The Sea Hunters II: More True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks Read online

  Their love affair was not the only event that took place while New Orleans was tied up at Louisville.

  The first baby born on a riverboat, Henry Latrobe Roosevelt, arrived at sunrise.

  The next few weeks in Louisville passed with cleaning and maintenance. New Orleans’s slate-blue paint was touched up and the brightwork was polished. The sails, as yet unused, were unfurled and checked for tears or moth damage, then refolded and stowed on the masts. Andrew Jack studied the measurements on a sheet of paper, then tossed a stick into the middle of the falls and watched its rate of travel. It was late November, and a light chill frosted the air.

  “We can make it,” he said at last, “but we’ll need to traverse at full speed so we have steering control.”

  Nicholas Roosevelt nodded. A few days earlier, he had received a letter from his partners in the Ohio Steamboat Navigation Company. They’d expressed concern about the delay — the monopoly was in jeopardy. New Orleans needed to get under way. Once they had passed the falls, it would be smooth sailing.

  Or at least that’s what Roosevelt thought.

  Nicholas sat inside the dining room, spooning a deer stew into his mouth. Dabbing a cloth napkin at his lips, he then sipped from a tin cup filled with steaming coffee.

  “The river is fullest in about two hours,” he said. “I’ll have a deckhand take you by wagon to the bottom of the falls, where you’ll meet up with us.”

  “Is this for our safety?” Lydia asked.

  “Yes,” Nicholas said.

  “Then the boat might overturn?” Lydia asked.

  “The chance is slim,” Nicholas admitted, “but it might.”

  “Then you would be killed and I’d be alone with a new baby,” Lydia said.

  “That’s not going to happen,” Nicholas said.

  “I know it’s not,” Lydia said defiantly. “We’re going with you. All or none.”

  So it was settled. New Orleans left the dock in early afternoon.

  “I’ll run upstream about a mile,” Jack said, “then turn down and run her full-out.”

  Roosevelt stood outside the door to the pilothouse as New Orleans pulled into the current. Jack’s face was a mask of tension and concern. A thin trickle of sweat ran down his neck, no mean feat with the temperature outside in the forty-degree area.

  The steamboat was strangely quiet. The deckhands had secured themselves in the forward cabin. The women huddled together in the aft cabin, lining the windows to watch. Baby Roosevelt lay in a bassinet braced against a bulkhead, sound asleep.

  “I’m going to turn now,” Jack said.

  He spun the wheel. New Orleans turned slowly in an arc and faced downstream. Then Jack pulled the whistle, rang the bell for full steam, and said a prayer.

  Atop the rock outcropping on the south side of the falls, Milo Pfieffer and his best friend Simon Grants were pouring red paint into the water from a bucket they had stolen from the hardware store. The thin stream of tinted water widened as it neared the top of the falls, then spread across the water as it fell, finally completely tinting the discharge a light pink for a mile downstream.

  “Okay,” Milo said, “you go watch now.”

  “What’s that?” Simon said, as he heard a noise coming from upstream.

  “Ditch the paint,” Milo said, “there’s grown-ups coming.”

  Simon stashed the stolen paint, then turned to the crowd that was slowly advancing on the falls. Thirty of Louisville’s finest citizens left the dock before New Orleans. They planned to watch the steamboat shoot the falls or break up trying.

  “What’s happening?” Simon asked.

  “There’s a steamboat going to try and shoot the falls,” a man answered.

  Milo ran upstream until he spotted New Orleans racing downstream. He stared in awe. The slate blue of the hull seemed to blend with the blue of the river water. Sparks and smoke poured from the stack and trailed to the rear like a signal fire run amok. The twin paddle wheels chopped at the river, flinging sheets of water high in the air. No one was visible on deck save for the big black dog atop the bow sniffing the air. In fact, the vessel looked like a ghost ship. Suddenly, the steam whistle shrieked, and Milo watched as New Orleans entered the middle channel of the falls.

  “Back left wheel,” Jack shouted, “full starboard.”

  New Orleans leaped sideways.

  “Full on both wheels,” Jack said a second later.

