Steamboat

“ He was so fascinated by this and by the creeping danger away to the left that he had no eyes for anything seaward. And then a swift movement of the steamboat (she had suddenly come round to avoid being run down) flung him headlong from the seat upon which he was standing. There was a shouting all about him, a trampling of feet, and a cheer that seemed to be answered faintly. The steamboat lurched and rolled him over upon his hands. ”

“ For our own part, when we are down among the machinery of a steamboat in full play, we conduct ourself very reverently, for we consider it as a very serious neighborhood; and every time the steam whizzes with such red-hot determination from the escape valve, we start as if some of the spirits were after us. ”

“ THE STEAMBOAT. DELAWARE.—NEWCASTLE.—RAILROAD.—FRENCH-TOWN.—ELK RIVER.—NORTH POINT.—BAY OF CHESAPEAKE.—BALTIMORE.
Quitting one of these great seaports by the ordinary conveyance of steamboat, early on a fine winter morning, is at once an amusing and interesting event.
Hastily summoned by your servant, who, himself not over early, bustles up to your bedside with "Just five minutes after six o'clock, sir," you start from a slumber that has been for some time back uneasy enough, broken up by visions of steamboats, locomotives, canvass-back ducks, Nott's stoves, and crowded cabin-tables. ”

“ The alarm had been promptly given, and the night pilot was a man for an emergency. Before the little-used yawl could be lowered, the steamer had swept a wide circle in mid-stream and the search-light picked up the castaways. From that to placing the Belle Julie so that the two bits of human flotsam could be hauled in over the bows was but a skilful hand's-turn of rudder-work, accomplished as cleverly as if the great steamboat had been a power-driven launch to be steered by a touch of the tiller. ”

“ The blowing of an incoming steamer’s whistle was a signal for every resident, male, female, child and Indian to hasten to the landing, the former to peer into the faces of the passengers for friends or relatives, the latter to gape in open-eyed astonishment at the white man’s monster, the steamboat. ”

“ There was no sign of approaching craft, no curl of smoke above the woods beyond the point to herald deliverance by a steamboat. One of the old ladies had established herself on her suitcase on the topmost step of the flight from the portico, and it would, indeed, have been a swift steamer that could have escaped her vigilance and passed without being signaled. ”

“ But it was not the remarkable completeness and elegance of the furnishings of this noble ship that occupied my attention this afternoon when, having at last said good-bye to my genial fellow-countryman, I lounged on the broad hurricane-deck awaiting the hour of our departure, which had been fixed for five o’clock. The starting of a steamboat is always an interesting spectacle, whether one witnesses it in a grimy Liverpool dock, a crowded harbour in the Levant, or here under the glaring sunshine of Southern France. But a special interest attaches to the Charles Quint on its present voyage. ”

“ Weight of steamboat, not going very fast, would break in an old vessel, without steamer feeling the blow much.
'It is usual for sailing vessels to set lights in passing steamboats, or coming up to them; commonly set in shrouds or rigging. Considers it duty of vessels to show lights, according to practice in Sound.
'If he had known the course of schooner, should have thrown his wheel as he did, because schooner might have hauled off on wind. Stern of steamboat injured very little; put on a small piece to repair her.
'Vessels on wind can keep away quicker than luff. ”

“ Already, then, the steamboat had shown herself capable of doing her work on inland waters, and even for short voyages across Channel, as well as for coasting within sight of land. Independent of calms, currents and tides, she was a being of a91 different kind as compared with the sailing ship and was carving out for herself an entirely novel career of usefulness. ”

“ The distance at which a steamboat should pass must in some degree depend on the wind and weather, and on the light or darkness of the time and the size of the respective vessels. And, in order to excuse an erroneous movement on the part of the sailing vessel, the proximity of the steamboat, and her course and speed, must be such that a mariner of ordinary firmness, and competent skill and knowledge, would deem it necessary to alter his course to enable his vessel to pass in safety. ”

“ They knew that there would be a wind and a draught everywhere, and that they would be occupied nearly all the time in moving the little stools about to get out of the wind, or out of the sun, or out of something that is inherent in a steamboat. Most people enjoy riding on a steamboat, shaking and trembling and chow-chowing along in pleasant weather out of sight of land; and they do not feel any ennui, as may be inferred from the intense excitement which seizes them when a poor porpoise leaps from the water half a mile away. ”

“ And so with the steamboat; it had crossed the Atlantic before the locomotive could carry passengers from one town to the next.
FIG. 15.—THE MARQUIS OF JOUFFROY'S STEAMBOAT, 1783.
France, England, Germany and America were all eager to have the first steamboat. In this race America won, although France and England came out with their colors flying. As far back as 1663 the Marquis of Worcester, of whom we have heard before (p. 59) , described a vessel that could be moved by steam: "It roweth," he said, "it draweth, it driveth (if needs be) to pass London bridge against the stream at low water." ”

“ The Baxter steamboat, used on the Erie canal, was the outcome of a competition invited by the State of New York for a prize of 20,000l. for the steamer which best fulfilled the following, viz. a mean speed of 3 miles per hour with a load of 200 tons, small cost, and no wash or swell. This steamboat is 100 feet long, 171⁄2 feet wide, and about 9 feet deep, with a flat bottom and vertical sides, and, including engines and coal, weighs 52 tons. It carries a load of 200 tons, with a draught of 6 feet of water, and has an average speed of about 4 miles, but can work up to 71⁄2 miles an hour. ”

“ From the engine, in fact, which Boulton and Watt had constructed at Soho for Fulton, by far the majority of the engines for the earliest steamboats took their pattern. And if to the Americans belongs the credit of having so thoroughly and so quickly developed the steamboat navigation of large rivers, it is the British, as we shall see shortly, who have been the pioneers of ocean navigation in steamships. ”

