Two Centuries Ago, Batteaumen on Virginia’s James River Ended Long Work Days With a Taste of Freedom
The James River Batteau Company, an outdoor recreation-meets-historical tour business, has designed a dinner cruise that honors the resilience and culinary ingenuity of enslaved boatmen
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As the sun dips softly behind the Blue Ridge Mountains, the James River unfurls like a ribbon of gold, cradling the reflection of a passing batteau. The flat-bottomed vessel, a wooden relic of the 18th century, glides through the water. Onboard, the air is laced with the scent of fire-kissed trout and simmering asparagus, a fragrant echo of suppers shared along these waters two centuries ago.
Between 1775 and 1840, hundreds of extraordinary watermen—enslaved, freed and poor white—poled flotillas of tobacco (as many as 11 hogsheads, or 11,000 pounds, according to Thomas Jefferson’s diary), iron and flour from the Piedmont of central Virginia to market in the colonial and then state capital, Richmond. Their calloused hands navigated hundreds of boats through the river’s curves, muscles straining against the current with each push of the pole.
“Imagine this river at two feet and bringing a boat with 10,000 pounds of tobacco on it,” says Will Smith, co-owner of James River Batteau Company, an outdoor recreation-meets-historical tour business based in Scottsville, Virginia. “These people played an incredible role in building Virginia into the powerhouse it was in that era.”
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In modern Virginia, trains and semi trucks dominate the transport routes, but back then, this 348-mile tributary was the state’s lifeline—a liquid superhighway propelled by the labor of marginalized men. Shackled by bondage or poverty, they powered the prosperity of a young nation with every stroke. Yet, each evening brought a brief respite—a promise of dinner and a momentary escape from the day’s hardships.
“We know they ate a lot of ashcakes and things that would go directly into the fire made on the boats,” says Will Cash, James River Batteau Company’s other co-owner. “That and salt-cured bacon.”
It’s these meals that the Amherst, Virginia, natives honor with Farm to Batteau, a unique voyage held on their own replica batteaux offered from May through October. This immersive tour invites passengers to step back in time, experiencing the river as those early watermen did, complete with simple, hearty flavors reminiscent of a bygone era.
Weighing the risks of the job
By the early 1800s, the movement of commodities throughout central Virginia was almost entirely dependent on batteaux. A typical crew of three navigated these long, narrow boats from sunrise to sunset down the James River in favorable weather. “They generally required more men to get back upstream, especially when loaded,” Smith says. “We have some accounts of the upriver crewing being five to six men and others where there were as many as nine.”
The shallow draft—often less than two feet—allowed batteaux to traverse the river even during near-drought conditions. But this same feature posed a challenge, as the boat’s low clearance demanded precision and strength from the crew, especially given its length of 70 feet. To maneuver, boatmen had to use lengthy oars called sweeps to push from both ends, securing a hold in the often slippery riverbed. The most accomplished of sailors ascended to the role of headman and were in charge of piloting the vessels through rapids and whitewater.
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“River commerce always had seasonal fluctuations, and the water level would have often been more of a factor than the month,” explains Smith. “Given the unpredictable nature of the water level, plantations would send more boats when the water was up. During late summer, when the water was low, the crews often had to take half-loads or even wait for rain to make the trip. Batteaux would also travel in the winter when conditions permitted—river ice was a real problem.”
How much boatmen earned for this work remains a mystery. “We don’t have evidence of exactly how they were paid,” Smith adds. “I presume it was either in currency, tobacco or another crop they could trade themselves.” Whatever the amount, it likely wasn’t equal to the work being done.
According to Smith and Cash, numerous accounts detail batteaumen getting trapped in rapids, frantically bailing water and helplessly watching as hogsheads of tobacco were claimed by the turbulent current. Short of that, Bruce Terrell, author of The James River Batteau: Tobacco Transport in the Upland Virginia, 1745-1840, writes that “often, the crew had to jump into the water and lift the vessel with brute strength.”
One of the most tragic incidents occurred in January 1854, when Frank Padget, an enslaved man navigating a batteau, lost his life attempting to rescue several men from a James River canal boat that had plunged over a dam near Balcony Falls. Today, a historical marker near Glasgow, Virginia—commissioned and funded by Captain Edward Echols, who witnessed the disaster—commemorates Padget’s bravery.
However, the dominance of the batteau did not last. The development of the James River and Kanawha Canal, which began operating in 1821, swiftly followed by the advent of the Richmond and Alleghany Railroad, made batteaux obsolete. Despite this shift, the economic advantage that batteaux offered at their peak, over the laborious and costly practice of rolling hogshead barrels overland to market, was undeniable.
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According to Terrell, the introduction of batteaux had a profound impact on the tobacco trade, significantly boosting exports to England and Scotland. Between 1761-1765 and 1771-1775, tobacco exports surged by 40 percent, reaching approximately 102 million pounds per year. For wealthy planters like Thomas Jefferson, sending men down the river was worth the risk.
Reviving history on the James River
If not for an extraordinary archaeological find in the 1980s, this brief chapter of river history might have remained a mere footnote.
In 1983, scientist William E. Trout III and classical musician James Moore III made an astonishing discovery at what was once the commercial heart of 19th-century Richmond. In a vast pit near Shockoe Slip, where the Great Turning Basin of the James River and Kanawha Canal once sat, developers were excavating to build the James Center and Omni Hotel. Convinced that sunken treasures were hidden beneath what was about to become three high-rise buildings, the amateur river detectives donned hard hats and persuaded a backhoe operator to let them onto the site. It didn’t take long for their instincts to pay off: After a bit of poking around, Trout and Moore uncovered the outline of a ship. As it turned out, buried below the mud lay more than 100 boats and a trove of other artifacts.
