The Six Horse Stage Coach
Team:
How exactly does it
work?
by Francis Graves
by Francis Graves
Six horses working together as a team are a symphony of
cooperative effort – beautiful to behold and thrilling to drive or ride behind.
A six horse team is composed of three sub-teams: the Lead, the Swing and the
Wheel teams. All contribute their strength in pulling the load, but each also
has an additional unique function important to the success of the whole. In the
days when horse-drawn conveyances were the prime means of transportation,
people understood how a good team functioned and took pleasure in that
knowledge. They came to admire the skills of expert drivers who attained modest
celebrity status, not unlike the pilots of airliners today.
In the era of giant aircraft, high speeds trains and space
travel, we have no need to understand how a six horse hitch functioned. It has
become only a small part of history – something we know nothing about except
what we learn from Hollywood films (which are singularly inaccurate in the way
they represent the operation of stage coaches). For example, they invariably
show the stage coach teams operating at a full gallop which never happened.
Horses can only run so far without resting, perhaps a mile or two, especially
if they are pulling several tons of coach, its passengers, baggage and freight.
The can go farther at a trot, and perhaps all day, at a walk. Therefore the
American long distance stages traveled at a walk in the flat and speeded up to
a trot going downhill – a lesson sternly taught by my uncle.
As children my sister, my brother and I, and a number of cousins
were blessed to have a great uncle, Captain William Banning, who in the 1920s
and ‘30s was perhaps the last of the experienced California stagecoach drivers.
He was a consultant to Hollywood, which often ignored his counsel (much to his
annoyance), and to several museums. His greatest pleasure was driving his
collection of horse-drawn passenger vehicles, including several models of the
famous Concord Coaches, which opened the West before railroads took their
business. I recall riding with him as he drove then through the streets of Los
Angeles and later on through the countryside around Walnut, California, when he
moved out of the city to a small ranch. The high spot of our lives was spending
summer with him there and having the privilege, if we behaved, of riding with
him up on the driver’s boot. Those of us less well-behaved were condemned to
ride inside the stage or, in extreme cases, left behind. My cousin Paddy,
Evangeline Victoria Banning, and I were the oldest, and we had the honor of
riding with him in the grand parade through the streets of Los Angeles and into
the coliseum as a part of the 1931 Olympic Games celebration.
While he drove, Uncle taught us many things; about the coaches,
how they were built and the intricacies of their design, and about the team’s
harness and its functions. As a special honor, he taught us how to hold and use
the reins controlling the six horses. It was heady stuff, sometimes difficult
for our young minds to fully grasp. But somehow we knew it was important, because
it came from that wonderfully wise man who had lived so long and experienced so
much, and whom we loved and honored.
For me, the most interesting things he taught us were about his
horses. He pointed out their different characters and personalities; which were
faithful workers and which would loaf if allowed to; which liked to show off
and which were quiet and dignified; and which were playful and which had a
sense of humor – yes, horses can have a sense of humor. He made us understand
that horses are individuals, just like people. Those were the lessons I
remember most and they helped me when I later attended Culver Military Academy
and was assigned to a Field Artillery horse-drawn unit which utilized six
horses to pull its guns. It was a different version of a six horse hitch which,
instead of a driver on the conveyance, used three drivers each mounted on the
near (left) horse of the Lead, Swing and Wheel teams. A substantial difference,
but the lessons learned from Uncle about horses and how a six horse team
functioned still applied there, and they still have stuck with me to this day.
Which brings me to my beginning point. How does a six horse
team, the Lead pair, the Swing pair and the Wheel pair, function? Aside from
exercising horse power, what unique contribution does each make to the
successful performance of the whole?
The Leaders lead – their eyes on the road ahead, ears forward,
but always alert and listening for the voice of their driver, ever aware and
sensitive to directional signals transmitted to them through his reins. The
Leaders set the pace and the spirit, communicating style and pride and energy
to the whole team. They are leaders in more ways than one.
The Swing teams job is to follow the leaders, except in sharp
turns when they swing wide to insure their tow stays on track, does not “cut
the corner”, and, thereby, they set the course for the Wheelers.
The Wheel team, reinforced by the Swing and Lead teams on an
uphill grade, provides the major muscle – and in some harness arrangements they
help brake on a downhill grade. The Wheelers follow the track set by the Swing
team and because the wagon tongue anchored between them is connected to the
swiveling front carriage of the stage, they actually steer it.
When the horses know their jobs and are harnessed and hitched to
the stage, they cease to be individuals and are transformed, with their driver,
into a team – single unit composed of man and beast, working together for a
common purpose. Together they become that “symphony” of cooperative effort,
that thing of beauty, which cannot be matched today by man and soulless
machines.
“With the horses trotting loosely in their harness, and the
driver on the brake, we streamed around the curves, at a moment swinging over
the abyss until one’s hold on one’s breath involuntarily tightened, and the
next, swinging back easily toward the bank. In some places the shoulders of the
mountains jutted out so abruptly that we would lose sight of the leaders around
the curves before we got there ourselves.
“They were dainty, elegant little animals, those leaders; at one
moment with their reluctant heads reined around toward their flanks, they
danced like wild deer along the verge of the precipice, and the next, the
inexorable driver was grinding them against a bank – but never a sign did they
give of leaving the road, so thoroughbred were they. The swing horses, a trifle
larger; followed the movements of the leaders but more sedately. The wheelers.
Big steady fellows that held the stage back. All six moved in fearless
obedience to the guidance of the two hands, clad in a pair of buckskin gloves,
whose taciturn owner, with one foot on the brake and another on the footboard,
made me think of a skilled musician playing upon a familiar instrument.”
(Banning, William and Banning, George. Six Horses. 1928.)*
Clearly there was an element of romance attached to the
relationship between man and his horse which is fast fading in the American
ethos – that sense of interdependence, appreciation and affection for God’s
gift of the willing, faithful, trusting “co-worker,” the horse. Sadly, we no
longer need them.
*This quote from the book Six Horses was taken from an
article published in the San Francisco Argonaut on September 9, 1889, authored
by Captain Robert Howe Fletcher, describing riding a stage through the mountainous
terrain.
