USA > Missouri > Missouri the center state, 1821-1915 > Part 17
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The Edna is at the head of the list of Missouri disasters in the number of lives lost. Next comes probably the Timour. The boilers of this boat exploded a short distance below Jefferson City in August, 1854. The force was terrific. It carried the boat's safe to the top of the bluff two hundred feet high overlook- ing the river. Between thirty and forty people were killed. For more than fifty years the decaying hull of the Timour could be seen on the shore during low water.
The Bedford struck a snag and went down just above the mouth of the Missouri River. This was in April, 1840, at night time. A storm was prevail- ing; the night was intensely dark. Under other conditions there probably would have been smaller loss of life. Fifteen people were drowned. The river channel has shifted since 1840 and the mouth of the Missouri is several miles lower down. The Bedford hull is said to be buried under the land of Missouri Point where wheat is now harvested. There were reports at the time of heavy losses in gold and silver. The boat's safe was said to contain at least $25,000 belonging to pas- sengers, besides the cash carried for the boat management. According to one re- port a single passenger had $6,000 in gold in his trunk. Estimates of the gold and silver on the Bedford ran as high as $100,000.
The Saluda exploded her boilers at Lexington in April, 1852. Twenty-seven persons were killed. The Big Hatchey blew up at Hermann in July, 1845, with a number of fatalities.
Lost Treasure.
Search for sunken cargoes in the Missouri River has been made with opti- mism like to that for the hidden hoards in the Ozarks. It has been attended with about the same results. The disappointments have been many. Since the Inde- pendence showed that steam navigation on the Missouri River was practical there have been over three hundred steamboats wrecked in the Missouri. Some of them carried down cargoes the values of which were known. With other hulks were buried in the silt gold dust, silver bullion and Mexican dollars. Information as to the amounts of such treasure lost was not as a rule definite.
Between 1880 and 1890 many miners who were drawn to Montana and had struck it rich came back by way of Missouri River boats. They brought with them gold dust and silver bars. The steamboats bringing such passengers oc- casionally struck snags and went down so quickly that the precious metals were lost.
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In August, 1865, the Twilight sunk just before sunrise twenty miles below Kansas City. She had left the channel in the fog and had struck a submerged sycamore tree. The bank was not far away. The boat went down leaving the pilot house and Texas above the water. Passengers escaped in their night clothes and were cared for by the farmers. The Twilight was heavily loaded and was bound for the head of navigation on the Missouri. One item of the cargo was three hundred barrels of whiskey. There were many barrels of oils, many tons of white lead, pig iron, stoves and stamp mills and engines for the mines. Gov- ernment arms and a variety of valuable consignments were included in the cargo. Portions of the boat were in sight for some years during low water. Several attempts were made to recover portions of the cargo. Farmers lifted out two bar- rels of whiskey. At a later date the river shifted and the Twilight was buried completely in a sand bank. The flood of 1881 added to the silt. The wreck was buried under thirty-nine feet of sand and soil and by the change of the channel was half a mile from shore at low water. About twenty years ago, in the belief that the whiskey barrels were still whole and that the contents had improved from age, a company was formed in Kansas City to make search for the Twilight and to recover, if possible, what was still valuable of the cargo. The officers of the company obtained such information as they could from the settlers along that part of the river. They used long steel rods probing the sand to locate the wreck. After some days' work of this kind one of the rods struck metal which proved to be the engine used to feed the boilers. With more probing the exact location of the hulk was found. The Twilight was thirty-two feet wide, one hundred and eighty-five feet long. With machinery from Kansas City an air- tight caisson was built just over the hatches. It was sunk through the thirty- nine feet of sand in the same manner that excavation is made for bridge piers. The hull of the boat was reached. Several bottles of "Old London Gin, 1860" were taken out and carried to Kansas City and opened for tasting by experts at one of the clubs. One of the barrels of whiskey was tapped and the whiskey was pronounced to be better than the gin. News of the discovery spread. In many of the saloons in Kansas City "Twilight" whiskey was offered to customers although none of the genuine had been placed on sale. There was great excite- ment for several days over the results reported by the wreckers. A crowd of farmers gathered at the scene of operations. In a few days, however, the expecta- tions failed and the work was given up.
