“Most often, the flatboat owner was a farmer, who took his produce to New Orleans once a year on a boat that he himself had made. For his crew he no doubt had tall sons, but in any case there was no dearth [lack] of strong men who preferred a trip down the Tennessee to lying around home at a season when there was little to do. For flatboating offered them a fine, hearty outdoor life, with a spice of real danger. They slept on the deck where they worked, ate plain bread and meat with whisky to wash it down, and took time off for a dance and revel at the sparse settlements where they might tie up and wait for a rise [in the water] or to load more cargo. In warm weather, they worked stripped to the waist and soon were fit to pass for Indians. They let their beards grow, and by the end of the long voyage probably resembled a gang of pirates."
-- Donald Davidson, The Tennessee: The Old River: Frontier to Secession (p. 213)