BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields

Subject: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: wysiwyg
Date: 20 Feb 07 - 10:44 AM

I guess the river channels shifted so far that some of the wrecked steamboats are under corn, now, instead of underwater. (Article cites three HUNDRED found over time!) I'm reading about one now in the Smithsonian mag; one item of note is the lynching of passengers that almost occurred over rifles smuggled onboard the boat to be used (I think I have it right) to perpeturate slavery. "Lynching" so often evokes images of slain African Americans; this one has "whitey" about to get a turn like Old West "justice" and over race issues, to boot.

Other items of note seem to have changed the scholars' sense of class values and purchasing patterns in those times.

Me, I just think it's SO cool that people go out looking for old steamboats, in corn fields, and FIND them.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: wysiwyg
Date: 20 Feb 07 - 11:00 AM

SMITHSONIAN STORY, ONLINE

If anyone wants the mag when I am done with it, let me know via PM please. First come, first serve. I have a few other back issues, too, for a Mudcat donation.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 20 Feb 07 - 11:29 AM

Rivers can shift quite some way if we don't stop them. The Kosi, the largest tributary of the Ganges, so not a small river at all, migrated about 70 miles in 200 years.

Subject: RE: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: wysiwyg
Date: 20 Feb 07 - 11:33 AM

Yes, of course; I knew about that but I never thought about it resulting in steamboats under cornfields. I lived near an old internal sea, and thought about fossils of sea life; but the idea of steamboats under our feet has a certain charm to it, don't you think?

Graves, old cities, yes, I might think of them..... But steamboats?

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: jeffp
Date: 20 Feb 07 - 11:39 AM

I think one of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt books used this scenario.

Subject: RE: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 20 Feb 07 - 03:10 PM

Here is another

Subject: RE: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: leeneia
Date: 20 Feb 07 - 06:38 PM

You beat me to it, KB. I have visited the display about the Bertrand twice and will again in a month. I was amazed at the high quality and beauty of the some of the wares.

Kansas City has the Steamboat Arabia. Its museum is well worth visiting.

To me,one of the most remarkable things about the Arabia is the way it was located. A man and his sons had done historical research on wrecks and had read about the Arabia. They went to a landowner who they thought might have it on his place. The landowner walked them out into his cornfield, pointed down, and said "It's here."

And that's where it was. Imagine the enduring ties to the land that made that statement possible.

Subject: RE: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 12:26 AM

Old friend, the late John Hartford, wrote a fascinating little book some years back called, if ya remember, "Steamboat In A Cornfield"--about the sternwheel Str. Virginia going aground in a cornfield---and the heroic efforts that eventually re-floated her.

Also, I photographed a steamboat high and dry near Savanna, Illinois back when I was singing on steamboats on the Mississippi River from 1986 to 1997. Sublime times were those...

That boat (THE WEBBER) was deemed a hazzard and was dismantled in the late 1980s. By then souvenir hunters had pretty much stripped her of everything worth having. Trees had grown up all around her and I doubt she ever would've refloated hemmed in that way.--- But the big flood in '93 might've made the vessel more dangerous to navigation than she had been through the years. All that's left of her are my photos. --

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 08:24 PM

And a recent news note was that Abraham Lincoln held a patent for his invention of "inflatable pontoons" to be used for freeing grounded steamboats without the necessity of unloading all the cargo.

Apparently it wasn't commercialized.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 08:38 PM

Just read the article in the Smithsonian waiting in the dentist's office today. Something about a big root that sunk the Arabia. Not ideal reading in a dentist's office. The Arabia was found with a device that recorded underground changes in either magnetism or density of the ground.

Hey, I was in the dentist office. You want I should remember everything?

It was discovered by one of the people who excavated it, not by the farmer.

Folk tales never die.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: bubblyrat
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 08:50 PM

In England,we have lots of WW2 bombers buried under our fields.Some were casualties,and crashed while returning to base, but many aircraft were simply buried in trenches not long after the war ended, mostly in East Anglia ( Norfolk & Suffolk ), as it was too expensive to keep them going. I think the types / marques covered included most of the aircraft operated by the Royal Air Force, possibly including the B 17 "Flying Fortresses" that my Dad flew in. Also, large numbers of Naval aircraft were shipped out to Australia in the build-up to the Allied invasion of Japan.Following the Japanese surrender, they were taken out of their crates,assembled, had their engines run & tested, and were then loaded aboard various British carriers.As soon as these ships were a few miles out to sea, all of these aircraft, Corsairs, Hellcats, Avengers,etc.,,all brand new & straight from the factory, were pushed over the side ,into the sea !!! What a waste !! But that's politics for you !! In more modern times----after the Falklands War,between Britain & Argentina, the British government spent millions of pounds on re-building the airfield at Port Stanley. When the operation was complete, the government was faced with the cost of bringing back all the heavy plant,like bulldozers,trucks,earth-movers,cranes etc to Britain. So they decided it was too expensive, and the airfield constructors were told to excavate huge trenches and bury EVERYTHING underground !! What a waste !! But-----That"s politics for you !!

Subject: RE: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 10:11 PM

Is what is!

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: leeneia
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 11:17 PM

Well, Jerry, I learned the story about the Arabia from the documentary at the museum, and afterward I talked to the father of the family that found it. I forget his name.

No doubt they used devices to check the landowner's belief. Who wouldn't?

Subject: RE: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: Charley Noble
Date: 22 Feb 07 - 08:09 PM

Pretty neat! I did read that article in the Smithsonian with interest.

I'm even more fascinated with the article in the current Smithsonian Magazine on deciphering Archimedes's manuscript (copy) after it was scraped down by some monk and recycled. It's amazing what can be uncovered with imaging nowadays.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Steamboats Under the Cornfields
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Feb 07 - 08:13 PM

My Smithsonian back issues are up in the Auction for the year.

~S~