Natchez (boat)
[3] Natchez IX is mostly made of steel, to comply with United States Coast Guard rules.
[1][4] On September 25, 1976, the SS Natchez was used by U.S. President Gerald Ford for a presidential campaign trip to the Southern United States.
[5] While on the campaign trip, which was about a month after Ford was nominated for re-election as President of the United States, Ford campaigned from the Natchez during the six-hour Saturday cruise from Lutcher, Louisiana to Jackson Square, New Orleans,[5][6] a historic park in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana.
From there, Ford planned to spend three days in the south appealing to Southern conservatism by depicting his opponent, Jimmy Carter, as a free-spending liberal.
During the Hurricane Katrina disaster, the Natchez was temporarily moved upriver to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The first Natchez was a low pressure sidewheel steamboat built in New York City in 1823.
Its most notable passenger was the Marquis de Lafayette, the French hero of the American Revolutionary War, in 1825.
Leathers, she was a fast two-boiler boat, 175 feet (53 m) long, with red smokestacks, that sailed between New Orleans and Vicksburg, Mississippi.
[9][11] The fifth Natchez was also built in Cincinnati, as Captain Leathers returned there quickly after the destruction of the fourth.
[11] It became famous as the participant against another Mississippi paddle steamer, the Robert E. Lee, in a race from New Orleans to St. Louis in June 1870, immortalized in a lithograph by Currier and Ives.
Stripped down, carrying no cargo, steaming on through fog and making only one stop, the Robert E. Lee won the race in 3 days, 18 hours and 14 minutes.
When Leathers finally dismantled the boat in Cincinnati in 1879, this particular Natchez had never flown the American flag.
[9][13] Noted steamboat captain and historian Frederick Way, Jr. disputes this version of history somewhat.
He cites Johnny Farrell, second engineer of the Natchez: "This old idea about the two boats preparing for days for the race, tearing down bulkheads, putting up wind sheaves, and a lot of other stuff, is not true.
When I went aboard the Lee, all they had done was to move the coal bunkers a little forward... On our boat there was absolutely no preparation whatever.
There was no such thing as colors flying, bands playing, and the decks of both boats crowded with ladies and gentlemen.
She had eight steel boilers that were 36 feet (11 m) long and had a diameter of 42 inches (1,100 mm), and thirteen engines.
[16][17] The captain of the second-eighth Natchez, Thomas P. Leathers, sometimes nicknamed "Old Push",[1] was described as savage, reckless, and colorful.
He would sometimes throw fatty bacon and hog fat into the engine to dramatically increase the speed of his boats.
The first was USS Natchez (1827), an 18-gun sloop-of-war with a complement of 190 men, built by Norfolk Navy Yard in 1827.
After a final tour of duty in the Caribbean in 1839, Natchez was scrapped at the New York Navy Yard in 1840.
It was built in 1838 in Baltimore, Maryland, named Natchez by some merchants, until the government of Brazil bought it from them, and converted it for military use.
