Pathway to the Heartland and Great Lakes Landing Sites – the St Lawrence River – Part V

Continued from the last post, regarding the flat-bottomed boats that were all the boats that could move along the Mississippi prior to the dredging and deepening of the inner waterway system in North America.    Thus, since we have eliminated the possibility of Lehi reaching the inland areas of the Heartland and Great Lakes, as so many North American theorists claim he did, let’s turn our attention now to the St. Lawrence River, the only other possible approach to the Great Lakes area.

The St. Lawrence River, now called the St. Lawrence Seaway since the building of the canal around Montreal and the locks and dams leading up to Lake Ontario; Red Line: theorists claim of Lehi’s course from Arabia to North America; Green Line: St. Lawrence River

First of all, the enormous effort to stabilize the Mississippi River, and later the Ohio River, both having to be controlled and regulated by dams and other river engineering structures, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, building these structures to aid in navigation, flood control, hydropower, bank stabilization, and recreation. The Mississippi River and its tributaries served as major transportation routes, and the natural channel, where the St. Lawrence River (Fleuve Saint-Laurent), from the Mohawk word Kaniatarowanenneh, meaning "big waterway," had an entirely different problem that kept any kind of shipping from travelling upriver past Montreal.
    The river, flowing northeast from the Lake Ontario, which connects the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean, forms the primary drainage outflow of the Great Lakes Basin. The river itself moves from the Gulf of St. Lawrence along the North Atlantic where it flows past Nova Scotia to the south and Newfoundland to the north, moving southwest down to Québec City and then past Montreal and around the city to Lake St. Louis and down around north side of Grand Island and finally to Lake Ontario, a total distance of 1900 miles.
    Initially, the river from the Gulf to Montreal was called Rivière du Canada, and as a separate river beyond Montreal, because of its impassability there, was named the Ottawa River as it moved upriver toward the Great Lakes. In between were the impassable Lachine Rapids—a series of rapids three miles long, containing large standing waves (result of two waves traveling in opposite directions), indicating a turbulent current interaction.

Until the construction of the three-mile-long Lachine Canal through the southwestern part of the island of Montreal, upstream from the city, from the Old Port of Montreal to Lake Saint-Louis, through the boroughs of Lachine, Lasalle and Sud-Ouest, a distance of 8 or 9 miles had to be portaged. Even with the canal, the difficulty was such that it was usually more convenient to ship goods by rail to Montreal, where they could be loaded at the city's port.
    The original canal was begun in 1821 and was almost 9 miles long, had seven locks, each 98-feet long, 20 feet wide, and 5 feet deep, and officially opened in 1825. Soon after, the canal was deepened to allow bigger boats to pass through. In the 1840s, the Lachine Canal was again deepened to allow even heavier ships to pass through and hydraulic power was introduced to the industries located on its banks.
    At its zenith from 1880 to 1940, the industrial and manufacturing area adjacent to the canal was once the largest in Canada in terms of both the number of firms and diversity of its output. At one time, over 20% of the workforce of the Island of Montreal was employed in its factories. Given its historic importance, the "Lachine Canal Manufacturing Complex" was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1996, an addition to the designation already enjoyed by the canal itself.
    However, by 1950, the canal had become obsolete and was replaced by the St. Lawrence Seaway, which opened in 1959, but by 1970, the Lachine Canal fell victim to deindustrialization. Many of the factories that lined the Canal were torn down and replaced by houses and apartments with the entire canal abandoned due to the decline of shipping, and eventually the entire lower canal was filled in.
    It might be important to realize the significance of the difference in the Mississippi River problems and those of the St. Lawrence. First of all, hydrology, or the movement of water, did not provide the stable, uniform, consistently deeper channel that was needed for efficient navigation of the river. Channelizing and stabilizing the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers was a monumental task, requiring extensive modifications to stabilize the freely meandering river channel and banks and to create a self-scouring channel for navigation by reducing channel width and complexity. The Mississippi required a complex combination of levees to confine and separate the river channel from the flood plain, engineered floodways to reduce flood stages near critical infrastructure, channel straightening to increase the conveyance capacity of the channel, and the construction of dams on the tributaries to attenuate flood peaks and store irrigation water.
    The first major modifications consisted of widespread clearing of snags and obstructions to increase the ease and safety of river navigation. Downed trees and rocks snagged and sank keelboats and steamboats, whereas sandbars and rapids slowed or prevented the upstream movement of boats. The river was known to be particularly treacherous for steamboat navigation because of the numerous snags caused by fallen trees and branches, and a serious effort was begun removing snags and dredging the main channel of the Mississippi River in the early 1800s.
    A report stated “The snag boat O.G. Wagner removed 834 river snags and 380 shoreline snags from the river in one week” (U.S. War Department, 1882). The result of the clearing of snags and obstructions made navigation easier and safer; however, the modifications were only temporary because annual channel migration caused substantial bank erosion, and continuously fed the channel with additional trees from the banks. Thus, snag clearing often was repeated after each high-water event. River engineering projects such as channel straightening, dike construction, and revetments reduced the number of snags and obstructions, but channel dredging continues even today.