  Spray washed through the open windows in the aft cabin, wetting Lydia’s and Maggie’s faces. To each side of the vessel were rocks and churning waters. They braced themselves as New Orleans took a sharp turn from left to right. In the pilothouse, Nicholas Roosevelt peered downstream.

  “Looking good,” he shouted over the roar of the water.

  Engineer Baker poked his head into the pilothouse. “How much longer?”

  “Two, maybe three minutes,” Jack said.

  “Good,” Baker said. “I’ll rupture a boiler if it’s much longer.”

  “Twenty yards ahead is a series of boulders we need to avoid,” Jack said.

  “What’s the sequence?” Roosevelt shouted.

  “Hard left, right half, left half, then full to the right and hug that side of the river until we’re in the clear,” Jack said.

  “Here they go,” Milo shouted as New Orleans lined up to tackle the last rapids.

  “He had better get her over to the left,” Simon added.

  The mayor of Louisville crested the rocks. He panted from the exertion of the climb. Stopping to catch his breath, he pulled the stub of a cigar from his vest pocket and crammed it in the comer of his mouth before speaking.

  “Hard to believe,” he said. “They just might make it after all.”

  Inside the pilothouse, the mood was tense but optimistic. Eighty percent of the falls had been navigated already. All that remained was a small series of rocky outcropping at the outflow. Then they would be in the clear.

  “We’re almost through,” Jack said.

  “The river narrows a bit right ahead,” Roosevelt noted.

  “And the current becomes stronger,” Jack noted. “I’ll need to steer at the rocks to the right, then let the current swing the bow around. Once she’s straight, give her full steam. We should pop right out the other side.”

  “Should?” Roosevelt asked.

  “We will,” Jack said.

  Inside the aft cabin, Lydia Roosevelt, Maggie Markum, and the heavyset German cook, Hilda Gottshak, were huddled together alongside the widows on the starboard side. Henry the baby was awake, and Lydia held him up to see.

  “Looks like we’re headed right for the wall,” Lydia said, pulling the baby closer.

  Gottshak hugged her Bible. “I pray the rest of this trip goes smoothly.”

  “Pray the engines keep running,” Lydia said to her.

  At that instant, the current grabbed hold of the bow and swung the vessel around.

  “Bully of a job,” Nicholas said, as they cleared the last of the falls. “Maxwell will bring you a snifter of brandy.”

  “The river is smooth from here to the Mississippi,” Jack noted.

  “How long until we reach Henderson?” Roosevelt asked.

  “Barring any problems, we’ll be there tomorrow afternoon,” Jack said.

  * * *

  “Quiet,” Lucy Blackwell said, “or you will scare it away.”

  Blackwell was Lydia Roosevelt’s best friend. She was also the wife of artist John James Audubon, who would become famous for his sketches, drawings, and paintings of birds. Lydia Roosevelt was the daughter of Benjamin Latrobe, surveyor general of the United States. Nicholas had known the Latrobe family before Lydia was born, and he had watched her grow into womanhood. Though there was more than a twenty-year age difference between the two of them, Lydia was a happy wife.

  “Carolina Parrot,” Lucy said.

  “Beautiful,” said Lydia.

  Half a mile away, in the Audubons’ store in Henderson, Kentucky, Nicholas sa
t in front of a checkerboard. He glanced over at Audubon, then made his move.

  “We are 150 miles below Louisville,” Roosevelt said. “So far, so good.”

  Audubon studied Roosevelt’s move. Reaching onto the table, he removed a deerskin pouch of tobacco and filled his pipe. Tamping down the tobacco, he lit it with a nearby candle. “From here downstream,” Audubon said, “the river widens and the current slows.”

  “So you think we’ll make New Orleans?” Roosevelt asked.

  “Sure,” Audubon said. “I made it to the Gulf of Mexico once in a canoe.”

  Roosevelt nodded and watched as Audubon made his jump.

  “Did a painting of a pelican there,” he finished, “with a fish hanging from his bill.”

  * * *

  On December 16, New Orleans left Henderson and continued downstream.