There was special fascination in the search for sunken cargoes of whiskey. The Leodora went down after burning near Elk Point, South Dakota, carrying one hundred barrels of liquor. The search in that case disclosed only rusted metal and the rotting mass of one hundred forty-eight tons of miscellaneous freight. Some thousands of dollars were spent near Parkville, Missouri, by a company which hoped to recover one hundred and fifty barrels of whiskey in the hull of the Arabia, a steamboat that sunk in 1856. All that the searchers found which had resisted the decay of nearly a half century was a shipment of old wool hats.
One of the boats which was said at the time to have carried a large amount of gold dust from the Montana mines was the Butte, which went down in July, 1883, near Fort Peck. The Butte's cargo was valued at $110,000. The Bertrand sunk in 1865, near Portage La Force. It was bound upstream and had as part of the
ANTOINE SOULARD
RUSSELL FARNHAM
BULL BOATS ON WHICH FURS WERE BROUGHT DOWN THE MISSOURI RIVER
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cargo iron flasks containing more than $25,000 worth of quicksilver, consigned to mining camps in Montana. The Boreas burned in 1846 near Hermann and carried down a large amount of silver bullion and Mexican dollars. It was suspected that the boat was fired by thieves who had planned to steal the money and bullion in the excitement. The fire spread so rapidly that the men were forced to jump overboard without getting the treasure.
The channel of the Missouri River has changed so that in places it is now five miles distant from where it was sixty to seventy-five years ago. A Chariton farmer in digging a well found a Bible. On the cover was printed "Naomi." That was the name of the steamboat wrecked in that locality in 1840. The place where the well was dug is five miles from the Missouri River of to-day.
Days of the Pilots' Glory.
Successful pilots of Missouri river boats were looked upon with great re- spect. Navigation of the clear water, regular channel rivers was considered tame by comparison. It was said that the La Barges, Elisha Fine and navigators of their class knew where the existing sandbars were and where the next sand- bars would form and could locate snags unerringly. A feat of the pilot known as Uncle Davy was to come down stream headed direct for a sandbar, slack up, poke the prow into the bar, swing around and back down stream by the only practicable channel left.
"I remember," said Captain Hunter Ben Jenkins, "when the steamer Dacotah came down the Missouri River to St. Louis with 16,756 sacks of wheat on four and one-half feet of water, mind you, and never set a spar on the whole trip. That's what we pilots used to do in the day when we were paid as high as $1,500 to $2,000 a month. You can get pretty near anything you want in this country if you want to pay, including good pilots-yes sir! Why I remember the day when young fellows not only didn't want any pay to learn the river, but would actually put up a couple of thousand dollars to the man who would teach them. They did the work and the pilot drew the pay. Those were great days. We didn't know what electric lights were in those days. We carried a torch basket of rosin, one on the starboard and one on the larboard side. Who were some of the boys? Well, there's a long string of mighty fine names. It's hard to say where to stop. There were the La Barges, Masseys, Teabeaus, Kaisers, Henry and Ed McPherson, Yores, Dillons, Lafayette and Robert Burton, Ed Baldwin, 'Bud' Spahr, George and Henry Keith, the Homan brothers, Thomas Hale, James McKinney, Mike and Joe Oldman, Tony and Lew Burbach and Cap- tain Shaw and a lot more. I reckon the most popular man in his day was Captain Jewett. He operated on the Missouri River. He died of cholera in Glas- gow, Missouri, in 1849. We had some mighty fine boats, too. There were the Morning Star, Ben W. Lewis, Cornelia, Minnehaha and Clara Emma and Martha Jewett."
The Missouri Belle and the Buttermilk.
This is the story of steamboat days which Lloyd G. Harris told a committee of Congress when he was in Washington with a Missouri delegation : "The captain and officers of the Missouri Belle were very fond of the buttermilk which a farmer who lived along the river bank supplied to them. The boat, in passing this
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point, would always make a landing, and blow her whistle in order to notify the farmer that she was there, waiting for buttermilk. The farmer would send down a negro man with a bucket of buttermilk, and, having taken it aboard, the boat would proceed on her way. On one occasion when she tried to edge up at this point, she struck a sand-bar and sunk. The captain blew a signal of distress, fas- tening the lever so that she would blow as long as there was steam, while the hungry waters were gradually rising and swallowing her. The water had crept up to the boiler, and as it rushed in there was an expiring gush of steam into the signal pipe which caused a most peculiar, lugubrious, and nerve-shattering sound. Just at that moment Pompey, who was responding to the signal, reached the water's edge with his pail. When he heard that sound he exclaimed: 'Great Gawd! Da's de Belle a-sinkin' and callin' fo' buttermilk wid her last breff !'"
