In 1807, a strange beast belching smoke and fire and creating a racket loud enough to wake the dead crawled up the Hudson River to Albany at a shockingly speedy four miles an hour. The beast was Robert Fulton’s steamboat. His contraption cut the time of travel from the harbor at New York City to the docks at Albany down to a quarter of the hours sailing had previously taken.
A new era had begun.
For the first few decades of the steamboats’ life, they were not the luxurious works of art we later associate with the Mississippi and Mark Twain. These were little more than layered platforms fitted with an engine, boilers, and a paddle wheel or two, atop which a few primitive cabins perched. Suspended even higher was the wheelhouse without glass and only wooden partitions to protect the pilot from the worst of the elements.
If a passenger could procure a cabin, he enjoyed no amenities like a dining room. Most of the time, passengers camped on one of the decks along with cargo, baggage, and livestock. They risked sunburn, frostbite, and the danger of an overzealous engineer blowing up the boilers and thus the vessel. Yet steamboats thrived on America’s rivers because they were fast, compared to sailing.
The opening of the Erie Canal from Albany to Lake Erie in 1825 expanded westward travel and shipping further. The industrious could and did make a fortune.
As a lover of all boats and the water, I could not resist exploring this age of steam travel. As a lover of romance, when I discovered the moon was full during the dates of my story . . . Well, it was all too promising to resist.
Sincerely yours,
Laurie Alice Eakes