Managing the Missouri

If it weren't for the Sgt. Floyd parked where 'tis along the river, it would be well- nigh impossible to begin to imagine a time--getting on 200 years ago--when 150-foot steamboats cruised (that's a fair weather word maybe) up and down the river between here and Omaha--or St. Louis.

But one needs to say only one word to understand why they ran so thick--'twas gold. Once the stuff was discovered in them thar hills, not even the 7th Cavalry, could keep fortune hunters out east and at home. First, it was Council Bluffs, then Sioux City that offered dreamers commodious starting blocks to the frontier and all the bucks that could be made there. All needed outfitting, of course, buying all sorts of things that could, back then, be supplied best by great hulking beasts that blew vile smoke as they stumbled--yes, stumbled--up a river that took great joy in having them for dinner, the Missouri.

In some places, I'm told, politicians get yanked out of office when trains don't run on time. "On time" is a language steamboats never understood. Their passage on the Missouri was totally dependent on how much water there was between the banks on any day of the week--or even hour of the day. 

A man named Charles Deatherage never forgot a passage his family booked to St. Louis in 1864, from someplace down river in Missouri. It's a mean story, and I wouldn't tell it if the steamer they'd booked had a different name--it was, as Deatherage never forgot--the Sioux City. That's right, the Sioux City.

His family arrived at its appointed landing on Thursday, bags packed, ready to go. Sadly, the Sioux City didn't show up until Tuesday, four days later--not four hours or four days, and there was no airport bar. Not enough water to float a boat. 

Once the crew lugged out the stage plank for passengers, the whole bunch scrambled aboard, he remembers, while the crew rolled in bundles of tobacco, hogsheads they were called, loading the ship up, well down is a better fit.

What Deatherage remembered was how the Sioux City navigated the shallow waters for the deepest flow, a route that took them so close to shore cottonwoods swept the passengers from the deck. What's worse, it was soon clear that the passenger list included a family with scarlet fever. In no time, the fever spread. Off to a great start.

One morning the captain, well aware this would be the last trip of the season, took a look at the shallow river and determined not to move but to stay right where they were, even though ice was starting to threaten. 

It was November, 1864. The Civil War was far from over, even if most of the action was far to the east. One morning they took aboard a Union soldier who was himself, Deatherage notes, as loaded as the Sioux City, maybe more so because when this guy spotted some human figures on a hill beside the river, he unloaded his revolver, which, in turn, meant those human figures let loose with a cavalcade that rained iron hail, prompting the Captain to scream "full speed ahead" and demand passengers take cover behind the walls of the state rooms. 

Wasn't over yet. A day later, the Sioux City ran aground on a sandbar, one of those so frequent on the Missouri that steamships armed themselves with huge spar poles that enabled the crew to hoist the whole ship up just far enough to swing it forward, like a pair of giant grasshopper legs, time after time, to get it to deeper water. Blessedly, this time the spar poles worked, he says, but all of that took another three days. 

This is November, remember. During the night, the ice flow got heavy. When the people woke up the next morning, they were looking at a triangular ice cube a hundred feet or more out front.

When the river inexplicably deepened again, the Sioux City kept going for two whole days before the Missouri once more spread forever wide and a couple feet deep. Things seemed hopeless, so the good ship backtracked to a landing where they'd languished before, where the good Captain threw in the towel and sent the passengers to St. Louis via the Missouri Southern Railroad.

That night, Deatherage says, "We arrived in St. Louis about midnight." And then, dolefully, "the Sioux City came down about two weeks later." 

Just another grand voyage. Traveling up the Missouri was something akin to riding a bull, same grueling passage, whether you stay on or fall off.

Steamboat Sioux City wrecked by ice in Omaha