“STEAMBOAT ‘ROUND THE BEND!”

By Homer Hirt

When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient... these ambitions faded out, each in its own turn, but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.

(From Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi)

Photo: "Rebecca Everingham"
Artist - Dennis Lyall

I was attending a graveside service for a deceased friend at Mount Pleasant Cemetery near Chattahoochee, standing apart from the crowd that had pushed up close to hear the preacher’s eulogy. I suddenly realized I was standing on a flat marker. I glanced down and read "Sam Cameron", and the date of his death on the stone.
Sam Cameron was one of the renowned pilots on the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers during the time when the sternwheeler steamboats were disappearing and the more dependable diesel powered boats pushing barges filled with bulk materials were taking over the commercial movement of products. Sam was rated by his peers as one of the best Captains on the river, and was the source of many stories of his prowess - stories both real and imagined.
Captain "Poley" McDaniel told one of the best and probably one of the most unusual stories about Sam Cameron. Sam was a pilot on a boat that was transporting, among other cargo, hives of bees to keepers down the river. Sam was resting when the boat swung close to the bank and a protruding tree branch crashed several of the hives onto the deck, of course infuriating the "residents" and endangering one of the cargoes that was bringing revenue in for the boat owner, commercial passengers. Sam rushed down, grabbed up the parts of the hives, placed them in the proper order and stuffed the angry bees back into them by the handful. Captain McDaniel said that Sam was "probably stung twenty five or thirty times" and added "Only Sam would have done it".
My favorite story, and one that most certainly was added to until it gained heroic and mythical proportions, was about the time that Sam was hired as a trip pilot by the owner of one of the Florida Gravel Company’s small towboats. Sam had come aboard drunk, and had immediately taken to his bunk. The other pilot, young and inexperienced, decided to get underway without any aid from Sam, even though it was dark. Soon he ran the boat aground, and not only could not get off, but did not have any idea where he was. He reluctantly shook Sam’s shoulder, told him the situation, and asked for his help. Sam asked for a bucket of river water, and the young man, presuming that he wanted to wash his face, brought it to the bunk. Sam swished his hand through it, and said, "We’re aground at Ocheesee Reach. Put your rudder hard over to the port and back down". The young man did as he was told, and the boat floated free. So Sam’s legend as a miracle worker grew.
A few days later the scene duplicated itself. The night was dark, Sam Cameron was sleeping off his drunk, and the young pilot eased the boat to the shore and woke Sam. Sam again ordered the bucket of water, but this time the young man brought him some water that he had pumped out of the horse trough in Sneads. Once again, Sam ran some water between his fingers, bolted upright in the bunk and exclaimed "Good God Almighty! We have had another Noah flood. We are directly over the horse trough in Sneads!"
Cameron never lost a boat or any cargo, but had several personal misadventures, mostly brought on by "demon rum". One night on the Flint River, during a cold winter night, he fell over the side, stark naked. He was not missed till daylight, and by then he had reached the bank and had walked to several houses trying to get warm, but no one would let him in. He finally wrapped himself in some sacks he found and hitched a ride into town on a school bus.
Captain Poley McDaniel was one of the last steamboat rivermen to survive into the 1980s. He was named for Poley Ford, a small branch running into the Chipola River south of Wewahitchka. He went to work for his father, Captain W. A. McDaniel, when he was twelve years old. The year was 1907, and Poley said "I wanted to play baseball, but my daddy did not like baseball, so I started to work for him on the boat".
The boy began as a cook and a cabin boy for the magnificent sum of $10 per month. Skilled pilots were paid $150 at the time, so the young man, probably with the idea of gaining this lofty wage plateau, started learning the trade. In the book "Perilous Journeys" he told of him and his father running the steamboat CHIPOLA for John W. Callahan, a craft that was built at the cost of $10,000. He claimed that in the first year the boat paid for itself and returned $3,000 to Mr. Callahan.
Captain McDaniel enjoyed relating his steamboat stories to anyone that would visit him, even in the last years of his life, and once he related to a visitor: "The old sternwheelers are gone, and all the old captains I know are dead. But, my, wouldn’t I love to get a hold of a wheel again! There’s nothing I’d rather do than feel that wheel and that current when it throws water against the rudder. I’d just feel it, hold it and turn the boat loose."
There are still some sternwheelers in action on other rivers, but no commercial ones on the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Rivers, unless you count one that is in Columbus, Georgia, a craft that takes folks on short tours of the city that is the head of navigation, a boat built by Captain Tom Corley, who also started out as a cabin boy and………….but, wait………that’s another story!
(Note: Some of the related stories are from the publication "Perilous Journeys: a History of Steamboating on the Chattahoochee, Apalachicola and Flint Rivers, 1828-1928" by Edward A. Mueller. These books are for sale at the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce in Marianna.)