Volume 16 , Issue 4

(1811) 1st Steamboat On Western Waters Survived Earthquakes

It was during the New Madrid earthquakes, the first steamboat travel on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers took place. The New Orleans set out from Pittsburgh on 20 October 1811, bound for New Orleans.

Captain Nicholas Roosevelt had brought along his young wife, their two year old daughter, and a Labrador dog. Ten days after leaving Pittsburgh, his wife Lydia gave birth to a son in Louisville, Kentucky. They waited a while for her to recover, and for the water to rise prior to crossing the dangerous waters and coral reef at the Falls of the Ohio. On the night before the day of the earthquake, 16th december, the steamboat was anchored near Owensboro, Kentucky, about 200 miles east of New Madrid, Missouri. Captain Roosevelt's dog, Tiger, insisted on staying in the cabin with them instead of sleeping on the deck.

Without realizing it, the Roosevelts were heading straight towards the epicenter of the greatest earthquake in American history. Their steamboat was thought instead ton e the cause of the earthquake by many who saw it. At Henderson, Kentucky, where no chimneys were left standing, they stopped to visit their friends, the painter John James Audubon and his wife Lucy. Floating in the middle of the Ohio River they were protected from the earthquake tremors shanking the land, but not front he hazards of falling trees, disappearing islands, and collapsing river banks. After entering Indian Territory on 18th December, they were chased by Indians who figured the "fire canoe" had caused the earthquake, but they managed to escape capture by outrunning them. They even had a small cabin fire that night which they managed to put out.

Thousands of trees were left floating on the waters of the Mississippi as they approached New Madrid, Missouri on the 19th December (three days after the earthquake). The town of New Madrid had been destroyed. The Roosevelts didn't dare to stop and pick up a few survivors, for fear of being overrun, and they were without supplies. They tied up at one island, and the island sank during the night. Their dog, Tiger, alerted them to oncoming tremors. On December 22 (1811), they encountered the British naturalist John Bradbury on a boat at the mouth of the ST. Francis River, who told them the town of Big Prairie was gone.

Captain Roosevelt and his family arrived at Natchez, Mississippi on the 30th December, and celebrated the first marriage aboard a steamboat on steamboat on the 31st December, when the steamboat engineer married Lydia's maid. They arrived at New Orleans on 10 January 1812, safe and sound, after traveling nineteen thousand miles from Pittsburgh on the first steamboat to travel the western waters.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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