Samuel Clemens' Steamboat Career

Photo from original portrait
in Public Library of
Keokuk, Iowa
courtesy of Dave Thomson

Steamboat logo

With graphics from the collection of
Dave Thomson

CUB PILOT

In February 1857 Samuel Clemens departed Cincinatti for New Orleans aboard the steamboat PAUL JONES. Technically a passenger aboard the boat, by the time he reached New Orleans he had convinced Pilot Horace Bixby to take him on as an apprentice pilot. The following are a list of boats and their descriptions that Clemens' worked about as a Cub Pilot.

Steamboat: PAUL JONES
Built: 1855
Tonnage: 353
Clemens' trip from Cincinnati to New Orleans: 16 February - 28 February 1857
Pilot: Horace Bixby
Co-Pilot: Jerry Mason
Captain: Hiram Hazlett
Fate: 1861 acquired by Confederacy and later sunk at Big Black River at Bovina, Mississippi to prevent capture by Union forces.

On August 26, 1962, the Vicksburg Post reported that the river level at Big Black River near Bovina had dropped to a record low and that the wreckage of the boats sunk a century earlier was visible. According to the Post, "The paddle wheels, chimneys and boilers of the vessels, identified as "The Charm" and "The Paul Jones" appeared above the waters' surface. Several residents of the area retrieved relics including forks, broken crockery, pieces of a stove, pulley, hearth brick."

Clemens' comments: (In 1857) I was in Cincinatti . . . I packed my valise, and took passage on an ancient tub called the PAUL JONES for New Orleans. For the sum of sixteen dollars I had the scarred and tarnished splendors of "her" main saloon principally to myself, for she was not a creature to attract the eye of wiser travellers.
- Life on the Mississippi

One of the pilots was Horace Bixby. Little by little I got acquainted with him and pretty soon I was doing a lot of steering for him in his daylight watches.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography

Steamboat: COLONEL CROSSMAN
Built: 1857
Tonnage: 415
Clemens' Service: 4 March - 15 March 1857
Pilot: Horace Bixby
Captain: Patrick Yore
Fate: lost in explosion 2 February 1858 at New Madrid, MO with loss of fourteen lives

SS Crossman
From the lithograph "Bird's Eye View of St. Louis"
drawn and published by James T. Palmatary in 1857.
From the Raymond Ewing collection.

Steamboat: CRESCENT CITY
Built: 1854
Tonnage: 688
Clemens' Service: 29 April - 7 July, 1857
Pilot: Horace Bixby
Co-Pilot: Strother Wiley
Captain: R. C. Young
Fate: 1861 abandoned

Ad for CRESCENT CITY, 1861

Steamboat: D. A. JANUARY
Built: 1857
Tonnage: 440
Clemens' Service: 16 July - early Aug 1857
Pilot: Horace Bixby
Captain: Patrick Yore
Fate: snagged and lost 18 Dec 1867, Chester, Illinois

NOTE: New research by Michael Marleau indicates that during this time frame Clemens most likely made a trip up the Missouri River with pilot Horace Bixby aboard the D. A. JANUARY. Edgar Branch never placed Clemens on the Missouri River and had previously theorized that Clemens was on board the RUFUS J. LACKLAND from 11 July to 3 August 1857. Further research by Michael Marleau includes a new interpretation of Clemens' personal journals and indicates the 1859 dates are the most likely dates of service for the RUFUS J. LACKLAND as a licensed pilot.

Steamboat: JOHN J. ROE
Built: 1856
Tonnage: 691
Clemens' Service: 5 August - 24 September, 1857
Pilot: Zebulon Leavenworth and/or Sobieski Jolly
Captain: Mark Leavenworth
Fate: snagged and sunk at New Madrid, MO on 12 September 1864 with 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry aboard. Losses included 165 horses.

