Batteaux and Banjos
Celebrating Two Hundred and Fifty Years on the James River
High Points in Batteau History
While most enthusiasts of American history have been eagerly anticipating April 19, 2025 — the 250th anniversary of "the shot heard round the world" at the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775 — this date also marks the 250th anniversary of the James River batteau! On that very same day, more than six-hundred miles to the south, brothers Anthony and Benjamin Rucker, with Thomas Jefferson in attendance, launched their newly designed flatboat on a tributary of the James in Amherst County, Virginia.
The following list summarizes some key points in batteau history:
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First James River batteau launched April 19, 1775 by brothers Anthony and Benjamin Rucker of Amherst County, Virginia, (a few miles upriver from Batteaux and Banjos). Thomas Jefferson witnessed the event and wrote, “Rucker's battoe is 50 f. long, 4 f. wide in the bottom & 6 f. wide at the top. She carries 11 hhds. [hogsheads] & draws 13 1/2 [inches] water.” (Hogsheads were large, often flat-sided barrels, into which tobacco was tightly packed. The standard size and weight of hogsheads in Virginia had been steadily increasing since the 1600s. In Jefferson’s day, a typical hogshead weighed in around 1,000 lbs. By the early 1800s, that weight had increased by a hundred pounds or more.)
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The James River batteaux were flat-bottomed pole boats, typically 6’ wide, anywhere from 40’ to 70’ long, and had a draft of about one foot. While some were signifcantly shorter, the largrest batteaux clocked in around 80’ long, were as wide as 8’, and had a draft of 2’. Boats this large pushed the limit of operability on the James, and would have been unusable on most of the river's smaller tributaries and further upriver. The James River batteaux were specially designed to carry hogheads of tobacco over the shallow, rocky waterways of the upper James (west of the Fall Line at Richmond). The design proved so successful that it was quickly adapted to streams and rivers across the upland South from Maryland to Georgia.
Various methods of transporting tobacco including batteau (b) from An Historical and Practical Essay on the Culture and Commerce of Tobacco by William Tatham (1800). Note the first example which illustrates an early method whereby two dugout canoes were lashed together forming a sort of catamaran. Tatham did not recommend this method which he states was attempted in the "mountains far up the James river." In Tatham's words, "The originality of this mode of conveyance seems to be also ascribable to the fertile imagination of a people, upon whom the self-sufficiency of doing nothing wrong, has aspersed the foul imputation of doing nothing right."
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The term batteau comes from the French “bateau” which can refer to a wide variety of craft, usually flat-bottomed. Some have suggested the Ruckers may have encountered the term during the French and Indian War where it was applied to similar craft used in the Old Northwest. The design of the James River batteau was distinctive enough, however, that the heirs of Anthony and Ben Ruckers were able to acquire a patent and claim exclusive rights to use and vend the design. Despite published threats to enforce their rights, by 1821 when they acquired the patent with the help of Thomas Jefferson, the batteau had become so common and widespread it was beyond anyone’s ability to regulate.
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During antebellum times, counties in Central and Southside Virginia raised millions of pounds of tobacco annually. Prior to the batteaux, hogsheads would be turned on their side, hitched to oxen or mules, and rolled over Virginia’s notoriously poor roads from farm to market. For many planters and small farmers, this could be a journey of a hundred miles or more over the broken, hilly, Piedmont country. Batteaux capable or transporting as many as 10 to 15 hogsheads by river could cut that journey in half or eliminate it altogether for planters fortunate to live right on the river. Most farms and plantations on the river and its navigable tributaries would have owned at least one batteau.
Tobacco hogshead transported in the traditional manner, Richmond, Virginia ca. 1900.
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The boatman of the early 19th century was a legend in his own lifetime. This was equally true of the James River batteaumen. While low ranking and known for their rowdy and licentious behavior, they were folk heroes nonetheless. Popular songs like "The Boatman’s Dance" celebrated their exploits. In respect to both their vital role in the economic infrastructure and their place in the popular imagination, a close analogy can be drawn between 19th century boatmen and modern day truckers. The vast majority of batteaumen in antebellum Virginia were African American slaves and freemen. Poor whites also worked off and on as boatmen. Of this class, Frederick Law Olmsted wrote in A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, "They mostly followed boating — hiring as hands on the bateaus that navigate the small streams and canals, but never for a longer term than a single trip of a boat, whether that might be long or short. At the end of the trip they were paid by the day. Their wages were from fifty cents to a dollar, varying with the demand and individual capacities." Many planters and farmers owned and operated their own boats. Other boats were hired out. Records indicate there were many black boat owners and captains. Oftentimes, slaves would be given the responsibility of independently transporting a crop to market and bringing the batteau back.
