Credit: Artist, unknown.
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The first flatboats were only four to six feet in width, but were soon typically about fifty-five feet long by sixteen broad. Rectangular in shape and flat-bottomed, they were constructed of green oak plank, with no nails or iron. The heavy oak planks were fastened by wooden pins to still heavier frames of timber. The seams were originally caulked with pitch or tar, but as this was expensive, tow or some other pliant substance was later used. They usually had boarded sides two to three feet high. The width and length depended on the needs of the builder. Even fully loaded, they drew only about three feet of water. The smaller craft, used for shorter trips, were called Broadhorns or Kentucky Boats. The larger long distance craft were called Mississippi Broadhorns, New Orleans Boats, Barges, or Arks (a humorous reference). Huck Finn refers to a flatboat as a 'trading scow' in Chapter 3 of Life on the Mississippi, by Mark Twain.
For navigation, they were rigged with sweeps on the sides, a rudder or steering-oar, and a short front sweep called a "gouger". The great side sweeps, resembling horns from a distance, gave rise to the name Broadhorn. The sweeps were used for directing the flatboat into the current, or for pulling into slack water when landing, rather than for propulsion. Some flatboats also had hawsers mounted to reels; the hawser (rope) would be attached to a tree or stump and wound in to assist landing. Smaller craft had a shelter with a cooking area. Larger flatboats had a rear shelter for horses and cattle, and a forward cabin for the family, and the largest were fully covered.
The settler's boat, navigated ever further down the eastern tributaries of the Mississippi in search of new land, was filled with household goods and farm stock. From the roof of the cabin that housed the family, cocks crew and hens cackled, while stolid cattle peered over the parapet of logs built about the edge for protection against attacking Indians or freebooters. Sometimes several families would combine to build one ark. Often, when they chose a place to stop, they would re-use the ark's lumber when building a cabin.
As these settlements multiplied, with increasing emigration to the west and southwest, river life became full of variety. In some years more than a thousand boats were counted passing Marietta. Several boats would lash together and make the voyage to New Orleans, sometimes navigating months in company. There would be songs and dances; the notes of the violin ~ an almost universal instrument among the flatboatmen ~ sounded across the waters by night to the lonely cabins on the shores, and the settlers would sometimes put off in their skiffs to meet the unknown voyagers, ask for the news from the east, and share in their revels.
Flatboats built by traders were able to carry as much as thirty or forty tons of cargo per trip. Down the Ohio came cloth, ammunition, tools, agricultural implements, and the ever-present whisky, which formed a principal staple of trade along the rivers. The proprieter would trade en route, blowing a horn to attrack willing custom at any signs of settlement. Trade was mostly a matter of barter since currency was seldom seen in remote areas. Skins and agricultural products were all the purchasers had to trade, and the merchant starting from Pittsburg with a cargo of manufactured goods, would arrive at New Orleans, perhaps three months later, with a cabin filled with furs and a deck piled high with the products of the farm. Here he would sell his cargo, perhaps for shipment to Europe. The flatboat, unsuitable for upriver travel, would be sold for lumber, and the trader would begin his perilous journey back again to the head of navigation, wary of anyone who might seize his profit or his life.
Although the flatboat preceded the steamboat, it was in regular use for many years after steamboats had become prevalent.
Credit: Artist, unknown.
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Quote:~
'In 1809 a New York man, by name Nicholas J. Roosevelt, set out from Pittsburg in a flatboat of the usual type, to make the voyage to New Orleans. He carried no cargo of goods for sale, nor did he convey any band of intended settlers. ...Roosevelt was the partner of Fulton and Livingston in their new steamboat enterprise, having himself suggested the vertical paddle-wheel, which for more than a half a century was the favorite means of utilizing steam power for the propulsion of boats. He was firm in the belief that the greatest future for the steamboat was on the great rivers that tied together the rapidly growing commonwealths of the middle west, and he undertook this voyage for the purpose of studying the channel and the current of the rivers, with the view to putting a steamer on them. Wise men assured him that on the upper river his scheme was destined to failure. Could a boat laden with a heavy engine be made of so light a draught as to pass over the shallows of the Ohio? Could it run the falls at Louisville, or be dragged around them as the flatboats often were? Clearly not. The only really serviceable type of river craft was the flatboat, for it would go where there was water enough for a muskrat to swim in, would glide unscathed over the concealed snag or, thrusting its corner into the soft mud of some protruding bank, swing around and go on as well stern first as before. The flatboat was the sum of human ingenuity applied to river navigation. Even barges were proving failures and passing into disuse, as the cost of poling them upstream was greater than any profit to be reaped from the voyage.'
