The Steamboat After Fulton
ROBERT FULTON MAY NOT HAVE literally invented the steamboat, but he surely introduced it into everyday commercial service. His premier boat of 1807 ran steady and full, and its public acceptance opened a new era. For the first time, mechanical power was used to carry passengers and cargo over long distances. The Hudson River became a highway for long and sleek side-wheelers racing along at 20 and 25 miles an hour. Travel time to Albany fell to just seven hours. Fortunes were made by business leaders like Daniel Drew and Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Steamers offered service between New York and New England via Long Island Sound starting in the 182Os. These boats remained popular long after railroads offered competing service, with the last of them retiring in 1937. Fulton saw inland rivers as a prime market for steamboat traffic and tried to develop such service early on. His first boat left Pittsburgh in 1811 for New Orleans. Steamboats not only were faster than barges and keelboats but could travel upstream against the current, making twoway travel possible. As pioneer settlements like Cincinnati and St. Louis grew, the prospects of the river steamer expanded. By 1850 more than 700 plied the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Unusually cheap fares and good meals did much to stimulate travel, and cotton, salt, and agricultural products provided large cargoes. Packet travel flourished until around 1880 and then slowly ebbed away over the next half-century. The last steam towboat tied up in 1967.
The first Great Lakes steamers appeared in 1816. They multiplied as Cleveland, Detroit, and Buffalo blossomed into centers of trade and industry. In 1840 there were 48 steamers; by 1876 there were 885. Some passenger vessels on the lakes carried upward of 1,500 passengers plus large cargoes. Their biggest traffic was iron ore lugged from Minnesota to Pennsylvania, often 70 million tons of it a year. Steam prevailed on the lakes until about 1960, when diesel-powered vessels became more popular.
Steamers began to cross the oceans in 1838, their ability to maintain a dependable schedule making them preferable to sailing ships. A normal crossing by sail took a month; by 1860 most travelers, including emigrants, traveled on steamers that took only about a week. Britain controlled the trade; the only serious competitors were the German lines. By 1899 there were 15,000 oceangoing steamers of 100 tons or more on the high seas, a third of them British. Fulton’s breakthrough had grown into a gigantic international business.
The great ocean liners seemed destined to rule international travel forever, and as late as 1952 many investors believed they still had a long future. The United States entered service that year with 12 decks for nearly 2,000 passengers and a steam power plant rated at 240,000 horsepower. She swept along at 40 miles an hour, crossing the Atlantic in just three days and 10 hours. But by 1960 jets were making the same trip in a few hours. By 1972 airlines had over 80 percent of this traffic. The age that Robert Fulton had inaugurated was finally over, more than a century and a half later.
