PACKET BOATS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 November 1938, Page 6

PACKET BOATS

LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI DISAPPEARANCE OF ROMANCE AND COLOUR. “STEAMBOAT ROUN’ DE BEND.” An institution which has all but disappeared from the inland rivers of the United States is the packet, the combination passenger and freight boat which plied the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri for close to a century, writes Malcolm Bayley in the "Christian Science Monitor.” A few of them struggled on for years after the railroads came, in the face of competition from bus, truck, and private motor-car and the newer barge lines, but recent stringent federal regulations, especially as to lifeboats and other equipment, caused all but a handful to give up their passenger licences. Today the once proud packets have torn out their staterooms and converted themselves either into excursion boats or miscellaneous freight carriers. There are,' to be sure, one or two luxurious ‘‘floating hotels” which carry parties to the Mardi Gras or the Kentucky Derby or on vacation trips up the Tennessee to Muscle Shoals—but these huge vessels, with their shower baths and radios and air-conditioned cabins, bear no more relation to the old river packets than the streamlined, diesel-driven, articulated train does to the stagecoach. The inter-city packets have gone; tiny, gasoline-engined sternwheelers, whose cabins have seats for less than a dozen, carry passengers to and from the remote river villages which have neither railroads nor highways. The romance and colour of the latter half of the last century have, all but disappeared from mid-western rivers. “FLOATING PALACES.” I remember many a delightful journey on these “floating palaces” which were made more memorable by’moonlight nights and Negro roustabouts or waiters singing to the accompaniment of guitar or banjo. Some of the older boats had a reputation for “setting a fine table.” This reputation may have declined in later years, but there was a time which fresh eggs, butter, poultry, and vegetables picked up at the rural landings, along with newly caught catfish, prepared as only a black cook can prepare them; hot biscuits, and buttermilk with beads of real butter floating in it, combined to charm a smile from the grimmest countenance. And who could help reflecting cheer and geniality under the flashing grins of the friendly-waiters, whose white coats set off so well the shining ebony of their friendly countenances? Some of the best lines boasted fried chicken every night and home-made ice cream! The longest steamboat ride I ever had was from Pittsburgh to Louisville when I was a boy in my teens, and it took from Monday to Friday for the trip—as long as it takes the fastest liners to cross the Atlantic today. This was my first experience and the beginning of my river education. Theretofore I had merely known the interiors of Sunday School picnic excursion boats or ferries; now I spoke to my campanions as a seasoned traveler on gilded packets. And 1 gilded they were! Never was there so gorgeous a vessel as the Pitts-burgh-to-New Orleans packet. At the head of the double staircase, with its brass-bound treads polished twice daily by one of the black boys, were a pair of antlers, trophy of some memorable race. Perhaps, in our more sophisticated years, we might have termed these boats gaudy; but a good river packet in the old days cost from 150,000 to 200,000 dollars,, and an owner could buy a lot of bright paint and shiny brass for that much money. KNOWN BY WHISTLES. We youngsters on the river learned to know the packets by their whistles. We knew by the quality of their tones whether it was the Tarascon or the Tell City, the Morning Star or Southland, or merely the Sunshine or the Hiawatha, the local excursion boats. But none of them, except perhaps the Tarascon’s, equaled the deep-throated bellow of the giant towboats that pushed huge tows of coal barges up and downstream to and from Pittsburgh —for “river coal” from the Pennslyvania mines dominated the trade in those days. .

The object of juvenile adulation in Mark Twain’s day was the pilot, who knew every sandbar and snag on the Mississippi. We along the Ohio recognised the pilot’s importance, but our hero was the Captain, who wore resplendent blue and gold and a decorated cap, and who, likely enough, was a pilot in his own right. He was as a god in our awestruck eyes, for he had complete command and was, as we often knew, a kindly and gentle person, although Jovian in stature and demeanour. This impression was heightened because we gazed at him from the levee or wharLboat while he stood above us on the top deck, calmly issuing orders to mate or pilot —a sort of “monarch of all I survey,” a royal figure, indeed. Next to the Captain in importance was the mate—usually chosen for his ability to handle' roustabouts, often with picturesque language. I never detected the undertone of. sadness that Paul Robeson gave to the Negro roustabout in “01’ Man River,” but certainly the melodious singing was not exaggerated. Practically every crew was reputed to have an accomplished vocalist. This happy black boy led the singing at every landing where there was work to be done, and he was hired, it was understood, for this very purpose, as the Negroes worked better while singing. Their working songs were the plantation songs that we heard the field hands sing. They were neither spirituals nor ditties about the wild things, but stressed the theme of the deckhands supposed joys and sorrows on pay day in town. Humour ran throughout their laughing length. But the songs they sang in the evening, while the paddle wheels churned the yellow water, turned emerald in the twilight, were of a sweeter, more wistful type. Those are the evenings that remain in memory. Sunset came early behind the high hills that line the stream. Then the packet would turn a bend and miraculously the day would be back. The great golden ball of the sun would be in midstream, turning the river to shiny copper and the spray off the paddle wheel to showers of jewels. Then as suddenly another bend would shut it from sight and the purple' hills would envelop the river in its mantle for the night. But the black boys on the boiler deck played and sang until long after the moon was up.