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A flatboat (or broadhorn) was a rectangular flat-bottomed boat with [1] square ends used to transport freight and passengers on inland waterways in the United States. The flatboat could be any size, but essentially it was a large, sturdy tub with a hull.
A flatboat was almost always a one-way (downstream) vessel, and was usually dismantled for lumber when it reached its destination. [2]
The flatboat trade first began in 1781, with Pennsylvania farmer Jacob Yoder building the first flatboat at Old Redstone Fort on the Monongahela River. Yoder's ancestors immigrated from Switzerland, where small barges called weidlings are still common today, having been used for hundreds of years to transport goods downriver. Yoder shipped flour down the Ohio River and Mississippi River to the port of New Orleans. Other flatboats would follow this model, using the current of the river to propel them to New Orleans where their final product could be shipped overseas. Through the antebellum era, flatboats were one of the most important modes of shipping in the United States. [3]
The flatboat trade before the War of 1812 was less organized and less professional than during later times. Flatboats were generally built and piloted by the farmers whose crops they carried. They were limited to 20 feet (or approximately 6 meters) in width in order to successfully navigate the river, but could range from 20 to 100 feet (or approximately 6 to 30 meters) in length. Flatboats could be built by unskilled farmers with limited tools and training, which made them an ideal mode of transport for isolated farmers living in the Old Northwest and the Upper South. Farmers could make the journey down the river after the harvest. The boats themselves were usually salvaged for lumber at New Orleans, because they could not easily make the journey upriver. A boatman's return journey up the river was long and usually arduous. Passage on a (human-powered) keelboat was expensive and took weeks to make the journey up the Mississippi. Returning to the northern reaches on foot required about three months. [4]
A flatboat itself was a serious investment for a Midwestern farmer. One generally cost about $75 to construct in 1800 (which was equivalent to $1,293.24in 2022), but could carry up to $3,000 worth of goods. [5] These flatboats could typically be salvaged for around $16 in New Orleans, recouping some of the initial investment. [6] Flatboats carried a variety of goods to New Orleans, including agricultural products like corn, wheat, potatoes, flour, hay, tobacco, cotton, and whiskey. Livestock such as chickens, cows, and pigs also made their way down the Mississippi in flatboats. Indiana native May Espey Warren recalled that as a young girl she saw a flatboat loaded with thousands of chickens headed down the Mississippi. Other raw materials from the Old Northwest, like lumber and iron, were also sent down the Mississippi to be sold in New Orleans. [7]
Many American cities along the river network of the Mississippi boomed due to the opportunities that the flatboat trade presented. New Orleans was the final destination for most flatboats headed down the Mississippi, and it was from there that most of the goods were shipped on the oceans. Cincinnati, another major American trading city, first built itself on the flatboat trade. Its large sawmills produced most of the heavy lumber sent downriver on flatboats, and it also became a large hub for the pork trade. Other cities, like Memphis, Tennessee and Brownsville, Pennsylvania became hubs for outfitting and supplying flatboat traders. [7]
The flatboat trade also led to a series of cultural and regional exchanges between the North and the South. Many Northern flatboatmen had not seen the Deep South before, and rural farmers of the time generally did not travel. Flatboatmen brought tales of antebellum mansions lining the Mississippi and of the Cajun culture of lower Louisiana. They also brought back exotic foods such as bananas, and animals such as parrots. [4] Abraham Lincoln served as a flatboatman twice, in 1828 and 1831. It was on these journeys that he first witnessed slavery, and in New Orleans he also saw a slave auction firsthand. Lincoln would later recall these journeys as essential in shaping his personal views on slavery and the slave trade. [8]
The invention of the steamboat greatly reduced the costs of flatboat journeys, and caused the trade to boom through the antebellum period. Introduced to the Mississippi in the 1810s, the steamboat greatly reduced the time of the return journey for flatboat crews. After reaching New Orleans, many flatboat crews scuttled their craft and bought passage on steamboats upriver. What had once been a three-month hike for many flatboaters now took only days. These reduced labor costs saw flatboat operating costs plummet and profits boom. In some cases steamboats would also drag cargo-carrying flatboats upriver, allowing flatboat operators to profit on the return journey as well. These uses of steamboats caused the flatboat industry to grow from 598 arrivals in New Orleans in 1814 to 2,792 arrivals in 1847. [9]
The steamboat also changed the nature of flatboat crews, making them more professional and more skilled. Returning upriver on steamboats allowed flatboat crews to make multiple journeys per year, which meant that a crew could earn a living wage simply by flatboating. These crews were known as "agent boatmen," as opposed to the earlier "dealer boatmen" or "peddler boatmen" for whom flatboating was only a seasonal job. This change ended up benefiting the flatboat industry significantly, because it seriously reduced wreckage and loss of cargo. River improvements also helped, and experienced flatboat crews were able to reduce cargo losses from $1,362,500 in 1822 to $381,000 in 1832. [9]
The flatboat trade stayed vigorous and lucrative throughout the antebellum period, aided by steamboats (and later by railroads) in returning crews upriver. However, these same technologies, which earlier had made the flatboat trade significantly more efficient, would eventually overtake the flatboat trade along the Mississippi and render flatboats obsolete. Steamboats and railroads simply carried freight much more quickly than flatboats, and could bring cargo upriver as well as downriver. By 1857, only 541 flatboats reached New Orleans, down from 2,792 in 1847, and also fewer than the 598 flatboats that had traveled down the Mississippi in 1814. [7]
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, abbreviated as the C&O Canal and occasionally called the Grand Old Ditch, operated from 1831 until 1924 along the Potomac River between Washington, D.C. and Cumberland, Maryland. It replaced the Potomac Canal, which shut down completely in 1828, and could operate during months in which the water level was too low for the former canal. The canal's principal cargo was coal from the Allegheny Mountains.
