Hippolyte: Little Known Facts About Alexis De Tocqueville's Lesser Known Brother

By Ken Hinrichs

Arriving from France in the Spring of 1831 on a mission to learn about America and its unique new government, a young Alexis de Tocqueville future world renowned writer and philosopher found many things to excite and inspire him, especially in its third largest city, New Orleans.

At the time, the Crescent City was the most wide open of Americas cities. It was a thriving melting pot teaming with creativity, intrigue, and heavy on personality. Blood was shed nearly every day beneath the huge spreading oaks of City Park. When war came, New Orleans assumed the mantle of largest city in the Confederacy and the Unions Number One Military Target.

Secretly accompanying Tocqueville to America was his brother, Hippolyte. In December of 1831, the two accidently separated, never to see each other again. Alexis returned to France and fame as a world renowned social commentator, Hippolyte stayed on in America and accomplished even more in his own way.

This is Hippolytes story. It is also the story of Abraham Lincoln, steamboating, the pirate Jean Lafitte, a slave named Tom Armstrong, a host of other famous American heroes, of the birth of technology, and of Americas Civil War. It is also the story of Longfellow, Louisiana, Huey Long, and a love affair so intense it is commemorated in one of Americas most famous pieces of classic literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475989847

Ken Hinrichs

KEN HINRICHS and his wife are the parents of three sons and share time between Niceville, Florida and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

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Copyright © 2013 Ken Hinrichs.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-8983-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-8984-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013908700

iUniverse rev. date: 06/11/2013

CONTENTS

Preface—Decouverte

Book One Secousse, Cliquetis Et Rouleau

Chapter One—Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Chapter Two—Are The Stars Out Tonight?

Chapter Three—New Madrid, That Toddlin’ Town

Book Two Chant Le Blues

Chapter One—I Only Have Ice For You

Chapter Two—Long Distance Information Give Me Memphis, Tennessee

Chapter Three—They Ain’t Heavy, They’re Our Brothers

Chapter Four—One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians

Chapter Five—The Times, They Are A Changin’

Chapter Six—Sometimes I Question Why I’M Still Here

Chapter Seven—Hot, Hot, Hot

Chapter Eight—The Fault Of The New Madrid

Chapter Nine—All The Leaves Are Brown

Chapter Ten—Lessez Les Bon Temps Rouler!

Chapter Eleven—Proud Papa Noel

Chapter Twelve—Takin’ The Bacon

Chapter Thirteen—Angelina

Book Three Vingt Ans Avant

Chapter One—Sugar In The Morning, Sugar In The Evening

Chapter Two—!Live Not On Evil

Chapter Three—He’s A Rebel

Chapter Four—The Purfuit Of Happinefs

Chapter Five—Blood On Sugar

Book Four Coup Du Chance

Chapter One—Flatfeet, Flatlands, Flatbush, Flatboats And Flatulence

Chapter Two—They Shoot Horse Thieves, Don’t They?

Chapter Three—Shirley, Molly And Donald’s Son

Chapter Four—Unchained Melody

Chapter Five—Down In New Orleans

Chapter Six—A Hippo On The Loose On The Streets Of New Orleans

Chapter Seven—Monday Monday, Fat Tuesday

Chapter Eight—Homecoming In Baton Rouge

Chapter Nine—I Fought The Law And The Law Won

Chapter Ten—You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling

Chapter Eleven—There Is A House In New Orleans

Chapter Twelve—Great-Great-Great-Grandpa Tom’s Cabin

Chapter Thirteen—Haitian Party Animal

Chapter Fourteen—The Landry Knife

Chapter Fifteen—Remembering The Alamo

Chapter Sixteen—Don’t Know Why, There’s No Sun Up In The Sky

Chapter Seventeen—Hurricane Marie

Chapter Eighteen—You Do That Voodoo That You Do So Well

Chapter Nineteen—Our Neighbors, Louis And Delphine

Chapter Twenty—Deliver De Letter De Sooner De Better

Chapter Twenty-One—Boudreaux, Thibodaux And Marie

Chapter Twenty-Two— Gimme’ The Fax. Just The Fax

Chapter Twenty-Three—Bienvenue ‘A Louisiane!

Chapter Twenty-Four—Name Droppings Of The Wurst Kind

Chapter Twenty-Five—La Cochon De Lait

Chapter Twenty-Six—A Golden Shower In Golden Meadow

Chapter Twenty-Seven—A Velvet Glove

Chapter Twenty-Eight—La Code Duello

Chapter Twenty-Nine—Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?

Chapter Thirty—Smells Like Turpentine And Looks Like India Ink

Chapter Thirty-One—Angelina On My Mind

Chapter Thirty-Two—Yellow Is The Color

Chapter Thirty-Three—Half Past Mark Twain

Chapter Thirty-Four—Too Thick To Drink. Too Thin To Plow

Chapter Thirty-Five—Rollin’ Down The River

Chapter Thirty-Six—Rah Rah Sis Boom Bah

Chapter Thirty-Seven—Goldilocks And Sam The Sham

Chapter Thirty-Eight—Lousiana 45—Lincoln 0

Chapter Thirty-Nine—Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Chapter Forty—Hold That Tiger

Chapter Forty-One—Chattanooga Choo Choo

Chapter Forty-Two—When The Tough Get Going, The Going Gets Tough

Chapter Forty-Three—Damn The Mosquitoes. Full Speed Ahead!

Chapter Forty-Four—Happy Trails To You

Chapter Forty-Five—Twain Again

Chapter Forty-Six—Arkansas, My Arkansas

Chapter Forty-Seven—I See Fire And I See Rain

Chapter Forty-Eight—Busted Flat In Baton Rouge

Chapter Forty-Nine—A.B. Kinglake

Chapter Fifty—Ding-A-Dong-Ding Blue Moons

Chapter Fifty-One—Ford, Lincoln And Mercury

Chapter Fifty-Two—Goin’ Back To Springfield

Chapter Fifty-Three—Return To Sender

Chapter Fifty-Four—Don’t Know When I’ll Be Back Again

Chapter Fifty-Five—The Sultana

Chapter Fifty-Six—Yes, Virginia

Chapter Fifty-Seven—An Uncivil War

Book Five Les Français L’appellent Un Épilogue

Chapter One—Upon The Waters Dark And Rude

Chapter Two—Doors Close, Windows Open

Acknowledgements

To want to be free is to be free.

Ludwig Borne

Der ewige Jude

Our destiny is frequently met in the

very paths we take to avoid it.

