The arrival of the railroad at the head of the Ohio River in the early fifties brought the East into an immediate touch with the Mississippi Valley unknown before.But however bold railway engineers were in the face of the ragged ranges of the Alleghanies, they could not then outguess the tricks of the Ohio, the Mississippi, or the Missouri, and railway promoters could not afford to take chances on having their stations and tracks unexpectedly isolated, if not actually carried away, by swirling, yellow floods.The Mississippi, too, had been known at times to achieve a width of seventy miles, and tributaries have overflowed their banks to a proportionate extent.It was several decades ere the Ohio was paralleled by a railway, and the Mississippi for long distances even today has not yet heard the shrill cry of the locomotive.So the steamboat entered its heyday and encountered little competition.Until the Civil War the rivers of the West remained the great arteries of trade, carrying grain and merchandise of every description southward and bringing back cotton, rice, and sugar.
The rivalries of the great lines of packets established in these days of the steamboat, however, equaled anything ever known in railway competition, and, in the matter of fast time, became more spectacular than anything of its kind in any line of transportation in our country.With flags flying, boilers heated white with abundance of pine and resin, and bold and skillful pilots at the steering wheels, no sport of kings ever aroused the enthusiasm of hundreds of thousands to such a pitch as did many of the old-time races northward from New Orleans.
The J.M.White and her performances stand out conspicuously in the annals of the river.Her builder, familiarly known to a generation of rivermen as Billy King, deserves to rank with Henry Shreve.Commissioned in 1844 to build the J.M.White for J.M.
Converse of St.Louis, with funds supplied by Robert Chouteau of that city, King proceeded to put into effect the knowledge which he had derived from a close study of the swells made by steamboats when under way.When the boat was being built in the famous shipyards at Elizabeth, on the Monongahela, the wheel beams were set twenty feet farther back than was customary.
Converse was struck with this unheard-of radicalism in design, and balked; King was a man given to few words; he was resolved to throw convention to the winds and trust his judgment; he refused to build the boat on other lines.Converse felt compelled to let Chouteau pass on the question; in time the laconic answer came:
"Let King put the beams where he pleases."Thus the craft which Converse thought a monstrosity became known far and wide for both its design and its speed.In 1844 the J.M.
White made the record of three days, twenty-three hours, and nine minutes between New Orleans and St.Louis.* Of course the secret of Billy King's success soon became known.He had placed his paddle wheels where they would bite into the swell produced by every boat just under its engines.He had transformed what had been a handicap into a positive asset.It is said that he attempted to shield his prize against competition by destroying the model of the J.M.White, as well as to have refused large offers to build a boat that would beat her.But it is said also that an exhibition model of the boat was a cherished possession of E.M.Stanton, Secretary of War, and that it hung in his office during Lincoln's administration.
* This performance is illustrated by the following comparative table showing the best records of later years between New Orleans and St.Louis, a distance estimated in 1844 as 1300 miles but in 1870 as 1218 miles, owing to the action of the river in shortening its course.
YEAR BOATTIME
1844J.M.White 3 d.23 h.9 m.
1849Missouri 4 d.19 h.--
1889Dexter4 d.9 h.--
1870Natchez 8 d.21 h.58 m.
1870R.E.Lee3 d.18 h.14 m.
The steamboat now extended its service to the West and North.The ancient fur trade with the Indians of the upper Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Arkansas, had its headquarters at St.Louis, whence the notable band of men engaged in that trade were reaching out to the Rockies.The roll includes Ashley, Campbell, Sublette, Manuel Lisa, Perkins, Hempstead, William Clark, Labadie, the Chouteaus, and Menard--men of different races and colors and alike only in their energy, bravery, and initiative.
Through them the village of St.Louis had grown to a population of four thousand in 1819, when Major Long's expedition passed up the Missouri in the first steamboat to ascend that river.This boat, the Western Engineer, was built at Pittsburgh and was modeled cunningly for its work.It was one of the first stern wheelers built in the West; and the saving in width meant much on streams having such narrow channels as the Missouri and the Platte, especially when barges were to be towed.Then, too, its machinery, which was covered over or boarded up, was shrouded in mystery.A fantastic figure representing a serpent's open mouth contained the exhaust pipe.If the New Orleans alarmed the population of the Ohio Valley, the sensation caused among the red children of the Missouri at the sight of this gigantic snake belching fire and smoke must have thoroughly satisfied the whim of its designer.
The admission of Missouri to statehood and the independence of Mexico mark the beginning of real commercial relations between St.Louis and Santa Fe.In 1822 Captain William Becknell organized the first wagon train which left the Missouri (at Franklin, near Independence) for the long dangerous journey to the Arkansas and on to Santa Fe.In the following year two expeditions set forth, carrying out cottons and other drygoods to exchange for horses, mules, furs, and silver.
