Chapter 7

The cannon was small, but Capt. Johnson had bought some grapeshot and cannister rounds for it. Either one would play hell with attacking pirates. I made a point of getting to know the three cannoneers, Jim Anderson, Bill Jackson, and Hiram North. They were all veterans of the Indian wars and knew how to handle cannon against gangs of attackers. We all felt a lot more secure when they signed on to the Lovely Louise. Between the cannon and our fast-loading rifles, we would be able to outfight any pirates who should be so unfortunate as to attack us.

Four of the ship's crew who were regular riflemen were assigned to guard the cannoneers while they used their cannon. The cannoneers were vulnerable to musket fire while they serviced their weapon, so they needed dedicated protectors. We were not able to have any more riflemen allocated from the regular crew because they were needed to keep the Lovely Louise operating during a fight. It was obvious that my wives and I were going to have to take up the slack.

We left St. Louis headed for Cincinnati with the boat loaded to the gunnels with freight and paying passengers. Everybody feared the threat of pirates on the major rivers, but the problem on the Ohio River was one of the worst. Though I was not really expecting my wish to come true, I hoped that we would not meet any pirates because of Mary's condition.

Mary was swollen to the point that she looked like she would burst with that baby. We got close to Cairo, Illinois, about the time her water broke. There was no midwife on board, but we were close enough to the town that we were able to get a midwife to attend Mary before the child actually started to move too much.

Capt. Johnson tied up at Cairo while we waited for the baby to arrive. The whole boat was on pins and needles waiting, but I got through it pretty well because a couple of crew members convinced me to drink some whiskey to "steady my nerves." I woke up with one hell of a hangover, but the baby was here. Mary had presented me, and, in truth, the whole boat, with a joyous package in the form of a baby girl which she named Anna Harriet Ostermier in honor of our two mothers. I thought that she was the most beautiful baby ever born, and the rest of the boat agreed with me. Mary was sure that Anna was going to be spoiled rotten.

The midwife was paid and put ashore, and we continued our trip to Cincinnati. We had hardly left Cairo before we met the first of the Ohio River pirates. This was a large gang which was using two flatboats and four rowboats. There appeared to be a total of 52 pirates. Normally, this would have been an overwhelming foe, and any sensible captain would have surrendered. However, we had our cannon and our rifles, so Capt. Johnson was defiant.

We began to shoot our rifles when the pirates were first spotted about 125 yards away as they came boiling out of a side stream. We managed to pick off a number of the pirates, but not enough to make any real difference at that range. To the surprise of the pirates, Capt. Johnson put on some additional speed to get us closer to the pirates before he slowed down to the point that we were barely making headway. This slowing down was to give the cannon a better chance to zero in on the pirates.

The cannoneers loaded the first shot with grapeshot. The large balls would tear great chunks out of the structure of the wooden boats we were facing. They fired the first shot at about 60 yards. The pirates must have been astounded when the cannon fired, judging from the way they acted so confused. Several of the grapeshot actually hit the boats and nearly sank one of them, as well as putting holes in a couple of others. Also, three or four of the pirates, it was hard to tell in the confusion, appeared to be hit with the same shot or by splinters from the boats. Whatever caused it, there were several parts of bodies in the water and a hell of a lot of blood.

The cannon fired one more round of grapeshot with comparable results before switching to cannister. This played hob with the pirates. It was like the world's biggest shotgun going off in their faces. I have no idea how many were killed or wounded by that first shot of cannister. Again, there were bits and pieces of human bodies strewn about the river. There was no opportunity to fire any more shots from the cannon, since the pirates tried to run away as fast as they could get their boats to move.

Most of the passengers had come out to watch the fight, and there was a lot of cheering and back-slapping when the pirates ran away. The cannoneers were the heroes of the day, and they deserved all of the praise that they got. The denizens of the river certainly had a banquet that day!

Several people raised the question of where so many pirates had come from. Normally, 30 pirates was a large gang, so the only answer that anybody could come up with was that the pirate leader must have been out recruiting. Well, we hoped that this debacle would convince the rest of the gang members that this pirate leader was not somebody to stick with. Either that, or it would convince this pirate leader to get his own cannon. Had we started an arms race for greater and greater killing power? I hoped not!

In any case, we had a few days of peace and quiet. We stopped at a small town to discharge some of our passengers and to pick up a few more. It looked to me like, even with the pirates, travel on the river was the safest and most comfortable way to travel—the only restriction was that very same river. You could only go by boat where the river was willing to flow. I wondered if it was possible to make a living transporting only passengers on the river. I discussed it with Capt. Johnson, but neither one of us had an answer at the moment.

Several times, we were flagged down to pick up more passengers. Soon there were men camped on the open deck, since all of the cabins were taken. There was so little river traffic in the winter and early spring that people were anxious to grab the first ride that showed up.

There were a few very young children riding as passengers, but Anna was still the darling of the boat. Mary did retire to our cabin for feeding the child, but Anna was in demand as a companion everywhere it was safe to take her on the boat. Mary was afraid to take her into the engine room because of the heat and the noise, but Anna went everywhere else there was to go. The "black gang" from the engine room spent as much time on deck as they could manage just so that they could spend some time with the baby. We wondered why Anna was so popular with the crew, but Capt. Johnson explained that most of these men did not have families, and the few that did saw their wives and children so seldom, that Anna was almost a daughter to them. She gave them a feeling of being with a family, and that brought them great comfort and joy.

It was on this leg of the trip that Helen announced that she was, indeed, knocked up. It looked, already, like we would have to postpone our trip to California that we had planned for next year. Capt. Johnson and the rest of the crew were delighted to learn of this, and the captain insisted that we were welcome to travel with his boat as long as we wanted to. This was a great relief, as it took a lot of pressure off of us, and Helen, particularly.

I spent all of my spare time manufacturing guns and my wives made the cartridges. We had a small factory set up aboard ship and turned out guns as fast as we could, while keeping the quality up. I did have to reduce the price of my guns to compete with the conversions of flintlocks to cap guns, but I still had a virtual monopoly on breech loading rifles. I did reduce my price to $75, but that was still a very steep price to pay for a gun. I considered going lower if I had to, but I was still selling every gun that I could make, so I stayed with that price.

We ran into our next pirates before we got to Evansville, Indiana, but this was a small gang of only six men, so we did not need the cannon. We were able to take care of the attack with just the rifles. This made such an impression on three of the passengers that I sold rifles to all three before the day was over. Since we were now regular members of the crew, Capt. Johnson had stopped paying us the bounty on dead pirates, but we did not mind, since he was paying each of us $2 per day in wages and providing free room and board. Besides, I was making plenty of money selling my rifles and cartridges.