USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > Cincinnati, the Queen City, 1788-1912, Volume II > Part 12
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"Boats have frequently passed from Pittsburgh to the mouth of the Ohio in 15 days, but in general 10 days from Pittsburgh to the falls is reckoned a quick passage.
"Descending the river when much incommoded with floating ice should be avoided, particularly early in the winter, as there is a great probability of its stopping your boat; however, if the water is high, and there is an appearance of open weather, you may venture with some propriety, if the cakes are not so heavy as to impede your progress, or injure your timbers; the boat will in such case make more way than the ice, a great deal of which will sink and get thinner as it progresses, but on the other hand, if the water is low, it is by no means safe to embark on it when anything considerable of ice is in it.
"If at any time you are obliged to bring to on account of ice, great circum- spection should be used in the choice of a place to lie in; there are many places where the shore projecting to a point throws off the cakes of ice towards the middle of the river and forms a kind of harbor below. By bringing to in such a situation, and fixing your canoe above the boat, with one end strongly to the shore, and the other out in the stream sloping down the river, so as to drive out ยท such masses of ice as would otherwise accumulate on the upper side of your boat, and tend to sink her and drive her from her moorings, you may lie to with a tolerable degree of safety.
"The above observations are more particularly applicable to the Ohio; the following apply to the Mississippi, and point out the greatest impediments and .. the most imminent dangers attending the navigation of this heavy-watered and powerful river. These are, Ist, the instability of the banks; 2nd, planters, saw- yers and wooden islands.
"Planters are large bodies of trees firmly fixed by their roots in the bottom of the river, in a perpendicular manner, and appearing no more than about a
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foot above the surface of the water in its middling state. Sawyers are likewise bodies of trees fixed less perpendicularly in the river, and rather of a less size, yielding to the pressure of the current, disappearing and appearing by turns above water. Wooden islands are places where by some cause or other large quantities of drift wood, has through time been arrested and matted together in different parts of the river." "The Navigator" proceeds at length to give advice as to the best modes of meeting these difficulties.
Such were some of the conditions that. the emigrants had to meet in making their way to the new settlements along the Ohio.
The early settlers along the Ohio had from i790 on until the era of steam- boats, various kinds of boats in use. There were the canoe, the pirogue, the keelboat, barge, brig, schooner, galleyboat, batteau and dug-out.
Of these the ones in common use in early days on the Ohio were the canoe. the pirogue and the batteau. The canoe was made from bark. The pirogue was pushed with poles. The batteau or barge was a square box. The canoe could go either up or down stream. The pirogue could be sent up stream only with hard labor. The barge was only usable going down stream. The canoe and the pirogue were light-weight craft, though large ones could carry twenty men. The barge was for freight.
Up until about 1785 these three kinds of boats practically were the only ones in use on the Ohio.
In canoes the cargoes of valuable furs were brought down the various tribu- taries and carried up the Ohio to Pittsburgh. Some of the canoes could carry large loads. When in 1770 Washington made a trip down the Ohio he embarked at Pittsburgh, October 20th, "in a large canoe with sufficient store of provisions and necessaries, besides Dr. Craik and myself, to wit: Capt. Crawford, Joseph Nicholson, Robert Bell, William Harrison, Charles Morgan and Daniel Rendon, a boy of Captain Crawford's."
But it was on barges that the armaments and stores were transported to the various forts in the valley, that indeed made such forts possible.
When Pittsburgh and other towns on the upper Ohio grew and a market was thus opened for the products of the lower valley the keelboats came, the first boats on the Ohio capable of going readily up stream as well as down. The keel- boat was long and narrow, about fifteen feet by fifty, and pointed at both ends. There were "running boards" from end to end, on either side. The main part of the boat was under roof. Such a boat would carry thirty or forty tons of freight. From six to ten men were needed to force it up stream. Each man was equipped with a long pole. Half the crew were on either side the boat. They . set their poles at the head of the boat, brought the end of the pole to their shoulder, bent over, and walked on the running boards to the stern. At the captain's order they returned quickly to the head for a new start.
