If we follow the picturesque phrasing of the Pilot Rules, the western streams are “the rivers whose waters flow into the Gulf of Mexico, and their tributaries, and the Red River of the North.” The name western rivers” is not inappropriate, any more than “Middle West” is for a group of states lying, like the Mississippi itself, well in the eastern half of the continent. Of course, the economic and cultural division of our country is a matter of history, rather than of geography; so it is that a chart of Lake Erie still refers to the Survey of the Northern and Northwestern Lakes, and if the western rivers lie mostly in the east, it is only because the geographical frontier has moved, they are still not eastern rivers.
It comes as a surprise to many people to earn how extensive the system of our inland waterways is. The western rivers, the Great Lakes, the various canals, and the intracoastal routes add up to a very considerable mileage, and the shipping which traverses this network is an important part of our Merchant Marine, particularly in wartime. In the rivers, millions of tons of strategic Materials and commodities are continually on the move, to the relief of the overburdened railroads. Recent publicity given to the “Catfish Navy” has reminded us of the role of the western rivers and other inland waterways in our naval construction program, with seagoing types being built hundreds or even thousands of miles from tidewater, to be delivered to tidewater points either under their own power or otherwise. The story of these construction projects and delivery trips has received some attention in the press, but it is to be hoped that a fuller account will be written at some suitable time by someone with access to all necessary information, for such an account could not an to be most interesting.
The great Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio system spreads over a tremendous territory like a three-tined fork, with each of the tines and the handle of roughly similar length. The light list divides the Mississippi into two sections, the upper section commencing at Minneapolis, Minnesota, and extending 853 miles to the mouth of the Ohio near Cairo, Illinois, and the lower section commencing there and extending 975 miles to New Orleans, Louisiana. This latter mileage does not take account of various artificial cutoffs; also, of course, the river flows onward to the sea, roughly a hundred miles beyond New Orleans, dividing into three major passes at the delta. The light list notes that the Missouri rises in Montana, but commences listing aids to navigation at Sioux City, Iowa, 760 miles from the mouth, which is near St. Louis, Missouri. The Ohio extends 981 miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cairo, Illinois. The city of St. Louis is centrally located as a river port, being on the Mississippi practically at the mouth of the Missouri and about 180 miles from that of the Ohio; not far from St. Louis, also, is the mouth of the Illinois, a shorter river which affords a connection with Lake Michigan at Chicago, through the Illinois Waterway. The streams tributary to the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio system, too numerous to mention, include a great many whose names are household words, associated as they are with the history, literature, and music of America.
The blue-water sailor would not feel immediately at home on the western rivers; he feels somewhat pent-up when his ship enters a seaboard harbor or river, and he would find the western rivers even more foreign to his tastes.
Aids to navigation are considerably different from those in seaboard rivers. The majority of lights are fixed white (kerosene or occasionally electric) of low power, mounted atop a wooden structure on the bank. One does not see lighthouses or lighted beacons of the seacoast type such as are found, for example, on the Hudson. Nor are there very many lighted buoys. Daymarks (diamond-shaped targets) are often situated next to or in lieu of a light. In some areas flashing lights are placed on the right bank (on one’s right, facing downstream) and group flashing lights (2 flashes) on the left; in other areas green lights are on the right bank, red on the left. River people are quite content with this restricted variety in the characteristics of lights, and indeed are not overfond of the flashers, as these are harder to steady on. Ranges in the strict sense are quite scarce indeed, but a vessel frequently sails along the line joining two lights, keepine one ahead and the other astern. Can and nun buoys, both provided with a white band at the top, are extensively employed, but except for the green-topped dredging buoys these red or black channel buoys monopolize the picture. Chart navigation is little resorted to, except by apprentice pilots who may use charts to help them memorize the many details they will need to know. Strip-type charts are published by the U. S. Engineers.
