{"id":2235,"date":"2017-10-01T01:55:39","date_gmt":"2017-10-01T01:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/?p=2235"},"modified":"2017-10-01T12:36:27","modified_gmt":"2017-10-01T12:36:27","slug":"steamboats-impacted-the-south-despite-quaky-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/?p=2235","title":{"rendered":"Steamboats Impacted The South Despite Quaky Start"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eleventh in A Series<\/em><\/p>\n

By Matt Chaney, for ChaneysBlog.com<\/p>\n

Posted Saturday, September 30, 2017<\/p>\n

Copyright\u00a0\u00a92017 for historical arrangement by Matthew L. Chaney<\/p>\n

America’s early steamboats shocked witnesses along the major rivers, conjuring fear in many, doom in the very naive.<\/p>\n

Thurlow Weed was a boy at Catskill, N.Y., in 1807, when he joined chums on an island to watch Robert Fulton\u2019s maiden steam voyage up the Hudson. \u201cWe had heard for several days that some sort of vessel was coming up the river against wind and without sails. Such a thing was regarded as utterly impossible,\u201d Weed later recalled, as a prominent newspaperman.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinally we saw the monster coming, vomiting fire and smoke and throwing up sparks. The paddlewheels were not covered. We were frightened almost out of our senses, and at first ran out of sight, but presently took courage and cheered the pioneer steamboat with the people that lined the bank of the river.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Fulton-backed steamboat launched on the Ohio River from Pittsburgh in late 1811, christened the “New Orleans.” The $38,000 steamer was built “for the navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, to carry goods and passengers between New Orleans and the different towns of those rivers,” eastern newspapers reported.<\/p>\n

“We are told she is an excellent well-constructed vessel;\u00a0 about 140 feet long, will carry 400 tons of goods, has elegant accommodations for passengers, and is every way fitted in great style. It is supposed that she will go 35 miles\u00a0 a day against the stream… considerably faster with the current.”<\/p>\n

The news moved slower downriver from Pittsburgh than the boat, however. The Ohio and Mississippi valleys\u2014encompassing most western states and incorporated U.S. territories\u2014stood hardly informed that a “steam boat” was en route. And epic earthquakes would raise tension as the foreign machine appeared on western waters.<\/p>\n

The New Orleans steamed into Louisville, Ky., by moonlight, alarming inhabitants of both shores, Indiana Territory as well. \u201cThe novel appearance of the vessel, and the fearful rapidity with which it made its passage over the broad reaches of the river, excited a mixture of terror and surprise among many of the settlers on the banks, whom the rumor of such an invention had never reached,\u201d The Louisville Courier<\/em> later recounted.<\/p>\n

Farther downstream on the Indiana shore, the steamer attracted settlers who expressed \u201cgreat alarm,\u201d but not because of the boat. Locals attested of hearing \u201cstrange noises on the river and in the woods.\u201d They claimed the shoreline shook earlier that day, \u201cinsisting that they had repeatedly felt the earth tremble.\u201d Indeed, the earthquakes of 1811-12 had begun from an epicenter in Missouri Territory at New Madrid, along the Mississippi River, some 170 miles southwest of the steamboat’s location.<\/p>\n

Small tremors had been undetectable aboard the steamboat on the Ohio, with the loud engine’s rattling everything, but deck occupants felt jarring that night at anchor. The next day, as a crewman would recall, \u201cwe heard a rushing sound, violent splash, and finally saw large portions of the shore tearing away from the land and lapsing into the watery abyss. It was a startling scene\u2026 the crew spoke but little.\u201d<\/p>\n

The steamboat reached the mouth of the Ohio a week before Christmas, at confluence with the Mississippi River, and crewmen moored on the southern tip of Illinois Territory, future site of Cairo settlement. Directly across the Mississippi sprawled a vast alluvial plain\u2014Missouri Territory of swamp and virgin timber, sparsely populated. A few folks met the steamer on the Illinois side, woodcutters drawn to the landing by talk of \u201ca great monster walking upon the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