Jean de La Fontaine

La fable 16 (L’Horoscope)

House of the Rising Sun

There is a house in New Orleans,

They call the Rising Sun.

And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy,

And God, I know, I’m one.

Copyright 1966

Traditional, Arr: Burdon/Chandler/Price/Steele/Valentine

PREFACE—DECOUVERTE

Following its revolution, the new French democracy sent Alexis de Tocqueville, 26, and Gustave de Beaumont, 29, on a tour of America to study prison life. The simple question the two men were to answer was, How does a democracy humanely imprison its citizens?

With none of today’s communications technology at their disposal, Tocqueville and Beaumont recorded their daily observations in journals and letters home. It is through these documents and subsequent publications, particularly Tocqueville’s De la democratie en Amerique (On Democracy in America), that we know what occurred during their travels across early America in 1831 and 1832.

We don’t know everything though. Curiously, there is a two week gap in their normally detailed journals that occurs over the final two weeks of December 1831. In the final entry of clarity, Gustave writes, "The seventeenth . . . arrival at Memphis. Alas! The Mississipi (SIC) is covered with ice and navigation is suspended. Memphis!! Large as Beaumont-la-Chartre (his small hometown). What a fall! Nothing to see, neither men nor things." Later: "We are resolved to wait a week. If (a steamboat) does not come in that interval, we shall leave for Washington by retracing our steps (overland, back to the East Coast).

Tocqueville hints at staying on in Memphis: Several steamboats are trapped in the ice. They are as motionless as rocks. Obtuse undated entries, very much out of style with the rest of the journals, follow until the pair’s arrival in New Orleans on the first day of 1832. It is then that detailed entries resume.

What occurred during that 14 day interval is under debate. Some historians believe the two remained in Memphis unable to travel because of the ice. A few of the entries support this. Others however suggest that the stay-over never occurred—that Tocqueville and Beaumont left the city immediately, heading for New Orleans aboard the steamboat, Louisville. After pages and pages of detailed observations, why the vagueness?

While Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clèrel de Tocqueville and Gustave Auguste de Beaumont de La Bonninière must have visited many places and met many Americans during the last half of December 1831, curiously their experiences in that last half of the last month of 1831 are largely left to our imaginations.

For reasons related to my Baton Rouge, Louisiana employment, I studied the life of Tocqueville and his family and noted that he had an older brother—Hippolyte Landry Clèrel de Tocqueville. While Alexis became world famous, little is known about the brother. In family histories, Hippolyte is born, marries well, dabbles in real estate and horticulture, vanishes in early adulthood, reappears to accompany Alex on a trip to Algeria, disappears again, attends the death of Alexis in 1859, and then vanishes again for good. Some in his old hometown say he left as a youth to serve as a gendarme in Le Havre and was never seen again. Family histories claim he outlived Alexis by nearly twenty years but there are few details available. A small tomb bears his name. It is located in a small cemetery far from the rest of his family’s crypts. Rumors persist however that the tomb is empty.

As I dug into what motivated young Alexis, it became obvious that his trip to the New World was prompted as much from curiosity and adventure as it was for the government stipulated penal research. The study was a vehicle used to get him to the U.S. on the government’s tab. This was, it appeared, his and Beaumont’s Great Youthful Adventure. Upon their return to France, the two did in fact collaborate on a publication called Du systeme penitentiare aux Etats-Unis et son application en France (The Penitentiary System of the United States and its Application in France). It is a remarkably dry and lifeless read.

Drawing from their American travels, both men went on to write again. Beaumont published Marie, ou l’Esclavage aux Estats-Unis (Marie, or Slavery in the United States), a novel of a beautiful slave woman—half-white, half-black. It is clear that Gustave retained vivid memories of his short visit to New Orleans and greatly admired the beauty of the Creole women he found there. Further, it seems from his not-very-well-received literary effort that he looked upon the lives of the young men of that city with more than a little envy.

The principle product resulting from their visit though was Tocqueville’s On Democracy in America, a two-volume set published a few years after their return from the American frontier. The piece is foundational literature for its observations on democratic society: how a representative one evolves, how it creates its politics, how it sets its laws and defines its morals, its pros and cons, and how Americans interact and support each other. It accurately reveals the strengths and weaknesses of democracy and of 1830s America.

I was curious whether Tocqueville had visited my hometown on his passage down the Mississippi from Memphis. In 1831, Baton Rouge was home to fewer than a thousand residents: cotton planters, sugarcane entrepreneurs, trappers, and Native Americans. Unfortunately, his diaries seemed to lose their detail just when I wanted it most. Had he spent Christmas in my town? Had he been the inspiration for the state-of-the-art prison that was to be built less than a decade later? More importantly, had I walked in the footsteps of Alexis de Tocqueville, one of the greatest social observers and philosophers in history?

If missing pages from the Tocqueville and Beaumont journals were available, I set out to find them. I spent hours in the State Archives. I visited LSU’s Hill Library. I researched at Southern and at Tulane Universities. I searched through exhibits and files in the museums on Jackson Square in New Orleans. I looked for information on Nineteenth Century Louisiana in every place imaginable.

After months, I hit pay dirt.

While browsing through Roman Catholic diocesan historical records I found a reference to, ". . . the journal of Monsieur D. Tocqueville in the Embassy of the Rising Sun, Tokugawa Shogunate." However, a search of consulate history in New Orleans showed no Japanese embassies in the city. Nevertheless, the lead was tantalizing.

Weeks went by with no bonne chance and I seriously considered giving up the search. As luck would have it, and as darkness set in on a dreary February day, I stopped at a corner grocery on Royal Street in the French Quarter for a loaf of bread. Scooping up my change, I said to the clerk, I’m working on a project researching mid 1800s French Quarter history. I’ve run out of experts. Do you know any?

Without only a second’s thought he responded, You need to sit down with Anna LaCour. He described her by saying, She’s a bit on the old side but she knows everything there is to know about old New Orleans. She’ll even give you a private tour of St. Louis Number One (a famous local cemetery), if you prime her with a shot and a beer. He winked.

I got directions and a moment later found myself pounding on the door of a ground floor apartment in an old brick building on Ursuline. After a few minutes and a ruffle of lace curtain in the door’s window, Miss LaCour appeared. A bit stooped, she wore a formless gray dress and, even indoors, wore a tight white scarf over thinning gray hair. Her face was extremely wrinkled but classically beautiful. It framed faded blue eyes. Wonderfully, she possessed an incredible memory coupled with a willingness to talk. I offered to buy her a glass of wine, or water if she preferred, at a nearby restaurant.