“ Along the outer edge of these wheels a platform and rail are formed quite round the vessel, projecting over the sides, and supported by timbers reaching 760down to the vessel’s side. This steamboat runs at the rate of four or four and a half miles per hour in calm weather; but against a considerable breeze, three miles only. It can accommodate two hundred and fifty passengers, and is wrought by five men. The engine consumes twelve hundred weight of coals per day. The funnel of the boiler is twenty-five feet high; and carries a square-sail twenty-two feet in breadth. ”

“ Now the fault was the steamboat captain's. He miscalculated our speed and tried to cross our bow. Then came the collision, and the Dixie's bow cut through that steamboat, cabin and hull. There were hundreds of passengers, men, women, and children. Father never took his hands from his pockets. He sent the mate for'ard to superintend rescuing the passengers, who were already climbing on to our bowsprit and forecastle- head, and in a voice no different from what he'd use to ask some one to pass the butter he told the second mate to set all sail. ”

“ She was the first steamboat constructed with a round bottom. We quote a passage referring to her from a work published in 1817:—"During a great part of her route she would be as much exposed as she could be on the ocean: it was therefore necessary to make her a perfect sea-boat. She passes daily, and at all times of the tide, the dangerous strait of Hell-Gate, where for the distance of nearly a mile she often encounters a current running at the rate of at least six miles an hour. ”

“ Like most important inventions, that of the steamboat was a long time in assuming a form capable of being profitably utilized, and, even when it had assumed such a form, the objections of commercial and scientific men had still to be overcome. The increase in the number of steamboats since the time when the Sirius first crossed the Atlantic has been very great. ”

“ No better description of a side wheel steamboat has ever been given than is contained in this letter of the 6th of September, 1798, the original draft of which, with all its interlineations, is now before me; and this is the first practical suggestion of the combination which made steam navigation a commercial success, that there is a record of in America; and this also, when, as late as 1802, four years later, Fulton, as we are informed by his biographer, had become assured, that endless chains and floats were alone to be relied on! ”

“ Higher up the river there may be more dissonance, where the steamboats are being laden with china-clay and stone; there is a clang of cranes, a rattle of machinery, a bustle out of unison with the placid water beneath, the dense woodland behind. Maritime doings seem to lose much of their beauty when they are dependent on steam—they cannot lose it all. ”

“ We have had occasion frequently to lay down the rule, that it is the duty of steamboats traversing waters where sailing vessels are often met with, to have a trustworthy and constant look-out, stationed at a part of the vessel best adapted for that purpose, and whose whole business was to discern vessels ahead, or approaching, so as to give the earliest notice to those in charge of the navigation of the vessel ”

“ In the mean time, the boat left the landing, and began to glide along rapidly on her way over the surface of the water.
The shores of the lake are very fertile and populous, and at every eight or ten miles, especially on the northern shore, you come to a large town. The steamboats stop at these towns to take and leave passengers. They do not, in such cases, usually land at a pier, but the passengers come and go in large boats, and meet the steamer at a little way from the shore. ”

“ These large steamboats, having a barge or barges in tow, lashed to them loosely, as they must be, are often brought against their sides with much force. They land for the purposes of their ordinary business at every ten or twelve miles of their voyage at the towns and landings on the river, and in doing so must necessarily impinge with more or less force against the barge which is between the boat and the shore. These are the daily and hourly external forces to which the barge is subjected in the ordinary course of navigation. ”

“ This deponent further says that the form and make of the said Hope and Perseverance steamboats, their wheels, wheel guards, manner of steering, mode of placing the masts and rigging, mode of arranging the awning, arrangements of the Cabins and kitchen, suspending their row-boats from the sides instead of from the stern, as is usual, are in his opinion in all these combinations and arrangement, exact copies from the Car of [39] Neptune Steamboat, and more like her than she is like the North River Steamboat which was first built, and further this deponent saith not. ”

“ Two red-hot steamboats raging along, neck-and-neck, straining every nerve—that is to say, every rivet in the boilers—quaking and shaking and groaning from stem to stern, spouting white steam from the pipes, pouring black smoke from the chimneys, raining down sparks, parting the river into long breaks of hissing foam—this is sport that makes a body's very liver curl with enjoyment. A horse-race is pretty tame and colorless in comparison. ”

“ Speed was a question to which he devoted considerable attention, for he realised its importance, and nearly every vessel he turned out was an improvement upon its predecessor. The inventions and improvements which he introduced inaugurated a new era of steamboat construction. Of the fate which overtook some of these early vessels, it may be noted that the Clermont died of premature old age, the Car of Neptune was broken up, the Paragon went to the bottom, and the Hope, the Perseverance, the Firefly, and the Richmond were broken up. ”

“ This is important as being the first occasion in history when the steamship took to the sea, for it was not until the James Watt achieved her distinction in 1811 that a British ship had shown her full confidence in steam. Impelled by the impetus which had been given by Fulton and Stevens, the North American continent, with its vast extent of waterways, quickly realised the possibilities of the steamboat, so that in the next decade this novel type of craft became familiar in many parts. ”

“ The march of mechanical invention is driving every thing poetical before it. The steamboats, which are fast dispelling the wildness and romance of our lakes and rivers, and aiding to subdue the world into commonplace, are proving as fatal to the race of the Canadian voyageurs as they have been to that of the boatmen of the Mississippi. ”

“ Some ships built regular steel boxes with "all round" protection, others carried the side plates so far aft that they protected men standing in the stern-sheets; and the snotties in the boats with the least protection made great fun of those who had more. Probably, among the hundred thousand men in that harbour, during the days prior to the landing, the twenty or thirty snotties in charge of these steamboats were the most supremely happy of all.
The Hun and the Orphan went away, several times, and practised towing the transports' boats. ”