  Inside a buffalo-skin tepee near present-day East Prairie, Missouri, a Sioux Indian chief drew in smoke from a long pipe, then handed it to his Shawnee visitor.

  “General Harrison defeated the Shawnee at Tippecanoe?” the Sioux chief asked.

  “Yes,” the Shawnee messenger noted. “The white men attacked the morning after the harvest moon. Chief Tecumseh rallied his braves, but the white men attacked and burned Prophet’s Town. The tribe has retreated from Indiana.”

  The Sioux took the proffered pipe and again inhaled the smoke. “I had a vision yesterday. The white man has harnessed the earth’s power for his own evil purposes. He has rallied the beasts to his cause, as well as controlling the comet in the heavens.”

  “One of the reasons I came,” the Shawnee explained, “is that our braves witnessed a Penelore on the river above here. It might try to enter the Father of Waters.”

  “A Fire Canoe?” the Sioux chief asked. “Must be part of the burning star.”

  The Shawnee exhaled smoke from his lungs before answering. The Sioux had powerful tobacco, and his head was spinning. “Smoke trails from the center of the canoe like from the middle of a thousand tepees. And it roars like a wounded bear.”

  “Where did you see this beast last?” the Sioux said.

  “It was still at the city by the falls when I left,” the Shawnee said.

  “Once it comes down my river,” the Sioux chief said, “we will kill it.”

  Then the chief rolled over onto a pile of buffalo robes and closed his eyes. He would seek the answer from the spirits. The Shawnee opened the flap of the tepee and stepped out into the bright light reflected off the early snow.

  * * *

  Deep inside the earth below New Madrid, Missouri, all was not well. The layers forming the first thousand feet of overburden were twitching like an enraged lion. Molten earth, heated by the immense temperatures below ground, mixed with water from the thousands of springs and dozens of tributaries along the Mississippi River. This superheated, black, slippery liquid worked as a lubricant on the plates of the earth that were held in place under great tension. Earth had given fair notice of the wrath it was about to unleash. The birds and animals had sensed the danger. A great burp from the earth was building. And the burp would soon erupt.

  New Orleans was steaming right toward the inevitable eruption.

  The Ohio River current ran faster nearing the Mississippi River, and New Orleans was steaming smoothly. In a few moments, the ship would arrive at the confluence of the two rivers, hours ahead of schedule. The mood aboard the steamboat was one of happy contentment. The deckhands went about their duties with gusto. Markum had already cleaned the cabins and was hanging the sheets from a clothesline stretched between them. Andrew Jack was taking a short nap on the bow while Nicholas steered. When Roosevelt sent word that they were at the confluence, he would go to the pilothouse to direct the passage.

  Hilda Gottshak was putting the finishing touches on a dozen meat pies for lunch.

  “What’s wrong, boy?” Lydia asked Tiger.

  The Newfoundland had started whining. Lydia checked and found no obvious injuries. Tiger kept up the low, relentless howl. Lydia chose to ignore the animal, hoping he would quiet down on his own.

  In the comer of the pilothouse, Roosevelt was figuring the profits New Orleans could generate. From the start he’d envisioned the steamboat running from Natchez, Mississippi, to New Orleans. That route would ensure the vessel a ready supply of cargo — bales of cotton and a fair amount of passenger traffic. Roosevelt and his partner, Robert Fulton, figured to pay off the construction costs in eighteen months. Nothing Roosevelt had learned on the journey had made him alter this opinion. Folding up his charts, he slipped them back into his leather satchel.

  The smell of the meat pies piqued his appetite. Roosevelt figured that once Jack resumed control of the helm, he would wander into the kitchen and see what Helga had to tide him over until lunch.

  He was sure the worst was over, and his appetite had returned with a vengeance.

  At the sight of the mighty river, Jack took the wheel from Roosevelt. As he made a sweeping turn into the muddy waters flowing from the north, the Roosevelt baby awoke screaming. At almost the same time, Tiger began to howl as if his tail were caught in a bear trap. To compound matters, the river was rougher than usual, and the boat was suddenly rocking to and fro. Stepping out the pilothouse door, Jack stared at the sky above. A flock of wrens darted back and forth as if their leader had no idea of their intended flight direction. Along the shoreline, the trees began to shake as if responding to an unseen gale.

