Harry G. Dyer
The Log of Harry G. Dyer: Steamboatman,
Upper Mississippi, 1881-1902 Excerpts from
Upper Mississippi River Rafting Steamboats
Edward G. Mueller, Ohio University Press,
1995.
1897 Salvaging the BART E. LINEHAN
In the spring of 1897, I was fool enough to
ship on the C. W. COWLES again with Joe
Buisson. That spring he had Frank LaPointe
and he was signed as mate. He was an
old-time pilot and was supposed to stand
Captain Joe's watch going upstream and a
good part of it going down, and I soon found
that I was to do most of Frank's work on the
raft, but Joe soon found that he had got his
lines crossed and it wouldn't work, so I
told Joe goodbye. A few days after that, I
shipped on the BART E. LINEHAN, William
Dobler, master; John Schmidt, second pilot;
Bob Shannon, chief engineer; Fred Graham,
second engineer; Louis Prommel, mate; and Si
Barnes in charge of the kitchen. The boat
was owned by McDonald Brothers of LaCrosse
and her trade was towing logs from West
Newton and Stillwater to Quincy, Illinois.
Captain Dobler was one of the best raft
pilots. In 1887 he made eight round trips
from the West Newton rafting works to
Quincy, Illinois, in sixtyfour days; a mark
for all to shoot at. The LINEHAN was a good
towboat, not as powerful as some, and not as
fast as some, but a good all-around raft
boat.
While steaming up the Mississippi River
after delivering a raft of logs to the Gem
City Lumber Company, Quincy, Illinois, about
October 1, 1897, the BART E. LINEHAN sank
after striking a snag above Buena Vista,
Iowa. The water where the LINEHAN settled
was about eight feet deep.
Captain Dobler was on watch at the wheel at
the time the craft struck a snag, which
proved to be a soft maple log about two feet
in diameter firmly planted on the bottom of
the river. The snag struck the boat just
forward of the boilers, tearing a hole in
the hull about fifteen feet long and three
or four feet wide.
It took the boat about two minutes to settle
on the bottom of the river. The deck crew
had its sleeping quarters on the lower or
main deck, and immediately after the boat
struck the snag, there was a race for the
after stairs leading to the boiler deck.
Ed Lubey, one of the firemen, an old man and
a cripple, was in the lead, and was followed
by eight raftsmen, the second engineer, the
fireman, and a helper, all of whom were
trying to get up the stairway which was
about thirty inches wide.
After the craft had settled down, the water
was from two to three feet on the main deck
and about three inches below the grate bars
in the furnace. McDonald Brothers at
LaCrosse, owners of the boat, were
immediately notified, and a diver was sent
from St. Louis. Two large barges, each about
the same length as the sunken boat, were
procured from the Diamond Jo Company,
Dubuque, Iowa.
On the arrival of the diver, the work of
raising the LINEHAN began. The first phase
of the work was for the diver to enter the
hull and saw off the snag. This took about
six hours. The snag was about seven feet
long and was removed from the hull when the
boat was pulled out on the dock at Dubuque.
While the diver was at work in the hull, the
steamboat crew and an extra gang sent down
from LaCrosse were engaged in putting large
chains under the boat from one barge to the
other. Seven of these chains were placed. By
means of large levers which were square
timbers twelve feet long and a foot square,
the chains were pulled up, gradually raising
the sunken boat.
Amidships, it was found impossible to get
the chains to run "square across" under the
boat because of the many small snags on the
river bottom. This made it useless to go
further with the chains as the boat would
have broken in two.
After working three or four days it was
decided to bulkhead the hold and pump the
boat out. The diver went into the hull and
built a double bulkhead of dry lumber around
the hole. When this was finished, a strip of
heavy canvas was run around the LINEHAN, the
top edge of the canvas coming above the
surface of the water. It was then tacked to
the sides of the boat.
Steam was raised in the boilers on the
LINEHAN and the ETHEL HOWARD, a small boat
from LaCrosse, was brought alongside. All
the siphons (pumps) were started, and two
men with a wash tub were at each deck room
door bailing out water. The LINEHAN came up
until the crown of the main deck was three
inches out of the water. Then, owing to a
poor draft, the steam dropped, the siphons
stopped working, and the LINEHAN settled
back onto the river bed.
That night the QUICKSTEP, another McDonald
boat, went to Fulton, Illinois, and brought
back a sand pump having an eight-inch rotary
pump and an eight-inch rubber hose for a
suction line. The outfit arrived at the
place of operations about 5:30 A.M. Steam
was already up in the sand pump's boiler.
The suction hose was stuck down the
LINEHAN's forward hatchway, the pump
started, and in one hour and a half the boat
was afloat. While she was coming up, we kept
taking up the slack of the chains so that it
was impossible for her to go down again.
When the pumping out was finished, she was
between the two barges and resting on the
chains, and after steam was raised went to
Dubuque under her own power and was pulled
out on the ways and repaired. The time spent
in raising and repairing the hull was
thirteen and onehalf days.
While tearing out the bulkhead that the
diver built around the hole in the hull, one
of the boat yard men made the remark that a
good many men couldn't have built as good a
one out of the water as the diver built
underwater. The diver, Leron Jobin of St.
Louis, surely was good and knew his
business.
The LINEHAN was back in commission in time
to make a trip from Prescott, Wisconsin, to
Quincy, Illinois, and then back to LaCrosse
where she was laid up for the winter on
November 7, 1897. The crew of the LINEHAN at
the time of the sinking was as follows:
captain, William Dobler; pilot, John
Schmidt; chief engineer, Robert Shannon;
second engineer, Fred Graham; clerk, Herman
Lawson; steward, Si Barnes; cook, Fred
Burrows; watchmen, William Lawson and Isaac
Deschman; mate, Louis Frommel; firemen,
Newton Nesbitt and Ed Lubey; linesmen, Harry
Dyer and John Cronin; and raftsmen, Ed
Frazier, Dennis Cronin, Arthur Hultz and
Pete La Duke.