Chapter 8

The Ohio River could and would be very treacherous if it was ever given the chance. Sand bars abounded and the channel was almost impossible to find when the river was in flood. Capt. Johnson had a man on the bow taking depth readings every few yards. The Lovely Louise was barely moving just fast enough to keep up steerage. Any faster and they would not have been able to correct for changes in the channel. Fortunately, the Lovely Louise drew very little water, even when heavily loaded. She was able to skim over many a mud bank or sand bar that would have trapped most boats.

The boat held a full complement of passengers and enough freight to make any boat owner shiver with jealousy. As the first river boat to sail from Pittsburgh this season, she was carrying the most valuable of cargo. Capt. Johnson was able to name his price for freight, though he did resist temptation and kept his prices within reason. He did want more business if he ever came back this way.

We were traveling so slowly that we were hardly making 15-18 miles per day down the river. The twisting back and forth that we had to do cut deeply into our rate of forward progress.

Everybody on board was quite antsy since these were ideal conditions for pirates. Water had flooded over many miles of farmland and forest, so the only practical way to travel was by boat. Furthermore, the big boats like ours had to go very slowly, making us easy to catch by rowboats and flatboats. Other than at flood stage, our travel down river was at a speed that made it impossible for small boats to catch up, so that they had to ambush us from the front and to try to make us stop. Now, with a little bit of work, those same small boats could move faster than us and could catch up to us even in a stern chase.

In any case, we were still more likely to have pirates approach us from the front than from the rear, so Capt. Johnson made no effort to move the cannon to the rear of the Lovely Louise. Any stern attack would be the responsibility of the riflemen. We were ready, and a sharp lookout was maintained.

Our vigilance was rewarded on the second day after leaving Pittsburgh. It was in the afternoon and the sun was low, so we had to stare into the setting sun whenever we looked toward Ohio. This meant that we did not see the pirates at first. They were able to approach quite close before they were spotted. The pirates in their rowboats were actually spotted by one of the men measuring depth, since he was near enough to the water to be in shadow.

The warning was given, and we all rushed to the starboard side of the boat to see what was the cause of the ruckus. We arrived just in time to see a grapnel thrown from a rowboat to the railing of the Lovely Louise. Mary had just put Anna down and come out on deck to take part in the guard duty. She had her rifle in hand, so she got off the first shot at the boarder.

She blew him into next week, so there was a pause of consternation among the other pirates in the boat. That gave the rest of us time to gather our wits and start shooting. We quickly killed all of the pirates in that boat and had started working on the second boat as it tried to pull away and run for the hills. We managed to get off several more shots before the boat was too far away to see clearly, but I am sure that we hit several more of the pirates.

One of the deck crew ran up and chopped at the line holding the rowboat to our boat. He severed the line, and the rowboat drifted away rather quickly, as the wake of our boat was able to push it freely, now that no one was rowing. Everybody who had seen the fight waved and cheered at Mary, and she dropped a curtsy in acknowledgment. There had only been six men in each rowboat so our rifles were more than a match for them.

Coming up was a choice of stopping at Marietta, Ohio, or Parkersburg, Virginia. However, both were so flooded that Capt. Johnson decided to stay in the channel he was sure of and disembark the few passengers desiring it by small boat. There was just too much chance of tearing a gash in the bottom of the Lovely Louise to chance trying to tie up at either place. We even picked up three passengers headed for Cincinnati, so it was worth the stops.

I, for one, was amazed at the skill of Capt. Johnson and the pilot in keeping us from running aground or hitting any of the trees that were floating in the river. It was strange to look to one side or the other and see only the tops of trees sticking out of the water. I was told that the trees would actually drown if the water did not recede pretty soon. As it was, every year, some trees did not live through the flood.

Frankly, I could not see the attraction of living on a flood plain where I had to escape to high ground every year. I imagined that it was something like living for 10 months beside the river in one place and living for 2 months beside the river in another place. Oh, well, to each his own. I wondered how many did it because they were addicted to eating fresh fish?

We were lucky in that we did not see any more pirates before we got to Cincinnati. Could it be that our reputation had preceded us? Or, maybe, it was the cannon perched so menacingly on our bow. Whatever the cause, we were happy for it. Also, the flood was noticeably dropping, so the navigation became much less nerve wracking.

I had to chuckle to myself on the way Anna was the darling of the boat. Mary was continually on the move from place to place about the boat taking Anna to visit some portion of the boat that she had not been to, recently. The crewmen got very jealous of any others who they deemed to have been visited more often than them. Capt. Johnson remarked to me what a boon it was to have Anna on board—the Lovely Louise had never before been so neat and clean. Woe unto any member of the crew who failed to clean up a mess as soon as it was spotted, no matter whether the mess was made by a crewman or by a passenger. Capt. Johnson said that we must have the cleanest boat on the Ohio River!

We were running into fuel problems. We had stocked up on wood for fuel before leaving Pittsburgh, but that supply did not last all that long. The flood had been particularly fierce this year along this section of the river, so all of the wood was still wet. Our fireboxes would accommodate wet wood to some extent, but it burned at lower efficiency, so that we needed more wood than usual. We simply could not buy all of the wood we needed, so we were forced to send out wood cutting parties of our own, and riflemen were sent along for protection.

It's amazing to me how mean and avaricious people could get if the opportunity presented itself. It could not have been profitable to attack the wood cutters, yet it did happen. It was obvious to me that a working man under those conditions was not going to be carrying his valuables with him, so what was there worth stealing? Maybe boredom had something to do with it, since there could not be much to do when the ground was covered with several feet of water.

Cutting wood under these conditions was back breaking work, and the chore had to be rotated around among the crew. I went on several of the expeditions, and Sarah went along a couple of times to be a guard, though she was not strong enough to do any actual wood cutting. Nevertheless, even she found it to be an exhausting job.

The wood cutters often stood in waist-deep water to chop and saw. At least, the tree could be floated back to the boat where it could be dragged on board and chopped into usable lengths. Fortunately, it was usually possible to find dead trees so that the wood was dry enough inside. The annoying thing was having to leave those tall stumps which we had to navigate around to get back to the boat. Let me assure you, that navigating was often more aggravating and tiring than chopping the tree down. The limbs of the floating tree would become entangled with the tall stumps, and workers would often have to reenter the water. It was still cold weather, though above freezing, and plenty of blankets were in use once the men climbed back into the boats. Dammit, there had to be a better way to do this job!