Robert Gudmestad

And so there was enough water and it was kind of this very rough voyage over the river or over the falls, but they made it.

They get further down.

This crazy coincidence was that you had a series of earthquakes that happened in the center of the United States that probably not a lot of Americans have heard of.

They're called the New Madrid earthquakes.

And so by this point, the New Orleans was on the Mississippi River.

And these were three magnitude eight earthquakes that happened.

And then with the aftershocks as well.

And the story goes that for a while, a portion of the Mississippi River actually went upstream.

The waters ran backwards.

because of the magnitude of the earthquake, which is actually a pretty fitting metaphor for the steamboats because in a way, you know, they're going upstream.

They're kind of making the water go backwards.

Yes, right.

And this was really difficult because they had a guide on this boat.

His name was Andrew Jack, and he was very familiar with these rivers.

And he had to know the rivers because of where the eddies were and where the sandbars were and that kind of thing.

But now the river is completely remade in a portion of it between lower Missouri and above Natchez.

But they're able to guide their way through, and then they get to Natchez by December 30th.

And fittingly, they take on cotton bales as their first commercial product that they ship to New Orleans, and they arrive in New Orleans on January 12th, 1812.

And of all types in some ways.

Yeah.