28 INLAND NAVIGATION AND BARGE CONSTRUCTION 



dressed, get their goods, get down through anywhere from 6 inches to 3 feet of gumbo 

 mud, and be at the levee in ample time to sit there and wait for the boat to arrive. When 

 Mr. Bemhard tries to get hold of way traffic, instead of long distance through freight, I 

 am inclined to think he may find it profitable to put in an auxiliary boiler and a 5-mile stem 

 whistle. 



In regard to the middle paragraph on page 20, as to the barges being floating bridges, and 

 the fact that I have rather gathered from the paper that the construction of a vessel so that she 

 has to be loaded carefully and with uniformity is something new, I would say that on the Ohio 

 River I saw not only hundreds but thousands of coal barges which, if you dumped 5 tons of 

 coal in one end and in the other end 500 tons, the sides would open out and the barge would 

 lose courage, and that would be the end of it. 



If I remember rightly, at the time of the year that Mr. Bernhard took this barge up 

 to St. Paul, the Mississippi was running about 12 feet over what could be considered normal 

 stream height. Consequently, at the cut-offs there was ample depth of water, ample chance 

 to dodge the side currents, and what is of more importance — on part of his trip, at any rate — 

 the river was falling, so he did not have the question of drift and its effect on his screws to 

 contend with seriously. 



As regards new improvements on the river steamers, I think Mr. Bernard has judged 

 these somewhat hastily. 



Owing to the lack of terminals and the financial condition of the old packet lines, it has 

 been necessary to nurse along the existing boats, making only improvements that could be 

 done without adding too much to the fixed charges. 



There is a large growing trade of local freight transportation, served by boats anywhere 

 from 80 to 140 or 150 feet long, driven by gasoline or kerosene engines, geared to stern wheels, 

 with high economy for the carrying of mixed freight, and which are ahead of anything I have 

 run across on this coast or in the interior — and I might add that, being a Boston man, my 

 sympathies are entirely with eastern waters and a good screw propeller. I went out west 

 with those notions, and from experience obtained in navigating my own boat on those 

 waters, from what I saw in the shape of propeller tugs, from the condition of the waters when 

 the flood is rising and the drift is coming down, and fromi the further fact that the average 

 river steamer goes ashore once a month, as a matter of habit or custom, I am very strongly 

 inclined to believe that the screw propeller as applied to that form of navigation is a tour 

 de force, an engineering feat, and not a commercial desirability. I have seen going down the 

 Ohio stern-wheel steamers that had been aground for six months, with the farmers raising 

 crops around them, only to read in the paper a week afterwards that they had floated off 

 after their exile. That point is mentioned to bring out the fact that when a steamer goes 

 ashore on the rivers she must get off very quickly, there is no time to send for a salvage 

 crew, or she may be interned and remain in captivity for the next three or five months. A 

 screw propeller on a sandbar is not efficient in getting the ship off the bar. You do not need 

 a centrifugal pump forward to push if you have a good reliable stern wheel. 



What can be done with an eastern designed stern wheel, with feathering blades, with the 

 experience of the coast to draw on, is a problem, but I do know that in small boats — one of 

 which I have particularly in mind, a small packet that has steel blades and geared engine — 

 the coal cost is about one-third of that on a propeller tug packet running in the same service. 



The handling of freight and materials in enclosed rivers, like the Black Warrior, is a dif- 

 ferent problem from handling it in the Mississippi, particularly in low water. While the 



