Free The Great American Steamboat Race by Benton Rain Patterson Page A

blew the Robert E. Lee ’s steam whistle in acknowledgment.
    But he didn’t land. The Lee merely slipped up between two barges loaded with sacks of coal and had the barges tied to the Lee as the sacks were unloaded onto the Lee while it continued upstream, all done by a prior arrangement made by the Robert E. Lee ’s canny captain. Once the coal was aboard the Lee , the barges were cut loose and allowed to drift back to the Natchez waterfront.
    By the time the Natchez arrived, eight minutes behind the Lee , and tied up to the wharf boat, Cannon and the Lee were steaming away in the distance, leaving the Natchez and its disappointed fans, some of them openly weeping, far behind. The Natchez did manage to beat the old record of the Princess , by eleven minutes, reaching the Natchez shore in seventeen hours and nineteen minutes from the starting point at St. Mary’s Market. But its time was not good enough to prevent the horns from passing into Cannon’s hands. And the trailing Natchez lost another eight minutes as it put ashore twelve dejected Natchez-bound passengers and took on fuel.
    Leathers then rushed the Natchez back out into mid-river to resume the race. Try as desperately as he might, though, to close the distance between him and the Robert E. Lee , he was finding that the Natchez , with its thirtyfour-inch cylinders, lacked sufficient drive to outrun the Lee , powered by forty-inch cylinders, on the river’s long straightaway.
    News of the Robert E. Lee ’s record-breaking feat quickly spread by telegraph to New Orleans and elsewhere and was made public . The Picayune reported, “At an early hour ... a large crowd of eager persons gathered around the Picayune Office to hear the news, and all over the city the most intense interest was manifested. What with the shouting of the news boys — each of whom had something staked on the result — and the cheering whenever a new dispatch from up the river came in, one was forcibly reminded of the war times just after some tremendous engagement.” 14
    Leathers, outraced to Natchez, now conceded that he had misjudged the Lee ’s ability. “I’ve underestimated her power,” he confessed, but then seemed to grow more determined than ever. Above Natchez the Mississippi narrowed and became more twisting. The Lee may have had an advantage on the broad, straight sections of the river below Natchez, but the sleeker, more maneuverable Natchez , Leathers believed, would have the advantage now in channels studded with small islands and sand bars and salients thrusting out from the banks. Besides, the Natchez , he was certain, had the two best pilots on the Mississippi, Frank Clayton and Mort Burnham. The race now would be not simply a contest of speed but of piloting skill. It was far from over.
    Up ahead were the towns of Cole’s Creek, Waterproof, Rodney and St. Joseph, spotting the riverbanks in Louisiana and Mississippi. St. Joseph, Mississippi, a frequent stop, was the home of Ed Snodgrass, a merchant who held the distinction of being a friend of both Cannon and Leathers, and loving a bit of mischief, he delighted in passing on to each the insults of the other when their boats tied up at the St. Joseph landing. Leathers had recently had a painful, bothersome carbuncle develop on his back, suffering so severely that he brought his doctor along with him on the Natchez . Seeing him in his torment, Snodgrass had sympathized, but after the Natchez departed and Cannon arrived on the Robert E. Lee , he eagerly informed Cannon of Leathers’s condition.
    “A carbuncle, huh?” Cannon responded.
“Yes,” Snodgrass answered.
“Well,” Cannon said, “you tell the old blankety-blank-blank that I had
a brother — a bigger, stronger man than I am — and he had one of them things and died in two weeks.”
    When Cannon took a misstep aboard the Robert E. Lee one time, he fell to the deck and broke his collarbone. That news reached Snodgrass and was passed along to Leathers,