The galley—a model boat with covered deck impelled by oarsmen—was not an unfamiliar craft in the early river days. It was such a boat as this that General George Rogers Clark armed as a gunboat on the lower Ohio and used as a patrolling gunboat during the Revolutionary War. The famed “Adventure Galley,” of the New England pilgrims to Marietta, was a craft of this pattern. It was forty-five feet long and twelve feet wide, with an estimated burden of fifty tons. Her bows were raking or curved, strongly built with heavy timbers and covered with a deck roof.[60] It is probable that the first mail boats which ran on the Ohio in 1793 were of similar design. This service, established by Jacob Myers between Cincinnati and Pittsburg, was advertised on November 16 as leaving Cincinnati at 8 A. M. every alternate Saturday, requiring one month for the round trip. The proprietor took great credit to himself, “claiming to be ‘influenced by love of philanthropy and desire of being serviceable to the public.’ He further stated: ‘No danger need be apprehended from the [Indian] enemy, as every person on board will be under cover, made proof against rifle or musquet balls, and port holes for firing out of. Each boat is armed with six pieces carrying a pound ball; also a number of good musquets, and amply supplied with ammunition, strongly manned with choice hands, and the masters of approved knowledge. A separate cabin is partitioned off for accommodating ladies on their passage; conveniences are constructed so as to render landing unnecessary, as it might, at times, be attended with danger. Rules and regulations for maintaining order and for the good management of the boats, and tables of the rates of freightage, passage, and carrying of letters; also, of the exact time of arrival and departure at all way places, may be seen on the boat and at the printing office in Cincinnati. Passengers supplied with provisions and liquors, of first quality, at most reasonable rates possible. Persons may work their passage. An office for insuring at moderate rates the property carried, will be kept at Cincinnati, Limestone, (i. e. Maysville) and Pittsburgh.’ Packet-boat promises then, like steamboat promises nowadays, were not always kept; instead of on November 30th, the second boat did not leave until December 10th, ‘precisely at 10 o’clock in the morning.’”[61]
In the days before steamboats, sails were greatly used on almost every manner of craft, and were made of every conceivable material. The great barges of early days were moved by sails when the wind was favorable.[62] Both barges and keel-boats were “provided with a mast, a square sail....”[63] Canoes were frequently provided with sails and their progress was more or less dependent on the winds.[64]
The story of the building of the first brigs and schooners on the Ohio and its tributaries, the dreams of their proprietors and masters, and the experiences of their crews, is a subject worthy of a volume. The building of these larger craft for the Mississippi and ocean trade suggests at the outset the long, conflicting story of Mississippi control which can only be hinted at here.
This business of building sailing vessels in the Ohio Basin began the decade before the nineteenth century opened, and grew more and more important until steam navigation revolutionized the river trade. These brigs and schooners were, without doubt, distinctively down river craft, which never returned; they were therefore the export carriers, and the importance of their place in history may be found in the fact that their appearance marks the rise of the export business to a position of prominence, as the use of the keel-boat marked the rise of what may be called interstate commerce.
In the year 1792 the company of shipbuilders previously mentioned, Tarascon, Berthoud, and Company, who put the first keel-boats into business on the Ohio, built the schooner “Amity” of one hundred and twenty tons, and the “Pittsburgh,” a ship of two hundred and fifty tons. In 1793 the schooner “was sent to St. Thomas, and the ship to Philadelphia, both laden with Flour. The second summer, they built the brig ‘Nanina,’ of two hundred, and the ship ‘Louisiana,’ of 350 tons. The brig was sent direct to Marseilles; the ship was sent out ballasted with our stone coal, which was sold at Philadelphia, for 37 1-2 cents per bushel. The year after they built the ship ‘Western Trader’ of 400 tons.”[65] By 1800, therefore, cargoes of flour, iron, beef, pork, glass-ware, furniture of black walnut, wild cherry, and yellow birch, and beverages of varying character were awaiting the great hulls of these new ships of several hundred tons. In 1803 Thaddeus Harris found several of these ships on the stocks at Pittsburg; three had been launched before April, “from 160 to 275 tons burden.”[66] On May 4 he wrote at Marietta: “the schooner ‘Dorcas and Sally,’ of 70 tons, built at Wheeling and rigged at Marietta, dropped down the river. The following day there there passed down the schooner ‘Amity,’ of 103 tons, from Pittsburg, and the ship ‘Pittsburg,’ of 275 tons burden, from the same place, laden with seventeen hundred barrels of flour, with the rest of her cargo in flat-bottomed boats. In the evening the brig ‘Mary Avery,’ of 130 tons, built at Marietta, set sail. These afforded an interesting spectacle to the inhabitants of this place, who saluted the vessels as they passed with three cheers, and by firing a small piece of ordnance from the banks.”[67] “The building and lading of ships is now considered as an enterprize of the greatest importance in this part of the country. The last (1802) there were launched from the ship-yard of Captain Devol, on the Muskingum river, five miles above its mouth, the ship ‘Muskingum,’ of 204 tons, owned by Benjamin Ives Gilman, Esq. and the brigantine ‘Eliza Greene,’ of 115 tons, owned by Charles Greene, Esq. merchants at Marietta. At the spring flood of the present year, the schooner ‘Indiana,’ of 100 tons, the brig ‘Marietta,’ of 130 tons, and another of 150 tons, also built here, were launched and descended the river for New Orleans and the trade to the West Indies. Good judges of naval architecture have pronounced these vessels equal, in point of workmanship and materials, to the best that have been built in America. The firmness and great length of their planks, and the excellency of their timbers, (their frames being almost wholly composed of black walnut, a wood which, if properly selected, has nearly the strength of white oak, and the durability of the live oak of the south without its weight) it is believed will give these vessels the preference over any built of the timber commonly made use of, in any market where there are competent judges. This part of the country owes much to those gentlemen, who, in a new and experimental line, have set this example of enterprize and perseverance.”[68] One ship from Marietta is said to have had the existence of her port of clearance questioned in Italy.
