River Road Rambler by Mary Ann Sternberg

Author:Mary Ann Sternberg [Sternberg, Mary Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Regional Studies, Nature, Environmental Conservation & Protection
ISBN: 9780807150788
Google: 4NOoCv8UO6IC
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2013-04-15T05:40:18+00:00

9

Le Pelican’t

Beyond the decorative wrought iron benches and lamp posts that redevelopment brought to the levee top in downtown Donaldsonville lies a broad flat swathe of batture. Just beyond its ragged edge, a sea-green buoy bobs on the current. Near it, a chunk of dark wood noses above the water, looking like so many of the timbers that ride the Mississippi downstream and get hung up underwater.

But this wooden relic is different: this is the only visible remains of the shipwreck of the seventeenth century-reproduction French warship Le Pelican, and the green buoy is maritime shorthand for “Stay away!”

I know that Le Pelican is only one among the many ships mired on the dark floor of the Mississippi, all with tales worth telling. But I’d bet that few can match hers for drama, or for her unfortunate and ignominious ending.

I first encountered Le Pelican in 1997. I remember the circumstances because it was two years before the tricentennial of Pierre LeMoyne, Sieur d’ Iberville’s voyage along the Mississippi River, and I was seeking a compelling story to write in conjunction with the celebration. I heard that a reproduction of Iberville’s warship was moored at a boatyard in a rough industrial neighborhood in New Orleans and, intrigued, made an appointment to see her.

The original Pelican was a 44-gun flagship that Iberville commanded on the Hudson Bay during King William’s War in 1697. Her eponymous reproduction had been constructed in Montreal in 1992, underwritten by a Canadian businessman for the princely sum of $15 million, to serve as a tourist attraction. And she was a dazzling sight when I found her bumping against the dock at Morrill & Associates on the Harvey Canal amid the drab industrial gray. She was much larger and more dramatic than I’d expected—176 feet from bow to stern and 35 feet amidship, sporting three towering wooden masts that were secured with an authentic-looking webwork of shrouds. Her upper decks were highly varnished and gleamed in the sunlight, and her main deck was impressively decorated with arrangements of thick furled ropes. These, I later learned, were merely props, like much else on Le Pelican. This boat didn’t—and couldn’t—sail; she had arrived in New Orleans resting on the deck of a barge.

I climbed her open double staircase, admiring the ornately carved balustrade that coordinated nicely with the boat’s other carved woodwork, all painted a garish red, blue, and gold. She also sported faux stained-glass portholes and decorative gun slits and, on the stern, a blue and white rococo-style cameo carving of Neptune that was embellished with her name and home port: Pelican d’Iberville, Montreal.

I spent a delightful morning at the shipyard envisioning seventeenth-century nautical life and chatting with the laconic refurbishing crew, admiring their work. I had no doubt that Le Pelican would become a splendid exhibit, but I never did find a buyer for my story.

By the time I had met Le Pelican in New Orleans, she already had a credible resumé. Originally positioned on the St. Lawrence

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