Grant P. Marsh

Grant Prince Marsh was born on May 11, 1834, in [[New York]]. A few years later, he moved with his parents to [[Rochester, Pennsylvania]], a small town, 30 miles below Pittsburg on the [[Ohio River]]. Steamboat packets plying the Ohio past Rocheser were easily visible as they passed, and Grant Marsh and his young friends would run to the river bank and watch until the riverboats steamed from view.   

Moving westward with the tide of immigration, Marsh took work on boats running from Pittsburg to Ohio River ports, and in 1852 he became employed as a deckhand on the ''Beaver'' which ran between Pittsburg and St. Louis.  In 1852 no rail reached St. Louis and its levee was lined with scores of steamboats.   

In 1854 Marsh became a deckhand on Missouri River steamboats ''F.X. Audrey'' and then the ''A.B. Chambers'', and thus launched his career on the Missouri River with which his name would become linked in hisotry. At this time, Missouri riverboat traffic was expanding. As settlers spread up the Missouri and out into the surrounding praries, all commerce moved by steamboat.

In the winter of 1855-1856, Marsh was a watchman on the ''A. B. Chambers'' during the event known as the St. Louis Ice Gorge of '56.  Extreme cold weather in January caused thick river ice to form on the Mississippi river at and above St. Louis, but unseasonably warm weather in February caused the ice to break into floes that then came flooding down the river.  At St. Louis scores of riverbots lay in winter harbor along the levees. The boats were so closely packed one could walk on their decks for a distance of 20 blocks.  Pushed by the current the ice floes piled up against the steamboats.  The ice wrecked steamboats, sank them, pushed them ashore, and tore off parts.  The force of the ice floes broke the boats from their moorings causing them to drift down, singly or entangled together, to collide with and damage other steamboats.  A large number of boats become lodged on the upstream point of an island below St. Louis known as the Lower Dyke.  In the evening, an ice dam (ice gorge) formed just below St. Louis, bringing the floes to a halt for a time, during which the water rose ten feet.  Then the gorge broke and the ice flows and steamboat hulks continued moving, causing more destruction. Watchman Marsh had stayed with the ''A.B. Chambers'' which was torn loose and carried down on the flood.  The boat was damaged, and Marsh expected the boat to be crushed or sunk, but it finally came to rest against the wall of the arsenal, below St. Louis, and Mrsh went ashore safely.

During the winter of 1858-59, the ''A.B. Chambers'' was headed down the Mississippi with a young Mississippi River pilot by the name of Samuel Clemens.  The weather was cold and the river channel was filled with ice floes and the boat ran hard aground while hugging the bank.  As luck would have it the boat's fuel was also low, and was soon exhausted. Marsh and Clemens were sent back upstream with the yawl to the town of Commerce to get a wood raft to bring fuel down to the boat.  To reach their destination the yawl had to cross a narrow section of the river where the ice cakes would first jam up until they built up pressure, then the ice jam would suddenly break free.  Just as the yawl was crossing the river in front of the ice jam, it gave way.  While Marsh called out to turn back, Clemens cooly guided the boat forward just in front of the swiftly advancing ice, to the safety of the opposite shore, saving the lives of those in the yawl. Marsh and Samuel Clemens became friends and maintained a correspondence, even after Samuel Clemens attained fame as 'Mark Twain'.

In a letter to Jack Downing, Clemens said this about that incident, "When we were taking that wood flat down to the Chambers, which was aground, I soon saw that I was a perfect lubber at poloting such a thing. I saw that I could never hit the Chambers with it, so I resigned in Marsh's favor, and he accomplished the task to my admiration. We should all have gone to the mischief if I had remained in authority."

At the start of the [[Civil War]] Marsh was a mate on the steamer ''John G. Roe'', a St. Louis to New Orleans packet.  In March 1862, the ''Roe'' was one of a large flotilla of 80 steamboats commandeered by the Union army to take General Grant's Army of the Tennessee to Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River.  The Union troops under Grant were divided with the Army of the Tennessee on the west side of the Tennessee River, and the Army of the Ohio, under General Don Carlos Buell approaching from the east side of the river.  On the morning of April 6, 1862 the Confederates, advancing from their base at Corinth, surprised the Union troops on the west bank, advancing through the scrub oak thickets surrounding a small church called Shiloh.  The Confederates hoped to overwhelm the Union troops on the west bank before they could be reinforced by the troops approaching from the east, across the Tenessee river.  All day long the Union troops on the west bank fought desperately to hold on and reform their defensive lines, while the ''Roe'' and other steamboats went down to Savannah landing on the Tennessee River and as the  segments of Buell's Army of the Ohio arrived, they ferried these troops from the east bank to Pittsburg landing on the west bank.  The steamboats continued to ferry troops through the eveing and all night, and into the next morning despite a heavy rain that caused the Tennessee River to rise eight feet.  The ''Roe'' was a large steamship and commonly ferried two regiments, and in one nightime crossing carried an entire brigade. By early morning on April 7, the reinforced Union forces were strong enough to counterattack and they drove off the Confederate forces.

