Wreck of the Ceaser

"...to find a good schooner of light draught and about 150 tons burden and to charter the same" were David Kokernot's orders from the Revenue Cutter Service. So he "chartered the schooner Julius Caesar" and set out for pass Barataria, which was "alive with smugglers." Kokernot's tale that follows is an exciting one, with a hurricane, shipwreck on a deserted shore, death, rescue by children, and eventual return to New Orleans just in time for the birth of his first child. Almost none of it is true.

What is true is that David Kokernot cruised to Texas and was shipwrecked and returned in time for Elizabeth Kokernot's birth. Contemporary documents--newspapers, Customs and Cutter Service records--tell the true story, and it's almost as good as the one Kokernot tells. It's also good for a chapter in length, so here I'll just tell the story of the vessel itself.

The vessel was named the Ceaser, and it was purchased and registered with the Customs Service on July 8, 1831, just three days before its departure. The registration documents give the vessel's length as sixty-five feet; beam, thirteen feet; and the depth of its hold, three feet, one inch. This is extraordinarily broad and shallow for an ocean going schooner and suggests the Ceaser was built for inland trading instead. It would be ideal for shallow waters, such as Lake Pontchartrain and the bayous of Louisiana. In fact the previous owner, Felix Boyer, had not registered it when it was new in 1818 but rather had enrolled it with the Customs Service. Enrollment was cheaper than registration, but did not permit international trade, such as with Texas, Havana, Haiti, or, before 1821, Florida. Not a problem for Boyer, who probably never ventured onto the Gulf of Mexico.

Ceaser was far smaller than the 150 tons that Kokernot described. Tonnage is an estimate of the cargo capacity of a vessel and is calculated from the vessel length, width, and depth of the hold, yielding 25 38/95 tons for Ceaser.

The Ceaser did not head for Barataria, as Kokernot claimed he was ordered, but instead sailed toward Texas and quickly encountered severe weather. In Kokernot's telling he sent all crew and passengers, except himself and two others, "below." This is unlikely, since the hold was only three feet deep and, he claimed, had two feet of water in it. I have seen drawings of small schooners with a cabin, three feet tall or so, on deck. Ceaser may have had such a cabin covering access to the hold. It could provide shelter from weather and permit standing upright with feet on the floor of the hold.

At thirteen years Ceaser was old for a wooden vessel operating in the tropics and was probably not structurally sound. Rough weather would inflict a lot of pounding, so it isn't surprising she quickly developed leaks when sailing on the fringes of a hurricane.

Carlyn Iverson created the adjacent rendering of the Ceaser about to wreck, based on what we know about the vessel, on sketches of later scow schooners, and on some informed guesses. Her hull is broad and flat, and her prow blunt, allowing her to navigate shallow lakes and bayous and nudge straight into shore for unloading. Rather than a fixed keel board she probably had a retractable centerboard for the same reason. The hold was small, so the deck was used for living space as well as additional freight stowage. Under storm conditions both the mainsail and jibs were completely furled and the foresail half furled. The crew was trying to find deep enough water to thread their way into the Sabine River for shelter but instead grounded on the sandy bottom. The old and worn Ceaser quickly broke apart, but the crew salvaged all the cargo and made their way to the remote sandy shore just ahead.

Kokernot's description of the Ceaser was flawed. How about his description of the rest of the voyage? Why did they go to Texas instead of Barataria? Was the Ceaser chartered by the Revenue Cutter Service? Who owned it? Who commanded it? What was Kokernot's part in the tale? What was in the hold? Who was the fifteen year old Yiddish speaking lad on board who had only arrived from Amsterdam the previous month? All these excellent questions will be answered in Chapter Four of my equally excellent biography of David Kokernot.

"Dwight" Kokernot?

It is a pleasure to see David Kokernot receive acknowledgement as the rogue he often was. Wanda Orton has a piece in the Baytown Sun describing the "tory chase" and likening Kokernot to "Dwight," of The Office. I don't know that show, but the comparison seems right on.

A short piece must by necessity leave many details out. The livestock Kokernot seized from citizens during the revolution were only part of it. Both armies "impressed" livestock, shoes, corn, you-name-it, as they swept across Texas. They lived off the land. Cattle was especially needed, because Houston's army had come to a stop and they were holding some 900 Mexican prisoners. All had to be fed, but the livestock owners were more inclined to drive their herds immediately to Louisiana to prevent that. Kokernot was ordered to stop them.