Up Grand River for Hickory Nuts.
"The Grand river country" was a famous section of Missouri between 1840 and 1860. The legislature declared the river navigable to the northern boundary of the State. As early as 1842 a small sternwheel steamboat made two trips to the East and West Fork in the western part of Livingston county. It carried up goods from St. Louis and Brunswick and brought down produce. The Bedford struck a snag and went to pieces. The Lake of the Woods, the Bonita, and some other steamboats made occasional trips up the river. As late as 1865 a steamboat landed at Chillicothe. For many years one of the chief exports of the Grand river country was hickory nuts. For fifty years the forests of shell-bark trees have yielded a crop measured by hundreds of bushels. These Grand river hickory nuts are large and fine flavored. In early days they brought at least twenty-five cents a bushel, which was considered a very good price before the war. Perhaps nowhere else in Missouri has this crop formed such an important industry.
A Tradition of Osage Navigation.
Tradition in St. Clair county preserves the story of Mathew Arbuckle's wild ride into Papinsville one day in the early summer of 1844. The horse was flecked with spots of foam. The rider was livid under the tan. He told how, while plowing about a mile from the Osage, he had been scared by a terrible noise, something like a scream of a "painter" but ten times as long and loud. He had unhitched and had ridden into town to give warning that some animal heretofore unknown was in the woods near the river. The settlers turned to Uncle John Whitley for leadership. Mr. Whitley was a veteran of the battle of New Orleans. He said the only thing to do was to assemble with the dogs and go out after the monster which, probably, had wandered down from the Rocky Range, as the Rocky Mountains were called in those days. Uncle James Breckinridge seconded the proposition. The next morning the settlers gathered at Uncle John's, whose place was near the river. As the party was about ready to take to the woods, that unearthly noise was heard. Uncle John suddenly remembered that his pretty daughter Mattie had gone down to the river on her pony a few minutes before.
"Ride men !" he shouted, "Ride! Mat went down to the river for water, and I expect she's dead before this."
The settlers jumped into their saddles but before they had fairly gotten under- way, here came Mat with her hair flying. She had heard the wild beast. Uncle
RECLAIMING THE LAND IN SOUTHEAST MISSOURI
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John told the girl to go into the house and not come out until the hunt was over.
About all of the settlers and every dog on Whitley Prairie were in the posse that rode away to strike the trail. Uncle John Whitley was considered the cap- tain. James Breckenridge was his lieutenant. Among others who rode to hounds that memorable day in search of the mysterious monster were the Morrises, Benjamin, Hamilton and Snowden; the Roarks, William and Frank; Benjamin Burch and Benjamin Snyder. There was trouble about getting the trail. The hounds snuffed and yelped, but didn't seem able to scent anything unusual. All day the hunters searched. At intervals that noise, a combination of scream and howl, was heard. Now it seemed close at hand. Half an hour later it was far dis- tant. At times the rocky cliffs along the Osage sent back a series of echoes. As night came on the clouds thickened and a storm threatened. The hunters sought shelter in "Rock House."
On the south side of the Osage, a little way below Clear creek, there may be seen today a cave possessing some unusual features even for the Ozarks. This cave is at the foot of the bluff. The front part is a room twenty feet high, thirty. feet wide and forty or fifty feet deep. It is dry. The floor is covered with white sand. A more comfortable camping place could not be devised. As a matter of fact the Whitley family spent a winter in Rock House as it was called. Just before the hunters reached the camping place the hounds struck a scent and started a buck which was dropped quickly by half a dozen bullets. A fire was built in the cave and after a supper of venison the hunters settled down for the night.
There was no disturbance until dawn when that nerve-racking noise brought every man to his feet and set the dogs howling. The noise was repeated. It in- dicated that the animal was coming along the river and was approaching the cave. Uncle John led the way to the attack. Every man took a tree and got ready to shoot. Four of the party were told off to have their knives drawn and ready if powder and lead failed. The Osage, like other Ozark rivers, twists and turns upon itself. Near Rock House was a sharp bend. Suddenly around this bend and into view of the amazed settlers, swept the Flora Jones, the first steam- boat to ascend to the upper Osage. As was often the case in those days the steam whistle was out of all proportion to the size of the craft. It was purposely so, for navigators found it expedient to give warning of their coming as long as possible before the gangplank was pushed out. The whistle, first shrill and then hoarse was what had startled Mathew Arbuckle and what had led to the hunt with the hounds. The Flora Jones on that initial trip ascended the Osage to Harmony Mission in what is now Bates county. The many bends and the echoing effects with the cliffs had exaggerated the sound of the whistle. After the Flora Jones had passed by, the settlers with very few words disbanded and went home. But that first appearance of a steamboat on the upper Osage has not been forgotten.