Mississippi River in 1890 and in 1990. Note the clear flow today from the many sandbar obstacles of the past

Early nineteenth century travel on the Mississippi, Ohio and Illinois Rivers was fraught with danger. There were moving sandbars, rapids, rocks, and snags throughout the rivers that could easily wreck a boat. Snags were the most significant threat to travel because they were often undetectable. River pilots described three kinds of snags:
1. “Rafts" or "wooden islands" composed of an accumulation of logs and tree debris that became grounded on a sandbar or other outcropping from the shore.
2. "Planters" were whole trees that had fallen into the river and become embedded on the bottom, over time becoming reinforced by the buildup of silt.
3. Similar to planters were "sawyers", groups of trees embedded in the river bottom at a less than perpendicular angle and subject to the pressure of the current, appearing and disappearing at intervals mimicking the motion of a saw at a saw mill.
    Often groups of planters would have only a foot or two showing above the water, and contrary to their flimsy appearance, planters could quickly ground a boat and tear into its hull. Trees were constantly falling into the rivers as the banks eroded or during high water, making every river trip dangerous.
    In the heyday of the riverboat, pilots were the heroes and celebrities of river commerce. They faced shipboard explosions and fires as well as snags, ice, shifting channels, and all the other obstacles of a changing river. A journey’s success, the ship owners’ fortunes, and the lives of the passengers rested on how well pilots read the river. Steamboat pilots learned from experience, and the nation’s western rivers were strict, fickle teachers. Knowing the channel wasn’t nearly enough. The required learning included the locations of snags, rocks, sandbars, and landmarks, the depth of the water, and the strength of the current.
    As soon as they learned these vital facts, some changed. From the feel of the boat, the color of the water, and ripples and swirls, they had to deduce new information about what lay ahead. They put this knowledge to use day and night, in all kinds of weather, and in all seasons. Obviously, this was not a river to be sailed by inexperienced novices, who knew nothing about the river or its many intricacies, even after it was dredged and deepened.
   On the other hand, the St. Lawrence had different problems. It was filled with tiny islands, with four major archipelagos within the river itself. No one ever considered the river a pathway from the Atlantic clear to the Great Lakes before the Lachine Rapids were circumvented with a canal around them, and even then, no ship could reach Lake Ontario until a series of two U.S.(Wiley-Dondero Canal, and 5 Canadian locks (South Shore Canal, Beauharnois Canal, Iroquois Canal) were built, to raise a ship 265 feet (equivalent of a 26 story building) from the river to Lake Ontario; then, to move from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, a series of eight locks were built to raise a vessel 326 feet more (equivalent of a 32 story building). Together, these 15 locks make up the world’s most spectacular lift system, which lifts ships 591 feet, as high as a 59-story building.
    For anyone, especially one who claims to be writing about the Book of Mormon, to make a claim that Lehi’s ship could have made its way up the equivalent of the height of a 59-story building, from river to lake and from lake to lake, in order to arrive at Lake Erie, is ludicrous and beyond any believability. 
(See the next post, “Pathway to the Heartland and Great Lakes Landing Sites – the Ohio and St Lawrence Rivers– Part VI,” for more on what it took to make the Mississippi and inland waterways navigable for anything other than flat-bottomed, shallow-draft boats)