The Invention Of Steamboats In The 1800's

The steam engine, invented in 1698, was not put too much use until the 1760’s. Even so they weren’t too good for anything until the they were used in steamboats. Steamboats could travel up river! This was something unheard of in the 1800’s. people could save money and time! But, as with any invention, people began going for quantity over quality. Boilers could easily explode when not watched and maintained carefully. Steamboats revolutionised trading and traveling around the known world being much quicker and easier than ever before.

Robert Fulton invented the first efficient steamboat. Many people before him had made “steamboats” but most didn’t work for very long or were not very efficient. His first design was called the Clermont which

Robert Fulton had a monopoly on the designs and their were an intense legal battles for three years. Finally, once things had died down Henry Miller Shreve began to design steamboats. His design, the Enterprise, made its travel up the Mississippi. The steamboats began to grow in population. In ten years a trip that once took twenty five days on a steamboat took only ten. And once these ships took off they were everywhere on the rivers. The increased speed and the ability to go up river meant that people could not waste money on selling their boat after doing business and travel up to where they started on land just to buy another boat again. This meant that people could save money and get to places

Some boats called snag boats would travel around the river and get rid of things that boats could get snagged on in the river. Also, like many things in the past 200 years, manufacturers started going for quantity over quality. People also forgot to carefully watch and maintain the right pressure in a boiler. This lead to boiler explosions that could rip straight through the hull of the boat and cause it sink. Herbert Quick wrote in Mississippi Steamboatin', “The owners in their counting houses nodded satisfactorily at the large profits and knew that though their craft might snag, blow up, collide with another or catch fire, there was more than enough money to buy new boats, which the shipyards along the Ohio were busily making day and