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Rafting the New River in the 1800s Part 2

Posted by: 0 in New River Gorge, Hawk's Nest, Bateau Boat on Mar 20, 2009

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west virginia's new river gorgeIn my last post, I was talking about what a wild ride it must have been to go down the New River in the wooden bateau boats of centuries past. Here's a great anecdote that describes the experience:

In the summer of 1869, Collis P. Huntington (a C&O Railroad Executive) hired a bateau for $10 to take him and a group of railroad executives from Hinton to Hawk's Nest (now a West Virginia State Park) to oversee the proposed route for the planned railroad. Bateaus were used early on to survey the route and to supply the work crews building the railroad.

In 1870, John Dempsey, said to have been the most experienced boatman in the county, took his bateau with three young C&O engineers, trailing a small yawl (a 12' to 15' longboat, used by the engineers to cross and re-cross the river). Somewhere below Cotton Hill near the "narrow falls" (possibly Landslide Rapid), the three young engineers attempted, under protest, to follow Dempsey down the river in the yawl. Unfortunately, they capsized and drowned - thus ending the practice of using bateaus for the railroad.

With the completion of the C&O Railroad in 1873, a much safer and easier form of transportation, it marked the end of their use on the Lower New River. But bateaus were used on the Upper New River sections, the Greenbrier and Lower Gauley River until the 1920s.

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Rafting the New River in the 1800s

Posted by: 0 in New River Gorge, History, Bateau Boat on Mar 19, 2009

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new river gorge scenic viewMore than 100,000 people raft the New River every year, challenging some of the East Coast's biggest rapids.

As a guide, sitting in the back of a raft, I often wonder what it must have been like to challenge these same rapids more than a hundred years ago in a Bateau Boat.

It must have been hard, backbreaking work! The wooden boats were up to 70 feet in length. That's five modern rafts tied together end-to-end. There was no turning those boats - line them up and go!

They were 10 feet wide, several feet deep, with rounded ends, usually with small decks on both ends - not to mention they were loaded down with thousands of pounds of freight. They used two rudders on both ends for steering and were propelled by 12-foot poles. Crews of up to four men were used to pole the boat along the river.

They didn't have life jackets back then. Mistakes often proved fatal. And they didn't have duct tape back then, either - if you hit a rock and cracked the wood, you were in trouble!



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