riverboat era

When Deadly Steamboat Races Enthralled America

In July 1852, the “Henry Clay” caught fire during a contest on the Hudson River, killing an estimated 80 people

Greg Daugherty

History Correspondent

During the 19th century, hundreds of steamboats traversed America’s waterways, carrying passengers faster and more luxuriously than ever before.

“The steamboat was the first American invention of world-shaking importance,” wrote historian James Thomas Flexner in 1944. In fact, he added , it “was one of those crucial inventions that change the whole cultural climate of the human race.”

Defined broadly as any vessel powered by a steam engine, the term “steamboat” is more often used to describe paddle wheel -propelled crafts that roamed the rivers of the United States, particularly the Mississippi, in the 19th century. An early prototype set sail in 1787, but it was only in 1807 that the first commercially successful steamboat made its debut . High-stakes—and sometimes deadly— steamboat races followed soon after.

What made the steamboat revolutionary was its ability to travel on rivers and other waterways regardless of which way they flowed. Prior to steamboats, says Robert Gudmestad , a historian at Colorado State University and the author of Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom , water transportation was largely limited to rectangular, flat-bottomed boats that could only move in one direction. Sailors would load the flatboats “up in Tennessee or Kentucky, … float them down the Mississippi and break them up for scrap once they’d reached their destination,” Gudmestad explains.

Useful as steamboats were, they came with one big problem: They were inherently dangerous . The boilers they used to make steam were prone to exploding and igniting fires. Not only were the boats built mostly out of wood, but their cargos also often included highly flammable cotton bales, along with barrels of turpentine and gunpowder. The waterways themselves presented numerous hazards, including “ snags ”—large tree limbs and uprooted trees that either floated atop the water or lurked beneath the surface. As rivers became more congested with traffic, steamboats also ran the risk of colliding with other boats, particularly at night when they had to use torches to light their way.

Between 1816 and 1848, boiler explosions alone killed more than 1,800 passengers and crew and injured another 1,000, according to government records . The sinking of the steamboat Sultana in 1865, also the result of a boiler explosion, claimed as many as 1,800 lives —still the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history. “Western steamboats usually blow up one or two a week in the season,” Charles Dickens observed after an 1842 tour of the U.S.

One of the most horrific accidents occurred in 1838, when the Moselle , a fast and nearly new Ohio River steamboat, exploded off Cincinnati. “All the boilers, four in number, burst simultaneously,” reported one contemporary author. “The deck was blown into the air, and the human beings who crowded it were doomed to instant destruction. Fragments of the boiler and of human bodies were thrown both to the Kentucky and Ohio shores, although the distance to the former was a quarter of a mile.” At least 120 people died, but the exact death toll remains unknown.

“Western steamboats showed an appalling accident record,” wrote historian Daniel J. Boorstin in 1965. “A voyage on the Mississippi, it was often said, was far more dangerous than a passage across the ocean.”

As if these hazards weren’t enough, steamboats soon began racing each other in what quickly became a nationwide sensation. In some cases, the races were planned and advertised in advance, with spectators lining the riverbanks beforehand to enjoy the spectacle. Others were impromptu affairs, sometimes urged on by thrill-seeking passengers. Steamboat captains competed as a matter of pride and ego, while boat owners believed that establishing a winning record would draw more passengers and sell more tickets. Gamblers also bet on the outcomes; in one celebrated 1870 race, total wagers amounted to more than $1 million (around $23 million today).

In addition to bragging rights, the winning boat was typically awarded a large pair of deer antlers , often painted gold, that could be mounted in a prominent place for all to admire.

“I think that much the most enjoyable of all races is a steamboat race,” wrote Mark Twain in his 1883 memoir, Life on the Mississippi . “Two red-hot steamboats raging along, neck-and-neck, straining every nerve—that is to say, every rivet in the boilers—quaking and shaking and groaning from stem to stern, spouting white steam from the pipes, pouring black smoke from the chimneys, raining down sparks, parting the river into long breaks of hissing foam—this is sport that makes a body’s very liver curl with enjoyment.”

Twain deemed horse races “pretty tame and colorless in comparison,” noting that he’d never seen anybody killed at one. Deaths were all too common in steamboat racing. Passengers and crew were scalded or blown to pieces in boiler explosions; burned alive in fires; or forced to take their chances in the water, where they often drowned. Boiler explosions were even more likely during races, when crews often circumvented safety valves in order to pour on extra speed.

Just as Flexner saw the steamboat as a distinctly American innovation, the 19th-century humorist Charles Godfrey Leland said much the same about steamboat racing. “From the days of the Romans and Norsemen down to the present time, there was never any form of amusement discovered so daring, so dangerous and so exciting as a steamboat race,” he wrote in 1893, “and nobody but Americans could have ever invented or indulged in it.”

The races begin

What Flexner calls “the first steamboat race in American history” occurred in July 1811. It pitted a brand-new steamboat, the Hope , against inventor Robert Fulton ’s The North River in what was supposed to be a race down the Hudson River from Albany to New York City. Unfortunately, the two boats, traveling at the then-astonishing speed of about five miles an hour, got too close and collided near the town of Hudson. Neither boat was seriously damaged, but their captains decided to call it a draw.

Steamboat racing soon spread to other rivers, as well as to the Great Lakes .

In 1851, the showman P.T. Barnum arranged a steamboat race on the Ohio River, from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh, to promote local appearances by Jenny Lind , a celebrated songstress known as the Swedish Nightingale. The Messenger No. 2 , with Barnum and Lind aboard, took on a rival boat, the Buckeye State . The latter won, but Barnum got his money’s worth and then some in newspaper publicity .

Meanwhile, steamboat racing continued on the Hudson, all too often with catastrophic results. In July 1852, the Henry Clay caught fire off Yonkers, New York, possibly from overheated boilers, resulting in an estimated 80 deaths , many from drowning. “There was a wild panic, the terror-stricken men and women fighting for possession of the life preservers and struggling with one another even after landing in the water,” wrote David Lear Buckman in his 1907 book, Old Steamboat Days on the Hudson River . Though the Clay ’s captain and owners denied that the ship had been racing, passengers testified otherwise, identifying the other ship as the Armenia , which had apparently dropped out of the race well before the disaster.

The New-York Daily Tribune denounced the Clay ’s recklessness as “ wholesale murder ,” a sentiment apparently shared by much of the American public. The incident became a major catalyst for the Steamboat Act of 1852 , which imposed stricter safety and inspection requirements and called for the licensing of river pilots and engineers.

Not every steamboat race ended in tragedy, of course. In 1847, for example, robber baron Cornelius Vanderbilt bet $1,000 that his namesake steamer, the C. Vanderbilt , could beat the steamboat Oregon in a round-trip race between New York City and Ossining, New York. The competition got so intense that the Oregon ’s crew began burning the ship’s furnishings to fuel its boilers. “Berths, settees, chairs and doors went into the flames in order to keep up steam,” noted American Heritage magazine in 1989. The Oregon won the race, and Vanderbilt, a man unaccustomed to losing, had to pay up.

In 1870, the steamboats Robert E. Lee and Natchez competed to determine which was the fastest boat on the Mississippi. The much-publicized event , billed as the Great Mississippi Steamboat Race , began in New Orleans and ended in St. Louis, taking nearly four days from start to finish.

Steamboats like the Lee and Natchez used enormous amounts of fuel and had to stop periodically to take on more coal or firewood, as well as freight and passengers, during the course of a race. Newspapers provided frequent updates , telegraphed in by reporters at various points along the route, revealing which boat was ahead and by how many minutes or hours.

Some papers covered the gambling on the race—which produced bets totaling upwards of $1 million—as avidly as the race itself. The Daily Arkansas Gazette , for example, reported that “New Orleans was wild with excitement and betting going on furiously. One enthusiastic admirer of the Natchez in that city has staked all his cash and closed by betting his house and lot against $30,000.”

Nor was the excitement limited to New Orleans. “Betting by telegraph between Cincinnati, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Louisville and Chicago exceeds anything ever done or heard of,” the Gazette added.

The Lee won the race, but by then, the era of the steamboat was largely past. Historian Gudmestad says it peaked in the 1850s, as railroads became the country’s dominant mode of transportation, facilitated in part by large government subsidies .

The end of the steamboat era also meant the demise of steamboat racing, though the tradition is still celebrated today in the annual Great Steamboat Race on the Ohio River, part of the festivities surrounding the Kentucky Derby. The 14-mile race has been held nearly every year since 1963, with the exception of the pandemic year of 2020. This year, it’s scheduled for May 3.

A longtime competitor and frequent winner is the Belle of Louisville , built in 1914 and billed as the “only remaining authentic steamboat from the great American packet boat era.”

In a departure from steamboat racers of yore, the Belle of Louisville ’s caretakers conduct thorough tests of its safety valves and boilers, and they don’t push the boilers to full pressure when the ship is running, says Eric Frantz, guest and education programs manager for Belle of Louisville Riverboats . “Even when racing,” he explains, the goal is “safety over speed.”

Still, some things never change: If the Belle wins this year, its prize will be a pair of silver antlers.

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Greg Daugherty | READ MORE

Greg Daugherty is a magazine editor and writer, as well as a frequent contributor to Smithsonian magazine. His books include You Can Write for Magazines .

ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Steam-powered vessels were important to the growth of the U.S. economy in the antebellum years.

Earth Science, Geography, Physical Geography, Social Studies, World History

Steamboat River Transport

Steamboats proved a popular method of commercial and passenger transportation along the Mississippi River and other inland U.S. rivers in the 19th century. Their relative speed and ability to travel against the current reduced time and expense.

