A Day When the Mississippi River Ran Backwards, 1812
The Time Travel Series
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In the winter of 1811–1812, the New Madrid Seismic Zone unleashed a catastrophic series of earthquakes that remain the most powerful ever recorded in the contiguous United States east of the Rocky Mountains. The first major shock struck December 16, 1811, followed by another on January 23, 1812, but it was the third great convulsion on February 7, 1812—estimated between magnitude 7.5 and 8.0—that proved the most devastating. The Mississippi River, swollen with winter runoff, became a scene of apocalyptic terror.
Our subject is Samuel Reeves, nineteen years old, a keelboatman from Shelby County, Kentucky, working his first winter season hauling goods between Louisville and New Orleans aboard the flatboat Providence. Like many young men of the western frontier, Samuel left his family’s hardscrabble farm seeking wages on the river—a brutal, dangerous trade that aged men quickly. He had survived the December and January quakes upriver, but on the night of February 6, the Providence lay moored near the settlement of New Madrid in the Missouri Territory, placing Samuel at the epicenter of what would become one of the most terrifying natural disasters in American history.
February 6, 1812 — 7:45 PM
West bank of the Mississippi River, 2 miles north of New Madrid, Missouri Territory
Supper of salt pork and cornmeal mush eaten from a tin plate. The fire hisses against falling sleet. Samuel sits on a cottonwood log with three other crewmen, listening to the boat’s captain recount the December earthquake to a nervous deckhand. The horses on shore stamp and refuse to settle. A dog belonging to a nearby settler howls without ceasing. The river moves black and silent beyond the firelight. The air smells of woodsmoke, river mud, and the iron tang of coming weather. Samuel scrapes the last of the mush, wipes the plate with his sleeve, and watches the flames.
February 6, 1812 — 11:30 PM
Aboard the flatboat Providence, moored on the Mississippi
Samuel lies wrapped in a filthy wool blanket in the cargo hold among barrels of flour and whiskey. The boat creaks against its mooring ropes. Sleep will not come. The other men snore, but Samuel stares at the wooden planks above his face. A low vibration hums through the hull—felt more than heard. Rats that normally infest the hold are absent tonight, fled hours ago. The timbers groan. Outside, through the gaps in the planking, he hears the river lapping strangely, as though breathing. His heart beats too fast for a man lying still.
February 7, 1812 — 3:47 AM
Aboard the flatboat Providence, Mississippi River
