Everything about Steamboats totally explained
A
steamboat or
steamship, sometimes called a
steamer, is a
ship in which the primary method of propulsion is
steam power, typically driving a
propeller or
paddlewheel.
The term steamboat is usually used to refer to smaller steam-powered boats working on lakes and rivers, particularly
riverboats; steamship generally refers to steam-powered
ships capable of carrying a (ship's) boat. The term
steamwheeler is archaic and rarely used.
Steamships gradually replaced sailing ships for commercial shipping through the 19th century, and they were overtaken by diesel-driven ships in the second half of the twentieth century. Most
warships used steam propulsion until the advent of the
gas turbine. Today,
nuclear-powered warships and
submarines use steam to drive
turbines, but are not referred to as steamships or steamboats.
Screw-driven steamships generally carry the
ship prefix "SS" before their names, meaning 'Steam Ship' (or 'State Ship' (U.S.)),
paddle steamers usually carry the prefix "PS" and steamships powered by
steam turbine may be prefixed "TS" (turbine ship). The term
steamer is occasionally used, out of nostalgia, for
diesel motor-driven vessels, prefixed "MV".
Early development
The French inventor
Denis Papin, after inventing the
steam digester, a type of
pressure cooker, built a model of a piston
steam engine, the first of its kind in 1690. He continued to work on steam engines for the next fifteen years. During a stay in
Kassel,
Germany, in 1704, he also constructed a ship powered by his steam engine. The engine was mechanically linked to paddles. This would then make him the first to construct a steam boat.
In 1736, Anetta Johnson took out a
patent in
England for a
Newcomen engine-powered steamboat, but it was the improvement in steam engines by
James Watt that made the concept feasible.
William Henry of Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, having learned of Watt's engine on a visit to England, made his own engine and in 1763 attempted to put it in a boat. The boat sank, and while he made an improved model he doesn't seem to have had much success, though he may have inspired others.
In
France, by 1774 Marquis
Claude de Jouffroy and his colleagues had made a 13 metre (42 ft 8 in) working steamboat with rotating paddles, the
Palmipède. The ship sailed on the
Doubs in June and July 1776, apparently the first steamship to sail successfully. In 1783 a new
paddle steamer,
Pyroscaphe, successfully steamed up the
river Saône for fifteen minutes before the engine failed, but bureaucracy thwarted further progress.
From 1784
James Rumsey built a pump-driven (
water jet) boat and successfully steamed upstream on the
Potomac river in 1786; the following year he obtained a patent from the State of
Virginia. In
Pennsylvania,
John Fitch, an acquaintance of Henry, made a model paddle steamer in 1785, and subsequently developed propulsion by floats on a chain, obtained a patent in 1786, then built a steamboat which underwent a successful trial in 1787. In 1788, a steamboat built by John Fitch operated in regular commercial service along the Delaware river between Philadelphia PA and Burlington NJ, carrying as many as 30 passengers. This boat could typically make 7 to 8 miles per hour, and traveled more than during its short length of service. The Fitch steamboat wasn't a commercial success, as this travel route was adequately covered by relatively good wagon roads. The following year a second boat made 50 km (30 mile) excursions, and in 1790 a third boat ran a series of trials on the
Delaware River before patent disputes dissuaded Fitch from continuing.
Meanwhile,
Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, near
Dumfries,
Scotland, had developed double-hulled boats propelled by cranked paddlewheels placed between the hulls, and he engaged engineer
William Symington to build his patent steam engine into a boat which was successfully tried out on Dalswinton Loch in 1788, and followed by a larger steamboat the next year. Miller then abandoned the project, but ten years later Symington was engaged by
Lord Dundas, and in March 1802,
Charlotte Dundas towed two 70 ton barges 30 km (19 miles) along the
Forth and Clyde Canal to
Glasgow. This vessel, the first tow boat, has been called the "first practical steamboat", and the first to be followed by continuous development of steamboats. Although plans to introduce boats on the Forth and Clyde canal were thwarted by fears of erosion of the banks, development was taken up both in
Britain and abroad.
Robert Fulton, who may have become interested in steamboats when he visited Henry in 1777 at the age of 12, visited Britain and
France where he built and tested an experimental steamboat on the
River Seine in 1803, and was aware of the success of
Charlotte Dundas. Before returning to the
United States he ordered a
Boulton and
Watt steam engine, and on return built what he called the
North River Steamboat (often mistakenly described as the
Clermont). In 1807 this steamboat began a regular passenger boat service between
New York City and
Albany, New York, 240 km (150 miles) distant, which was a commercial success. It could make the trip in 32 hours. In 1808 John and James Winans built
Vermont in
Burlington, Vermont, the second steamboat to operate commercially. In 1809,
Accommodation, built by the Hon.