Image from Picturenow

Any seagoing vessel drawing energy from a steam-powered engine can be called a steamboat. However, the term most commonly describes the kind of craft propelled by the turning of steam-driven paddle wheels and often found on rivers in the United States in the 19th century. These boats made use of the steam engine invented by the Englishman Thomas Newcomen in the early 18th century and later improved by James Watt of Scotland. Several Americans made efforts to apply this technology to maritime travel. The United States was expanding inland from the Atlantic coast at the time. There was a need for more efficient river transportation, since it took a great deal of muscle power to move a craft against the current. In 1787, John Fitch demonstrated a working model of the steamboat concept on the Delaware River. The first truly successful design appeared two decades later. It was built by Robert Fulton with the assistance of Robert R. Livingston, the former U.S. minister to France. Fulton’s craft made its first voyage in August of 1807, sailing up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany, New York, at an impressive speed of eight kilometers (five miles) per hour. Fulton then began making this round trip on a regular basis for paying customers. Following this introduction, steamboat traffic grew steadily on the Mississippi River and other river systems in the inland United States. There were numerous kinds of steamboats, which had different functions. The most common type on southern rivers was the packet boat. Packet boats carried human passengers as well as commercial cargo, such as bales of cotton from southern plantations. Compared to other types of craft used at the time, such as flatboats , keelboats , and barges , steamboats greatly reduced both the time and expense of shipping goods to distant markets. For this reason, they were enormously important in the growth and consolidation of the U.S. economy before the Civil War. Steamboats were a fairly dangerous form of transportation, due to their construction and the nature of how they worked. The boilers used to create steam often exploded when they built up too much pressure. Sometimes debris and obstacles—logs or boulders—in the river caused the boats to sink. This meant that steamboats had a short life span of just four to five years on average, making them less cost-effective than other forms of transportation. In the later years of the 19th century, larger steam-powered ships were commonly used to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The Great Western , one of the earliest oceangoing steam-powered ships, was large enough to accommodate more than 200 passengers. Steamships became the predominant vehicles for transatlantic cargo shipping as well as passenger travel. Millions of Europeans immigrated to the United States aboard steamships. By 1900, railroads had long since surpassed steamboats as the dominant form of commercial transport in the United States. Most steamboats were eventually retired, except for a few elegant “showboats” that today serve as tourist attractions.

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History Cooperative

Who Invented the Steamboat? The History and Legacy of Steamboats

The invention of the steamboat is attributed to several individuals who made significant contributions to its development. However, the most famous and widely recognized inventor of the steamboat is Robert Fulton.

In 1807, Fulton’s steamboat, the Clermont (also known as the North River Steamboat of Clermont), made its historic voyage on the Hudson River in New York, becoming the first commercially successful steam-powered boat. Fulton’s design and successful operation of the Clermont marked a major milestone in the history of steam-powered transportation and played a pivotal role in the development of steamboats as a practical means of travel and transport.

Table of Contents

Who Invented the Steamboat?

Robert Fulton is credited with the invention of the first commercially successful steamboat. He was an American inventor and engineer with a keen interest in steam power and had previously worked on various engineering and artistic projects, including canal engineering and submarine design.

READ MORE: The First Submarine: A History of Underwater Combat

In the early 1800s, Fulton entered into a partnership with Robert Livingston, a wealthy landowner and U.S. Ambassador to France. Livingston had a strong interest in steam-powered navigation and had previously secured patents related to steam propulsion for boats.

With financial support from Livingston, Fulton designed and built a steam-powered boat known as the Clermont (also called the North River Steamboat) in the early 1800s. The boat was constructed in 1806-1807 and featured a combination of existing steam engine technology and improvements made by Fulton.

On August 17, 1807, the Clermont made its historic voyage on the Hudson River, traveling from New York City to Albany and back. This journey marked the first commercially successful steamboat trip in the United States. The boat’s regular passenger service commenced shortly thereafter.

The success of the Clermont demonstrated the feasibility of steam-powered boats as a practical means of transportation and led to the rapid development of steamboat technology in the United States and around the world. Steamboats revolutionized inland and coastal transportation, making travel and trade more efficient and accessible.

While Robert Fulton is often credited with the development of the first commercially successful steamboat, it’s important to note that he built upon the work of earlier inventors and engineers who had experimented with steam-powered propulsion for boats, including John Fitch, James Watt, and William Symington.

Contributions of Other Individuals in Steamboat Invention

Apart from Robert Fulton, the invention and development of the steamboat involved the contributions of several other individuals.

• John Fitch: Often enveloped in a fog of ingenuity and determination, John Fitch unveiled the first operational steamboat in the United States. His creations glided through the tranquil waters of the Delaware River in the late 18th century, sculpting a new chapter in naval transportation.
• James Watt: Watt’s innovations in steam engine technology stretched across various applications. His enhancements in steam power played a significant role in fostering an environment where steamboats could become not only viable but also revolutionarily efficient.
• James Rumsey: James Rumsey was an American mechanical engineer and inventor who made important contributions to the early development of steamboats. His work on steam propulsion and boat design had a notable impact on the field, even though his designs were not as widely recognized or commercially successful as Robert Fulton’s later steamboat.
• William Symington: Symington, a brilliant mind from Scotland, sailed into history by engineering the world’s first steamboat to successfully harness a practical steam propulsion system. His notable creation, the Charlotte Dundas, evidenced the union of steam and waterways, sailing gracefully on the Forth and Clyde Canal.

Early Models and Designs

The cradle of steamboat invention nestled various models and designs, each embodying the trials, errors, and triumphs of their creators. These early renditions of steam-powered vessels, albeit often clunky and unreliable, signaled the dawn of a new era in transportation. Paddle wheels, cumbersome steam engines, and rudimentary hull designs formed the initial visual and functional aspects of these pioneering steamboats.

Through its infancy to its golden age, the steamboat morphed, adapted, and evolved, navigating the ebb and flow of technological advancements and societal needs, continually charting a course that would indelibly alter the landscape of global transportation and trade. This vessel, both literally and metaphorically, steamed ahead, forging connections between distant lands, peoples, and opportunities, as it rode the waves of invention and innovation.

When Was the Steamboat Invented?

The whisperings of steam-powered travel began to ripple through the latter half of the 18th century. A multitude of inventors globally, from the fervent endeavors of John Fitch in the 1780s to the groundbreaking journey of the Charlotte Dundas in 1803, served as heralds of a nascent era of maritime transportation.

The First Successful Voyage

When Robert Fulton’s Clermont, affectionately dubbed “Fulton’s Folly” by skeptics, commenced its inaugural voyage from New York to Albany in 1807, it didn’t merely traverse the 150 miles of the Hudson River; it journeyed into historical immortality. The Clermont shattered nautical skepticism, taking 32 hours and defying doubts, proving that steamboats could be a viable and reliable means of navigating waterways.

READ MORE: Who Invented Water? History of the Water Molecule

Evolution of Steamboat Designs

From those initial endeavors, the blueprints of steamboats gradually evolved, reflecting advancements in technology and adaptations to varied nautical needs. The hulls became more streamlined, engines more powerful and efficient, and designs more specialized, catering to the multifaceted demands of booming industries and expanding territories. Each new iteration of the steamboat brought with it an enhanced capability to link distant ports, bridge economic ambitions, and fuel the surging tide of exploration and expansion, throughout the 19th century.

The Era of Popularization and Wide-scale Usage

With the successful voyages of steamboats such as the Clermont, technology began to permeate global consciousness, shaping and propelling the industrial revolution forward. By the mid-19th century, the unmistakable silhouette of the steamboat, with its billowing stacks and rotating paddlewheels, had become synonymous with progress and opportunity.

READ MORE: Who Invented the Wheel? History of the Wheel

Steamboats were now not merely vessels of transport but symbols of a smaller, interconnected world, navigating through serene rivers and vast oceans alike, knitting together a tapestry of cultures, economies, and innovations. They pervaded myriad sectors from commerce and communication to migration and military strategy, affirming their place as linchpins in a rapidly globalizing world.

The Impact of the Steamboat on Trade and Transportation

The incarnation of the steamboat ushered in a transformative epoch in the realm of goods transportation, recalibrating the dynamics of how products and commodities navigated across watery expanses.

The intrinsic power of steam elevated the potential for speed and efficiency within the logistical veins of trade. It enabled a more predictable and systematic movement of goods, unshackled from the erratic whims of wind and current, thereby injecting newfound reliability into trade networks.

• Speed and Efficiency: The steamboat, in its robust magnificence, alleviated the plodding pace of goods transportation, turning weeks into days, and materializing the concept of timely, reliable delivery into the realities of commerce.
• Transportation Costs: While initial investments in steam technology were substantial, the prolific impact on the velocity and consistency of goods movement gradually sculpted a decrease in overall transportation costs, inherently weaving a more affordable and systematic tapestry of trade.

Opening of New Trade Routes and Effects on Global Trade and Commerce

Wielding the vigor of steam, new trade routes gracefully uncurled across the global map, enabling access to previously secluded or inaccessible markets and regions. The Mississippi River, Yangtze, and Congo River, among others, witnessed an influx of steam-powered vessels, each one a herald of commerce and connection, intertwining economies, cultures, and opportunities across continents.

The steamboats contributed greatly to the transcendence of goods, ideas, and cultures across vast distances. As commodities like cotton, spices, and manufactured goods traversed new and expedited routes, global trade metamorphosed, seeding intercontinental dependencies, alliances, and exchanges, thus sculpting an intricately interwoven global economic tapestry.