Instead, over a shot-and-beer at a non-tourist bar sharing a common wall with the same grocery where I’d first learned of her, Anna LaCour listened with a growing smile as I told her of my search for the Embassy of the Rising Sun. She laughed aloud, drained her beer and waved at the bartender for a refill.

Sonny, she said. If you want to hear about the House of the Rising Sun, it’s gonna’ cost you a few of these!

I stammered my reply because an entire canyon of revelation was opening before me. How could I have missed the connection between the House of the Rising Sun and a Japanese Embassy?

It was a gaudy place, she began.

Over a few more shots-and-beers, she told me that her great-grandmother had come to New Orleans from France as a Casket Girl and from her she’d heard many stories of the Rising Sun. The grandmother originally intended to become a Novice at the Ursuline Convent, located just a few blocks away from where we sat. I interrupted to move her back to my search for the journals but she shushed me and ordered another refill. I soon began to wonder how she managed to consume them and remain upright.

What I learned between refills was amazing. In detail she described the interior of the House of the Rising Sun which, she said, was located not far from the Convent. The convent and its outbuildings had long since been converted into a memorial to the first Roman Catholic cleric in New Orleans and now served as a repository for diocesan documents. I had spent some of my research time there.

How long ago did they tear it down, I asked, fearing the worst.

Oh, it’s still there, she said. You were there. It’s where I live.

I think I visibly trembled.

I was a Novice too, and just like my great-grandmother, wasn’t fit to be a nun, she said with finality. Like my mother and her mother before her, we were all kicked out of the convent. That’s when we all ended up where you found me.

Several visits and weeks later, and after at least a gallon of shots and several cases of beers, Miss LaCour took me back to her apartment building, the original House of the Rising Sun! I was in awe but the thought of searching such a large apartment building was intimidating.

Start with the attic, she suggested.

My months of searching ended ten minutes later. In a crook of the eaves in the southern-most corner of the attic, I discovered a worn wooden box about six inches high, two feet deep and a bit more than a foot wide. Covered in a thick layer of humidified dust, grime and mold, the small chest featured a single lockable drawer. A key—both grimy and dusty at the same time—sat in its keyhole, seemingly in invitation to me to test its security. A hard turn proved both the key’s and lock’s worth.

Within the chest lay several faded yellow, brittle and barely-legible telegrams, along with numerous loose handwritten pages penned both in French and in a stilted Cajun-English dating from the 1830s to the mid 1860s. They were amazingly well preserved given their age, the terrible condition of the telegrams, and the attic’s humid environment. Under the pages was a sealed envelope with the name Henry written upon it in an elegant cursive and in an ink that looked so fresh it could have been penned yesterday. My hands shook.

I also discovered a small trove of artifacts and diagrams including items that have since become prized possessions: an 1853 edition of one of the first English translations of Democracy in America and an 1856 copy of Evangeline by Longfellow. Also in the drawer were three stones—two white, one black—with holes punched through them. In the back corner, I found a small rust encrusted pocketknife with the name James engraved on its single corroded blade.

The building where I found what I presumed to be Alexis de Tocqueville’s missing journal pages—Anna LaCour’s refuge following her expulsion from the convent—is more than simply notorious. It was home to one of the great brothels in history. Songs have been dedicated to the House of the Rising Sun. A version performed by Eric Burden and the Animals in the 1960s perennially makes Best Song Ever lists. In the 1920s, Georgia Turner first recorded House of the Rising Sun, but Texas Alexander, Roy Acuff and Woody Guthrie have all also enjoyed success with their own versions. And, given the Victorian period in which the reference to an . . . Embassy of the Rising Sun was written, it isn’t beyond reason to imagine a straight-laced librarian replacing the word brothel with embassy.

Back in my study, I began reading the journals. What I learned set my mind reeling.

I quickly realized that the papers I’d discovered were not missing pages from Alexis de Tocqueville’s journals but were actually products of the pen of Hippolyte Landry de Tocqueville, the lesser-known older brother of Alexis. Hippolyte wasn’t even known to have traveled to America and yet these papers described how he’d accompanied Alexis on the younger brother’s epic trip to the New World.

The pages told the story of how a young and struggling French government contracted to cover expenses for two persons to study America’s prisons. Hippolyte apparently lobbied hard to be included but was refused. Instead, he stowed away. It isn’t clear, but Alexis probably didn’t know about the stowaway before sailing.

When discovered, probably well out to sea, Alex and Gustave chose to cover for Hippolyte. It was a risky decision, for Alexis and Gustave would be required to conceal his presence for more than a year. If found out, they feared their government funding would end and their reputations permanently impugned. They decreed that it was Hippolyte’s responsibility to hide himself until they were safely in America. After that, he would be required to pretend to be their servant.

The trio then arrived in Newport’s seaport May 9th, 1831. What happened to them during the first months of their trip is noted mostly in the diaries maintained by Alexis and Gustave. The details are often fascinating and sometimes humorous. Many of their experiences with American pioneers and frontiersmen are laced with incredulity. They also describe the ever-present dangers of the American frontier. There is no mention of Hippolyte.

Nothing of significance threatened harm or alarm until their outbound carriage trip from Nashville to Memphis in mid-December. Alexis fell ill. Beaumont writes melodramatically, The twelfth, the cold still more rigorous; we cross the Tennessee River, carrying down great cakes of ice, in a ferry. Tocqueville benumbed by the cold; he experiences a chill. He has lost his appetite; his head affected; impossible to go any further, we must stop. Where? How? No inn on the road. Extreme anguish. Here finally is a house: Sandy Bridge Tennessee, Log-House! No matter, they set us down.

Dripping with drama, Beaumont’s journal continues: Thirteenth of December; what a day! What a night! The bed where Tocqueville is lying is in a chamber whose walls are made of oak logs not even squared, placed one on top of the other. It is so cold it would crack a stone. I light a monster fire; the flame crackles on the hearth fed by the wind which rushes in on us from all sides.

Gustave stayed with Alexis while he recuperated in the log cabin in Sandy Bridge as described with continuing and perhaps unintentional humor. If one believes Beaumont, Alexis was in true danger. As I discovered in the Rising Sun journals though, Hippolyte didn’t believe it and while Gustave and Alexis stayed on in Sandy Bridge, the third member of the party traveled on ahead to Memphis to secure passage for the three of them on a riverboat heading for New Orleans. According to Les Papiers de Hippolyte, Alexis and Gustave were expected to follow him to Memphis as soon as Alex became well enough to travel. It was then, as Beaumont describes in his personal journal, that he and Alexis arrived in the city on the seventeenth and found, Nothing to see, neither men, nor things.

