Strange things come to pass in the mountains. Like “The Vivian”, a homemade 50-foot steamboat that plied the Little Tennessee in the early 1920’s with barges piled high with lumber.
Or the whaleboat that never saw the sea, and the hair-raising ridge of the three lumberjacks who dared gravity and a spring freshet.
A few old times are still around who remember “The Vivian” which was used to transport lumber from the Kitchen Lumber Company’s big band mill at a point above the present Cheoah Dam to the then Southern Railroad terminus at the town of Fontana.
The hull of “The Vivian” was constructed of balsam, her wheels and paddles of native white oak. She was operated by a sawmill boiler engine that gave her power to pull several barges loaded down with lumber.
The whaleboat came long before “The Vivian”, making its debut in 1893. And her first and only trip is legend now. Nobody remembers how it all started. But it followed the Paul Bunyan-Mike Fink pattern, which essentially is the pattern of boast and dare.
The lumber barons of the North had just discovered the rich, virgin timber stands in the Carolina mountains and had moved in with ax and saw. This was rugged country then, remote and sparsely settled the state’s last frontier, still home to the bear and the owl and the wildcat.
Lumber camps sprang up like mushrooms and into the hills swarmed a rough, tough breed of men that worked hard and played hard. They were men born with an ax in their hands – Danes and Swedes and Norwegians. Men who knew how to level a forest like a swarm of locusts moving through a wheat field. And in their bunkhouses of a Saturday night the peartenin’ juice flowed freely, the talk loud and tall, and sometimes tempers flared to match the fire of the jug.
Perhaps it was on such a night, amid loud talk and loud boasts that the idea of the whaleboat and the river ride was born.
Be that as it may, folks woke up one morning to a racket of hammers and saws right here in Robbinsville. They moseyed out of their houses and down the street and came upon a strange sight. They saw a thing taking shape that looked like a canoe. But it was no ordinary canoe. It was 10 times bigger than any canoe any of them had ever seen. They were told that it was to be a whaleboat. And what, asked the townsfolk, was a whaleboat needed for up here in these mountains where the streams offered only bass and trout?
Some of the lumberjacks said they were aimin’ to go whalin’ just the same. And they roared with laughter. They said if there weren’t any whales in the creeks hereabouts, then they’d just pile into the whaleboat and go where there were whales. The townsfolk shook their heads and reckoned the lumberjacks had gone plumb crazy.
Finally the whaleboat was finished. And then the lumberjacks fetched a wagon and a team of oxen and hauled the whaleboat out of town and down to Snowbird Creek. There they floated it down to the Cheoah River and from there to Johnson’s post office, then hauled it by ox-wagon to Rocky Point and put it in the Little Tennessee River.
In April, with the snows melting and the creeks and rivers running high, three lumberjacks showed up and allowed as how they aimed to ride that whaleboat right out of the mountains and down to New Orleans.
The would-be Mike Finks were Calvin Lord, Sam McFalls and Mike Crise. They loaded some provisions into the whaleboat and then got in. With long poles they pushed away from the bank at Rocky Point and out into the Little Tennessee.
There was quite a crowd to see them off. Word had spread up and down the coves and into the hills. And the folks came to take a look. Many a man shook his head that morning and reckoned that would be the last they would ever see of the three lumberjacks. Nobody figured the whale-boaters would be alive come sundown.
There were some tight spots along the Little Tennessee. Places where the river pitched over great boulders and where the river plunged right down the mountain. But the three lumberjacks were laughing and joking and shouting as they took off and swept out of sight.
The stream was fat and sassy and on a tear. Some of the folks figured the three would not get more than two or three miles down the stream, if that far. So somebody suggested it would be fit and proper to organize a party to cut across the hills and start searching for them.
Meanwhile, the three lumberjacks were beginning to regret their venture. Once they had left Rocky Point it was like shooting down a flume, albeit a big difference. The difference was the rocks that lay hidden under the surface of the water or stuck up like small mountains. But the whaleboat had been built well. The three lumberjacks held on for dear life as the whaleboat skidded and bounced over the boulders, rammed into others and twisted and whiled away, always forced into the main stream.
Just before sundown, they were swept close to the north bank of the river where they quickly caught sight of some overhanging branches. McFalls made the first grab. He got hold of a limb but the boat was being pulled so swiftly he lost his grip. Then Crise tried. He held fast but was almost pulled out of the boat. Lord grabbed him and held on. Between them they worked the whaleboat into the bank, inching closer and closer, limb by limb, until finally they landed it and pulled it out of the water.
Once ashore, they bedded down for the night. When daylight came they agreed to resume their trip. A little later they got to the mouth of Rabbit Creek. And there on the bank was the party of men that had come out looking for them. They spend three days there until the freshet subsided, then went onto the Harden farm where they grounded the whaleboat for good.
When they went ashore at the Harden farm, it was exactly a week after leaving Rocky Point. They left the whaleboat right there. They figured they had better stick to lumbering, which they did.
Sometime later, somebody came along and took possession of the whaleboat and hauled it off to Lenoir City in Tennessee. Nobody knows whatever happened to the whaleboat after that. But be that as it may, nobody ever again attempted to duplicate the feat of the three lumberjacks.
Only “The Vivian” came along to ply more placid waters. But after a few years when the Kitchen band mill moved its operations, “The Vivian” was dismantled and became only a legend along with the whaleboat.