READ MORE: Who Invented the Cotton Gin? Eli Whitney and Cotton Gin Impact on America

Changes in Industrial Practices

The navigational efficacy of steamboats necessitated a recalibration of industrial practices, catapulting them into an era where mass production and expansive distribution became not only feasible but essential. Factories, mills, and workshops embraced mechanization and scale, orchestrating their outputs to the relentless, rhythmic pulses of steamboats docking and departing, laden with goods bound for distant shores.

The Steamboat’s Role in Expansion and Exploration

As the steamboats reliably plied through winding rivers and vast lakes, new territories, previously enshrouded in a cloak of isolation due to the formidable challenges of access, found themselves bathed in the glow of exploration and subsequent settlement. Steamboats not only transported goods but also carried the lifeblood of expansion: people, resources, and ideas, into these remote realms, knitting them into the burgeoning fabric of nation and commerce.

Steamboats and the American West

In the American West, steamboats became the chariots of manifest destiny. They ferried settlers, miners, and entrepreneurs through the veins of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, fueling the westward expansion by ensuring that the migration was not a one-way journey but a cyclical flow of resources, communication, and people.

Pioneering Routes and Channels and Encouraging Settlements and Community Development

The steamboat, with its relentless mechanical heartbeat, plied not just established routes but ventured into unchartered waters, pioneering new channels of navigation and commerce. Explorers and traders employed steamboats to delve into the remote corners of continents, establishing connections with indigenous communities, and intertwining destinies across geographical and cultural landscapes.

The presence of steamboats on remote waterways signaled more than mere passageways; it indicated access to the sprawling networks of global and regional trade. Communities blossomed along these routes, nurtured by the steady influx of goods, people, and opportunities brought forth by the steamboats. Ports became bustling centers of commerce and culture, where resources flowed and melded in a dynamic tapestry of societal growth and exchange.

Decline and Legacy of the Steamboat Era

Eventually, the steamboat gave way to new technologies and advanced means of transportation. However, its legacy still lives on and is visible in its impact on modern naval engineering and design.

Introduction of New Transportation Technologies

In the undulating tide of progress, the once-dominant silhouette of the steamboat gradually receded into the mists of history, as new technologies burgeoned on the horizon, offering novel avenues for transportation and commerce.

Internal Combustion Engines and Railroads

The advent of the internal combustion engine , manifesting in vessels propelled by diesel and gasoline, introduced a fresh epoch in naval engineering, offering greater energy efficiency, speed, and maneuverability, thereby rendering the steam-powered titans of yesteryear increasingly obsolete.

Also, the building of railroads meant new faster, and more reliable means of transportation. This diminished the preeminence of steamboats in the logistical and transportation frameworks of societies.

READ MORE: Who Invented the Railroad? Exploring the Fascinating History of Railroads 

Environmental and Safety Concerns

The industrial charm of the steamboat, shrouded in billowing plumes of steam, concurrently exhaled a darkened soot of environmental and safety quandaries, marking yet another stroke on the canvas of its gradual decline.

• Pollution: The coal-fueled heartbeats of steamboats, while symbolizing industrial prowess, concurrently scribed a narrative of pollution, eliciting growing concern and catalyzing a transition towards more environmentally congenial alternatives.
• Safety: Boiler explosions and accidents beckoned a meticulous reconsideration of their design and operational principles, amidst growing safety apprehensions.

Preservation and Museums

As the tangible whisper of steamboats faded, efforts to preserve and memorialize their legacy emerged, encapsulating their historical and cultural significance within the halls of museums and the echoes of preserved vessels.

• Historical Significance: Through meticulously curated exhibits and restored specimens, the epoch of steamboats is immortalized, offering glimpses into the bygone eras of innovation, expansion, and exploration.
• Cultural Impact: Beyond mere vessels, steamboats are celebrated as emblems of a transformative era, their stories and impacts meticulously preserved and narrated for future generations.

Impact on Modern Naval Engineering and Design

Although steamboats have receded from the forefront, their influence permeates modern naval engineering, inspiring designs and technologies that continue to navigate through contemporary waters.

• Innovations in Design: The morphologies and mechanical innovations birthed in the steamboat era continue to inform and inspire modern naval design, interweaving past ingenuities with present and future innovations.
• Heritage of Exploration: The spirit of exploration and connection that steamboats symbolized endures, influencing the design and operation of contemporary vessels tasked with navigating the boundless expanse of global waters.

While the invention of the steamboat is often attributed to Robert Fulton due to his successful and commercially viable steamboat, the Clermont, it’s important to note that many inventors and engineers contributed to the development of steam-powered boats over time .

Innovations in steam engine technology and ship design by various individuals, including John Fitch, James Watt, and William Symington, laid the groundwork for the eventual success of steamboats.

Robert Fulton’s Clermont, which began regular passenger service in 1807, marked a significant milestone and is widely recognized as a pivotal moment in the history of steamboat development. Steamboats played a vital role in revolutionizing transportation and trade, ultimately contributing to the industrial and economic growth of the 19th century.

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A History of Riverboats in Mississippi

The mighty Mississippi river stretches from Northern Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. The second-longest river in the United States, the Mississippi is integral to the history of America — particularly in the state of Mississippi. Riverboats facilitated travel, commerce, and cultural exchange within Mississippi and beyond. Learn more about the impact of Mississippi riverboats in this post from Visit Mississippi .

Riverboats: The Early Days

While people have navigated the waters of the Mississippi River for centuries, steamboat technology was not viable until the early 1800s. The first steamboat to travel the Mississippi was the New Orleans, whose October 1811 maiden voyage began in Pittsburgh, PA, and ended in New Orleans after traveling along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

The New Orleans stopped in Natchez in December 1811 before continuing to its final port in New Orleans. First established by French colonists and later ruled by the Spanish, Natchez was an important center of trade and cultural exchange.

The Golden Age of the Steamboat

By the 1830s, steamboats existed all along the Mississippi River and its major tributaries. The growth of Mississippi’s riverfront communities, such as Bolivar, Commerce, and Greenville, can largely be attributed to the riverboat trade. Riverboats also brought new settlers to the state, helping to speed up agricultural development in the fertile Mississippi Delta.

Propelled by steam-driven paddle wheels, steamboats could navigate the river more quickly and effectively than barges or flatboats. They carried goods such as cotton, timber, and livestock up and down the river, expanding trade throughout the growing U.S. However, steamboats could be dangerous — the boilers used to create steam could build up too much pressure and explode. Steamboats were also susceptible to hitting obstacles such as rocks or logs, which could cause them to sink. This created a growing industry for a smaller type of riverboat called a “snagboat.” Snagboats patrolled the Mississippi River looking for tree stumps, debris, or other hazards and removing them before they damaged larger steamboats.

Wealthy Mississippians could enjoy leisure travel on a showboat — a riverboat used for theater and musical performances. Showboats were ornately decorated and would announce their arrival at a port by playing music that could be heard for miles.

Riverboats During the Civil War

During the years after Mississippi’s secession from the Union, many steamboats were used to support the Confederate Army. Riverboats carried troops, provisions, and supplies along the Mississippi during the Civil War. Demand for ships was so high that both the Union and Confederate governments chartered steamboats. Riverboats also played a role in the defense of Vicksburg, an important Confederate stronghold that connected the South to the Western states.

Gaming on the River

Riverboat gambling became popular in the early 1900s due to legislation surrounding gaming. By keeping poker, roulette, and other games of chance restricted to a riverboat, business owners could evade the anti-gambling laws that were in effect on land in states along the Mississippi River. Riverboat gaming in Mississippi was legalized in 1993, but unfortunately, Hurricane Katrina destroyed many riverboat casinos. In response, Mississippi lawmakers allowed casinos to move 800 feet inland.

However, you can still find a few riverboat casinos throughout the U.S. In Mississippi, visitors can try their luck at the Ameristar Casino Hotel in Vicksburg , a riverboat-style casino and hotel located right on the water.

Mississippi Riverboats in the Present Day

According to National Geographic, by 1900, the growth of railroads across the U.S. significantly reduced the demand for transporting goods and people via steamboat. Many riverboats were retired, but a few showboats remained as a testament to this period in history.

The popularity of riverboats continues to thrive in the Magnolia State. Today, tourists can enjoy the relaxing and immersive experience of river cruising. These luxury expeditions offer a unique way to travel the Mississippi, where guests can admire the breathtaking scenery along the waterway. First-class accommodations, fine dining, and a variety of things to do can be expected on a luxury tour on the Mississippi. Companies such as American Cruise Line and Viking River Cruises offer a variety of cruises that vary in duration and cities visited, like Vicksburg and Natchez.

Plan Your Trip With Help From Visit Mississippi

If you’re planning a trip to one of our historic riverfront cities like Natchez, Vicksburg, or Greenville — or anywhere else in the Hospitality State — Visit Mississippi is here for assistance.

Plan your next trip to Mississippi using our complimentary trip planner tool that helps you map out all your must-see attractions, restaurants, and lodging options. Whether you’re here for a week or just passing through, you’ll find a wealth of information about Mississippi history and culture on the Visit Mississippi website. For more information, contact us today.

