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FOUR MONTHS IN A SNEAK-BOX

NATHANIEL H. BISHOP

AUTHOR OF "A THOUSAND MILES' WALK ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA" AND "VOYAGE
OF THE PAPER CANOE."

TO THE
OFFICERS AND EMPLOYEES
OF THE
LIGHT HOUSE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE UNITED STATES
This Book is Dedicated
BY ONE WHO HAS LEARNED TO RESPECT THEIR
HONEST INTELLIGENT AND EFFICIENT LABORS
IN SERVING THEIR GOVERNMENT THEIR
COUNTRYMEN AND MANKIND
GENERALLY.

INTRODUCTION.

EIGHTEEN months ago the author gave to the public his "VOYAGE OF THE
PAPER CANOE:--A GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNEY OF 2500 MILES FROM QUEBEC TO THE
GULF OF MEXICO DURING THE YEARS 1874-5."

The kind reception by the American press of the author's first journey
to the great southern sea and its republication in Great Britain and
in France within so short a time of its appearance in the United
States have encouraged him to give the public a companion volume--
"FOUR MONTHS IN A SNEAK-BOX"--which is a relation of the experiences
of a second cruise to the Gulf of Mexico but by a different route
from that followed in the "VOYAGE OF THE PAPER CANOE." This time the
author procured one of the smallest and most comfortable of boats--a
purely American model developed by the bay-men of the New Jersey
coast of the United States and recently introduced to the gunning
fraternity as the BARNEGAT SNEAK-BOX. This curious and stanch little
craft though only twelve feet in length proved a most comfortable
and serviceable home while the author rowed in it more than 2600 miles
down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and along the coast of the Gulf
of Mexico until he reached the goal of his voyage--the mouth of the
wild Suwanee River--which was the terminus of his "VOYAGE OF THE PAPER
CANOE."

The maps which illustrate the contours of the coast of the Gulf of
Mexico like those in the other volume are the most reliable ever
given to the public having been drawn and engraved by contract for
the work by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Bureau.

LAKE GEORGE WARREN CO.
NEW YORK STATE

SEPTEMBER 1st 1879.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.
THE BOAT FOR THE VOYAGE.

CHAPTER II.
SOURCES OF THE OHIO RIVER.

CHAPTER III.
FROM PITTSBURGH TO BLENNERHASSET'S ISLAND.

CHAPTER IV.
FROM BLENNERHASSET'S ISLAND TO CINCINNATI.

CHAPTER V.
FROM CINCINNATI TO THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

CHAPTER VI.
DESCENT OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

CHAPTER VII.
DESCENT OF THE MISSISSIPPI TO NEW ORLEANS.

CHAPTER VIII.
NEW ORLEANS.

CHAPTER IX.
ON THE GULF OF MEXICO.

CHAPTER X.
FROM BILOXI TO CAPE SAN BLAS.

CHAPTER XI.
FROM CAPE SAN BLAS TO ST. MARKS.

CHAPTER XII.
FROM ST. MARKS TO THE SUWANEE RIVER.

ILLUSTRATIONS

DRAWN BY F. T. MERRILL. ENGRAVED BY JOHN ANDREW & SON.

SHANTY-BOATS--THE CHAMPION FLOATERS OF THE
WEST....... FRONTISPIECE.
DIAGRAM OF PARTS OF BOAT...14
INDIAN IN CANOE...28
THE START--HEAD OF THE OHIO RIVER ...31
COAL-STOVE. . .39
INDIAN MOUND AT MOUNDSVILLE WEST VIRGINIA...54
A NIGHT UNDER A GERMAN COVERLET...78
POPULAR IDEA OF THE NESTING OF CRANES...111
STERN-WHEEL WESTERN TOW-BOAT PUSHING FLATBOATS...114
MEETING WITH THE PARAKEETS...125
DYING IN HIS BOAT...177
BOYTON DESCENDING THE MISSISSIPPI...187
NEW ORLEANS ROUGHS AMUSING THEMSELVES...214
ARRIVAL AT THE GULF OF MEXICO--CAMP MOSQUITO...239
THE PORTAGE ACROSS CROOKED ISLAND...269
SADDLES BREAKS DOWN...292

PARTING WITH SADDLES...302

LIST OF MAPS

DRAWN AND ENGRAVED BY THE UNITED STATES COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY
BUREAU
TO ILLUSTRATE N. H. BISHOP'S BOAT VOYAGES.