Credit:~ American Merchant Ships and Sailors, by Willis J. Abbot, published in 1902. Copyright free e-book credit: ProjectGutenberg.
Credit: Artist, Ray Brown.
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'I took passage on a flatboat or as they were known in river parlance, a "Mississippi broadhorn," the poor man's transfer. Out on the broad bosom of the Father of Waters these boats floated from the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee and numerous smaller tributaries, laden with the products of the vast region contiguous, to be floated down to New Orleans and thence distributed around the seaboard by sailing vessels. The flatboat having served its purpose, it was broken up and sold for lumber and fuel, while the owner pocketed his cash and wended his way home, generally on foot up through Mississippi, where he was liable to he interviewed by footpads and relieved of his money if not his life. Many were the gruesome stories of robbery and murder thus committed by old John A. Merrill and his band of freebooters. My transport was loaded with ice, artificial ice being a thing unheard of. The crew consisted of three men, whose principal duty was to look out for "sawyers," sunken trees, and to keep clear of eddies, for a boat once drawn into the swirl would go floating around indefinitely, in danger of colliding with the ever-accumulating drift and being sunk.'
Credit:~ The memoirs of Noah Smithwick, published in Evolution of a State.
Credit: Artist, George Caleb Bingham.
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In 1819 artist George Caleb Bingham’s family, like many others, moved west of the Mississippi. They settled in the wilderness town of Franklin in the Missouri Territory, which would become a state two years later. Farmers in the area shipped crops and animals in flatboats down the nearby Missouri River to the Mississippi, and on to the port of New Orleans. From there goods were shipped to markets on the east coast of the United States.
Bingham was a self-trained painter who lived most of his life in Missouri. Working before America’s vastness was made accessible by roads and railways, Bingham found his subjects in the boatmen and trappers who populated his state’s great rivers, the Missouri and the Mississippi. Through these subjects he captured a taste of life in the West.
Credit:~ National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Credit: Artist, Gary R. Lucy.
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One of the most famous landmarks on the Mississippi, Tower Rock is a massive limestone outcrop rising some 90 feet above the riverbed, located between Chester, Illinois and Cape Girardeau, Missouri. In high flow, turbulent water passes around the rock, forming a powerful whirlpool as it re-enters the main channel. In 1673, Indians warned explorers Marquette & Joliet of "a demon that devours travellers". Later, in 1803, Lewis & Clark also recorded this notable river feature in their exploration journals, even climbing it to measure its height. Artist Karl Bodmer paused to sketch it in 1832.
During the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant passed Tower Rock several times as he directed troops along the river. Later as President, he refused to approve a river channel improvement that would have blasted the rock into oblivion.
Here, Gary R. Lucy expertly renders a group of flatboatmen passing Tower Rock late at night. Two flatboats are tied together; a common practice on easier reaches which afforded greater protection and reduced the number of men needed to navigate. Of course, such a meeting was also conducive to a drop of recreation. The card players in this scene are observed by onlookers who appear lubricated to various degrees, ably supervised by the dog.
The full title of this work is: "Mississippi River Flatboatmen - Navigating Past Tower Rock ~ 1831"
Credit: Currier & Ives.
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Published in 1870, this hand-colored lithograph is one of Currier's most famous Mississippi River scenes, illustrating a flatboat laden with kegs and other cargo, bound down the lower river. A sternwheeler is nearby, a sidewheeler appears to be landing at a settlement, while still more steamboats ply the busy waterway in the distance.
A fiddle player and a dancing crew member complete this scene, which was already part of river folklore when published.
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