Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0137/01376.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 11KB | 194 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01376}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life On The Mississippi
Chapter XVI}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{boat
miles
three
time
boats
days
steamers
race
always
every
see
tables
}
$Date{1917}
$Log{See Table 1.*0137601.tab
}
Title:       Life On The Mississippi
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1917

Chapter XVI

Racing Days

     It was always the custom for the boats to leave New Orleans between four
and five o'clock in the afternoon.  From three o'clock onward they would be
burning rosin and pitch-pine (the sign of preparation), and so one had the
picturesque spectacle of a rank, some two or three miles long, of tall,
ascending columns of coal-black smoke; a colonnade which supported a sable
roof of the same smoke blended together and spreading abroad over the city.
Every outward-bound boat had its flag flying at the jack-staff, and sometimes
a duplicate on the verge-staff astern.  Two or three miles of mates were
commanding and swearing with more than usual emphasis: countless processions
of freight barrels and boxes were spinning athwart the levee and flying aboard
the stage-planks; belated passengers were dodging and skipping among these
frantic things, hoping to reach the forecastle companionway alive, but having
their doubts about it; women with reticules and bandboxes were trying to keep
up with husbands freighted with carpet sacks and crying babies, and making a
failure of it by losing their heads in the whirl and roar and general
distraction; drays and baggage-vans were clattering hither and thither in a
wild hurry, every now and then getting blocked and jammed together, and then
during ten seconds one could not see them for the profanity, except vaguely
and dimly; every windlass connected with every fore-hatch, from one end of
that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping up a deafening whizz
and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the half- naked crews of
perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring such songs as "De Las' Sack!
De Las' Sack!" - inspired to unimaginable exaltation by the chaos of turmoil
and racket that was driving everybody else mad.  By this time the hurricane
and boiler decks of the steamers would be packed black with passengers.  The
"last bells" would begin to clang, all down the line, and then the powwow
seemed to double; in a moment or two the final warning came - a simultaneous
din of Chinese gongs, with the cry, "All dat ain't goin', please to git
asho'!" - and behold the powwow quadrupled!  People came swarming ashore,
overturning excited stragglers that were trying to swarm aboard.  One more
moment later a long array of stage-planks was being hauled in, each with its
customary latest passenger clinging to the end of it with teeth, nails, and
everything else, and the customary latest procrastinator making a wild spring
shoreward over his head.

     Now a number of the boats slide backward into the stream, leaving wide
gaps in the serried rank of steamers.  Citizens crowd the decks of boats that
are not to go, in order to see the sight.  Steamer after steamer straightens
herself up, gathers all her strength, and presently comes swinging by, under a
tremendous head of steam, with flag flying, black smoke rolling, and her
entire crew of firemen and deck-hands (usually swarthy negroes) massed
together on the forecastle, the best "voice" in the lot towering from the
midst (being mounted on the capstan), waving his hat or a flag, and all
roaring a mighty chorus, while the parting cannons boom and the multitudinous
spectators wave their hats and huzza!  Steamer after steamer falls into line,
and the stately procession goes winging its flight up the river.

     In the old times, whenever two fast boats started out on a race, with a
big crowd of people looking on, it was inspiring to hear the crews sing,
especially if the time were nightfall, and the forecastle lit up with the red
glare of the torch-baskets.  Racing was royal fun.  The public always had an
idea that racing was dangerous; whereas the opposite was the case - that is,
after the laws were passed which restricted each boat to just so many pounds
of steam to the square inch.  No engineer was ever sleepy or careless when his
heart was in a race.  He was constantly on the alert, trying gauge-cocks and
watching things.  The dangerous place was on slow, plodding boats, where the
engineers drowsed around and allowed chips to get into the "doctor" and shut
off the water-supply from the boilers.

     In the "flush times" of steamboating, a race between two notoriously
fleet steamers was an event of vast importance.  The date was set for it
several weeks in advance, and from that time forward the whole Mississippi
valley was in a state of consuming excitement.  Politics and the weather were
dropped, and people talked only of the coming race.  As the time approached,
the two steamers "stripped" and got ready.  Every encumbrance that added
weight, or exposed a resisting surface to wind or water, was removed, if the
boat could possibly do without it.  The "spars," and sometimes even their
supporting derricks, were sent ashore, and no means left to set the boat
afloat in case she got aground.  When the Eclipse and the A. L. Shotwell ran
their great race many years ago, it was said that pains were taken to scrape
the gilding off the fanciful device which hung between the Eclipse's chimneys,
and that for that one trip the captain left off his kid gloves and had his
head shaved.  But I always doubted these things.

