Robert E Lee vs The Mighty Mississippi

[Whitepanther]

A lot of you have probably studied old city surveys at some point or another like I have. Ever wonder what happened to Duncan’s Island or Arsenal Island? Sort of an interesting story that of all people involves Robert E Lee.

Lee graduated second in his class at West Point in 1828. Upon graduating he took a job with the Corps of Engineers. His first major assignment would come along in 1837 when he was tasked with finding a solution to riverboat snags south of the port of St Louis where the Arch stands today.

To give an idea of how important this was you have to consider what occurs when a steamboat gets its paddlewheel bound up. It explodes because the pressure has nowhere to go. Half of all early steamers exploded. It was a big deal and it threatened St Louis’s future hub to the west and its future growth.

Lee completed an exhaustive survey of the river which is a beautiful piece of cartography if you like that sorta thing. But his solution to the snags took a very practical approach instead of insisting on some massive dredging operation, he proposed a series of wing dykes on Bloody Island. In other words he put the river to work to dredge itself by redirecting its current (and partially it’s velocity). The reason he came to the solution he did was because he believed they were mostly if not entirely the cumulative results of alluvial deposits that settled over thousands of years. Ultimately Duncan’s Island at the foot of Rutger Street (roughly where the USS Inaugural is today) disappeared entirely by 1850. Sometime in the 1870’s Arsenal Island at the foot of Arsenal Street washed away as well which was a very controversial topic at the time. In the 1850’s prior to washing away Arsenal Island was renamed Quarantine Island where folks with cholera and tuberculosis and anything considered highly contagious were sent. It’s also the location where the bodies that were exhumed from Benton Park were reinterred after the city turned its Paupers Cemetery into a park. One could see the problem here and as grim as it might be there were numerous reports around the 1870’s about bodies floating down the river. In all likelihood that might have been what people thought they saw but a cholera victim typically wasn’t embalmed and would’ve likely decayed to the point it couldn’t float rather quickly. Either way these poor souls bodies that were left behind probably became catfish food because they all washed away with the island. It was said that 86 bodies in all were exhumed from Benton Park and 88 were reinterred at the island. Don’t really have a clue why those numbers don’t match up but I can just about guarantee there’s still several hundred to a couple thousand still buried at that park. It was pretty typical of that era to just remove the headstones. My theory on why 86 were exhumed can’t be proven but I believe that’s how many were accidentally discovered while digging the pond that wasn’t there prior and perhaps it’s fitting that it’s been leaking into the cave below ever since for disturbing the deceased. I’m not sure what year but sometime around the 1870’s or shortly after Koch Hospital on the other side of Jefferson Barracks became the place where tuberculosis patients were sent to die and be buried on the grounds.

As for Robert E Lee. He went on to become a General with the Confederate Army as you know. What I found interesting from researching him is his regret over that decision later in life and how he wished he’d have stuck with the gift he had as a successful engineer.

Link to letter between Lee and Kayser about the river conditions not changing as quickly as hoped. Lee explains how they must seal off any current or flow on the East side of Bloody Island.
https://mohistory.org/collections/item ... llscreen=1


Link to Lee’s River Survey
https://digital.shsmo.org/digital/colle ... d/8/rec/10

[Nicotti]

Super interesting! Civil Engineering, especially dealing with hydrology, is an interest of mine. That map is f-ing beautiful! The sheer amount of river surveys they ran to get an accurate topography of the river bottom is surprising and amazing!



Your mention of exploding boilers reminds me of this literature I found while researching the steamboat that hit the CoR intake tower:

It is with consternation and feverish excitement that I present to you the 1856 book "Lloyd's steamboat directory, and disasters on the western waters, containing the history of the first application of steam, as a motive power; the lives of John Fitch and Robert Fulton"!

While written too early for Majestic's wreck at Tower #2, it's got a whole lot of interesting things in it, including a description of St Louis at the time (p 217-220).

[LINK] [Archived LINK]

The tl;dr version is: a lot of boilers exploded, with horrifying results.

[Nicotti]

It was said that 86 bodies in all were exhumed from Benton Park and 88 were reinterred at the island. Don’t really have a clue why those numbers don’t match up...

It's possible that someone couldn't read the other's handwriting or forgot the exact number when they were making the report. I'm betting the correct number of bodies was interred, and the number difference is just human error.

[SubLunar]

It's possible that someone couldn't read the other's handwriting or forgot the exact number when they were making the report. I'm betting the correct number of bodies was interred, and the number difference is just human error.

Or someone simply ended up with a couple of extra bodies they needed to get rid of.

[SubLunar]

Really fucking cool/interesting story, thanks for sharing.