Will Smith and Will Cash have been friends since middle school, college roommates at Radford and now they’re business partners, offering the public a chance to celebrate one pivotal part of Virginia’s history.
Four days a week, they welcome guests to their boats -- 7.5 feet wide, 44 feet long – furnished with simple wood tables and benches. They are replicas of watercraft dating back 250 years.
“April 29, 1775 Jefferson writes in his journal. He’s just witnessed the launch of the very first batteau," Smith tells passengers on a sunset cruise.
To understand why the batteau was a big deal, Smith says, you have to go back to a time when English settlers were growing and getting rich from the sale of tobacco. Their crop was hard on the land, sucking nutrients from the soil, and every few years they’d have to move west – farther away from the market.
"The trick with that is we don’t have roads out here yet, and what are serving as roads back then are just the same native American trails snaking their way through the forest," Smith says.
So tobacco was packed into barrels called hog’s heads and pulled to market by mules and oxen. Each weighed about 1,000 pounds, and when it rained the trip was doubly difficult. Then farmers tried taking their heavy crop to market in double-canoes – dugouts lashed together. That method proved so popular that whole forests along the James were cut down, and when heavy rains came in 1771, floodwaters took most of the fleet with them. Two brothers from Amherst – Anthony and Benjamin Rucker – were left high and dry.
"They are sitting around with this massive ability to make money growing tobacco and have no way to get their crop to market," Smith explains. "They set out to design new boats that you didn’t need these massive trees to build – something you could mass produce very quickly out of milled lumber."
Their wide, flat-bottomed boat could carry heavy cargo in a relatively shallow river. Jefferson was so impressed that he ordered two, and the James was soon filled with bateaus.
"What this would look like are 500 boats operating constantly between Richmond and Lynchburg being run by 1,500 batteau-men who in 1830 manage to get 23 million pounds of dried tobacco down to Richmond’s markets. The majority of these men are going to be enslaved African-Americans."
Smith tells his passengers that the lives of those men were very different from what they had known on plantations.
"For starters, you were gone and off these plantations for weeks or months at a time. There were also no overseers out here on the boats. This was going to be a degree of independence that would have been pretty uncommon for this time in Virginia. And, lastly, bateau-men figured out a way to leverage their position on the river to make their own money."
Small farmers would flag them down and hire them to take additional crops to market. It was a good life going downstream, until the encountered rapids or rock ledges. Then, the boats had to be unloaded and dragged to a safer spot for reloading.
In Richmond, new cargo came on board -- coffee, tea, molasses and sugar, rum, whisky and wine.
"But think even crazier things," Smith suggests: Your European imports: Pianos. You know those pretty windows at Monticello. They went up the James River and then up the Rivanna on a bateau. One thing I found out recently that really blows my mind – the columns of the UVA Rotunda traveled up river by batreau."
With the coming of railroads, the bateaus disappeared, but each year their modern-day fans gather in Lynchburg to begin an eight-day cruise commemorating the boats and crews that made history.
"Prior to the invention of the batteau, Lynchburg was all of two buildings and John Lynch’s ferry. That was it. After this boat was invented, this is now the obvious location for a new warehouse district, so Lynchburg completely explodes right after this boat is invented."
It was, for a time, the wealthiest city in the nation. Scottsville and Richmond also prospered, and today the Wills are happy to report their own business – The James River Batteau Company – is doing well, allowing them to make a living and enjoy the simple pleasures of life on the water.
As the commentary ends, the music begins with Will Smith performing and Will Cash serving charcuterie. The cruise gets rave reviews from passengers who’ve come from as far away as Minnesota and Montana. New Yorkers Austin Putter and Molly Isabella are students at UVA.
"I did some research about it – looked on the website and thought, ‘This looks so peaceful, and to be out on the water, in the sun!’ says Isabella.
"We’re in the middle of finals as we speak," Putter adds. "I have an exam tomorrow, so we really just wanted a break. I really needed this."
Six women on a mother-daughter trip were also on board. We spoke with Emily Kevan, Jill Peterson and Wendy Halsey.
"We were just looking for a unique experience, and it seemed like a fun way to enjoy some history and enjoy the river all at the same time."
"A boat and snacks was my low-level and this has just shot it out of the water!"
Others, like Raemarie and Shantala, had escaped from the nation’s capital.
"This is really fun. I’m learning a lot. Being on the water is wonderful. We’re from D.C. and we’ve been going, going, going, and being on the water is really wonderful."
"We recently moved from D.C. to Virginia, so this was definitely an opportunity to explore more of what the state had to offer. I don’t think we were expecting the history lesson, but it was very welcome. You kind of feel yourself floating down this road that other people have been there – you feel a sense of connection to your history. It was awesome!"
The Wills thank them for their business and invite anyone with a canoe, paddle board or kayak to join the party on June 14th – Father’s Day weekend – in Lynchburg, when about a dozen bateaus and as many as 50 canoes will begin an 8-day festival and cruise celebrating the boat that made Virginia great. In years past, they estimate a thousand people have joined them for that first day on the James.
