THE FIRST BOAT BUILT TO TOW RAFTS 199 



we better go get some o' dem little bell for dis engine 

 room?" They got them. 



Two men who were in the crew of the ''LeClaire" on 

 this experimental trip away back in 1866 are alive yet 

 to tell the story: Captain J. D. Barnes of LeClaire, and 

 David G. Carr, our long-time barber in LeClaire, now 

 living in Davenport. 



Now we come to the first real raft-boat built for and 

 successfully used in the work. It will be more interest- 

 ing to have the story as told by the man who built and 

 owned her. He was not a raftman then. He was a 

 young man in partnership with his father- J. W. Van 

 Sant in the LeClaire yard, building and repairing river 

 craft. His ideas originated from intelligent Floating 

 Pilots who favored the use of a steamboat in getting 

 rafts down river. 



Some of these men had had a little experience in 

 using steamboats and young Van Sant caught their 

 ideas and became enthusiastic. 



I quote from his letter of December 3, 1920: 



Steamer "J. W. Van Sant" 



The first "J. W. Van Sant" was built at LeClaire, by J. W. Van 

 Sant and Son. The hull was launched in the month of December, 



1869. She was ready for business on the opening of navigation in 



1870. She was one hundred feet long, twenty feet beam and four feet 

 depth of hull. Engines twelve inches by four foot stroke, built by the 

 famous Niles Works of Cincinnati. Her boiler was twenty-four feet 

 long, forty-four inches in diameter, with ten and six-tenths inches, 

 lap-welded flues. Then, lap-welded flues were only twenty feet long 

 and it was said that we could not have boilers more than twenty feet 

 in length. Fortunately, we had an old-time steamboat engineer, 

 Henry Whitmore, a man of long experience and a first-class mechanic, 

 who contended that the flues could be lengthened by brazing, and 

 this was successfully accomplished. 



The "J. W. Van Sant" was the first stern wheel boat of large 



