Ohio History Journal

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EARLY STEAMBOAT TRAVEL ON THE OHIO RIVER

EARLY STEAMBOAT TRAVEL ON THE OHIO RIVER.

 

 

BY LESLIE S. HENSHAW, CINCINNATI, OHIO.

October, 1911, marks a centennial of considerable impor-

tance to the Western country, for it was in that month in 1811,

that the first steamboat on Western waters, passed down the

Ohio River. The boat, a "side-wheeler",1 was built at Pitts-

burgh, under the direction of Nicholas J. Roosevelt of New

York, an agent of Fulton, the inventor, and Livingston, the

financial aid, and was called the "New Orleans."2  It passed

Cincinnati on the twenty-seventh of October3 and arrived at

Louisville on the twenty-eighth.4 The Cincinnati newspaper,

"Liberty Hall", in its issue of Wednesday, October thirtieth,

1811, adds a small note to commercial and ship news to the fol-

lowing effect: "On Sunday last, the steamboat lately built at

Pittsburgh passed this town at 5 o'clock in the afternoon in fine

stile, going at the rate of about 10 or 12 miles an hour." The

water was too low to allow passage over the falls, so to prove

that it could navigate against the current, the boat made sev-

eral trips between Louisville and Cincinnati and, on November

twenty-seventh, arrived at Cincinnati in forty-five hours from

the falls.5 When the water rose, the "New Orleans" proceeded

on its way towards its destination and arrived at Natchez, late

in December6 and plied as a regular packet between Natchez and

New Orleans for several years.

Following the "New Orleans", a group of boats was built

at Pittsburgh; the "Comet" under the French patent; the "Ve-

suvius" and the "Aetna" on the Fulton plan. In the meantime,

Brownsville had entered the field as a steamboat building town,

for the "Enterprise" was constructed there and later, the en-

gine for the "Washington," under the supervision of Captain

Henry M. Shreve, while the boat itself was built at Wheeling.

This boat by its voyage in 1817, from Shippingport to New

Orleans and back in forty-five days, convinced the skeptical

public that steamboat navigation would succeed on Western

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