Prior to the 1860's steamboats brought supplies and passengers to the upper Missouri for the fur trade and buffalo robe trade.  However, after 1862 and 1863, gold discoveries in the western [[Montana]] Territories (Alder Gulch at Virginia City, Last Chance Gulch at Helena, Confederate Gulch at Diamond City, Grasshopper Gulch at Bannock)  so increased the demands for freight that steamboat traffic on the upper Missouri offered the chance of huge profits to river steamboats.  Steamboats were the one reliable method of transporting goods (particularly the heavy bulky goods demanded by the expanding mining industry) and passengera from the down river Missouri ports to Ft. Benton, Montana, at the head of navigation on the Missouri. Five sixths of the gold of the Montana Territory was brought out by steamboats, and a single cargo of gold would often exceed one hundred thousand dollars. Ft. Benton, was suddenly propelled into a trading and rendevous center of great commercial importance. Steamboat arrivals at Ft. Benton went from about 6 a year in 1865 to 31 in 1866 and 39 in 1867, transporting 8,000 tons of goods and 10,000 passengers each year.

The term "upper Missouri" referred to the last 1300 miles of navigable river, from Ft. Randall(a military post on the southern border of the Dakota Territory) to Ft. Benton.  In this section the river traversed remote plains and breaks, which had no ports or settlements except a few military posts which were often attacked by Indians.  The upper Missouri presented a severe challenge to a river pilot who had to contend with shifting channels, swift rapids, rocks and snags; these hazards were made worse during low water, after the spring floods.  Occasionally a boat encountered maurading bands of Indians.  Wood hawks cut and sold wood on the river banks, but was an isolated and dangerous job, and when no wood hawk could be found, the boat simply pulled over at a plentiful supply of dead wood, and all the passengers and crew would pitch in to "wood up".   

As the "Luella" lay snubbed to the bank at Fort Benton on June 17, 1866, Marsh was confronted by a community of only 500 people, but the center of commerce for a vast region. Muddy rutted streets ran between rough built buildings.  Ft. Benton is located in a large "cove" in the bluffs along the north side of the Missouri. Facing the river, Front Street had bars, bordellos and mercantile establishments, in front of which stood huge freight wagons pulled by six to twelve spans of mules or oxen, loading freight from steambats for the last overland haul to Alder Gulch (Virginia City), Last Chance Gulch (Helena), Confederate Gulch, or to other more distant mining camps. Facing the river just east of Front Street were the crumbling adobe bastions of the American Fur Company's Fort Benton which had stood guard over the fur and robe trade at this location for 20 years. Here thronged men of all stamp and type, but having a large proportion of former soldier from the recently defeated Confederate army.

In June 1976, as captain of the "Far West" Marsh had accompanied a calvary column under the command of General [[Alfred H. Terry]] and Col. [[George Armstrong Custer]] up the Yellowstone as part of the Sioux war of 1876.    While waiting with reserve supplies on the [[Yellowstone River]], the ''Far West''  received news of the defeat of the detachment under Custer on the [[Little Bighorn]].  Taking advantage of flood waters he took the Far West up the [[Big Horn River]] to the mouth of the [[Little Bighorn River]], a feat worthy of note.  Marsh then loaded wounded from the battle on June 30th, and  made the historic and record setting river run for which he is most famous--the steamboat trip down river, to [[Bismark]] in the [[Dakota Territory]], 710 miles in 54 hours.  

In 1878, Grant took command of Coulson Line's new boat "F. Y. Batchlor" at [[Pittsburgh]] and took her to the Custer landing (supply point for Ft. Custer, just above the mouth of hte Bighorn River) on the [[Yellowstone River]].  Grant worked this boat on the upper Missouri River and the Yellowstone River for several years, hauling cargo and supporting army activities

Grant Marsh is rememberd in several biographies and he is referenced in other books.