Part One: 1927 - Waterways of Westward Wandering; small boat voyage down the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi rivers

These posts will be excerpts from Freeman's book, Waterways of Westward Wandering; small boat voyages down the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi rivers

I'm only sharing the chapters and sections that are involved more with outboarding with an Elto.  His other articles linked above in the "Index by Model" were more succinct and outboard focused, but this was a book and he padded it unmercifully!

If you are interested in the whole journey you can read it online by borrowing it from archive.org for 14 days at a time!

Many things were interesting and amusing in sections I left out.  Freeman's delight in obtaining a "really small" portable radio has him talking about radio things quite a bit :-)











Chapter 2

My voyage down the Ohio, which ultimately resolved itself into a race against time and resulted in putting up what is probably an outboard motor record for continued day-by-day running, was originally planned as the most leisurely of jaunts.

I had thought of starting at tide-water on Chesapeake Bay, making my way across to the headwaters of the Ohio by the series of canals and locks which I had been told were still in operation, and then dropping down with the current to the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico.  A run on to Florida was in the back of my head, with the alternative of working along up the inside passages of the Atlantic to my starting point, or possibly head south for Cuba and the West Indies.   Six months would be the minimum of time in which to cover such an itinerary with out rush and discomfort; but a year would more than double the enjoyment.

And so, before heading east from California to clean up last of my winter’s grind of work in New York and Washington, I packed my river outfit and sent specifications for a boat to be built in Wisconsin and held ready to ship on to the Atlantic seaboard as soon as I was ready for it.  A new outboard was also ordered to be run in and set aside for me. 

 An Elto which had served me well the previous year on a two thousand-mile run by inland waterways from Milwaukee to New York was reported by the manufacturers as still in prime shape but booked up for show purposes.   On sentimental grounds I would have preferred my tired and tested little veteran from the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, but on the practical side was just as well pleased to be starting with a new motor on a voyage which I expected might well be extended a good many thousand miles. ...

EDIT

 (In brief: He had to make this journey in a big hurry because the Navy invited him to join them on the Australian cruise, meeting in Honolulu on a certain date.  So there are many pages of explaining the possible hazards and hassles to get ready and leave in 12 days to make a thousand miles. One problem was the difficulty in getting a portable radio.)

A possible hitch developed when it transpired that the (radio) set in question—it was called “Radiola 26”,  I believe,—would not be delivered to dealers until mid-summer.  An exchange of wires between the New York office of the Radio Corporation and the factory, however, finally brought the promise of a specially assembled set inside of a week.  This failed to turn up in New York by the time I had to leave, but a messenger handed it to me at the Cosmos Club in Washington the night before I took train for Pittsburgh.

In the meantime my boat had been rushed to completion in Milwaukee and dispatched in a special ex-press car to Pittsburgh. Here the energetic Elto agent, Mr. Reilly, conveyed it by truck to the boathouse on the Alleghany most convenient to my hotel.

Crated boat and motor, propped up on a convenient cinder pile beyond the reach of rising water, were awaiting me when Mr. Reilly took me over from the train.

With the whole outfit of the simplest possible character, less than twenty-four hours were required to assemble it and get under way. The boat was of the same general type of the one I had used the previous season on my Great Lakes-New York voyage. 

It was a round-bottomed skiff, eighteen feet in length, with six feet of the bow decked over and bulkheaded off to form a water-tight compartment. The latter was planned along the lines of the fore-and-aft compartments built in the boats we had used in the Geological Survey expedition through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. 

Its hatch, with a rubber gasket, could be clamped and padlocked down, serving the triple purpose of preventing petty pilfering, keeping cameras and radio completely dry in rain or rough weather, and providing an air-chamber that would give the boat additional buoyancy in the event of an upset. 

An extendable spray-hood of waterproofed canvas had its forward end attached to a coaming on the compartment. For ordinary weather it could be run back to a bow of spring steel arched between the forward oar-locks. In rain or when running into heavy head seas further extension could be made to a bow set in the after oar-locks, while to form a sleeping
cover or to close up the boat completely it could be carried back over the motor and made fast under the stern. Snaps were set to engage eyes to fasten down the sides to the coaming of the cockpit.