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The heyday of the James River batteau ran from 1780 to 1840 when, at its peak, an estimated six-hundred batteaux were operating on the James from its navigable headwaters in the mountains down to Richmond. The completion of the James River and Kanawah Canal between Richmond and Lynchburg in 1840 marked the beginning of the batteau’s decline as canal boats took over a greater share of transport on the middle James. Nonetheless, batteaux remained in use on the James for several more decades, albeit in declining numbers. As late as the mid 1850s, Frederick Law Olmsted recorded in A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, “On the canal [in Richmond], a long, narrow, canoe-like boat, perhaps fifty feet long and six wide, and drawing but a foot or two of water, is nearly as common as the ordinary large boats, such as are used on our canals. They come out of some of the small, narrow, crooked streams, connected with the canals, in which a difficult navigation is effected, by poleing. They are loaded with tobacco, flour, and a great variety of raw country produce." Ultimately, railroads would spell end for batteaux and canal alike. In 1854, Lynchburg and Richmond were first linked by rail. However, river and canal transport remained important throughout the War Between the States. In 1880, partly instigated by damaging floods, the James River and Kanawha Canal was finally sold to the Richmond and Allegheny Railroad Company. and tracks were laid on the old towpaths.
"George Napper's boat & crew at dinner at Gwins Landing." 1872, on the Greenbrier River, near Alderson, West Virginia. From the papers of Jedediah Hotchkiss in a photograph album of views along projected railroad lines and rivers from near Staunton, Virginia, to Huntington, West Virginia.
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Batteaux and banjos are virtually inseparable in early nineteenth century accounts of life on the James River. In his “Letters from the South” (1816), New Yorker, James Kirke Paulding remarks, "In the evening I have seen them [black batteaumen] reclining in their boats on the canal at Richmond, playing on the banjo.” Another eyewitness, one P.C. Sutphin, recalled, “The banjo had been quite common with the negro boatman of James river, whom I have often heard playing it while their batteaux were lying at the landing on the river at Lynchburg.” And Buckingham County native, George William Bagby penned the following description of a typical batteaux crew, “A stalwart, jolly, courageous set they were, plying the pole all day, hauling in to shore at night under the friendly shade of a mighty sycamore, to rest, to eat, to play the banjo, and to snatch a few hours of profound, blissful sleep.” Similarly, in his book Virginia Illustrated (1857). David Hunter Strother describes a boatmen's camp on the James:
"Night was the glorious time, when the boats were drawn along shore in some still cove beneath the spreading umbrage of a group of sycamores . . . The sly whisky-jug was passed about, banjoes and fiddles were drawn from their hiding-places, the dusky improvisatore took his seat on the bow of a boat and poured forth his wild recitative, while the leathern lungs of fifty choristers made the dim shores echo with the refrain. The music and manner of singing were thoroughly African, and as different from the negro [minstrel] music of the day as from the Italian Opera. The themes were humorous, gay, and sad, drawn for the most part from the incidents of plantation life, and not unfrequently the spontaneous effusion of the moment. The melodies were wild and plaintive, occasionally mingled with strange, uncouth cadences, that carried the imagination forcibly to the banks of the Gambia, or to an encampment of rollicking Mandingoes."
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Some James River boatmen of note include Frank Padget, a slave who died rescuing stranded canal boat passengers from the flooded river near Balcony Falls at Glasgow, Virginia, and Dick Parsons, one of the most successful and respected free black boat captains. You can read more about Dick Parsons here. A fascinating real life glimpse of a batteauman may be found in Appomattox River Seay Stories: Reminiscences of James Washington Seay, the last of the Appomattox River Batteaumen, available from the Historic Petersburg Foundation.
“Steering a Bateau" watercolor by Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1798)