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| Mississippi River icon |
It
is hard to imagine the Mississippi River without its iconic steamboats beating
their way up and down stream. Even Mark Twain once wrote, of the steamboats on
the Mississippi; “When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among
my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That
was, to be a steamboatman.” But before all of those boats began to ply the
waters there must have been a first steamboat on the river. What was the story
of that boat? Why are you reading about the Mississippi River this blog about the Hudson River Valley? The short answer to that one is that, its my blog I'll change the rules if I want.
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| Robert R. Livingston, had probably been planning this for years. |
Within
days of the first successful voyage of the North
River Steamboat in 1807 Robert Fulton and Robert R. Livingston’s thoughts
had turned to spreading their new form of transport to the Mississippi River.
Fulton wrote “I think it would be well to write to your brother Edward to get
information on the velocity of the Mississippi, the size and form of boats
used, the number of hands and quantity of tons in each boat, the number of
miles they make against the current in twelve hours, and the quantity of tons
which go up the river in a year. On this point beg him to be accurate.”
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| Robert Fulton For once not the craziest part of the story |
It
took Fulton and Livingston four more years to complete their plans but in 1811
they began construction of the New
Orleans at Pittsburgh. They had added another partner to the endeavor in
the form of Nicholas J. Roosevelt, a distant uncle of Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt had helped Fulton and Livingston in the construction of the side
mounted paddle wheels for the North River.
In Pittsburgh he supervised the construction of the new boat which would be 146
feet 6 inches long and 32 feet 6 inches wide. The engine was built in New York
and carried in pieces overland to Pittsburgh because there were no facilities
for constructing such an engine in the city at the time.
The
steam boat made its first successful test trip around Pittsburgh on October 15,
1811. Just five days later, on October 20 the New Orleans set out for New Orleans. Aboard her were Nicholas
Roosevelt who would act as captain for the trip, his extremely pregnant wife
Lydia and their first daughter. Nicholas Baker was the engineer for the trip
and Andrew Jack was the pilot. There were also six deck hands, two maids for
Lydia, a cook, a waiter and a large Newfoundland dog named Tiger.
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| A large Newfoundland Dog. Newfoundland Dogs have webbed feet which makes them excellent swimmers. |
On
October 28 the New Orleans docked at
Louisville. The steamboat would have to wait at Louisville nearly a month
before the water rose high enough in the Ohio River to allow the boat to
traverse the Falls of the Ohio, which were more like a series of shallow rapids
than an actual waterfall. During the wait Roosevelt took the steamboat on
several small excursions including a return to Cincinnati to prove that the
boat could travel upstream. On October 30 Lydia Roosevelt gave birth aboard the
New Orleans to a son they named
Henry.
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| The New Orleans enters the Mississippi |
They
departed Louisville in late November to make their way over the Falls and after
stopping to resupply into the Mississippi River. It was hoped that the
Mississippi River would be relatively easy to cruise down. Andrew Jack had
experience on the river and knew the channel well.
It
was not an easy cruise to New Orleans.
On
December 16, shortly after the New
Orleans had entered the Mississippi, the New Madrid earthquake hit. This
earthquake, which was actually an extended period of severe tremors, has been
estimated up to an 8.0 on the Richter scale basically reshaped the Midwest. The
entire channel of the Mississippi was erased, the course of the river changed
dramatically. For about an hour after the most severe tremors the river
actually ran backwards. Jack, the pilot, had no idea where he was and soon
found himself navigating the boat over areas that only hours before had been
fields or forests. Whole sections of the shore were dropping into the river,
islands appeared and disappeared. Tiger
the dog would often give warning of a fresh tremor by putting his head in Lydia’s
lap before it hit.
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| The New Orleans had to navigate a river full of obstacles and unknowns after the earthquake |
A
few days after the worst of the tremors the New
Orleans arrived in New Madrid itself. Houses had fallen into the holes that
opened in the ground. Many people asked to be taken aboard but the steamboat
had neither the space for all the refugees or the means to supply them.
The
New Orleans finally arrived in New
Orleans on January 10, 1812. It had spent a total of 259 hours cruising on the
trip and averaged 8 mph. The time announced for the trip did not include all of
the time lost stopping to wait for the right conditions or for other reasons.
In
less than two weeks the New Orleans set
out on the first voyage along the route that Livingston and Fulton had
envisioned for it, New Orleans to Natchez and back. The ship could make 3mph
upstream and 10mph downstream meaning she could complete a round trip every
three weeks. Fulton and Livingston began
to sell stock in their steamboat which realized a profit estimated to be about $20,000
in its first year in operation. Edward Livingston also helped his brother and
Fulton get a monopoly on steam travel in the territory. Violating the law would
mean having to pay Fulton and Livingston $5,000 for each violation and forfeit any
unauthorized steamboats to them.
The
Chancellor did not live long enough to enjoy the monopoly on the river to its
fullest; he died in 1813. The New Orleans
met its end in July of 1814. She snagged a log or some other obstruction near
Baton Rouge which punctured her hull. The ship sank but her engine was removed
and used in a later vessel of the same name.
In
1989 author Clive Cussler and his National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA)
set out to try to find the final resting place of the original New Orleans. They surveyed the shore and
were able to come up with a “ballpark” location for the boat but unfortunately the
Army Corps of Engineers had laid a steel and concrete revetment mattress over
the site in 1971 to help control erosion. This made finding an exact location
using various forms of metal detectors impossible.
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| 1911 "replica" of the New Orleans I mean they are both boats... |
Sources:
NUMA Expeditions New
Orleans www.numa.net
A Critical Account of
the Beginning of Steamboat Navigation on the Western Rivers of the United
States, Pittsburg Legal Journal, Vol 59 No. 42 (21 October 1911) pp 570-591
The Rambler in North
America by Charles Joseph Latrobe 1832-1833
The Sea Hunters II by Clive Cussler and Craig Dirgo G. Putnam’s Sons 2004
