The record-union., 1896-08-17
THE MISSISSIPPI FLEET.
Over Thirty Million Tons Of Freight
Were Annually Moved.
Life Of the River Men-Were a World
Unto Themselves With Their
Floating Homes.

EIOdLluS MONIES.
Engrossed as we are these days with
white squadrons, record breaking AT
lantic liners, yacht races and Henley
| regattaS, We can with difficulty believe
| that far away from all these on the
waters of the Mississippi Valley, there
is a great fleet doing a vast business
without fuss or noise, and yet it is true.
| Up and down the rivers of the Missis-
! sippi Valley ply to-day 5000 steamers
and unrigged craft. The crew that mans
them numbers fully 10000. They move
annually fully 30000,000 tons of freight
and carry more than 10000 passengers.
They earn in the gross some S11 ,OOO, 900
and pay out perhaps .$6,O00OO0 in
wages.
THE PICTURESQUE PAST
/ 1t is monStrouS silent commerce, this
of the wonderful valley, and it goes on
unnoticed and unsung; yet there was a
day, not fifty years ago, when the com
merce of these rivers instead of that OF
the Atlantic, fixed the attention and
kindled the imagination of the whole
country. In the palmy days it was by
| these rivers almost entirely that the
East and West, the North and South.
held intercourse; the railroad had not
! linked the States into one and all who
would journey through the central
United States, send their wares hither,
or bring from without foreign products,
| did it by grace of the waters of the
valley. The commerce which grew up
thus was one of the most vivid, pictur-
esque and energetic in all the history OF
water traffic.
The rivers were used for such a va
riety of purposes and by such a varied
humanity that the result was a con-
glomeration of craft which was prob
ably never equaled in the English chan
mel or on the Thames. When the set
| tiers arrived the savageS held the
| streams. Their one water craft for
pleasure, profit and war was the canoe,
and though savages went, the canoe re-
mained to serve the whites. They socn
! improved upon it, making from the
! trunks of trees the pirogue, true
woodsman's boat. When they fitted out
| the pirogue with out-riggers and sails
| they had a craft safe, strong, commo-
dious and easily replaced. After these
primitive crafts came the RATS and fiat
| boats made of green oak plank, fastened
| by wooden pins to a frame of timber
| and caulked with tow; the variations
of these We're legion and the keel boat,
| broad horn,'' lark, " Kentucky boat"
| held the river unmolested until the ar
rival of the steamboat.
DAYS OF THE KEEL AND FLAT
BOAT.
| With a raft or fiatboat as foundation
| III h,,i1f of he,
grotesque craft conceivable. One of the
strangest sights were their fleets Of
lumber formed by lashing together
solidly with rope thirty or more lorg
lumber RATS. The fleets came usually
from the upper Allegheny and fioated
down to the gulf, that is, they did if
they escaped dashing into the bank and
breaking apart, in which case the lum-
Der generally reached the gulf a plank
at time. These accidents were not
rare. for the lumber fleets were un-
calmly things to manage and their crew
often careless or the worse for liquor.
| Upon fiatboats and keelboats it was
customary to build sheds, shanties or
cabins according to their purpose and
| the wealth of the owner. The entire
hull was covered with cabin In the
produce boat and on top of this was a
smaller cabin for the crew. AS every
man built as he pleased in those days
there were hardly two flats alike on the
river. Many of the boatmen painted
their cabins in gay colors, others
| blazoned notices on them. New Or
leans or Bust" was q favorite legend,
and an appropriate one, for so poorly
were many of the crafts put together
| that it was as often bust" as New Or
| leans.
| A FLOATING THEATER.
! These boats were manned by a crew
of from one to fifty, according to size.
In the large keel boats there were usu-
| ally some twenty men. They went
down under oars when the water
was low; if it were high they went
ION top of the water" as the express
sio1 is, and needed only to steer. The
| tleets RATS usually waited for high
water They carried often a crew of
| fifty men who We're kept busy with
poles and long oars guiding the sprawl
ing thing.
| Many of the flatboats rigged up sail
for themselves and made good speed.
The sail was of kind to stagger a
seaman. Bagging, bedticking coats,
anything was utilized though not
often were so queer sails seen as those
Joe Jefferson tells of. 1t was in the
early forties and he was travelling
| through the West with a strolling COM
pany Of actors who We're often put to
shifts for means for paying for it. On
leaving Nashville for New Orleans they
| had rugged up a barge with cabin
and caboose, and were getting on ia
mously when one day on the Missis-
| sippi a fair breeze suggested sails.
Steering into shore, hickory pole
was cut and drop-scene with wood
painted on one side and a palace on
the other was unfurled to the breeze.
THE wonder-stricken farmers and
their wives and children says Jeffer-
son. would run out of their log cab
| ms and, standing or the river bank,
gaze with amazement at our curious
craft. 1t was delightful to watch the
steamboats, as they went by. The pass
/ engerS would crowd the deck and look
with yonder at US. For a bit of sport
the Captain and | would vary the pic
| ture and when a boat passed we would
| first show them the wood scene and
| then suddenly swing the sail around,
mr. s2l11|IJl FRUIT