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The American Pioneer states: "In ascending rapids, the greatest effort of the whole crew was required, so that only one at a time could shift his pole. This ascending of rapids was attended with great danger, especially if the channel was rocky. The slightest error in pushing or steering the boat exposed her to be thrown across the current, and to be brought sideways in contact with rocks which would mean her destruction. Or, if she escaped injury, a crew who had
WHOROWR SONS
CELEBRATION IN 1892, OF THE FOUR HUNDRETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LANDING OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
RIVER FRONT, CINCINNATI, 1907-G. A. R. ON THEIR WAY TO POINT PLEASANT, OHIO, TO UNVEIL THE U. S. GRANT MONUMENT
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let their boat swing in the rapids would have lost caste. A boatman who could not boast that he had never swung or backed a chute was regarded with con- tempt, and never trusted with the head pole, the place of honor among the keel- boat men. It required much practice to become a first rate boatman, and none would be taken, even on trial, who did not possess great muscular power."
On account of their narrowness the keelboats were able to pass up and down the tributaries of the Ohio. Thus markets were reached that otherwise would have been inaccessible.
The greater part of the traffic on the Ohio in early days was by barges and flatboats. The flatboats were also called "Kentucky broad horns," or Ken- tucky boats. These barges were huge, covered boats. They were pointed, and capable of carrying forty or fifty tons of freight. The services of thirty to fifty men were required to manage one. They were propelled up stream by poles, oars, sails and by towing with ropes from the shore.
Audubon describes the barges at length: "We shall suppose one of these boats under way, and, having passed Natchez, entering upon what were called the difficulties of their ascent. Wherever a point projected. so as to render the coarse or bend below it of some magnitude, there was an eddy, the returning current of which was sometimes as strong as that of the middle of the great stream. The bargemen, therefore, rowed up pretty close under the bank, and had merely to keep watch in the bow lest the boat should run against a planter or sawyer. But the boat has reached the point, and there the current is to all appearance of double strength and right against it. The men, who have rested a few minutes, are ordered to take their stations and lay hold of their oars, for the river must be crossed, it being seldom possible to double such a point and proceed along the same shore. The boat is crossing, its head slanting to the current, which is, however, too strong for the rowers, and when the other side of the river has been reached, it has drifted perhaps a quarter of a mile. The men by this time are exhausted, and, as we shall suppose it to be 12 o'clock, fasten the boat to a tree on the shore. A small glass of whiskey is given to each, when they cook and eat their dinner, and after resting from their fatigue for an hour, recommence their labors. The boat is again seen slowly advancing against the stream. It has reached the lower end of a sandbar, along the edge of which it is propelled by means of long poles, if the bottom be hard. Two men, called bowsmen, remain at the prow to assist, in concert with the steersman, in man- aging the boat and keeping its head right against the current. The rest place themselves on the land side of the footway of the vessel, put one end of their poles on the ground and the other against their shoulders and push with all their might. As each of the men reaches the stern, he crosses to the other side. runs along it and comes again to the landward side of the bow, when he recommences operation. The barge in the meantime is ascending at a rate not exceeding one mile in the hour.
"The bar is at length passed, and as the shore in sight is straight on both sides and the current uniformly strong, the poles are laid aside, and the men equally divided, those on the river side take to their oars, while those on the land- side lay hold of the branches of willows or other trees, and thus slowly propel the boat. Here and there, however, the trunk of a fallen tree, partly lying on the Vol. II-7
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bank and partly projecting beyond it, impedes their progress and requires to be doubled. This is performed by striking into it the iron points of the poles and gaff-hooks, and so pulling around it. The sun is now quite low, and the barge is again secured in the best harbor within reach for the night, after having ac- complished a distance of perhaps fifteen miles. The next day the wind proves favorable, the sail is set, the boat takes all advantages, and meeting with no ac- cident, has ascended thirty miles,-perhaps double that distance. The next day comes with a very different aspect. The wind is right ahead, the shores are without trees of any kind, and the canes on the bank are so thick and stout that not even the cordelles can be used. This occasions a halt. The time is not al- together lost, as most of the men, being provided with rifles, betake themselves to the woods and search for the deer, the hares or the turkeys that are generally abundant there. Three days may pass before the wind changes, and the ad- vantages gained on the previous five days are forgotten. Again the boat pro- ceeds, but in passing over a shallow place, runs on a log, swings with the cur- rent, but hangs fast with her lee side almost under water. Now for the poles. All hands are on deck, bustling and pushing. At length, towards sunset, the boat is once more afloat, and is again taken to the shore where the weary crew pass another night.