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Voices of the Steamboat Era: A Short History of the Steam Whistle on the Inland Rivers

“ Steamboat whistles made a beautiful noise. Each vessel had her own more or less distinctive notes, and each hand upon the rope could pull forth a different voice: now a friendly nod of the head; a full tip of the hat; a screaming blast of annoyance punctuated with short silences; or a long, stentorian call that ranged and echoed o’er the valley. To the uninitiated, such as a visiting backwoods cousin, the sounds of river commerce were startling: sudden, shrill, felt as well as heard. Even a blasé pilot could start with surprise at a quick, powerful blast… Up and down the meandering Western Rivers, whistles were the sound of civilization,” – Charles Preston Fishbaugh, in From Paddlewheels to Propellors , pg. 59.  

In this poetically written passage, historian Charles Fishbaugh captures the unique character, beauty, and grandeur of the steamboat whistle. Unless someone is lucky enough to live near a river town that has an authentic steamboat like the NATCHEZ in New Orleans or the BELLE OF LOUISVILLE in our own local area, there is a good chance that most people alive today have never heard this unique sound. This is a shame, because for more than a century steamboat whistles were one of the defining sounds of the river. In this article, we will examine the history and development of the steamboat whistle and tell a few interesting stories about this important piece of technology.

The steam whistle was first patented in England in 1838, though it had likely been in use from an earlier date. They originally saw use as low-pressure alarms on factory boilers in England and the United States. The use of pressurized steam to power them made these whistles significantly louder than most other forms of signaling available at the time; it also contributed to the steam whistle’s distinctive sound. As hot steam from the boilers blew through the whistle, the metal, usually brass, copper, iron, or another common metal of the day, expanded and contracted. This caused many semitones, overtones, and inversions of the pitch produced by the rushing steam. Differences in the size and construction of individual whistles’ bell lengths gave each of them a distinct musical quality, and astute listeners could tell boats apart from the sounds of their whistles alone.

According to steamboat historian Frederick Way Jr., the first documented use of a steam whistle on the Western Rivers was in 1844, when Chief Engineer John Stut Neal installed a whistle on the steamer REVENUE, built at Pittsburgh that same year. While it is possible that steam whistles were used on the river from an earlier date, Chief Neal deserves the official credit for beginning a new era of river communication. Throughout the rest of the 1840’s, whistles became a common feature on steamboats, and before long they could be heard up and down the inland rivers.

The steam whistle became the universal form of river communication in 1852, when Congress passed an act on river navigation and safety mandating its use. Before this, steamboat pilots communicated with each other primarily through a combination of shouts and bells. However, the human voice was simply not loud enough to be effective at signaling, and bells could easily be misunderstood or even not heard at all due to the impact of atmospheric conditions on their sound. This lack of effective signaling contributed to many collisions and accidents in the first several decades of the Steamboat Era. The steam whistle, with its greater volume and hard-to-miss sound, helped make the inland rivers a safer place, and its adoption was credited with a significant reduction in collision-related accidents.

Steamboat pilots used many different whistle signals while on the river, in effect creating a sort of second language between themselves. For example, one blast of the whistle from the pilot of a downbound boat (a boat steaming with the current and therefore having right-of-way) to the pilot of an upbound boat (a boat steaming against the current and having to yield to the downbound boat) indicated that the boats would pass on their port (left) sides, while two blasts from the downbound pilot signaled that the boats would pass on their starboard (right) sides. Another common signal was one long blast (the signal of a moored vessel preparing for departure) followed by three short blasts (the signal for a vessel operating under stern propulsion), indicating that a steamboat was about to leave the landing and back into the river.

In addition to these universal signals, pilots also used signals that were unique to each boat. This was so that people on the wharf could identify which boats were landing, often before they even came into view. The BELLE OF LOUISVILLE, which, launched in 1914, is the oldest inland river steamboat still in operation today, uses a pattern of one long blast, two short blasts, one long blast, and two short blasts for this very purpose.  

It was common for a steamboats’ whistle to outlive the boat itself, with many whistles being used on several different boats over a span of decades. An interesting example of this is the whistle from the steamer CALHOUN. Launched in 1876 at Jeffersonville, Indiana, CALHOUN spent most of her career working the St. Louis-Peoria packet trade on the Illinois River before being dismantled in 1892 at the Howard Shipyard in Madison, Indiana. (The Howard family of shipbuilders had multiple yards along the Ohio River during this time).

Later that same year, the Howards recycled CALHOUN’s whistle, in addition to much of her superstructure and machinery, when they built the steamer GREY EAGLE for the Eagle Packet Company. This company used CALHOUN’s whistle on several of their packet boats over the following decades. In 1923, they installed the whistle on the new steamer CAPE GIRARDEAU, the last steam packet boat built by the Howard family. CAPE GIRARDEAU later became the famous overnight boat GORDON C. GREENE, using the same whistle throughout her whole career until she herself sank in 1967.

The venerable old whistle then moved to the Ohio River Museum in Marietta, Ohio, where it remains to this day. For a brief, interesting period in 1980, however, it came out of retirement one final time to be used on the overnight boat MISSISSIPPI QUEEN for part of her cruising season. Although CALHOUN herself only existed for a couple of decades, for more than a hundred years her whistle was heard all along the inland rivers.

(Fun fact: The Howards themselves kept another memento of the CALHOUN after they dismantled her. To this day, visitors at the Howard Steamboat Museum can see the steamer’s decorative gold-gilt eagle from atop her pilothouse displayed in Edmonds Howards’ den).

Steam whistles were a ubiquitous sound on the inland rivers throughout the Steamboat Era. They were still a common sound even into the mid-20 th Century, after the glory days of the era had passed. In our museum’s local area (the stretch of the Ohio River above and below Louisville, Kentucky), two familiar whistles during this time would have been found on the towboats J.R. NUGENT and EDITH NUGENT.

Both boats were owned by Nugent Sand & Gravel Company, and they show the variance in sound had between different types of whistles. J.R. NUGENT’s whistle, mounted on the port side of her pilothouse, was a unique Lonergan-pattern steam whistle that emitted a distinctive multi-note signal. EDITH NUGENT, on the other hand, had a large single-note whistle on the starboard side of her pilothouse that emitted one deep, powerful tone. Both boats operated out of Louisville throughout the 1940’s, and people all along this stretch of the Ohio River would have been familiar with the sound of their whistles.

As can be seen from even this handful of stories, the steam whistle was one of the defining sounds of the Steamboat Era. From its initial adoption as a signaling device in the 1840s through to the middle of the 20 th Century, steam whistles were heard wherever a river was navigable. Although steamboats and the beautiful whistles they carried were eventually replaced with newer technology, there is still nothing quite like the sound of a steamboat giving a long, powerful blast of her whistle as she steams down the river.

If you would like to spend some time listening to iconic steamboat whistles like those on the BELLE OF LOUISVILLE, DELTA QUEEN, GORDON C. GREENE, and others, steamboats.org has a remarkable collection of whistle recordings at the following link below:

Whistleblow: Various Steamboat and Towboat Whistles

Bates, Alan L.  The Western Rivers Steamboat Cyclopedium.  Hustle Press: Leonia. 1968.

Engstrom, Kadie. “Language of the River – Whistles”. (Educational Pamphlet). Howard Steamboat Museum.

Fishbaugh, Charles Preston. From Paddlewheels to Propellers. Indiana Historical Society: Indianapolis. 1970.

Hunter, Louis C. Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History. Harvard University Press: Cambridge. 1949.

Morrison, John H. History of American Steam Navigation. Stephen Daye Press: New York. 1958.

Vasconcelos, Travis. “Curator’s Corner: Steam Whistles”. (Educational video). Howard Seamboat Museum. (Posted to Facebook September 4th, 2020).

Way Jr., Frederick. Way’s Packet Directory, 1848-1983. Ohio University Press: Athens. 1983.

”      —        ”  Way’s Steam Towboat Directory. Ohio University Press: Athens. 1990.

The Age of Steamboats

O ne of Marion County’s distinguishing characteristics is our central location in a very long state.

In recent years, big name logistics centers including FedEx, Chewy, AutoZone and Amazon have come to town, bringing jobs and helping move goods along that concrete river that is Interstate 75. While the vehicles and warehouses are modern and impressive, the idea of Marion County serving as an inland port and commerce center is not new.

As early as the 1860s, commercial riverboats with steam engines and paddle wheels traversed the twists and turns of local waterways. The real boom in business came after the Civil War, when government contracts were made to clear the Ocklawaha River of snags and debris. This allowed for the delivery of mail, passengers and other cargo. By the 1890s, several competing riverboat lines were making runs to Silver Springs from ports at Fernandina, Jacksonville and Palatka.

Nineteenth century travel across the wilds of Florida was largely done by foot, horseback, wagon or boat, so it didn’t take many trips to realize that travel aboard a riverboat, complete with staterooms and a cook, was the way to go.

The steamers came in various configurations. If you picture a pint-sized Mississippi paddle wheeler from a Huck Finn adventure, you’re in the ballpark. Average boats were about 85 feet long by 20 feet wide and needed only three to four feet of water to float. They had names like the Metamora, Okahumkee, Hiawatha, Sharpshooter and Hel-Kat (a combination of the owner’s daughters’ names Helen and Katherine). They carried wealthy socialites from northern cities on winter pilgrimages to Silver Springs, local folks traveling to and from town, and cargo such as citrus, cotton, turpentine, stock for merchants and even chickens.

While transportation is certainly more efficient now, I can’t help but imagine how nice it would be to cruise our rivers aboard one of these quaint vessels.

For more information , visit silverrivermuseum.com or call (352) 236-5401.

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Mississippi River Cruises

History of steamboats on the mississippi river.