While scholars believe that Beaumont was speaking despairingly of the city and of its residents, I believe he was sending a coded message home that he and Alex had encountered a problem. As agreed, they’d come to Memphis to meet Hippolyte and then continue the trip to New Orleans. However, in Memphis, Hippolyte was nowhere to be found. Learning that he’d headed downriver, at their first chance they set out for New Orleans, hoping to overtake him.

That’s where the journals of Hippolyte Landry de Tocqueville fill in history and where Alex and Gustave’s diaries fail. Hippolyte describes what happened along the Mississippi during those fourteen fateful days… and for many, many days… and years after.

History records that both Hippolyte and Gustave attended the deathbed of Alexis in 1859. According to the journals I found in the attic of the House of the Rising Sun, that is simply not possible. Gustave may have been there but not Hippolyte. Further, there may in fact be a marker in France noting the passage of Hippolyte in 1877 but his remains are to be found instead in a crypt not far from the famous Evangeline Oak in St. Martinville, Louisiana.

But, more on that in due course.

Several years after their trip to the United States, an outraged brother Alex learned of Hippolyte’s other life in New Orleans—that of a Professional Card Dealer residing in a famous whorehouse. Alexis worried that the revered Tocqueville family name would be permanently tarnished and he resolved to cover up the facts. With Gustave’s help, Alexis even contrived to have France believe that Hippolyte resurfaced from obscurity long enough to mourn him.

Until now, no one knew that Hippolyte Landry Clèrel de Tocqueville, lesser known brother to the author of Democracy in America, traveled to America, steamed and floated down the Mississippi in the company of pirates, and that within a few hours of his arrival in Baton Rouge nearly burned the city to the ground.

Nothing has previously been revealed of Hippolyte’s appearance in New Orleans dressed as a woman of ill repute, of his long residency in the House of the Rising Sun, as the man who drove both Sir John James Audubon and the pirate Jean Lafitte from town, of his involvement in the invention of the submarine, of his secret service as a courier in America’s Great Civil War, or of his role in the abolition of slavery… . until now.

Secousse, Cliquetis et Rouleau

Book One

(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock

One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock rock

Five, six, seven o’clock, eight o’clock rock

Nine, ten, eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock rock

We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight

Bill Haley & His Comets

Words and Music by Max Freedman and Jimmy DeKnight

CHAPTER ONE—SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES

Saturday, March 23rd, 1811

Nearly every one of Pittsburgh’s five thousand residents lined the slips of the Berthoud Boatyard on this beautiful day. Bands played. Dogs barked. The dress that Pittsburgh citizens normally reserved for Sundays and funerals was on display wherever the eye landed. Cries from Polish Sausages vendors competed with the sounds of church bells clanging. Horses bucked and whinnied nervously. Children dashed through the crowd shouting and laughing. Palpable excitement had ladies on edge and men chewing, rather than smoking their cigars.

It was a fine spring day with blue skies, bright fast moving puffy clouds and a crisp breeze. The biggest moment in Pittsburgh’s fifty-year history was at hand and no one from miles around Pennsylvania’s fourth largest city wanted to miss it. Even the Berthoud employees, normally attired in greasy working clothes, were dressed in their best handmade wool church suits.

Had there been electricity, it would have been in the air.

Most of the crowd cheered at any announcement from the authorities regarding the unique project that rocked slowly before them in the Monongahela River. Preceded by musical performances, several speeches and much applause, the unique contraption had just that morning been pushed from its construction skids into the river.

There were also skeptics and condemners on hand too and they were disproportionately vocal. To think that man is so arrogant as to believe he can bend God’s forces to his own will, shrilled a woman holding a small child, her eyebrows, chin and shoulders upraised with affront. She was not alone. Many shared her belief that Robert Fulton’s creation was blasphemy of the vilest sort.

If God had meant man to travel across the seas using a machine instead of his holy winds, he’d have given us paddle wheels instead of legs, said a tall man, smiling, clearly trying to goad those on who were so righteously indignant.

Regardless of their concerns that God would not approve, the citizens of Pittsburgh still weren’t about to miss the biggest moment in their city’s history.

After hours of waiting, the launching of Fulton’s huge vessel—The New Orleans—the biggest ship ever built to work inland waterways, and the first boat, inland or outland, designed and built from the keel up to be powered by something other than wind, current or manual labor, had gone off without a hitch. It didn’t explode and that disappointed some of the skeptics. At the end of the day though, even the non-skeptics left a bit disappointed because the New Orleans hadn’t cranked up her controversial steam engine and chugged off down the river. That’s what they’d come to see.

Word was that the machine would make a great noise, throw off huge clouds of smoke and steam, and then power the strange looking craft through the waters faster than anyone could imagine. And so, all looked forward to the spectacle but it was not to happen on this first Saturday of Spring.

Some chose to believe that the New Orleans was not a steamship at all for instead of the unique smokestack they’d heard about, the vessel carried three masts and packed sails for them. Further, it was noted by more than a few as she slid into the water that, in fact, . . . . the ship isn’t even outfitted with that so-called new-fangled compressed air steam engine anyway. Phooey!

The truth was that construction of the New Orleans had fallen behind schedule and the vessel was still far from complete. Most of the delay was caused by the ingenious single-stroke steam engine itself. It was not installed on the boat because it had just then begun its journey to Pittsburgh. In unassembled pieces, it was beginning its trip by cart over the Allegheny Mountains from New York City, a much more likely home for its design, innovative technology and manufacture. After all, 97,000 human beings made New York City home!

That’s was where Nicholas Roosevelt had designed and built the innovative piece of machinery, there being no foundry in Mr. Pitt’s namesake city capable of mounting such a Herculean effort in 1811. Nevertheless, there had been delays in New York as well, and so the disappointment at the launch was huge.

A few of the Berthoud workers suggested that eventually the City of Pittsburgh might have to construct some sort of iron foundry itself if it wanted to continue to claim its place as Boat Building Capital of America. The times were changing and Pittsburgh had best keep up with them.

