The Great American Steamboat Race

“Nothing,” the nineteenth-century steamboat historian E.W. Gould asserted, “so much interests the average American as rapid motion, and it is not confined to our nationality altogether either. The fastest sailing vessel, even a merchantman, always got the preference in the early days, if known to excel in speed. Then followed the clipper ships, which excited the admiration of the civilized world because of their speed.

“Steam had no sooner been applied to navigation than the genius of the best mechanical skill was challenged to produce the best results in speed from a combination of steam power and model of vessels.... The principal question to be determined by all who had embarked in steam navigation was how much speed could be obtained.”
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And what better way was there to demonstrate how much speed could be obtained, to show which was the fastest vessel, than to race the very fastest against each other?

In the days following America’s Civil War two of the very fastest steamboats were the
Robert E. Lee
and the
Natchez
, both operating on the lower Mississippi River, each with a large following of customers and friends. The personal rivalry of their owner-captains and the public partisanship that the boats engendered grew so intense that a match between the two became inevitable. The resulting race won both boats a fame so widespread and enduring that no other steamboats would ever equal it. The race itself became so famous that it became a milestone in the history of America.

The
Natchez
and the
Robert E. Lee
were quintessential Mississippi River steamboats, elegant specimens of the breed, built to tempt aboard passengers who could afford to travel in style, much like twenty-first-century cruise ships. Travel aboard a Mississippi River steamboat was, for those who could afford to go first class, an esthetic experience, providing days and nights of pleasure in an opulent floating palace.

But unlike modern cruise ships, Mississippi River steamers had an indispensable practical function, far more important than pleasure or recreation. During many years of the nineteenth century, until the spread of railroads, the steamboat was the major means of transportation for both passengers and freight. The steamboat opened America’s mid-continent to settlement by providing access to the roadless western territories, carrying on its often crowded, boisterous main deck those courageous, hardy, sometimes desperate people who settled mid–America, the polyglotinous, multi-ethnic immigrants from abroad as well as restless and hopeful Americans moving westward from states along the eastern seaboard, all seeking new opportunity in a land of opportunity. For them the promise of America lay within its immense interior, which was reachable only on foot, through and across largely trackless woods and plains, or by boats steaming through the growing nation’s intricate network of rivers.

The steamboat was the way in and the way out. Once on their land, the settlers, farmers and planters depended on the steamboat to take the fruits of their labors to market centers where they could be sold, and to bring from those market centers what people needed to survive or simply to make their lives better. People of the mid-continent turned the Mississippi River into a vibrant thoroughfare, and the steamboat was the vehicle that traveled upon it, transporting them and their goods. A common sight in communities along the river, the steamboat became an integral part of ordinary life in the nineteenth century.

The
Natchez
and the
Robert E. Lee
were only two of the many, but because of the race they ran and the fame it gained them they have become symbols of all Mississippi River steamboats and of the steamboat’s time in history. Their story, their vying for pre-eminence, is not merely the story of two of the thousands of steamboats that plied the Mississippi’s muddy waters. It is the story of the Mississippi River steamboat itself, the vital, majestic creature of an American era.

It was the most massive crowd on Canal Street since Mardi Gras, despite the summer heat, which afternoon clouds and a light shower failed to abate. The
Daily Picayune
reporter covering the event observed that the city seemed to empty itself onto the levee, thousands of onlookers thronging to where New Orleans’s famous thoroughfare meets the mighty river. The
St. Louis Republican
reporter in town for the event said the levee in the area of Canal Street was so densely packed with people that there was practically a solid human mass from the river back a hundred yards or so to the first row of buildings.

In upper-floor windows, on rooftops and on lacy iron balconies people assembled to watch the spectacle. Seven blocks away from the river, on St. Charles Street, as many as a dozen desperate onlookers climbed atop the dome of the St. Charles Hotel to get a clear view of the expected action. As far as the eye could see and farther, from Canal Street all the way uptown to Carrollton and beyond, eager spectators spread themselves out along the river’s edge, standing or sitting, squatting or lying wherever they managed to find viewing space, passing the time with food and drink bought from street vendors, suffering the crush gladly, knowing they were about to witness one of history’s great moments.

Some spectators, bent on a close-up view of the racers, boarded steamers that had scheduled special excursions to carry paying customers as far as twenty miles up the river, following the boats as the race proceeded. The steamer
Henry Tate
had moved to an upriver vantage point, carrying on board a load of passengers, who had shelled out a dollar apiece for tickets, and a brass band to further enliven the festive atmosphere. A half dozen or so other steamers had joined the
Henry Tate
, all providing the river’s equivalent of ringside seats.