Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/381



REMINISCENCES OF CAPT. W. P. GRAY 341

did not like to complain. I had to sit up all night as watch- man, and then was made to work as a deckhand during the day. After a week or so of almost continuous night and day serv- ice, I finally rebelled and stretched myself out on the boiler and went to sleep. I was reported for being asleep while on duty. The captain had taken a dislike to me, so when he re- ported the matter Captain Ainsworth suggested that, in place of firing me, the captain had better take a vacation. It hap- pened that Captain Ainsworth was acquainted with the cir- cumstances through having asked some one else about it. Snow, the mate, was promoted to captain, and I was made mate.

After being the mate of the John H. Couch for a short time, Captain Ainsworth sent for me and told me he wanted me to go on the upper river as a pilot. I could not leave the Couch without securing another man to take my place, so I hired a horse and rode to the Red House tannery near Milwaukie and secured Granville Reed to take my place as mate on the Couch. Later, both Snow and Reed became captains of river steamers and later branch pilots on the lower river between Portland and Astoria. I went to the upper river and acted as pilot on the boats plying between Celilo and Lewiston. I served as pilot on the Nez Perce Chief, the Owyhee, the Tenino, the Webfoot, the Spray, the Yakima and the Okanogan.

"I stayed on the upper river as pilot until 1867, when I was engaged by Colonel R. S. Williamson, of the United States engineers, to act as captain of a sailboat employed by the gov- ernment in taking a party under Lieutenant W. H. Heuer to make a hydrostatic survey of the Columbia river rapids be- tween Celilo and the mouth of the Snake river. My duty was to navigate the boat, a 40-ton schooner, but at the very first rapids the men engaged in the hydrostatic survey, who were deep water sailors and who were unused to swift water, made so bungling a job of the work that I volunteered to take charge of the small boats in the swift water. I had been so accustomed to being tipped out of the boats and swimming out and taking all sorts of chances that the deep water men were scared nearly to death when I would make straight runs through the rapids or across dangerous places in the river.