The River: Rain keeps us indoors with thoughts of fabled storyteller Mark Twain and his tales

The riverboat captain is a storyteller, and Captain Don Sanders will be sharing the stories of his long association with the river — from discovery to a way of love and life. This a part of a long and continuing story.

By Capt. Don Sanders
Special to NKyTribune

I’m glad it was raining and not bright and sunny outdoors. The rain makes staying in the house easier during this confinement for the viral pandemic. Who wants to walk in a cold downpour? Perhaps the rain may keep someone from contracting the disease with a life unwittingly spared.

My son Jonathan and I slipped away to check on the CLYDE, our stern paddlewheel boat.

Just yesterday, my son Jonathan and I slipped away to check on the CLYDE, our stern paddlewheel boat. Surprisingly, three men standing at the top of the ramp leading down to our dock had protective masks covering their faces. Everyone waved as we cruised slowly by to the far end of the parking lot. By the time we returned, two of the strangers were leaving in a car bearing Indiana plates, while the third looked our way before descending the steep ramp to the boats bobbing unconcerned about us or any virus. Donning our facemasks, Jon and I followed the fellow who had disappeared into one of the “plastic floating palaces,” as Jonathan called the expensive vessels before we were on the level of the floating dock.

Later, on the way home, we took a slight detour to see how people were doing in the heart of town. It seemed that the three masked men at the marina and we were the only ones wearing face coverings. No one in the riverside park was, nor were the grocery shoppers coming and going in and out of the privately-owned chain store. If I rode through town, now, I’m convinced the rain would have the park and the streets empty, while keeping grocery shoppers at home waiting for a sunny day.

The rain has me indoors as well, but through the wonder of 21st Century technology, I can communicate with thousands of others via the electronic medium called the internet. To those of like-minded interest in the history of the river, the boats, and those who ran the fire-breathing monsters, the steamboats, I “post” pictures and text of what I know will interest those scattered shut-ins. Mark Twain, the so-called “Patron Saint of the Golden Age of Steamboating,” is always an eye-opener.

Mark Twain, the so-called “Patron Saint of the Golden Age of Steamboating,” is always an eye-opener. 

As far as river-related works are concerned, the writings of “Mark Twain,” the nom de plume of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a Missouri fellow who wrote primarily about his boyhood adventures and his short-lived career as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River, are all that a layperson usually knows of the subject. By coincidence and the complete lack of malice of forethought, my own life paralleled his. Given a river and the freedom and desire to explore, what else would any boy do but play along its banks and swim in its alluring waters? Both “Sam,” as I often call him, and I tried our hands at “steamboatin'” and reached similar levels of success in the art. As far as my scribbling and Sam’s literature goes, I’ll not make the slightest comparison. Though I harbored a curiosity for writing for many years, I realized long ago that any river-related writer would invariably shiver within the cold, dark shadow of one of literature’s most excellent practitioners.

Consequently, I have avoided the matter for the most part. Though I have yet to allude to the Master’s likeness, the kiss of death for any aspiring river writing is the moniker, the “new Mark Twain.” Who, but the most impassioned student of steamboat literature, can name one work written by Ben Burman, Irving S. Cobb, or Dick Bissell? And these are, perhaps, the best river writers found standing within Twain’s deep shadow.

The City of St. Louis quickly renamed the nearly 30-year-old harborboat, originally named the ELON G. SMITH, a handsome sidewheeler with classic steamboat proportions and built at Madison, Indiana in 1873, the MARK TWAIN.

Breaking my self-imposed tradition of avoiding Mark Twain as zealously as I do the COVID-19 pandemic, a photo someone posted of the St. Louis harborboat, MARK TWAIN, named to venerate Sam Clemen’s May 1902 visit to the “Gateway City, caused me to research and post a few comments on the subject.

As I found, according to the Spring 2000 Mark Twain Journal, Clemens was interested in returning to his hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, upriver from St. Louie, after he received an invitation to attend a “Mark Twain program” at the Hannibal High School. Twain declined on the basis that he was “too old.” Shortly after that, Yale University awarded him an honorary doctorate, and hearing this, the University of Missouri quickly bestowed the same honor on the Missouri lad with the required stipulation that he attend the commencement exercises in person. Thus was set into motion Clemens’ return to the land of his birth to receive the public recognition from his fellow Missourians. They also recognize the North American Bullfrog as their state amphibian. By returning to the “Show Me State, Clemens had an opportunity to visit Hannibal, one last time.

Who, but the most impassioned student of steamboat literature, can name one work written by Ben Burman, Irving S. Cobb, or Dick Bissell?

Planning the trip, Twain did not expect to “make numerous public appearances: rather he expected to briefly wash up in St. Louis before changing trains for Hannibal, stay there for five days, travel to Columbia, Missouri to receive his doctorate, and then return to St. Louis,” according to the Journal article. What we may fail to understand, 118 years later, is, this man was the foremost superstar of his age when a writer-of-words was as venerated as the contrived Hollywood and musical idols of today are glorified. What Sam Clemens envisioned as a brief, clandestine, excursion home quickly became a public event after one-hundred newspaper accounts recorded “an almost hourly account of his activities.”

Other than writing a cousin he was coming and making hotel reservations in St. Louis and Hannibal, Clemens told no one in either city of his impending trip to avoid unwanted attention. With Twain’s luminosity, secrecy was too much to expect, even in those days before cell phone and doorbell cameras recorded every moment. “Between May 29, when he arrived in Missouri, and June 8, when he left… perhaps no other week and a half in his life are recorded in such detail,” according to the MT Journal.

What we may fail to understand, 118 years later, is, this man was the foremost superstar of his age.