The New Orleans’ single glorious bright red stack, designed to expel huge clouds of dark smoke from her revolutionary engine, was invisible as well. It sat on the dock still packed in a large shipping crate, its installation aboard the New Orleans also running behind. Unlike her innovative engine, at least the stack would be added to the ship’s profile within a few days of the launch ceremony.

Too bad we couldn’t at least have her in place, thought Robert Fulton. He was angrier at the delay then he was disappointed. The crowd’s disappointment was obvious though.

Still, the giant twin paddle wheels were in place, one on each side of the boat, and they were turning lazily, spun by the current, though, not by the steam engine. No one except Roosevelt and his workmen had seen anything like them before and they were drawing most of the crowd’s attention.

After standing next to the Mayor for a small ceremony, Robert Fulton joined the crowd in front of his boat. He was still learning the skills to effectively and persuasively cultivate public support and had heard the cynical comments of the men and women around him. At one point, he could stand them no more.

"The sun will shine and the river will yet part itself for the New Orleans!" he said with confidence, but he did so when he was certain there were few nearby to hear him. There had been too many disappointments in his life and he did not take criticism well. In truth, he wasn’t confident that his scheme would actually work.

When even the paddle wheels ceased to amaze, the show ended. With no deafening noises, explosion or excitement to awe the crowd, the novice steam enthusiasts returned home, changing back to everyday Saturday work clothes, kids heading for the streets, backyards, hills and woods at the town’s edge to play with their fellows. The members of the town band hefted their instruments and put them aside for a concert scheduled for the following Friday evening.

Disappointment hung over Pittsburgh where clouds of smoke and excitement had been anticipated.

Seven months later, however, toward the last half of October 1811, Pittsburgh again put out the red carpet. Crowds again gathered for the New Orleans. Just like that day back in March, bands played. Given the crowd’s previous disappointment there were even more skeptics on hand. But this time they were silenced, and in truth, the crowd was also cautiously quiet. The silence was one of awe at what was about to occur.

Huge columns of dark smoke drifted up lazily from an almost regal bright red smokestack, now planted proudly mid-deck just aft of the side paddle fenders. The Fulton Family Coat-of-Arms had been painted for all to see on newly installed fenders that now sat over the monstrously huge paddles. The silence was suddenly broken by a release of steam, powering an ear splitting whistle, and sending children scurrying behind their mother’s skirts. Many in the crowd laughed nervously as the thick clouds of black smoke brought tears to their eyes. Believing the moment of official launch to be on hand, a city employee set off several fireworks rockets.

The fireworks were premature, but this was more like it! This is what they’d come to see and hear! A cheer went up and the crowd applauded.

Robert Fulton and Nicholas Roosevelt, the boat’s newly crowned captain, stood exposed at the giant wheel amidships. Pilothouses set high and built to protect their captains from foul weather were several improvements and a few years away. On this day, the pilot’s wheel was simply mounted on the middeck for all to see, like all ocean-going ships. The wheel wasn’t the only things that caught the crowd’s attention. Captain Roosevelt fit the crowd’s concept of what a daring new-age pilot should look like. He was tall, handsome and articulate… everything the crowd wanted in a new hero. His beautiful young wife Lydia, nearing the end of her first pregnancy, held his arm and made a perfect complement to the dashing young captain. Invention, capitalism, heroism, romance and motherhood.

Just the ticket to incite a young city and a new industry! thought the mayor.

Just as visually exciting, the innovative steam engine sat exposed, its giant cam turning slowly, the bright red stack leaking black sooty smoke into the blue October sky. As the cam reached its perigee, a huge explosive boom startled the celebrants and a giant ball of smoke belched from the stack. Few in the crowd had ever heard a steam engine before and so the sound of a piston firing under compression prompted children and their mothers alike to quickly move their hands to their ears for protection from this supernatural noise. They’d been led to expect the noise, of course, but after the initial shock, they feigned surprise and even fright. It was all part of the fun and drama on this day. So especially were the squeals from the little girls present.

The horses however hadn’t been told to expect the loud noise and many reared and threatened to stampede, adding even more frenzy and excitement to the moment.

Boat launches like this had played out many times before in Pittsburgh, albeit without the sound and the fury. Beginning at this eastern spot, the rivers of North America were navigable all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, a thousand miles and a million savages away. Many flatboats had been built in these very same slips for just that purpose. In fact, boat building was an industry for which the fathers of this town believed Pittsburgh would eventually become famous.

"Ah, Pittsburgh, the Steamboat City, the Mayor said in his comments, It is our future! "He presented a Key to the City to Fulton as this time both made comments at what turned out to be a longer-than-necessary ceremony prior to the boat’s departure.

The New Orleans was indeed different from any boat before her. The noises issuing from her engine were simply results of the unique design. Certainly, the sound it created was deafening. Just when women and children relaxed a bit and appeared to become accustomed to the piston rhythmically slamming home, the pilot would release steam, sounding the boat’s whistle. The noise echoed several times off the faces of Pittsburgh’s hills and mountains.

Horses bucked anew. Spectators again held hands to ears at the piston’s noise and at the whistle’s shriek. Bands played. Dogs barked. Chills ran down backs. This was history and everyone knew that he or she was witness to it. No daily journal or diary written in Pittsburgh that evening—and most educated people of the day kept them—would fail to mention the event, and nearly everyone who wrote of it actually was present.

Only a few passengers were aboard the New Orleans for her maiden journey. They were visible though, and they were envied. The few paraded on deck as much to see as to be seen by the spectators who watched and cheered from the muddy banks of the Monongahela. Often they returned waves and blew kisses to recognizable faces ashore. Often they waved just because someone waved to them. Huge smiles creased the faces of wavers and wavees alike.

Finally, the New Orleans sounded her shrill steam whistle twice in succession. Women, now more accustomed to the sounds, still were startled by the suddenness and grabbed at the arms of their men who, truth be told, were too brave to admit to their own nervousness.

They knew that time and again in the young history of steam engine design, boilers had exploded causing death and terrible injury. Was this to happen on such a festive occasion? More than a few silent prayers were offered to prevent it.

Confidence in Nicholas Roosevelt was high though. He’d earned it in the few short months he’d been in the city. Upon his arrival, finally from New York with the crated engine parts, Roosevelt assumed leadership of the project. And unlike March 23rd, the New Orleans didn’t immediately tie off to shore. Following the ceremony, she actually set off on a journey downriver, looking for the Monongahela’s junction with the Ohio. Then would come the Mississippi, and then the goal, many miles downstream, the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico, near her namesake city.

