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The Invention of the Western Steamboat

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Louis C. Hunter
Louis C. Hunter
Affiliation:
The American University
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Extract

The steamboat was the first great American contribution to modern technology. First developed to the point of practical commercial success in this country, the steamboat was quickly incorporated into the economic structure of the nation and within a few years became the principal vehicle of transportation on the main channels of inland commerce. Eventually the influence of the American steamboat was felt all over the globe, and there were few great river systems that in time did not feel the beat of the paddlewheels by which it was propelled.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , November 1943 , pp. 201 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1943

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References

1 See especially Turubull, A. D., John Stevens, an American Record (London: The Century Company, 1928)Google Scholar, Boyd, Thomas, Poor John Fitch (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1935)Google Scholar, Greville, and Bathe, Dorothy, Oliver Evans (Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1935).Google Scholar

2 Eskew, G. L., reviewing Dorsey, Florence L., Master of the Mississippi (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1941) in New York Herald Tribune Books, November 9, 1941.Google Scholar

3 Hulbert, A. B., The Paths of Inland Commerce (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1920), 174–175.Google Scholar

4 Hartsough, M. L., From Canoe to Steel Barge on the Upper Mississippi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1934), 44Google Scholar; Eskew, G. L., The Pageant of the Packets (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1929), title of frontispiece.Google Scholar

5 M'Murtrie, H., Sketches of Louisville (Louisville, 1819), 202.Google Scholar

6 Lloyd, James T., Lloyd's Steamboat Directory and Disasters on the Western Waters (Cincinnati, 1856), 45.Google Scholar

7 Dunbar, Seymour, A History of Travel in America (New York: Harlem Publishing Company, 1937), 395.Google Scholar

8 See, for example, Gephart, W. F., Transportation and Industrial Development in the Middle West (New York: Columbia University Press, 1909), 72–73Google Scholar; Meyer, B. H., et al., History of Transportation in the United States before 1860 (Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1917), 104Google Scholar; Hulbert, A. B., The Ohio River (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1906), 334–335Google Scholar; Baldwin, Leland D., The Keelboat Age on Western Waters (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1941), 192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Cincinnati Western Spy, April 19, 1816.

10 I have found no contemporary evidence in support of the view expressed above that the Enterprise was aided by flood conditions. Against this view must be placed the wellknown facts that navigation at flood seasons was more difficult than at an ordinary stage, due to the greater swiftness of the current and the presence of great quantities of driftwood. While the distance covered could be shortened somewhat through the use of cutoffs and otherwise impassable island chutes, the force of the current could not be avoided to a much greater extent at flood seasons than at other times, because of the frequent necessity of crossing from one side of the river to the other.

11 Cincinnati Western Spy, October 6 and November 24, 1815; Niles' Weekly Register, July 1, 1815; Lexington Reporter, September 6, 1815; The American Telegraph (Brownsville, Pa.), September 20, 1815.Google Scholar

12 Cincinnati Western Spy, April 19, 1816.

13 According to this account the Vesuvius grounded on a sandbar 700 miles up the river from New Orleans about June 1 and remained there until December 3 when the river rose and floated her off. She then returned to New Orleans where she ran aground a second time on the Batture and lay there until released by a rise in the river about March 1. Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, August 3, 1819. The precise causes for these mishaps are subjects for conjecture.

14 Ibid., January 15, 1816; Niles' Weekly Register, July 1, 1815.

15 Ibid., April 29, 1816.

16 Cincinnati Western Spy, April 18, 25; May 2, 1817; the weight of the Aetna's cargo has been estimated from the freight bill.

17 The Buffalo had just arrived on her maiden trip from Pittsburgh.

18 Cincinnati Western Spy, May 2, 1817.

19 The now traditional account of the record voyage of the Washington describes the public dinner given Shreve at Louisville in celebration of the event but fails to mention that Captain de Hart was also invited. “These two enterprising men,” declared an editorial on the occasion, “have gained much of public esteem by their successful and enterprising exertions to demonstrate the practicability of navigating the Ohio and Mississippi, ‘the high seas of the western country,’ with steam vessels.” Ibid., May 9, 1817.

20 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, August 3, 1819.

21 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, June 16, 1817; Cincinnati Western Spy, June 27 and July 25, 1817; The Reporter (Lexington. Ky.), August 27 and December 10, 1817.Google Scholar

22 Wright, J. K. (ed.,), Paullin, C. O., Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States (Washington and New York: Carnegie Institution and the American Geographic Society, 1932), Plate 76.Google Scholar

23 Acts Passed at the Second Session of the Third Legislature of the Territory of Orleans (New Orleans, 1811), ch. xxvi.Google Scholar

24 Cincinnati Western Spy, February 2, 1816.

25 Ibid., August 2, 1816.

26 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, August 3, 1819.

26a Cramer, Zadok, The Navigator (Pittsburgh, 1814, ed.), 31–32; 1817 and 1818 eds., 30–31.Google Scholar

26b Communication on “Steam Boats” in the Cincinnati Gazette, reprinted in The American Telegraph (Brownsville, Pa.), September 20, 1815.Google Scholar

27 Felix Flugel (ed.), “Pages from a Journal of a Voyage Down the Mississippi to New Orleans in 1817,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly, VII, 436–437.

28 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, June 16, 1817.