Not to be outdone with honors bestowed upon the great man, the City of St. Louis quickly renamed the nearly 30-year-old harborboat, originally named the ELON G. SMITH, a handsome sidewheeler with classic steamboat proportions and built at Madison, Indiana in 1873, the MARK TWAIN. On June 6, the Countess de Rochambeau christened the aging steamboat in Twain’s honor. During a much-recorded affair, the former steamboat pilot took the wheel of his namesake sidewheel one last time. After just a few minutes of handling the steamboat, he gave the control back to the regular pilot, Captain Matt Tulley. As the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 7, 1902, reported:  

After a few moments of silence in the pilothouse and laughing applause on the deck, the distinguished pilot sang out in the long, weird cry of the riverman for his “larboard lead,” and a deckhand dropped the line into the water. Then the long, lingering song of the deckhand announced the depths, and in the same tone and manner, a man on the roof passed the word: “Mark three-e-e-e,” came from the deck. “Mark three-e-e-e,” echoed the word-passer. “Ha-a-a-alf twa-a-ain,” from below. “Ha-a-a-alf twa-a-ain,” from above. “Quarter tw-a-a-ain,” from the deck. “Quarter twa-a-ain,” from the wheel. “Ma-a-a-a-ark twa-a-a-a-ain,” from the leadsman, and “Ma-a-a-ark twa-a-a-a-ain,” from the pilot, as cheers went up from the onlooking guests and the crew, who had grouped themselves on the deck.

The only riverman I knew who supposedly met the illustrious steamboatman-turned-writer, was Captain Jesse P. Hughes, a long-time pilot with the Greene Line Steamers, Inc. of Cincinnati.  

“That’s good enough water for anyone,” said Dr. Clemens; “you couldn’t improve it without putting in a little whiskey.”

During my many years on the river, I frequently inquired of old-timers if they met, saw, or knew of anyone who encountered Mark Twain. None admitted they had, but they usually remarked, “Twain wasn’t much of a pilot.” That I didn’t believe, as he piloted some of the biggest, best, and swiftest steamboats of his time without causing death, destruction, or desolation. Captain Harry Louden, a character Twain might have used in a story had the two met, noted, “Mark Twain was a better writer than he was a pilot.”

The only riverman I knew who supposedly met the illustrious steamboatman-turned-writer, was Captain Jesse P. Hughes, a long-time pilot with the Greene Line Steamers, Inc. of Cincinnati. Cap’n Jesse, born in June of 1876, lived until May of 1973. The last time he was aboard the DELTA QUEEN was during the Summer of 1972 as the QUEEN and the BELLE of LOUISVILLE lay nose-to-nose at Louisville during one of my escapades as the Captain of the QUEEN. When I ventured over to the BELLE, I found the old gentleman seated alone and neglected on a hard, wooden bench near the head of the Louisville steamer. Bending down, I asked, “Captain Jesse, would you like to go with me to the DELTA QUEEN?”

Instead of answering, Cap’n Jesse vigorously pumped his head up and down, indicating the affirmative. Without a word, the elderly boatman shot off the bench, and with me holding onto his arm, I swear I had to hustle to keep up with him as he nearly ran to be back aboard the boat he piloted soon after it came around from California in the late 1940s. No sooner had Captain Hughes and I stepped onto the DELTA QUEEN’s long stage-plank, his guardians from the BELLE came running as though I’d kidnapped their most-prized ward. “Leave Captain Jesse alone,” I cautioned, “He just wants to be aboard the DELTA QUEEN for one last time.” Years later, the old pilot’s daughter told me how much that final time aboard the QUEEN meant to her father.

Captain Wagner was anxiously blowing the AVALON’s steam whistle, reminding me it was nearly time to depart Twain’s hometown with a boatload of restless school kids.

Mr. James E. “Jimmy” Reising, from down-Falls-City-way and a long-time riverman with DELTA QUEEN ties stretching beyond my own that go back nearly 60 years, surprisingly added:

“Louisville Captain G.W. McBride’s grandfather cub-piloted under the illustrious Captain Horace Ezra Bixby in 1854. The elder Capt. McBride and Mark Twain worked together on their first piloting jobs in New Orleans. When Mark Twain visited Louisville in the early 1900s, he presented Capt. McBride with a copy of his book, Life On The Mississippi.”

So there you go. I’ve mentioned Mark Twain, undoubtedly the greatest of all river writers and a master of the English language. But the one incident that personally ties me to Cap’n Clemens remains a time when my wooden jonboat was stuck tightly on a stump in Bear Creek which flows through Hannibal. In the distance, Captain Wagner was anxiously blowing the AVALON’s steam whistle, reminding me it was nearly time to depart Twain’s hometown with a boatload of restless school kids. Without having the jonboat aboard the steamer had one of those kids, thinking he was another Huckleberry Finn and decided to swim the Mississippi River, Coast Guard regs would have forbidden the AVALON to leave the dock. If I didn’t get the small, wooden boat back on time, my steamboat career with me stranded up Bear Creek would have concluded, then and there.

With a final desperate shove, the boat dislodged right before I was about to jump overboard to lighten it. Getting back aboard would have been another story. Later, I found that a young Sam Clemens nearly drowned in Bear Creek not far from where I almost came to my fate had I gone over the side.

Captain Don Sanders is a river man. He has been a riverboat captain with the Delta Queen Steamboat Company and with Rising Star Casino. He learned to fly an airplane before he learned to drive a “machine” and became a captain in the USAF. He is an adventurer, a historian, and a storyteller. Now, he is a columnist for the NKyTribune and will share his stories of growing up in Covington and his stories of the river. Hang on for the ride — the river never looked so good.