of the Lee. But experienced steamboatmen claim that the Natchez can more than make up her lost hour above this point, and great confidence is still manifested by the backers of the natty champion.
Tugs have been stationed in the river with barges of coal ever since 8 o’clock, but up to this hour nothing has been heard of either boat.
Old men who have not been to the levee for years came out on this occasion, to gaze upon the magnificent spectacle. Carriages, hacks, buggies and every specie of vehicle crowded the levee. Bonfires are prepared and will be fired as soon as the boats come in sight.6
The people of Memphis, the city itself, were planning a spectacular welcome for the race’s leader, which at last report was the Robert E. Lee. Not only the cheering crowds, the artillery salutes and the bonfires, but a breathtaking fireworks display were awaiting the Lee, the fireworks to be set off the moment the Lee was spotted clattering and splashing up the river, its cabin lights glowing from a distance, gleaming through the night’s blackness.
Then suddenly at twenty minutes past ten shouts of “Here she comes!” burst from the crowd as the lights of an approaching steamer, still far off, appeared and all eyes turned downriver. It was the signal that the celebrants had been waiting for. The barrels filled with tar were set ablaze, their flames quickly leaping into the night, firecrackers popped, cannons thundered, and barrages of skyrockets shot up, brightening the dark sky with brilliant color — an altogether dazzling winner’s welcome to the city of Memphis. But as the approaching steamer came closer, the cheering spectators along the riverfront could see it wasn’t the Robert E. Lee. It wasn’t the Natchez either.
The Thompson Dean had left New Orleans a few days before the Lee and the Natchez, making its regular, comparatively unheralded run between New Orleans and Memphis, and here it came, as if crashing the party, its crew and
Riverfront at Memphis in 1862. The spectacular welcome that the people of Memphis planned for whichever boat was in the lead when the racers reached Memphis was set off prematurely when in the darkness the excited crowd mistook the steamer Thompson Dean for the Robert E. Lee (Library of Congress).
passengers doubtlessly embarrassed by the mistaken fuss it had set off, its captain sounding its whistle in sheepish response as the boat slowed and glided up to the wharf.
The cannons then were reloaded, and a search for more fireworks was begun. The premature display was not entirely wasted, however. So brilliantly arresting were the fireworks that those on board the Robert E. Lee could see them in the sky as the Lee came by Presidents Island, in the great bend of the river just below Memphis.
A half hour later, at 11 P.M., the reporter in Memphis, recording every new, significant occurrence at the waterfront — although not bothering to mention the crowd’s awkward mistake — told his readers: “A bright light is just coming into view around President’s Island, six miles from the city. It is believed to be the Lee.”
This time it was the Lee. Quickly the reporter added to his dispatch: “11:04— The Lee has just arrived and is taking coal barges in tow. Enthusiasm is immense. The crowd is cheering, cannons firing and bonfires blazing.”7
Two more terse adds to his dispatch told the rest of the story:
11 :10— The Lee has just left. Such an ovation has never been given to any boat before. The people are wild and bets are freely offered that she will beat the Natchez to Cairo one hour and fifteen minutes.
12:13 — The Natchez has just passed. The crowd is fast dispersing and a day of great excitement is over.8
The Natchez had stopped long enough to put fourteen passengers ashore, then had slipped back out into the river and taken on coal from a pair of barges that had been waiting for it, losing another seventeen minutes in so doing. By the time both boats had passed Memphis, the Lee’s enthusiasts, seeing its big lead, were so ecstatic over the race’s progress that they were offering odds of ten to one that the Lee would reach St. Louis first.9
The course northward from Memphis took the racing steamers past and through the group of islands called Paddy’s Hen and Chickens, site of the disastrous explosion and fire aboard the Sultana five years earlier, and twisted through the narrow, shallow channels in the darkness, which the Natchez’s adherents must have thought favored their boat, with its shallower draft. However, as the Natchez, running at racing speed again, steamed into the night, it ran into more bad luck, plowing into shoals again, off island No. 41 (the forty-first island in the river, counting downstream from Cairo), scraping its already bruised hull and once more forcing its pilot to back up repeatedly and churn loose from the river’s muddy bottom. The result was more lost time.
Through the labyrinth of islands the Natchez continued, threading its way past island No. 38, where it executed a sharp turn, then past Devil’s Bend and No. 37 and at last emerging onto a straight stretch that let it resume full speed.
Around five-thirty on Sunday morning, July 3, it drew abreast of Fort Pillow, then, just above the fort, it reached Plum Point, where on the morning of May 10, 1862, the Confederacy’s meager collection of civilian steamboats converted into warships to defend the Mississippi — the General Bragg (formerly the Mexico), General Beauregard (formerly the Ocean), General Sterling Price (formerly the Laurent Millaudon), General Sumter (formerly the Junius Beebe), General Lovell (formerly the Hercules), General Jeff Thompson (former name unknown), General Van Dorn (former name unknown) and the Little Rebel (formerly the R & J Watson)— won their lone victory over a Union fleet of ironclad gunboats, then had fallen back to Memphis to face a devastating defeat four weeks later.
