of
Muscatine County Iowa
1911
| History of Muscatine County Iowa 1911 | |
Source: History of Muscatine County Iowa, Volume I, 1911, pages 76-77
THE "FATHER OF WATERS" BRINGS TO MUSCATINE IT'S FIRST SETTLERS. In April, 1823, Daniel Smith Harris, a lad of fifteen, left Cincinnati on the keel boat Colonel Bumford for the LeFevre lead mines, now Galena, where he arrived June 20th, following, after a laborious voyage down the Ohio and up the Mississippi. It came about in the evolution of things required for specific purposes that the keel boat was constructed. This boat was built to go up stream as well as down. It was a well modeled craft, sixty to eighty feet long and fifteen to eighteen feet wide, sharp at both ends and often with fine lines, clipper built for passengers or traffic. It had usually about four feet depth of hold. Its cargo box, as it was called, was about four feet higher, sometimes covered with a light curved deck, sometimes open, with a "gallows frame" running the length of the hold, over which tarpaulins were drawn and fastened to the sides of the boat for the protection of the freight and passengers in stormy weather. At either end of the craft was a deck eight or ten feet in length, the forward or forecastle deck having a windlass or capstan for pulling the boat off bars or warping through swift water or over rapids. Along each side of the cargo box ran a narrow walk about eighteen inches in width, with cleats nailed to the deck twenty-eight or thirty inches apart to prevent the crew from slipping when poling up stream. About the time the keel boat Colonel Bumford was passing St. Louis, the Steamer Virginia departed for the upper river with a load of supplies for the United States military post at Fort Snelling. She arrived at Fort Snelling, May 10, 1823, the first boat propelled by steam to breast the water of the upper Mississippi. She was received by a salute of cannon from the fort and carried fear and consternation to the Indians, who watched the smoke rolling from her chimneys and the exhaust steam from her escape pipe with a noise that simply terrified them. The Virginia was scarcely longer than the largest keel boat, being about 120 feet long and twenty-two feet beam. She had no upper cabin, the accommodation for passengers being in the hold in the stern of the boat, with the cargo box covering so common to the keel boat of which she herself was but an evolution.
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