Omaha daily bee., 1921-08-17
"Down the or Mississip."
Packets Revive Memories of the Day
When Matches Beat Robert z. Lee
BY H. H. Dunn, in the September Popular
Mechanics Magazine

of the Robert E. Lee" the "Natchez," and
scores OF other floating palaces that ran up and
down the waterways of the lower Mississippi
Valley a third of a century ago. the river
come back. Confirming the faith of the old
river captains, some OF whom have died in
that faith but most of whom have held onto
life at New Orleans, and Memphis, and
Natchez, and St, Louis, and other river ports,
| the day OF the stern-wheeler has returned. And
oddly enough, most of these revived packets OF
other days, as we'll the new ones, are COM
manded by those men who have been waiting,
uncomfortable and cramped in their short quar-
ters, all these years for the steamboat to return
| to its own
Within the past lS months, since the first
turned to work the Mississippi, the Red, the
Atchafalaya. Bayou Lafourche, Bayou Terre-
bonne, the Warrior, the Tombigbee. and other
streams of the south, wherever there is water
enough to float their fiat bargelike hulls, or to
give their slowly revolving paddles grip enough
to drive them ahead That they are here,
| every town along these rivers knows, but where
they came from not even the Oldest river man"
can tell. Some have been laid up for IS, 20, 80
| years. in the ports of missing boats, idle but
beloved and hopeful; some have been working,
| in desultory fashion, on small inland streams,
| eking out an existence in competition with
| motorboats, and number, possibly e-third
of the total have been built new for this revival
The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, giving
the railroads the right to charge less tor long
haul, provided the long haul was in competi-
ton with water carriers, put the packets out
OF business. The act Of the Interstate Com
merce Commission of lolo-l920, allowing the
railroads to boost their rates to new high lev
els, brought back the packets into a more
profitable business, mile for mile, than they had
IS years ago. The federal government, with
its barge lines on the Mississippi and Warrior
rivers, showed the way to the owners and
builders and operators Of the packets, and the
old river captains many of whose names had
been all but forgotten, suddenly stood once
more in the glass-fronted cabin, just beneath
the twin gilded eagles and squarely between
the towering smokestacks, heading once more
into the stream.
Today, the New Orleans waterfront, which
has been bare of these packets for many years,
so bare that the incoming of one was described
in all the newspapers holds from three to
dozen more every morning, and, by after
noon, on most of these days, this feet has been
replaced by newcomers, alike save for size-so
much alike that only by looking for the name
cabin can one tell which is which at the Bien-
willie Street landing. No boat in the history of
the world ever had the romantic career of the
old river packet, with its sturdy hull, its "gin
gerbread" superstructure, its blazing furnaces,
fed by sooty blacks, its belching stacks its
SuuCu udlIIOoluS, dHu hS SldlCIOOulS uOHS III
blue and pink and yellow, to suit the tastes of
the rich rice and sugar and cotton planters and
cattlemen. The races of these boats are mat
tiers OF history, and thousands of dollars
changed hands on contests such as those of the
Robert E. Lee" and the "Natchez," from the
Orleans to St. Louis, or of the Liberty" and
the first America" from Memphis to New
Orleans, nearly half century ago.
But, with the return of the packets, the ro-
nance has gone from their service. They have
come back for work and not for play; they are
freight carriers, with passenger traffic only |
an incident. With railroad freight rates 20 to |
40 per cent above those at which freight can be
handled prohtably by these steamboats,, those !
who have watched the trend OF transportation |
in the United States have seen that the money |
lies in the freight. The men who have brought |
back the packets realize that, while they can
road average of Is miles, they cannot compete
with the 800 to $50 miles day of the passenger |,
train and so the passenger must seek the |
packet, for the packet does not care for the |
passenger.
The cost of one of the packets Of medium
size is about $4,000; of the larger packets up
to 100000, while fuel today is coal or crude
oil. No longer is it wood cut from the river
bank while the passengers held picnic on
shore. But if the romance is gone from the
packet itself, it still remains in the men who |
brought it back, for they are the river cap
boats, and their sons, and their sons sons, all
experts in river craft, class of water men
peculiar to themselves, the best of the type, |
who have survived the vicisstudes Of time,
largely on the strength OF the hope that their |
own ancient profession or their fathers trade |
would come back to them.
How strongly it has come back may be |
judged from the fact that almost every town
from St. Louis to New Orleans and some even |
farther north, is providing terminals and port
facilities-h it is fortunate as to have river
in front of ito handle the up and down
stream traffic of these stern-wheelers. New |
Orleans is devoting large part Of the 500
feet Bienville Street landing to the accommoda-
ton of the packets; Memphis is putting in
floating terminals, rising and falling wharves,
so that the landing stage always will be at the
menced work on similar landings The new |
terminals at St. Louis provide for abundant
space at the packet landings. Biloxi, Miss, is !;
seeking federal aid to deepen her harbor and
widen its channel so as to bring in the packets
Mobile is putting several hundred thousand
dollars into port improvements largely for
coastal traffic, while Morgan City, 100 miles
laya river, one of the ancient mouths of the
Mississippi, is preparing a bond issue for port |
improvements, and asking federal aid to i'm
prove the channel to deep salt water Green
vile, Ark, has developed lines up and down
and across the river. and now has six packets
operating into and out of the port.
One of the big packets, carrying about 200
tons of freight, has been operated from Chi
cago to New Orleans; another has been put
on between Cincinnati and the Louisiana port, |
while service between New Orleans and other
Louisiana and Mississippi towns by packet is
as regular as, and a great deal cheaper than, |
freight or passenger train service between the