Julie Green

| June 28, 2013

Just how long have steamboats been on the Mississippi River? For twenty-five years in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, individual inventors including John Fitch and James Rumsey labored toward the use of steam power in water transport of goods and people. Until then, goods or cargo made its way down stream on the Mississippi River on flatboats or keelboats. In fact all movement that took place on the river was predominantly one direction with any attempt at upstream transportation completed by costly poling against the current over long periods of time.

While Rumsey and Fitch fought over patent rights of a successful steamboat whose design was put in service between Philadelphia and New Jersey, others were moving ahead in their quests to develop steamboats that could travers the powerful current of the Mississippi. On the heels of Scotland’s successful upstream running on the River Carron of the Charlotte Dundas in 1801, American inventors, among them Oliver Evans and Robert Fulton worked in earnest to put a steamboat in service in America.

Fulton had immense success with his steamboat Clermont in traveling the 150 miles of the Hudson River from New York City to Albany in just over 30 hours. Fulton recognized the economic potential of using steamboats to move people and goods up and down the Mississippi and in 1811 the New Orleans became the first steamboat on the mighty river thus ushering in a new era of river transportation and a romantic period defined by sidewheelers and sternwheelers.

Steamboats on the Mississippi River in those early years were few but notable. A lightweight steamboat, the Comet , completed a similar voyage to the city of New Orleans, and following the War of 1812, more steamboats began to ply the Mississippi’s waters. The Vesuvius , a steamboat also owned by Fulton and similar in design to the New Orleans and the Enterprise were both launched in 1814 and sported design changes that made them better suited to navigate shallow water and strong current. Bringing with it the well known design of multiple decks, the Washington , launched in 1816 was a two deck steamboat allowing the upper deck to be reserved for passengers while the lower deck held cargo.

Mississippi River travel was developing into an economic and travel boon with the presence of a growing number of steamboats and the resulting growth of cities along its route. Memphis, St. Louis and Natchez expanded in population and economic development as they evolved into important port cities. Not surprisingly, with the evolution of port cities came further growth in steamboat development.

In 1814 the city of New Orleans recorded 21 steamboat arrivals, however, over the course of the following 20 years, that number exploded to more than 1200. The steamboat’s place as a transportation necessity was secured.

The theatrical Chapman family recognized the steamboat’s potential as an entertainment vessel and after numerous runs of entertainment productions on existing boats, in 1837 had their own steamboat built. Calling it the Floating Theater, this vessel was the predecessor of the familiar showboat that launched steamboat travel into the glorious era that is well recognized as an essential experience for Mississippi River travelers today.

Interrupted for a time by the Civil War, and by the advent of the automobile, steamboat travel on the Mississippi River experienced an evolution of growth, safety legislation and design change that sealed it’s place in history. The elegantly festooned, multiple decked sternwheelers that grace the river today call up a long and colorful history that helped expand a nation and capture imaginations forever in novel and story.

ABOUT JULIE

My name is Julie Green and I am the head writer, content contributor, and chief, cook, and bottle washer too! My goal is to provide you information about the Mississippi River.

It’s a wonderful place that I call home. I’d like to think I know a thing or two about this area!! Please stop by often and pay us a visit.

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Steamboat Era

The stage for steam transportation was set in the 1760s by James Watt, a Scottish inventor, who developed a successful steam engine for removing water from mines. This event is regarded by many as the opening of the Industrial Revolution. Applying steam power to boats was an important idea to many. Flatboats could float down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in about six weeks; the return trip, however, took four to five months of strenuous labor. American John Fitch adapted steam engines to boats and demonstrated a working model on the Delaware River during the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Fitch proved to be a successful boat builder, but never mastered the business side of his endeavor. It would be a later figure, Robert Fulton , who became known as the “father of the steamboat.” In 1807, Fulton teamed with promoter Robert Livingston to attract public attention to the voyage of the Clermont , which steamed up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany . Later, Livingston and Nicholas J. Roosevelt powered the New Orleans from Pittsburgh to the Crescent City at an amazing eight miles per hour. Steam-driven paddlewheelers were soon making the downstream trip in seven days and the return tip in a little more than two weeks. In 1817, there were about one dozen steamboats on the western rivers of the United States. That number exploded to 60 within two years and over 200 by 1830. These were mostly built in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. Steamships dominated traffic on America’s inland waters for much of the 19th century, but failed to capture traffic on the high seas. The superior speeds of the "clipper ships" assured the prominence of these wind-driven vessels until the 1880s.

"A River's Ghosts": A look at Connecticut's forgotten steamboat era

Journalist Erik Hesselberg has covered Connecticut’s waterways for decades. This hour, we preview his new book about the vibrant history of steamboats in our state, taking a trip on Night Boat to New York .

"For more than a century, overnight and day-excursion steamers had plied the route between Hartford and New York," writes Hesselberg, "carrying passengers, mail, and goods on regularly-scheduled runs. More than just transportation, a trip on a river steamer was an adventure in itself."

Hesselberg explains that through much of the 1800s, the steamboat was a social phenomenon at the center of a recreational revolution, drawing wide swaths of the public to commune with nature and, eventually he says, to the seashore.

• Erik Hesselberg: Journalist; Author, Night Boat to New York ; Editor, Voices on the River

Where We Live is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify , Google Podcasts , Stitcher , or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode.

Media Artifacts

Steamboats on the river.

The crew threw more wood on the fire. The steamboat needed a lot of steam power to pull away from the shore. The giant paddle wheel started turning faster. As the crew made sure the cargo was packed tightly, the captain blew the whistle. On the decks the passengers cheered as the boat headed up the river. Throughout the 1800s, steamboat travel on Iowa’s rivers has impacted the states development and growth.

Iowa as a River State

Iowa is the only state with four border rivers, the Mississippi, Missouri, Des Moines, and Big Sioux. The ability to navigate these rivers was of great importance in the settlement of Iowa before railroads. Steamboats traveled into Iowa border waters even before Iowa was legally open for settlement. Steamboats and flatboats brought thousands of early settlers to the new land of Iowa. Steamboats brought supplies to the new Iowans and transported their produce and products to market.

The Dangers of the Missouri River

The Missouri was a dangerous river. Dead trees fell into the river and got stuck on the bottom. Sometimes these snags stuck out of the water. Then the captain did his best to steer around the dead trees, but sometimes they were hidden underwater. The jagged limbs could rip open the bottom of a steamboat.

The current on the Missouri was fast, and the channel—the deepest part of the river—shifted from place to place. Sometimes captains accidentally ran their boats up onto the sandbars. Bad storms hit the river in the summer. Hundreds of steamboats were wrecked on the Missouri. Irregular river depth, sandbars and snags made steamboat travel on the Missouri slow and dangerous.

Steamboats on the Missouri River

Traveling by steamboat on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers was common in the 1800s. The huge boats could carry many passengers and large amounts of freight. Most river travel was between the years of 1846 and 1866. In 1857, The Nebraska City Advertiser newspaper listed 46 steamboats traveling the Missouri, with 12 more being built.

Long before Kanesville or Council Bluffs were settlements on the Missouri river, the steamboat the Western Engineer arrived in the area in 1819. By the 1830s steamboats had navigated the Missouri River to the mouth of the Yellowstone River. During the gold rush to Montana in the 1860s, steamboats traveled far up the Missouri to early mining towns. Steamboats carried plows and seed to new farmers settling in Nebraska in the 1850s and 1860s.

The Calmer Mississippi

The Mississippi was not as dangerous. The current was calmer and the channel was deeper. However, the Upper Rapids and Lower Rapids were serious obstacles to navigate. Sometimes terrible accidents happened on the Mississippi too. Steamboats collided or caught on fire. Sometimes the boilers exploded. Passengers were blown apart or scalded by the hot water.

Steamboats on the Mississippi River

The first steamboat on the Mississippi River along Iowa’s border was the 109-ton Virginia , on its way to Fort Snelling (now Saint Paul, Minnesota) in May 1823. There were 10 passengers on board.

In the 1820s, steamboats on the Mississippi carried lead from Julien Dubuque's lead mines near Dubuque. Lead was a very important export from the Dubuque area. Between 1823 and 1848, 365 boats made 7,645 trips. These trips moved almost 5 million tons of lead down stream!

On November 19, 1840, The Burlington Hawkeye newspaper reported upwards of 100 flatboats had passed Burlington going downstream loaded with produce. Flatboats and keelboats carried cargo down the river. During the Civil War steamboats carried Iowa soldiers, weapons and food supplies to army posts. In later years the steamboats pushed huge rafts of logs from the forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota to sawmills farther down the river.

Steamboat Travel on Iowa’s Interior Rivers

Despite even less reliable water depth than the border rivers, interior Iowa rivers (those rivers that do not border the state) also saw considerable steamboat travel. In the 1840s, The Ripple was the first steamboat to the capital in Iowa City. In 1859, the Blackhawk made 29 round trips between Cedar Rapids and Waterloo on the Cedar River. The Hero and the Pavillion traveled the Des Moines River to Fort Des Moines in 1837. And even before the Civil War, 30 steamboats had traveled to Des Moines before the Civil War.

Steamboat Accidents

Steamboat companies often made huge profits by carrying tons of cargo to rapidly growing communities. The lure of huge profits led steamboats to travel in unsafe river conditions and at unsafe speeds. This led to many accidents and groundings. The exact number of steamboat accidents in Iowa Rivers is not known.

The Corp of Engineers in a report issued July 3, 1934 listed 36 types of steamboat wrecks on the Missouri River alone. Many of these boats were salvaged soon after the accident and rebuilt, but some remain in or near Iowa rivers. The May 9, 1989 the Des Moines Register newspaper listed 40 known sunken steamboats from the southwest corner of Iowa north just over 100 miles to Sioux City. That is a sunken ship almost every 3 miles!

