MySpace BackgroundsThe James River Batteau Festival
Since its inception in 1986, this week-long homage to the James River has evolved from a simple race to a floating festival of flat-bottomed wooded boats, based on the craft that hauled tobacco downstream in John Lynch's day. Reconstructed by local communities and civic groups, an ad-hoc fleet of "bateaux" takes a leisurely trip from Lynchburg to just upriver from Richmond in mid-June, stopping each night to camp and play.
Almost midway is the tiny town of Scottsville. Travel back in time to an era when Scottsville was the center of the trade route between East and West.
A fleet of flat-bottom boats, called Batteaux, filled the James River transporting tobacco, grains, hemp, linens, and other goods to Richmond and bringing prosperity to our region. The first Bateau was launched in April, 1775. The primary purpose of this craft was to move tobacco, packed in hogsheads, down the James River and its tributaries to Richmond. The earliest known reference to the Bateau comes from Thomas Jefferson’s account book, dated April 19, 1775. Jefferson had been at that first launching and forty-six years later was to witness the successful patenting of the Batteau by heirs of the Ruckers.
