PLEASANT RAFTING WITH THE GOOD 'TEN BROECK'
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The year 1882 was a busy and important for me. Because getting my license
and beginning work on my own boat and helping organize the LeClaire
Navigation Company as told in the preceding chapter, I was entered, passed
and raised to the degree of a Master Mason in Snow Lodge
number forty-four in LeClaire, Iowa, I changed my membership to Trinity
Lodge number two hundred and eight. I have been away from home too much to be
an active member but after forty-five years' experience I hold masonic
teaching and practice in high esteem and consider it a great influence for
good in any community.
Miss Elizabeth Bard and I were married in her home on the evening of
December 7, 1882. At the same time her sister Adelle was married to John H.
Laycock.
It was very cold and the heavy ice running made crossing the river very
difficult and dangerous. Captain and Mrs. Van Sant went up with me in a
carriage in the afternoon and drove back with my plucky bride and me after
midnight with the temperature twenty-six degrees below. The road, frozen hard,
had smooth tracks and we were not long on the way to our cozy, furnished
apartment, with a good hard - coal fire in the base-burner.
In February, 1883, we bought the towboat 'J.W. Mills' of W.J. Young and company for $7000.00.
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We did not have to pay any cash down or spend any money repairing her.
She had been out on the Eagle Point ways and given $2200.00 repairs before
lying up for winter.
Mr. Young now had two fine, large, new boats, the 'Boardman' and
'W.J. Young, Jr.', that would do the bulk of his work. We were to do all his
extra work and let about 0ne-third of the earnings thereon apply on our notes
given for the 'J.W. Mills.'
I took charge of her and started out early. She cleared $4000.00 that
season and $60000.00 in 1884 and $4700.00 in 1885, my last season on her. So
she more than paid for herself in her first and second season.
In February, 1886, we bought the 'Ten Broeck' and barge for $8250.00. This
was a great bargain as the 'Ten Broeck' was only six years old. She was one
of the best in the business. Her engines were sixteen and one-half inches in
diameter by fourteen and one-half foot stroke, fitted with new piston packing
and Frisbie balance valves.
She three good boilers and was very easy on fuel.
She had a nice comfortable cabin for her crew and one large guest room.
The 'Ten Broeck' was wide and low, caught very little wind, She was easy
on the stern of the raft and had wonderful power in backing and flanking.
I went on her in the spring of 1886 leaving LeClaire twenty-four hours
after a severe March blizzard that gave us ten inches of snow and a very cold
night to start up river.
During the six seasons I was in charge of the 'Ten Broeck' I had several
good pilots who changed watches with me. Among them I hold John Monroe, John
H. Wooders, George Tromley, Wm. Savage, Alf.
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Picture: Steamer Ten Broeck
This was a large, powerful rafter with three boilers, and engines seventeen inches by four and one-half feet. Built at Stillwater in 1882 for Gillispie and Harper. In 1886 the LeClaire Navigation Company bought her and the author took charge for six years. She was low and wide, very little affected by wind and would out-back or out-flank anything in the river. Photograph taken four miles below Lynxville, Wis. |
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... Withrow, and Frank LePoint in
grateful recollection for their skillful work, cheerful co-operation and
genial companionship night and day. They were real partners.
When you rouse a man out of his nice berth at 11 P.M. or 3 A.M., night after
night to 'take her' in any part of the river and battle with fog, wind, and
shoal water, you get a good clear line on his disposition all right.
My old friend Henry Whitmore was my chief engineer for the first season on the 'Ten Broeck' and we enjoyed being together again.
Then James Stedman of LeClaire took charge of the engine room in 1887
and remained with me until we left her at the close of the season in 1891.
Our company now had several boats and had to take care of all the Beef
Slough or West Newton output for the Lansing lumber Company of Lansing Iowa,
David Joyce of Lyons, Iowa, and Fulton, Illinois, Chr. Mueller of
Davenport, besides supplying the Clinton Lumber Company, and W.J. Young
and Company all above what he could handle with his own two boats. We had
rented Wyalusing and Desota bays some other storage places where we would put
rafts not wanted at the mills in safe storage and where we could get them
out and run them to the mills during low water when the
rafting works were shut down.
Dropping rafts down one or two days run, moving them up in some bay,
taking off our kit and hiking back to Beef Slough for another raft to be
similarly lined up and fitted to run, then taken down to Desota or Lansing
and laid up and stripped was not as desirable as long through trips.
Then when we went after these logs in low water some were aground
on the shore and required consider-
140
able rolling to get them afloat and placed in the raft again.
