NICHOLAS ROOSEVELT'S 1811 STEAMBOAT NEW ORLEANS
extracts from Pittsburgh Gazette

2 August 1811
Quotes Orleans Gazette stating that waters of Mississippi have risen this spring to a height never before paralleled in the recollection of the oldest inhabitants of Louisiana,

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18 October 1811
Steam Boat

With pleasure we announce, that the Steam Boat lately built at this place by Mr. Roosevelt (from an experiment made on Tuesday last) fully answers the most sanguine expectations that were formed of her sailing.

She is 150 feet keel, 450 tons burthen, and is built of the best materials and in the most substantial manner. -- Her cabin is elegant, and the accommodations for passengers not surpassed.

We are told that she is intended as a regular packet between Natchez and New Orleans.

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25 October 1811

The Steam Boat sailed from this place on Sunday last, for the Natchez.

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21 Jan 1812

The Earthquake

Extract of a letter from a gentleman on his way to New Orleans to a friend in this place (Lexington, Ky.) -- dated 20th December

We entered the Mississippi on the morning of the 14th, and on the night of the 15th came to anchor on a sandbar, about ten miles above the Little Prairie -- half past 2 o'clock in the morning of the 16th, we were aroused from our slumbers by a violent shaking of the boat -- there were three barges and two keels in company, all effected the same way . ... We weighed anchor early in the morning, and in a few minutes after we started there came on in quick successions, two other shocks, more violent than the former. It was then daylight, and we could plainly perceive the effect it had on shore. The bank of the river gave way in all directions, and came tumbling into the water; the trees were more agitated than I ever before saw in the severest storms, and many of them from the shock they received broke off near the ground, as well as many more torn up by the roots. We considered ourselves more secure on the water, than we should be on land, of course we proceeded down the river. As we progressed the effects of the shock as before described were observed in every part of the banks of the Mississippi. In some places five, ten and fifteen acres have sunk down in a body, even the Chickasaw Bluffs, which we have passed, did not escape; one or two of them have fallen in considerably.

The inhabitants of the Little Prairie and its neighborhood all deserted their homes, and retired back to the hills or swamps. The only brick chimney in that place was entirely demolished by the shocks. I have not yet heard that any lives were lost, or accident of consequence happened. I have been twice on shore since the first shock; and then but a very short time, as I thought it unsafe, for the ground is cracked and torn to pieces in such a way as made it truly alarming; indeed some of the islands in the river that contained from one to two hundred acres of land have been nearly all sunk, and not one yet that I have seen but is cracked from one end to the other, and has lost some part of it.

There has been in all forty-some shocks, some of them have been very light; the first one took place at half past 2 on the morning of the 16th, the last one at eleven o'clock this morning (20th) since I commenced writing this letter. The last one I think was not as severe as some of the former, but it lasted longer than any of the preceding: I think it continued nearly a minute and a half. ... There is one circumstance that has occurred, which if I had not seen it with my own eyes, I could hardly have believed; which is, the rising of the trees that lie in the bed of the river. I believe that every tree that has been deposited in the bed of the river since Noah's flood, now stands erect out of the water; some of these I saw myself during one of the hardest shocks, rise up eight or ten feet out of water. The navigation has been rendered extremely difficult in many places in consequence of the snags being so extremely thick. ...

Immediately after the first shock and those which took place after daylight, the whole atmosphere was impregnated with a sulphurous smell.

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14 February 1812

Copies Louisiana Gazette of 13 January reporting arrival of steam boat New Orleans in city of New Orleans. (already copied from Louisiana Gazette).


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