The James River Batteau And Festival History
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In 1832, the old James River Company became the James River and Kanawha Company chartered to do the final link between the Ohio River and the tidewater of the James by canal and roadway. Joseph Carrington Cabell, active in Buckingham County, was president of the company for its first twelve years and was known as the “Father of the James River and Kanawha Canal”. Four years later the initial financing was completed and work on the new canal was started from Maiden’s Adventure to Lynchbrug.

Eight years later the canal was completed to Lynchburg in the fall of 1840. There was a great celebration when the first canal boat, the General Harrison, arrived laden with passengers and merchandise from Richmond. The excitement was so intense that the speaker of the day fell off his platform on the boat into the canal.

The first passenger boat, the Harvey, left Richmond on November 25, 1841 and covered the 147 miles to Lynchburg in forty hours. During the next year a line of packet boats would leave Richmond every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7:30am for a fare of eight dollars. And two boats, the Joseph C. Cavell and the John Marshall would leave alternately for Richmond. The packet boats took thirty to thirty six hours to go from Richmond to Lynchburg, a remarkable savings in time over the ten days consumed by a batteau.

Hundreds of boats of different sizes were moved over to the now competed canal to be pulled along its towpath by hand, mules or horses. In addition to a number of batteaux, two major types of boats plied the canal: hugh wooden freighters up to fourteen and a half feet wide and ninty three feet long that could carry a load, on average, of 60 tons; and the more streamlined packet (passenger) boats, at least six of them with iron hulls.

It took ten more years for the James River and Kanawha Canal to reach Buchanan, 196 miles upstream from Richmond and cost $8,259,000. The first packet boat, the John Early, left Lynchburg for Buchanan on November 11, 1851. At every lock along the line crowds gathered, cheering. A hotel, newly erected was the site for continued celebrations with dancing until daylight. Buchanan gave promise of becoming the metropolis of southwest Virginia and a boom in real estate values was enjoyed. In just one year, it have become a prosperous community and its financial future seemed to be secure. The 1850 census showed 1,804 dwellings, 26 paupers, 4 deaf and dumb, 4 blind, 3 insane, 4 idiots, 5,550 males, 5,208 females, 2,027 male negro slaves, 1,710 female negro slaves, 203 free negro males and 211 free negro females. 1,060 attended school and 825 over the age of 25 could not read or write. Buckanan’s total population was approximately 15,000. The final leg from Buchanan to Covington, 47 miles away was never completed.

Revenues from tolls on the canals in 1860 would substantially decrease because of the immense competition from the railroad. It was no longer profitable to ship freight by batteaux.

By March of 1861 and for the next four years, Virginia was the principle theater for hostilities during the War between the States. The batteaux would again see a familiar use. As railraod lines were being destroyed by the opposing armies, batteaux were again used as fast, flexible military supply carriers that could travel down the rivers with or without use of the canals. Most central Virginia and the northern valley of Virginia had been devastated in the fighting, and Richmond had been nearly destroyed.

The forward surge of the railroads caused the James River and Kanawha Canal to gradually fade out of the picture. That expensive waterway, the dream of George Washington had capitulated to the new, faster railroad. Badly battered during the Civil War and almost wrecked by a severe flood in 1877, its passenger packet boats and freight boats made their last trips in 1880. George W. Bagby wrote in The Old Virginia Gentleman and other Sketches, “If the James River does not behave better hereafter than it has done of late, the railroad will have to be suspended in mid-heavens by means of a series of stationery balloons; traveling, then may be a little wabbly, but in all events, it won’t be wet.”

In the end, the canal was purchased by the railroad (now CSX Corporation) which laid its track on the towpath. The Great Kanawha Canal Turning Basin in Richmond was

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