Chapter 16 - Page 2

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 swing 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 night-fall, 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 was carefully loaded to that exact figure--
she wouldn't enter a dose of homoeopathic pills on her manifest after that.
Hardly any passengers were taken,