On the Natchez raced, through another set of islands scattered in a narrow stretch of river, then back onto a wide straightaway, past Needham’s Island, which once had been a salient projecting into the river but now, cut off from the Arkansas shore by erosion, an island in the stream, then on beyond islands 21 and 20, then past Nos. 19 and 18, opposite the Missouri state line on the western shore.
Near island No. 14, shortly before Sunday noon, the Natchez came upon the steamer Belle of Memphis, approaching from upriver. While it was still a distance away, the Belle of Memphis courteously stopped her engines and paddle wheels to give the Natchez calm water as it steamed by, then saluted the racer with a whistle blast, which was returned by the Natchez.
At No. 14 Captain Leathers again consulted his watch. Two days, eighteen hours and sixteen minutes had elapsed since he had sped the Natchez past St. Mary’s Market, making the present run two hours and forty-two minutes better than the boat’s previously best time — b
ut still running behind the Robert E. Lee.
The Lee had passed No. 14 almost exactly an hour earlier and was about fifteen miles in front of the Natchez. Passing the Tennessee-Kentucky border on the eastern shore, the Lee steamed on toward New Madrid, Missouri, on the west bank, and reached it around one P.M. Then came a straight, twelvemile stretch that ended at island No. 10, situated in an S-shaped curve above New Madrid. Island 10 was another memorable Civil War site, where the guns of a Confederate fortification had checked the Union Navy’s advance down the Mississippi until the U.S. gunboat Carondelet bravely ran past it. The Carondelet was captained by Commander Henry Walke, a daring and imaginative steamboat naval officer who insulated his vessel with cordwood, hawsers and chain and tied a coal barge loaded with hay to the gunboat’s larboard side to ward off shot as the Carondelet steamed defiantly downriver to the right of the island on the night of April 4, 1862. On April 6 the Carondelet, from its position below No. 10, turned its guns on the island’s batteries and, joined by the gunboat Pittsburg, knocked out several of them. The Confederates, seeing their position was no longer tenable, withdrew from the island and abandoned their fortification, opening the way for the U.S. gunboats’ drive on Memphis.
At island No. 8, roughly a thousand miles from New Orleans, some of Cannon’s friends aboard the Robert E. Lee noted its elapsed time since passing St. Mary’s Market as two days, twenty-one hours and seventeen minutes and computed the Lee’s average speed at more than fourteen miles an hour since the start of the race.
As the Lee passed No. 8, the town of Hickman, Kentucky, came in sight on the east side of the river. From Hickman a St. Louis Republican reporter filed the latest dispatch on the race :
The Lee passed the wharf here at 3:4 1 P.M. [Sunday], railroad time, hurrying with unparalleled velocity. Clouds of spray were right and left by her hurrying bow, and the air was blackened with dense columns of smoke that issued from the heated chimneys. When the Lee appeared, the smoke from the Natchez was hardly visible twenty miles or more below. The whole population of the place — men, women and children — had been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the racers, and never before was there such a multitude upon the river banks as on this bright Sabbath afternoon.... As the Lee came up, the multitude greeted her with cheers loud and long. Two cannons, placed upon the wharf, were fired at short intervals, and the excitement of the multitude that thronged the river shore for a mile or more was boundless....10
The reporter at Hickman also gave news of the Natchez, as well as his opinion of its chances: “The Natchez passed up at 4:45. There was great cheering, and the guns were again fired. The Natchez was gaining steadily on the Lee as she passed, but she is hopelessly beaten.”11
From Columbus, Kentucky, the site of another strategic fortification lost by Confederate troops guarding the Mississippi, the St. Louis Republican’s reporter telegraphed:
The patience of the good people of this city and vicinity, who have been congregated along the river front nearly all day, has just been rewarded. The Lee passed at 4:41, apparently in splendid condition, driving through the water like some magic marine monster. She was munificently cheered. The Natchez is not heard from.12
The reporter later telegraphed to say: “The Natchez passed here at 5:51 1⁄2.”13 Above Columbus came Lucas Bend, where island Nos. 4, 3 and 2 clustered, tightening the channel of the river. Then came island No. 1, and beyond it stood Cairo behind its protective levees.
At Cairo, at the juncture of the Ohio and Mississippi, crowds of onlookers had poured into town, some traveling considerable distances by train, to view the passing of the steamers, and by early Saturday evening many of them had begun to cluster and camp along the levee, making sure they would not miss the big event, uncertain about when exactly the racers would arrive. Both boats would have to refuel at Cairo, and the spectators figured they would get a good, long look at them at that coaling stop. A dispatch from Cairo published in the Picayune described the scene :
The levee here swarms with people come from far and near to witness this historical race. Not only has the whole population of Cairo, men, women, children, the infirm and the aged, without regard to race, color, sex or previous condition of servitude, turned out, but strangers from St. Louis, from Cincinnati, Louisville and the Ohio River towns, and from the railroad towns in Illinois, are here too, standing at the same time on the banks of the Mississippi....14
As the Robert E. Lee came up to island No. 1 Cannon and his passengers could see the steamer Idlewild standing in the river. The Idlewild, its run ordinarily being between Evansville and Cairo, had come down the Ohio, stopped at Cairo, then had swung southward down the Mississippi and stopped at island No. 1, about twelve river miles below Cairo, to wait for the Lee. Aboard the Idlewild were some three hundred passengers, including a large group of excursionists who sought a close-up view of the racers, a number of other passengers who wanted to board the Lee and ride it to St. Louis on the final leg of the course, and two pilots, Enoch King and Jesse Jameson, who were especially knowledgeable of the vagaries of the river between Cairo and St. Louis, a stretch not so familiar to the Lee’s regular pilots, Wes Conner, James Pell and George Clayton, who were probably thankful to be relieved from their tasks during this critical last leg of the race.
