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From [http://www.cowboysindians.com/Cowboys-Indians/July-2009/Stagecoach-expert-tells-of-drivers-demands-and-dangers/] Cowboys & Indians: How many horses were used to pull a stagecoach? Doug Hansen: There were four to six horses depending upon the size of the coach and the terrain. Coach models were available in four- to 12-passenger capacities. In terms of pulling, the bigger factor wasn't the passenger weight, but rather the terrain and the grade/inclines that would be encountered. Keep in mind, too, that any regular stage lines had intervals where there were stations to change horses — typically they would travel 10 to 15 miles and then change. If there was an incline, they needed six horses. If it was a flat route, then four would suffice. The number of horses depended mainly on the logistics of the stage line — where the heaviest and steepest incline was. When stagecoaches came into town, they might have had six horses just for a presence — they would have wanted to look flashy for the sake of advertising. C&I: How are the horses connected to each other and the coach? Hansen: The stagecoach itself has a stiff pole or "tongue." That is what the first pair of horses — the "wheelers" — on either side of the pole are connected to. There's a left or "near" wheeler, and a right or "off" wheeler. Working our way forward, the next pair of horses is referred to as the "swing" horses — they're middleweights. And the front team is the lead horses. Each team or pair is hitched to a doubletree connected to the hitch assembly, and this is how they draw the coach. The horses steer the coach with another connection termed "pole straps." This strap connects the breast of the horse to the pole or tongue. And the driver controls these six spirited animals through the "lines," six leather straps in his hands that connect to the bits. C&I: Were there certain temperaments or attributes that made for good coach horses? Hansen: Wheelers, swing, and lead are positions. It's like a football team: Each position has a characteristic and job. Wheel horses are the muscled, heavier horses — the brutes connect directly to the pole of the coach. The tongue is jerking around in rough country. They have to have enough mass and pulling power — they need the strength. The swing team are middleweights; they have to have good control and balance. They are helping draw the coach. The lead horses are the leaders of the hitch. They are like the quarterbacks — they're making decisions. Lead horses have confidence, courage. They are the horses you are going to drive into the raging torrents of the river. They are the leaders of the pack. They have to be courageous. If you could weigh the spirit, the lead horses must have the most because they are farther from the driver and his commands — so they're more sensitive and higher-spirited, with more grit in their disposition. These attributes were understood and recognized by the horsemen. The horse is a draft animal, and in the day of the stagecoach, a lot of engineering went into figuring the physics of the draft for utmost efficiency — harness, collars, hitches, vehicles were evaluated for minimal draft. This was the horse-drawn era — the horse moved everything. As many mules as horses were used. You did not move anything without the horse or the mule. C&I: Sounds complicated. How do you train horses and mules to pull a coach? Hansen: A good horseman will recognize the characteristics and consider the position. There is some preliminary training, but most of the schooling is on the job. The other horses will teach the new ones. They were bred for it to a certain extent. The Morgan breed was a strong breed then. The horses had to have physics to endure the task: heavy-boned, good feet, and a large heart girth for the lung capacity. These horses were athletes. And you needed the right kind of horses for the task. Mules are tougher than horses and could do longer runs — for instance, mules were favored where stage stations were few and far between. A horse, though it's magnificent and has the capability to travel fast, was not quite as self-sufficient as the mule. Horses were higher-maintenance. They needed grain, hay, and pampering to keep up their high-spirited stamina. Courtesy HansenWheel.com C&I: How about the driver? What kind of skill is involved, and how did someone go about learning to drive a coach? Hansen: The driver was extremely talented. High regard was given to these reins men, or "whips." The driver or "coach" was held in high esteem like a race-car driver today. He had six lines, or ribbons, in his hands. He had to constantly manipulate the lines: contact to the wheelers, taking from the swing, feathering the leaders, and back again to maintain control and balance of his hitch. His touch was his communication with the horses. Every subtle movement with his hand, the horses responded to. He would have three lines in each hand. Each line split out to the team. To make a right-hand turn to get the coach around the corner — imagine turning a semi — the driver would start the lead horses turning first, then the swing, then the wheelers, all in effort to position the coach wheels precisely where he wanted them. He had to balance the lines in such a way that the timing was right in phases. He could use the brake to slow the coach and add tension to his lines. It's very difficult. It's like two horses quantified to four then to six — it's exponential in complication, like going from tricycle to bicycle to unicycle. The skill is still alive today, but there are very few people involved in multiple-hitch driving that can pass it on. It's a matter of handing down the art — quite an endeavor. A coach driver would take years to achieve his status. He was kind of like a king. Besides the skill involved, a driver also had to be responsible to keep to schedule and brave to deal with the adversities on the trail. These guys weren't found on every street corner. C&I: How many pounds does the typical coach weigh empty? And loaded? Hansen: The unloaded empty weight of the Western mail coach, the Concord, was 2,400 pounds for a nine-passenger coach. But the stagecoach didn't just carry people — it served numerous functions. It was a mail coach from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast. A good-paying contract [to carry the mail] might have been several hundred thousand dollars. It was also a passenger service and an express service. Then you have to figure all the bags of each person. If you weighed