(Photo provided) Towboat ISTHMIAN high and dry near Wolf Island Bar on the Mississippi River in December 1935, copied from Reflector magazine, March 1998 issue.

“Our next misadventure came about 11am on December 27, 1935.” This was the recollection of Captain E. Clare Carpenter from Meigs County. He was then on the crew of the sternwheel towboat ISTHMIAN (try to say it fast) on the Mississippi River. Life on a riverboat could be exhausting, fun, mesmerizing, and dangerous, often all in the same day.

ISTHMIAN and her crew were on a string of bad luck. A few weeks earlier, a deckhand named Jimmy had fallen overboard and drowned. Next a clicking sound in the sternwheel revealed a crack in the 20 ton steel shaft. They had to call for help. Today, we’d reach for our mobile phone. Then, they had to row a yawl 15 miles, then be driven another 50 miles to Ripley TN – just to find a phone. It took a week to replace the cracked shaft.

Then came the “next misadventure.” They were headed upriver just after a heavy snow. There was ice in the river which was beginning to damage the wooden paddle wheel. Capt. Harry Nichols piloted the boat to some ice-free open water. But the high river level obscured a long sand bar. Carpenter’s memoir: “The ISTHMIAN slid gently up on the sand and no one noticed until we stopped.”

Two other boats tried to pull the ISTHMIAN free. No luck. The river had fallen, holding ISTHMIAN even firmer. Lack of flotation put visible stress on the hull. Meanwhile, the temperature fell to 10 degrees and ten inches of snow fell. It was a grim situation.

They urgently need to reduce the weight of the boat to minimize hull stress and make it easier to get free. The crew had to manually offload 100 tons of coal used for fuel. Whew!

After that they had time to kill. Carpenter: “Well, it can’t be all work and disaster,…there has to be some fun, too.” They noticed lots of rabbit tracks on the sand bar, using hollow logs as dens. Roasted rabbit meat sounded good. How could they catch them? Curtis Morton lived opposite the marooned boat on the Missouri side. He loaned them a shotgun. Meanwhile the clever crew figured out how to snatch the rabbits out of the hollow logs – never fired the gun once.

Curtis loved coon hunting and offered to take crew members with him if the weather was good. One frigid night Captain Byrnside suggested they go hunting with Curtis. Clare said, “There won’t be a coon out in the whole state of Missouri on a night like this.” But they rowed over to Curtis’s house anyway. Curtis laughed when they arrived. No way they’d go hunting. Instead they hung out, “eating popcorn…and telling tall tales.”

The Corps of Engineers dredge BURGESS started digging through to the boat on December 31. The ISTHMIAN was now 4 feet above water level. Would she capsize sliding down to the water? All crew were taken off. Finally, on January 2, she slid into the water, heeling “so far over her stacks looked like cannons on a battleship,” and water washed over her deck. The ISTHMIAN righted herself! No leaks or major damage. Congratulations all around.

Clare remembered hearing a loud crash on board as the ISTHMIAN heeled over. A large safe on wheels rolled into a bulkhead. He was relieved the bulkhead had held. The safe contained an engagement ring he’d bought for Mabel, his wife-to-be.

January 6, 1936: The ISTHMIAN is back on the river. No more “misadventures.”