Fresh faces join James River Batteau Festival

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Four new batteaux will join in James River flotilla

 

Andrew Shaw had never spent any real time on a batteau, much less been in the annual James River Batteau Festival.

Needless to say, neither the 20-year-old nor any of his six good buddies had ever built a batteau.

They have now.

She’s the “Miss Debbie.” Shaw floated in the “Miss Debbie” on the waters of Judith Creek as he and some friends have kicked back and marveled at the creation.

Next comes floating her on the James from Lynchburg to Richmond in the 24th annual batteau festival, which launches Saturday.

Shaw, who grew up in Lynchburg and is now a rising third-year student at the University of Virginia, said, “I’m so excited. I can’t believe it’s here.”

He also owns up to mild trepidation, given his neophyte status and that of the “Miss Debbie’s” crew.

They are Sebastian Backstrom, Trent Sparks, Jake Baum, Matt Hitchcock, John Harris and Tucker Denham. The seven friends, who went to high school together, attend various colleges and universities but still get together on weekends.

During the past year, while other friends partied all weekend, they’ve often been busy.

It all started on a whim. Shaw saw a batteau at Point of Honor some years ago and thought at the time, “I want one of those.”

Somewhere along the line last year, he took the next step. If he wanted to have one, he’d have to make it.

Shaw sounds as though, to some degree, he has surprised himself.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” he said. “(But) I never knew what I was getting into, in retrospect.”

He had no idea of the hours, energy and money it would take to build the simple vessel made of white oak.

To get going, Shaw said he and the crew dug into their pockets and passed the hat some, and raised around $2,000. That turned out to be not quite enough, so Shaw and others dug into their savings and passed the hat again. The total project cost has come to around $2,400.

Then came the actual building itself. Shaw said Backstrom and Sparks have “really stepped up to the plate.” Backstrom and Shaw would talk daily sometimes.

Shaw said, at times, he would feel frustrated and wonder if the project would ever get done. A large part of it was figuring out what it was they had to do.

Shaw said they couldn’t have done it without Mason Basten.

Basten, his wife, Katy, and their two daughters are river folks.

They have a batteau, and during last year’s festival, a nine-months-pregnant Katy began having contractions. They cut their journey short, and their second daughter was born not long after.

Shaw said when he took the plunge, he asked Basten for guidance. He figured Basten would spend an hour or two with him, maybe give him a set of plans or something, and that would be that.

Instead, he said, Basten has guided him and the crew every step of the way.

The “Miss Debbie” is now moored next to Basten’s batteau, awaiting the big day.

Shaw said he was surprised, too, by others in the extended batteaux family. “The people in the festival have been awesome.”

People he had never heard of would materialize and offer material for “Miss Debbie.”

Meanwhile, the folks at Pamplin Forest Products have special-cut the white oak for them.

Then there are his parents, Tracey and Kathy Shaw, who’ve been “great, allowing their backyard to be turned into a construction site.”

Shaw, a history major at UVa, said that as a result of building a batteau, he has learned more than he every imagined about the history of the place he calls home.

When English and European settlers began settling this country, rivers like the James were the super-highways into the interior, and batteaux were the vehicles.

There were several varieties of batteaux — flat-bottomed boats that were often 45 to 60 feet long and 7 to 8 feet wide, and pointed at both ends. The James River batteau is credited to Anthony and Benjamin Rucker of Amherst County, with a date of approximately 1771. Shaw points to the mountains in the background behind his batteau, the mountains through which the James cuts a passage. During Virginia’s early days, the James teemed with batteaux carrying goods and people from Buchanan to Richmond and back.

The modern day festival began after the remnants of original batteaux were found in a canal in Richmond.

Those who built the original batteaux knew what they were doing, Shaw said. And, he points out, people today have had to rediscover what their forebears knew in order to begin building replicas. (While he admires how clever the original builders were, he prefers power tools.)

Shaw, the grandson of a man who built boats as a hobby, said he looks forward to the festival to talk to others who’ve built batteaux.

Of the river and batteaux, he said, “I have a passion for it now.”

Shaw, in short, is hooked.

One detail had to be worked out as the pipedream began morphing into reality. The batteau’s crew had to pick a name for their emerging creation.

Shaw recalls theorizing, “A boat’s a she, right?” So what woman, he asked his friends, had an influence on all their lives?

He said John Harris answered without missing a beat, “It’s got to be Debbie.”

He meant Debbie the waitress at the Texas Inn. (Actually, there’s more than one Debbie at the T-Room; theirs is Debbie Eagle.)

“They come in here almost every weekend,” Eagle said. They tease her, and she gives as good as she gets.

They’d tell her how the construction was going, and she give them helpful feedback, like, “It’s going to sink.”

That, she figured, was the extent of things. Then one evening, they told her they’d named the batteau after her.

“They want me to come down and christen it,” Eagle said.

At first, she said she wouldn’t go. Then she softened up a bit and said, in effect, “Why not?”