Ad John J. Roe
Ad for JOHN J. ROE, 1860

Clemens' comments: I served a term as steersman in the pilot house. She was a freighter. . . It was a delightful old tug and she had a very spacious boiler-deck--just the place for moonlight dancing and daylight frolics. She was a charmingly leisurely boat and the slowest one on the planet. Up-stream she couldn't even beat an island; down-stream she was never able to overtake the current. But she was a love of a steamboat.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography

Also see comments above for the Rufus J. Lackland

Steamboat: PENNSYLVANIA
Built: 1854
Tonnage: 486
Clemens' Service: 27 September - 26 November 1857
and 17 February - 5 June 1858
Pilot: William Brown
Co-Pilot: George Ealer
1st Mate: Abner Martin
Captain: John Klinefelter
Fate: 13 June 1858 lost by explosion

SS Pennsylvania
Artist's drawing of the PENNSYLVANIA (based upon the sister ship PHILADELPHIA)
from the Dave Thomson collection.

Clemens' service aboard the PENNSYLVANIA began in November 1857 and was interrupted by a two month gap after the PENNSYLVANIA was involved in a collision on November 26 with the steamer VICKSBURG twenty-eight miles north of New Orleans. The PENNSYVLANIA remained in port for repairs and Clemens later was required to give testimony in a lawsuit regarding the collision.

Clemens' testimony in part: I was on the PENNSYLVANIA as Steersman at the time of the collision in November last. I was not at the wheel at the time. At the moment of the collision I was standing on the Sky light deck, aft of the Pilot house…..I think that at the instant the VICKSBURG struck us that one of her engines was still going--and my reason for thinking so is, that she did not recede from us after she struck, but kept pressing on--the crash of timbers continued--the deck swayed under me, and I thought I heard the noise of her engines. It was over a minute after the VICKSBURG struck us, before she began to back away from us. After the boats came together, I heard the Captain of the VICKSBURG call to Captain Klinefelter, and I understood him to say that he (Capt White) "Knew that the VICKSBURG would run from the bar." I am learning the river--have been learning it, now, about ten months. At that time I had been on the PENNSYLVANIA about three trips. The PENNSYLVANIA steers very easily, I was in the Pilot house that night before supper, and I noticed that she steered well--that is her general character for steering. The PENNSYLVANIA is a first class boat every way--she is large, and well finished for a passenger boat. The officers and crew which the PENNSYLVANIA had at the time of the collision were all of them capable sober and patient. When I was on the extreme stern of the PENNSYLVANIA as above stated, Capt Klinefelter was there--I do not know where he was after that. After the collision the VICKSBURG towed the PENNSYLVANIA to the right hand shore. The VICKSBURG then backed off. I am not exactly certain whether I was in a position to see her when she left us. I do not think she landed after she left us--I think she just backed out, and went up the river. I am certain she did.
- John Klinefelter et. al. vs. Steamer Vicksburg, J. M. White, Master, National Archives

Clemens' other comments: At the time I speak of I had fallen out of the heaven of the JOHN J. ROE and was steering for Brown, on the swift passenger packet the PENNSYLVANIA, a boat which presently blew up and killed my brother Henry. On a memorable trip, the PENNSYLVANIA arrived at New Orleans, and when she was berthed I discovered that her stern lapped the fo'castle of the JOHN J. ROE. I went aft, climb over the rail of the ladies' cabin and from that point jumped abon the ROE, landing on that spacious boiler-deck of hers. It was like arriving at home at the farm-house after a long absence. It was the same delight to me to meet and shake hands with the Leavenworthn and the rest of that dear family of steamboating backwoodsmen and hay-seeds as if they had all been blood kin to me. As usual there were a dozen passengers, male and female, young and old; and as usual they were of the hearty and likeable sort affected by the JOHN J. ROE farmers. Now, out of their midst, floating upon my enchanted vision, came that slip of a girl of whom I have spoken -- that instantly elected sweetheart out of the remotenesses of interior Missouri -- a frank and simple and winsome child who had never been away from home in her life before, and had brought with her to these distant regions the freshness and the fragrance of her own prairies.