The End of the Steamboat Era in Iowa

When railroads started carrying freight across the country, the days of the steamboats were over. By August 1872 the count of steamboats under the Burlington Railroad Bridge was 147, while the 1,108 engines and trains crossed over that bridge during the same month. The last Iowa steamboat to carry goods was the coal fired sternwheeler the Loan Star in 1967. Barges still carry some goods on the river, but trains and trucks carry most of the freight in America. The few steamboats still gliding along the rivers today are usually carrying tourists on short trips.

• Ginalie Swaim Ed., “Steaming Up the River,” The Goldfinch 6, no. 4 (April 1985): 6.

What effect did steamboats and travel on the river have on the development of Iowa?

Investigation Tip: Get up-close and in-depth when examining artifacts such as photographs. Look for details such as clothing, technologies or buildings in old photographs to learn more about the past.

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Those Roaring Riverboat Years: A History of the Steamboat Era Kindle Edition

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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07W6X822H
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 7, 2019
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Colonel mason.

Hardened as a street reporter during the 1967 Detroit riots. Celebrated 54th year in broadcasting in 2018. Colonel became a professional broadcast name in the 1960s, several years before the U.S. Army hired Mason to be a broadcast spokesman for the All Volunteer Army in 1975, at which time the Army made Mason an honorary colonel in the St. Louis Recruiting Command. Award-winning Career Journalist; Speaker; Author; Writer; Events Producer; international ScienceNews Radio Network Host/Producer; Knight of the Nanotech Institute, University of Texas at Dallas; Press Relations Chair volunteer for many IEEE Conferences; Press & Communications officer for major international conferences of various genres; 2011 AAES Journalism Award; 2010 IEEE-USA Literary Award

Produced international nanotechnology conferences and trade expositions in Dallas, Texas: nanoTX ’06, nanoTX ’07, and nanotxUSA 2008 (in cooperation with Nano Tech Japan); and other expos for the entertainment and construction industries.

Executive Producer of award-winning documentary on the lives and careers of the late Nobel Laureates Jack Kilby, inventor of the microchip; and Rick Smalley, father of modern day nanotechnology.

Author of Those Roaring Riverboat Years, a history of the steamboat era. Authored scores of documentaries and editorials for broadcast, and thousands of words in commercial copy. Author and director of five murder mystery dinner plays

Hobbies and interests include: Sailing/yachting, historical research, creative writing. Endowed member of A. C. Garrett Masonic Lodge; Past Worthy Patron, The Colony Chapter Order of Eastern Star; member National Rifle Association; Society of Professional Journalists, ACLU, Amnesty International

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The steamboat played an important role in Arkansas from the earliest days of the Arkansas Territory. Before being superseded by the railroad in the post–Civil War era, steamboats were the primary means of passenger transport, as well as moving raw materials out of Arkansas and consumer goods into the state.

The inland rivers steamboat, invented in the Mississippi River Valley in the first half of the nineteenth century, eventually connected every person on or near a stream to the larger world. The first major historian of the steamboat, Louis Hunter, saw the steamboat as the “most notable achievement of the industrial infancy” of the United States, not to mention the chief technological means by which the frontier advanced and by which steam power was introduced and spread in the United States. Building and supplying steamboats with hulls and machinery provided the infrastructure that pushed the United States’ transition from the “wood age” to the “iron age.”

In 1820, the steamboat  Comet made it to  Arkansas Post (Arkansas County) ; two years later, the Eagle was the first to visit Little Rock (Pulaski County) on its way to what is now Russellville (Pope County) with a load of supplies for Dwight Mission . The Arkansas Gazette reported numerous steamboats operating regularly on Arkansas waters even in the 1820s, including the Robert Thompson , Allegheny , Spartan , Industry , and Catawba . By 1829, the Laurel had reached Pocahontas (Randolph County) on the Black River , and two years later, Batesville (Independence County) on the upper White River was reached by the Waverly . The Ouachita River had its Dime , and even the Red River Raft was breached by the late 1830s. By about 1875, steamboats had reached everywhere in the state, up the Little Red River , into the Fourche La Fave River , up the St. Francis River and Bayou Bartholomew , and eventually up the Buffalo River as far as Rush (Marion County) . The keelboats that had once supplied these towns were supplanted by these vessels that could reach almost anywhere in the state with cargoes of factory goods and foodstuffs, along with emigrants and travelers, and then go downstream with cotton or subsistence staples.

It is difficult to find details on most of these steamboats. After the mid-nineteenth century, boats were required to be registered and their boilers certified, but even these requirements documented only such details as name, length, width, depth of hull, sometimes the number of boilers and the diameter of cylinders in the engines, and something called “tonnage,” which was calculated in different ways at different times. The earlier boats are especially poorly known, partly because the inland rivers steamboat had to be created to deal with unique conditions on inland rivers, a process that was poorly recorded. Rapid progress involved numerous false steps, hand labor, and experiment tempered by experience. Rapid development also took place in building and controlling steam engines to make them more reliable and safe, with the concurrent development of all the associated regulations and legal protections.

The form of the steamboat itself came into being particularly in the 1820s and 1830s. A steamboat is different from the deep-water, deep-draft vessel that has cargo, quarters, and everything else deep in the hull. The new form was simply a long, narrow, shallow pontoon upon which cargo was stacked and cabins were built higher and higher. Some cargo could be placed in the hull, but the engines and boilers sat on the main deck; passengers’ cabins and the salon were on the second or “boiler” deck with perhaps a “Texas” deck above that for the crew; and the pilot house perched at the front of the stack for visibility. The hull, much like a bridge, had to be reinforced with an extensive truss system, known as “hog chain” and consisting of long runs of wrought-iron rods over stout “sampson” posts, both along the length, as much as 350 feet, and across the width, up to forty feet plus overhanging “guards” that made the main deck even wider than the hull. The wrought-iron rods were fitted with enormous turnbuckles, and by tightening or loosening these turnbuckles, the flexible hull could even be “walked” over shallow sand bars.

There were variations in placement of the paddlewheels. Putting them on each side of the hull, as in those boats known as “sidewheelers,” made for smoother passenger travel and a bit easier steering, but the paddlewheels were outside the lines of the hull, leaving them vulnerable and making the vessel much wider. The sternwheeler put the paddlewheel at the back, creating a narrower vessel as well as protecting the fragile paddlewheel by hiding it at the rear of the hull. The sternwheeler eventually proved more efficient at pushing barges, and it was the sternwheeler form that survived the loss of the passenger trade brought on by the spread of railroads after the 1870s; in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sternwheelers were used for towboats.

These wooden-hulled steamboats were vulnerable, and their lives were often short . The most frightening losses were from boiler explosions due to abuse, clogging by muddy river water, or design weaknesses. One of the most famous boiler explosions occurred on the sidewheel steamboat Sultana . The only photograph of the Sultana was taken during a short stop at the waterfront at Helena (Phillips County) on April 26, 1865. The photograph shows that the boat was astonishingly overloaded—in a vessel 260 feet long and forty-two feet wide, built in 1863 for 300 or so passengers, thousands of people could be seen, nearly all of them Union soldiers recently released from Confederate prisoner-of-war camps. Not long after the boat stopped briefly at Memphis, the boilers of the Sultana exploded near Mound City (Crittenden County) in the middle of the night on April 27. Approximately 2,000 to 2,300 people were killed. This remains the worst maritime disaster in North America. Many times the disaster was less spectacular, the result of accidentally holing the hull by ramming into submerged log, but the result was still loss of the vessel; most of the time, at least some of the cargo and steamboat machinery was salvaged.

In spite of their vulnerability, hundreds of sternwheelers and sidewheelers of various dimensions were an integral part of daily life in Arkansas for most of the 1800s, certainly from 1830s into the 1880s, when the network of railroads finally reached maturity. Any factory goods from ceramic tablewares to pianos traveled at least part of the way by steamboat, and even for isolated farmsteads, the wagon journey at the end was only a few miles from the riverside landing to the house. Cotton , corn, livestock, wool, bricks , lumber , staves , logs, and other products traveled only a short way to the docks.

Steamboats played a role in tumultuous events as well, beginning with carrying troops and supplies in the early 1800s to Fort Smith (Sebastian County) . In the 1830s, tens of thousands of Native Americans passed through Arkansas as part of Indian Removal , and many traveled on steamboats such as the Smelter , Thomas Yeatman , Reindeer , Little Rock , Tecumseh , and Cavalier , or on the keelboats often towed by these vessels. Moreover, much of the crew on antebellum steamboats were slaves .

During the Civil War , both Union and Confederate forces exploited steamboats for rapid communication and transport of troops, horses, and supplies on Arkansas waters. Little Rock, Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) , DeValls Bluff (Prairie County) , and Helena became major re-supply centers and shipping points, first by the Confederacy, then by the Union. Civilian vessels were chartered; in the case of the Homer , the Confederacy made use of it until its capture by the Union and scuttling in the Ouachita River in April 1864 at Camden (Ouachita County) . Bombardment of Confederate positions on land by Union gunboats was an important factor in the capture of St. Charles (Arkansas County) on the White River in June 1862, the destruction of Arkansas Post (Arkansas County) in January 1863, and the defense of Helena in July 1863. The Engagement at St. Charles included the scuttling of three steamboats by Confederates in a vain attempt to block the upstream advance of the Union fleet. The capture of Little Rock in September 1863 saw the sinking of more Confederate vessels, including the gunboat Pontchartrain . Throughout the war, Union-chartered steamers and specially built tin-clad and iron-clad warships were fired on regularly from the shore, and Confederates even managed to  capture and burn the tin-clad  Queen City at Clarendon (Monroe County) in June 1864.