"I could tell you of the crew abandoning the boat and cargo and of numberless accidents and perils, but it is enough to say that advancing in this tardy manner, the boat that left New Orleans on the Ist of March, often did not reach the Falls of Ohio, Louisville, until the month of July, sometimes not until October; and after all this immense trouble, it brought only a few bags of coffee and at most one hundred hogsheads of sugar. Such was the state of things as late as 1808. The number of barges at that period did not amount to more than 25 or 30 and the largest probably did not exceed one hundred tons burden. To make the best of this fatiguing navigation, I may conclude by saying that a barge which came up in three months had done wonders, for I believe few voyages were performed in that time."
The flatboats were the ones used by the immigrants, as this kind of boat was for down stream only. The usual flatboat was about forty feet in length, twelve feet wide and eight feet deep. The bottom was flat. The whole was square in shape. Six oars were used. The boat was roofed. Two of the oars were of about thirty feet in length and were called the "sweeps." Two men were required for each of the "sweeps." The steering oar, used at the stern, was, blade and all, forty or fifty feet in length. The "gouger" was a small oar at the prow, for helping in steering in swift water.
The old flatboats were called "Kentucky" and "New Orleans" as most of these had Kentucky and New Orleans as their destinations.
The immigrant, anxious for a start from somewhere on the upper Ohio, had to buy or build a flatboat. Frequently, several families united and traveled to- gether on one flatboat. Such voyagers always had on board a tin horn to make known their coming or to announce their whereabouts in fogs.
After the flatboat had played its part as a conveyance for immigrants, it be- came later a ready means of carrying produce down the river. This traffic con- tinued up to the time of the Civil war.
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When the flatboat had reached its destination and the cargo had been dis- charged it was the universal custom to dispose of the material of the boat for lumber, while the boatmen made their way homeward on foot, or purchased mules or ponies for the trip. The returning boatmen, when it was possible, trav- eled homeward in companies, as the way was infested with outlaws.
The houseboats of the early period were called "arks"; these were square, flat bottomed, forty feet by fifteen. The sides were six feet in depth; there was a board roof and a fire place. Four men could manage an ark; no sails were used, but the arks went with the currents.
In the first half of the last century, many men were engaged in the business of rafting logs down the river. These rafts were often of great size, more than one hundred feet in length and from fifty to sixty feet in breadth. Oars were used to some extent. A cabin large enough to afford accommodations for the men was built in the center of the huge raft.
The "galley" was in use to a limited extent. The galleys had covered decks and oars.
On most of the river craft sails were used at times and to some extent. Reg- ular sailing vessels had of course a considerable place in the river traffic and the export business. Sailing vessels were built at Pittsburgh, Wheeling, and other places from about 1790 onward. Some of these vessels went to the West Indies, some to Atlantic ports and some crossed the ocean.
Archer Butler Hulbert, in a book on the Ohio River and its Tributaries, says : "Let us glance at the first generation of Ohio rivermen; those who knew these waters before and during revolutionary days. At the outset it is clear that their tasks are as strange to us as the sights upon which their eyes feasted and the sounds which day and night were sounding in their ears. They were engaged in the only trade known in the valley then,-the fur trade. At about midsummer, or a little earlier, the fur trade of the entire Ohio basin focused at the mouth of the Monongahela for transportation to Philadelphia and Balti- more, or on the lower Ohio for shipment by canoe down the Ohio and Mississippi. When the curtain of actual history arose on the Ohio river, the fur traders formed the motley background in the drama in which Celeron, Contrecoeur, Villiers, Washington and Cist stood out clearly in the background. Celeron found them here and there in 1750 and sent them back with a sharp letter to Governor Dinwiddie. Indeed it was these first rivermen who floated on the Ohio in canoes laden with peltry who brought on apace the Old French war. Nominally, of course, it was that quota of one hundred families with which the Ohio company promised to people its two hundred thousand acre grant between the Monongahela and Kanawha rivers, which alarmed the Quebec government ; but in reality it was the Virginia and Pennsylvania fur traders in whose canoes thousands of dollars worth of beaver skins were being kept from the St. Law- rence. From village to village these traders passed, securing from the natives their plunder of river and forest. In their long canoes the packs were carefully deposited, and payment was made in goods, of which ammunition and firearms were of most worth. Though these were the first rivermen, they as frequently came by land as by water. But. when in their canoes, they were the first to ply these western waters. They knew islands which have long since passed
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from sight; they knew the old licks and the old trails. They practiced the lost arts of the woodsman; they had eyes and ears of which their successors in these valleys do not know. They did not become white Indians for, it would seem, they did not mingle as closely with the red men as did the French; but they became exceedingly proficient in the Indian's woodland wisdom. Browned by the sun and hardened by wind and rain and snow, they were a strong race of men; they could paddle or walk the entire day with little fatigue. Yet their day's work was not such usually as made mere brute machines of them. There were songs to be sung as the canoe glided speedily along beneath the shadows of those tremendous forest trees; dangers intensified the joys, and, as everywhere else, added a flavor to living, a romantic tinge to what otherwise might have been commonplace."
