Re: Monday Answer
Uncle Sam�s tooth pullers were riverboats that cleared rivers of snags. The more efficient were twin hull (like a catamaran of today) with an iron bar stretched between the two hulls. The Captain would aim the boat directly at the snag and ram the thing to dislodge it then chain it and pull it out of the way. These were no small snags. A Time Life river book shows a tree with easily a four foot diameter weighing tons being hauled out. There is no doubt that a snag could skewer a hundred fifty foot wood hull boat
Brownsville, PA.
Overlooking the eastern shore of the Monongahela River Brownsville was at one time the riverboat building capital of the world. Hundreds of vessels were made there. Long before the whites came to southwestern Pennsylvania, Native Americans had found and organized the most direct and the easiest routes over the Allegheny Mountains. One of the most important routes west was from Cumberland, Maryland. It moved over the ridges of the Alleghenies, and met the Monongahela River at its easternmost banks at what was to become Brownsville. This path was originally the Nemacolin Trail. It was widened into Burd's Road, and finally the National Road (Braddock's road did not go to Brownsville). At Brownsville, early settlers along Nemacolin Trail and Burd's Road boarded flatboats and keelboats and headed for Pittsburgh, Louisville, and Saint Louis. Later, on the National Road, they crossed the river and continued on the pike bound for Washington, PA. Washington, PA earliest known as Catfish, was the thirty mile shortcut land route to Wheeling, WV and saved five days river time from going from Brownsville, to Pittsburgh to Wheeling and beyond�St. Louis and New Orleans down the Mississippi river.
Hints: St. Louis and New Orleans were the destinations of many of the riverboats.
Daniel French and Thomas Copeland one of Brownsville and one of Pittsburgh ignored the patent of Oliver Evans and built high pressure steam engines. Evans wanted pressures of 40 lb/sq inch. French and Copeland made similar engines then made them use steam at 150-160 lbs/sq inch. These were rough, reckless men and they dared Evans to do something about them stealing the use of his patent. Evans determined it safer not to challenge them, and the �high speed� riverboat steam engine thus was �wrenched, no matter how dubiously, into the public domain�.
Custer�s survivors.
This didn�t involve a snag boat but one of the best avoid snag stories in all river boating. After the battle of the Bighorn a superb riverboat Captain, Grant Marsh, had pushed his boat the �Far West� hard and high on the Little Big Horn River (draught about three feet). Here Gibbon�s men brought 59 horse soldiers from Reno and Benteen and the lone survivor of Custer�s last stand, a horse named Comanche from 11 miles away. At that time immediately after the Custer blunder they could possibly have been the most important men, as well as the most important news in the U.S. On orders from General Terry, Marsh took these men 700 miles averaging 13 miles an hour from Bighorn to Bismarck, ND in 54 hours and that included stops for wood and three additional stops at forts to tell people of the disaster. He ran full steam day and night in uncharted waters in low water, rapids, blind channels between islands, containing hundreds of snags and sand bars sometimes at speeds equal to a train. He miraculously avoided them all�even though he did knock the crew down like tenpins several times when he hit something. In the end he did as ordered in one of the most adventuresome and sheer guts piloting river runs ever.