| that river in Debuque, Clinton, Rock Island, St. Louis, and
other cities. At that time there were still large sawmills in these cities
on the Mississippi River, which floated their logs down from the Chippewa
and other rivers. The mills at Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls has platforms
at the tail of the mill, on which they built their rafts and they tilted
up the platform so that the raft slid into the river, and then the rafts
were made up into strings and floated down the river. I believe after they
got into the Mississippi River they were towed or pushed by steam boats,
the steam boats being at the rear of the tow instead of in the front of
it.
Loading logs with a mobile "donkey" steam engine. Photo - Mike Ziereis
Fourteen |
During the time that we were shipping lumber by water we owned and operated one vessel, the Schooner Richard Mott. She carried about 160 M feet of green rafted lumber when she was first operated by Holt & Balcom, and in th winter of 1880 and 1881 she was lengthened and fitted with three masts, instead of two, and had a capacity of 260 M feet of green rafted lumber. For twenty-five years Captain L. M. Soyer was the captain and made weekly trips between Oconto and Milwaukee, with an occasional trip to Chicago. In the spring of 1886 there was a big strike in Chicago, which tied up the lumber yards and ended in the Hay Market riot, and none of the yards could take in any lumber so we loaded the Mott with wheat and sent her to Kingston, Canada, on Lake Ontario, for which we received six cents a bushel freight. When she had delivered the wheat she went to Charlotte, New York, and took on five hundred tons of coal and returned to Milwaukee. Freight on the coal was $1.00 per ton. She made a little money on the trip and by the time she got back business had opened up again and she returned to her run between Oconto and Milwaukee. Captain Soyer lived in Oconto and as soon as his vessel had anchored off the mouth of the Oconto River he took a little sail boat, which he carried on the Schooner, and came up river to his home, where he remained until the Schooner was loaded and then he went aboard again. In Milwaukee he tried to arrive early in the morning, and got unloaded by the latter part of the afternoon of the same day and start back for Oconto. The lumber shovers who unloaded the vessels were a husky lot and they unloaded a cargo of that size in about eight hours. At Oconto the lumber was loaded from rafts which were towed out to the vessel, and there was a good crew of lumber shovers who delivered the lumber from the raft onto the rail of the vessel. They usually loaded the vessel in less than two days. I made several trips with Captain Soyer, between Milwaukee and Oconto, which was a very interesting experience for me as I was a young boy and never had had any experience in sailing. On one trip we had a collision with another schooner, in a heavy fog somewhere off Manitowoc. The ship ran across our bows, breaking our jibbom and tearing out all of the stays on one side so that there was nothing to hold the masts. We spent all one day with all hands making temporary fastening to hold the masts in place, and then went Fifteen |