     If the boat was known to make her best speed when drawing five and a half
feet forward and five feet aft, she carefully loaded to that exact figure -
she wouldn't enter a dose of homeopathic pills on her manifest after that.
Hardly any passengers were taken, because they not only add weight but they
never will "trim boat." They always run to the side when there is anything to
see, whereas a conscientious and experienced steamboatman would stick to the
center of the boat and part his hair in the middle with a spirit-level.

     No way-freights and no way-passengers were allowed, for the racers would
stop only at the largest towns, and then it would be only "touch and go."
Coal-flats and wood-flats were contracted for beforehand, and these were kept
ready to hitch on to the flying steamers at a moment's warning.  Double crews
were carried, so that all work could be quickly done.

     The chosen date being come, and all things in readiness, the two great
steamers back into the stream, and lie there jockeying a moment, apparently
watching each other's slightest movement, like sentient creatures; flags
drooping, the pent stream shrieking through safety- valves, the black smoke
rolling and tumbling from the chimneys and darkening all the air.  People,
people everywhere; the shores, the housetops, the steamboats, the ships, are
packed with them, and you know that the borders of the broad Mississippi are
going to be fringed with humanity thence northward twelve hundred miles, to
welcome these racers.

     Presently tall columns of steam burst from the 'scape-pipes of both
steamers, two guns boom a good-by, two red-shirted heroes mounted on capstans
wave their small flags above the massed crews on the forecastles, two
plaintive solos linger on the air a few waiting seconds, two mighty choruses
burst forth - and here they come!  Brass bands bray "Hail Columbia," huzza
after huzza thunders from the shores, and the stately creatures go whistling
by like the wind.

     Those boats will never halt a moment between New Orleans and St. Louis,
except for a second or two at large towns, or to hitch thirty-cord wood-boats
alongside.  You should be on board when they take a couple of those wood-boats
in two and turn a swarm of men into each; by the time you have wiped your
glasses and put them on, you will be wondering what has become of that wood.

     Two nicely matched steamers will stay in sight of each other day after
day.  They might even stay side by side, but for the fact that pilots are not
all alike, and the smartest pilots will win the race.  If one of the boats has
a "lightning" pilot, whose "partner" is a trifle his inferior, you can tell
which one is on watch by noting whether that boat has gained ground or lost
some during each four-hour stretch.  The shrewdest pilot can delay a boat if
he has not a fine genius for steering.  Steering is a very high art.  One must
not keep a rudder dragging across a boat's stern if he wants to get up the
river fast.

     There is a great difference in boats, of course.  For a long time I was
on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in.
But of course this was at rare intervals.  Ferry-boats used to lose valuable
trips because their passengers grew old and died, waiting for us to get by.
This was at still rarer intervals.  I had the documents for these occurrences,
but through carelessness they have been mislaid.  This boat, the John J. Roe,
was so slow that when she finally sunk in Madrid Bend it was five years before
the owners heard of it. That was always a confusing fact to me, but it is
according to the record, anyway.  She was dismally slow; still, we often had
pretty exciting times racing with islands, and rafts, and such things.  One
trip, however, we did rather well.  We went to St. Louis in sixteen days. But
even at this rattling gait I think we changed watches three times in Fort
Adams reach, which is five miles long.  A "reach" is a piece of straight
river, and of course the current drives through such a place in a pretty
lively way.

     That trip we went to Grand Gulf, from New Orleans, in four days (three
hundred and forty miles); the Eclipse and Shotwell did it in one. We were nine
days out, in the chute of 63 (seven hundred miles); the Eclipse and Shotwell
went there in two days.  Something over a generation ago, a boat called the J.
M. White went from New Orleans to Cairo in three days, six hours, and
forty-four minutes.  In 1853 the Eclipse made the same trip in three days,
three hours, and twenty minutes. ^1 In 1870 the R. E. Lee did it in three days
and one hour.  This last is called the fastest trip on record.  I will try to
show that it was not.  For this reason: the distance between New Orleans and
Cairo, when the J. M. White ran it, was about eleven hundred and six miles;
consequently her average speed was a trifle over fourteen miles per hour.  In
the Eclipse's day the distance between the two ports had become reduced to one
thousand and eighty miles; consequently her average speed was a shade under
fourteen and three-eighths miles per hour.  In the R. E. Lee's time the
distance had diminished to about one thousand and thirty miles; consequently
her average was about fourteen and one-eighth miles per hour.  Therefore the
Eclipse's was conspicuously the fastest time that has ever been made.

[Footnote 1: Time disputed.  Some authorities add 1 hour and 16 minutes to
this.]


[See Table 1.: The Record Of Some Famous Trips]