“The Mississippi Valley is as reposeful as a dreamland…nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon.”
So wrote Mark Twain, author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, about his pre-Civil War days as a steamboat captain in his 1883 memoir Life on the Mississippi.
I thought of Twain as my own stress floated away while American Symphony, one of the newest river boats launched by American Cruise Lines, quietly manoeuvred out of Memphis, towards New Orleans on Twain’s beloved river.
My daughter and I were about to experience our own adventures on a one week cruise of the lower Mississippi — North America’s second longest river, winding more than 3,700 km. from Minnesota to empty into the Gulf of Mexico.
During our travels downstream we would glimpse small-town America, tour grand antebellum houses, enjoy southern food and hospitality and learn more about the American Civil War and the south’s complicated history.
After a two day pre-cruise, exploring the blues capital of Memphis and Elvis’ Graceland, we boarded the modern ship for its fourth run down the Mississippi after it launched last August.
Since the ship is so small, accommodating up to 175 guests, it wasn’t long before we were on a first-name basis with most of the staff.
American Cruise Lines is a family-owned, U.S.-based company, which has been building their own ships since the 1970s. It has a fleet of 17 ships, including four classic paddle wheelers, cruising U.S. rivers and protected coastal waters in New England, the Southeast, the Northwest, Alaska and the Great Lakes.
While other cruise lines are going bigger, American Cruise Lines is going smaller to give guests a personalized experience, yet still offering the same luxury touches cruise ship travellers have come to expect.
American Symphony has a grand multi-story atrium in the centre, larger than normal staterooms, all with private balconies, and so many lounges we didn’t get a chance to hang out in all of them.
While the cruise line industry has always appealed to an older demographic, more and more younger people are discovering the joys of cruising. The company’s destination-driven itineraries, typically offering historic and cultural excursions, now include outings that appeal to a younger crowd. Like the swamp tour we took to see alligators in a Louisiana wildlife refuge and the “Great River Outdoor Adventure” in Mississippi, where we drove all terrain vehicles through the countryside, fished and competed in axe throwing and archery competitions.
Joining us on both of those excursions were some of the younger members of a three-generation family, who had travelled from Los Angeles and Portland for a family reunion/vacation. The family’s patriarch tells me they chose the lower Mississippi cruise because it’s so steeped in American history.
Indeed, there’s no better place to better understand the American Civil War than visiting the historic city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, our first port of call. Vicksburg was the turning point in the Civil War with the Confederate defeat, on July 4, 1863, after a 47-day siege. Here, we toured The Vicksburg National Military Park, with more than 1,300 monuments in remembrance of both the Confederate and Union soldiers who fought here. It’s also where you can see 144 canons that were used on the battleground, and the only surviving ironclad gunboat, used by the Northern Army, which was raised from the bottom of the Mississippi in 1963 after being torpedoed seven miles north of Vicksburg in 1862.
Slavery was central to the conflict, and many of the cruise excursions provided opportunities to discuss the lives of enslaved people, who worked the sugar and cotton plantations of the south.
Just south of New Orleans, we visited the Oak Alley Plantation, a grand mansion built with the profits from slavery. I particularly appreciated this plantation tour since the guide talked equally about the antebellum owners and the 220 enslaved people who worked the sugar plantation.
“This house represents a picture of Louisiana luxury at its finest, but let us not forget it was still a plantation house built by the hands of slaves,” our guide tells us.
“The men and women had to hand-make thousands and thousands of bricks using clay and mud right out of the Mississippi River.”
In the grand dining room she points out the original punkah (a large, ceiling fan) hanging over the massive table.
“It shows you both sides of life on the plantation, as some sat under it and enjoyed its breeze but if you follow the rope to the corner there still has to be someone else to stand here and pull the rope to make the breeze possible.”
Cinephiles will recognize the plantation, with its quarter mile canopy of 300-year-old Virginia live oak trees, as the home of the vampire Louis, played by Brad Pitt, in the 1994 gothic horror film Interview with the Vampire.
At another tour of a plantation, this one in the charming town of St. Francisville, Louisiana, we visited Catalpa, one of the few plantations owned and lived in by a fifth-generation descendant of its antebellum owners.
Mary Thompson guides us through her home, still shaded by 200-year-old oak trees her ancestors planted, and guarded by two iron greyhounds, brought from England — one with a hole in its back made by a Union soldier’s musket.
Although the original house was destroyed in a fire in 1898 they were able to rescue many of the family’s treasures. These include a Pleyel piano, dated 1848, with its worn down keys since it was played so often, and a silver butter dish, dented by a shovel. It had been buried in burlap in a pond on the property and was dug up after the Civil War.
Thompson, who has no children herself, is hoping one of her nieces will take over the house that now sits on 28 hectares, down significantly from its original 405 hectares when the lands surrounding it were used to grow cotton and tended by 100 enslaved people.
“I’m just lucky enough that it has stayed in my family,” says Thompson, who ended our tour by inviting us to join her on her front porch for either a glass of sherry or lemonade.
It was a custom started by her mother, who opened Catalpa to the public in the 1960s.
“People loved meeting my mother and loved having a glass of sherry with her after her tour, so I think Catalpa is as famous for the glass of sherry as anything else,” she says.
One of my favourite stops on the cruise was to Natchez, the oldest continuous settlement on the Mississippi River with a well-preserved blend of its Native American, Southern and African-American culture. Its first recorded occupants were the Natchez Indians who settled on the river but were killed off by the British. Soon after the British arrived, cotton was planted and harvested by enslaved people and the town grew to become the second largest cotton producing region in the world, and home to half of the millionaires in the United States. While there are so many cruise excursions to choose, if you go be sure to explore not only some of the many historic antebellum homes but the sobering Natchez Museum of African American History & Culture, documenting the history of Black people in Natchez, from its founding in 1716.
Kim Pemberton was a guest of American Cruise Lines, which didn’t review or approve this story. Follow her on instagram at kimstravelogue.