As the fur trade passed away, these rivermen found other occupations which their knowledge of the river and its surroundings fitted them for. They became bargemen and flatboatmen. As the Indians disappeared and white settlers came, there came also hordes of desperate men, gamblers, horse thieves, and worse, into this valley.
Cassedy, in his History of Louisville, says: "The bargemen were a distinct class of people, whose fearlessness of character, recklessness of habits and laxity of morals rendered them a marked people. Their history will hereafter form the groundwork of many a heroic romance or epic poem. In the earlier stages of this sort of navigation, their trips were dangerous, not only on account of the Indians whose hunting grounds bounded their track on either side, but also because the shores of both rivers were infested with organized banditti, who sought every occasion to rob and murder the owners of these boats. Beside all this, the Spanish government had forbidden the navigation of the lower Miss- issippi by the Americans, and thus hedged in every way by danger, it became these boatmen to cultivate all the hardihood and wiliness of the pioneer, while it led them also into the possession of that recklessness and independent free- dom of manner, which even after the causes that produced it had ceased, still clung to and formed an integral part of the character of the western bargeman. The crews were carefully chosen. A 'Kentuck,' or Kentuckian, was considered the best man at a pole, and a 'Canuck,' or French Canadian, at the oar or the 'cordelles,' the rope used to haul a boat up stream. Their talk was of the dangers of the river ; of 'planters and sawyers,' meaning tree trunks imbedded more or less firmly in the river ; of 'riffles,' meaning ripples ; and of 'shoots,' or rapids (French chutes). It was as necessary to have violins on board as to have whiskey, and all the traditions in song or picture of 'the jolly boatman' date back to that by-gone day. Between the two sides of the river there was already a jealousy. Ohio was called 'the Yankee state,' and Flint tells us that it was a standing joke among the Ohio boatmen when asked their cargo to reply, 'Pitcoal indigo, wooden nutmegs, straw baskets, and Yankee notions.' The same authority describes this sort of questioning as being inexhaustible among the river people and asserts that from one descending boat came this series of an- swers, all of which proved to be truthful: 'Where are you from?' 'Redstone.' 'What is your lading?' 'Millstones.' 'What's your captain's name?' 'Whet- stone.' 'Where are you bound?' 'To Limestone.'"
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The first ocean going vessel that passed out of the Ohio was the St. Clair. She came down the Ohio to Cincinnati April 27, 1801, with a cargo for the West Indias. The banks of the river at this port were crowded with people anxious to gaze upon this wonder.
As early as 1801, a decade before the inventor of steamboats was considering placing these upon western waters, there was a call among citizens of Cincinnati for a meeting at Yeatman's tavern to discuss the practicability of driving boats up stream by the "power of steam-or elastic vapor."
But for several years yet the boats moved by poles, oars and sails continued to hold the river traffic undisputed. These boats were capable of conveying fifty to one hundred tons each. Five or six dollars a hundred was the freight charge to New Orleans from this place.
When the river was full, these boats made two trips annually to and from New Orleans.
