class="typestyle"> Natchez had shattered by an hour and 11 minutes a record that had stood since 1844. Nevertheless, one small cloud hung over the remarkable feat. Leathers had failed to capture the Princess antlers.

Displayed on the wharf boat at Natchez, an impressive spread of elk antlers, the traditional river symbol of a record performance, flaunted the challenge: “Why don’t you take the horns? Princess ’ time to Natchez 17 hours and 30 minutes.” Since his Natchez IV had held the record until the Princess broke it in 1855, Captain Tom wanted those horns badly. He missed by 21 minutes.

The Lee was coming down the Ohio when word of Leathers’ feat reached John Cannon at Evansville, Indiana. He was startled to learn that on her next trip the Natchez would leave New Orleans on Thursday, June 30, instead of Saturday as usual. Leathers had, in effect, placed a chip on his shoulder and dared his rival to knock it off.

The latter wasn’t anxious to try just then. The Lee , three years older than the Natchez , had been in constant operation for months, and although Engineer Bill Perkins had done everything to keep her in top shape, the boat needed an overhaul. Still, Cannon neither could nor would back off.

At Mound City, Illinois, the Lee stopped for some judicious stripping. The splash guards on the paddle-wheel housings were removed to permit the buckets (steamboat jargon for paddle blades) to work without the drag of dead water, sidings were taken off the pilothouse, and doors and windows fore and aft of the main cabin were unhinged to lessen wind resistance. On arrival at New Orleans, Cannon put ashore all unneeded furniture and tackle to further lighten the Lee —in fact, the story soon made the rounds that he was restricting himself to a single change of underwear to save weight.

Still basking in the glow of his recent triumph, Leathers did less to prepare for the showdown he had invited. His only gestures were to remove loose hold lumber and unship the swinging gangplanks at the bow to cut down air resistance. Both captains arranged for recoaling on the fly at various points.

Neither would admit to any intention of racing, although Cannon was quoted as saying that if he got away in front and Leathers tried to pass him, he’d discover the Lee was more than a hundred miles long.

News that the long-anticipated contest was on flashed along the river, across the nation, and to Europe via telegraph and cable. Dispatches out of New Orleans fanned speculation in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Washington, Philadelphia—even in London, Paris, and Vienna.

Millions of dollars soon were riding on the outcome. Sentiment

figured strongly in the betting. The hallowed name of the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia held irresistible appeal to Southerners and romantic amateurs, although experienced boatmen and professional gamblers leaned toward the Natchez .

Both vessels were coal-burning, steam-driven sidewheelers. Each had two engines, one per paddlewheel, and eight boilers, four to an engine. The Lee ’s engines, however, were medium pressure with cylinders of larger bore than those of the Natchez , a high-pressure boat. The latter’s wheels were unusually large, four feet greater in diameter than the Lee ’s.

The Lee looked longer, wider, and taller than the Natchez but was actually smaller. She was 300 feet long with a 44-foot beam, while the Natchez was 307 feet long and a foot narrower. Cleaner hull lines enabled the Natchez to slip gracefully through the water in contrast to the Lee , which seemed to butt her way, throwing up a bigger bow wave.

On the other hand, the Natchez was top-heavy, slow in landing and getting under way, with a bad habit of “running off” (sideslipping out of control on sharp turns) in shallow water. Expert opinion rated the Natchez slightly faster at full speed but not enough to make any difference over the long, winding, and treacherous route from New Orleans to St. Louis.

Surprisingly, on a river where pilots played such a vital role, those involved in the great race got almost no attention. For the record, the regular pilots of the Lee were West Conner and James Pell, with George Cayton as apprentice, while Mort Burnham and Frank Cayton handled the wheel of the Natchez .

Thursday, June 30, 1870, was exceptionally hot and sticky even for New Orleans in midsummer, with few people on the streets and business almost at a standstill. In midafternoon, the hottest part of the day, the city came alive as traffic converged on the waterfront from all directions. By four o’clock a sweltering crowd of more than ten thousand packed the wharf at the foot of Canal Street where the Lee and Natchez , two berths apart, were preparing for the customary five o’clock departure. Several steamboats, filled to capacity at a dollar a head, were already moving to vantage points upriver to see the start. New Orleans hadn’t known such crowds and excitement since the war.

As the last passengers came aboard—exact figures weren’t announced but the Natchez had about ninety and the Lee between sixty and seventy-five, including half a dozen experienced captains who had volunteered to go along as extra officers—and visitors went ashore, the tension fairly crackled. Smoke curled lazily from the stacks; black firemen, stripped to the waist and glistening with sweat, stoked furnaces, and

engineers hovered anxiously over their machinery. The rival captains watched from their hurricane decks, acknowledged the cheers of the crowd, and turned their backs on each other.

