User:Maralia/Washington (steamboat)

The steamboat Washington
 * innovative design (first two-decker, boilers on deck, engine horizontal, double high-pressure engine, cam cut-off)
 * fifth steamboat built in the west (Orleans, Comet, Vesuvius, Enterprise, Washington)
 * very fast; played important role in ending Fulton/Livingston steamboat monopoly

Background

 * first four western steamboats
 * arrivals in NOLA
 * Fulton/Livingston steamboat monopoly

Construction

 * constructed in 1816 for the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company (owners Henry Miller Shreve; Niles Gillespie and Robert Clark, both of Brownsville, PA, and Noah Zane and George White of Wheeling, WV)
 * the hull was built at Wheeling, West Virginia
 * the engine was built at Brownsville, Pennsylvania by Daniel French
 * originally 136' long with a 28' beam
 * (see Lloyd 44)

1820 refit

 * altered in Louisville to 136'8" x 21'9" with 6'8" draft, 211 tons
 * owners: Henry Miller Shreve, William and David Fowler of New Orleans, James Gray of Louiville, H.W. Conway of Arkansas, William Taylor of Baltimore

Unique design

 * Shallow draft
 * Boilers located on deck instead of below, and horizontal
 * Passenger cabins on a second deck; Shreve named each after a state; coined 'stateroom'
 * engine: horizontal, double high-pressure, cam cut-off valve, 24" diameter cylinder, 6' stroke

Career

 * 1816: 24 September crossed falls of the Ohio, RT to NOLA returning November
 * second steamboat to ascend the Mississippi and Ohio rivers?
 * 1817:
 * March 12 left Louisville for NOLA; returned to Shippingsport in 41 days; ascent was fastest ever in 25 days
 * RT to NOLA in 31 days (May)
 * 1821: Went up the Mississippi as far as Franklin, Missouri

Impact

 * Monopoly
 * 1817:Shreve sued by Fulton/Livingston heirs over Washington
 * This was second suit; they had sued him over Enterprise the previous year
 * Edward Livingston saw the ship at NOLA in November 1817; remarked "You deserve well of your country, young man; but we shall be compelled to beat you [in the courts], if we can." (Lloyd p. 44)
 * Both suits were dismissed
 * Interstate commerce steamboat monopoly officially ended by Supreme Court with decision in Gibbons vs Ogden in 1924 (Haight p. 13)
 * Proving the worth of steamboats in the west
 * Enterprise made the first ever northbound trip (for a steamboat) from NOLA to Louisville in 1815, but the situation was atypical: the river was over its banks in many places, so there was far less current than usual. (LLoyd p. 43–44)
 * Consequently the usefulness of steamboats on western waters was still considered unproven
 * Things changed in 1817 when Washington made the trip from NOLA to Shippingsport in 25 days
 * "From this voyage all historians date the commencement of steam navigation in the Mississippi valley." (Lloyd p. 45)
 * "It was now practically demonstrated to the satisfaction of the public in general, that steamboats could ascend this river in less than one-fourth the time which the barges and keel-boats had required for the same purpose." (Lloyd p. 45)
 * "In that year the steamboat Washington made a trip from Louisville to New Orleans and return in forty-one days, the voyage upstream consuming twenty-five days. This trip dispelled the last of the remaining doubts and people from this time on accepted the steamboat as a necessary and normal factor in their economic life." (Haight p. 13)
 * Popular reaction
 * "This feat of the Washington produced almost as much popular excitement and exultation in that region as the battle of New Orleans." (Lloyd p. 45)