  Though it was not yet noon, the sky to the west was an unearthly orange color.

  “I don’t like this,” Jack shouted, “there’s some—”

  But he never finished the sentence.

  Deep below ground, where the sun will never reach and the cool of a light breeze will never be felt, the temperature was six hundred degrees Fahrenheit. A river of wet, molten earth one hundred feet in diameter roared toward a just-opened fissure. Slipping into the opening, the wet slop acted like Vaseline on glass. The plates of the earth, at this point just barely held in place, slipped like a skater on clear ice.

  The earth snapped and stung at the surface.

  “Good Lord, what is happen—” Nicholas Roosevelt started to say.

  He was standing in the kitchen, trying to talk Helga out of a slab of cheese. Staring out the window for a second, he watched as a geyser of brown water shot eighty feet in the air. Then the water arced over the decks of New Orleans, as dozens of fish, turtles, salamanders, and snakes rained down. Then a rumbling was felt through the decks in the hull.

  Back in the pilothouse, Jack struggled to keep the steamboat on course.

  On the shore, undulating waves swept across the earth like someone shaking a bedspread. The trees along the bank swayed back and forth until their branches intertwined and locked in place. Then they snapped like breadsticks in a vise. Branches were turned into spears and shot across the water like a gauntlet of arrows. Fissures dotted the ground along the river. Streams of water ran into the low-lying areas. Then, seconds later, the ground belched as torrents of shale rock, dirt, and water blasted in the air.

  “The river is out of its banks,” Jack shouted.

  Engineer Baker walked into the pilothouse.

  From deep beneath the river’s former channel, the blackened trunks of decomposing trees that had become waterlogged and sunk into the mud now shot up into the air with a smell akin to that of putrefied flesh. Baker watched a family of black bears hiding high atop a cottonwood tree, trying to escape the devastation. Suddenly the tree shattered as if a bomb had exploded at the base. He watched as the bears fell to the ground. They began to run west as fast as they could shuffle.

  At that instant, Roosevelt burst into the pilothouse.

  “It’s either an earthquake,” he said quickly, “or the end of the world.”

  “I think the former,” Jack said. “I felt one in Spanish California a few years ago.”

  “How long did it last?” Roosevelt asked.

  “That one was small,” J
ack said. “Only lasted ten minutes or so.”

  “I’m going to check on my wife,” Roosevelt said, as he turned to leave.

  “Could you ask Miss Markum to come in here?” Baker asked.

  “I will,” Roosevelt said, as he sprinted away.

  Just then, the earth twitched, and the river began to flow backwards from south to north.

  Markum poked her head inside the pilothouse door, her face white with fear.

  “If we make it out of this alive — will you marry me?” Baker asked.

  “Yes,” Markum said without hesitation, clutching Baker around the waist.

  Deep below the river, the liquid was squeezed from between the plates, and the grinding together of coarse rock stopped. The first shock had ended, but there was much more to come.

  Jack spun the wheel completely to its stop as the Mississippi River changed direction again and returned to a north-to-south flow. Gazing through the window of the pilothouse, he saw that the boat was traversing a farmer’s field. Fifty feet off the right side of the boat’s hull was the upper story of a large red barn. Several milk cows and a lone horse were huddled on the upper loft, avoiding the rushing water. No trace of a farm-house could be seen.

  When Roosevelt came into the pilothouse, Jack was intent on staring off the right side of the bow far in the distance. There was an opening in the ground ahead that was swallowing up most of the river flow. As the land on the far side of the opening came into view, he could see puddles of water and acres of mud where the riverbed used to lie.

  New Orleans was less than a hundred yards from the chasm and was being sucked closer. With only seconds to spare, Baker managed to get the beams reset for reverse running. Inch by inch, the steamboat began to back away from the tempest in the water. Twenty minutes later, New Orleans was nearly a mile upstream. Scanning the unearthly landscape, Jack found a tributary that had eroded a straight path through what had once been the river bend. Slipping the boat into the current, he steered past the void and then into the main channel once again.

  * * *