At about five o’clock black smoke belched from the Lee ’s stacks. Fire axes severed mooring lines, and she shot out of her berth as the crowd roared. In midstream she pointed her bow upriver, gathered speed, and fired her saluting cannon as she passed St. Mary’s Market, the starting point for timed runs.

Captain Leathers, still taking bows on the hurricane deck of the Natchez , was caught by surprise. Although he promptly ordered lines cast off, he couldn’t leave the wharf until the Lee had cleared his stern. By the time the Natchez had squared away in pursuit, the Lee had gained about a mile as well as a time advantage of three and a half minutes. Old Tom descended to the boiler deck where he sat glowering at the stern of the Lee . He had been embarrassed in front of the home folks and was in no mood for conversation.

The first lap—140 miles to Baton Rouge—set the tone for the next four days. It was an unforgettable time for passengers, none of whom bothered to go to bed before the Louisiana capital was passed at 1:30 A.M. The reporter for the St. Louis Republican aboard the Lee wrote the most vivid account of those first hours: “The scene from the time of departure till dark last evening baffles description. As we steamed along the watery race track the whole country on both sides of the river seemed alive with a strange excitement expressed in a variety of gestures, the waving of handkerchiefs, hats, running along the river shore as if to encourage the panting steamers, and now and then far off shouts came cheeringly across the waters and were plainly heard above the roaring of the fires, the clatter of machinery, the dashing of the waters and the rushing of steam. … The settlements and plantations along the coast as we passed turned out their whole forces and seemed to have taken a holiday in honor of our flying trip.”

His colleague aboard the Natchez confessed that his hand shook as he sat down to write his dispatch.

When darkness fell, the river was outlined by huge bonfires on both banks, although they had died down by the time the racers reached Baton Rouge. Since the boats were hugging the opposite bank, diehards on the levee had trouble identifying them, but a lusty shout went up when the “Hoppin’ Bob” was seen as the leader. She swept past in the record time of 8 hours and 27 minutes from New Orleans, 6 minutes ahead of the Natchez .

Steaming

through the night with little change in position, the boats arrived at Natchez, 300 miles out of New Orleans, in midmorning of July 1 to a tumultuous welcome. The landing area under the hill was packed and the heights above lined with carriages and wagons for a mile or more by a crowd overwhelmingly behind their city’s namesake. The welcoming committee even had a band on the wharf to serenade the Natchez , and when the Lee arrived first, it refused to play.

As the unwelcome front-runner swung in toward shore to pick up a pair of waiting coal barges, Captain Cannon shouted, “I’ll take those horns!” The Princess ’ antlers were removed from the wharf boat where they had hung so long and were placed on one of the barges and sent out to midstream. A few minutes later the Natchez pulled in to discharge and accept passengers.

Tom Leathers had achieved his ambition to beat the Princess ’ time, only to have the prize whisked from under his nose by Cannon, whose clocking of 17 hours and 11 minutes beat him by 8 minutes. By the time the Natchez took up the pursuit again, the antlers were on the Lee ’s hurricane deck, where excited lady passengers festooned them with ribbons.

On the 100-mile run to Vicksburg the Natchez , despite losing 6 minutes at Natchez and 9 more at Grand Gulf, Mississippi, closed to within 14 minutes of the Lee . The latter arrived at Vicksburg to the now usual reception at 5:30 P.M. , one day and 38 minutes out of New Orleans. Both took on more coal, and the Natchez docked briefly to let off passengers.

As the speeding boats disappeared around the bend north of the city, they dropped out of sight for 300 miles. Not until they passed the next telegraph station at Helena, Arkansas, 90 miles south of Memphis, would the blackout lift.

During the early evening hours the Natchez appeared to be gaining until she reached Milliken Bend, where a broken valve in the cold-water pump forced a 33-minute tie-up for repairs. The Natchez also gave her first display of running off, almost piling into the bank before the pilot could straighten her out. Otherwise the second night passed quietly.

The next morning, approximately 100 miles above Vicksburg, the Lee met the steamer Frank Pargoud , which had been sent ahead with a load of pine knots to augment Cannon’s coal supplies. Swinging alongside, the Pargoud lashed on and added the power of her engines to those of the Lee while the crews transferred the fuel. The maneuver, revealed when the Pargoud got back to Vicksburg, raised a cry of “Foul!”