This laying up and getting out again cost about two hundred dollars per
raft more than a trip straight through to the mill. Because I had the best
boat and was familiar with all the places we were using for storage, the 'Ten
Broeck' got the bulk of this work, and her earning were cut thereby;
but in the six years I was on her she cleared $ 22,000.00. We had sustained a
cut of ten cents per thousand feet on all logs to Clinton, Lyons and Fulton
since 1885 and this made a big difference in profits.
I only had one real bad break-up while on the 'Ten Broeck.' This was in
Lake Pepin, with a heavy raft of logs from Stillwater on Lake Saint Croix
for Chr. Mueller of Davenport, late in October. The mate and his crew had
double-boomed it all around the outside and put on extra lines to strengthen
it, but this all counted for nothing when the storm struck us at
daybreak when we were within one and one - half miles of shelter at the
mouth of the Chippewa.
We had to let go and get the 'Ten Broeck' away and out of the lake and our
raft was reduced to single logs with all the bark worn off them.
The bark and our entire kit of lines and poles were thrown up in a windrow on
shore and it was a mean task to disentangle the mass or mess.
I got a regular rafting crew from Beef Slough to help us and in nine days
hard work we had a new raft ready to start and lost only thirty-four
logs.
This break-up occurred before we bought the 'Netta Durant.' She was about a
mile behind us and got the same treatment. Her raft for the Clinton Lumber
Com-
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Picture: Steamer W. J. Young, Jr.
A handsome rafter, built in 1883 for W. J. Young Company of Clinton, Iowa. She is shown towing a half raft of logs. She was 180 feet long over all and 34 Feet wide, with engines fourteen inches by six feet. |
143
pany was in single logs and clear of any bark the same as ours.
My last trip with the noble 'Ten Broeck' was late in the fall of 1891
with a raft for Dimock Gould and Company of Moline from Stillwater to
Lansing Bay where we had orders to lay it up for early spring delivery.
The first half of November was mild, clear and calm, but the river was low.
We knew we would have to split below Prescott and double-trip past
Four Mile island where the United States dredge had made a cut through
the bar wide enough for a half raft.
When we got out of Lake Saint Croix in the morning and below Prescott
we found Captain R.J. Wheeler with the steamer ' Henrietta' and a large
excursion barge, the 'Robert Dodds' and raft in charge of Captain George
Brasser and the 'Menominee' and raft, Captain S.B. Withrow all tied up and
lying quiet. I could see some small boat down below in the cut. So we landed
on the right above the others. I took a skiff and visited the other boats,
and learned that Dan Rice with his little side-wheeled 'Bun Hersey'
and half raft for Red Wing had caught his right hand bow corner on that side
of the cut and then the stern swung over and rested on the sand on
the other side. The captains all thought he would soon get loose and drop
out of our way.
While the day was pleasant I knew how quickly that river could freeze
up when it turns cold, and the water low, but I was behind all of them and
could do nothing but wait for an opening.
When I got up the next morning, November 11, and could see no change in
the situation, I took a skiff and went down to the 'Bun Hersey
and took in the situa-
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... tion. On making inquiry of Captain Dan Rice a big, rough-looking chap with
his pants inside, big, high boots, as to what his plans or intentions were,
he told me that was his business not mine. I then went back up to the other
boats and got the captains together and told them if we waited
on Rice to get out of our way, we would all freeze in here. "Lets go down
together and hold an 'inquiry' over him,' was proposed. We went and Rice at
first was surly and stubborn, but we convinced him he must act at once
and he did as we suggested. He cut off that corner that was aground (about
one hundred and twenty-five logs) and took his raft through, coupled up and
on our way for a good run through Lake Pepin.
We had two days of bad weather but got our rafts safely placed in Landing
bay, hitched in to our fuel barge, and 'fit out' from Lansing at 2 A.M., on
November 10, for LeClaire. It turned cold at dark when we passed Clinton. We
reached LeClaire at 9:30 P.M.; put off surplus stores,
took on coal, paid off the deck crew and cooks and early in the morning of
the seventeenth with the 'Irene D.' hitched in alongside, made for Wapsie
Bay, ten miles up river. Wapsie Slough had frozen over during the night.
We had to break out way in. It was a cold day to 'Lay-up' and drain
steamboats, but we did it, only stopping for coffee and sandwiches at noon.
We carried our baggage and walked ashore before night over the ice that
had made again since we broke in earlier in the day.