In 1811 we learn that ship-building was not prospering as might be supposed; misfortunes and accidents “have given a damp to ships building at present.”[69] On an inland river, where the winds and the amount of rainfall at any time were very uncertain, it must have been a most difficult thing to cope successfully with low water and shifting sand bars and other innumerable obstacles to navigation in the Ohio. The times were ripe for another power, one which did not require that the vessels have deep draught, as was the case with sailing vessels.
The dawning of the new era of steam navigation cannot be introduced better than by quoting a unique paragraph from The Navigator of 1811:
“There is now on foot a new mode of navigating our western waters, particularly the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This is with boats propelled by the power of steam. This plan has been carried into successful operation on the Hudson river at New York, and on the Delaware between New Castle and Burlington.—It has been stated that the one on the Hudson goes at the rate of four miles an hour against wind and tide on her route between New York and Albany, and frequently with 500 passengers on board. From these successful experiments there can be but little doubt of the plan succeeding on our western waters, and proving of immense advantage to the commerce of our country. A Mr. Rosewalt, a gentleman of enterprise, and who is acting it is said in conjunction with Messrs. Fulton and Livingston of New York, has a boat of this kind now on the stocks at Pittsburgh, of 138 feet keel, calculated for 300 or 400 tons burden. And there is one building at Frankfort, Kentucky, by citizens who no doubt will push the enterprise. It will be a novel sight, and as pleasing as novel to see a huge boat working her way up the windings of the Ohio, without the appearance of sail, oar, pole, or any manual labour about her—moving within the secrets of her own wonderful mechanism, and propelled by power undiscoverable!—This plan if it succeeds, must open to view flattering prospects to an immense country, an interior of not less than two thousand miles of as fine a soil and climate, as the world can produce, and to a people worthy of all the advantages that nature and art can give them, a people the more meritorious because they know how to sustain peace and live independent, among the crushing of empires, the falling of kings, the slaughter and bloodshed of millions, and the tumult, corruption and tyranny of all the world beside. The immensity of country we have yet to settle, the vast riches of the bowels of the earth, the unexampled advantages of our water courses, which wind without interruption for thousands of miles, the numerous sources of trade and wealth opening to the enterprising and industrious citizens, are reflections that must rouse the most dull and stupid.... From the canoe, we now see ships of two or three hundred tons burden, masted and rigged, descending the same Ohio, laden with the products of the country, bound to New Orleans,—thence to any part of the world.—Thus the rise and progress of the trade and the trader on the western waters, thus the progress of our country from infancy to manhood, and thus the flattering prospects of its future greatness through the channels of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.”[70]
These words came true in a miraculously short space of time. Previous to the adoption of the steamboat navigation, say in 1817, the whole commerce from New Orleans to the upper country was carried in about twenty barges, averaging one hundred tons each, and making but one trip a year. The number of keel-boats employed on the Upper Ohio could not have exceeded one hundred and fifty, carrying thirty tons each, and making one trip from Pittsburg to Louisville and back in two months, or about three voyages in the season. The tonnage of all the boats ascending the Ohio and Lower Mississippi was then about sixty-five hundred.
In 1811 the first steamboat was constructed at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, on the Monongahela. Several others were built soon after, but it was probably fifteen years before steamboats came into such general use as to cause any diminution in the flat-and keel-boat navigation. These first boats were built after models of ships, with deep holds. They also were constructed with low pressure engines and heavy machinery. Hence they were useless in low water, very hard to propel against the current, and their carrying capacity was greatly reduced. In order to attain greater speed, the builders soon made the boats long and narrow but it was not until they came to the decision that boats would run faster on the water than in it, and began making them flat and broad, that they finally got a boat capable of carrying a thousand tons, when drawing only four feet, and when empty only two and one-half feet. Then with a high pressure engine at each wheel they could make unprecedented speed; and these boats afforded traveling and freight accommodations equal to any. Although the prices of passages did not exceed hotel rates, yet more bountifully filled tables were not to be found on land and the boats were marvels of splendor in their appointments. The chief improvement made in the river steamboats was placing one large wheel at the stern of the boat entirely behind the hulk and with long paddles the full length of the beam, operated by double engines and quartering cranks. This had the advantage of allowing the wheel to fly in the eddy water of the boat, while it cleared the boat of the afterdraft. With these improvements rapid currents and shallow waters could be conquered.