In reality, the New Orleans wasn’t Robert Fulton’s first steamboat. His initial effort capsized and sank in Europe in 1803 because its steam engine was too heavy for the boat to support. The Clermont followed, but she was constructed as an ocean going vessel, converted and fitted with side paddles, destined to operate ineffectively and only briefly in the deep waters of the Hudson River. The rest of the country’s rivers were far too shallow for the ocean-crossers.

In fact, the Clermont’s successes were so few and her failures so many that a year after she first chugged off in her wobbly fashion toward Albany, Fulton had the boat torn apart and rebuilt. He was so embarrassed over her failure that he had the boat renamed The North Wind.

Robert Fulton’s initial interest in water transport actually had been an even earlier failed attempt. That time it was a vessel that would later be known as a submarine, albeit this first design was powered by sail, aided by a hand cranked screw. It was after failing to convince investors in Europe of the practicality of his Nautilus submersible that Fulton turned to surface ships. Nevertheless, the Nautilus served a valuable purpose. A few years later a young Frenchman, inspired by Fulton’s ideas, gave up on a stock brokering career and took up writing full time instead. Jules Verne’s first work was a novel about a submarine named the Nautilus.

It was a few years later that Fulton became enamored with the possibility of turning Albany, New York—tenth largest American city at the time—into a great metropolis, larger even than New York City. He expected to earn great wealth by expanding river trade between Albany and New York City. The challenges of turning Albany into a great sea-going port though were several. Prevailing winds in the area were weak and undependable, making sailing there difficult. Traveling upstream 150 miles, even with a strong wind, was virtually impossible. That’s when Fulton came up with the idea to convert an ocean going vessel—the Clermont—into a steamship by strapping an engine onto her top deck, adding side paddle wheels, and proving that steam powered river travel was indeed possible. 150 miles and Albany, New York were as far as Fulton’s mind could see. His imagination wasn’t big enough to envision the real future of a steam and river collaboration.

Nicholas Roosevelt helped Fulton expand the picture.

Fulton and Roosevelt had met in 1809 and in their very first conversation the young engine builder and inventor described his own vision for Fulton.

Roosevelt planted a seed that if a steamboat could travel 150 miles, then Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Natchez, New Orleans, and all the world could be opened to commerce as well. Trade between distant outposts would draw more people to them, creating even more business opportunities… if only a reasonable method for transporting people, goods and services were available.

Albany’s grand future as a seaport ended when Fulton met Roosevelt.

And so, the New Orleans was conceived and built to fulfill that larger vision.

Roosevelt’s prediction for a teeming inner continent, thriving with commerce and not a few loose dollars, excited the entrepreneur. Fulton enlisted another Robert: Livingston by surname, a friendly-neighborhood-moneyman, to help as a third partner. Livingston and Fulton had met in France during the design stage of the Nautilus. Livingston’s resume included both a personal friendship with Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, and one with the father of his own country, George Washington.

Robert Livingston in fact was so close to George Washington that he’d been given the honor of administering the oath of office to the country’s larger-than-life hero back in 1789 when the general was crowned First President of the United States of America. Because of his heroics in beating back the most powerful nation on earth, George Washington had become so popular that America’s new citizens wanted to crown him King, even though they’d just conducted a destructive war to get rid of one. Washington wanted none of it, especially the lifetime requirements of the job. A four-year term just might work however and so, Robert Livingston made his first mark in history by swearing in the country’s first president. Robert Fulton and Nicholas Roosevelt suggested another.

The three men discussed the river, transportation and land opportunities that lay before them and made preliminary plans to build a fleet of side-wheeled steamboats that would operate the entire length of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. In anticipation, they incorporated, forming two companies: the Mississippi and the Ohio Steamboat Navigation Companies.

Building the first boat in the line turned out to be expensive and all three men were taken aback at the constantly escalating finances required to build the New Orleans. Finally, after construction costs totaled $38,000, roughly double the original projection, the experimental and innovative boat departed on her maiden voyage for New Orleans from the foot of Pittsburgh’s Boyd’s Hill on the banks of the Monongahela River. The date was October 20th, 1811. The trip was intended to prove to the world that steam travel on the world’s inner continental rivers was not only feasible, it was economic genius.

A lot was at stake for the trio—and for the New Orleans. Failure might set back the risky venture for decades. On the other hand, success would undoubtedly bring commercial revolution, untold wealth for Robert Fulton, and another asterisk in future history books for Robert Livingston.

CHAPTER TWO—ARE THE STARS OUT TONIGHT?

Sunday, October 20th, 1811

Two years earlier, looking ahead toward setting an eventual date for the trip, the Mississippi and the Ohio Steamboat Navigation Companies paid Nicholas Roosevelt six hundred dollars to scout the entire route from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, noting hazards in the river, fixing possible Indian ambush sites, locating coal stockpiles, and so forth. To explore the river, Roosevelt built himself a small flatboat. On it, he and his new wife Lydia floated down the connecting rivers on a leisurely six-month cruise to the Crescent City. Either Lydia loved her man or loved adventures, or both, for the two departed Pittsburgh on the raft as man and wife less than a month after they’d first met.

That was 1809. Now it was 1811and it was half-past payoff time. Fulton was feeling the financial pinch and he wanted the trip to New Orleans to begin yesterday! Because Roosevelt had served as point man for the journey, because he designed and built the New Orleans’ unique engine, and because he supervised final construction of the vessel itself, Fulton and Livingston chose him to captain the boat on her maiden and hoped-for historic voyage.

By October, the year 1811 had already proved uniquely interesting. There were strong rumors about an invasion that might begin before year’s end in a British attempt to reclaim her American Colonies. In addition, several of the still newly minted United States were unhappy over the way their new government was treating them and, having tasted the fruits of mutiny once, threatened secession again—not from Great Britain of course, but this time from the United States of America.

There was other news. It was incredible and somewhat fearful news but January had brought news of a slave rebellion in Louisiana Territory that threatened white settler’s lives, the territory’s application for statehood, and an historically accepted form of employment called human slavery. The world was changing… quickly, so it seemed.

More news was just over the horizon. In fact, a few years later French historians would dub the year 1811 L’année de Miracles. More traditional historians gave it a Latin name, Annus Mirabilis (The Year of Miracles).

As winter turned to spring, terrible floods began to ravage North America. Heavy spring rains are always expected but these were widespread and lasted weeks. Interrupted by a single day of sunshine, they’d begin again and last for what seemed another eternity. The vernal equinox passed and still the inundating rains continued, overwhelming and drenching most of the country. In Cincinnati, river watchers marked the peak of the flood of June 1811 at sixty-four feet above normal low water mark, an all-time high.