John Molson at
Montreal, and fitted with engines made in that city, was running successfully between Montreal and
Quebec, being the first steamer on the
St. Lawrence and in
Canada. The experience of both vessels showed that the new system of propulsion was commercially viable, and as a result its application to the more open waters of the
Great Lakes was next considered. That idea went on hiatus due to the
War of 1812.
In 1815, Pierre Andriel crossed the
English Channel aboard
Élise, marking the first sea-going use of a steam ship.
Steamboats on major American rivers soon followed Fulton's success. In 1811 the first in a continuous (still in commercial passenger operation as of 2007) line of river steamboats left the dock at
Pittsburgh down the
Ohio River and on to
New Orleans.
(External Link
) Mark Twain, in his
Life on the Mississippi, described much of the operation of these vessels. For most of the 19th century and part of the early 20th century, trade on the
Mississippi River would be dominated by paddle-wheel steamboats. Their success led to penetration deep into the continent, where
Anson Northrup in 1859 became first steamer to cross the U.S.-Canadian border on the
Red River. They would also be involved in major political events, as when
Louis Riel seized
International at
Fort Garry, or
Gabriel Dumont was engaged by
Northcote at
Batoche. Very few such craft survive to the present day. Most were destroyed by
boiler explosions or fires. One of the few surviving Mississippi sternwheelers from this period,
Julius C. Wilkie, is a
museum ship at
Winona, Minnesota. For modern craft operated on rivers, see the
riverboat article.
The cartoon
Steamboat Willie introduced steamboat
pilot Mickey Mouse to the public.
The
Belle of Louisville, out of
Louisville,
Kentucky is the oldest continually operating steamboat on the inland waterways of the United States: she was laid down as
Idlewild in 1914.
In
Canada, the city of
Terrace, British Columbia, celebrates "Riverboat Days" each summer. The
Skeena River passes through Terrace and played a crucial role during the age of the steamboat. The first steamer to enter the Skeena was
Union in 1864. In 1866
Mumford attempted to ascend the river but was only able to reach the
Kitsumkalum River. It wasn't until 1891
Hudson's Bay Company sternwheeler
Caledonia successfully negotiated
Kitselas Canyon and reached
Hazelton. A number of other steamers were built around the turn of the century, in part due to the growing
fish industry and the
gold rush. For more information, see
Steamboats of the Skeena River.
Sternwheelers were an instrumental transportation technology in the development of Western Canada. They were used on most of the navigable waterways of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, B.C and the Yukon at one time or another, generally being supplanted by the expansion of railroads and road access. In the more mountainous and remote areas of the Yukon and British Columbia, working sternwheelers lived on well into the 20th century.
The simplicity of these vessels and their shallow draft made them indispensable to pioneer communities that were otherwise virtually cut off from the outside world. Because of their shallow, flat bottomed construction, (the Canadian examples of the western river sternwheeler generally needed less than three feet of water to float in) they could nose up almost anywhere along a riverbank to pick up or drop off passengers and freight. Sternwheelers would also prove vital to the construction of the railroads that would eventually replace them, and were used to haul supplies, track and other materials to construction camps.
The simple, versatile locomotive-style boilers fitted to most sternwheelers after about the 1860s could burn coal in more populated areas like the lakes of the Kootenays and the Okanagan region in southern B.C. or wood in the more remote areas such as the Yukon or northern B.C.
The hulls were generally wooden, (although a few steel and composite hulls were built after about 1898) and were braced internally with a series of built-up longitudinal timbers called keelsons. Further reilience was given to the hulls by a system of "hog rods" or "hog chains" that were fastened into the keelsons and led up and over vertical masts called "hog-posts" and back down again.
Like their counterparts on the Mississippi and its tributaries and the vessels on the rivers of California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Alaska, the Canadian sternwheelers tended to have fairly short life-spans. The hard usage they were subjected to and inherent flexibility of their shallow wooden hulls meant that relatively few of them had careers longer than a decade.
In the Yukon Territory there are two vessels preserved, the S.S. Klondike in Whitehorse and the S.S. Keno in Dawson City, plus many other derelict hulks can still be found along the Yukon River.
In British Columbia, the
SS Moyie, built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1898, was operated on Kootenay Lake in south-eastern B.C. until 1957. It has been carefully restored and is on display in the village of Kaslo, while the S.S. Sicamous of 1914 has been preserved in Penticton at the south end of Okanagan Lake.
