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THE
LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF
CAPT. STEPHEN B. HANKS,
RECALLING THE DRED SCOTT CASE, WHICH ORIGINATED AT ST.
PAUL
We were at once put on the Golden Era.
Just how she happened t be there and free for us to use I
cannot say. She had been with the company before and I think
must have been doing something outside of regular line work.
We left Galena on the Galena’s day so the regularity of the
line from the lower end was not interrupted.
Early in the fall the water began to
get low and one day just after leaving Dubuque I asked the
Cub, who had now been with me for two years, if he could run
her long enough for me to get shaved and he said he could. We
were going down stream in a good river so I ventured to leave
him in charge. When I was about half shaved there was a sharp
blow on the hull, under and forward, followed by a slivering
and raking along what seemed to be her entire length. I jumped
from the chair under the barber’s hands, and run up until I
could see the cub and then told him to “round to” and run into
a slough close by where we would be in shallow water, then
returned to the barber’s chair t finish my shave. Meanwhile
the inside of the hull was examined and the report was that
but little water was coming in and that mostly at the point
where the obstruction first bit us. At the first shock I
sensed what had happened and as soon as I got outside found my
suspension correct. A year or two before the Roy al Arch had
sunk at this point and the low water had brought one of her
cranks near enough to the surface to rake us as our boat was
some hundred yards out of her proper course. This happened at
a point about half way down nine mile Island. The wreck was
taken out by the Government the next year. It was a close
call for us, hitting that kind of an obstruction under full
On the Grey Eagle. I went to Galena
early in the spring via Fulton and Dixon and I remember there
was much ice still on the banks of the river when we first
went up. My regular season’s work was on the Itasca with
Captain Webb whose home was in Le Claire. He had come
from the Ohio river at an earlier date and was rather a
peculiar man in some respects but we became very good
friends. He was perfectly bald and wore a wig. My partner
was Orlando L West, commonly known as “Ed West” and Charlie
Mather was our clerk and a very good friend of mine. His wife
was boarding in galena and my wife came up and boarded for a
time in the early part of the season at the same place.
The season was uneventful: there was a
good stage of water: our trips were regular; we had a fine
steward, Frank Norris by name, and he supplied an
excellent service at the table. The passenger traffic was not
large during the early part of the season but as the summer
came on the tourist travel became good both form the East and
South. The planters from the southern states were getting
into the way of coming up to the north country to spend the
hot season and it became a familiar sight to find southerners
and their families traveling with us, nearly all of them slave
holders, together with their personal servants who were
slaves. This created more or less friction, the boat
employees objecting to waiting on the slaves as well as
objecting to service with them in waiting on the masters and
their families. There was never anything serious with us but
at hotels there was much annoyance and sometimes real
trouble. The latter frequently came when the blacks learned
that they were on free soil and were not compelled to remain
in slavery. In fact there were plenty of people ready to give
them this information and naturally some took advantage of it
and this cause further bad blood and I think can be considered
as one of the causes leading to the War of Rebellion.
Many are still living who can recall
the famous “Dred Scott” case,
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