Shreve, Henry

Henry Shreve was born in 1785 in Burlington County ( New Jersey ). His father, Israel Shreve ( Eng. ) Was a Quaker and a member of the American Revolution . Since 1799, Henry Shreve sailed on the rivers, engaged in the fur trade. In 1814, Shreve, as captain of the steamship Enterprise, took part in the battle for New Orleans . In 1815, he went from New Orleans to Louisville in Mississippi and Ohio on the Enterprise. In 1816, according to his own project, he built the ship “Washington”, which had a flat bottom and a second deck.

Since 1821, Shreve thought about how to clean the river from the coats that interfered with navigation. In 1827, he was appointed leader for the improvement of western rivers. Shreve built the ship "Heliopolis", specially designed for cleaning rivers, and in 1829 began work. By the end of 1830, he had cleared 200 miles on the Mississippi River. Then, until 1840, he cleaned the Red River (in particular, Lake Caddo ) and other tributaries of the Mississippi. The Shriwa ships were called Uncle Sam's Tooth Pullers ^[1] . Shreve spent his last years in St. Louis , where he died in 1851.

In honor of him, the city was named Shreveport , standing on the Red River ^[2] .

• Florence L. Dorsey. Master of the Mississippi: The Story of Henry Shreve, Who is Taught by the River to Fetch and Carry for the Nation. Pelican Publishing, 1999.
• Stewart H. Holbrook. Lost Men of American History . The Macmillan Company, 1948. P. 124-126.

• Henry Miller Shreve . Encyclopedia Britannica