While I expected to sleep on bank or bars whenever weather permitted, provision for making snug in the boat was effected by carrying several lengths of light board cut to the inner dimensions of the open section of the little craft. Laid crosswise between the fixed seats, these formed a temporary deck upon which my inflatable rubber mattress could be spread under cover of the extended spray-hood. 

In practice, I found that the most convenient plan was to leave that part of this deck running under the forward section of the hood in place all of the time. That gave space for stowing the mattress without deflation and saved the rather tedious operation every night. 

Grub-box and loose dunnage stowed under this section of deck, while blankets, poncho and slickers found place on top with the mattress. Regulation canvas life-preservers were provided to comply with Government regulations; also a can of fire-extinguisher and a fog-horn. The latter proved very useful in signaling my approach to locks.  The life-preservers were supplemented by a kapok jacket, survivor of the Grand Canyon expedition, and an inflatable Gieve waistcoat that I had worn during the war in the North Sea patrols. 

A 1917 B. Altman ad noted it was of especial interest to Americans about to embark for war service in Europe.

One can hardly have too many life-preservers around an open boat, especially on a one-man voyage.  One never knows when they will be needed to provide buoyancy and warmth in the event of the ever imminent upset, while one type or another always comes in handy as a pillow, seat-cushion or in terracing up a sleeping spot on a wet and sloping bank. They are the soundest kind of assurance and insurance.  

My gasoline was carried in three-gallon spring-top cans—the kind that will not leak when rolled over on their sides. A built-in tank would have been a convenience but at too much of an increase of weight. Where one is handling a boat alone the more that can be instantly lifted out.or thrown over to lighten it the better. Gallon-cans, fitted with three feet of one-inch hose, for emergency filling in rough weather, were included in the outfit, but with little expectation that they would be used until such time as my voyage was extended to the Gulf. As it transpired, however, this ingenious contrivance—a product of Ole Evinrude’s fertile brain—turned out very useful, just as had been the case in two or three unexpected emergencies on my Great Lakes run. 

In the Pittsburgh office of the U. S. Army Engineers, I found the same keen, practical, obliging type of officers I had come to know in similar work along the Missouri, Mississippi and Columbia. They furnished me with a copy of “The Ohio River,” a volume compiled under the direction of the Chief of Engineers of the United States Army and the District Engineer of the First District, Cincinnati. Besides a complete set of large scale charts of the Ohio from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi, this invaluable publication contained detailed descriptions of locks, dams and canals, with minute navigation directions for all stages of water; also tables of distances and short descriptions of every city, town and village on the main river and its principal tributaries.

Supplementing this encyclopedic Army volume, I had the booklet of the U. S. Lighthouse Service of the Fourteenth District, for the Ohio and its navigable branches, and a complete set of the maps of the U. S. Geological Survey covering the course of the Ohio. The latter was furnished me through the courtesy of Chief Topographic Engineer Claude Birdseye, who had been in charge of the Grand Canyon expedition. By a skillful cutting and matching in the map department of the Survey, sheets which, complete, would have aggregated several hundred square feet in area, were reduced to a narrow but continuous strip that folded into a foot-long envelope. 

The army engineers had unwelcome news for me in the announcement that the dams of the Ohio, after being down all through the winter season of high-water, had been raised but a few days previously. Nothing but heavy and protracted rains over the whole upper basin would bring a stage of the river sufficiently high to make it practicable to lower these movable barrages without impeding navigation. This meant not only that I would be subject to the delays of locking down at every dam, but that, instead of a two or three-mile current, I would be running in almost slack water between dam and dam. I had anticipated this would be the case, but it was disappointing to learn I had missed an open river by less than a week.

