Steamboat Days
by: Fred Erving Dayton
Illustrated by: John Wolcott Adams

INTRODUCTION

Shallow waters were deepened and made navigable at private expense. Steamboats grew in size and in such numbers that 800,000 tons were added in a single year. Journeys which had required weeks to make were accomplished by steamboats in as many days. Pioneer wildernesses blossomed cities and towns almost over night. Mechanics were created by thousands, and dreamers of yesterday were conservative steamboat executives the day following.

A struggle to monopolize steamboats was bitterly fought. Laws had not been written, or, if on the statute books, had not been tried and tested; the constitution had not been interpreted, and the monopoly grants threatened to disrupt the young country, for the States were at grips with each other over steamboats.

These legal contentions developed into commercial warfare, bitterness, hatred and unfair competitive battle unknown before and not tolerated since. Passengers were kidnapped by rival lines and steamboats fouled each other in premeditated collisions, while they omitted advertised stops in the race to beat competitors and proclaimed superior speed which they did not possess.

From the fights emerged Vanderbilt, Drew, Isaac Newton, Chapin, Borden, Memnemon Sanford, Whildin, Aspinwall and Charles Morgan among other early leaders who became great transportation executives and capitalists; and ruin consumed scores of others who tried and failed.

As if attempting to repair the damage occasioned by their monopolistic introduction, steamboats knitted and solidified the eastern States into a strong and enduring republican government and on the western rivers and lakes steamboats carried thousands of pioneer home-seekers across and beyond the old boundaries, and "without steamboats the West might never have been the West."

When New England coast towns were burned by the British in the War of 1812, and their people settled anew on western land grants, the shipbuilders among them continued in the one trade they knew. Pittsburgh became a shipbuilding port with anchor forges, block factories, rope walks and shipbuilding yards, not alone for river boats which later came in such numbers, but sea-going ships. Pittsburgh and Marietta built full-rigged ships that sailed over the world.

For twenty-five years steamboats alone provided transportation and later when they divided the business with railroads, the steamboats' share was largest and of primary importance, for the railroads were, at first, but feeders and extensions of steamboat routes. Credit is commonly given to railroads for the expansion of America, but it was the pioneer steamboats out of Pittsburgh that opened the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and steamboats on the coast, rivers, canals and lakes facilitated the great movement of passengers and freight.

The early thought devoted to transportation did not contemplate competition between steamboats and railroads. Commonly the two systems had the same ownership, and steamboat owners promoted connecting rail lines, replacing stage coaches, and often with steamboat capital.

The imagination of early steamboat builders was limitless. Their ability to put their plans into effect was marvelous considering every step taken was new. Modern ocean liners only measure up to early conceptions. Coast and inland steamboats of today are no larger or finer than New World of 1848 and present-day steamboats are not faster. Except in her power equipment Great Eastern anticipated present design by half a century.

Steamboat days were romantic and travel was adventure. Transportation was a highly competitive business and men struggled to win and maintain place. This hectic competition was a glorious game which helped to advance travel. New lands were conquered and great cities built where steamboats reached, and the nation halted in its pursuit of agriculture to enter upon the mechanics and engineering of steamboating.

When the high seas came to be crossed by steam vessels American steamships led in speed, numbers, comforts and cargo capacity. The largest and most satisfying ocean liners were American built and owned. English travelers preferred them. This leadership was lost to America following the Civil War. The railroads gradually took an increasing share of business, and monopolized capital available for transportation expansion. The railroads recruited their forces, too, largely from the steamboat world.

America did not lose her leadership in the change from sail to steam. She began to build iron ships as soon as any country. The Civil War gave impetus to iron shipbuilding. The Government had brought the art to such place that iron vessels could be built in America, so far as everything except raw materials was concerned, as cheaply as Europe could build them.

Nor was it the differential bounty of forty-four cents a ton granted to early American ships that made them prosperous, for this bounty only matched the bounties of other shipping nations.

Congress refused to permit three-quarters of a million tons of American steam and sail ships, which had gone under foreign flags for protection during the Civil War, to return to American registry, and so kept in the service of competitive nations a vast amount of American owned tonnage and capital.

While competitive nations were aiding their ocean shipping by direct methods of subventions and mail contracts and by indirect methods of relief, the United States Government refused assistance, and imposed new burdens upon shipping beyond those of other industries, which increased the cost of operating American ships.

America lost its leadership in steam. The Navy and the river, lake and coast steamboats kept shipbuilding alive and America showed ability to come back in the World War. The American flag will continue to fly from a representative merchant fleet upon the seven seas because a united country has determined to keep it there.

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