Among the victims of the floods was the New Orleans’ Date-with-Destiny. Originally scheduled for a June departure to her namesake city, the first steamboat ever built from the keel up finally fired her single-stroke engine and chugged off into history, departing Pittsburgh in late October. By then the she’d become a community effort and residents of the city wanted to share in the glory and send her off with enthusiasm.

The Roosevelts were expecting a baby soon who would in time become both grand uncle to future President Theodore Roosevelt and great-great-grand uncle to another future president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. With less than a month to go in Lydia’s pregnancy they left Pittsburgh aboard the New Orleans along with thirteen crewmembers, four servants, and a dog named Tiger. They hoped their new offspring would be born in the City of New Orleans.

Some called them a most handsome couple. Many called them crazy.

As the New Orleans left her dock, spectators noted that Nicholas and Lydia seated themselves on a bench on the highest part of the boat and held hands. Moments after a final wave to the crowd, Nicholas uncorked an expensive bottle of red wine. It was the first of several the couple consumed as they watched a parade of uninterrupted forest lining both banks of the Ohio glide past them.

Early French settlers called the Ohio River, La belle rivière, the beautiful river. Roosevelt’s log indeed reads, We are entertained by unending beauty. Until then the year had been horridly rainy and dreary, but October 20th proved to be the glorious day that all had hoped for—puffy white clouds overhead and a constant breeze cooling those aboard the New Orleans.

Until that glorious day though, few expressions of confidence had been offered. In fact, without exception Lydia Roosevelt’s relatives and acquaintances urged her not to literally paddle off into primitive America, especially so close to her delivery date. Her first trip down the Mississippi with Nicholas has been fraught with dangers from Indians, wild animals, and primitive settlements. When their flatboat disintegrated following numerous collisions with sandbars and snags, they’d traveled the last five hundred miles down the Mississippi in a row boat. Nevertheless, Lydia had been an adventuresome soul from the first day of her marriage to Nicholas and she was not about to miss the next adventure. Failing to dissuade her of the attempt, friends tried to convince Nicholas that he was placing his wife in unnecessary danger.

She is not one to be left behind on any account, Nicholas confirmed, to their dismay. No. We’ll go now… today… even if the baby’s to be born tomorrow!

Other worries haunted Roosevelt however. As a former River Scout and now Captain of the boat, Nicholas was more concerned for falling river levels then he was for his wife and future child’s safety. There were no precedents for building steamboats. Late October had arrived and the New Orleans, sailed, or chugged rather, with its traditional deep ocean-going keel. The problems Nicholas worried most about were several extremely shallow areas of the river along the route south. Louisville’s low water was the most critical. At least Louisville was somewhat civilized. If the boat became stuck there, they’d probably be able to get help. An even greater concern though was Natchez, Mississippi. The New Orleans had to pass that small primitive settlement before winter’s low waters set in or risk being stranded there indefinitely. Natchez was Indian Territory and an extended stay there could well prove fatal.

Three weeks after his own predetermined last date to depart, Nicholas Roosevelt sounded the shrieking whistle and the New Orleans finally got underway… and, as feared, even with the heavy Spring rains, the waters of the Ohio had receded to dangerously low levels.

The residents of cities downstream from Pittsburgh though didn’t care about low waters north of Natchez. They were ready to be a part of history now. The desire to witness it was overriding and contagious. Flatboats leaving Pittsburgh had brought the news of the boat’s impending departure for weeks. Huge crowds assembled to greet the boat when she arrived in Cincinnati. Large crowds were expected to gather to welcome her to Louisville as well.

1811 was indeed to be a year of miracles. On the very same day that the New Orleans was christened and slid down the launch ramp into the dark Monongahela waters on March 23rd, a French astronomer, Honoré Flaugergues, who until then was known principally for an endless supply of long haired wigs, squinted through his primitive telescope and discovered a comet.

Because of its streaming tails splaying off from the core, the word comet—a Greek derivative—means the Hairy One. As is still the custom, the heavenly apparition was named for its discoverer. This object came to be called by several names including its official designation, Comet Flaugergues. Given his propensity for collecting wigs, Honore’s namesake also became a below-the-belt joke in the world of astronomy. Somewhat derisively it was also labeled Comet Flaugergues, the Hairy One.

As history today records it, The Great Comet of 1811 began to fill the springtime night skies and excite the imaginations of everyone in the Northern Hemisphere. Soon it became visible with the naked eye. Comet Flaugergues proved to be one of the largest, most brilliant and most breathtaking celestial visitors ever to grace our skies. Tracked for nearly a year, it reached its sixty-day peak of brilliancy beginning in October 1811, astounding and terrifying the residents of the Northern Hemisphere, and especially Native American Indians living along the Ohio River.

By those less well educated, comets have always been believed to be precursors to floods, earthquakes, wars, wild animal unrest, pestilences, supernatural occurrences and other disasters. More well educated people in 1811 however were dismayed to note that coincidentally, L’année de Miracles, had already provided more than a few of these occurrences and, in the case of a possible war with Great Britain, another one was strongly rumored to be imminent.

Superstitious friends of the Roosevelts wrung their hands over the couple’s decision to sail down an Indian infested river in an untested mechanical monster and beneath an apparition in the sky whose brother and sister comets had only brought death and destruction wherever and whenever in history they’d appeared.

The New York Gazette, in its October 11th, 1811 edition wrote, There have been several comets of superior brilliancy, but few of greater magnitude. If therefore its visit should be attended with none of the ill consequences which some may have apprehended, we may look upon ourselves as peculiarly favored with the sight of so magnificent an object.

In the same edition the Gazette debunked theories of why these heavenly bodies exist saying wisely and somewhat smugly, The theory of Comets has in modern times undergone an entire change. They are no longer considered as a necessary means of supplying the sun with fuel to support the flames of its oil, or as the abodes in which the wicked are to receive the punishment due for their crimes.

On cloudy nights when the comet was invisible, the horrific and hitherto never-before-heard sounds of powerful steam rushing from the boiler of the New Orleans convinced many locals living along the Ohio that the Comet Flaugergues had crashed into it. Even more foreboding, many Indians living along the river heard the sounds and believed they were the signals for which they’d been waiting. They danced and chanted and resolved that the time had arrived for them to drive the white man from their lands.

