Today, at long last, the health care exchanges go online for real. Americans across the nation can engage in their least-most favorite pass-time: shopping! We are duly warned to expect snags, glitches and errors in the first few weeks as our fastidious civil servants work furiously to finagle their online marketplaces into fine working condition.
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It is Tuesday, October 1st, and I hereby proclaim as President and Commander in Chief of my apartment that this date will now be known as Obamacare Day. It is also World Vegetarian Day
according to some people. However, this is what caught my eye this morning:
The American Queen
On October 1st, 1811, the first ever steam boat arrives on the Mississippi River in New Orleans, LA.
When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient. When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first negro minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that kind of life; now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.
- Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
I do not think we would have such a colorful and romantic picture of this period in U.S. history if it were not for that most iconic riverboat pilot of them all, Samuel Clemens. Granted, steam boats plied many more waters than the Mississippi, but for most of us, the steamboat evokes the big red paddle-wheel boats chugging along the lazy waters of the Mississippi.
The introduction of steamboats quite literally changed the big river forever. Within a very short period of time, shipping costs both down river and up river bottomed out. The cost of 100 pounds of cargo from New Orleans to Louisville dropped from $5.00 to $0.25, a 2000% decrease. The number of jobs generated by steamboats was massive, from pilots and crew, to maintenance and repair, down to the axe men chopping down the trees for the wood the steamboats burned for fuel. The mid-west economy exploded, in a good way, and connections to the Mississippi's tributaries fueled further western expansion.
Speaking of chopping down trees (and things bottoming out), massive deforestation along the banks of the Mississippi led to both the widening and shallowing river due to increased silt deposits, and (especially in the Middle Mississippi Valley between St. Louis and the Ohio River) caused the path of the river to meander wildly, threatening navigation. The also-steam-powered "snagpullers" used to keep the shipping channels open actually added to the problem with their need for fuel. The already quite wide floodplain became even wider, increasing the severity of floods throughout the valley.
Piloting on the Mississippi River was not work to me; it was play -- delightful play, vigorous play, adventurous play -- and I loved it...
- Mark Twain
The economy wasn't the only thing steamboats caused to explode. It was a rather dangerous type of play our esteemed Mr. Clemens engaged in. Most riverboats were lost due to explosions and fires. About four times as many boats were destroyed in that way than those lost to snags and rocks. Few steamboats from Clemens's era still survive today.
Steamboats themselves aren't dead, however. Many modern built steamships still navigate our inland waterways, mostly as cruise ships. The American Queen pictured above travels the Mississippi, Ohio, Cumberland and Tennessee rivers offering week-long luxury cruises with a classically Victorian feel. How fun that would be! Midwest meetup cruise on the Mississippi anyone?
My experience with steamboats begins and ends on the Erie Canal. Steamboats were an important part of canal navigation as well, though most canal traffic was horse-drawn in the early days. In elementary school, we took a class trip on a replica paddle boat on the Erie Canal. I have two very vivid memories of that trip: having to duck under the railroad bridges (supposedly intentionally built low over the canal by the railroads due to freight competition). The other memory is standing in the light mist kicked up by the paddle wheel at the stern, watching the wheel churn round and round.
A pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived in the earth.
- Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
I wish I was back there piloting up & down the river again. Verily, all is vanity and little worth -- save piloting.
- Samuel Clemens, letter to Jane Clemens, October 1865
Have you ever been on a steamboat?