Horses were another matter. Many, maybe most, were simply seized for personal gain "under color of authority." Kokernot was hardly alone in this. A week after Kokernot was safely confined aboard the Terrible, Burnet issued another order:

"WHEREAS, it has been reported to me that many abuses have been practiced by persons having or pretending to have authority to impress into public service horses and other property belonging to private individuals..." He ordered that thenceforth only the Commander-in-Chief and the cabinet had that authority.

Not every horse and mule was returned to its rightful owner. One citizen pursued Kokernot, the republic, and the state for ten years seeking compensation for his lost horse, which Kokernot admitted taking. But that's another story...

I'm a Big Texas Oil Man

The return address caused a warm smile to cross my face: "Superior Crude Gathering." The smile broadened to a grin as I slipped the check from the envelope. Like many Texans, I look forward to this annual largess in the form a royalty payment for oil extracted from Barber lands. I hurriedly filled out a deposit slip to speed my share,$19.07, to my checking account.

In my case, it's not the sum, but the rich history of the payment that appeals. This land was acquired by Barbers five generations ago with the royalty interests divided so many times since that my own share amounts to only a .000044644 fraction of the barrels sucked from the ground. The accountants send me a check only when they've accumulated enough value to justify the time and postage.

In 1868 John and his wife, Elizabeth Kokernot Barber, moved their family from St. Marys to the Aransas coast onto unclaimed land open for homesteading. Unfortunately, John died the following year, before the three year homesteading process could be completed. His widow neglected the process and simply farmed the land with the help of her many sons. Three decades earlier one John H. Phillips had fought in the Texas Revolution and the Republic rewarded him with a bounty certificate, allowing him to survey and patent any 1920 acres of unclaimed land for himself. Phillips died before he could use it but his descendants sold the certificate to someone who did use it, in 1871, to patent 1920 acres surrounding and including Elizabeth's farm.

Elizabeth probably didn't even know her land was not hers until fifteen years later when the new owners, in Missouri, sued to eject her. It was five more years before the suit reached trial and a jury was seated. The next day the plaintiff abruptly withdrew and conceded Elizabeth's 160 acres to her. The case file is not complete enough to explain why he withdrew, but the reason is easily guessed: The plaintiff's lawyer looked at the sixty year old widow seated at the defendant's table, then at the jury box filled with neighbors of the widow, and rightly concluded that he would lose, regardless of the strength of his arguments.

Goofy patents

Count me among those who believe that many patents issued today are frivolous. They describe something that is either self-evident, impractical, or physics defying. I'll bet you've seen a cartoon showing hopeful men in the waiting room of the patent office, each with some contraption in his lap, one man making a rueful comment to another. It's not done that way. Never has been. All you need for a patent is the written description of a device. Well, that plus patience and money to work your way through the system. I used to think this was a modern development, but then I stumbled across a Kokernot patent more than a century old.

Alexander Kokernot was David Kokernot's nephew in New Orleans. He envisioned churning butter or ice cream while leisurely reading the evening paper by attaching the churn handle to the back of his rocking chair. Even if you've never churned ice cream you may imagine the heavy force required, especially as the churning approaches completion. The drawing accompanying the patent looks like something created by Rube Goldberg, except Goldberg's inventions were at least operable, if overly complex and pointless. Kokernot churned out (eeeyuw!) more patents over the years, but none so amusing as this one. He died in poverty, so it's likely none were commercial successes.

Patents, at least old ones, are difficult to research. The Patent and Trademark Office has online images from the first (for manufacturing potash, signed by George Washington) to the most recent. Unfortunately, their search engine for patents earlier than 1975 only searches on patent number and date of issue. If you don't know either of those, your only hope is to stumble across that information. I found the Kokernot patent because, for some unknown reason, somebody at Miami University in Ohio indexed the patents issued to Louisianians from 1810 to 1890.

To examine an elegant patent, decidedly not frivolous, take a look at one of mine.

Locking through from the North Sea

When David Kokernot's ancestors on his mother's side arrived in Amsterdam from Hamburg in 1710 they probably entered the city through this lock. Passage from Hamburg via the North Sea could be accomplished in a small vessel because the route was protected by barrier islands. From the North Sea they entered and crossed the Zuiderzee, then the Oudezijds Voorburgwal canal by way of this lock. The lock chamber is about 150 yards long and about fifteen feet wide. The Amsterdam side is shown here. The other end of the chamber connects, ultimately, to the North Sea. I had to ponder the operation of those gates before I understood their operation, for they never opened or closed during the week I was there.

