Topic starter
06/12/2006 1:33 am
Hello, my name is Alex Cantrell, and my project for history day this year deals with steamboats. I am trying to focus on Mississippi-area steamboats, and would like to deal with the advantages steamboats brought, along with the many tragedies they caused. Can anyone provide sound websites for such information or first-person evidence from the era?
Any help is thouroughly appreciated.
06/12/2006 3:04 pm
I believe I have found what you're looking for at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5865178028197978306&q=steamboats&hl=en
06/12/2006 4:06 pm
Here are a few more to get you started:
Steamboat Arabia Museum
http://www.1856.com/
Sultana (the worst US marine disaster, April 1865, not that many people seem to know)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/05/0501_river5.html
http://www.rootsweb.com/~genepool/sultana.htm
Lloyd's Steamboat Disasters on Western Waters used to be available in the Ohio River Museum gift shop or by interlibrary loan. It makes for horrifying reading, and the ghoulish Victorian illustrations don't help, but it is interesting.
You'll also enjoy anything Capt. Fred Way Jr. ever wrote. Check your local library first.
--Becky
06/12/2006 5:41 pm
Alex,
Sound websites of that era would be a great find! I doubt there is any sound evidence except for
Jane Curry: The River´s in My Blood - Riverboat Pilots Tell Their Stories
Jane Curry did a lot of taping. The original tape are stored in the Inlands Rivers Library in Cincinnati. Copies are available (we bought some years ago, no bargain!).
Check our book list
http://www.steamboats.org/ebooks.htm
Lloyd´s is a great source for disasters. I think there´s a reprint available. You can also find the disaster reports on this site in the western rivers steamboat database, like the steamer Moselle
http://www.steamboats.org/desaster-htmls/9120.htm
The Sultana tragedy is the worst tragedy in marine history. Check
Jerry O. Potter: The Sultana Tragedy - America´s Greatest Maritime Disaster
The heydays of steamboating were mainly prior to the Civil War. Best thing to read is
Mark Twain: Life on the Mississippi
For steamboat races check our book list (Roy Barkhau about the Natchez and Robt. E. Lee and Fred Way "She takes the horns").
General information about river history
Norbury L. Wayman: Life of the river - A Pictorial History of the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Western River System
Ray Samuel/Leonard V. Huber/Warren C. Ogden: Tales of the Mississippi
Various people did write about their river experiences like Dorothy Heckmann Shrader (see book list) or Captain Ron Larson (Upper Mississippi River History).
Carmen
06/12/2006 6:40 pm
Any sound recordings of an earlier era would definitely have to be after Thomas A. Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877. A Danish engineer, Valdemar Paulsen first discovered magnetic recording in 1898 and invented the wire recorder in 1899. Tape recording was later invented in 1926 by Fritz Plleumer.
Theoretically, the possibility of sound recordings of river disasters prior to 1900 exist, but the probability of finding any would be highly unlikely. If any are found, they would be highly valued and need to be uploaded to our archives.
06/12/2006 11:16 pm
The Lloyd's Disaster book is probably the most definitive. In spite of all the bad luck on old riverboats, one's chances of completing a voyage on the high seas at that time were much slimmer.
Here's another goody, if you can find it. Limbs on the Levee: Steamboat Explosions and the Origins of Federal Public Welfare Regulations, 1817-1852, by John K. Brown. Also has an extensive bibliography. Well written.
He was not referring to tree limbs.
06/12/2006 11:19 pm
Googled "Limbs". Came up as being available at the Howard Steamboat Museum.