Continuing
with the Great Lakes and Heartland theories that have Lehi sailing up a river
from the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico to reach the theorists’ Land of
Promise, we covered the St. Lawrence approach from the northeast out of the
Atlantic in the last post, and showed how impossible that was in 600 B.C., as it was for 2400
years afterward before the channels were dug around the rapids near Montreal. In
this post we will show the approach from the south, up the Mississippi River.
One
of the troubles we have today in understanding all this is every boat, ship,
schooner and yacht is equipped with powerful engines. Even “sailing boats” have
engines. For the past many years, only the most experienced blue water sailor might
think to go to sea without a backup engine.
Top Left: 26’ LWL Catalina 315 sailing boat has a 21 hp 3-cylinder diesel;
Top Right: 36’ Gulfstar has a diesel inboard engine; Bottom: 48’ Elan 494
Impression has a 75 hp engine
With
an engine, of course, a boat small or large, can make turns, sharply maneuver,
and work their way through narrows and around obstacles with comparative ease.
However, there were no engines in Lehi’s day. There was no knowledge of tacking,
booms, or hauling close to the wind. Boats had a fixed sail and you went where
the wind blew it. Even today, sailboats cannot sail dead on end (directly into
the wind), nor on a course that is too close to the direction from which the
wind is blowing (“no-go-zone”), but in Lehi’s time, boats were not designed and
sailors knew nothing of chock-a-block, or beating, or working to windward
(sailing toward the wind just off the “no-go-zone”), that is, sailing “upwind.”
Even when tacking was learned in the 16th century, it wasted a lot
of time to sail in that manner and seldom done, especially on long voyages, and
obviously a thorough knowledge of the winds had to be known and understood to
use them in such a manner to reach a destination.
Lehi’s
ship, and ships into the 15th century “ran downwind,” that is with
the wind coming directly behind the ship. This is called “running with the wind”
today, and what Nephi called being “driven forth before the wind” (1 Nephi
18:8, 9). The other term is “going with the flow,” that is, to move with the
flow of the current, which gave rise to the construction of ships with high
sterns (poop deck) to keep from being swamped from high following seas when
traveling in the current with the wind behind.
Consequently,
when a boat or ship entered the water in that ancient era, it automatically
became “adrift,” meaning it was at the will of the wind and tide. This is why
knowledge of winds and ocean currents became so important to sailing, and
continued even into and past the Age of Sail. It is an issue that even today, “landsman”
and “lubber” often fail to take into consideration when discussing sailing
routes of the past. As much as half of the comments about ancient sailing on
the internet today are made by those who know little or nothing about the
period and the difficulties or challenges early seamen faced.
From the first sails, seamen took
their ships where the wind blew them. These early routes across the oceans
determined early development, exploration, trade and conquest
Under
such conditions, any approach to the Mississippi Delta in 600 B.C., would have
been a hazardous experience for a sailing vessel “driven forth before the
wind.” Whenever rivers meet the ocean, soil and dirt carried by the river are
deposited at the mouth and new lands, shoals, and sand bars are created, forming
a delta. As these rivers enter the ocean, they tend to get off course and
branch into many directions, creating many small islands in the delta region.
This is particularly true with the Mississippi Delta.
Top: Map of the Mississippi Delta
today, with numerous channels and sub-entrances; Bottom Left: Satellite
imagery of Bird's Foot Delta, green being built up land, dark blue being river waterways to the
(light blue) Gulf; Bottom Right: Satellite view of created islands blocking the
entrances in the delta
Even
as late as the 18th century, just entering the Mississippi Delta was dangerous and in
1718, the French had Bar Pilots who boarded all ships entering the Delta to
help guide them through the dangerous eddies, channels, branches, and
ever-changing sandbars. The French built a Pilot station called the Belize, meaning “beacon,” and built
towers to mark the entrance.
When Louisiana was ceded to
Spain by secret treaty in 1762, the Spanish built a station in the same general
location and called it Balise, which was also a fortress to protect Louisiana
from pirates and the enemies of France. The Spanish Pilots and their deputies
were required to take frequent soundings of the bar with lead lines to
determine where the deepest parts of the channel were. These Pilots were
independent entrepreneurs and competition among them was fierce and often
violent. The ones with the fastest boats reached the incoming ships first and got
the job to pilot them in.
1744 French map of the Mississippi Delta East Pass, showing (yellow
arrow) Fort de la Balize (“seamark”) on the lower right
After 1800, because of the
Spanish Pilot concession abuses, pilots from Massachusetts, Maine, Nova Scotia,
England and Scandinavia joined forces and sailed on Pilot cutters cruising the
coast looking for sails on the horizon, and in 1805, the Pilot Act was passed,
seeking to regulate the appointment of these Pilots who, within a few years,
were called Branch Pilots because they piloted the branches of the Mississippi
river delta. By 1853, Balize was called Pilotsville, and the town moved about
five miles northwest on the west bank in the Southwest Pass channel, but in
1860, after succumbing to storm winds, the village was moved five miles upriver
on the east bank, just above the Head of the Passes, where the main stem of the
Mississippi branches off into three distinct directions at its mouth in the
area called “Bird’s Foot Delta.” By 1879 there were 38 bar and branch Pilots,
and no ship captain, concerned with the safety of his ship and crew, would dare
to attempt entering the delta without one aboard.
Nor would anyone sail up the
Mississippi, even in a steamboat, without knowing by heart the location of
every snag, rock, sandbar, and landmarks, as well as the depth of the water,
and strength of the current. Every Mississippi Pilot knew the meaning of differing colors
of the water, of the ripples and swirls, in order to deduce new
information about what lay ahead on the river, especially just below the
surface. They learned from experience for the river was a strict, dangerously fickle
teacher, that changed frequently.
To think that a deep sea vessel,
like Nephi’s ship that had crossed the ocean, with its deep “V” or rounded
keel, could have sailed up the Mississippi in 600 B.C. with an inexperienced
crew with almost no experience, is simply not a logical understanding of the
river and sailing, and obviously would have been out of the question.
To better understand this, consider that the Mississippi flows
at 125,000 cubic feet per second toward the Delta, 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.
This southward flow would require a weather vessel like Nephi’s,
“driven forth the before the wind” to sail against extremely strong currents. For a sailing ship to move
against these currents would require a considerable wind to compensate. And
with such limited direction of sail, would have found it near impossible just
to maintain steerage upriver.
In addition, the
draft of the ship (distance between the vessel’s waterline and the lowest point
of the ship) would have probably required ten feet of draught (the depth of
water needed to float a ship). As an example, the Pilgrim’s 90-foot Mayflower had a draft of 13 feet, and Columbus’
56-foot Nina and Pinta, had a draft of 7.5 feet, with his 62-foot Santa Maria a draft of 6.6 feet and a
drought of 10 feet. To have sailed up the Mississippi, it would have required a
ten foot deep water channel—something that did not exist anywhere in the
Mississippi. The Corps of Engineers dug a 9 foot navigation channel in the
river in 1930, and according to the Corps of Engineers spokesman Greg Raimondo
of the Vicksburg District office, they are required by law to maintain “a
9-foot-deep channel 300-feet wide and 500-feet wide in the bends” along the
Mississippi’s 2,300-mile run from northern Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.
Depth was a critical issue to sailors of the
Age of Sail. They constantly had seamen on the sides with sounding lines, shown
here in the 1850s, measuring the depth under the keep to make sure they did not
run aground
Nephi’s deep ocean,
blue water ship simply could not have sailed up the Mississippi River, since it
would have continually run aground in any attempt at sailing up river.
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