On June 6th, as spring wore out its rainy welcome and the comet became increasingly visible in the night skies of the northern hemisphere, the Indian Chieftain Tecumseh, known by his followers as The Prophet, sent an angry letter to the United States War Department.

He wrote, "Your blood is white. You have taken my talk, and the sticks, and the wampum, and the hatchet, but you do not mean to fight. I know the reason. You do not believe the Great Spirit has sent me. You shall know. I leave Tuckhabatchee (central and southern Indiana) and go straight to Detroit. When I arrive there, I will stamp on the ground with my foot, and shake down every building in Tuckhabatchee."

Stranger things were about to occur.

Fulton’s boat design would eventually prove to be impractical for sailing inland rivers until Henry Shreve modified the original design years later. At the time of course no other models existed so the New Orleans merrily plowed through the deep Ohio River waters east of Louisville with her narrow beam and, for ocean going vessels, an acceptably deep keel. Her departure from Pittsburgh had been repeatedly delayed by floods that struck nearly everywhere in the United States that spring and summer. Unfortunately river levels drop quickly.

Climatically 1811 played true to form. First a lack of frost. Then unending monsoons. Now floods gave way to drought. French scientists, noting similar unusual weather across the globe, blamed British industrialization for heating the air and predicted calamity. Some said the warming caused the unending rain and that foretold the end of times. Many people blamed Comet Flaugergues.

Roosevelt now found that a lack of rain since mid-August had created serious navigation problems. The Ohio had dropped to the point where the hull of the New Orleans would most certainly scrape bottom just west of the city. Since the boat’s keel was constructed of wood, it was a sure bet to peel back, puncture, or crush after striking a submerged rock of which there were plenty on the riverbed. Fulton and Roosevelt elected to hold the New Orleans in Louisville for a few days, wagering that fall rains would bring the river up again before winter set in.

With time on his hands the captain of the New Orleans chose to entertain steamboat fans and disprove steamboat skeptics by staging lavish parties aboard the boat, inviting local citizens aboard… and by steaming upriver to Cincinnati, a feat never before accomplished. Night views of the comet from the deck of the boat in the middle of the Ohio River were said to be spectacular.

Word began reaching New York of Fulton’s and Roosevelt’s successes. Even fierce skeptics of steam power were moved to applaud Fulton who by now was accepting sole credit for the idea, the design, and the construction of the first true steam-powered riverboat. Fulton ached for the notoriety and the financial rewards that he’d missed with the Nautilus and the Clermont. It was at that moment that he began to push Livingston into the background and relegate Roosevelt’s role to merely that of pilot.

Early on the morning of October 30th, once again back in Louisville because rain was anticipated and hopes for resuming the voyage had risen, the New Orleans passenger manifest grew by one. Lydia Roosevelt, daughter of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect of the United States Capitol Building, gave birth to a namesake Henry Latrobe Roosevelt in an aft cabin of the New Orleans. For the rest of the voyage, the crew complained of the Henry’s constant crying.

No rains of significance occurred that week. In fact, they held off through most of November. Finally by early December minimal rains fell. With the prospect of winter closing in and the river rising slightly, Captain Roosevelt estimated that he had perhaps five inches clearance over rocks in the shallowest portions of the river west of Louisville. The New Orleans began moving downriver as winter threatened to settle in over the central United States.

Again, the New Orleans steamed off to meet history. Roosevelt proved to be an astute judge of both available water and the depth of his ship because the boat cleared the rapids by inches and steamed west down the Ohio toward history.

Across frontier America the strange events of 1811 continued. Sickness swept the country. There was talk of plague. Many blamed the comet. Along the Ohio River, some blamed the New Orleans.

Roosevelt paddled on, the boat’s haunting whistle and steam engine echoing up and down the river creating sounds that quieted the wildlife. The eerie noises seemed to come from a netherworld.

Following the bends of the river, with the state of Kentucky on her port and Illinois Territory to starboard, the New Orleans churned steadily south and west. The December 14th new moon reflected no rays of the sun across a leaden night sky. Heavy dark clouds hung oppressively over the landscape, the river, and the New Orleans, obliterating any hopes of sighting Comet Flaugergues.

Not everyone felt the gloom. Destiny awaits us, wrote Andrew Jack in his log. Jack was, the official pilot of the boat,. With our passage finally from Louisville, we await the world’s attention and its applause upon our arrival in New Orleans.

Always alert to internal and external threats to his boat, Nicholas Roosevelt’s reverie was jolted on the afternoon of the 15th by gunshots and shouts from starboard. Fearing attack by native Indians, Roosevelt turned the wheel over to Jack and rushed aft, weapon in hand, to check the cause of the commotion. He found some of the crew armed with oars taken from the life raft, beating on the sides of the vessel. Several had retrieved firearms from their cabins and were shooting into the water.

What the bloody hell is going on? he demanded as he descended a few stairs to where the commotion originated. Instead of terror, he found the warriors laughing as they swung their oars. A maid had climbed atop a table where she grasped a lantern pole, steadying herself. She giggled and screamed in a high-pitched squeal, obviously enjoying the attention.

Roosevelt looked to his feet and was amazed to find a soggy gray carpet moving across the boat from port to starboard. Not a carpet though, it was hundreds, nay, thousands, of wet exhausted squirrels scurrying across the deck. They’d climbed the sides of boat to rest, exhausted from their swim across the Ohio River. They were being pushed off the other side by the squirrels following them, hundreds of squirrels, thousands of squirrels, millions of squirrels.

As Roosevelt turned his gaze to the southern shore, his jaw dropped. The squirrel carpet stretched from Kentucky, across the Ohio River, to the northern shore. Driven by an internal trigger, a squirrel population of untold numbers was fleeing north, throwing itself into the Ohio River like lemmings. Many drowned and floated on the river’s surface. Many others swam hard for the New Orleans hoping to use it as a refuge. Instead the exhausted rodents found members of the boat’s crew willing to do battle with them and a million other squirrels, ready to push them off the other side.

Roosevelt wrote that he lost the ability to speak at the sight. Small gray animals continued to leap from the riverbanks, one after another, mile after mile in a massive northern migration. The parade lasted all afternoon. They could see the moving gray mass ahead of them; they could see it to their rear, and still squirrels clamored aboard the New Orleans.

That evening, having finally moved clear of the squirrel parade, passengers and crew remarked on the strange events of 1811 and how they and the New Orleans herself seemed to be integral to many of them: failed frosts, severe snowfalls that became raging floods leaving thousands homeless,