Robert Gudmestad

You went into the water.

You were fending for yourself.

There were a few life preservers, but nothing, nowhere near the number that you would need for the number of people on the boat.

At first, there were no night trips because it was too dangerous to travel at night.

Because as you alluded to, you could not see a snag.

Today, we use hitting a snag as a way, you know, we encountered an obstacle.

That's where this enters the language is Mississippi River steamboats.

Most people don't know what a snag was.

They know it's wood, but...

The Mississippi was constantly changing its course and it would erode its banks as it sort of went, say, east or west.

And as it eroded the bank, it would bring trees into the river.

But these trees have their root system intact and those would get planted into the bed of the river.

And so now you've got this tree that's sort of like a spear, if you will, because the smaller sticks get stripped off because of the current.

And sometimes they were just above the water.

And if they kind of bobbed above the water, they're called sawyers because it looked like they were sawyers.

Oh, interesting.

If they're below the water, they were called planters because you couldn't see them.

Wow.

But you could kind of sometimes tell, you know, the way that the water moved around them.

But physically, you can see the wood.