The SS Samson V is the only Canadian steam-powered sternwheeler that has been preserved afloat. It was built in 1937 by the Canadian federal Department of Public Works as a snagboat for clearing logs and debris out of the lower reaches of the Fraser River and for maintaining docks and aids to navigation. The fifth in a line of Fraser River snagpullers, the Samson V has engines, paddlewheel and other components that were passed down from the Samson II of 1914. It is now moored on the Fraser River as a floating museum in its home port of New Westminster, near Vancouver, B.C.
Some good reference works on the history of these vessels include Art Downs'
British Columbia-Yukon Sternwheel Days (1992 Heritage House Publishing Company, Surrey, B.C.), Robert D. Turner's Sternwheelers and Steam Tugs (1998, Sono Nis Press, Victoria, B.C.), Edward Affleck's A Century of Paddlewheelers in the Pacific Northwest, the Yukon and Alaska (2000, Alexander Nicolls Press, Vancouver, B.C.) Graham Wilson, Paddlewheelers of Alaska and the Yukon (1999,Wolf Creek Books, Whitehorse,Yukon) and Robin Sheret's Smoke, Ash and Steam (1997, Western Isles Cruise and Dive Co., Victoria, B.C.).
There are six major commercial steamboats that currently operate on the inland waterways of the United States. They are the steamers
Belle of Louisville,
Delta Queen,
Julia Belle Swain,
Mississippi Queen,
Natchez, and
American Queen. Three of these boats are overnight passenger vessels operated by
Majestic America Line, formerly the Delta Queen Steamboat Company of
New Orleans, LA.
Thames steamboats
There are not many genuine steamboats left on the Thames. However a handful still remain:
S.L Nuneham
- This is a genuine Victorian Steamer originally built in 1898. Operates on the non-tidal upper Thames.
Lake, loch, estuary and sea-going steamers
Bell's
Comet started a rapid expansion of steam services on the
Firth of Clyde, and within four years a steamer service was in operation on the inland
Loch Lomond, a forerunner of the lake steamers still gracing
Swiss lakes. Today the 1900 steamer SS
Sir Walter Scott still sails on
Loch Katrine, while on Loch Lomond PS
Maid of the Loch is being restored.
On the Clyde itself, within ten years of
Comet's start there were nearly fifty steamers, and services had started across the
Irish Sea to
Belfast. By 1900 there were over 300
Clyde steamers. The
paddle steamer Waverley, built in 1947, is the last survivor of these fleets, and the last seagoing paddle steamer in the world. This ship sails a full season of cruises every year from places around
Britain, and has sailed across the
English Channel for a visit to commemorate the sinking of her predecessor, built in 1899 at the
Battle of Dunkirk in 1940.
People have had a particular affection for the
Clyde puffers, small steam freighters of traditional design developed to use the Scottish canals and to serve the
Highlands and Islands. They were immortalised by the tales of
Para Handy's boat
Vital Spark by
Neil Munro and by the film
The Maggie, and a small number are being conserved to continue in steam around the west highland sea lochs.
The Clyde sludge boats had a tradition of occasionally taking passengers on their trips from
Glasgow, past the
Isle of Arran, down the
Firth of Clyde, and one has emerged from retirement as "SS
Shieldhall, Steam powered General Cargo-Passenger Steamer available for Trips in the Solent", offering outings from
Southampton,
England with views of the two triple expansion engines.
From 1844 through 1857, luxurious
palace steamers carried passengers and cargo around the
North American
Great Lakes.
Built in 1856, PS
Skibladner is the oldest
steamship still in operation, serving towns along lake
Mjøsa in
Norway.
The 1912 steamer
TSS Earnslaw still makes regular sight-seeing trips across
Lake Wakatipu, an alpine lake near
Queenstown, New Zealand.
Swiss lakes are home of a number of large steamships. On
Lake Lucerne, five
paddle steamers are still in service:
Uri (built in 1901, 800 passengers),
Unterwalden (1902, 800 passengers),
Schiller (1906, 900 passengers),
Gallia (1913, 900 passengers, fastest paddle-wheeler on European lakes) and
Stadt Luzern (1928, 1200 passengers, last steamship built for a Swiss lake). There are also five steamers as well as some old steamships converted to diesel-powered paddlewheelers on
Lake Geneva, two steamers on
Lake Zurich and single ones on other lakes.
From 1850 to the early decades of the twentieth century Windermere, in the English Lakes, was home to many elegant steamboats used for private parties and watching the yacht races. Many of these fine craft were saved from destruction when steam went out of fashion and are now part of the collection at Windermere Steamboat Museum. The collection includes SL Dolly, 1851, thought to be the world's oldest mechanically powered boat, and several of the classic Windermere launches.
