A RAFT PILOT'S LOG 



At the end of the season I drew out four hundred and 

 sixty-five dollars as my share of profit which was more 

 than I had earned by seven and one-half months' work, 

 and this made me eager to increase my holding. 



Captain McCaflfrey had the "Last Chance" hauled 

 out on the LeClaire Ways for the winter and in Febru- 

 ary, 1882, Captain Van Sant and I bought McCaffrey's 

 half and divided our interest evenly each owning a half. 



The "Last Chance" was a small boat. She had a good 

 boiler, but the engines were small - ten inches in diam- 

 eter by three-foot stroke, and the cylinders were in 

 bad shape. The hull was old but had had a good thick 

 bottom put under her only three years before and she 

 needed very little repairs otherwise. 



We secured new cylinders a little larger and used 

 the same upper works. This and some valve grinding 

 made quite an improvement in her movement. 



As soon as I finished my term of school I secured a 

 room at the Gault House in LeClaire and took real 

 pleasure in working on my own boat, cleaning, paint- 

 ing, changing a little here and there to enable me to 

 house, feed and sleep a crew of eighteen men. 



I was fortunate in securing Robert Shannon as chief 

 engineer and George O. Lancaster as his assistant. 

 George was a good carpenter and a handy man in many 

 ways in addition to being a good engineer. 



I hired William Long for our cook and he was a 

 handy man with carpenter tools also, so I started him 

 in to remodel the kitchen and fit it up, as in the work 

 the boat had been doing on the rapids her crew lived 

 ashore and the so called kitchen was nothing but a small 

 room with a stove in it. 



With very little expense for material Mr. Long made 

 a very handy little kitchen that just suited him and 