Baum and Perry, and Riddle, Bechtle and company controlled most of the river traffic at this point. They conveyed up the Mississippi and the Ohio a greater part of the goods brought to Cincinnati, and they continued their busi- ness for several years after steamboats had been introduced on these waters.
Flatboats and small keelboats as well as packets were employed in the traffic with the upper Ohio. Canoes were also employed for journeys to Wheeling.
"The New Orleans" was the first steamboat to come to the port of Cincin- nati. This was on the 27th of October, 1811. Liberty Hall, October 30, 1811, stated, "The steamboat, lately built at Pittsburgh, passed this town at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, in fine stile, going at the rate of about ten or twelve miles an hour." The editor, apparently, did not grasp the vast significance of the event and the revolutionary effect that event was to have on the commerce of this city, as well as on all towns on the western waters.
When Theodore Roosevelt, as president, made a memorable trip down the Ohio and Mississippi, he recalied with justifiable pride that it was his uncle. Nicholas J. Roosevelt, who had built and commanded this first steamboat on western waters.
When Fulton and his associates in the New York company decided to build a steamboat for the western waters. William Robson, who had worked on the Clermont, Fulton's first steamboat on the Hudson, was sent to Pittsburgh . to superintend its building. Robson came to Cincinnati in June, 1818, and was for years prominent in the coppersmith and brassmaking business in Cincinnati. Thus Cincinnati is related to the pioneer of steamboat making in the west.
Charles J. Latrobe, in his "First Steamboat Voyage on the Western Waters," said in regard to this first voyage of the "New Orleans:" "Circumstances gave me the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the particulars of the very first voyage of a steamer in the West; and their extraordinary character will be my apology to you for filling a page of this sheet with the following brief relation :
."The complete success attending the experiments in steam navigation made on the Hudson and the adjoining waters previous to the year 1809, turned the attention of the principal projectors to the idea of its application on the western rivers ; and in the month of April of that year, Mr. Roosevelt, of New York, pursuant to an agreement with Chancellor Livingston and Mr. Fulton, visited
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those rivers with the purpose of forming an opinion whether they admitted of steam navigation or not. At this time two boats, the North River and the Cler- mont, were running on the Hudson. Mr. Roosevelt surveyed the rivers from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, and, as his report was favorable, it was decided to build a boat at the former town. This was done under his direction, and in the course of 1811 the first boat was launched on the waters of the Ohio. It was called "The New Orleans," and intended to ply between Natchez, in the state of Mississippi, and the city whose name it bore. In October it left Pittsburgh for its experimental voyage. On this occasion no freight or passengers were taken, the object being merely to bring the boat to her station. Mr. Roosevelt, his young wife and family, a Mr. Baker, the engineer, Andrew Jack, the pilot and six hands, with a few domestics, formed the whole burden. There were no woodyards at that time, and constant delays were unavoidable. When, as re- lated, Mr. Roosevelt had gone down the river to reconnoiter, he had discovered two beds of coal, about one hundred and twenty miles below the rapids at Louis- ville, and now took tools to work them, intending to load the vessel with the coal and to employ it as fuel, instead of constantly detaining the boat while wood was procured from the banks.
"Late at night, on the fourth day after quitting Pittsburgh, they arrived in safety at Louisville, having been but seventy hours descending upwards of seven hundred miles. The novel appearance of the vessel, and the fearful rapidity with which it made its passage over the broad reaches of the river, excited a mixture of terror and surprise among many of the settlers on the banks, whom the rumor of such an invention had never reached; and it is related that on the unexpected arrival of the boat before Louisville, in the course of a fine, still, moonlight night, the extraordinary sound which filled the air, as the pent-up steam was suffered to escape from the valve on rounding to, produced a general alarm, and the multitudes in the town rose from their beds to ascertain the cause. I have heard that the general impression among the good Kentuckians was that the comet had fallen into the Ohio; but this does not rest upon the same foundation as the other facts which I lay before you, and which I may at once say I had directly from the lips of the parties themselves. The small depth of water in the rapids prevented the boat from pursuing her voyage immediately, and during the consequent detention of three weeks in the upper part of the Ohio, several trips were successfully made between Louisville and Cincinnati. In fine, the waters rose, and in the course of the last week in November the voyage was resumed, the depth of water barely admitting their passage.
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