Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008 - (Page 45)

decided to “slip the kedge anchor,” in other words, let the line go. Then, by the pilot’s order, and “to prevent the vessel drifting back upon the same bank, and her total loss or great danger, the stream cable was also cut by the pilot’s order.” The Stratford then passed the bar with no further accident, and proceeded up the river. The subsequent protest was of course aimed at the “winds and currents and shoals of the river” as being the cause of having to cut the cables. Later, the crew did go back and recover the anchors and the cables. Now if ocean-going sailing vessels give new meaning to the phrase “passing the bar,” those that did still had to make it through English Turn, the double bend below New Orleans so sinuous that the same wind that helped sailing vessels get up against the current blew against them in making the infamous Turn. They could only wait at anchor for the wind to change, which often took days. In one case, the schooner Argo left Mobile on March 18, 1820, arrived at the Mississippi, and passed the bar without incident. She sailed up the river, and twelve miles below English Turn piled on all sail. In two hours, she managed to ascend the Turn as far as the other shipping anchored there. The crew then put out their small bow anchor in ten fathoms of water to wait for the wind to come out of the North-Northwest. But the anchor did not catch, and they drifted about three-quarters of mile into water 19 fathoms deep before it did. At that point “she brought up all of a sudden,” which was curious. They then waited two days for the wind to change, and when it did, they hove short, pulling the lines hand over hand till the vessel lay over the anchor. In the words of Captain Henry Tibbets Jr. this is what happened next: “They hove short; set the mainsail and took the corner rope to the windlass; after heaving a strain, set the topsail; they then hove till they parted the corner rope. They now set ALL sail, [and] with a brisk breeze [blowing], heaving at the windlass, and yawing and shearing the vessel as much as the cable would allow. In this manner they hove for three hours with all the purchase they could get on the windlass, and it appearing evident that the anchor had hooked a sunken log at the bottom, which baffled all their efforts, it was determined at a consultation held, that they could not proceed on the voyage without cutting the cable, which was done, and the wind being fair they continued their course up the river.” When they got to New Orleans, of course, they protested against “the obstructions of the river” as the cause of the loss of the cable and anchor. In reflecting on these actions, one might note that seamen valued every piece of equipment they had, and lamented any loss. The system, perhaps, had incentives to ensure this, but in any case it was not a throwaway society. In 1834, the steamboat Le Flore struck a tree-sized snag on her way from New Orleans to Manchester, Mississippi on the Yazoo River. The trunk went through the starboard bow, tore off the railing, carried away the anchor and knocked a chest of furniture into the water. Undefeated, the crew spent an hour searching for the chest, found it, and delivered it to Natchez. Four years later the Mohican, on her way from Big Bend Shoals on the Tennessee to New Orleans carrying cotton, tobacco, corn, peas and beans, found herself on fire above the boiler deck opposite the Morgan Plantation in Pointe Coupée. With the wind fanning sparks coming out of the pipes and the flames increasing, the crew threw all the burning cotton bales overboard. They then lay by all night at Morgan’s landing and the next day fished ten bales out of the river Thriftiness is a virtue Boatmen on the Missouri,1846, by George Caleb Bingham, from the collection of the de Young Museum, San Francisco. Fall 2008/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 45

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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