1. GENERAL MAP OF ROUTES FOLLOWED BY THE AUTHOR DURING HIS TWO VOYAGES
MADE TO THE GULF OF MEXICO IN THE YEARS 1874-6.....OPPOSITE PAGE 1

GUIDE MAPS OF ROUTE FOLLOWED

IN DUCK-BOAT "CENTENNIAL REPUBLIC" ALONG THE GULF OF MEXICO IN 1876

2. FROM NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA TO MOBILE BAY ALABAMA. . . .OPPOSITE
209

3. FROM MOBILE BAY ALABAMA TO CAPE SAN BLAS FLORIDA. . . .OPPOSITE
247

4. FROM CAPE SAN BLAS FLORIDA TO CEDAR KEYS FLORIDA. . . .OPPOSITE
273

MAP SHOWING RIVER AND PORTAGE ROUTES

ACROSS FLORIDA FROM THE GULF OF MEXICO TO THE ATLANTIC OCEAN.

5. ROUTE FOLLOWED BY THE AUTHOR IN PAPER CANOE "MARIA THERESA" IN
1875. . . . OPPOSITE 319

[MAP OF ROUTES FOLLOWED BY N. H. BISHOP IN PAPER CANOE "MARIA THERESA"
AND DUCK-BOAT "CENTENNIAL REPUBLIC" 1874-1876]

Four Months in a Sneak-Box

CHAPTER I.

CANOES FOR SHALLOW STREAMS AND FREQUENT PORTAGES.-- SNEAK-BOXES FOR
DEEP WATERCOURSES.-- HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF THE BARNEGAT SNEAK-
BOX.-- A WALK DOWN EEL STREET TO MANAHAWKEN MARSHES.-- HONEST GEORGE
THE BOAT-BUILDER.-- THE BUILDING OF THE SNEAK-BOX "CENTENNIAL
REPUBLIC."-- ITS TRANSPORTATION TO THE OHIO RIVER.

THE READER who patiently followed the author in his long "VOYAGE OF
THE PAPER CANOE" from the high latitude of the Gulf of St. Lawrence
to the warmer regions of the Gulf of Mexico may desire to know the
reasons which impelled the canoeist to exchange his light graceful
and swift paper craft for the comical-looking but more commodious and
comfortable Barnegat sneak-box or duck-boat. Having navigated more
than eight thousand miles in sail-boats row-boats and canoes upon
the fresh and salt watercourses of the North American continent
(usually without a companion) a hard-earned experience has taught me
that while the light frail canoe is indispensable for exploring
shallow streams for shooting rapids and for making long portages
from one watercourse to another the deeper and more continuous water-
ways may be more comfortably traversed in a stronger and heavier boat
which offers many of the advantages of a portable home.

To find such a boat--one that possessed many desirable points in a
small hull--had been with me a study of years. I commenced to search
for it in my boyhood--twenty-five years ago; and though I have
carefully examined numerous small boats while travelling in seven
foreign countries and have studied the models of miniature craft in
museums and at exhibitions of marine architecture I failed to
discover the object of my desire until on the sea-shore of New
Jersey I saw for the first time what is known among gunners as the
Barnegat sneak-box.

Having owned and thoroughly tested in the waters of Barnegat and
Little Egg Harbor bays five of these boats I became convinced that
their claims for the good-will of the boating fraternity had not been
over-estimated; so when I planned my second voyage from northern
America to the Gulf of Mexico and selected the great water-courses of
the west and south (the Ohio and Mississippi rivers) as the route to
be explored and studied I chose the Barnegat sneak-box as the most
comfortable model combined with other advantages for a voyager's use.
The sneak-box offered ample stowage capacity while canoes built to
hold one person were not large enough to carry the amount of baggage
necessary for the voyage; for I was to avoid hotels and towns to live
in my boat day and night to carry an ample stock of provisions and
to travel in as comfortable a manner as possible. In fact I adopted a
very home-like boat which though only twelve feet long four feet
wide and thirteen inches deep was strong stiff dry and safe; a
craft that could be sailed or rowed as wind weather or inclination
might dictate--the weight of which hardly exceeded two hundred
pounds--and could be conveniently transported from one stream to
another in an ordinary wagon.

