In the early days of the colony the small ocean-going merchant vessel
was the only method of transportation essential to marketing the
tobacco crop. Such a small ship was able to anchor at many of the
plantation wharves and load its cargo of tobacco. Next to fertility,
the proximity to navigable water was the most important factor in
influencing the planter in the selection of a tract of land. However,
later expansion of the tobacco industry into the interior and the
increase in the size of all ocean-going ships made some mode of
transportation within the colony a necessity. When the ships could not
get directly up to the wharf or enter shallow creeks on which many of
the plantations were located, small boats called flats or shallops were
used to transport the hogsheads to the anchored vessels. In 1633 the
General Assembly provided that all tobacco had to be brought to one of
the five warehouses--to be erected in specified localities--to be
stored until sold. The planters objected immediately and petitioned the
House of Burgesses to allow ships to come into every county, "where
they will find at every man's house a store convenient enough for
theire ladinge, we beinge all seated by the Riverside." The planters
also complained that they had "... noe other means to export but by
Boatinge."
Carrying the tobacco for long distances in the shallop involved a risk,
as well as an additional expense. By rolling the hogsheads directly on
board a ship anchored at his own wharf or only a few miles away the
planter eliminated the danger involved in transporting his tobacco in
an untrustworthy, heavily laden shallop, and he also saved the increase
in freight charges for delivery to the ships by the seamen. Freight
rates were the same from his wharf to England as they were from any
other point in the colony.
In 1697 Henry Hartwell remarked, "they [the merchants] are at the
charge of carting this tobacco ... [collected from the planter,] to
convenient Landinge; or if it lyes not far from these landings, they
must trust to the Seamen for their careful rolling it on board of their
sloops and shallops...." A second common mode of transportation,
according to Philip A. Bruce, was "not to draw the cask over the ground
by means of horses or oxen, like an enormous clod crusher, the custom
of a later period, but to propel it by the application of a steady
force from behind." In 1724 Hugh Jones wrote, "The tobacco is rolled,
drawn by horses, or carted to convenient Rolling Houses, whence it is
conveyed on board the ships in flats or sloops." Thus it appears that
by 1700 the Tidewater planters had adopted three methods of
transporting their tobacco to market or to points of exportation: by
rolling the hogshead, by cart, and by boat.
By the middle of the eighteenth century planters in the Piedmont were
rolling their tobacco to the distant Tidewater markets, whereas the
Tidewater planter usually hauled his tobacco by wagon. Rolling tobacco
more than 100 miles was not out of the ordinary. The ingenious upland
planters placed some extra hickory hoops around the hogshead, attached
two hickory limbs for shafts, by driving pegs into the headings, and
hitched a horse or oxen to it. This method worked quite well except
that the tobacco was frequently damaged by the mud, water, or sand. To
prevent this, the hogshead was raised off the ground by a device called
a felly. This device consisted of segments of wood fitted together to
form a circle resembling the rim of a cartwheel; these segments were
fitted around the circumference of the hogshead. The hogsheads used for
rolling in this manner were constructed much more substantially than
those wagoned or transported by boat.
For the river trade the Piedmont planter once again relied upon his
ingenuity. Around 1740 a rather unique water carrier was perfected by
the Reverend Robert Rose, then living in Albemarle County. Two canoes
fifty or sixty feet long were lashed together with cords and eight or
nine hogsheads of tobacco were rolled on their gunwales crossways for
the trip to Richmond. This came to be known as the "Rose method." For
the return trip the canoes were separated and two men with poles could
travel twice the distance in a day as four good oarsmen could propel a
boat capable of carrying the same burden. Before 1795 boats coming down
the James River from the back country landed at Westham, located just
above the falls, and the tobacco was then carried into Richmond by
wagon. There is the story of one planter who forgot to land his canoes
at Westham. It seems that he left his plantation on the upper James
with a load of tobacco and a jug full of whiskey. By the time he
reached Westham the planter had consumed too much of the whiskey, and
forgot to land at Westham. He rode his canoes, tobacco and all, over
the Falls. Shortly thereafter he was fished from the waters downstream,
wet and frightened, but sober.
By 1800, owing to the fact that both the planters and buyers had become
more concerned about the quality of tobacco, rolling tobacco in
hogsheads began to decline sharply, although fifty years later a rare
roller might still be seen on his way to market. The rivers and canals
provided the most typical means of transportation. Wagons were used
primarily as feeders to and from inland waters. The Potomac,
Rappahannock, and York rivers were valuable colonial arteries, but
played a less significant role after the Piedmont became the major
producing area. The James and the Roanoke superseded them as the major
arteries of transportation in the nineteenth century.
The "Rose method" of water transportation, the lashing of two canoes
together, had practically disappeared on the upland waters by 1800,
being replaced by a small open flat-bottomed boat called the bateau,
which carried a load of from five to eight hogsheads. Two planters, N.
C. Dawson and A. Rucker, both of Amherst County, patented a bateau, in
the early 1800's, which was a great improvement over the earlier ones.
This bateau was from forty-eight to fifty-four feet long, but very
narrow in proportion to its length. It was claimed that with a crew of
three men these new "James River Bateaux" could make the round trip
from Lynchburg to Richmond in ten days. They floated down the stream
with ease, but worked their way back upstream with poles. Shortly
before the turn of the eighteenth century canals had been constructed
around the falls from Westham to Richmond, and the upland boats were
able to load and unload their cargoes at the wharves in Richmond. In
1810 it was estimated that about one-fourth of the entire Virginia
tobacco crop came down the James River and through the Westham Canal
into Richmond.
There were land and water routes in the Roanoke Valley that led to
Petersburg. Tobacco was taken all the way to Petersburg by wagon, or
carried by boat from the upper Roanoke and its tributaries to the falls
at Weldon, North Carolina, and from there to Petersburg by wagon. Owing
to the tobacco trade coming down the Roanoke, Clarksville became a
small market town. In the Farmville area many of the planters sent
their tobacco down the Appomattox River to Petersburg, rather than
overland by wagon. Soon after 1800 the Upper Canal Company built a
canal that connected Petersburg with the navigable waters of the
Appomattox River. Virginia's waterways served her transportation
problem well until they were superseded by the railroads in the
ante-bellum days.