29 United States Magazine and Democratic Review, XXII (1848), 169.

30 W. Faux, Memorable Days in America (1823), 203.

31 Evans, Estwick, A Pedestrious Tour… through the Western States and Territories, during the winter and spring of 1818 (1819), 154.Google Scholar

32 Hulbert, Paths of Inland Commerce, 175; see also Hulbert, The Ohio River, 336.

33 Article on Shreve in the Dictionary of American Biography.

34 Ambler, C. H., A History of Transportation in the Ohio Valley (Glendale, California: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1932), 127.Google Scholar

35 M. L. Hartsough, From Canoe to Steel Barge, 45–46; see also Baldwin, 192.

36 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, September 23, 1816; “Reminiscences of J. Scott Elder,” Louisville Courier-Journal, January 30, 1876; Democratic Review, XXII, 168.

37 The foundation for this as for many other features of the Shreve legend was laid in the Democratic Review articles of 1848 upon which all histories of western steamboating lean heavily, although few authors appear to have consulted them directly. These articles, however, refer to the George Washington as the vessel in which Shreve broke with the traditional ship model. Democratic Review, XXII, 241–242.

38 Dimensions of the New Orleans have been taken from John Melish, Travels in the United States (1812), II, 60; those of the remaining vessels from the customs-house enrollment records, Commerce Division. The National Archives.

39 Ibid. Tonnage figures given here have been adjusted to the old system of measurement in effect prior to the act of 1864.

40 Tables illustrating this trend and based on enrollment records will be published in a forthcoming work.

41 The lightness of draft, which was the prime object of western steamboat design, was a function not only of hull design and proportions, but of the weight of the vessel. To reduce weight was as important as to give the hull a broad and flat bottom. It was partly for this reason that the high-pressure engine was favored over the low-pressure type. It was for this reason, too, that the western steamboat came to be built with a lightness of timber, planking, and superstructure that largely justified the epithet of flimsy. There is no evidence that Shreve made any contribution to this important trend. A statement in his report as superintendent of river improvements in 1833 suggests that he regarded it with disfavor. In defense of his method of snag removal, Shreve declared that so far as “good and substantially built” boats were concerned, virtually none had recently been sunk by snags. On the other hand, his report continued, “a great many of the boats now navigating the Mississippi river are light timbered, just sufficient to hold the plank together to bear caulking”—and hence easily sunk by snags. American State Papers, Military Affairs, V, 210.

42 The data on capacity have been taken from the following: Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, September 23, 1816; Pittsburgh Commonwealth, February 14, 1816; Felix Flugel, “Pages from a Journal of a Voyage Down the Mississippi,” 433; Morrison, J. H., History of American Steam Navigation (New York: W. F. Sametz and Company, 1903), 217–219. It is worth noting that on her record trip, New Oileans to Louisville, in the spring of 1817, the Washington carried but 155 tons' cargo. Cincinnati Western Spy, April 25, 1817.Google Scholar

43 Hartsough, 45–46.

44 E. A. Davis and J. C L. Andreassen, “From Lousiville to Mew Orleans in 1816. Diary of William Newton Mercer,” Journal of Southern History. II. 395.

45 An advertisement of the new steamboat Emerald describes her as particularly well suited to passengers, “her cabin being on the upper deck [his italics], entirely secured from accidents.” Nashville Whig, November 1, 1824.

46 W. J. Petersen, “Steamboats,” in Dictionary of American History.

47 Hartsough, 45–46.

48 The data on Oliver Evans that follow have been drawn chiefly from the admirable biography, Oliver Evans (1935) by Greville and Dorothy Bathe.

49 David Thomas, Travels through the Western Country in the Summer of 1816 (1819), 61.

50 Communication to the Cincinnati Western Spy, February 16, 1816. This was prior to the construction of the Washington later in this year.

51 XXII (1848), 168. Contradicting the assertion here that the French engine was a low-pressure engine are the facts of its light weight, simplicity, and oscillating cylinder, all of which argue against its using low pressure, and the assertion of a rival, George Evans, who declared in a letter to Oliver Evans in 1814 that French used forty pounds pressure and over. Bathe, 217.

52 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, July 1 and September 23, 1816.

53 Order of Reference of the Supreme Court in the Wheeling Bridge Case (Saratoga Springs, 1851), 549–550. Since few western steamboat engines cut off before the completion of five eighths of the stroke, the assertion that the cutoff saved three fifths of the fuel is somewhat exaggerated. Equally to be doubted is the statement that Shreve's engine used but one half the fuel required by other engines. A similar claim was made by Oliver Evans for his high-pressure engine but the verdict of both logic and experience supports the superior fuel economy of the low-pressure engine.Google Scholar

54 On two-engine boats to avoid stalling on dead center.

55 Even if Shreve was the first to use two engines and to place the cranks at right angles on sternwheel shafts, he started no revolution. Single-engined boats predominated on the western rivers until well into the forties and sternwheelers played a distinctly minor role to 1850.

56 Democratic Review, XXII (1848), 168.Google Scholar

57 See House Doc. 2, 28th Cong., 1st sess. (Serial 439), 212–213; sec also selected committee report and attached documents in House Report 272, 27th Cong., 3d sess. (Serial 428).

58 Correspondence between Shreve and General Gratiot, Chief of Engineers, reprinted in Harden, J. Fair, “The First Great Western River Captain. A Sketch of the Career of Henry Miller Shreve,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly, X (1927), 40 ff.Google Scholar

59 Ibid.

60 Democratic Review, XXII (1848), 249.Google Scholar