A Nautilus or any improved type of canoe would have been lighter and
more easily transported and could have been paddled at a higher speed
with the same effort expended in rowing the heavier sneak-box; but the
canoe did not offer the peculiar advantages of comfort and freedom of
bodily motion possessed by its unique fellow-craft. Experienced
canoeists agree that a canoe of fourteen feet in length which weighs
only seventy pounds if built of wood bark canvas or paper when
out of the water and resting upon the ground or even when bedded on
some soft material like grass or rushes cannot support the sleeping
weight of the canoeist for many successive nights without becoming
strained.

Light indeed must be the weight and slender and elastic the form of
the man who can sleep many nights comfortably in a seventy-pound canoe
without injuring it. Cedar canoes after being subjected to such use
for some time generally become leaky; so to avoid this disaster the
canoeist when threatened with wet weather is forced to the
disagreeable task of troubling some private householder for a shelter
or run the risk of injuring his boat by packing himself away in its
narrow coffin-like quarters and dreaming that he is a sardine while
his restless weight is every moment straining his delicate canoe and
visions of future leaks arise to disturb his tranquillity.

The one great advantage possessed by a canoe is its lightness.
Canoeists dwell upon the importance of the LIGHT WEIGHT of their
canoes and the ease with which they can be carried. If the canoeist
is to sleep in his delicate craft while making a long journey she
must be made much heavier than the perfected models now in use in this
country many of which are under seventy-five pounds' weight. This
additional weight is at once fatal to speed and becomes burdensome
when the canoeist is forced to carry his canoe upon his OWN shoulders
over a portage. A sneak-box built to carry one person weighs about
three times as much as a well-built cedar canoe.

This remarkable little boat has a history which does not reach very
far back into the present century. With the assistance of Mr. William
Errickson of Barnegat and Dr. William P. Haywood of West Creek Ocean
County New Jersey I have been able to rescue from oblivion and bring
to the light of day a correct history of the Barnegat sneak-box.

Captain Hazelton Seaman of West Creek village New Jersey a boat-
builder and an expert shooter of wild-fowl about the year 1836
conceived the idea of constructing for his own use a low-decked boat
or gunning-punt in which when its deck was covered with sedge he
could secrete himself from the wild-fowl while gunning in Barnegat and
Little Egg Harbor bays.

It was important that the boat should be sufficiently light to enable
a single sportsman to pull her from the water on to the low points of
the bay shores. During the winter months when the great marshes were
at times incrusted with snow and the shallow creeks covered with
ice--obstacles which must be crossed to reach the open waters of the
sound--it would be necessary to use her as a sled to effect which
end a pair of light oaken strips were screwed to the bottom of the
sneak-box when she could be easily pushed by the gunner and the
transportation of the oars sail blankets guns ammunition and
provisions (all of which stowed under the hatch and locked up as
snugly as if in a strong chest) became a very simple matter. While
secreted in his boat on the watch for fowl with his craft hidden by
a covering of grass or sedge the gunner could approach within
shooting-distance of a flock of unsuspicious ducks; and this being
done in a sneaking manner (though Mr. Seaman named the result of his
first effort the "Devil's Coffin" the bay-men gave her the sobriquet
of "SNEAK-BOX"; and this name she has retained to the present day.

Since Captain Seaman built his "Devil's Coffin" forty years ago the
model has been improved by various builders until it is believed that
it has almost attained perfection. The boat has no sheer and sets low
in the water. This lack of sheer is supplied by a light canvas apron
which is tacked to the deck and presents when stretched upward by a
stick two feet in length a convex surface to a head sea. The water
which breaks upon the deck forward of the cockpit is turned off at
the sides of the boat in almost the same manner as a snow-plough
clears a railroad track of snow. The apron also protects the head and
shoulders of the rower from cold head winds.

