The River: Readying the CLYDE for the treacherous 1300-mile journey from Wisconsin to Cincinnati

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 Captain Don Sanders
Special to NKyTribune

This week, nine years ago, at 10:30 p.m., Everett Dameron and I pulled into the parking lot at the Great River Harbor Campground and Marina near Alma, Wisconsin. Nearly 13 hours earlier, Ev and I departed Aurora, Indiana, with a U-Haul rental truck chockablock full of assorted “stuff” we considered necessary to make the treacherous 1,300-mile trip retracing our way back to Aurora via the Upper Mississippi and Ohio Rivers instead of the Interstates.

The CLYDE, perhaps, the most authentic steamboat-style, small paddle wheeler anywhere on the Western Rivers (Photo provided)

Seventeen days earlier, I’d written two checks to cover the purchase price for, perhaps, the most authentic steamboat-style small paddle wheeler anywhere on the Western Rivers, the CLYDE, built by a local craftsman, Ed Newcomb. The CLYDE was named to commemorate the first iron-hulled steamboat on the Mississippi, a raft boat by the same name constructed at the Iowa Iron Works, Dubuque, Iowa, in 1870 as a sidewheeler. Five years later, Captain Jeremiah M. Turner, a veteran river pilot and steamboat owner from Lancing, Iowa, was most responsible for rebuilding the sidewheel CLYDE into a stern paddlewheel. Mr. Newcomb’s ancestors were officers aboard the original CLYDE, so the smaller version was a tribute to his forebearers.

No sooner had the truck, loaded with everything including a hefty anchor off my other boat, the SUN*FISH; also PFDs, tools, line (ropes to ye lubbers), tools, grub, the 13-foot, aluminum yawl BUSTER, and my mascot crew transferring from the FISH to the CLYDE – JoJo-the-Monkey and Brownie the Bear, arrived, Ev and I crashed into our bunks for the night.

Monday, June 4, 2012, the two of us rolled out of the racks for an early start emptying the van. Breakfast was at the bar and grill run by the marina. We chuckled when the waitress told us it would be “a scorcher” that day – a hot 80 degrees. Eighty is a mild day in the humid Ohio River Valley where we were from. Several hours later, after uploading most of the contents from the U-haul to the boat, Ev and I felt the impact of the Wisconsin heatwave. IT WAS HOT!

Ed treated us to lunch at the Pier Four Cafe in downtown Alma next to Lock & Dam # 4 and alongside the railroad tracks that hug the shoreline of the Great River (Photo provided)

Thankfully, Ed Newcomb came and helped us finish discharging the rest of the contents. Ed seemed unfazed by the Wisconsin heat and was seemingly accustomed to such “scorching” temperatures on the Upper Miss. Together, the three of us launched the BUSTER for the first time she’s been in the water since I bought her from Captain Robert Lischgke and restored the small skiff in the garage behind my house.

One of the nicer things about Ed Newcomb was, he couldn’t be too delightful to Everett and me while we were in town. As soon as the last of the truck was emptied, Ed treated us to lunch at the Pier Four Cafe in downtown Alma next to Lock & Dam # 4 and alongside the railroad tracks that hug the shoreline of the Great River and run through the heart of any community getting in the way.

Railway trains along those tracks alongside the Mississippi River are nothing like the trains I’d seen all my life at home. My first experience with such a beast, however, was some years earlier when I was decking on the Steamer AVALON during the Summer of 1959. Our steamboat, loaded with mothers and little kids, school-age boys and girls who came in yellow busses to the landing along the river, somewhere on the Illinois shore, was met by a state trooper as the excursion boat slid into shore after the afternoon ride. The law officer ordered Captain Wagner to keep everyone on the boat.

A Milwaukee Road Rail Line passenger train instantly materialized from the expanding dot swollen to the size and speed of a blazing yellow meteorite. (Photo from RR Picture Archives)

“There’s a train coming,” he announced gravely.

Although the terrain was flat enough to clearly see to the horizon in the far distance, not a speck appeared that my straining eyes could detect.

“Surely,” I thought to myself. “We have time to unload these passengers before the train gets here.”

No sooner than had that thought faded, a tiny mote materialized where the converging lines of track met the horizon. Each passing second expanded the growing molecule larger and larger until the profile of a Milwaukee Road Rail Line passenger train instantly materialized from the expanding dot swollen to the size and speed of a blazing yellow meteorite. Within seconds, the thundering engine and railcars tore past and disappeared out of sight as quickly as they had arrived. Immediately, I realized that our passengers would have stood no chance against such odds as that life-threatening extravaganza. Had I not witnessed the spectacle with my own eyes and ears, I couldn’t have imagined a train flying so fast.

Similarly, trains roaring through Alma and along the tracks paralleling the river behaved no differently. After a few days, I grew accustomed to the speeding rail commerce zooming by at all hours of the day and night. Sometimes, the trains seemed just minutes apart. One night, after midnight, a lull befell in the madness I’d taken for normal, and I had trouble sleeping without the screaming comets streaking past on silver polished rails.