But earthquakes had become everyone’s concern. Massive shocks erupted as the steamboat headed southward on the Mississippi around Dec. 19, 1811. \u201cTrees along the shores of the river were seen waving and nodding\u2026 and all this violence seemed only to increase,\u201d the Louisville paper recounted. \u201cThe steamer New Orleans had no choice but to pursue its course down the river… a fearful stream, now unusually swollen, turbid and full of trees.\u201d<\/p>\n

The boat docked for a time at New Madrid village, seismic ground zero where the \u201cgreatest distress and consternation\u201d gripped residents. \u201cPart of the population had fled in terror to the higher grounds; others prayed\u2026 as the earth was opening in fissures on every side, and their houses hourly falling around them.\u201d Superstitious types blamed the steamboat, declaring its manifestation in concert with a current comet at night triggered catastrophic earthquakes and likely end of time.<\/p>\n

Thirty miles downstream, at Little Prairie village in future Pemiscot County, Missouri, the steamer was \u201cbrought to by the cries of some of the people who thought the earth was gradually sinking,\u201d stated a Natchez dispatch. \u201cSome distance below the Little Prairie the bank of the river had caved in to a considerable extent, and two islands had almost disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n

The steamboat chugged on, passing the Chickasaw Bluffs where Memphis would soon rise,\u00a0to\u00a0reach Natchez on Dec. 30 and load cotton bales, the ship’s first cargo. The steamer finally docked at namesake city New Orleans on Jan. 10, 1812; Louisiana statehood was pending, three months away.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe New Orleans<\/em> entered the American bloodstream at a propitious moment,\u201d observed modern author Robert H. Gudmestad in his Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom<\/em>. \u201cThe Louisiana Purchase had recently doubled the country\u2019s size and Americans were eagerly moving over the Appalachian Mountains.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 1860, states of the great Mississippi drainage basin boasted almost half the American population. \u201cThe interior South\u2014those slave states west of the Appalachian Mountains\u2014figured prominently in these changes,\u201d Gudmestad noted. \u201cIts population shot from 806,000 to nearly 7 million people\u2026 When the New Orleans<\/em> completed its first voyage, over 17,000 people lived in New Orleans. Fifty years later, 168,675 people dwelled there. Memphis, a city that did not exist in 1812 and owed its existence to riverboats, was the country\u2019s thirty-eighth largest city in 1860.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA decade after the first riverboat touched the New Orleans levee, over seventy steamers prowled the western waters. By the time Abraham Lincoln took up residence in the White House, the number surpassed eight hundred.”<\/p>\n

Select References<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Talk With Thurlow Weed. (1878, July 1). New York Tribune<\/em>, p. 2.<\/p>\n

Bagnall, N.H. (1996). On Shaky Ground: The New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812<\/em>.\u00a0 University of Missouri Press: Columbia.<\/p>\n

Gudmestad, Robert H. (2011). Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom<\/em>. Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge.<\/p>\n

La Pariere. (1884, Jan. 6). Opening The Ohio: Initial Trip of the New Orleans, Made During the Convulsive Earthquake of 1811. Louisville Courier Journal<\/em> KY, p. 9.<\/p>\n

Latrobe, C. (1856, Feb. 15). First Steamboat in the West. Louisville Courier Journal<\/em> KY, p. 1.<\/p>\n

Natchez, Jan. 2. (1812, Feb. 22). Missouri Gazette and Public Advertiser<\/em>, St. Louis, p. 2.<\/p>\n

Steam Boat. (1811, Oct. 18). Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette<\/em>, p.2.<\/p>\n

Matt Chaney is a writer and consultant in Missouri, USA. For more information visit\u00a0<\/em>www.fourwallspublishing.com.\u00a0Email:\u00a0<\/em>mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eleventh in A Series By Matt Chaney, for ChaneysBlog.com Posted Saturday, September 30, 2017 Copyright\u00a0\u00a92017 for historical arrangement by Matthew L. Chaney America’s early steamboats shocked witnesses along the major rivers, conjuring fear in many, doom in the very naive. Thurlow Weed was a boy at Catskill, N.Y., in 1807, when he joined chums on … Continue reading Steamboats Impacted The South Despite Quaky Start<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[283,374],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ywFp-A3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2235"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2273,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235\/revisions\/2273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}