This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
The Greek strongman, Hercules, performed his twelve labors satisfactorily, but had the gods really wanted to test his strength, they would have added a thirteenth task: taking a keelboat up the Mississippi River from New Orleans all the way to the Falls of St. Anthony.
Europeans who arrived at the Upper Mississippi in 1673 found it easy to float downstream, but impossible to return their rafts and flatboats against the three-to-five-mile-an-hour current. A new kind of boat was needed to realize the grand dreams of trade, especially toward the end of the 18th century, when lead was discovered along the Upper Mississippi at Dubuque and Galena.
The result was the keelboat, a rough, shallow draft freight boat looking like smaller versions of what passes for Noah's ark in Sunday school books. Keelboats dominated river traffic until the steamboat arrived in the 1820s. They were fifty to seventy-five feet long, pointed at both ends, with a roofed cargo hold in the middle. Unlike other flat-bottomed river boats, this one had a keel to aid steering.
Downstream, the keelboat rode the current as other boats did. Upstream was another matter. Most often, the keelboat was propelled up the Mississippi by a crew of five or six men on each side walking from the front to the back of the boat pushing a long pole against the river bottom to propel the boat upstream. They had to do this over and over again to keep the boat moving. At other times, two of the crew walked along shore ahead of the boat to tie a rope to a tree a half mile or so ahead. The crew then pulled the rope in, moving the boat toward the tree, and then repeated the process over and over.
Keelboat crews were reputed to be especially rough and tough when they hit town after a trip. Put yourself in their place. Imagine pushing your out-of-gas car the block to a Texaco station. Now imagine doing that for a thousand miles. Wouldn't you be a bit rough and tough? Even Hercules might require a beer or two after a keelboat trip.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