Ever thinking ahead, Captain Cannon had made arrangements for the Idlewild to meet the Lee and bring him the pilots as well as to take from the Lee the passengers from New Orleans who had bought passage to Louisville and other stops along the Ohio. Those passengers would be transferred to the Idlewild in mid-stream, in the same way the Lee had taken on firewood from the Frank Pargoud.
Once the Lee was sighted, around five o’clock, Captain Gus Fowler of the Idlewild restarted his engines and as the Lee drew near, the Idlewild steamed upstream, its captain hoping to keep up with the Lee and, as one eyewitness believed, match its speed against the Lee’s. That idea was banished in a few minutes, assistant engineer John Wiest related, the Lee having to slow down to allow the Idlewild to stay abreast of it. The Idlewild performed the same act as the Pargoud had done, Wiest reported, casting off as soon as the passengers and baggage had been transferred, while the Lee resumed full speed, passing Cairo.15
Having reached Cairo at six P.M., the Robert E. Lee had made it there from New Orleans in three days and one hour, beating the previous best time, made by the A.L. Shotwell, by two hours and forty minutes, thereby laying claim to another set of horns.
Cannon had also made arrangements for refueling at Cairo. Waiting near the Missouri side of the river was the steam tugboat Montauk with four barges loaded with coal, two for the Robert E. Lee and two for the Natchez. Perhaps because Cannon’s coal order had come to the supplier earlier than that of Captain Leathers — whose telegram ordering the coal and the arrangements was not received until Sunday, the day the coal was needed — the two barges of coal intended for the Lee were positioned toward midstream in the river for a relatively easy pick-up, and the two intended for the Natchez were positioned toward the Missouri shore, in shallow water that could pose a danger for the Natchez. The Lee slowed down to pick up the waiting barges. One was tied to the Lee’s larboard side, and the other to its starboard as it continued upstream, its crewmen manhandling 1,500 bushels of coal aboard the Lee in the process.
Also coming aboard the Lee were a number of newspaper reporters, who boarded the vessel on the fly. One, apparently desperate to share in some of the race’s drama, related the experience to his editor: “Owing to the fact that neither the Lee nor the Natchez landed here [Cairo] your correspondent was so engaged in making arrangements to get on board and off again, that no regular report can be sent to you. Dropping on board the Lee in mid-river as though shot from a cannon, I managed to obtain the following items during the two-mile ride....”16 He then went on to succinctly relate high points of the Lee’s voyage, information that had previously been published.
Another reporter, evidently no fan of John Cannon, offered his commen
tary on the race as viewed from the Cairo waterfront :
It is precisely 6: 10 P.M. and the steamer Lee has just passed a point opposite Cairo ... bound for St. Louis. She has no time to pay her respects to Cairo in respect for the prolonged shouts upon shouts that the multitude threw across the water toward her as she passed.
The avenger is on her track, and though she is ahead of the White’s time and ahead of the Natchez’s time, and ahead of everything in the world except herself, she has no leisure for courtesies and compliments.
The race is considered virtually ended, without an accident between here and St. Louis to delay the Lee till the Natchez can overhaul her.
But she is not content with simple victory. She has spent much labor and sacrificed much money to prepare for this race and is determined to set her peg where it will not be pulled up soon. The J.M. White’s time remained untouched for twenty-six years. Capt. Cannon wants his boat’s time to remain untouched to the end of the present century.17
At 7:08 P.M. the Natchez, having slowed to pick up its six hundred boxes of coal on the run, as the Robert E. Lee had done, without mishap, passed Cairo, now running about twenty miles behind the Lee.
Both boats were entering the final and most crucial leg of the race, from Cairo to St. Louis, with night quickly enveloping the river and the water at a low stage. A steamer descending from St. Louis, the Rubicon, had arrived at Cairo just minutes earlier than the Lee and had reported that there was but eight feet of water in the main channel above Cairo. To make matters worse, the Mississippi above Cairo was an obstacle course of islands, rocks, sandbars and narrow, often perilously shallow channels. Because of those dangers, some steamer captains routinely refused to take their boats on the run between Cairo and St. Louis after dark.
But Captain Cannon, relentlessly racing northward, was undaunted. And Captain Leathers had no choice but to follow.
The Great American Steamboat Race Page 23