I can state the rest, I think, in a very few words. I was not four inches from that girl's elbow during our waking hours for the next three days. Then there came a sudden interruption. Zeb Leavenworth came flying aft shouting, "The PENNSYLVANIA is backing out." I fled at my best speed, and as I broke out upon that great boiler-deck the PENNSYLVANIA was gliding sternward past it. I made a flying leap and just did manage to make the connection, and nothing to spare. My toes found room on the guard; my finger-ends hooked themselves upon the guard-rail, and a quartermaster made a snatcl for me and hauled me aboard.

That comely child, that charming child, was Laura M. Wright, and I could see her with perfect distinctness in the unfaded bloom of her youth, with her plaited tails dangling from her young head and her white summer frock puffing about in the wind of that ancient Mississippi time -- I could see all this with perfect distinctness when I was telling about it last Saturday. And I finished with the remark, "I never saw her afterward. It is now forty-eight years, one month and twenty-seven days since that parting, and no word has ever passed between us since."
- The Autobiography of Mark Twain (Neider, p. 80)

(Henry Clemens died in Memphis, Tennessee on June 21, 1858 his lungs and body having been scalded by steam during the disaster).

Steamboat: WILLIAM M. MORRISON
Built: 1856
Tonnage: 662
Clemens' Service: 2 December 1857 - 12 Feb 1858
Pilot: Isaiah Sellers
Co-Pilot: George Haggerty
Captain: John Bofinger
Fate: acquired by Confederacy

SS Morrison
From the lithograph "Bird's Eye View of St. Louis"
drawn and published by James T. Palmatary in 1857.
Courtesy of Dave Thomson.

I am indebted to Michael Marleau for sharing his research for a forthcoming book which helps indicate the dates Clemens most likely served aboard the WILLIAM M. MORRISON and for establishing who the pilot and co-pilot were during this time period. Marleau has also recovered pilot's memoranda from various newspaper archives, some of which are likely from the pen of Samuel Clemens during this time frame:

"ONLY ONCE BEFORE"
By Michael Marleau

Printed items called memoranda were occasionally published in the newspaper river columns of the major port cities along the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, customarily a brief record or log from which rivermen "might learn something of the whereabouts and late deeds" of the steamboats on the rivers. These memoranda were compiled from simple entries of some notable occurrence while on watch and usually entered into a log book. By there very nature they were composed of information that came primarily from the pilothouse and hurricane deck where the captain, mates and pilots stood their watches when underway. Periodically passenger and freight information might also be included, leading to the presumption that a steamboat clerk could have a hand in the drafting of an individual memoranda. Upon the completion of a trip these entries were sometimes collected with little or no editing for the newspapers and members of the river fraternity. As chronicles of the life and times on the western rivers surviving steamboat log books available for study are in fact very rare thereby making these memoranda valuable materials for study. Among the steamboat memoranda published in the Missouri Democrat, are several that are of a unique character and fall within the known activities of Sam Clemens.

Clemens was a steersman on the PENNSYLVANIA from late September of 1857 until her collision with the VICKSBURG on the twenty sixth of November of that year. A week later he was clerking and steering on the WILLIAM M. MORRISON under the watchful eye of the old pilot Isaiah Sellers. Sellers was one of the pilots on the J. M. WHITE in 1844 when she set the speed record for a trip from New Orleans to St. Louis in 3 days, 23 hours and 9 minutes. In February of 1858 the MORRISON was laid up and Clemens returned to his duties on the repaired PENNSYLVANIA.

In March the MORRISON was back in service and the "high water" of April "gave her a chance of spreading herself, and she proved herself very fast." Her memoranda from the Missouri Democrat tells of her trip:

Steamer Wm. M. Morrison left New Orleans Sunday, April 4th, at 11 o'clock A. M., with the United States mail and a fair cargo of freight -- having a fast rising river to Napoleon. Above Natchez the water was over the banks. From Lake Providence to Napoleon it was over the levee, and for twenty miles above Greenville the levees were washed away. Discharged freight at Lake Providence, Greenville, Napoleon, Helena, Memphis, New Madrid, Island No. 10, Hickman, Cairo and Chester.