It might be well to explain, perhaps, that the dams built upon the Ohio are of a special type which can be raised or lowered according to the stage of water it is desired to maintain for navigation. This is accomplished by making every dam a continuous unit of hinged sections, each of which can be raised and locked erect or laid flat at will. During the several months of maximum flow in the winter months navigation proceeds in an open river, much of the time

with the locks and their immediate buildings deeply submerged. When the water lowers in the spring sufficiently to make navigation difficult for the deeper draught steamers, the dams are raised, and with it the receding river level. Then the locks come into play, with all craft running between Pittsburgh and Cairo compelled to make use of them to pass the forty or more dams which block the river from bank to bank.

The night before my departure from Pittsburgh I endeavored to repay a long standing debt to radio by holding forth over KDKA on my experiences with various odds and ends of receiving sets in several remote corners of the continent.  The programs broadcast by this powerful station had been among the most dependable and entertaining we had picked the previous autumn among the perpetual ice fields on the Arctic divide of the Canadian Rockies. The announcer, before turning me loose upon the microphone, told something of my plans for navigating the Ohio by radio, adding that KDKA was to cooperate with me in making the latest weather forecasts available. He also stated that he would appreciate any help that could be given to me by his listening-in friends along my route.

This request—merely a conventional concluding flourish on the announcer’s part—was well intended but unfortunate. Just what aid a listener-in could be to a river voyageur (beyond dragging him to bank in the event of an improbable upset, perhaps) I have never been able to figure.  Nevertheless, a very considerable percentage of KDKA’s mighty audience forthwith proceeded to interpret the order literally.  Telegrams offering everything from First Aid to a Chamber of Commerce reception with broadcasting accompaniment began pouring in upon me, the first arriving before I had left the studio. Wires, letters and delegations continued to waylay me all the way to Cairo. How many hundreds of each failed to reach me there was no way of knowing;  but the toll for answering telegrams that were delivered was one of the main expense items of the voyage. 

I found only between forty and fifty government dams blocking my way to the Mississippi, but of kindly intentioned radio fans operating to a like end there must have been as many thousand. In the end Nature intervened in a way to make the obstructions of dams and fans a matter of small moment. Without such intervention, working through either barrage would have made conclusion of my voyage within the twelve-day time limit quite beyond the range of possibility.

With my outfit stowed and motor clamped into place by three o’clock of the following afternoon, I started to clear the decks for getting under way by replying to the stack of telegrams which had been accumulating in the cockpit since early morning. For the first half hour I made some gain upon the sprawling yellow heap; then I no more than held even the augmenting stream of replenishment. Finally, threatened with submergence by the tawny cataclysm, I cast off mooring lines and floated out to temporary freedom on the slow-moving current of the Alleghany.  Radio navigation was starting off a bit hectically.  But I was under way in any event, and the Ohio was just ahead.

That was a punishing day’s work. The last mile, against a wind that had finally settled down to blow up-stream at thirty miles or more an hour, took me eighty minutes to negotiate, with the bridge and the old river steamer along the bank in sight all the time.  But as the end of that infernal three-hundred mile grind from the Yellowstone marked also the end of my rowing for the voyage, I did not mind the backbreaking finish.

But when I told the wise old river-rats who came down to greet me at the Landing that I was about to clamp on an outboard and have done with rowing, they greeted the announcement with a hilarious roar of amusement. The little kickers might be all

right on clear-water rivers, they admitted, but did I ever see one that had been used in the mud and sand of the Missouri? I had not. Well, they would show me some.

And still cackling hilariously, they led me up to the cabin of a long disused stern-wheeler, and pointed to several battered and generally dilapidated clusters of rusting iron and corroding brass hanging upon the walls. “Half a day in the Missoury done it,” one of them announced sententiously, going on to explain that the pumps of the motors had scoured through in a few hours, and that the only reason the rest of them had survived was because pumps could not be replaced fast enough to keep them running the day or two that would have reduced even the propellers to river silt.

