Rafting on the River
By Ashley G., Class of 2004
J.B. Miller owned a boat scaffold along the Clarion River where he and his crew built boats. The crew consisted of three job placements, foremen, pilots, and river hands. Most of the men that worked on the boats were local men, but some also came from all over the countryside to work as river hands too.
Mr. Miller bought his timber from Forest County. He mostly bought pine and oak. It was rafted down to a mill and he usually bought enough square lumber to build fifty boats. He would get his shipment of timber when the spring flood came and the ice had left. His crew would build as high as two boats a week.
The foremen just watched over the river hands to make sure they were doing their job correctly. Unlike the foremen today, they too worked with the river hands and helped them build the boats.
The pilots steered the boats. The boats had two oars on them. They had a pole about forty feet with a blade about 16 feet long and 14 inched wide. They were fastened on the front and back ends of the boat. The men would put the blade down into the river and they could put the boat almost anywhere they wanted it. It would take about four men to handle a loaded boat at the mouth of the Clarion River. There were a lot of curves, crooks, turns, and swift water but rarely a boat ever wrecked. But the current did most of the work and the river was only wide enough for a single boat, but after they got to the mouth of the Clarion, they would couple four or six boats together and that was what they called a fleet. The pilots would have to be extremely careful in the spring of the year because in the winter the ice would sometimes shove a rock in the channel that wasn't there the previous year. They also had every bend, ripple, eddy, and big rock named.
The river hands had the worst end of the deal. They had to do all the hard labor. They built the large scaffolds and boats.
They
shipped barrels of oil, coal, mine posts, and farmers even shipped their
goods down the river to Pittsburgh to make money
selling their goods. From there they built the sides up on the boats,
loaded them with coal, and shipped them down the Ohio River where they
ended up at the mouth of the Mississippi in New Orleans.
Building the boats took a lot of time. These paragraphs were taken from the book Callensburg, a Small Community - History of Callensburg and Licking Township written by Arnold Kepple. This is apart of an interview with Harry Dunkle explaining how the boats were built:
" Well, there were two great big timbers. Possibly two feet square were allowed for each of these tilts. They were set apart about 14 inches. These tilts come right down in between them. Then they set them down there and locked them with a wooden pin through them. Well then they built this boat on there. After the boat was finished and ready to turn they put these lines on and pulled the pins out. The boat would set up on its edge. It would tilt at the top and stay at the bottom. It would come off of the boat bed. They had three inch plank laid for each tilt. It had rollers on it. After the boat was turned over they took the lines off. They then put a line on the upper end of the boat to catch it and then they would get behind it with cant hooks to start it rolling. These rollers would roll right there on their own. This process was done all summer long and no high water was needed."
" The boat was a flat bottom like a barge. It had what you called gunnels. They were 10 inches wide. And at the rake end ( lower ) they were about 10 inches by about 30 inches. They tapered back to the back end 170 feet. It was about 170 feet long. The trees were not that long so they had to splice them together. It was spiked and bolted. That boat was 170 feet long and 26 feet wide. The bottom of the boat was an inch and a half plank. We put oakum between the planks. Oakum is brown. It was rope like. They intentionally left cracks between the planks. They had what they called a chamfer. They would cut the edge back, well, then they would drive this oakum down in between the planks then the planks would swell and the boat wouldn't leak.
The
river hands would build about a dozen boats, and then they would have one
with a shanty on it. That's were the crew lived when they would "run
the river". At night 
they would tie it up and stay in the shanty and
leave in the morning again. They shanty was big enough to hold about
fifteen men. They had bunks, a stove, and just about everything in there.
When they arrived in Pittsburgh, they would land the boats and catch the
first train that headed for home. They had to pay their own train tickets
back. It cost two to three dollars at the most.
The
boat building crew at the Mouth of Beaver.
Copied
from Harry Dunkle. Give to him by Dr. Miller.
J.B. Millers' crew was hard working men. For all the hard work they did, they also got paid well. A river hand got as high as $11.00, about $1.00 a day. The boat crafters built their boats for about $1.25 to $1.50 a day back then, and that was pretty good pay.
Kepple,Arnold. Callensburg, a Small Community. Callensburg: Great Mills High School, St. Mary's Co. Maryland, 1991.
Page designed by Jami H., Class of 2004