Coal Burnt Rivers: A History of Steamboat Travel in the 1800s

The early years of the 1800s brought a multitude of major advances in travel across America. This great revolution in American transportation can be included in a much larger movement taking place during the same time period: The Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution is credited for countless major changes in human technology around the civilized world, including the way people and items got around. During this sweeping change, all previous methods of mobility were improved drastically beyond their current capabilities, upgrading travel on both land and water. However, water travel, which was widely considered faster and more efficient than land travel, was able to maintain its reputation of being the most vital way of moving people and goods (Davidson, Castillo, Stoff 303). Specifically, boats powered by steam, usually simply known as “steamboats,” made the greatest advances in transportation in early nineteenth century America. This can be argued due to the speed, profitability, and utility of conventional steamboats.

To begin, steamboat travel was the fastest method of transport in the early nineteenth century. One of the ways their speed was beneficial to the spread of steamboats was how well they were able to capture the attention of Americans. In fact, according to Louis C. Hunter, “What most impressed the public was the extraordinary rapidity of steamboats compared with other modes of transportation” (22). As steamboat technology grew increasingly more famous, coal fueled river travel grew more and more popular. Also, the sheer power of a steamboat’s engine rendered this new type of vessel capable of traveling upstream, improving total speeds of water travel tremendously. A website supported by the United State...

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... on the way people got around America in the 1800s. Interestingly, it would be true.