Some of the Missouri Commodores.
The possibilities of steamboating in the St. Louis trade brought to the city many strong men. William Wallace Greene, a native of Marietta, Ohio, a de- scendant of the Rhode Island Greenes of Revolutionary fame, was a successful steamboatman on the Ohio. In partnership with his father-in-law, Captain Jo- seph H. Conn, of Cincinnati, he built the Cygnet. Captain Conn and Captain
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Greene brought the Cygnet to St. Louis in 1834 and became residents here, oper- ating several boats and carrying on a commission business as Conn, Sprigg & Greene. Captain Greene was one of a number of St. Louis steamboatmen who were not only strictly moral but earnestly religious. He was a ruling elder in the Presbyterian church.
One of the most benevolent of the men who amassed fortunes in the river trade was Captain Richard J. Lockwood, who came from Delaware in 1830. He was a resident of St. Louis forty years. One of his acts of benevolence was the contribution of $20,000 for the building of an Episcopal church in 1866.
While Henry D. Bacon was on the river he became famous for his strict observance of the Sabbath. One of the boats he commanded was the Hannibal. Wherever midnight of Saturday found the Hannibal, Captain Bacon went to the bank and tied up until the same hour Sunday night.
The McCune family came from Pennsylvania originally, migrating first to Bourbon county, Kentucky, and later in 1817 to Missouri. John S. McCune, after doing business some years along the upper Mississippi river, came to St. Louis in 1841. The impressions he had received from his earlier experience prompted him to organize what became in the palmy days of steamboating one of the most important transportation interests of St. Louis. Long before the rail- roads, Commodore McCune had in operation the Keokuk Packet Company. Up to that time the steamboatmen had not appreciated the economies and the advantages of operation in companies. A great deal of the river business was done by indi- vidual owners of boats or by single firms. Commodore McCune put on the river a fleet of six boats which ran on regular schedules between St. Louis and Keokuk, furnishing facilities for all intermediate cities and towns. The boats were so far superior to most of the steamboats between 1840 and 1855 that conservative river men predicted a collapse. Commodore McCune and those associated with him garnered fortunes on their enterprise. In 1857 the Pilot Knob Iron Com- pany was in danger of going down. To raise money the stockholders proposed to give as collateral to eastern capitalists a very large amount of the stock for a loan of $300,000. Commodore McCune came forward and advanced the money, taking the presidency of the iron company. That was one of the acts which went far to establish at an early date the financial independence of St. Louis.
Two Illinois boys, born in the southernmost county of that state, sons of an Irish father and a Scotch mother, came to St. Louis to seek fortune. They found it in steamboating. They became river captains of the best type. Barton Able and Daniel Able began as clerks on the Ocean Wave. They were two of the best known men of St. Louis. They were "Bart" Able and "Dan" Able. It was said of Dan Able that in his many years of steamboating not a life was lost on any boat commanded by him. In 1851 he made a trip that is historic, taking the "Anthony Wayne" 160 miles up the St. Peters, now known as the Minnesota river, the first steamboat navigation of that river. He also took the Wayne up the Mississippi above St. Paul to St. Anthony, making another new record.
Decline of the Traffic.
Traffic by river began its decline soon after the Civil war. In 1866 there were fifty-one steamers running from St. Louis to the Upper Missouri. The next year there were seventy-one. In 1868 the decline began. There were sixty-two steam-
CAPTAIN JOHN SIMONDS
JOHN S. MCCUNE
فاهـ
A SCENE ON THE LEVEE, 1850
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boats in the Upper Missouri trade from St. Louis. In 1869 the decline was more apparent for the number of boats was reduced to thirty-seven. In 1870 the number came down to nine.
