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Updated: May 8, 2025
At the time of their voyage down the Mississippi "the science of piloting was not a thing of the dead and pathetic past," and wonderful accounts were written of the autocrats of the wheel and the characteristics of the ever-changing, ever-capricious river. "Accidents!" says an early steamboat captain.
When he had seen each division once in the daytime and once at night, his education was so nearly complete that he took out a 'daylight' license; a few trips later he took out a full license, and went to piloting day and night and he ranked A 1, too. Mr. Bixby placed me as steersman for a while under a pilot whose feats of memory were a constant marvel to me.
Tom declared their equal had never been installed in any plane that was ever built, and Lieutenant Beverly's eyes glowed with satisfaction to hear his pet praised so cordially by one whose good opinion he valued as highly as he did Tom Raymond's. After Jack had taken his turn at piloting the machine, he amused himself "between naps" by watching the surface of the sea through the binoculars.
No piloting less skilful than that of Corporal Sutton and his mate, James Bezzard, could have carried us through, I thought; and no side-wheel steamer less strong than a ferry-boat could have borne the crash and force with which we struck the wooded banks of the river.
Fishing and piloting, I have already said, constituted their chief business. Many, being too lazy to work, indulged themselves in lounging, drinking, betting, cock-fighting, and similar amusements. One redeeming virtue, however, they possessed, which is not always met with among the sedate, thrifty, and moral portion of mankind hospitality!
After a great deal of chaffering in regard to the amount of salvage, and some little altercation with part of the boat's crew as to which of them should stay with the vessel, J. Layton, J. Woolsey, and George Darling, boatmen, were finally chosen to assist in pumping and piloting her into Yarmouth harbor: the remainder of the crew of the yawl were then sent away.
Hour after hour the sagacious commander was at the mast-head, or away in a boat searching for a passage, while the rest of the boats were employed in a similar service. At length a passage was discovered, and with the boats piloting ahead, the Endeavour stood through it.
She was piloting a bevy of bashful girls to the stairway, and as she passed him she gave him a little nod and smile that set his heart dancing. He heard the caller-off calling for partners for a quadrille. The fiddlers had already tuned their instruments. From where he stood he could see the figures forming, but Jim watched the stairway.
Leaning on the General's arm an hour later and deftly piloting that bewildered veteran up and down the breezy deck, she came, just as she had planned to come, face to face once more with Stanley Armstrong. Well she knew that under the escort of that exalted rank she was safe from any possibility of cross question or interference.
In this expedition to Canada Cook distinguished himself greatly especially in his surveys of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and in piloting the fleet safely through the dangerous shoals and rocks of that inland sea.
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