Rapid increase of steam-vessels.
From the time therefore that Fulton[152] launched the Clermont at New York, and proved, by her performance in 1808 on the Hudson, that vessels propelled by steam could be made a source of profitable employment, they were increased with a rapidity and employed to an extent, especially during the first quarter of this century, far in excess of Great Britain. Besides the Clermont, launched in 1807, Mr. Charles Brown, an enterprising shipbuilder of New York, built in that year, also for the navigation of the Hudson, the Car of Neptune of 295 tons, and the Rareton, of 120 tons, named after the river on which she was employed. In 1811, he launched the Paragon, of 331 tons, which was likewise employed on the Hudson, and, in 1812, the Firefly, to trade between New York and Newburg, as well as the Jersey, ferry-boat of 118 tons, employed in the same year by the Ferry Company for the conveyance of passengers between New Jersey and the city of New York.
First vessels built for the western rivers and lakes.
In 1814 the Americans launched their first steam-ship on the great waters of the Mississippi, at once showing the practicability of ascending that mighty river by accomplishing on her trial trip, immediately after she was built, a distance of 700 miles against the current. In 1818, they started a steam-boat to ply between New York and New Orleans, and, from that time, vessels of this description, steadily, and we may say rapidly, increased on their coasts and rivers. Their first steamer on the lakes was the Orleans, a two-masted vessel built at Pittsburg in 1811, but some time elapsed before any other steamer appeared on the Lakes, their then limited trade offering little inducement for profitable employment; hence, when the Walk-in-the-Water—a most characteristic name—commenced to trade on Lake Erie in 1819, there was no one to furnish her with a cargo except the American Fur Company. In 1827, the waters of Lake Michigan were first ploughed by steam, a boat having made an excursion to Green Bay, and in 1832, another steam-boat reached Chicago with troops, that site being then in course of clearance and settlement: in the following year, there were eleven boats on the lakes at a cost of 360,000 dollars, carrying in that year (1833) 61,480 passengers, and earning in freight 229,211 dollars. In 1834, seven new boats were launched, making eighteen in this service during that year; and in 1840, the number of boats trading between Buffalo, Chicago and other ports west of Detroit, their trip between these two places occupying fifteen days, had increased to forty-eight. Such was the beginning of the steam-boat traffic on the great North American lakes.[153] In the following woodcut may be seen a fair illustration of one of these early vessels.
But it was on the rivers and along the sheltered bays on the coast that the new mode of propulsion made at first the most rapid progress. From the time when the pioneer boat ascended the Mississippi, steam-ships rapidly increased in number and in size, as well as in the power of their engines, so that, so early as 1832, there were no less than 900 arrivals of steamers at New Orleans from the upper country, and in 1834, there were 234 steam-vessels running on the Mississippi and Ohio, the large majority of which were built at Pittsburg and Cincinnati.
Dangers of river navigation.
Number of steamers lost by “snags,” ice, fire, and collision, 1831-1833.
The navigation, however, of these great rivers was for many years attended with almost endless difficulties and dangers. In the Ohio and other western waters of the United States, though the current does not average more than three miles an hour, there were rapids where, in some instances, it attains a velocity of from seven to eight miles. There were also numerous sandbanks, most of which have now been removed, whereon the boats frequently took the ground and were detained until the next rise of water, sometimes for even three and four months. In the upper waters, too, the floating ice during the spring of the year occasioned many disasters, and is still a danger not to be prevented. But the greatest danger arose from what was known as “snags,” stumps of trees which, from the falling in of the banks, are carried down the river until they lodge, with one end resting in the mud or sand, and the other rising to the surface sometimes so concealed as to baffle the utmost precaution in avoiding it. Among the sixty-six boats lost in the navigation of these western rivers during the years 1831-2-3, while seven were wrecked by ice, fifteen stranded and abandoned, fifteen destroyed by fire, and five wrecked by collision with other boats, no less than twenty-four were “snagged.”
But, besides the “snags,” there are dangers, though of somewhat less importance, arising from other falling trees, known by the name of “sawyers,” trees which have sunk with an inclination down the stream, the action of the current upon them causing a continual vertical vibration, whence their name. Generally, when a boat going down stream strikes a sawyer, she will pass over it with little or no injury as its inclination is in the direction of the boat’s movement. But the danger, here, differs from that of the “snags.” Their inclination is up the river, their ends sometimes projecting above the surface at low water, or when the river is at a higher stage, remaining just sufficiently beneath the surface to be still more dangerous. Boats going down stream, therefore, encounter very great peril, and it has frequently occurred that, when the “snag” lies at a great inclination, the end rises when struck and not only pierces the hull but passes up through all the decks.