 SIGHT
LINES:
River Relic
For more
than a century, travelers, emigrants, and farmers depended on flatboats
to travel the nation's waterways. Anyone who could build a log cabin could
construct the box-like boat made of planks.
Because flatboats couldn't navigate upriver,
they were broken up and sold for lumber when they reached their destination.
Consequently, none were preserved for posterity—until now.
This past summer, when water levels were
low, SIUC faculty and students photographed, mapped, and restored part
of a circa-1800 flatboat discovered by local resident John Schwegman in
the Ohio River near the tiny town of Olmstead, Ill.
About half of the bottom of the original
boat remains, although one 45-foot-long gunwale is intact. The boat was
originally 45 feet long and 12 feet wide. The gunwales were split from
the same tree. Made entirely of oak, the boat was fitted together with
wooden pegs, not nails.
"There are only about a half-dozen first-hand
accounts of how these boats were put together," says Mark Wagner, a researcher
with SIUC's Center for Archaeological
Investigations who led the effort. "This was put together differently
than any of the written accounts."
The flatboat era on the Ohio River began
about 1780, he says, and continued through about 1900, when the locks on
the river forced the clumsy boats into oblivion. The flatboats couldn't
navigate through the locks.
Robert Swenson, an assistant professor
of architectural studies who assisted in the project, says flatboats are
historically important because their wood often was reused to construct
many of the first buildings—the first architectural features—in the region.
"Knowing this history is a guide for future regional planning and development,"
he says.
Wagner found himself in a race against
the river as it began to rise and re-submerge the boat. The team had to
fill the boat with gravel to keep it intact until next year's low water
levels. Wagner hopes that all or part of the boat can be removed to a museum
at that time if grant money becomes available.
For more information, contact
Mark Wagner, Center
for Archaeological Investigations, (618) 453-5035. |