The first sneak-box built by Captain Seaman had a piece of canvas
stretched upon an oaken hoop so fastened to the deck that when a head
sea struck the bow the hoop and canvas were forced upward so as to
throw the water off its sides thus effectually preventing its ingress
into the hold of the craft. The improved apron originated with Mr.
John Crammer Jr. a short time after Captain Seaman built the first
sneak-box. The second sneak-box was constructed by Mr. Crammer; and
afterwards Mr. Samuel Perine an old and much respected bay-man of
Barnegat built the third one. The last two men have finished their
voyage of life but "Uncle Haze"--as he is familiarly called by his
many admirers--the originator of the tiny craft which may well be
called multum in parvo and which carried me its single occupant
safely and comfortably twenty-six hundred miles from Pittsburgh to
Cedar Keys still lives at West Creek builds yachts as well as he
does sneak-boxes and puts to the blush younger gunners by the energy
displayed and success attained in the vigorous pursuit of wildfowl
shooting in the bays which fringe the coast of Ocean County New
Jersey.

A few years since this ingenious man invented an improvement on the
marine life-saving car which has been adopted by the United States
government; and during the year 1875 he constructed a new ducking-punt
with a low paddle-wheel at its stern for the purpose of more easily
and secretly approaching flocks of wild-fowl.

The peculiar advantages of the sneak-box were known to but few of the
hunting and shooting fraternity and with the exception of an
occasional visitor were used only by the oystermen fishermen and
wild-fowl shooters of Barnegat and Little Egg Harbor bays until the
New Jersey Southern Railroad and its connecting branches penetrated to
the eastern shores of New Jersey when educated amateur sportsmen from
the cities quickly recognized in the little gunning-punt all they had
long desired to combine in one small boat.

Mr. Charles Hallock in his paper the "Forest and Stream" of April
23 1874 gave drawings and a description of the sneak-box and fairly
presented its claims to public favor.

The sneak-box is not a monopoly of any particular builder but it
requires peculiar talent to build one--the kind of talent which
enables one man to cut out a perfect axe-handle while the master-
carpenter finds it difficult to accomplish the same thing. The best
yacht-builders in Ocean County generally fail in modelling a sneak-
box while many second-rate mechanics along the shore who could not
possibly construct a yacht that would sail well can make a perfect
sneak-box or gunning-skiff. All this may be accounted for by
recognizing the fact that the water-lines of the sneak-box are
peculiar and differ materially from those of row-boats sailboats
and yachts. Having a spoon-shaped bottom and bow the sneak-box moves
rather over the water than through it and this peculiarity together
with its broad beam gives the boat such stiffness that two persons
may stand upright in her while she is moving through the water and
troll their lines while fishing or discharge their guns without
careening the boat; a valuable advantage not possessed by our best
cruising canoes.

The boat sails well on the wind though hard to pull against a strong
head sea. A fin-shaped centre-board takes the place of a keel. It can
be quickly removed from the trunk or centre-board well and stored
under the deck. The flatness of her floor permits the sneak-box to run
in very shallow water while being rowed or when sailing before the
wind without the centre-board. Some of these boats carrying a weight
of three hundred pounds will float in four to six inches of water.

The favorite material for boat-building in the United States is white
cedar (Cupressus thyoides) which grows in dense forests in the swamps
along the coast of New Jersey as well as in other parts of North
America. The wood is both white and brown soft fine-grained and
very light and durable. No wood used in boat-building can compare with
the white cedar in resisting the changes from a wet to a dry state
and vice versa. The tree grows tall and straight. The lower part of
the trunk with the diverging roots furnish knee timbers and carlines
for the sneak-box. The ribs or timbers and the carlines are usually
1 1/4 x 1 1/4 inches in dimension and are placed about ten inches
apart. The frame above and below is covered with half-inch cedar
sheathing which is not less than six inches in width. The boat is
strong enough to support a heavy man upon its deck and when well
built will rank next to the seamless paper boats of Mr. Waters of
Troy and the seamless wooden canoes of Messrs. Herald Gordon &
Stephenson of the province of Ontario Canada in freedom from
leakage.

During a cruise of twenty-six hundred miles not one drop of water
leaked through the seams of the Centennial Republic. Her under
planking was nicely joined and the seams calked with cotton wicking
and afterwards filled with white-lead paint and putty. The deck
planks of seven inches width were not joined but were tongued and
grooved the tongues and grooves being well covered with a thick coat
of white-lead paint.

The item of cost is another thing to be considered in regard to this
boat. The usual cost of a first-class canoe of seventy pounds' weight
...

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