About this record
George Byron Merrick was a steamboat pilot on the Upper Mississippi for nine years. In this memoir, Merrick chronicles steamboat life as he experienced it in the mid-1800s, when he started as a cabin boy and worked his way up to cub pilot. His narrative contains lively accounts of gamblers, shipwrecks, and boat races, as well as rich descriptions of river life and day-to-day steamboat operations during the height of the steamboat era.Citation
Merrick, George Byron. Old Times on the Upper Mississippi: the Recollections of a Steamboat Pilot from 1854 to 1863. (Cleveland: A.H. Clark Co., 1909). Online facsimile at: http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/search.asp?id=77