Topic starter
19/01/2007 6:46 pm
Still trying to learn what Minnie Hill had to do to become a steamboat pilot. Where do I go to find out what the inspectors "inspected" or what requirements she had to meet in the 1880's to be the first woman pilot in the northwest? Was there some sort of manual she had to memorize or was it just hours on the water?
Shannon Leonetti
20/01/2007 12:12 am
Shannon, the best description you could read would be in Mark Twain's "Life on the MIssissippi". He details what his mentor, Capt. Horace Bixby, tried to tell him and what he was required to memorize. There was no "manual" to memorize, save for the nautical Rules of the Road. Time aboard an appropriately-sized boat under the supervision of licensed officers is the way folks get to be licensed, and it is still pretty much that way. Once the required time is put in, one gets letters from officers one has worked with and under, gets a letter certifying the time spent aboard and certifying the number of round trips over the route one has applied to be licensed over, and then the prospective licensee can sit before the Inspectors to take the test for licensing. Usually this was a written test, though the individual inspectors had great latitude in what might be asked and how the exam was administered...it could be an oral exam. A First Class Pilot license would involve drawing a map or chart of the river from memory, indicating all bends, towns, sandbars, the normal channel line, any government lights with their characteristics and mileage to the tenth of a mile, bridges and their clearances, etc. Sometimes women were looked upon strangely for wanting to obtain a license, but sometimes not. There have been quite a few women licensed as pilots who worked a regular schedule. Hope this helps.
20/01/2007 6:59 am
Shannon,
I only can recommend two books about steamboating in the Northwest but you might already know them:
Bill Gulick: Steamboats on Northwest Rivers, ISBN 0-87004-438-9, Caxton Press / Caldwell, Idaho, 2004 www.caxtonpress.com
Randall V. Mills: Stern-Wheelers up Columbia
The later one was first published in 1947. Bison Book reprinted it as a paperback in 1977 ISBN 0-8032-5874-7
Carmen
Topic starter
21/01/2007 7:45 pm
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!! You gave me a great start. I have read "Life on the Miss." so many times and didn't even think of it. Too close I guess. Anyway, thanks again.