all of it out for a nine-passenger coach, which is three bench seats with three people each inside … you also need to count the outside seating. On the exterior of coach, you have the driver's seat, or the box — three people in the box, counting the driver and express man guarding the packages. The platform up there where the driver sat was 24-inches wide, but only 12 inches of the seat was used by the driver because directly behind him were the knees and feet of the three deck-seat passengers. And then there was the "Chinaman's seat" facing out the rear, riding backward, eating the dust, a loose footboard dangling from leather straps where you're keeping yourself balanced. During those days, that would be the slang name for that roof seat, probably because lots of Chinese workers got stuck riding back there; it was a cheaper fare. The best seat on the coach was sitting with the whip. You've got the rolling country view, horses, and sitting with the king of the coach. That is, of course, unless you were traveling at night in a rainstorm, in which case you'd want to be in the coach with the curtains down. So you've got a total of 18 people on the coach. C&I: Okay, so fully loaded, what are we talking about? Hansen: Eighteen people, plus trunks and luggage. The trunks would have been in the rear boot, mail and the strongbox in the front boot. And on the roof, there was another luggage rack with lighter stuff — parcels, satchels, hatboxes, and the like. They charged by dimensions and weight. So the payload on a 2,400-pound coach, carrying 4,800 pounds fully loaded … C&I: A heavy burden, in other words. Hansen: Yes, that's a big load. The horses had to be extremely fit, and the wheels had to be phenomenally engineered. The wheels were highly specialized things: You might have had to go on north slope of a hollow to get a slow-growing tight-grain special piece of wood selected by hand for its strength. Even so, with that capacity, there were likely runs they could not do. The logistics were complicated. The express office would have had to figure this out. A route the stages were traveling on was like an interstate highway. The stations were like gas stations/convenience stores. And a lot of mini industries grew up around the stage lines to support the routes. There'd be freighting, making hay, stock tenders, etc. Think about setting up a stage line: You had to freight overland all this gear to feed the people and the horses and sustain the caretakers who were running the station. It was a much more monumental task than hooking four horses on a coach and driving down a trail. Courtesy HansenWheel.com Remember the stations were 10 to 15 miles apart. If a horse went lame — threw a shoe or got a bruise on a rock — they'd baby him into the station and get a replacement. They spent a lot of time and care making sure their stock was kept in good shape. There were farriers at stations — very possibly the station manager took care of horses, kept them shod, and washed down their shoulders with saltwater to keep the horses from getting sore. He would have done all the things needed to keep them going. We don't know everything because it was not recorded. There's no journal — just pieces of information. Think about pulling into a filling station today — you wouldn't think of documenting it, but will future generations understand? What's interesting in the study in this field is trying to understand how all this was done. C&I: What were the main dangers going overland by a coach? Hansen: Environment, raging rivers, lightning, bad weather. Remember these stages ran 24 hours a day. Say it's 3 in the morning and you're caught in a blizzard; it's dark and you're crossing a river and you have to get out a lantern to see if you can make it or not. And, of course, hostile Indian attacks. The horses could get spooked. Something — a line or hitching — could break, causing a runaway or a rollover. There are recorded incidents of vehicle accidents. Maybe they drove them off a cliff; maybe there were washed-out mountain roads. One of the main functions of the stage in the Old West was to carry gold from the mines. Holdups by road agents were common whenever the strongbox was filled with gold. C&I: How often were they held up? Hansen: On some lines it was fairly common if it became known they were always carrying the strongbox. In California, Black Bart was a common road-agent thief — he was actually ona first-name basis with the drivers. The authorities didn't take kindly to their strongboxes being stolen. The better-equipped coaches had more armed guards on the more dangerous routes. They issued lots of rounds of ammunition, and on some troublesome routes, there were two rifles and two revolvers holstered on the side of the coach in addition to whatever weapons the driver was carrying on him. C&I: How often did wheels break? What happened if you got a "flat"? Hansen: The wheels were constructed of hand-selected wood that was chosen for its sturdiness. Regular maintenance was required, including axle greasing and setting tires. The iron tire would become loose from wear on the road and would need to be tightened or "set" — a blacksmith term for tightening the iron tire. The tire was removed from the wooden wheel and shrunk, then heated in a fire to expand, then placed back on the wheel, and cooled rapidly — and the result was a tight wheel again. The coach driver could hear the tone of the wheels. If a wheel lost its ring and got a dead sound, he could hear that it had become loose. He'd pull in to the blacksmith shop and get it set. They did not carry spares. [If a wheel went bad], they could make a log drag and drag the coach to the home station. These drivers had to be resourceful. If you lost a hind wheel, you could get a green sapling and tie it under the spindle and over to the reaches and take it home that way. We're talking about nearly 2,000 miles of the overland route. These coaches survived a lot of miles. In our restoration work, when we get an old coach in, you can really see the wear and tear. You're looking at parts that have traveled thousands of miles. We've seen areas on the steering castor where you'll find maybe an inch of raw steel just worn away. Some of the connecting links on the doubletrees are nearly worn in two. That's the work of horses in another century, driven by the ambitions of a young nation. There's no odometer, but you wonder how many thousands of miles and how much horseflesh was used to pull that stagecoach.
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