Nautical Research Journal 153
3. Queen Anne’s Barge. From Arnold & Henry Kriegstein, 17th 18th
2007).
in Figure 4. T is displays all the elements of Queen Anne’s barge. It also has a bowsprit, whose function is unknown.
A mid-eighteenth-century estate sales bulletin
off ered several barges: one of eight oars and two of six oars. Because of their size, and because the sale was held in New Orleans, it is presumed that these barges were intended for local service. (Dart 1935)
Pierre Laclede, the founder of Saint Louis (1764) owned barges that he employed in the fur trade. His personal barge is known from one literature source. (Stevens 1909) T ere is also an inventory of Laclede’s barge, made aſt er his death in 1778. It listed mostly goods for trading with Native Americans. (Anonymous 1778) Included among the forty-one items on the inventory were such miscellany as 2,000 pounds of bullets, 1,000 rifl e fl ints, several kinds of liquor, and 232 blankets. T ere are several specifi cs known about this boat. T ere was no cabin so Laclede and his family slept in a tent on shore every night. It had a “short, stubby mast”, apparently to serve as an anchor point for a towing rope. T e records state that the boat was towed by crew walking on the shore, rather than rowed, for most of its voyage from New Orleans to upper Louisiana.
Figure 5 is an image (from about 1799) of Whitehall Plantation in Saint James Parish, about forty miles upstream of New Orleans. Our interest is the barge which forms the center of the picture. T e picture is intimate and contemporary. T e person steering the barge is a member of the plantation owner’s family. T e painter, Chistophe Colomb, was a member of the family by marriage. He is depicted as the man sitting
and Century Ship Models from the Kriegstein Collection (Pier Books,
4. A French barge or row galley on the Mississippi River in 1726. Note the awning-covered ‘cabin’ at the stern and the rowers in the bow. From Evan Jones, Trappers and Mountain Men (New York, 1961).
on the river bank in the foreground. (Rathbone 1950) T is barge has a new feature, a cabin perched dead aſt , with the steering station on top of it. A consequence of this concept was some modifi cation of the hull form aſt . Whereas Queen Anne’s barge was nearly double ended, this barge needed a broad transom to support the cabin. Another new feature was an increase in the hull’s depth amidships, caused by a straighter sheer. T is feature tended to increase cargo capacity.
T e beginning of the nineteenth century saw some divergence in barge design, a division into two principal types. As Captain Amos Stoddard, the American military governor of Upper Louisiana, put it: “T e boats used by Indian traders are of various sizes, but those most commonly preferred carry fi ſt een to twenty-fi ve thousand weight. T eir sides are low, and their oars are short…T ey are also somewhat narrow and their length is generally forty fi ve to sixty feet. T e boats employed between New Orleans and the Illinois country are diff erently constructed, they are higher out of the water and sink deeper into it, of much greater width, and are supplied with keels; hence they are called barges and many of them will carry forty tons.” (Stoddard 1812)
A description of one of these lighter barges is presented in the journals of the Dunbar expedition. T is expedition, sponsored by the American government, explored what Dunbar
called the
Washita (now spelled Ouachita) River in present day central Arkansas in 1804. T e boat was fi ſt y-fi ve feet long by nine feet beam. It drew about one foot of water. It had no keel and no sail, but it did have a cabin, a rudder and tiller. It rowed with twelve oars.
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