Before the coming of the steamboat in the West, river travel was especially difficult, hazardous, and costly. Rafts and flatboats allowed downriver passage at reasonable cost, but the return upriver on foot or horseback was time consuming and dangerous. Typical voyages of 1,000 miles took one month downstream and three to four months to return. The keelboat, which made upstream journeys possible, was based on labor-intensive, backbreaking work. As shown in Figure 9.1, upstream travel costs were typically more than five times downstream travel costs.
In 1807, Robert Fulton, with the assistance of Robert R. Livingston, built the steamboat Clermont, which completed a historic voyage up the Hudson River from New York to Albany, a distance of 150 miles, in 32 hours. Following the initial trip, regular passenger service from New York to Albany was inaugurated, and the dependability of the steamboat was quickly demonstrated. A new era of transportation on the rivers of America had begun.
In Pittsburgh the first steamboat to ply the inland waters. Named the New Orleans, it left Pittsburgh on October 20, 1811, and completed its voyage to the Gulf of Mexico in a little over two and one-half months, despite an earthquake en route at New Madrid, Missouri. Six years passed before regular services upstream and downstream were established, but (as shown in Table 9.1) the tonnage of steamboats in operation on the western rivers by 1819 already exceeded 10,000. This figure grew to almost 200,000 tons by 1860. The periods of the most rapid expansion were the first two decades following 1815, but significant gains occurred throughout each decade. Not until the 1880s did steamboating on the western rivers register an absolute decline.
The appearance of the steamboat on inland waterways did not, by any means, solve all problems of travel. Variations in the heights of the rivers still made navigation uncertain, even dangerous. Ice in the spring and sand bars in the summer were ever-present
Inland shipping points like Cincinnati soon became major markets for an increasing variety of goods and services.
Hazards; snags (trees lodged in rivers), rocks, and sunken vessels continually damaged and wrecked watercraft. In addition to these problems, the steamboat exposed westerners to some of the earliest hazards of industrialization; high-pressure boilers frequently exploded, accidentally killing thousands over the decades. This prompted the federal government to intervene: In 1838 and again in 1852, some of the first U. S. laws concerning industrial safety and consumer protection were legislated. The 1852 steamboat boiler inspection law was especially effective, significantly reducing boiler explosions and loss of life. (Refer to Economic Reasoning Proposition 4, laws and rules matter, in Economic Insight 1.1 on page 9.) Also, the federal government sporadically engaged in the removal of snags and other obstacles from the rivers. This also reduced losses of cargo, vessels, and people.
World History
