By the official returns in 1842 it appears that the whole steamboat tonnage of the United States was 218,994 tons; this was divided as follows:
Southwest
| New Orleans, | 80,993 | tons |
| St. Louis, | 14,725 | “ |
| Cincinnati, | 12,025 | “ |
| Pittsburg, | 10,107 | “ |
| Louisville, | 4,618 | “ |
| Nashville, | 3,810 | “ |
| ———— | ||
| Total | 126,278 | tons. |
Northwest
| Buffalo, | 8,212 | tons |
| Detroit, | 3,296 | “ |
| Presque Isle, | 2,315 | “ |
| Oswego, | 1,970 | “ |
| Cuyahoga, | 1,859 | “ |
| ———— | ||
| Total | 17,652 | tons. |
Seaboard
| New York, | 35,260 | tons |
| Baltimore, | 7,143 | “ |
| Mobile, | 6,982 | “ |
| Philadelphia, | 4,578 | “ |
| Charleston, | 3,289 | “ |
| Newbern, | 2,854 | “ |
| Perth Amboy, | 2,606 | “ |
| Apalachicola, | 1,418 | “ |
| Boston, | 1,362 | “ |
| Norfolk, | 1,395 | “ |
| Wilmington, | 1,212 | “ |
| Georgetown, | 1,178 | “ |
| Newark, | 1,120 | “ |
| Miscellaneous, | 4,767 | “ |
| ———— | ||
| Total | 76,064 | tons. |
At this time the steamboat tonnage belonged to the internal commerce of the country, as, with the exception of two or three in the Gulf of Mexico, we had no steam vessels engaged in foreign commerce. Of the whole 218,994 tons, it appears that two-thirds belonged to the West; and as a portion of the other tonnage was employed on routes leading to the West and connecting with our highways, the commerce of the West no doubt amounted to more than two-thirds of the commerce of the Union. And, estimating the number of steamboats from their average tonnage, there must have been in 1842, one thousand in the United States, of which six hundred belonged to the West.
The table of tonnage above given, shows where this vast commercial marine was employed; first, in the Mississippi Basin; next, in the city of New York; and then on the Lakes. From the port of New York there were some seventy or eighty steamboats constantly running—on the Lakes there were hundreds. In the valley of the Mississippi the number of steamboats they employed was equal to the whole number of those employed in England. This will appear from the following statement from McCullough’s gazetteer of the steamboat tonnage of Great Britain in 1834: