Sweet Steamboats
Affordable and Quick.
Advantages and Disadvantages
- Disadvantages: They were not regulated and killed a lot of people due to boiler explosions and/or unsafe operation.
- Example: One steamboat on the Mississippi, at the end of the Civil War overloaded 300% or so with returning Union soldiers who had been released form Southern POW camps. Boiler exploded and over 3,000 people died.
History of the Steamboat
Important to settling the West
Steamboats quickly became a symbol of the West. As such, westerners continuously sought to improve and decorate the boats. In competition for passengers, they began to offer luxurious cabins and built ornate lounges on board. The elegance of these steamboats served as a reassurance to westerners that they were not the primitive backwoods hicks painted by the eastern press. However, most steamboat passengers did not have access to this elegance. The onboard saloons were open only to those who had purchased expensive cabin passage. Passengers who could afford only deck passage slept in dirty, crowded conditions on a cotton bale if they could find one, on the floor if they could not.
How it impacted North Dakota
Looking at the shallow twists and turns of the Red River, it’s hard to imagine that steam-powered paddlewheel boats were once the most important transportation link between St. Paul, Minnesota, and Winnipeg, Manitoba. From the first in 1859 to the last that sank in 1909, Red River steamboats hauled thousands of settlers and millions of tons of freight across the border between the United States and Canada. Although it lasted barely 50 years, the age of the steamboat forged a commercial network between the two countries that exists to this day in the Interstate-29 corridor.
- See more at: http://www.ndstudies.org/media/steamboats_on_the_red_steamboats_bring_people_and_businesses#sthash.6aJmsrSe.dpuf
John FItch
Robert Fulton
James Watt
Information
Email: kvaninwagen@bpsapps.org
Website: www.steamboatsrule.com
Location: Steamboat Springs, CO, United States
Phone: (701)955-3627
Facebook: facebook.com/steamboatsrule
Twitter: @steamboatsrule