Steamboat Calendar: Clemens’s Piloting Assignments, 1857–1861

The following record of arrivals and departures is based on currently available evidence, both factual and conjectural, about Clemens’s employment, first as a cub (or steersman), then as a licensed pilot, on Mississippi River steamboats from April 1857 to May 1861. Comparatively strong evidence places him on fourteen of the listed boats: the Paul Jones, Crescent City, R. J. Lackland, John J. Roe, Pennsylvania, John H. Dickey, White Cloud, Aleck Scott, Alfred T. Lacey (in 1859), Edward J. Gay, A. B. Chambers, City of Memphis, Arago, and Alonzo Child. Somewhat less compelling evidence points to his employment on the William M. Morrison, D. A. January, Alfred T. Lacey (in 1858), New Falls City (both assignments), and J. C. Swon. While the inclusive dates of Clemens’s service on a few of these eighteen boats are known with certainty, many of the dates on which he either began or ended his employment on the others remain uncertain. Particularly uncertain are the conjectured dates of his employment on the Morrison and the New Falls City (in October–December 1858), since his known movements on the river appear to allow for several periods when he might have worked on them. A departure or arrival date printed here in italic type indicates uncertainty about Clemens’s conjectured presence on a given boat at that time, not about the arrival or departure date itself.

Clemens was trained to navigate the river between St. Louis and New Orleans (the “Lower Mississippi”). Customarily he steered or piloted boats engaged in trade between those cities, with three exceptions. The John H. Dickey and its temporary replacement, the White Cloud (normally a Missouri River boat), were St. Louis-Memphis packets; and when Clemens was a pilot on the Arago, it was a St. Louis-Vicksburg packet that nevertheless made Cairo and New Orleans its terminals on one of his trips. For the Dickey and White Cloud, making weekly round trips between St. Louis and Memphis, departure dates only are supplied.

Most of the departure and arrival dates in the calendar were taken from the port lists and river columns of contemporary newspapers, primarily the St. Louis Missouri Republican, Missouri Democrat, and Evening News; the Memphis Appeal, and Avalanche; and the New Orleans Crescent, Picayune, Delta, and True Delta. On rare occasions, these newspapers failed to report the date of a boat’s arrival or departure, and at times they reported conflicting dates. Sometimes the information they supplied was simply incorrect, perhaps because it was carried over by mistake from the day before or published in mistaken anticipation of an arrival or a departure. Errors are also traceable to differing press deadlines (morning and evening), to unexpected scheduling changes or delays, and to boats’ arriving shortly before or after midnight, when river reporters were off duty and therefore easily mistaken about (or indifferent to) the actual date. Finally, broken or incomplete newspaper runs or illegible microfilm copy occasionally result in the loss of port lists and river columns necessary for a date or span of dates. Every attempt has nevertheless been made to repair these discrepancies and omissions to achieve the greatest possible accuracy and completeness. (A detailed discussion of the evidence used to determine all dates may be found in Branch 1987, forthcoming).

E. M. B.

[The entries for Paul Jones and Crescent City printed in L1, p. 387 (1988) have been corrected and a third boat, Colonel Crossman, added, in accordance with Edgar M. Branch, “Bixby vs Carroll: New Light on Sam Clemens’s Early River Career,” Mark Twain Journal 30 (Fall 1992): 2–10.

Explanatory Notes