sTEAMSHIP

Water Travel

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The invention of the steamship during the Industrial Revolution had many future effects throughout the world. One of the most important changes the steamship allowed was the ability for large groups of people to migrate more easily than before when they used sailboats.

After James Watt's improvements on the steam engine were made, inventors had the idea of using steam power to propel boats. John Fitch, an American, made the first successful trial of a forty-five foot steamboat on the Delaware in 1787. After James Rumsey had a similar design, John Fitch obtained a United States patent for the steamboat in 1791. Fitch worked on numerous models with different parts and propellant systems that all used steam, but the construction and operating costs were too high to justify the economic benefits of steam navigation.

As stated by voyager Edmund Patton in 1852, steamships "are fitted up to carry several hundred emigrants, who are glad to leave Europe, in the hope of improving their condition in the New World, which offers a fair prospect to clever mechanics, agriculturists, and others able to work, who have seldom had cause to repent bidding farewell to Fatherland, especially those having large families to settle in life." The populations of immigrants in many countries grew rapidly due to the invention of the steamship, and it was during this time that cities in the United States grew with large factories.

Steamships during the Industrial Revolution were able to connect people from all around the world, and increase diversity tremendously. By the 1870s, steam powered trains began to replace steamships as the main transporter of goods and passengers.

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Bellis, Mary. "History Engine: Tools for Collaborative Education and Research | Episodes." History Engine: Tools for Collaborative Education and Research | Episodes. About.com, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.

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Steamboats and other steamships were pioneered in France, Britain, and the United States in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The first commercially successful paddle steamer, the North River Steamboat, designed by American engineer Robert Fulton, traveled up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany, New York, in 1807 at a speed of about 5 miles (8 km) per hour. Eventually, ever larger steamboats delivered cargo as well as passengers over hundreds of miles of inland waterways of the eastern and central United States, especially the Mississippi River. The first transoceanic voyage to employ steam power was completed in 1819 by the Savannah, an American sailing ship with an auxiliary steam-powered paddle. It sailed from Savannah, Georgia, to Liverpool in a little more than 27 days, though its paddle operated for only 85 hours of the voyage. By the second half of the 19th century, ever larger and faster steamships were regularly carrying passengers, cargo, and mail across the North Atlantic, a service dubbed “the Atlantic Ferry.”