That was my thirty-fifth birthday and a good hard one. By walking two and
one-half miles to Folletts I caught a train to Noels Station. I was very
hungry but
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... could not beg, buy or steal anything to eat. Rather than wait four hours
for the night 'accommodation' on the C.M. & St. P. to Davenport, I walked three
and one-half miles to Long Grove where my old chum Ed. Owen was ticket agent
He took me to his house, made fresh coffee and saved my life. Reaching
Davenport, I was too sore and stiff to walk and took a carriage.
I did not expect to go back on the 'Ten Broeck' and though going home I
left her as 'a tried and faithful friend' that had carried me and our raft
through many, many storms, fogs, shallow waters and crooked places
all O.K.
One night going up the river on the 'Ten Broeck' with our fuel barge in
tow and changing watch at eleven o'clock above Apple river I said to Frank
LePoint who had just taken her (as pilot), "Frank, I think I see red and
green lights up there near the mouth the Maquoketa (river). In this moonlight
the lights don't show very well, but I think he has a raft of him; I guess
I'll wait and see who it is."
In a few minutes Frank's keen Sioux indian eyes caught the situation
and he said," Why that man he's tied up. Now why you 'spose tie up a raf' on
such a night like dis. It mus' be Brasser (Captain George Brasser)/
He like dat landing." Sure enough! When we got up closer, by four short
blasts from her whistle calling for help we recognized the raft-boat 'Robert
Dodds' of which George Brasser was master. Running in closer I
called to ask what he wanted and could see the trouble before he answered: "
Ho Cap ! This dam fellar wit' his tie raf' run into me since I'm landed here
and can't move my boat- he's swung in across the Robert
Dodd's wheel. I want you to pull him out of dis." There was a big bass voice
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... moving across on the tie raft ( from the Wisconsin river) whom I judged
was the pilot ( a 'floater') and at my suggestion he made fast to his raft
the end of a good line our mate threw out to him.
Then we slowly and carefully pulled him out of his predicament and swung
him well into the channel and let him go, and we proceeded up river.
Six weeks later we landed at the office in Beef Slough to get our raft
assignment. The 'Robert Dodd' was landed there also and when I met Captain
Brasser he had a merry twinkle in his mild blue eyes. After thanking me for
the little service that night six weeks ago, he said," I have good joke to
tell you on my own self. On my las' trip down my engineers say those biler
(boilers) need a clean out; so I tie up in same place I was that night you
see us there. Well, sir, I was woke up along 'bout midnight and when I step
out my room what you tink I see? Well my frien' there was another raf' in
same shape like de one you pull out wit
your boat dat I hail you in."
"Yas sir, and when I see big feller walkin' towar's my boat I see was de
same pilot; so I call out, I say my frien' aint dis river wide enough so
you can get by me sometime when I'm clear over one side? An here's where
de fun is on me. So soon I spik like dat he stop right where he was and in
dat big voice he'es got he say, 'Gawd-A-Mighty! Are you here yit?"
Once I had an Irish woman get a pretty good one on me.
We had lost a young chap on our last homeward trip with the "Stillwater
Crescent.' He was the cook's helper, against which we had warned him several
times. The cook and clerk took his clothes and money due him
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... to his mother and gave a full report of his loss.
I did not go to see her then, but offered a reward and notified the
fishermen to be on the lookout when the ice went out in spring. I came down
from LeClaire one day late in March and learned that Mike's body
had been found and would be buried the next day. I drove over to see her,
and with a rain coat and small cap on with my five feet seven inches
in height in that outfit my appearance was not impressive.
I found the poor woman in tears. She had been telling a neighbor woman
all about it and was naturally agitated, but when I gave her some money,
saying, it was to enable her to make a good showing at the funeral, she wiped
her eyes and a funny smile broke over her face when she said, "Well
of all things! Are ye Captain Blair?" Well before God now I never would have
thought it."
"Why not, I said; don't look like I run a steamboat?"
She pit her hand up to her cheek and with laughing eyes said; "Well ye
must know back on the 'ould sod' where I was born, it was a busy seaport
town. When I was a young girl in me teens I knew the captains of all the boats
AND THEY WERE ALL LARGE, FINE - LOOKIN' MIN."
And one early spring day while the usual repair work kept me busy getting
the many things needed from up town while waiting at Ripley and Second street
for a Rockingham car, I had my arms full of packages and a
small coil of three-eighths Manila rope over my head and one shoulder.
An old German approaching said," Cap, I don't like to see you with rope
like that. By Golly that's the size most of them use!"
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" Don't worry" I replied, "You never heard of an Irishman hanging
himself."
"No? No that's true." he shot at me. "They don't have to - the sheriff hangs them."
HISTORY