I think a pilot’s memory is about the most wonderful thing
in the world. To know the Old and New Testaments by heart,
and be able to recite them glibly, forward or backward,
or begin at random anywhere in the book and recite both ways
and never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant mass
of knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot’s
massed knowledge of the Mississippi and his marvelous facility
in the handling of it. I make this comparison deliberately,
and believe I am not expanding the truth when I do it.
Many will think my figure too strong, but pilots will not.
And how easily and comfortably the pilot’s memory does its work;
how placidly effortless is its way; how UNCONSCIOUSLY it lays up
its vast stores, hour by hour, day by day, and never loses or
mislays a single valuable package of them all! Take an instance.
Let a leadsman cry, ‘Half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain!
half twain!’ until it become as monotonous as the ticking of a clock;
let conversation be going on all the time, and the pilot be doing
his share of the talking, and no longer consciously listening
to the leadsman; and in the midst of this endless string of half
twains let a single ‘quarter twain!’ be interjected, without emphasis,
and then the half twain cry go on again, just as before:
two or three weeks later that pilot can describe with precision
the boat’s position in the river when that quarter twain
was uttered, and give you such a lot of head-marks, stern-marks,
and side-marks to guide you, that you ought to be able to take
the boat there and put her in that same spot again yourself!
The cry of ‘quarter twain’ did not really take his mind from his talk,
but his trained faculties instantly photographed the bearings,
noted the change of depth, and laid up the important details for future
reference without requiring any assistance from him in the matter.
If you were walking and talking with a friend, and another friend
at your side kept up a monotonous repetition of the vowel sound A,
for a couple of blocks, and then in the midst interjected an R,
thus, A, A, A, A, A, R, A, A, A, etc., and gave the R no emphasis,
you would not be able to state, two or three weeks afterward,
that the R had been put in, nor be able to tell what objects you
were passing at the moment it was done. But you could if your
memory had been patiently and laboriously trained to do that sort
of thing mechanically.
Give a man a tolerably fair memory to start with, and piloting
will develop it into a very colossus of capability.
But ONLY IN THE MATTERS IT IS DAILY DRILLED IN.
A time would come when the man’s faculties could not help
noticing landmarks and soundings, and his memory could not
help holding on to them with the grip of a vise; but if you
asked that same man at noon what he had had for breakfast,
it would be ten chances to one that he could not tell you.
Astonishing things can be done with the human memory if you will
devote it faithfully to one particular line of business.
At the time that wages soared so high on the Missouri River, my chief,
Mr. Bixby, went up there and learned more than a thousand miles
of that stream with an ease and rapidity that were astonishing.
When he had seen each division once in the daytime and once at night,
his education was so nearly complete that he took out a ‘daylight’ license;
a few trips later he took out a full license, and went to piloting day
and night–and he ranked A 1, too.
Mr. Bixby placed me as steersman for a while under a pilot whose feats
of memory were a constant marvel to me. However, his memory was born
in him, I think, not built. For instance, somebody would mention a name.
Instantly Mr. Brown would break in–
‘Oh, I knew HIM. Sallow-faced, red-headed fellow, with a
little scar on the side of his throat, like a splinter under