Grandview, IN[1]No known record exists of expedition’s travel between Louisville and Fort Massac. Using information from travelers of the period and Cramer’s 1802 river guide, The Navigator, one … Continue reading On or near this date, the expedition reaches the region where the hills recede, and the Ohio lowlands commence. One week earlier in this area, Thomas Rodney ran aground in a channel with only three inches of water.
The Ohio and Mississippi Navigator (1802)
Zadok Cramer, 1802.
Evidence suggests that Lewis or his pilot carried a recent edition of Cramer’s Navigator. Thomas Rodney’s journal makes several references to it, especially when this particular river guide did not help them pick the correct channel. It is likely that Lewis and Clark, only days behind Rodney, had similar frustrations navigating the river in the Ohio lowlands.
Cramer’s Description
Between Hardin’s creek and Yellow banks the low lands commence. The hills which higher up the river are uniformly to be met with either on one side or the other, now entirely disappear, and their is nothing to be seen on either hand but an extensive level country[2]Zadok Cramer, The Ohio and Mississippi Navigator: Containing Directions for Navigating the Monongahela, Allegheny, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers . . . (Pittsburgh: Zadok Cramer, Bookseller & … Continue reading
Rodney Runs Aground
[F]ound a sandy riffle on our right between us and NW shore, and after gitting 2/3 through the reach grounded. Got off and went forward again. Got near the lower end the riffle which was only soft sand and ground again. All hands turned out to git her off but found we could not git her over, there not being more than 3 inches water. All hands spread round to hunt a channel, and [we spent] an hour before we discovered a passage. We had to go back about 200 yards.
—Thomas Rodney[3]23 October 1803. Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), … Continue reading
Notes
| ↑1 | No known record exists of expedition’s travel between Louisville and Fort Massac. Using information from travelers of the period and Cramer’s 1802 river guide, The Navigator, one conjecture is that the captains reached the Ohio River lowlands near this date. |
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| ↑2 | Zadok Cramer, The Ohio and Mississippi Navigator: Containing Directions for Navigating the Monongahela, Allegheny, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers . . . (Pittsburgh: Zadok Cramer, Bookseller & Stationer, 1802), 37. |
| ↑3 | 23 October 1803. Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), 133. |
