Captain Marsh - part 1

 The Most Famous River Steamboat Pilot of the Palmy Days on “Big Muddy.” When the Luella Carried the Richest Cargo Ever Taken from Old Fort Benton to St. Louis. Captain Marsh and the Famous Far West During the Indian Campaign

By Dan R. Conway

This is the fifth of a series of six articles having to do with navigation on the Upper Missouri River.

(First published in the Hysham Echo on April 21, 1927)

If power of observation and memory were granted to inanimate things the grim old hills and rain-washed bluffs along the “Big Muddy” from Fort Benton down stream to the mouth of that mighty river, would be stirred these spring days when flood waters from the mountains begin to swell the current, by recollections of romance and adventure akin to the river steam-boating days of fifty years ago. Strange tales these old landmarks could narrate. From the early thirties when the Missouri was first opened to commercial traffic to late eighties when river steamers faded from the picture and left the turgid waters to the whims of nature, this water highway was an endless picturesque panorama.

The Luella
One of the tales which these hills might tell - and not the least interesting of them all - might have to do with the trip of the staunch river boat Luella, which under the guiding hand of Captain Grant Marsh, master pilot, in 1866, carried the richest cargo of treasure ever transported down the river from Fort Benton.
Somewhere below St. Louis, and beneath the shifting sands of the Mississippi lie the rotting timbers of the Luella. Time has long since retired from active life all of her crew and one-time passengers, and few of them today survive. Perhaps, however, today, there may be a few old men who muse occasionally upon those red-blooded days and live over again the stirring incidents of the Luella’s downstream voyage with more than 200 miners from the Montana placer camps in whose money belts and pokes was carried upward of $1,250,000 in gold dust.

Up the “Big Muddy”
The Luella left St. Louis April 18, 1866, with a cabinful of passengers and a hold which housed 113 tons of freight chiefly mining machinery and staple groceries. This boat was one of a large fleet of steamers which drew out of the metropolis of the Mississippi within the first few weeks following the opening of navigation that season. Turning westward past Mobile Point into the swelling tide of the “Big Muddy,” the Luella started on her long uphill climb towards the mountains. She was the finest boat of which Captain Marsh had ever been in command; but the owners of the craft who had placed this man in charge were convinced that Marsh’s creditable work with the Sully expedition had well qualified him for the responsible position. Later he became one of the most famous of the Missouri river steamboat captains.

The Panic-Stricken Clerk
The Luella was less speedy than many of the boats engaged in the Fort Benton trade, and her early start was due to the fact that time was precious. After Fort Randall had been passed, downward-bound boats brought news of the fierce hostility of the Sioux and other tribes; and passengers and crew grew uneasy over the prospect, notwithstanding the fact that the pilot house of the Luella was sheeted with boiler iron, against which the bullets of Indians would patter harmlessly. The boat’s clerk, a young fellow by the name of Mello, became so panic stricken that he was on the verge of collapse when the boat reached the mouth of Milk river in Montana, 350 miles below Fort Benton; and it was here he deserted the boat amid protests and ridicule, to take passage down the river on the deep draft steamer, the Rubicon, which was at that time piloted by Captain Horace Bixby, famous as the river navigator who had been confidential pilot to Flag Officers Foote and Davis of the Mississippi, during the Civil War.

Although, above the mouth of the Yellowstone, the Missouri was entirely strange to Captain Marsh, he threaded its channel successfully, reaching his destination on June 17, just sixty days out of St. Louis.

The Old Fort Benton Levee
It was a strange scene which greeted Captain Marsh and his crew and passengers, as the Luella rounded the bend into view of old Fort Benton. And, interest increased as the boat steamed up to the levee and was snubbed to the bank. Here on the edge of an open prairie, stretched a straggling hamlet of rude log cabins interlaced with deeply rutted wagon tracks, and containing approximately 500 inhabitants.

Before the doorways of the trading establishments stood long trains of huge freight wagons drawn by a dozen yoke of oxen or spans of mules just arrived after a long and adventurous trek from Alder and Last Chance gulches in the mountains. Now the first impression of a stranger in old Fort Benton was apt to receive an atmosphere of recklessness, if not lawlessness. This because of the fact that the city was then the center of the northwestern fur trade, as well as the outfitting depot for prospectors and adventurers from every walk of life east of the Mississippi.

(Cont. next week) Print this post