The unique feature of this lock, or any in Amsterdam, is it can lift or lower a vessel, coming or going. Most locks only operate with one side higher than the other. Take the Ballard Locks in Seattle, which lower vessels from Lake Union to Puget Sound or raise them going the other direction. Puget Sound is always lower than Lake Union, even at high tide. Mitered lock gates hold back the waters of Lake Union like this: Puget Sound>....lock chamber.....>Lake Union, where > represents a pair of swinging lock gates. The higher water to the right of the gates holds them shut. Only when water is allowed to fill the chamber through another passageway can the gates swing open.

In Amsterdam, however, the canals could be either above or below the Zuiderzee side, depending on the tides. Therefore, two sets of lock gates, swinging in opposite directions, are required. High water on the right side requires this configuration: >. Low water on the right requires this: <. You can see one side of the gates in the photo here, recessed into the chamber wall. Each is hinged to swing in the opposite direction from the other.

In the early twentieth century a dike was placed across the Zuiderzee, isolating it from the North Sea. It was filled with fresh water from the Amstel, was renamed the IJsselmeer, and sees no tidal swings. The water level is equalized on each side of this lock and the gates are simply kept open.

David Kokernot's Boyhood Home in Amsterdam

Amsterdam Jews in the eighteenth century celebrated their marriages at their synagogue, rarely bothering to register them with the civil authorities. After the turn of the nineteenth century, however, the authorities insisted that all marriages be registered in the same manner as those in the Dutch Reformed Church. On January 29, 1808, David Kokernot's parents complied, even though they had already been married for several years--David's older brother was about eight years old.

"There appeared Levie Moses, from Amsterdam, a Jew aged 25 years, on the Kerkstraat, by the Magere Brug, No 6, accompanied by his mother Rebecca Moses..." reads their marriage intention announcement. These documents always give the residence street, or at least the neighborhood, of the bride and groom, and sometimes the actual address appears, like here. Kerkstraat (Church Street) crosses the Amstel River via the Magere (the Dutch say "MA-her-uh") Brug (bridge), but number 6 is nowhere near that crossing, probably because addresses have been renumbered since 1808.

The Dutch are fastidious record keepers, and a visit to the Amsterdam Archives cleared up the numbering. One shelf there contains volumes of computer printouts listing every address in the city, before and after the renumbering done in 1853. Kerkstraat 6 had become Kerkstraat 623 that year. Another shelf contains volumes detailing the changes of 1875. Kerkstraat 623 became Kerstraat 449 that year, and remains so to this date. It was an easy walk over to Kerkstraat, and, indeed, 449 was a half dozen doors from the Magere Brug.

Amsterdam has many hundreds of bridges, but the Magere Brug is probably its most famous. It appears in the Bond flick Diamonds Are Forever, as well as almost all picture books of the city. The drawbridge is manually raised by the dual counterbalanced beams that resemble the oil well pump jacks so common in California and Texas. The 1691 original bridge had only a single draw span.

Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler

As I started some heavy editing to chapter three of my biography of David Kokernot--a chapter I wrote almost four years ago--I grew wistful remembering the three months I spent researching in New Orleans. Chapter three (further described here) relates the happy years the Kokernot family spent in that city in the 1820s. I added these introductory paragraphs to the chapter:

When I arrived in New Orleans, the cab driver dropped me off after dark, and Karissa, my new landlady and self-described “Quarter Rat,” let me into my apartment. She knew, of course, she was dealing with a Yankee, but wanted, nevertheless, to help me avoid injury or embarrassment during my three month research visit to her beloved French Quarter. “Avoid these neighborhoods after dark,” she instructed, tracing them with her finger on the wall map. Her second lesson came as she pointed out the streets. “That’s BurGUNdy,” she said, naming the next cross street southeast of our Toulouse Street location. “Here is CON-tie.” She pointed at Conti Street. “Remember Calliope rhymes with ‘envelope’ and Esplanade with ‘cavalcade,’ Yankee.”

Soon after she left, a thunderous downpour drew me to the window overlooking Toulouse Street. Water cascaded from the rooftops and into the gutters, then ran uphill. After my session with Karissa, I knew exactly where I was and where the river was, and this water was not flowing in the correct direction. Later I learned that the peculiar hydraulics of the lower Mississippi creates a natural levee along its banks, with land sloping down and away from the river. New Orleanians incorporate this fact into their speech. For streets perpendicular to the river shore, like Toulouse, “up” is toward the river. “Down,” naturally, is toward Lake Pontchartrain, several feet below the level of the Mississippi at New Orleans. Likewise one needs to abandon concepts of north-south-east-west when following streets that parallel the curves of the river. Instead, use “uptown” and “downtown,” or “upriver” and “downriver” to understand directions from today or two centuries in the past.