Backers of

the Natchez promptly claimed all bets on grounds that the Lee had forfeited the race by receiving unfair assistance. Lee partisans replied that the Pargoud , being much slower, actually had slowed her down. The claim was taken seriously in London and Paris, where most bets were declared off, but generally was ignored in the United States.

The Natchez lost another 10 minutes landing at Greenville, Mississippi, during the morning but at the head of Island No. 82 the Lee ’s upper works were seen across a neck of land only about 12 miles ahead. At the mouth of the White River the deficit had been narrowed to 50 minutes and might have been pared even more except for the Natchez ’s repeated tendency to run off.

Meanwhile, the excitement and tension mounted in Memphis throughout July 2 as the news blackout continued. By midafternoon the crowd in front of the Western Union office waiting for news from Helena completely blocked the street.

At 3:00 P.M. , with still no news, the line from Helena went dead, blown down by a sudden storm in an uninhabited wilderness between Helena and Madison, Arkansas, 60 miles north. The telegraph company immediately dispatched mounted repair parties to find the break, but Memphis was left hanging. Finally, at about seven o’clock, a Western Union employee burst out of the office shouting like a newsboy hawking an extra: “We’re in touch again! News of the racers … news of the Lee !”

The Lee had passed Helena at 4:30 with the Natchez following 54 minutes later. Since the Lee was the favorite at Memphis, the report was received with jubilation and plans for a monster welcome. A line of bonfires was laid along the bluff, fireworks were distributed, and cannon (every river community seemed to be well supplied with ordnance left over from the war) were loaded with blank charges. Where guns weren’t available powder was packed under anvils to produce a highly satisfactory bang.

At about 10:00 P.M. , long before the Lee ’s estimated arrival time, the Memphis bluff was lined with festive groups eager for the first sight of their favorite steamboat. Out of the darkness to the south the lights of a big vessel, running full tilt, suddenly appeared around the bend. “Here she comes!” cried the crowd as the gunners jerked their lanyards.

The oncoming boat fired her gun in reply but when she cut loose with her whistle spectators realized something was wrong. That wasn’t the familiar deep sound of the Robert E. Lee .

The stranger was the Thompson Dean , which had left New Orleans a day before the racers. By the time the mistake was discovered,

it was too late; when the Lee finally arrived a few minutes past eleven, most of the fires had burned out, the fireworks and saluting charges had been shot off, and the embarrassed Memphians had little left with which to greet her.

Slowing down only long enough to pick up waiting coal barges, the Lee acknowledged the pallid reception with repeated blasts of her whistle and hurried on. Shortly after midnight, an hour and 4 minutes behind, the Natchez pulled in to a quiet wharf and discharged her last passengers before St. Louis. Henceforth Tom Leathers would concentrate on catching up with the Lee .

As the latter pushed on toward Cairo, 250 miles farther north, Captain Cannon faced a decision—to break off the race at the mouth of the Ohio and proceed to Louisville as advertised, or to change course for St. Louis. He had kept options open by arranging to have his Louisville passengers taken off at Cairo and also had called for a team of upper-river pilots to guide him if he decided to head north. The river was falling, the Lee had never run that stretch before, and his own pilots weren’t familiar with it, but he had a good bulge on the recently established Natchez record and an excellent chance to rub Tom Leathers’ nose in the dirt. He decided to shoot for it.

Caught up in the excitement of the race, half his passengers voted to stick with him. The rest packed their bags preparatory to leaving on the fly. Several miles below Cairo the steamer Idlewild pulled alongside, they clambered aboard, and their baggage was tossed after them.

At 6:00 P.M. , July 3, while several thousand residents of Cairo and the surrounding area cheered from the point above the Ohio, the Lee swung past the mouth of the river, exactly three days and one hour from New Orleans. She had shattered every record on the Mississippi except her own between Memphis and Cairo, set in 1867. The only reason that didn’t fall, too, was because Captain Cannon had slowed down to clean out the boilers before tackling the 175-mile lap to St. Louis.

Having disposed of his passengers, Cannon swung the Lee toward the Missouri shore, where two loaded coal barges and a pair of new pilots were waiting. As the now well-drilled crew swiftly transferred fifteen hundred bushels of coal, pilots Enoch King and Jesse Jameson reported to the pilothouse. They had come down the day before and were familiar with conditions along the final stretch, where the water level had dropped in places to less than nine feet.

Elated by the success, Cannon invited the gentlemen to join him in the bar for a toast on the house. They scarcely had raised their glasses when the