After this ocular evidence of what the Missouri would do to outboards in general, there was little reassurance in my first sight of the particular outboard on the success or failure of which now hinged board on the success or failure of which now hinged

the continuance of my voyage. The type—twin-cylinder—was an innovation that season, as was also the attempt to furnish three horsepower in a motor weighing fifty pounds. Lightness had been effected by the liberal use of aluminum alloys. I could almost hold the shining little thing at arm’s length. Beauty and grace of lines bespoke the artist as well as the inventor in its builder. But would it stand up? With a sinking heart, I admitted to myself that there was not much hope on that score if motors of twice its weight and bulk had succumbed in a few hours. 

The mechanic of a Bismarck garage who drove me down to the Landing expressed my feelings to a nicety when he characterized it as “pretty but delicate,” much as he would have spoken of a girl in frail health.

The wise ones at the Landing made about as much fun of that poor little motor as had those of Livingston of my steel skiff. Only the gibes now found a mark where in the first instance they had left me only amused. I already knew enough about boats and rough water to feel confident that my fine-lined little craft, with careful handling, was equal to anything on the Yellowstone. But knowing nothing either of outboards or the abrasive action of suspended Missouri River silt, I could only shrug my shoulders in affected nonchalance and hope for the best.

The trial run was impressive as regards speed and power but stilled no note of croaking on the score of power but stilled no note of croaking on the score of durability. Starting and running the little “stern-splasher” (as one of my volunteer advisers called it) was as simple as winding a watch, and required little more effort.

We bored it up into a forty-mile west wind that almost held the ferry stationary in mid-stream, and when the ferry ran back with the wind astern, we circled it twice in the course of the crossing. Running against the wind I had to shut down to half-speed to keep from swamping the low skiff with the bow wave; down-stream, with the current and a quartering wind, we covered a known mile in about five minutes.

The river-rats admitted that this was good as far as it went, but that it wouldn’t go very far. St. Louis would be over two weeks’ steady running at a hundred miles a day, one of them observed, adding that he missed his guess if I ran steadily for two days.

Another opined that the motor was “as purty and shiny” as a cream separator, but that no separator was ever made to digest Missoury mud.

“The little cuss sputters and spatters like a pin-wheel,” he said, “but she’ll whiff out and die just as pronto. Call me a liar if the baby ain’t dead in her cradle before she kicks you to Pierre; and you might as well drop her over for good once she quits.”

Well, what this cheery prognosticator forecast came to pass to a certain degree. My motor was dead before I reached Pierre, but the demise came through no fault of its own. Neither was the passing permanent enough to warrant a burial at sea. How it befell I will tell presently; also of the resuscitation and of how, under constantly improving treatment, it not only kicked me into Pierre, but right on down to

Kansas City and St. Louis, and finally to Memphis, Vicksburg and New Orleans.

On my first day’s run under power all went swimmingly. Starting at ten o’clock and driving along without landing for lunch, I made the eighty miles or more to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in a bit over seven hours. I was helped by a good current all the way; also by a breeze which was more often with me than against. 

For the first time since running the last of the rapids of the Yellowstone the drudgery

of the oars ceased and the voyage again became one of thrills and pleasure. Bird life was plentiful, with ducks and geese winging overhead along the river and doves

and prairie chickens in the cottonwoods and grass of the bottoms. By shutting off the engine and drifting I could have shot enough birds from the boat to have fed a camp of a dozen men.

Deer, doubtless startled from their midday slumbers by the rat-a-tat of the motor, broke away through the willows at several points above the Cannon Ball, and one which took to the river in its fright I gave a right merry chase until it reached the shallows and started to run.

Running on down across the state line to South Dakota on my second day under power, I encountered my old enemy, the head-wind, trying to make the Missouri back up to where it came from. With no more than a twenty-five mile an hour breeze against me, I found there was kick enough in the motor to force my feather-weight outfit on down river with no great diminution of speed. As the velocity increased above that point head-waves came in over the bow faster than I could bail them out. This forced a slowing down of the engine as the wind augmented in strength until, about four in the afternoon, the best speed I could maintain without swamping was hardly more than enough to maintain a perceptible headway down stream.

(to be continued)

But, remember, you can go read the book at archive.org.