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George Byron Merrick chronicles the entire panorama of steamboat life he experienced in the mid-1800s, where he started as a cabin boy and worked up to cub pilot on the mighty Mississippi. Originally published in 1909, Merrick's narrative matches lively stories about gamblers, shipwrecks, and steamboat races with rich descriptions of river life and steamboat operations. George Byron Merrick (1841-1931) grew up in Prescott, Wisconsin, at the junction of the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers. After nine years of steamboating, he volunteered for the Wisconsin Infantry during the Civil War before settling into life as a newspaper editor and publisher.… (altro)
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If you're a fan of Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi then you will enjoy this book as well. Books written in this era by non-literary writers can have an annoying pedantic style that kills the joy of reading, but Merrick has a great, raconteur style that engages you like a grandpa telling tales.
This book is a memoir, so some early chapters focus on his childhood--but don't skip them. They are a fascinating portrait of a young boy free in the world. He had a number of harrowing experiences that are fascinating in the telling, and his description of the Wisconsin/Minnesota region in that period is also engaging. He lived in a town of 200 whites between a village of 1000 Sioux and 500 Chippewa that would occasionally come into his hometown of Prescott, Wi, to trade--and fight.
As a former steamboat cub engineer, clerk, and pilot, Merrick is very interested in the business of steamboating, so he breaks down the particular job of every officer on board, devoting a chapter to each. In each chapter he adds anecdotes and tales from his river experiences which are many and varied. Not only do you get a strong sense of the Upper Mississippi and its winding course of sandbars and snags, but also the people and work found along it. There are many details on the river towns, some no longer in existence, and the cargoes they provided. There are tales of various emergencies. The book not only describes how boiler explosions, snags, crushing ice and fires destroyed many a steamer, but he also adds examples and lots of technical detail that you don't find in other steamboat books.
If the book has any problem, it's that he writes for a more contemporaneous audience, so he assumes you know what a steamboats 'buckets' are, for example (they're the boards comprising the 'paddle' of the paddlewheel). There isn't a lot of jargon, but a glossary like the one found here can be helpful.
If you enjoy listening to an old man reflect on a youth that he loved and desperately misses, then pick up this book. It's history in its purest form, the first person narrative, told by an expert.
[Note: this book is available free on Google Books] ( )
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi.Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
Dedicated to the Memory of My Chiefs
William H. Hamilton, Engineer, Charles G. Margus, Clerk, Thomas Burns, Pilot, master in their several professions. From each of them I learned something that has made life bette worth living, the sum of what makes possible these reminiscences of a "cub" pilot.
Incipit
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi.Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
Prelude
The majesty and glory of the Great River have departed; its glamour remains, fresh and undying, in the memories of those who, wich mind's eye, can still see it as it was a half-century ago.
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▾Descrizioni del libro
George Byron Merrick chronicles the entire panorama of steamboat life he experienced in the mid-1800s, where he started as a cabin boy and worked up to cub pilot on the mighty Mississippi. Originally published in 1909, Merrick's narrative matches lively stories about gamblers, shipwrecks, and steamboat races with rich descriptions of river life and steamboat operations. George Byron Merrick (1841-1931) grew up in Prescott, Wisconsin, at the junction of the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers. After nine years of steamboating, he volunteered for the Wisconsin Infantry during the Civil War before settling into life as a newspaper editor and publisher.
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This book is a memoir, so some early chapters focus on his childhood--but don't skip them. They are a fascinating portrait of a young boy free in the world. He had a number of harrowing experiences that are fascinating in the telling, and his description of the Wisconsin/Minnesota region in that period is also engaging. He lived in a town of 200 whites between a village of 1000 Sioux and 500 Chippewa that would occasionally come into his hometown of Prescott, Wi, to trade--and fight.
As a former steamboat cub engineer, clerk, and pilot, Merrick is very interested in the business of steamboating, so he breaks down the particular job of every officer on board, devoting a chapter to each. In each chapter he adds anecdotes and tales from his river experiences which are many and varied. Not only do you get a strong sense of the Upper Mississippi and its winding course of sandbars and snags, but also the people and work found along it. There are many details on the river towns, some no longer in existence, and the cargoes they provided. There are tales of various emergencies. The book not only describes how boiler explosions, snags, crushing ice and fires destroyed many a steamer, but he also adds examples and lots of technical detail that you don't find in other steamboat books.
If the book has any problem, it's that he writes for a more contemporaneous audience, so he assumes you know what a steamboats 'buckets' are, for example (they're the boards comprising the 'paddle' of the paddlewheel). There isn't a lot of jargon, but a glossary like the one found here can be helpful.
If you enjoy listening to an old man reflect on a youth that he loved and desperately misses, then pick up this book. It's history in its purest form, the first person narrative, told by an expert.
[Note: this book is available free on Google Books] (