Читать книгу Highways and Highway Transportation - George R. Chatburn - Страница 59

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—As has already been stated streams and rivers were early adopted as a means for transportation. Birch-bark and dug-out canoes, flat-boats and keel-boats, with and without sails, and rafts were extensively used. For small boats paddles and oars furnished the means of navigation, while several pairs of oars were utilized on the larger boats. In shallow water poling was much in vogue. Two men by pushing poles against the bottom of the stream from opposite sides of a small boat could easily propel it. On still larger boats and rafts the men as they pushed walked toward the stern as far as possible while the craft moved through the water under them. A third man held it with his pole until the first two regained a position near the front for another push. By this arduous and crude means boats were propelled up shallow but often swift currents. On the larger rivers sails were employed. Going downstream offered little difficulty except to keep clear of sand bars and snags. Sails, oars, and poles were sometimes relied upon to assist the current in making speed. Large rafts of logs and lumber made by tying timbers together with wooden pins were floated down the rivers and broken up and sold when they reached their destination. Furs, hides, bacon, cured hams, or jerked-meat might form a cargo, stored during transit, in a small cabin erected at the center of the raft, which might occupy from 400 to 600 square feet.

The construction of a practicable steamboat in 1807 by Robert Fulton[68] and another by John Stevens, the same year, revolutionized both river and sea navigation. While many attempts had been made to utilize the steam engine for propelling boats, and some of them mechanically successful, Fulton’s was the first boat built and adapted for the conveyance of freight and passengers on a scale commercially successful. Fulton had had the confidence and backing of R. R. Livingston and the firm of Fulton & Livingston was formed. This firm secured a monopoly for operating steam vessels in the waters of the state of New York. The first boat, the Clermont, named after Livingston’s estate on the Hudson River, was 130 feet long, 18 feet beam, and 7 feet deep, with a burden of 160 tons. The Boulton & Watt engine had been brought from England the year previous by Fulton and the boat built for it. The vessel made a successful trial trip to Albany, August 7 to 9, and returned the following two days; her running speed had only averaged about 5 miles an hour, but she had demonstrated the practicability of steam navigation on inland waters. Following close after this event, Stevens, who had been experimenting for years and, it is claimed, had launched a screw propeller vessel driven by steam as early as 1804, perfected his vessel, but because of Fulton & Livingston’s monopoly took it to the Delaware River at Philadelphia. The trip around by sea demonstrated the feasibility of steam navigation on the ocean. Very shortly thereafter Fulton & Livingston had placed a fleet of their vessels on the Hudson River and Long Island Sound, and had begun to build them at Pittsburgh while John Stevens & Sons had their vessels on the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers. Soon all navigable waters were covered with steam propelled vessels.

Prior to the introduction of the steamboat Mississippi River traffic had been, as has been stated, carried on by flat boats, rafts, and perhaps some twenty barges[69] of a better quality. These latter had been making one round trip a year requiring sixty days down and ninety days back from Louisville to New Orleans. This time, by 1822, had been reduced to seven days down and sixteen days up. By 1830 all the navigable tributaries of the Mississippi were traversed by steamboats and the produce of a western empire teeming through the portals was rapidly making New Orleans a great city. The value of these commodities were given as approximating $26,000,000 annually.[70] In 1860 a writer said: “upward of two hundred millions of dollars worth of merchandise are annually brought to this market.”[71] New Orleans was an extremely busy place with all the picturesqueness of pioneer cities generally. Ranking twelfth of the cities of the United States in 1790, it had steadily climbed up to third place in 1840,[72] when the northern cities through the influence of the railroads and the decline of river traffic began to outstrip it. The levee, an embankment along the river, several feet higher than the city, was bordered by a long line of warehouses on the land side and by quays extending into the river on the other side. Miles of ships, boats, and barges were anchored along the levee as automobiles are now parked along a street, heads in. A contemporaneous writer describes it thus:

The New Orleans levee is one continuous landing-place, or quay, 4 miles in extent, and of an average width of 100 feet. It is 15 feet above low water mark, and 6 feet above the level of the city, to which it is graduated by an easy descent. During the business season, from November to July, the river front of the levee is crowded with vessels, of all sizes and from all quarters of the world, with hundreds of large and splendid steamboats, barges, flat-boats, etc. The levee presents a most busy and animated prospect. Here are seen piles of cotton bales, vast numbers of barrels of pork, flour and liquors of various kinds, bales of foreign and domestic manufactures, hogsheads of sugar, crates of ware, etc., draymen with their carts, buyers, sellers, laborers, etc. Valuable products from the head waters of the Missouri, 3000 miles distant, center here. The Illinois, the Ohio, the Arkansas and Red Rivers, with the Mississippi, are all tributaries to this commercial depot.

Under the influence of the river traffic many other cities were springing into importance. Many of these later became centers of railroad activity and thus retained or even bettered their rank. Others gradually wasted away until they are mere hamlets to-day.

The times seem to have been ripe when Fulton’s Clermont appeared, for almost immediately the steamboat industry thrived. During the first ten years 131 steam vessels had been built and by 1832, 474;[73] in 1836 and 1837, 145 and 158 respectively were launched. Building was for a few years checked by business depression but soon revived and in 1846 there were constructed 225 steam vessels. The Civil War reduced the number; immediately following business sprang up again and taking into account coasts, rivers, and lakes has continued brisk ever since.

With the growth in the number of vessels, up until railroads began to monopolize travel and freight, the accommodations and speed were continually improved until river and sound boats were frequently spoken of as “floating palaces.” Packets were built to accommodate several hundred passengers, with staterooms, saloons, dining rooms, bathrooms, barber shops, and other features. The river steamboat may be said to be a development of the pole-boat or flat-boat. On account of the shoals they must be broad and shallow. The paddle wheels on the sides are operated independently in order to facilitate quick turning. The weight of engines, boilers, fuel bunkers, freight and passenger burden, are distributed fairly well over the entire surface. Some of the best lower Mississippi boats had a length of hull of 300 feet, a width of 50 feet and depth of hold of 9 feet. The boat fully loaded drew about 10 feet of water, when light, 4 feet. “Mark twain,” 6 feet, represented the shallowest water the vessels piloted by Samuel L. Clemens could navigate; after quitting steam-boating he adopted that term for a nom-de-plume, under which his inimitable writings were published.[74] The main deck overhangs the hull and is about 90 feet wide. A complete system of ties and braces above the hull gives it strength and stiffness. Modern boats are electric lighted and have swinging gangplanks, capstans, and all the recent power improvements for the rapid handling of freight and passengers. The staterooms are erected on the saloon deck with doors opening into the saloon and on a narrow passageway along the outside. The saloon generally extends the full length of the house, giving a large well-lighted room, used as a lounging and dining room. Above this is another deck on which are officers’ quarters and above all fully glassed in is the pilot house. The freight capacity of these boats is given as 1500 tons, and there are 70 staterooms to accommodate 140 passengers. Deck passage could be provided for a number more. The cost of a “floating palace” was in the ’eighties from $100,000 to $120,000.

Extremely handsome, well equipped, and finely decorated boats ply regularly on the Hudson River and on Long Island Sound. Some of the vessels of one line are over 400 feet long and 50 feet wide. The decks are about 90 feet wide and they have over 350 state rooms; many of them are magnificently equipped.

O’Hanlon’s “Irish Emigrants’ Guide to the United States,” published in 1851, would indicate that all traveling in that day was not as comfortable as might be inferred from the preceding. With regard to steamboats it says: