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EDEN — About 1 p.m., T Butler heard the call of the yellow-billed cuckoo as her husband, Lindley, and a work crew below tried to turn over a 40-foot bateau that has sat submerged in the Dan River since late 2008. 

“Oh, a cuckoo,” Butler said, recalling an old wives’ tale. “Usually, that means rain, and that’s something we don’t need right now.” 

What she and her crew needed was time Thursday to complete the laborious process of rescuing a piece of local history. What they didn’t need was a rain delay. 

The bateau, a replica of what sailed the Dan River in the 19th century, used to carry tourists on short river trips. It was near the end of its life when a storm overturned and buried it under several feet of sand. 

On Thursday, a small crew clad in scuba masks and wet suits attempted to recover the wooden vessel from the river so that Eden or other river cities could use it to teach the public about the boat’s role in preindustrial economies. [Video]

The Dan River Basin Association bought the replica in 2003. Eden-based Three Rivers Outfitters operated it for several years before it started to suffer damage and wear out. Jeff Johnston, a partner with the company, said the boat, if raised successfully, would not be used for future tours but could serve as a historical display. 

“This bateau is not worth enough to put back together to get it to work,” Johnston said. “It would be cheaper to start with another bateau.” 

Local officials consider the relic an important part of the city’s tourism efforts and have discussed obtaining another one, said Cindy Adams, who works with the Eden tourism department. The 8-foot-wide, 6,000-pound boat can accommodate about 20 passengers and was used for cruises during special events, including RiverFest. 

“You feel like you’re a part of history when you’re going (down the river),” Adams said. “It’s so unique to our area, and it distinguishes us from the rest of the state.” 

The history of bateaux in the region goes back to the 1800s when three-man crews would steer the flat-bottomed vessels full of cotton, tobacco and other goods to and from Leaksville and other port cities until trains started to dominate commercial transportation at the turn of the 20th century.  

Eden commemorated the bateau’s importance with a 36-foot mural in 2008. Lindley Butler, a historian who coordinated the recovery effort, said he hoped the city would display the vessel at the 186-year-old Leaksville Landing, the only intact bateau landing in the country. 

By Thursday evening, Butler and members of a state underwater archaeology crew wondered if they could pull the bateau from the river and float it a mile away to the Eden Wildlife Access on Bethlehem Church Road.  

The crew experienced early breakthroughs around lunchtime when they dislodged the waterlogged bateau from the riverbed with rope and pulleys and turned it right-side up. 

“It’s just really exciting that we could break it loose from the bottom this morning,” Lindley Butler said at the time. “We didn’t know we could remove this much sand.” 

Then — true to the old wives’ tale about the cuckoo — the rain started, just after the crew fetched a firehose and wrapped it around the bateau to try to lift it to the surface. They feared the worst-case scenario: leaving early to avoid lightning strikes and returning to find the bateau missing, lopsided or further damaged.  

Then, the clouds broke and the rain stopped. 

 With the help of the Eden Rescue Squad and its motorized boat, the bateau made it to the landing about 7 p.m. The crew hoped to get it onto a trailer before the night ended so that the owners could store it. 

Butler thought the unique learning experience worth the risk of an incomplete mission. 

“I don’t know of anyone who’s raised a bateau except for this group of people,” he said. “It was always a long shot.”

Contact Morgan Josey Glover at 627-4881, Ext. 119, or morgan.josey@news-record.com