Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008 - (Page 39)

obstructions and shoals of the river, the rain, the River. This made Louisville, Kentucky (a.k.a. Shipping ice, the bottom, or another vessel for doing Port) and Muscle Shoals, Alabama the heads of damage to his boat or cargo. He points out that navigation on the Ohio and Tennessee rivers for a the damage suffered “ought not to be long time. The protests show that shallow water imputed to any fault, negligence, nor and weather were more mismanagement of himself or persistent enemies, if less the others of his company.” In final, than the snag. this way he makes his case Groundings, leaks, and rain “hordes of rough and hardy while his memory is clear, his probably did more men; rude, uneducated, brave, witnesses are near, and the widespread harm to the suffering terrific hardships notary is available. flatboatman’s precious cargo What kind of faith can than incidents of sinking. with sailor-like stoicism, heavy historians put into statements Rain could cause flour barrels drinkers, coarse frolickers … by interested parties that are to swell and pop their tops off, prodigious braggarts,yet in full of prefabricated clauses? wetting the contents and Civil law notarial acts are full bringing on mold. And the the main, honest,trustworthy, of received constructions sheer — a sudden, faithful to promises and duty rendered into stock phrases. uncontrollable veer of the and often picturesquely Cynics call them boilerplate, rudder — could cause a boat magnanimous.” but there is another way to to wreck against the shore characterize them. Our French from out of nowhere on a —Mark Twain ancestors called them les perfectly clear day. Some of formulaires. They represented the losses were owed to the the wisdom of centuries lack of a boat being tight and reduced to a formula. The formulas clothed notarial acts staunch, well manned and provided. This researchers can with a proper language to guard against vagueness, and to surmise if a passenger is involved in the telling. And ensure authenticity and completeness. The standardized accidents could defeat a vessel in the harbor at the end of a product makes it possible to extract a consistent rate of trip, following a clean journey all the way to New Orleans. evidence, and in this case begin to judge the character of the This must have been enough to take the starch out of all but flatboatman, who appears in history in his billowy shirt and straw or stove pipe hat and suspenders both idealized Louis C. Hunter’s Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History (1949) is considered one of the best researched books and notorious. about Mississippi River commerce in the 19th century. Historians are now Did the typical flatboatman’s rugged constitution researching firsthand accounts of river journeys gone awry by way of produce only illiterate, uncouth behavior, as portrayed in oral tradition, or was he more like George Caleb Bingham’s handwritten and notarized “ship’s protests,” a large number of which are stored at the New Orleans Notarial Archives. 1857 Jolly Flatboatmen, rosy-cheeked, musical, smiling and friendly, the salt of the Midwestern frontier? How did he really behave on the river in the face of frustration and peril? Was he professional? To what lengths would he go to survive the hazards of the river and faithfully deposit his cargo on the levee in New Orleans from as far away as Pittsburgh? And what were the odds of a successful voyage? Hunter’s Steamboats on the Western Rivers provides a statistical framework to suspend the facts of individual voyages. Most accidents were directly related to ripples and shoals, bars and rapids, and partially submerged objects, ranging from rotten old hulks to snags and sawyers. The most important fixed obstacles, Hunter reported, were the Falls of the Ohio and Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee UNPREDICTABLE JOURNEYS Fall 2008/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 39

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008 Contents Friends Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities New Orleans Immortelle The Historic New Orleans Collection Highland-Fairfield: The Historic Heart of Shreveport The Ogden Museum of Southern Art Perils of the Mississippi River Louisiana Foodways Harvest of Life King Oliver: The Forgotten King of Jazz Louisiana Architecture Jazz Notes Louisiana State Museum Eye of the Storm Louisiana Association of Museums Soul Resin Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008

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