Robert Gudmestad

It was a narrow flat bottom boat.

And then the deck extended wider.

Oh, I see.

Right above the water.

Because faster boats had less...

contact with the water.

Sure.

And people wanted fast boats.

But the deck itself became the repository for all kinds of cargo on these steamboats.

He had chains that literally would hold the deck from drooping down and touching the water.

They were called hog chains.

That voyage left on October 20th, 1811.

And a couple of days later, it's in Cincinnati.

A couple of days after that, it's in Louisville.

But it had a problem in Louisville because there were the falls at Louisville.

And when the New Orleans got to Louisville, they weren't sure if it would actually make it over the falls.

And that would be disastrous if it scraped over the falls, got a hole in the boat, and then sank.

That's not a good demonstration of an early technology.

So they spent a couple of weeks essentially at Louisville waiting for the water to rise and taking people on board and demonstrating that they could go up river and go back down river and that kind of thing.

They finally decided to shoot over the falls, so to speak.