Americans Used To Race Steamboats, And These Dangerous Events Claimed Many Lives
You wouldn’t know it today, but people all over America were once regularly transfixed by the most unusual of sporting spectacles. Travel back in time to the 19th century, and you’ll find swathes of excited revelers lining the edge of rivers to bear witness to a high-stakes race. The competitors in these contests? Steamboats. These impressive vessels would surge along the country’s waterways, captained by skilled and daring individuals willing to risk it all for glory. And it’s worth stating here: these guys really were risking everything. Because steamboat racing, while entertaining, could easily turn into a deadly catastrophe — and it often did.
A grandiose invention reduced to spectacle
The steamboat itself was quite the creation, and its impact on the world is hard to overstate. In 1944 historian James Thomas Flexner extolled the virtues of the machine, noting, “The steamboat was the first American invention of world-shaking importance... [it] was one of those crucial inventions that… [changes] the whole cultural climate of the human race.” That’s quite the assertion. Yet it makes the fact people started racing them seem a little weird. It almost cheapens this grandiose invention into a frivolous spectacle.
Steaming along since 1787
The word “steamboat” can technically refer to any boat that’s powered with the use of a steam engine. But really, when we use the term we’re usually talking about a specific type of vessel that’s propelled forward by a paddle wheel. This type of ship was very common in U.S. rivers throughout the 19th century, especially along waterways like the Mississippi River. Steamboats of this kind can broadly be traced back to 1787. Yet it took another 20 years before they were honed into the form we’d recognize today.
Almost an inevitability
It’s impossible to say the invention of any given technology was inevitable, but it’s hardly a surprise that advances in shipping were made around this time. Rivers were absolutely essential for the movement of goods and individuals throughout 19th-century America, so improvements to the way things were done were obviously desirable. Once steam power was developed, it was bound to roll out widely and be adopted by those within the shipping industry. By the time we reached the 1820s, then, steamboats were an everyday sight in waterways across the country.
A radical change
The reason steamboats were so amazingly useful was that it meant vessels were able to travel against the flow of a river, as well as with it. That meant a radically different way of doing things was possible for the first time. Before then, ships had been largely dependent on following the course of a river’s flow. This meant that boats would be used to transport goods downriver, but once they reached their intended stop they’d then literally be dismantled for scrap, an inefficient means of moving goods around.
