While still in his early twenties, Samuel Clemens
gave up his printing career in order to work on riverboats on the
Mississippi. On a voyage to New Orleans down the Mississippi, the
steamboat pilot, Horace E. Bixby, inspired Twain to pursue a career
as a steamboat pilot. It was a richly rewarding occupation with
wages set at $250 per month, roughly equivalent to $155,000 a year
today. A steamboat pilot needed a vast knowledge of the
ever-changing river to be able to stop at any of the hundreds of
ports and wood-lots along the river banks. Twain meticulously
studied 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of the Mississippi for more than two
years before he received his steamboat pilot license in 1859. While
training, Samuel convinced his younger brother Henry to work with
him. Henry was killed on June 21, 1858, when the steamboat he was
working on, the Pennsylvania, exploded. Twain had foreseen this
death in a detailed dream a month earlier, which inspired his
interest in parapsychology; he was an early member of the Society
for Psychical Research. Twain was guilt-stricken over his brother's
death and held himself responsible for the rest of his life. He
continued to work on the river and served as a river pilot until
the American Civil War broke out in 1861 and traffic along the
Mississippi was curtailed.
Perhaps most important, the riverboat life
provided him with the pen name Mark Twain, derived from the
riverboat leadsmen's signal—“By the mark,
twain”—that the water was deep enough for safe passage.
We wish you safe passage in finding this cache and in avoiding
“Big Mud”
