Chapter 20 A Catastrophe

We lay three days in New Orleans, but the captain did not succeed in finding another pilot; so he proposed that I should stand a daylight watch, and leave the night watches to George Ealer.  But I was afraid; I had never stood a watch of any sort by myself, and I believed I should be sure to get into trouble in the head of some chute, or ground the boat in a near cut through some bar or other.  Brown remained in his place; but he would not travel with me.  So the captain gave me an order on the captain of the ‘A.  T. Lacey,’ for a passage to St. Louis, and said he would find a new pilot there and my steersman’s berth could then be resumed.  The ‘Lacey’ was to leave a couple of days after the ‘Pennsylvania.’

The night before the ‘Pennsylvania’ left, Henry and I sat chatting on a freight pile on the levee till midnight.  The subject of the chat, mainly, was one which I think we had not exploited before—­steamboat disasters.  One was then on its way to us, little as we suspected it; the water which was to make the steam which should cause it, was washing past some point fifteen hundred miles up the river while we talked;—­but it would arrive at the right time and the right place.  We doubted if persons not clothed with authority were of much use in cases of disaster and attendant panic; still, they might be of some use; so we decided that if a disaster ever fell within our experience we would at least stick to the boat, and give such minor service as chance might throw in the way.  Henry remembered this, afterward, when the disaster came, and acted accordingly.

The ‘Lacey’ started up the river two days behind the ‘Pennsylvania.’  We touched at Greenville, Mississippi, a couple of days out, and somebody shouted—­

’The “Pennsylvania” is blown up at Ship Island, and a hundred and fifty lives lost!’

At Napoleon, Arkansas, the same evening, we got an extra, issued by a Memphis paper, which gave some particulars.  It mentioned my brother, and said he was not hurt.

Further up the river we got a later extra.  My brother was again mentioned; but this time as being hurt beyond help.  We did not get full details of the catastrophe until we reached Memphis.  This is the sorrowful story—­

It was six o’clock on a hot summer morning.  The ‘Pennsylvania’ was creeping along, north of Ship Island, about sixty miles below Memphis on a half-head of steam, towing a wood-flat which was fast being emptied.  George Ealer was in the pilot-house-alone, I think; the second engineer and a striker had the watch in the engine room; the second mate had the watch on deck; George Black, Mr. Wood, and my brother, clerks, were asleep, as were also Brown and the head engineer, the carpenter, the chief mate, and one striker; Captain Klinefelter was in the barber’s chair, and the barber was preparing to shave him.  There were a good many cabin passengers