Reaching the Great Lakes from the Gulf of Mexico: Mississippi River

Many Great Lakes Theorists claim that the Lehi Colony sailed up the Atlantic from the tip of Africa, then across the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico and then up the Mississippi River to the Great Lakes. While on a map, this 2000-mile-Mississippi River voyage looks plausible, in reality however, would have been impossible in 600 B.C. Like the Lachine Rapids blocking movement down the St. Lawrence (see last post), the Des Moines and Rock Island rapids blocked movement up the Mississippi for any type of ocean going vessel—if in fact, a deep sea vessel could never have gotten that far because of the shifting sand bars and other extremely difficult navigational problems.

Note the extremely shallow draft of a Mississippi paddle wheel boat

Note that two entire decks are beneath the water line on a regular deep-sea sailing vessel

In 1829, there were surveys of the two major obstacles on the upper Mississippi, the Des Moines Rapids and the Rock Island Rapids, where the river was shallow and the riverbed was rock. The Des Moines Rapids were about 11 mi (18 km) long and just above the mouth of the Des Moines River at Keokuk, Iowa. The Rock Island Rapids were between Rock Island and Moline, Illinois. Both rapids were considered virtually impassable. In fact, the Indians along the Mississippi called the river, hahawakpa, meaning the "river of the falls." In 1848, the Illinois and Michigan Canal was built to connect the Mississippi River to Lake Michigan via the Illinois River near Peru, Illinois. Before that, the Mississippi River had no route to the Great Lakes.

Rock Island Rapids in 1881. Today locks and dams are needed to bypass this navigational hazard

In addition, both the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence rivers flow toward the oceans. This means that any weather vessel, “driven forth the before the wind” would have to sail against extremely strong currents. The Mississippi river flows between 200 and 700 thousand cubic feet of water per second (moving 400 million metric tons of sediment annually into the Gulf), twice that of the Columbia River and 40 times that of the Colorado River. The St. Lawrence moves 244 thousand cubic feet of water per second. For a sailing ship to move against these currents would require a considerable wind to compensate.

As is thoroughly diagramed in the book “Lehi Never Saw Mesoamerica,” a ship moving by wind must have at its back a wind stronger than the current moving against it. As an example, if the wind is moving a ship forward at 10 mph (a good clip for a sailing ship in the 18th century), but the current is moving against the ship (pushing it backward) at 5 mph, the ship is only making 5 mph headway. On the other hand, if the current is moving against the ship at 10 mph, the ship is making no headway at all—it is literally standing still in the water. Further, if the current against the ship is 15 mph, the ship is losing headway at the rate of 5 mph—it is literally driven backward.

Normally, the flow of water on the Mississippi at high water level is between 6 and 9 miles per hour. Winds, on the other hand, generally average 9 to 11 mph. If the winds are blowing upriver, this would give a ship a heading of 2 to 3 miles per hour under normal circumstances. To cover 2,000 miles, traveling only in daylight hours since the Mississippi is a treacherous river for navigation, that would be about 83 days to cover this last leg of the journey—almost 3 months. Plus sailing the distance of about 7,500 miles form the Arabian coast (using Columbus’ average speed, the Mississippi Leg would be 50% longer than the entire voyage across the oceans).

Finally, the Mississippi is one of the most dangerous navigatable rivers in the world. In 1988, record low water levels provided an opportunity and obligation to examine the climax of the wooden-hulled age. Four and a half acres of water craft remains were exposed on the bottom of the Mississippi River at West Memphis, Arkansas. They dated to the late 19th to early 20th centuries, which included the period of time of the Steamboat Age along the Mississippi—flat bottomed vessels which were built specifically for this river. Consider the challenge for Lehi’s family, in a deep-hulled ocean vessel to have navigated this river. It is easy to make claims in the 21st century about the past, but something else to have accomplished the impossible in B.C. times.