Ev rustled up a pancake, bacon, and coffee breakfast while we waited for Ed to arrive. (Photo provided)

Tuesday and Wednesday, June 5-6, 2012, we awoke to a sunny and milder day with a light wind keeping the air circulating below the willows growing close to the water’s edge. My turn came to fix the coffee “steamboat-style,” and the new, eight-dollar coffeemaker did quite well. “Not bad,” Ev quipped after he’d taken his first sip. He was the cook for the trip and performed marvelously without any hitches except, while still at the Alma docks, the fringe on a dishtowel caught fire and singed his fingers.

Before Ev and I arrived the previous Sunday, the Upper Mississippi River Valley experienced some heavy rainfall that quickly brought the river toward flooding. Instead of rising drastically like the Ohio after a series of substantial rains, the current of the Upper increased to accelerated speeds. While the CLYDE and crew waited for the tide to subside, we utilized the opportunity to fine-tune the vessel for the long, arduous trip ahead.

Although Ed Newcomb continued to improve the paddle wheeler, he was not obligated to do so. For example, while the engine was running, Ed noticed the reading on the voltmeter was reading too low, so he removed the alternator to have it tested and repaired. He also bought a new starting battery and installed it on his own dime.

Ed told us to remove the forward and starboard pilothouse window casings, and he would replace the deteriorating wooden post between those windows when he came to the CLYDE on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, BUSTER and I took a long row out to the main channel of the Mississippi, where the current was still swifter than I wanted to challenge with the CLYDE. The eleven-foot aluminum skiff was light and very “tender,” or tipsy, but it could skim against the swiftest stream with the deftness of a damselfly. While I “pulled” against the might of the river, I thought of my friend Harlan Hubbard who loved rowing a boat as much as did I, as long as it was anywhere on the “fringe of society.”

The treacherous 1,300-mile trip retracing our way back to Aurora via the Upper Mississippi and Ohio Rivers instead of the Interstates. (Image provided)

Later that afternoon, Ed effortlessly removed the old wooden pilothouse corner post and slapped in the new one he prefabricated earlier before he came to the boat. Once the transition was completed between what was flawed and what was new, Ed proudly declared:

“There are two kinds of carpenters – barn carpenters and boat carpenters – and you will never find a barn carpenter in a boatyard.”

For the next four days, Everett and I had our chores aboard the CLYDE to ready everything we could think of before casting off the coming week. With the pilothouse windows replaced, they fit perfectly. We spent some leisure time at the marina clubhouse, where, at first, we were regarded as “outsiders” for the way we talked. Someone volunteered to disclose that we sounded “southern,” but when I objected, as we hailed from the Middle Ohio River near Cincinnati, someone else shot back in that brisk, snappy, Wisconsin way,

“Yez, yoo doooooo.”

“They should hear how the boaters talk,” I thought, “down where the SUN*FISH docks in Decatur, Alabama.”

My mascot crew transferring from the FISH to the CLYDE – JoJo-the-Monkey and Brownie the Bear. (Photo provided)

After we bought a few rounds bought for the house, we settled in and became fixtures whenever we popped in for breakfast or one of their celebrated hamburgers and fried egg sandwiches served Wisconsin-style. While Ev enjoyed his favorite beer, I knocked down an “AA Brew,” or one with no alcohol.

On Saturday, June 9, Ed came down to the CLYDE, and we took her out for what turned out to be my check ride as I handled the CLYDE from take-off to landing. I noted in the Log Book:

“Boat handles well. We should become friends… sooner or later.”

As Sunday was a day of relaxing before the upcoming departure that was getting closer, Ev announced:

“This might be the cook’s (his) day off.”

“Why not?” I answered. “Whattaya say we fast?”

For the rest of the lazy, hot afternoon, I loafed and read from a Farley Mowat novel while Ev couldn’t keep still and cleaned the pilothouse. Later that evening, we were Ed’s and his lovely wife, Cindy’s guests at the PICKLE FACTORY restaurant on Lake Pepin, near where Ed built the CLYDE twelve years earlier.

The CLYDE as she paddled full-throttle down the Mississippi River towards uncertain adventures that lay ahead for the next 1,300 miles. (Photo provided)

Monday, June 11, 2012 was cloudy and cooler, but by that night, the weather turned cold and blustery while the wind howled. My wife Peggy called to report that CLYDE’s temporary boat insurance expired on the 17th or 19th of July. She also said my pickup truck had been sideswiped, but my concerns were more for getting the CLYDE some 1,300 challenging miles ahead before the insurance deadline.

Tuesday, June 12, Everett Dameron and I were up early. Ev rustled up a pancake, bacon, and coffee breakfast while we waited for Ed to arrive. Jon Tschiggfrie, a calliope aficionado, and talented keyboard maestro drove down from the Twin Cities of St. Paul / Minneapolis to see the CLYDE off. Jon’s dad, my long-time friend, David Tschiggfrie, is the editor of the S&D REFLECTOR magazine, a respected and celebrated quarterly publication focusing on steamboat history. Dave and I first met on the AVALON when he and I were still lads hellbent on being aboard a steamboat.

At 11:25 a.m., as the last line was cast off the Great River Marina dock, the CLYDE paddled past the clubhouse for the last time before an audience of well-wishers sending us off shouting their final “fare-thee-wells.”

At 12:15 a.m., a pair of Bald Eagles flew over the CLYDE as she paddled full-throttle down the Mississippi River towards uncertain adventures that lay ahead for the next 1,300 miles.

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.