After the Civil War, some of the biggest-ever sidewheel steamboats were built for use on the Mississippi, but by the 1890s, passenger travel had largely ended. Indeed, passage on many rivers was made more difficult simply by the construction of many bridges for the trains. However, improvements in sternwheel maneuverability and increases in power—combined with increasing improvement of the waterways by dredging, snag removal, and electric light channel marking—made the larger rivers such as the Arkansas, the lower White, and Red efficient for the transport of bulk cargoes such as iron, grain, construction materials, chemicals, gravel, sand, and coal. Water transport is still common today, when a diesel-powered all-steel towboat can push twelve to thirty-six steel barges, and just one steel barge can carry the equivalent of fifteen large hopper-type railroad cars or fifty-eight semi-trailers. Even a modern sternwheel passenger steamboat sometimes plies the Arkansas River , such as the Delta Queen , built in 1924–1927 for excursions on the Sacramento River in California and rebuilt for the Mississippi River system in 1947.

The chart below lists some of the steamboats that were notable in Arkansas history. A list of those involving fatal accidents can be found at the Steamboat Disasters entry.

For additional information: “As Much as the Water: How Steamboats Shaped Arkansas.” Center for Arkansas History and Culture, University of Arkansas at Little Rock. https://ualrexhibits.org/steamboats/ (accessed January 7, 2022).

Baldwin, Leland Dewitt. The Keelboat Age on Western Waters . Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1941.

Bates, Alan L. The Western Rivers Engine Room Encyclopoedium . Louisville, KY: Cyclopoedium Press, 1996.

———. The Western Rivers Steamboat Cyclopoedium, or, American Riverboat Structure and Detail, Salted with Lore . Leonia, NJ: Hustle Press, 1968.

Branam, Chris. “A Database of Steamboat Wrecks on the Arkansas River, Arkansas, Between 1830–1900.” MA thesis, University of Arkansas, 2003.

Brown, Mattie. “A History of River Transportation in Arkansas from 1819–1880.” MA thesis, University of Arkansas, 1933.

Dethloff, Henry C. “Paddlewheels and Pioneers on Red River, 1815–1915, and the Reminiscences of Captain M. L. Scovell.” Louisiana Studies 6 (Summer 1967): 91–134.

Fitzjarrald, Sarah. “Steamboating the Arkansas.” Journal of the Forth Smith Historical Society 6 (September 1982): 2–30.

Gandy, Joan W., and Thomas H. Gandy. The Mississippi Steamboat Era in Historic Photographs: Natchez to New Orleans, 1870–1920 . New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1987.

Haites, Erik F., James Mak, and Gary M. Walton. Western Rivers Transportation: The Era of Early Internal Development, 1810–1860 . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.

Hawkins, Van. Smoke up the River: Steamboats and the Arkansas Delta . Jonesboro, AR: Writers Bloc, 2016.

Huddleston, Duane, Sammie Rose, and Pat Wood. Steamboats and Ferries on White River: A Heritage Revisited . Conway: University of Central Arkansas Press, 1995.

Hunter, Louis C. Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949.

McCague, James. Flatboat Days on Frontier Rivers . Champaign, IL: Garrard Publishing Co., 1968.

Stewart-Abernathy, Leslie C. “Ghost Boats at West Memphis.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 67 (Winter 2008): 398–413.

Stewart-Abernathy, Leslie C., ed. Ghost Boats on the Mississippi: Discovering Our Working Past . Popular Series No. 4. Fayetteville: Arkansas Archeological Survey, 2002.

Way, Frederick, Jr. Way ’s Packet Directory, 1848–1994 . Rev. ed. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994.

Way, Frederick, Jr., compiler, and Joseph W. Rutter. Way’s Steam Towboat Directory . Athens: Ohio University Press, 1990.

Leslie C. Stewart-Abernathy Arkansas Archeological Survey

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Concorde completes latest journey – along Hudson River in New York

One of UK-French supersonic planes, which stopped flying passengers in 2003, returns by barge to museum after restoration

A Concorde jet has been floated down the Hudson River in New York after months of refurbishments.

The retired British Airways plane was stored in the Intrepid ​​Museum in Manhattan after supersonic flights came to an end in 2003 and it was taken away for restoration last August.

According to the museum, which exhibits exceptional sea, air and spacecraft, the repair work included “removal of the aircraft’s paint coating, sanding, and recoating, using the same colours and markings that made Concorde a true aviation legend”.

On Wednesday, the renovated jet was floated on a barge down towards Weeks Marine in New Jersey. By the following afternoon, it had made its way back to the museum, before being lifted by a 90-metre crane.

The British Airways Concorde holds the record for the fastest transatlantic crossing by a passenger aircraft, at 2 hours 52 minutes and 59 seconds from London Heathrow to JFK airport in New York.

The Concorde was the only supersonic commercial jet to fly internationally and had a top speed of 1,354mph. Flights were between three and a half to four hours long. Today’s large airliners fly at about 600mph, and a London to New York flight takes eight hours on average.

The Intrepid Museum’s website says: “The Concorde is a product of Anglo-French cooperation. When the Concorde entered Air France and British Airways’ transatlantic service in 1976, it was the only operational supersonic passenger transport in the world.

“With a crew of nine, the Concorde could fly at 1,350 mph (2,150 km/h) at an altitude of 60,000 ft (18,181 metres), high enough for its 100 passengers to see the Earth’s curvature.”

Public tours of the jet will resume on 4 April, museum officials said.

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The Moscow Metro Museum of Art: 10 Must-See Stations

There are few times one can claim having been on the subway all afternoon and loving it, but the Moscow Metro provides just that opportunity.  While many cities boast famous public transport systems—New York’s subway, London’s underground, San Salvador’s chicken buses—few warrant hours of exploration.  Moscow is different: Take one ride on the Metro, and you’ll find out that this network of railways can be so much more than point A to B drudgery.

The Metro began operating in 1935 with just thirteen stations, covering less than seven miles, but it has since grown into the world’s third busiest transit system ( Tokyo is first ), spanning about 200 miles and offering over 180 stops along the way.  The construction of the Metro began under Joseph Stalin’s command, and being one of the USSR’s most ambitious building projects, the iron-fisted leader instructed designers to create a place full of svet (radiance) and svetloe budushchee (a radiant future), a palace for the people and a tribute to the Mother nation.

Consequently, the Metro is among the most memorable attractions in Moscow.  The stations provide a unique collection of public art, comparable to anything the city’s galleries have to offer and providing a sense of the Soviet era, which is absent from the State National History Museum.  Even better, touring the Metro delivers palpable, experiential moments, which many of us don’t get standing in front of painting or a case of coins.

Though tours are available , discovering the Moscow Metro on your own provides a much more comprehensive, truer experience, something much less sterile than following a guide.  What better place is there to see the “real” Moscow than on mass transit: A few hours will expose you to characters and caricatures you’ll be hard-pressed to find dining near the Bolshoi Theater.  You become part of the attraction, hear it in the screech of the train, feel it as hurried commuters brush by: The Metro sucks you beneath the city and churns you into the mix.

With the recommendations of our born-and-bred Muscovite students, my wife Emma and I have just taken a self-guided tour of what some locals consider the top ten stations of the Moscow Metro. What most satisfied me about our Metro tour was the sense of adventure .  I loved following our route on the maps of the wagon walls as we circled the city, plotting out the course to the subsequent stops; having the weird sensation of being underground for nearly four hours; and discovering the next cavern of treasures, playing Indiana Jones for the afternoon, piecing together fragments of Russia’s mysterious history.  It’s the ultimate interactive museum.

Top Ten Stations (In order of appearance)

Kievskaya station.

Kievskaya Station went public in March of 1937, the rails between it and Park Kultury Station being the first to cross the Moscow River.  Kievskaya is full of mosaics depicting aristocratic scenes of Russian life, with great cameo appearances by Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.  Each work has a Cyrillic title/explanation etched in the marble beneath it; however, if your Russian is rusty, you can just appreciate seeing familiar revolutionary dates like 1905 ( the Russian Revolution ) and 1917 ( the October Revolution ).

Mayakovskaya Station

Mayakovskaya Station ranks in my top three most notable Metro stations. Mayakovskaya just feels right, done Art Deco but no sense of gaudiness or pretention.  The arches are adorned with rounded chrome piping and create feeling of being in a jukebox, but the roof’s expansive mosaics of the sky are the real showstopper.  Subjects cleverly range from looking up at a high jumper, workers atop a building, spires of Orthodox cathedrals, to nimble aircraft humming by, a fleet of prop planes spelling out CCCP in the bluest of skies.

Novoslobodskaya Station

Novoslobodskaya is the Metro’s unique stained glass station.  Each column has its own distinctive panels of colorful glass, most of them with a floral theme, some of them capturing the odd sailor, musician, artist, gardener, or stenographer in action.  The glass is framed in Art Deco metalwork, and there is the lovely aspect of discovering panels in the less frequented haunches of the hall (on the trackside, between the incoming staircases).  Novosblod is, I’ve been told, the favorite amongst out-of-town visitors.

