Winona Daily News Few things made by man have been better fit for their task than a Mississippi River steamboat.
Fast, cheap, reasonably safe and able to navigate in waters that amounted to little more than a heavy dew, steamboats brought commerce, settlers and a reasonable likeness of civilization to the American wilderness in the decades before the Civil War.
Every schoolboys history teaches that Robert Fulton invented the first practical steamboat in 1807. That is true and all well and good as far as it goes, but the boat Fulton built worked fine in the deep water of the lower Hudson. On the wild sandbar-ridden shallows of the great rivers that coursed through the heart of the continent, Fultons deep-draft design would have needed a flood to float.
The riverboat that conquered the Ohio and the Mississippi was the brainchild of Capt. Henry Miller Shreve, a riverman born and bred on the banks of the Monongahela when a mans muscle was the only power on the river, save the wind and current. Years of experience muscling keelboats and flatboats from Pittsburgh to New Orleans taught Shreve a thing or two about what made a boat float on an American river.
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In 1816, Shreve convinced a number of investors to put up the money that would translate his ideas into wood, steel and steam.
The boatwrights in Wheeling, W.V., had never seen the like of it. The hull was broad and shallow, curved at the bow and stern. Instead of setting the engine low in the hold, the boilers and engines were mounted horizontally on deck, above the waterline, and a two-story superstructure was built over and around them. Skeptics told Shreve the boat was hopelessly top heavy and took bets that the Washington would turn turtle as soon as it slipped down the ways.
Few folks have ever been so wrong. Not only did the Washington prove remarkably fitted to its environment the broad, shallow hull sliding over the water rather than plowing through it it was a commercial success, making the round-trip from Louisville, Ky., to New Orleans in only 41 days. From the Washington to the American Queen, American riverboats have followed the basic design laid down in the Wheeling boatyard.
That basic design was polished and refined. Captains and investors realized early on that every pound they saved in building the boat meant another pound of paying cargo it could carry. Sturdy oak was replaced by light-weight pine. Boats were built to be fast, not to last which was just as well because the average life of a Mississippi steamboat was somewhat less than five years.
Hazards on the river were just about endless: rocks and rapids, sand bars, snags, low-hanging trees and unpredictable currents. Boats that werent sunk, beached or battered still could burn or blow up. The fire in the flue sent showers of sparks up the stacks. There were fires in the cookstoves, fires to warm passengers and crew most of whom were firing up pipes and cigars on a regular basis all inside a floating tinder-dry pinewood boat lit by lanterns and candles with nothing more than a couple of buckets to put out a spreading blaze.
The high-pressure steam engine driving the paddle wheel was the wonder of the age, but as often as not it was built with no safety valves or gauges to keep track of steam pressure or water level. If the water level in the boiler dropped too low, the boiler would overheat, weaken and explode with disastrous results. On April 27, 1865, a boiler aboard the Sultana exploded, killing more than 1,700 passengers and crew more than went down with the Titanic.
Even if the boat stayed afloat and in one piece, there was real risk that a passenger coming aboard would end the journey in a hastily dug riverbank grave. The water that floated the boat also was the ships sewer and source of water for drinking, washing and cooking. Cholera, transmitted by fouled water, haunted the river and took a regular toll of passengers and crew.
Despite the dangers, the steamboat was the frontier equivalent of the 747. West of the Appalachians, roads were little more than rutted wilderness trails, and the railroad wouldnt reach the Mississippi River until 1854. It was a long walk from Pittsburgh to points west. The steamboat fed a frontier boom, carrying settlers and manufactured goods from the east and carrying the products of the opening west lead, grain, furs, flour, salt, meat and cotton to the booming river ports on the Ohio and the lower Mississippi.
The number of boats on the rivers boomed as well. Fourteen years after Shreves first trip to New Orleans, 230 steamboats were working on Midwestern rivers; by 1842, there would be 450. The Virginia, in May 1823, was the first boat to pick its way onto the upper Mississippi. Loaded with supplies and tourists, it set off from St. Louis for Fort Snelling, Minn. It took her 26 days to make the 729-mile trip, threading her way through the rapids at Rock Island, Ill., and Keokuk, Iowa, and the virtually uncharted channels of the upper river.
Once navigation of the upper river proved itself practical, it took little time for it to prove itself even more profitable. Within two years of the Virginias first visit to Pigs Eye and the Falls of St. Anthony, more than a quarter-million dollars worth of frontier goods furs, hides, lumber and grain were shipped downriver. Several boats were making regular calls at Prairie du Chien, La Crosse and points north.
As the population along the upper river grew, more and more specialized boats were built to serve the burgeoning market. Boats were engineered for maneuverability and designed to float on less than 2 feet of water. Specialized steamboats regularly carried passengers and cargo on streams that would bar a contemporary fishing boat. Tiny rivercraft nosed into virtually any waterway in search of cargo or to found a new settlement.
In 1832, Abe Lincoln was hired to be assistant pilot on the steamboat Talisman, which managed to make its way up the Sangamon River in central Illinois all the way to Springfield. Early boatmen probed local streams and rivers as well, operating regular service up the Chippewa to Eau Claire and navigating the Root River as far as Rushford.
But war and invention eventually would end the steamboat era.
The guns of Fort Sumpter sounded the beginning of the end. Secession and civil war closed the river as a commercial artery. Steamboats were leased or requisitioned for military transport, and conquest and occupation of the lower river became a primary strategic goal for Union forces. The great port of New Orleans was blockaded and occupied for the duration.
With the river trade at a halt, the railroad had incentive to expand. The north-south trade along the river was supplanted by east-west rail routes that operated winter and summer, high water and low.
Steam power on the river would never recover its dominant position from steam power on land. Specialized work boats for hauling barges and maneuvering log and lumber rafts were developed in the post-war years, and elegant excursion boats returned to the river, but the work-a-day handling of travelers and freight became more and more a rail monopoly. Boats working the upper river would all but disappear until the shipping industry was revitalized by the construction of the lock and dam system, creation of the 9-foot channel and advent of the diesel towboat.
The 9-foot channel stands Henry Shreves principal he built a boat to fit the river on its head by rebuilding the river to fit the boats. Time might prove Shreve had it right the first time.
