This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
No vessel ever had such a welcome as the first Mississippi River steamboat. The "New Orleans" was a frail sidewheeler 116 feet long, built in Pittsburgh by Robert Livingston, who had also designed the "Clermont." By October the 1st, 1811, it had reached Louisville, Kentucky, on its way down the Ohio River toward New Orleans. Its captain was Nicholas Roosevelt, a distant relative of the future presidents.
The citizens of New Orleans began preparations for a grand welcome for this boat that would revolutionize transportation on the great river, but the Mississippi beat them to it. At two o'clock on the morning of December 16th, 1811, as the boat safely crossed the falls of the Ohio and prepared to take on the Mississippi River, the earth rumbled, heaved, and split asunder. It was the first shock of the New Madrid Earthquake, the largest ever in North America.
In the "night of horrors" which followed, much of the town of New Madrid, Missouri, disappeared under the water, as did other nearby communities. The waters of the Mississippi changed directions and turned red, new channels appeared where forests had been, and the "New Orleans" found itself steaming among treetops. Fissures opened up to swallow whole islands. Lakes appeared where none had been, including 65-square-mile Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee. Birds flew in aimless flocks, animals drowned themselves in panic. Indians dressed in warpaint sailed out into the river convinced of evil omens.
The New Madrid Quake was felt from New Orleans to Boston and Washington, D. C. During the next few months, there were 1,874 separate aftershocks—four of them stronger than the 1964 Alaska quake. Only the sparse population kept death to a minimum.
The small steamboat survived and reached cheering crowds in New Orleans on January 12th, 1812. It went to work immediately. Its ability to move upstream against the current marked the beginning of the conquest of the Mississippi.
Was the earthquake and the arrival of the boat a coincidence? I think not. The Mississippi wanted to note the occasion. But was it a welcome—or a warming?
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