Ocean steamships
The first steamship to operate on the Pacific Ocean was the
Beaver, launched in 1836 to service
Hudson's Bay Company trading posts between
Puget Sound and
Alaska. The side-wheel paddle steamer
SS Great Western was the first purpose-built steamship to initiate regularly scheduled trans-Atlantic crossings, starting in 1838. The first regular steamship service from the west to the east coast of the
United States began on
February 28,
1849 with the arrival of the
SS California in
San Francisco Bay.
California left
New York Harbor on
October 6,
1848, rounded
Cape Horn at the tip of
South America, and arrived at
San Francisco, California after a 4-month 21-day journey.
SS Great Eastern was built in 1854–1857 with the intent of linking Great Britain with
India,
via the
Cape of Good Hope, without coaling stops; she'd know a turbulent history, and was never put to her intended use.
As early as the 1820s, side-wheel steamers plied the waters of
Narragansett Bay,
Buzzard's Bay, the
Atlantic Ocean, and
Long Island Sound between the ports of southern
New England and
New York City. Eventually most of the steamship lines that traversed "The Sound" came under the control of
J. P. Morgan who consolidated them into the
New England Steamship Company, probably better know by the name of its most famous route, the
Fall River Line, which transported Astors, Vanderbilts, and the elite of the Eastern Establishment between
New York City,
Boston, and their palatial summer 'cottages' at
Newport,
Rhode Island. The last of the great paddle steamer fleet was put out of business by a combination of competition from railroads and automobiles, labor troubles, and the
Great Depression ecomomy in 1937;
however, service on "The Sound" between
Providence, and
New York City continued with screw steamers, until brought to an end in early 1942 by the menace of
WWII German
U-boat attacks.
Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States used steamships (such as the
USS Mississippi) to help
force Japan to open its ports up to American trade in 1853. This was a contributing factor to the
Meiji Restoration.
By 1870, a number of inventions, such as the
screw propeller and the
triple expansion engine made trans-oceanic shipping economically viable. Thus began the era of cheap and safe travel and trade around the world.
RMS Titanic was the largest steamship in the world when she sank in 1912; a subsequent major sinking of a steamer was that of the
RMS Lusitania, as an act of
World War I. Launched in 1938,
RMS Queen Elizabeth was the largest passenger steamship ever built. Launched in 1969,
RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) was the last passenger steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean on a scheduled liner voyage before she was converted to diesels in 1986. The last major passenger ship built with steam engines was the
Fairsky, launched in 1984.
SS Explorer is the last remaining steam trawler in Britain. She was built in Aberdeen, including the last steam engine built there, and was launched in 1955 as a fishery research vessel. Accommodation was provided for researchers, including a computer cabin. Currently she's berthed at Edinburgh Dock,
Leith, by
Edinburgh, and is subject of a restoration project.
SS Delphine is a classic 1920's yacht commissioned by Horace Dodge, co-founder of Dodge Brothers of automobile fame.
The yacht was launched on April 2, 1921, and spans . The Delphine can reach under power from her two quadruple steam expansion engines, each of . Interactive images including those of her original engines can be viewed here..
VR Panoramic images of The SS Delphine After a full restoration she now cruises the Mediterranean under charter.
A full history can be viewed on the
official website
The
turbine steamship
Royal Yacht Britannia, now retired from service, is berthed nearby at Ocean Terminal, Leith.
Steamboat images
Image:SteamboatEnglishPatent.gif|1736 steamboat English patent.
Image:D'AbbansSteamshipModel.jpg|Model of steamship, built in 1784 by Jouffroy d'Abbans.
Image:Clermont illustration - Robert Fulton - Project Gutenberg eText 15161.jpg|Robert Fulton's Clermont.
Image:Elise-vapeur.gif|the Élise
Image:paddle wheel small.jpg|Left: original paddlewheel from a paddle steamer on the lake of Lucerne. Right: detail of a steamer.
Image:PS Waverley leaving Dunoon 1989.jpg|PS Waverley leaving Dunoon on the Firth of Clyde.
Image:Dampfschiff.jpg|"Andreas" in Berlin
Image:PS Waverley off Greenock 1994.jpg|Paddle steamer PS Waverley steaming down the Firth of Clyde.
Image:TS Queen Mary 1981.jpg|Turbine steamer TS Queen Mary.
Image:SS_Shieldhall_in_Clyde_2005.jpg|SS Shieldhall steams down the Firth of Clyde.
Image:SS United States Philadelphia 2005.JPG|SS United States laid up in Philadelphia.
Further Information
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