Chapter 50

Chapter 50
The 'Original Jacobs'

WE had some talk about Captain Isaiah Sellers, now many years dead.
He was a fine man, a high-minded man, and greatly respected both ashore and on
the river. He was very tall, well built, and handsome; and in his old age--
as I remember him--his hair was as black as an Indian's, and his eye
and hand were as strong and steady and his nerve and judgment as firm
and clear as anybody's, young or old, among the fraternity of pilots.
He was the patriarch of the craft; he had been a keelboat pilot before the day
of steamboats; and a steamboat pilot before any other steamboat pilot,
still surviving at the time I speak of, had ever turned a wheel.
Consequently his brethren held him in the sort of awe in which illustrious
survivors of a bygone age are always held by their associates.
He knew how he was regarded, and perhaps this fact added some trifle
of stiffening to his natural dignity, which had been sufficiently stiff
in its original state.

He left a diary behind him; but apparently it did not date back
to his first steamboat trip, which was said to be 1811, the year
the first steamboat disturbed the waters of the Mississippi.
At the time of his death a correspondent of the 'St. Louis Republican'
culled the following items from the diary--

'In February, 1825, he shipped on board the steamer "Rambler," at Florence,
Ala., and made during that year three trips to New Orleans and back--
this on the "Gen. Carrol," between Nashville and New Orleans. It was during
his stay on this boat that Captain Sellers introduced the tap of the bell
as a signal to heave the lead, previous to which time it was the custom
for the pilot to speak to the men below when soundings were wanted.
The proximity of the forecastle to the pilot-house, no doubt, rendered this
an easy matter; but how different on one of our palaces of the present day.

'In 1827 we find him on board the "President," a boat of two
hundred and eighty-five tons burden, and plying between Smithland
and New Orleans. Thence he joined the "Jubilee" in 1828,
and on this boat he did his first piloting in the St. Louis trade;
his first watch extending from Herculaneum to St. Genevieve.
On May 26, 1836, he completed and left Pittsburgh in charge
of the steamer "Prairie," a boat of four hundred tons, and the
first steamer with a STATE-ROOM CABIN ever seen at St. Louis.
In 1857 he introduced the signal for meeting boats, and which has,
with some slight change, been the universal custom of this day;
in fact, is rendered obligatory by act of Congress.

'As general items of river history, we quote the following marginal
notes from his general log--

'In March, 1825, Gen. Lafayette left New Orleans for St. Louis