Manifest Destiny - Steamboats
The Age of Steamboats
The steamboat played an important role in America’s westward expansion. Steamboats were instrumental in assisting in the exploration and settlement and the expansion of the American continent. Many explorers and family units would use this transportation on part of their journey west. Moreover, the transportation revolution in the United States had been spurred by the desire of the Easterners to tap into all that the west had to offer. By 1860, more than one-half of the American population was located west of the Appalachian Mountains. The Mississippi River and its tributaries provided a natural highway for western commerce. Steamboats stimulated the agricultural economy of the west by providing better access to markets at a lower cost. Farmers quickly bought land near navigable rivers, because they could now easily ship their produce out. As such, westward expansion and economic growth were closely linked. Towns alongside rivers were successfully urbanized and commercialized. Villages at strategic points along the waterways evolved into centers of commerce and urban life. In the 1830s and 1840s, the port of New Orleans grew to lead all others in exports. The movement of goods over long distances to the various regions required a supporting infrastructure, which stimulated the growth of market towns where merchants, bankers, warehousemen, retailers, and other middlemen provided the services needed to move the goods from producers to consumers. More extensive markets increased competition, pushing manufacturers to produce better and cheaper products in order to capture a larger share of the market.
“Transportation innovations encouraged a new sense of connectedness among Americans, encouraging a deeper sense of nationalism. The transportation revolution pushed nineteenth-century America through the process of integrating an entire continent into a single cultural and economic entity”.
Negative Impacts
Despite the steamboat's enormous benefits, it also had several negative impacts.
For example, steam propulsion is inherently dangerous, and the early steam engines could be a problem. To power a steam engine, you must produce heat to boil water and make steam. You must then pressurize the steam. It is the pressure, trapped in boilers, that creates the power to drive a piston and subsequently a wheel. In days when metallurgy was not as advanced, engineers had to estimate how much pressure boilers could withstand. They didn't always estimate correctly, as explosions were common. Furthermore, steamboats were fast and sometimes the speed could be deadly. There were crashes and explosions including the 1865 Sultana disaster in which over 1,700 people, most of them Union soldiers recently released from prison, died". The Sultana tragedy has been called "the worst maritime disaster in American history.
From 1811 to 1851, boiler explosions caused almost one quarter (21%) of river accidents. Because of all the dangers, steamboats did not last long. It was rare for a steamboat to last five years. The years between 1830 and 1839 saw the destruction of 272 steamboats after less than three years of travel each.
The Sultana Tragedy
Steamboats were also an environmental menace, destroying riverbank ecosystems and contributing to both air and water pollution. Nature was seen as a thing to be tamed rather than protected by most. Coal, a primary fuel for steam engines, requires large quantities of water, which affects the habitats of both aquatic and land-based wildlife as well as people who use these water resources.
Additionally, steamboats faced attacks by Native Americans, who felt intruded by settlers. "Often, Indians would hide along the banks of a river and begin shooting at a boat when it got close enough. If a boat wrecked near the bank, the ship would certainly lose its cargo. The crew and passengers might even lose their lives".
The End of an Era
The steamboat era finally ended in the 20th century, largely due to the railroad. Although steamboats ruled trade and travel in the 1800s and early 1900s, newer and cheaper forms of transportation eventually replaced them. Steamboats began experiencing competition from railroads as early as the 1830s. This competition increased in the years before the Civil War. By 1880 there were around 93,000 miles of tracks, and the trains took away much of the steamboats’ business.
Revolution of Transportation
These early uses of railways gave little hint that a revolution in methods of transportation was underway. James Watt's improvements in the steam engine were adapted by John Fitch in 1787 to propel a ship on the Delaware River. Fitch, an American inventor and surveyor, had published his "Map of the Northwest" two years earlier to finance the building of a commercial steamboat. With Robert Fulton's Clermont and a boat built by John Stevens, the use of steam power for vessels became firmly established. Railroads and steam propulsion developed separately, and it was not until the one system adopted the technology of the other that railroads began to flourish.
As the railroad became the preferred mode of transport, steamboats became primarily used for transporting cotton bales but that business faded out as well. Eventually the Mississippi, once bustling with steamboat traffic, was home to just a few steaming up and down the river. In the 20th century, with the invention of automobiles and airplanes, steamboats became obsolete. Most were retired and scrapped.
However, steamboats nonetheless left a lasting legacy.
