Chapter 14

Chapter 14
Rank and Dignity of Piloting

IN my preceding chapters I have tried, by going into the minutiae
of the science of piloting, to carry the reader step by step
to a comprehension of what the science consists of; and at
the same time I have tried to show him that it is a very curious
and wonderful science, too, and very worthy of his attention.
If I have seemed to love my subject, it is no surprising thing,
for I loved the profession far better than any I have followed since,
and I took a measureless pride in it. The reason is plain:
a pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and
entirely independent human being that lived in the earth.
Kings are but the hampered servants of parliament and people;
parliaments sit in chains forged by their constituency;
the editor of a newspaper cannot be independent, but must
work with one hand tied behind him by party and patrons,
and be content to utter only half or two-thirds of his mind;
no clergyman is a free man and may speak the whole truth,
regardless of his parish's opinions; writers of all kinds are
manacled servants of the public. We write frankly and fearlessly,
but then we 'modify' before we print. In truth, every man and
woman and child has a master, and worries and frets in servitude;
but in the day I write of, the Mississippi pilot had none.
The captain could stand upon the hurricane deck, in the pomp
of a very brief authority, and give him five or six orders while
the vessel backed into the stream, and then that skipper's reign
was over. The moment that the boat was under way in the river,
she was under the sole and unquestioned control of the pilot.
He could do with her exactly as he pleased, run her when and whither
he chose, and tie her up to the bank whenever his judgment said
that that course was best. His movements were entirely free;
he consulted no one, he received commands from nobody,
he promptly resented even the merest suggestions. Indeed, the law
of the United States forbade him to listen to commands
or suggestions, rightly considering that the pilot necessarily
knew better how to handle the boat than anybody could tell him.
So here was the novelty of a king without a keeper, an absolute monarch
who was absolute in sober truth and not by a fiction of words.
I have seen a boy of eighteen taking a great steamer serenely
into what seemed almost certain destruction, and the aged captain
standing mutely by, filled with apprehension but powerless
to interfere. His interference, in that particular instance,
might have been an excellent thing, but to permit it would
have been to establish a most pernicious precedent. It will
easily be guessed, considering the pilot's boundless authority,
that he was a great