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 andcompany 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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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-

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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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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.

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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 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. "Let's 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."