The Mississippi River flood 1927, beginning of a novel

‘T’wasn’t a good situation, there in 1927.
To hear the story from ole Wash (Great-Grampa Beau had said) the captain had ordered the boat to be steered too close to a breach in the levee. And so, while the pilot spun the wheel in frantic dismay, the Leda Mae gradually got sucked out of the main channel, and then suddenly found herself sliding on a torrent of river water right through a flood-forced levee crevasse.
“She quivered like a bridesmaid in a Yazoo wedding, then slid on down, twirling and rockin’ like a sycamore leaf through a sluice gate, until Ole Miss finally dropped her on Beau Rivage ridge,” ole Wash had said.
It had happened on this very spot seventy-three years ago.
The “ridge,” by Louisiana standards constituted a mere rise of a few feet in several hundred of distance. And this is where William was now sitting, recalling the story that had been told to him of the demise of the Leda Mae. He was eating a pastrami sandwich, while taking a break from his work in the microbiology lab.
But even before that unfortunate incident, William’s great grandfather, Beauregard Theseus, had quite possibly sat in this same spot back in, oh, 1907 or so, as he took a break from running one of the largest cotton plantations this side of New Orleans.

from page 1 of Glass Chimera