The story was first published in the Danish Anders And & Co. #1992-33; the first American publication was in Uncle Scrooge #286, in June 1994.

Making his way to New Orleans, he looks up his Uncle Angus "Pothole" McDuck, and helps him as a deckhand on his steamboat alongside the inventor and engineer Ratchet Gearloose, racing to be first to a site along the Mississippi River to salvage a shipment of gold from a ship that sank 30 years earlier while transporting it for the government.

However, this just as the steam powered locomotives are gaining popularity as a mean of transportation and railroad is being laid across the nation, making riverboats somewhat obsolete.

Scrooge and Ratchet seeks protection in the other boiler among loads of stuffed cotton.

Since he no longer has a riverboat, Scrooge decides to move west, along the railroad and so he takes a job as a fireman on the Wabash Cannonball.