A vessel of any size can hardly make safe progress without a qualified pilot, and to the outsider it is a perpetual source of wonder how these men, in the course of their careers, have acquainted themselves with all the details of, let us say, a 600- or 1000-mile section of river. The pilot must know not only aids to navigation, marked and unmarked obstructions, bridges, locks and dams, submarine and aerial crossings, anchorages, and so on, but the actual shape of the river and the channel for every mile, else he will be unable to do his work consistently well under the variety of conditions he meets. The most obvious of these differences is that between daylight and dark, a change the significance of which need hardly be proved to any sailor. Beyond this, however, the level of the rivers is subject to considerable fluctuation, the vertical change being accompanied by changing current conditions. A man who knew the river only as it appeared at low water or at pool stage (the level maintained in some rivers by the system of locks and dams, during seasons of low water) would be at a disadvantage during higher stages, when the shore line he knew became part of the hydrography. The western rivers also fluctuate laterally; they commonly carry a great deal of sand in suspension, washing away a bar or shore in one place and building up in another. Although dikes, revetments, and other devices are resorted to locally to control the action of the current, the over-all picture is one of shifting channels and perennial dredging, at least very largely. In the Ohio and the Illinois the channel is semi-permanent, but in the muddy Missouri and lower Mississippi a pilot cannot stay away from his job very long without becoming, as it were, a stranger in his own country. In these waters the U. S. Engineers are constantly issuing channel reports containing a set of soundings not very many days old.
Whenever locks are met in the inland waterways, they are likely to have their individual peculiarities affecting the shiphandling problem involved in a lockage. This is true on the rivers, and the pilot must know the most practicable way to enter each lock under different conditions. When the pool above a dam is full, and a great deal of water is passing over the weirs (called “bear- traps”), a certain amount of outdraft is created, as the weirs and the lock are at opposite ends of the dam. In addition, the majority of the dams are made up of small individual wooden sections (“wickets)” which can be tripped, to collapse the dam when the stage of the river permits, and so to obviate lockages. If some of these wickets are down, the outdraft is increased, and the situation may be further complicated by the wind (especially in the case of seagoing vessels with their high freeboard and enforced light draft) or by the fact that the approach to the lock is not straight, or by other such local conditions, all of which the pilot has in mind. Sometimes the pilot will meet the problem of offshore wind and outdraft by deliberately getting the bow out, the stern coming in to the guide wall, and the bow being maneuvered back in after the stern line is over. It is interesting to note that long downstream tows, in rounding a bend, often resort to a similar maneuver to keep from sliding out of the channel—the towboat and its tow being unable to turn sharply enough, the towboat stops and backs, allowing the current to assist her in swinging the head of the tow around.
It will have been seen that downstream and upstream navigation differ; an upstream vessel can maneuver more readily and stop more quickly. Hence, under the not rules, the right of way in a meeting situation is given to the “descending steamer,” whereas under other rules neither vessel in a meeting situation has the right of way over the other. Again, although port-to-port is the method of passing enjoined upon vessels meeting end-on or nearly end-on in other waters, a different situation prevails under the Pilot Rules for western rivers. Although the pilot of the ascending steamer is obliged to blow the first passing signal, the pilot of the descending steamer may blow for the other side (after an exchange of danger signals), and is legally entitled to his choice. This privilege is entirely proper, but it may be remarked in passing that the clarity of the law relating to the rules of the road is no better in regard to the western rivers than it is in regard to other waters; in this very matter the Act of Congress known as the Western Rivers Rules prescribes a port-to- port pass; hence it is at least possible that the Pilot Rule just referred to is technically invalid as being repugnant to the statute under the authority of which the Pilot Rules are promulgated. Needless to say, the rule imposed by the Act of Congress is an unworkable one. Among the river people, the Act of Congress does not enjoy much prominence, although the Pilot Rules are well known.
