Steamboat: CITY OF MEMPHIS
Built: 1857
Tonnage: 865
Clemens' Service: 25 March - 1 or 2 July 1860
Co-Pilot: Wesley Jacobs
Captain: Joseph Edward Montgomery
Fate: boilers exploded May 31, 1866 with loss of eleven lives; towed to Saint Louis, MO and dismantled
March 25 Sunday – Sam became pilot of the City of Memphis (865 tons) and left St. Louis this day with co-pilot Wesley Jacobs, Captain Joseph E. Montgomery. Here was a 6-boiler, 300-foot behemoth of a boat. Branch asserts that Sam was a skillful pilot [Branch, “Mark Twain: The Pilot” 30].
“One time I mistook Capt. Ed Montgomery’s coat hanging on the big bell for the Capt. himself and waiting for him to tell me to back I ran into a steamboat at New Orleans” [MTNJ 2: 536].
April 2 Monday – City of Memphis arrived in New Orleans.
April 4 Wednesday – City of Memphis left for St. Louis.
April 11 Wednesday – City of Memphis arrived in St. Louis.
April 14 Saturday – City of Memphis left for New Orleans.
April 21 Saturday – City of Memphis arrived in New Orleans.
April 24 Tuesday – City of Memphis left for St. Louis.
May 1 Tuesday – City of Memphis arrived in St. Louis.
May 4 Friday – City of Memphis left for New Orleans.
May 9 Wednesday – A family story told by Annie Moffett Webster disclosed Sam’s political leaning in 1860 (Annie was 8 years old). That year a third political party of old Whigs and former Know-Nothings called the Constitutional Union Party met in Baltimore and nominated John Bell of Tennessee for president and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for vice president.
May 14 Monday – City of Memphis arrived in New Orleans.
May 15 Tuesday – City of Memphis left for St. Louis.
May 22 Tuesday – City of Memphis arrived in St. Louis.
May 24 Thursday – City of Memphis left for New Orleans.
May 27 Sunday – The St. Louis Missouri Republican published “a brief, matter-of-fact river report signed by him [Sam] and Wesley Jacobs, his City of Memphis copilot”
May 31 Thursday – City of Memphis arrived in New Orleans.
June 3 Sunday – City of Memphis left for St. Louis.
June 10 Sunday – City of Memphis arrived in St. Louis.
June 13 Wednesday – City of Memphis left for New Orleans.
June 19 Tuesday – City of Memphis encountered a storm about 11 AM at Terrapin Bend, 28 miles north of Vicksburg.
June 22 Friday – City of Memphis arrived in New Orleans.
June 24 Sunday – City of Memphis left for St. Louis.
June 27? Wednesday – Sam wrote brother Orion while on the City of Memphis (surviving fragments here):
What is a government without energy? And what is a man without energy? Nothing—nothing at all. What is the grandest thing in “Paradise Lost”—the Arch-Fiend’s terrible energy! What was the greatest feature in Napoleon’s character? His unconquerable energy! Sum all the gifts that man is endowed with, and we give our greatest share of admiration to his energy. And to-day, if I were a heathen, I would rear a statue to Energy, and fall down and worship it!
June 28 Thursday – City of Memphis arrived at Cairo [MTL 1: 99 n2].