Ohio, Mississippi River Flatboats

Compiled by Fred Keller [webmaster]. The only flatboat known to have survived was located in 2000 near Mound City, IL. Read more

Flatboats were a common way to move goods and farm products on the rivers during the late eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries. Perhaps hundreds of thousands were built. In the beginning sections of the Ohio River in Pennsylvania, hastily formed companies were making and selling them, rapidly.

They were also called arks, Kentucky boats, New Orleans boats, Mississippi boats, hoop-pole boats and broadhorns. They were box-like, and were forerunners of today's barges. They frequently did not make a two-way journey; they became part of the cargo and were disassembled for their lumber at the end of the journey.

There were few specifications and no standards. Poor construction and rotten wood did not show up until after the purchasers got downstream a bit. The purchasers often had little or no experience navigating a river or knowing what construction problems to look for.

Flat bottom plank boats date back more than 3,000 years to England. The planks join edge to edge, rather than overlapping as in other wood boats. They are shell-built: conceived, designed and built from the outside in. Skeleton-built boats, on the other hand, were built from the inside out.

By 1770, a steady stream of immigrants poured over the eastern mountains. The best lands of Virginia and Pennsylvania were filling up. When the Northwest Territory opened in 1787, the stream of people became a flood.

New Orleans became the natural market for Ohio Valley farmers and merchants. Cargo included corn, flour, potatoes, tobacco, fruit, whiskey, beans, and on and on. Live animals as well as buckets, glass, lumber and farm machinery were transported on flatboats.

Some common characteristics to Ohio and Mississippi River flatboats included Chine-girder construction where a log was split in half to create two equal timbers, or "gunwales". In Southern Illinois, gunwales were usually made of yellow poplar. They were made as a ledge that held the ends of the floor planks. Wooden uprights were set into the gunwales. The stern and sides were vertical planks of 4 to 6 feet. The bow was angled like that of a modern barge. They looked like floating shoeboxes.

Most pre-Civil war flatboats were built on a ratio of 1:2.5 or 1:3, so a 12-foot wide boat would be 30-36 feet long. As the century progressed, the boats got longer. As early as 1788, Zadok Cramer's Ohio River guide advised readers that large boatyards at Pittsburgh, Wheeling and Brownsville had boats for sale.

Over the 130-year flatboat era, hundreds if not thousands of flatboat wrecks lined the river. They sank for several reasons, one of which was they were built without iron nails.

Cramer said in 1811 poor workmanship and use of rotten wood in flatboat construction was so widespread on the upper Ohio that he believed the problem could only be solved by appointing a boat inspector in that area. He cited an 1807 case where the boat owner had sued a pilot who had lost his boat by hitting a submerged rock for carelessness and loss of cargo. The pilot cleared himself by bringing a section of floor planks into the courtroom and proving the wood was rotten.

There are many stories of pirates on the lower Ohio during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The most credible account are related to Samuel Mason, a Revolutionary War veteran who attacked, looted and burned flatboats from at least 1782 to 1803 (Wagner and McCorvie 2005). When captured by the Spanish in 1803, Mason and his gang testified against each other that they had robbed and burned many boats on the Ohio and Mississippi for over 20 years.

Romantic novelist and historian Timothy Flint published a story of Colonel Pfluger, or "Plug" in 1830. Colonel Plug and his partner, "Nine-Eyes" reportedly liked to sneak onto a boat and dig out the caulking in the bottom, or bore a hole in the hull. Then they would plunder under the guise of salvaging it. The stories said they operated near the mouth of the Cache River near present Mound City, Ill., north of Cairo on the Ohio.

Indians in 1791 defeated and nearly wiped out American army forces in Ohio. In 1794, American troops reopened the old French Fort Massac at present-day Metropolis. They investigated the massacre of 17 flatboat travelers at the mouth of the Cumberland River, just upstream. The next year, Indians killed eight Americans near Grand Tower, on the Mississippi.

Flatboat America

In 2000, when the Ohio River was especially low, local residents found along the shore, the remains of the only flatboat of that era known to still exist. It was found north of Mound City and south of an early nineteenth century community called America. It was probably 12 feet wide and 45 feet long. Only the bottom remained.

The boat cargo appears to have been salvaged. Some tools and kitchen utensils were left behind. Archeologist Mark Wagner says the wreck could be a skiff or houseboat rather than a flatboat. His study indicates flatboats faced a much greater danger of sinking from natural causes such as storms, rocks, snags and running aground.

site index

Photos by researchers, processed by SIUC News. It's near America, IL, between Olmsted and Mound City. The town is now only a few rural houses, but still bears street names of states. It was laid out to be the next US Capitol after the British burned Washington DC in 1814. A sandbar prevented good steamboat access. A plague and an arson fire finished the town.