“The Virginia Canals and Navigations Society in Amherst County has thousands of artifacts that were removed during the canal basin digs,” says historian Brian Coffield, a member of the society. “That includes functional items that they would have used like pots and pans and knives and axes.”
The publicity surrounding this remarkable archaeological find sparked a renewed interest in river exploration. In 1984, Joe Ayers, a resident of Columbia, Virginia, a hamlet on the banks of the James River, built the first replica batteau and poled it to Richmond. He founded the James River Batteau Festival in 1985, an annual event that continues to this day. Each June, participants embark on an eight-day journey, navigating 120 miles from Lynchburg to Maiden’s Landing, an unincorporated community in Goochland, Virginia. The festival typically features 10 to 15 crewed batteaux, along with numerous kayakers and canoers joining the parade.
One of the festival’s earliest participants was Ralph Smith, Will Smith’s father. He built his first batteau in 1988, the year after Will was born.
“I practically grew up on a batteau,” says Will Smith.
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By 2006, Smith and his high school classmate Will Cash were already crewing their own boat during the festival. After college and journeys abroad, the pair returned to Virginia eager to build lives that combined their passions for travel and history. In 2022, they launched the James River Batteau Company, offering tours aboard their replica batteau, the Morning Dew. But a chance encounter with live-fire chef Sarah Rennie of the caterer Two Fire Table in 2023 ignited a new vision. Smith and Cash glimpsed a way to deepen the voyage by partnering with Rennie to offer onboard suppers evoking the fare of the past.
Unlike their regular afternoon cruises, which often invite passengers to take a dip in the river, the Farm to Batteau dinner cruise comes complete with a live-fire-cooked meal prepared by Rennie on the boat while floating along the James at sunset. On a handful of dates from May through October, Cash and Smith drop anchor parallel to the village of Scottsville, offering historical storytelling and song as guests enjoy Rennie’s locally sourced meal.
Culinary clues
So, what exactly did batteaumen eat? The aforementioned ashcakes and salt pork were standard fare, but beyond that, the answer is a bit elusive. Most surviving records were penned by white men, which complicates matters. As Coffield warns, “I’ve come to the conclusion that much of what white people—and especially enslavers—recorded must be regarded with a measure of skepticism.” This cautionary perspective is why Cash and Smith are meticulous about avoiding anachronistic embellishments in their narratives—a principle they’ve adhered to from the outset.
However, that legendary archaeological dig did reveal a few clues. In addition to the boats, Trout and Morris uncovered parasols, pocket knives and a wealth of food remnants. According to a 2014 story by Richmond magazine, the discoveries included “piles of watermelon seeds, chicken bones, cuts of meat including pork chops, and almost-fossilized catfish.”
“They would have had makeshift galleys,” says Cash. Dirt piled beneath the ribs of the stern and capped with pig iron created hearths, Coffield explains. Some unearthed batteaux even had evidence of fires at both ends of the boat, suggesting they were used for warming as well as cooking.
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Excavations of slave dwellings at Monticello, Jefferson’s estate in Charlottesville, Virginia, have also provided insight into the diets of enslaved individuals. According to a 1990 report published in the journal American Antiquity, the faunal assemblage uncovered on Mulberry Row, the central area of the plantation, revealed that enslaved people had access to a diverse range of protein sources. In addition to the expected pig, cattle and chicken bones, archaeologists discovered remains of rabbit, squirrel, opossum, pheasant and deer—further evidence that these individuals made use of the resources available to them on the plantation during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
George Bagby, a 19th-century journalist who wrote for Harper’s New Monthly magazine and the Atlantic Monthly, wrote in his 1879 book Canal Reminiscences: Recollections of Travel in the Old Days on the James River and Kanawha Canal that “fish of the very best, both salt and fresh, chickens, eggs, milk and the invincible, never-satisfying ashcake and fried bacon,” were staples for batteaumen.
The practice of shoreline sourcing appears to have provided men with a crucial boost of calories. Nineteenth-century journalist David Hunter Strother’s book Virginia Illustrated: Containing a Visit to the Virginian Canaan, and the Adventures of Porte Crayon and His Cousins suggests that meals were often augmented with a hat full of eggs or a loose chicken procured along the way. On the return trip home from Richmond, when weary crews faced journeys of up to 15 days poling and sometimes walking their freight upstream, the cargo they carried might have added some additional sweetener. Jefferson lamented that batteaumen frequently pilfered cargo, making off with goods such as molasses and wine.
Rennie likes to envision armadas of boats gliding past the James River’s wild papaw trees, pausing to gather the fruit for dessert. And why not? Unlike the confines of plantation life, the open water offered, if not freedom, then at least a sense of autonomy. If there was ever a time to savor the river, it was after hours. With every fire-kissed bite and every chord strummed beneath the setting sun, Rennie’s meals of sausages, peas, corn and peppers serve as a reminder that even in the darkest currents of history, moments of perseverance and ingenuity manage to surface.
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Strother romanticized the nocturnal scenes along the iconic waterway:
“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 whiskey-jug was passed about, banjos 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 50 choristers made the dim shores echo with the refrain.”
While Smith warns that, like everything in the written record, this too should be taken with a batteau’s worth of salt, multiple accounts suggest that these lighthearted scenes hold more than a grain of truth.
“Music was very much a part of the night,” says Smith. “Music, food and whiskey.” And that’s what you’ll get during Farm to Batteau—a freshly charred meal made to order, an acoustic song courtesy of Smith and, if you go for brown water, a BYOB dram to wash it all down.
As the batteau drifts through the fading light, it’s impossible not to reflect on the resilience and grit of the men who once navigated these waters—enslaved, freed and impoverished alike. Their work was grueling, their lives constrained, yet each night on the river offered a fleeting taste of independence.
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