In the palmy days fifty steamboats ran regularly from St. Louis up the Mis- souri. In the times of heavy immigration this number was largely increased. There was first class passenger traffic as well as travel of emigrants going west- ward and of freight. Some of the Missouri River boats were, if not so large, as finely finished and equipped as the "floating palaces" on the Mississippi. The Morning Star, the Ben Lewis, the Polar Star and F. X. Aubrey, named for the man who had made the wonderful ride from Independence to Santa Fe, the Cataract, the Meteor and the New Lucy, were favorites with first class travel. The James H. Lucas was a record breaker. This boat made the trip from St. Louis to St. Joseph in two days and twelve hours. For freight from St. Louis to Fort Benton the charge was fifteen cents a pound.
In 1879 the revival of "mountain trade" by way of the Missouri River was attempted. Three boats, the Dakota, the Wyoming and the Montana, were built especially for the proposed mountain service. They proved to be too large, could not compete with the railroads and came into the possession of Captain Jenkins and the Keiths. The new owners pluckily attempted to secure the lost trade between St. Louis and Kansas City and intervening points. Low freight rates by the railroad and high insurance on the boats defeated them.
The value of the steamboats registered or controlled at St. Louis in 1871 was $5,428,800. Probably the most ambitious consolidation of steamboat interests was attempted at St. Louis just after the close of the war. The Atlantic and Mississippi Steamship Company was organized. It owned a fleet of twenty- eight of the finest boats on the western rivers. Leading spirits in the enterprise were the Scudders, John J. Roe, the Ames family, the Ables, John N. Bofinger and several other St. Louisans with a few stockholders from the Ohio. The stock was $2,500,000. If the South had not been so impoverished, if recovery had been rapid as expected, the consolidation might have been successful. Captain Joseph Brown said of the collapse: "The Atlantic and Mississippi Steamship Company was organized in 1866, after the war, and owned 28 steamers, most of which were 300 or more feet long. They plied between St. Louis and New Orleans. In fifteen months that company lost fifteen of the twenty-eight, either by explosion or sinking, and with no insurance. I was made president of the company after these disasters, and remedied the evils to some extent, but the company's back was broken. Inside of two years I was instructed to sell out at auction the balance of the boats, eleven in number. While no one but the stock- holders lost any money, it fell hard on them, for out of $70,000 that I had in stock I only got $2,600."
The White and Its Curves.
From its four heads in Boston Mountains to Batesville, where it leaves the Ozarks and enters the lowlands, White River is a succession of astonishing curves. No other river on the continent so nearly and so frequently doubles upon itself. From the source to the flat country is a distance on a straight line of perhaps 150 miles. White River between these points has a course of over 600 miles ; some estimates make it 1,000 miles.
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The beginning is near the Indian Territory in the western part of Arkansas. The water runs toward all points of the compass in quick succession many times before it adopts a comparatively direct course to the Mississippi. From the Boston Mountains the general course, with many a bend and curve, is northward and northeastward into Missouri. Probably the highest point in this direction is Forsyth, near the center of Taney County. From this place the White wriggles its way back into Arkansas and down through Marion County, to where the Buffalo joins it. But not until the Missouri-Arkansas border has been crossed seven times does the uncertain stream finally bear away to the southeastward to stay.
Adding to the marvel of White River's eccentric meanderings are the walls of rock which tower from 200 to 500 feet often from the water edge. A bird's-eye view from above would show the river deep set in a canyon of continuous and often sharp curvatures. A mile of river in a straight line is unusual. The canyon- like valley of the White narrows in places almost to the channel's width. Over most of the course it is wide enough for a strip of fertile bottom land along the river.
The water wanders from one side of the valley to the other. It washes the base of the towering palisades first on the right and then on the left. It maintains close relationship with a cliff for half a dozen miles. Then it suddenly crosses through the bottom lands and hugs the opposite frowning pass. On a bright day a stretch of the winding river seen from a summit of the palisades shimmers like well-polished silver. "White" aptly describes the appearance. A nearby view from the banks reveals a degree of purity which is not equaled by any other western river outside of the Ozarks. The contrast of comparison with the streams which flow through alluvial country is striking. White River has its origin in mountain springs. Numberless underground channels in the limestone strata help to swell the volume. Tributaries vary from tiny rivulets starting high up on the benches of the mountains to powerful streams which gush forth with a roar from beneath the shelves of overhanging rock. Twenty miles below Forsyth, beside the White, is McGill Spring, which pours out from the face of the cliff a body of water strong enough to run a large mill. It is a type of hundreds, while the smaller and unnamed springs can only be enumerated by thousands.
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