New Orleans to 81 mile Point 7 hrs 51 min., to Baton Rouge 12 hrs 15 min., to Bayou Sara 15 hrs 45 min., to Morgan's Bend 1 day, to Islands Nos. 98 and 99 2 days, to Islands Nos. 62 and 63 3 days, to Island No. 21 4 days, to Devil's Island 5 days. Whole time from port to port 5 days 14 hrs. Deducted. Running time 5 days 1 hr.

In May the PENNSYLVANIA had a fast trip too. The following memoranda is from the St. Louis Evening News of May 27, 1858.

Memoranda--Steamer PENNSYLVANIA left New Orleans on Thursday, May 20th, at 7 P. M. In Port for St. Louis, steamers R. J. LACKLAND and RR. packets A T LACEY and FALLS CITY. 21st -- Met RR. packet HIAWATHA at Baton Rouge. 22d -- Met CITY OF MEMPHIS at Lake Providence, T L MCGILL head of 93. 23d -- Met NEW UNCLE SAM at 71. 24th -- Met GOLDEN AGE, CORA ANDERSON at 37, IMPERIAL at Ashport. 25th --Met EDITOR at Island No. 4, WM. M. MORRISON in Dogtooth Bend; passed J J ROE at Lane's Landing. 26th -- Met L M KENNETT at Cape Girardeau. Time six days from port to port. Lost 32 hours by storms and fogs.

The following day, May 28, 1858, the Missouri Democrat also published a memoranda from the PENNSYLVANIA, but this one was a little unconventional, a slight bend from the norm, and quite possibly written by cub pilot Samuel Clemens.

MEMORANDA -- The PENNSYLVANIA left New Orleans on Thursday, May 20th, at 7 P. M. In port for St. Louis, R. J. LACKLAND, A. T. LACEY and FALLS CITY. 21st, met HIAWATHA at Baton Rouge, CITY OF MEMPHIS at Lake Providence; T. L. MCGILL at head of 93; NEW UNCLE SAM at 71: CORA ANDERSON at 37; IMPERIAL at Ashport. 25th, EDITOR at island 4; WM. M. MORRISON in Dogtooth bend. Time from port to port 3 days and 72 hours. Only once before has a trip been made in 3 days and some hours.

The reference to "only once before" has such a trip been made is a poke in jest directed at Isaiah Sellers as he was one of the pilots of the fleet J. M. WHITE in 1844. The "Only once before" item was published in the Democrat, the same paper the memoranda from Isiah Seller's log had been published a few weeks earlier. It is likely Sam Clemens was the author of the memoranda. Clemens would later recall how the "Oldest Pilot" was "full of strange lies & worldly brag" and probably bored the steersman with his boasting of the exploit.

In his personal notebooks for 1881-82 Clemens penned a similar river joke: "Trip up Missouri river 3300 miles made fastest time on record viz. 3 days 9 hours and 4 months" (Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals, vol. 2, p. 574).

Clemens' comments: I am now on my return from Memphis, on the steamer John H. Dickey, and allow me to say that the steamer named, is one of the finest boats now running between St. Louis and the above mentioned port. Capt. Dan Able is one of the accommodating sort, and I predict that he will continue always to receive a large share of the patronage of the business and traveling community.
- "Our Special River Correspondence," St. Louis Missouri Democrat, 1 September 1858 (signed "Rambler"; identified by Walter Branch as Samuel Clemens)

Around 1887 Duke's Cigarettes issued unsigned miniature biographies of titled "Histories of Poor Boys Who Have Become Rich and Other Famous People." The Twain issue contained the following yarn which supposedly came from a crew member of the ALECK SCOTT:

Clemens' comments: I will remark, in passing, that Mississippi steamboatmen were important in landsmen's eyes (and in their own, too, in a degree) according to the dignity of the boat they were on. For instance, it was a proud thing to be of the crew of such stately craft as the "Aleck Scott" or the "Grand Turk." Negro firemen, deck hands, and barbers belonging to those boats were distinguished personages in their grade of life, and they were well aware of that fact, too.
- Life on the Mississippi