Adventure: Mississippi and the open sea - the voyage of the "Centennial Republic" in 1876

Part 1 of the adventurous journey of the "Centennial Republic" you can find here.

On New Year's Eve 1875, with only a few hours left of the old year, Nathaniel H. Bishop reached the town of Cairo in Illinois after more than 1,500 kilometres with his sneak box, which was mocked as a "pumpkin seed" on board a coal barge. Here, at the triangle with Missouri and Kentucky, the Ohio flowed into the Mississippi.

Nature on the Mississippi

The last hilly foothills of the Appalachians were also behind Bishop, and the Mississippi wound its way southwards in narrow loops through its river valley. Sandbanks lined its course. It was getting warmer. Cotton plantations, sandstone cliffs and dense forests alternated along the banks.

On the first night on the Mississippi, Bishop set up camp on Bayou de Chien Creek under tall sycamore, amber and black poplar trees. He stayed in this beautiful spot the following Sunday as well, reading his Bible surrounded by the song of countless birds, including a small colony of Carolina parakeets.

Bishop was aware that this colourful parrot species was on the brink of extinction at the hands of his "callous" fellow humans who hunted for fun, and was therefore all the more delighted by the spectacle that had become rare.

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And a few kilometres further on, the next nature experience was already waiting: a detour to Reelfoot Lake. The swampy lake had been created by an earthquake sixty years earlier. "Its surface is covered by a carpet of vegetation, a green prairie, criss-crossed by waterways over which the dead trunks of gigantic cypress trees rise like obelisks."

Shanty boats and paddle steamers

The number of shanty boats, which drifted with the current or - if their owners were in a hurry - could also be pulled by self-made sails in northerly winds, increased steadily. Bishop now frequently took the opportunity to use the large houseboats as a galley during the voyage, especially when a family formed the crew. His polite request was usually happily granted. This often led to long conversations on board the rafts, while the sneak box in the packet made it safely down the river without a helmsman.

There was only one incident when the joint passage lasted several days: in the middle of the night, the swell of the upstream paddle steamer "Robert Lee" rolled over the cockpit of the flat trailer along with its slumbering skipper. He remained as pragmatic as ever: "They poured water over me and kindly washed my blankets."

New stories of the south

Memphis, Tennessee, was passed on 6 January and Natchez, Mississippi, a week later. On the way, Bishop collected reports that would have been completely unthinkable here in the Deep South just a decade earlier, for example of a coloured justice of the peace who now dispensed justice: "de common law ob de state ob Mississippi".

Or from Ben Montgomery. The freed slave had raised so much money that he had been able to buy the dilapidated plantation of his former masters himself - including none other than the only president of the Confederacy: Jefferson Davis.

The melting pot of New Orleans

The 20th January 1876 began with storm clouds over the Louisiana alluvial plain, but these dissipated the closer Bishop came to the end of his inland journey: the delta of the Mississippi with its glittering metropolis of New Orleans. Fifty days had passed since the start in Pittsburgh when the "Centennial Republic" moored at the jetty of the Southern Boat Club after 3,100 kilometres.

The restless man spent two whole days in the melting pot of Sicilian fruit sellers, Spanish gentlemen, French medames, "Creole ladies" and "Louisiana Indians" offering hot gumbo stew.

The sea has different rules

Then he tore himself away from the "scent of flowers, the old buildings, modern civilisation", placed the gift from his hosts, a silk club stander, and said goodbye to the Mississippi and New Orleans. Via a canal, he reached the lagoon-like Lake Pontchartrain in the north of the city, which opens up to the Gulf of Mexico to the east. "My fastest route!" Bishop rejoiced.

But the sea quickly made the conditions clear. The wind and waves were too much for the small skiff. It turned back and spent the night in the shelter of the high side of a schooner.

The last stage of the journey

Only one stage remained, but the dimensions were different. Instead of reliable shores on both sides, there was the coast, sometimes closer, sometimes further away, sometimes hidden in fog. If the "Centennial Republic" had only looked small before - now it was.

Even between the mainland and the islands and sandbanks in front of it, a wave could build up in a very short time that the sneak box could only run away from. The very first storm kept Bishop trapped in the Bay of St Louis for three days. He only just managed to make it through the breaking seas without being shipwrecked. By the crackling campfire made of driftwood, he could at least be glad that the wind kept the greedy mosquitoes away. As carriers of malaria, they had been his main reason for travelling in winter.

But not even the storms managed to stop the adventurer in his adventurous boat: On 19 March, Nathaniel Holmes Bishop reached the mouth of the Suwannee River in Florida, more than 4,000 kilometres from Pittsburgh. The soon to be one hundred year old republic was one success story richer.

Part 1 of the adventurous journey of the "Centennial Republic" you can find here.