In respect to lights for vessels, the outsider is immediately struck by the fact that no white navigation lights are exhibited on river craft (except motorboats). There is no masthead or range light. Also, the sidelights on many towboats are allowed to show all around (whatever the rule may be), so that one need not be surprised to find a red and a green light apparently transposed. The fact that you are overtaking will be made more plain by the two red lights, vertically arranged, displayed by towboats in the after part of the ship.
The judicious use of a searchlight at night is customary on the rivers—a vessel approaching a bend will play its searchlight about in exploratory fashion, the beam being visible to others long before the craft itself can be seen, and on closer approach passing signals may be exchanged first by searchlight flashes, to be followed later by the regular whistle signals. For this purpose the beam is usually elevated somewhat, to make it plain that the light is not being put to its ordinary use.
The language of rivermen, as may be surmised, differs from that of their salt water cousins—a natural consequence of the different conditions of navigation and the different type of vessel. Eventually, though, the stranger will realize that “now hold her as she looks a few ‘scapes’ ” means “steady” (for as long as it would take a steamboat to puff a few times). Some of the many other interesting expressions are: “catch her” (meet her); “straight rudder” (rudder amidships); “twist her” (one engine ahead, the other back); and “let her float” (all engines stop). Some common nautical terms are not in use at all—rivermen simply say “downstairs,” “window,” and “floor.” On the other hand, the word “cavil” (a cleat) is much in use on the rivers, and is perhaps not so well known elsewhere.
In conning, the pilot has a strange lexicon, uniquely expressive of river conditions. Some of his terms are related to the eternal fact of the river’s flowing. In a bend, he may declare his intention to pass on the “upper” or “lower” side of another vessel, an island, buoy, bar, or other object. Or he may say he intends to “take the point” and “give the other ship the bend.” Similarly, the pilot says “bring her down on the dayboard,” or “up on the light,” He may run “from 100 yards below Alpha Light to 200 yards above Beta Light,” Alpha and Beta being situated on opposite banks, and the marks given being points on the bank determining the line he wishes to follow in making his crossing.
Perhaps the expression used more often than any other is “run down the shape of the shore, easy distance,” which means to make the ship’s track over the ground follow the contour of the shore line, rather close to the bank but not too close for comfortable steering. In some sections of river a ship may do this for most of the day, running the shape of the shore, crossing to the other, running its shape, and recrossing.
Along the Ohio, the Illinois, and the upper reaches of the Mississippi, the scenery is often very pleasant. Indeed, this would be attractive country for a pleasure cruise. There are prairies and hills, thrifty farms, woods, villages, cities, and inviting tributary streams, and the water is often green or silvery as in seacoast rivers. But the yachtsman who sailed down the Missouri would probably begin to feel lonesome, if not lost, and if he continued down the Mississippi beyond St. Louis he would find little change; his voyage would be impressive rather than enchanting. One sailor complained that “this Mississippi is all alike— first trees to port and sand to starboard, then sand to port and trees to starboard.” His description was truthful enough, as the ship made one crossing after another, following the shape of the right shore and then the left, always with gigantic sandbars in midstream. The water is coffee-colored, and from time to time one may see a few more cubic yards of soil slide down the bank. Snags pile up along the shore, or float half submerged in the current, a menace to ships’ propellers. Deep water often extends close to steep banks, and it is fascinating to see a ship sail down the shore at a good speed, hardly more than 100 feet out, or round a point closely and begin to slide down the channel crabwise as the current catches her on the quarter.
Some of the towns are hidden from view, making the lower Mississippi seem more desolate than it really is; for the most part there are few signs of life in the flat country to right and left of the dominating river. Bend after bend, and crossing after crossing, it is willows and sand, and more willows and more sand. The river itself often presents a peculiar streaked and roily appearance; often when the banks spread far apart and one glances ahead, it has the look of being made up of huge parcels and laminations of water, marked off by streaks and patches, full of little eddies and spots where the water seems to be boiling up from underneath.
And so, at all events, a trip down the lower Mississippi would persuade any traveler that, besides being the greatest of the western streams, it is well named Father of Waters, unique among American rivers.