A steamboat is a boat that is propelled primarily by steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels. Steamboats sometimes use the prefix designation SS, S.S. or S/S or PS ; however, these designations are most often used for steamships.
Henry Miller Shreve was an American inventor and steamboat captain who removed obstructions to navigation of the Mississippi, Ohio and Red rivers. Shreveport, Louisiana, was named in his honor.
Sultana was a commercial side-wheel steamboat which exploded and sank on the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865, killing 1,167 people in what remains the worst maritime disaster in United States history.
A bateau or batteau is a shallow-draft, flat-bottomed boat which was used extensively across North America, especially in the colonial period and in the fur trade. It was traditionally pointed at both ends but came in a wide variety of sizes. The name derives from the French word, bateau, which is simply the word for boat and the plural, bateaux, follows the French, an unusual construction for an English plural. In the southern United States, the term is still used to refer to flat-bottomed boats, including those elsewhere called jon boats.
A keelboat is a riverine cargo-capable working boat, or a small- to mid-sized recreational sailing yacht. The boats in the first category have shallow structural keels, and are nearly flat-bottomed and often used leeboards if forced in open water, while modern recreational keelboats have prominent fixed fin keels, and considerable draft. The two terms may draw from cognate words with different final meaning.
A disposable ship, also called raft ship, timber ship, or timber drogher is a ship or sea vessel that is intended for use on a single voyage. At the final destination, the vessel is broken up for sale or reuse of materials. Until the end of the 19th century, such ships were common on major rivers such as the Danube and the Rhine in Central Europe and the Mississippi in North America. There were also saltwater vessels that were primarily built for one-time sailing to break up. Some of the largest wooden ships in history were of this type.
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Many steamboats operated on the Columbia River and its tributaries, in the Pacific Northwest region of North America, from about 1850 to 1981. Major tributaries of the Columbia that formed steamboat routes included the Willamette and Snake rivers. Navigation was impractical between the Snake River and the Canada–US border, due to several rapids, but steamboats also operated along the Wenatchee Reach of the Columbia, in northern Washington, and on the Arrow Lakes of southern British Columbia.
The Willamette River flows northwards down the Willamette Valley until it meets the Columbia River at a point 101 miles from the Pacific Ocean, in the U.S. state of Oregon.
The Colonel Wright was the first steamboat to operate on the Columbia River above The Dalles in the parts of the Oregon Country that later became the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. She was the first steamboat to run on the Snake River. She was named after Colonel George Wright, an army commander in the Indian Wars in the Oregon Country in the 1850s. She was generally called the Wright during her operating career.
New Orleans was the first steamboat on the western waters of the United States. Her 1811–1812 voyage from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to New Orleans, Louisiana, on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers ushered in the era of commercial steamboat navigation on the western and mid-western continental rivers.
Waterways in West Virginia find their highest sources in the highland watersheds of the Allegheny Mountains. These watersheds supply drainage to the creeks often passing through deep and narrow hollows. From the hollows, rushing highland streams collect in bottom land brooks and rivers. People have lived along and boated on the waterways of what is now the Mountain State from the time of antiquity.
Passage is a fantasy novel by American writer Lois McMaster Bujold, published in 2008. It is the third in the tetralogy The Sharing Knife.
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James D. Miller was a steamboat captain in the Pacific Northwest from 1851 to 1903. He became well known for his long length of service, the large number of vessels he commanded, and the many different geographical areas in which he served.
Thomas Brown, was an American colonial era husbandman, businessman, and land speculator. Along with his brother Basil, he acquired the bulk of the (Brownsville) lands towards the end of the American Revolution from Thomas Cresap(Cresap's War, Lord Dunmore's War), early enough to sell plots to Jacob Bowman in 1780 and Jacob Yoder who respectively made business firsts in 1780 and 1782; Jacob Bowman founded a trading post and tavern. Yoder got in a crop big enough to ship to New Orleans and invented the flat boat on Redstone Creek, inaugurating the water craft construction businesses which made the town an industrial powerhouse for the next seventy years.
A river pirate is a pirate who operates along a river. The term has been used to describe many different kinds of pirate groups who carry out riverine attacks in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, and South America. They are usually prosecuted under national, not international law.
Imhaha was a stern-wheel steamboat which operated on the Snake River in the Pacific Northwest in 1903. The steamer was built, launched, placed in service, and wrecked within a single year. The rapids on the Snake river had only rarely been surmounted by a steamboat, and generally only with the aid of a steel cable for lining used to winch the entire boat upstream through the rapids. After only a few trips, Imnaha was destroyed in Mountain Sheep rapids, just downstream from the mining settlement of Eureka, on the Oregon side of the river.
CSS Maurepas was a sidewheel steamer that briefly served as a gunboat in the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War. Built in 1858 in Indiana as Grosse Tete, the vessel was used in commercial trade until 1860 and then delivered mail until 1861, when she was acquired by the Confederate Navy.
There were a variety of specialized flatboats [eventually developed] to ship cargo to world markets. Some [later, meaning after steam boats became common] flatboats were built with raked bows to be used on return trips alongside steamboats, serving as 'fuel flats', first hauling wood, then coal. These flatboats with raked bows evolved into coal boats. [Later,] Coal boats were tied together in fleets to be pushed by steamboats. Those coal boats evolved into the steel barges of today [plying the coal fields of the Ohio River watershed].
The flatboat was the cheapest of the many types of boats used and became the standard conveyance for families moving west. All of the boats in this period were hand-powered, with poles or oars for steering, and usually floated with the current. They were not intended for round trips since the settlers used them only to get to their new homes and then broke them up for their lumber.