Komsomolskaya Station

Komsomolskaya Station is one of palatial grandeur.  It seems both magnificent and obligatory, like the presidential palace of a colonial city.  The yellow ceiling has leafy, white concrete garland and a series of golden military mosaics accenting the tile mosaics of glorified Russian life.  Switching lines here, the hallway has an Alice-in-Wonderland feel, impossibly long with decorative tile walls, culminating in a very old station left in a remarkable state of disrepair, offering a really tangible glimpse behind the palace walls.

Dostoevskaya Station

Dostoevskaya is a tribute to the late, great hero of Russian literature .  The station at first glance seems bare and unimpressive, a stark marble platform without a whiff of reassembled chips of tile.  However, two columns have eerie stone inlay collages of scenes from Dostoevsky’s work, including The Idiot , The Brothers Karamazov , and Crime and Punishment.   Then, standing at the center of the platform, the marble creates a kaleidoscope of reflections.  At the entrance, there is a large, inlay portrait of the author.

Chkalovskaya Station

Chkalovskaya does space Art Deco style (yet again).  Chrome borders all.  Passageways with curvy overhangs create the illusion of walking through the belly of a chic, new-age spacecraft.  There are two (kos)mosaics, one at each end, with planetary subjects.  Transferring here brings you above ground, where some rather elaborate metalwork is on display.  By name similarity only, I’d expected Komsolskaya Station to deliver some kosmonaut décor; instead, it was Chkalovskaya that took us up to the space station.

Elektrozavodskaya Station

Elektrozavodskaya is full of marble reliefs of workers, men and women, laboring through the different stages of industry.  The superhuman figures are round with muscles, Hollywood fit, and seemingly undeterred by each Herculean task they respectively perform.  The station is chocked with brass, from hammer and sickle light fixtures to beautiful, angular framework up the innards of the columns.  The station’s art pieces are less clever or extravagant than others, but identifying the different stages of industry is entertaining.

Baumanskaya Statio

Baumanskaya Station is the only stop that wasn’t suggested by the students.  Pulling in, the network of statues was just too enticing: Out of half-circle depressions in the platform’s columns, the USSR’s proud and powerful labor force again flaunts its success.  Pilots, blacksmiths, politicians, and artists have all congregated, posing amongst more Art Deco framing.  At the far end, a massive Soviet flag dons the face of Lenin and banners for ’05, ’17, and ‘45.  Standing in front of the flag, you can play with the echoing roof.

Ploshchad Revolutsii Station

Novokuznetskaya Station

Novokuznetskaya Station finishes off this tour, more or less, where it started: beautiful mosaics.  This station recalls the skyward-facing pieces from Mayakovskaya (Station #2), only with a little larger pictures in a more cramped, very trafficked area.  Due to a line of street lamps in the center of the platform, it has the atmosphere of a bustling market.  The more inventive sky scenes include a man on a ladder, women picking fruit, and a tank-dozer being craned in.  The station’s also has a handsome black-and-white stone mural.

Here is a map and a brief description of our route:

Start at (1)Kievskaya on the “ring line” (look for the squares at the bottom of the platform signs to help you navigate—the ring line is #5, brown line) and go north to Belorusskaya, make a quick switch to the Dark Green/#2 line, and go south one stop to (2)Mayakovskaya.  Backtrack to the ring line—Brown/#5—and continue north, getting off at (3)Novosblodskaya and (4)Komsolskaya.  At Komsolskaya Station, transfer to the Red/#1 line, go south for two stops to Chistye Prudy, and get on the Light Green/#10 line going north.  Take a look at (5)Dostoevskaya Station on the northern segment of Light Green/#10 line then change directions and head south to (6)Chkalovskaya, which offers a transfer to the Dark Blue/#3 line, going west, away from the city center.  Have a look (7)Elektroskaya Station before backtracking into the center of Moscow, stopping off at (8)Baumskaya, getting off the Dark Blue/#3 line at (9)Ploschad Revolyutsii.  Change to the Dark Green/#2 line and go south one stop to see (10)Novokuznetskaya Station.

Check out our new Moscow Indie Travel Guide , book a flight to Moscow and read 10 Bars with Views Worth Blowing the Budget For

Jonathon Engels, formerly a patron saint of misadventure, has been stumbling his way across cultural borders since 2005 and is currently volunteering in the mountains outside of Antigua, Guatemala.  For more of his work, visit his website and blog .

Photo credits:   SergeyRod , all others courtesy of the author and may not be used without permission

Meghan Markle Is Launching an Instagram Account

The Duchess of Sussex is back online under the name American Riviera Orchard.

The Duchess of Sussex wrote at the time, "After close to three beautiful years on this adventure with you, it's time to say goodbye to The Tig. What began as a passion project (my little engine that could) evolved into an amazing community of inspiration, support, fun and frivolity. You've made my days brighter and filled this experience with so much joy."

She ended her message, "Keep finding those Tig moments of discovery, keep laughing and taking risks, and keep being 'the change you wish to see in the world.' Above all, don't ever forget your worth - as I've told you time and time again: you, my sweet friend, you are enough."

Not long after Prince Harry and Meghan stepped down as senior working royals, they also shut down their Instagram account, @sussexroyal.

But today, Meghan is back online, under a new brand: American Riviera Orchard. T&C can confirm that a website ( americanriviera.com ) and Instagram account ( @americanrivieraorchard ) both do, in fact, belong to the Duchess of Sussex. This comes on the heels of the relaunch of another Sussex website, the domain sussex.com .

Additionally, an Instagram story, posted less than an hour ago to the handle, features edited clips of Meghan, likely at home in Montecito, as the song "I Wish You Love" by Nancy Wilson plays. Notably, the logo for American Riviera Orchard features gold font, on a beige background, and features a crest with the letters 'ARO' on top and 'Montecito' beneath the script of the name, and the description of the Instagram account reads simply: "by Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex" and ⁣⁣⁣"Established 2024⁣⁣⁣." Specifically, the account was launched in January.

No details have been made public yet regarding what American Riviera Orchard could be: Is it the Tig 2.0? A lifestyle brand selling products? Something else?

There's at least one clue as to what American Riviera Orchard could be, thanks to the Trademark & Patent Office. The trademark application , viewed by T&C and filed last month, reveals Meghan's American Riviera Orchard could possibly sell home goods, cookbooks, tableware, and edible treats—like jams and fruit preserves.

Meghan hinted at her return to Instagram in an August 2022 profile in The Cut . In the story, author Allison P. Davis writes that Meghan, told her "Do you want to know a secret? I'm getting back … on Instagram."

The site currently offers the opportunity to sign up for a waitlist. Whatever American Riviera Orchard becomes, we are definitely intrigued.

We'll update this as soon as we learn more about American Riviera Orchard .

Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma , a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram .

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Norilsk: The city built by gulag prisoners where Russia guards its Arctic secrets

Environmental activists are frustrated by how authorities handled a diesel spill which poured into two Arctic rivers in late May.

International correspondent @DiMagnaySky

Friday 3 July 2020 23:41, UK

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The drive from Norilsk airport to the city takes you past mile after mile of crumbling, Soviet-era factories.

It looks like an endless, rusting scrapyard - a jumble of pipes, industrial junk and frost-bitten brickwork. If you were looking for an industrial apocalypse film setting, this would be your place - but you're unlikely to get the permissions.

Norilsk was built in Stalin's times by gulag prisoners. This gritty industrial city is a testament to their endurance both of the cruelty of Stalin's regime and of the harsh polar climate. There were no thoughts then on how to build to protect the environment, just to survive it.

Vasily Ryabinin doesn't think much has changed, at least in ecological terms. He used to work for the local branch of the federal environmental watchdog, Rosprirodnadzor, but quit in June after exposing what he says was a failure to investigate properly the environmental impact of the gigantic diesel spill which poured into two Arctic rivers in late May.

At 21,000 tonnes, it was the largest industrial spill in the polar Arctic .

Despite the Kremlin declaring a federal emergency and sending a host of different agencies to participate in the clean-up, just last week Mr Ryabinin and activists from Greenpeace Russia found another area where technical water used in industrial processes was being pumped directly into the tundra from a nearby tailing pond. Russia's investigative committee has promised to investigate.

"The ecological situation here is so bad," Mr Ryabinin says.

"The latest constructions such as the tailing pond at the Talnack ore-processing plant were built exclusively by Nornickel chief executive Vladimir Potanin's team and supposedly in accordance with ecological standards, but on satellite images you can see that all the lakes in the vicinity have unnatural colours and obviously something has got into them."

Mining company Nornickel would disagree. It has admitted flagrant violations at the tailing pond and suspended staff it deems responsible at both the Talnack plant and at Norilsk Heat and Power plant no 3 where the diesel spill originated from.

On Thursday it appointed Andrey Bougrov, from its senior management board, to the newly-created role of senior vice president for environmental protection. It has a clear environmental strategy, provides regular updates on the status of the spill, and its Twitter feed is filled with climate-related alerts.

But what investors read is very different to the picture on the ground.

Norilsk used to be a closed city - one of dozens across the Soviet Union shut off to protect industrial secrets. Foreigners need special permissions approved by the Federal Security Service (FSB) to enter the region. It would take an invitation from Nornickel to make that happen and, for the past month since the spill, that has not been forthcoming.

Unlike in Soviet times, Russian citizens are now free to come and go. That's why our Sky News Moscow team were able to fly in and travel around the city, even if getting to the spill site was blocked. What they were able to film provides a snapshot of the immense challenge Russia faces in upgrading its Soviet-era industrial infrastructure, particularly at a time when climate change is melting the permafrost on which much of it was built.

Just downwind from one of the rusting factories on the city outskirts is a huge expanse of dead land. The skeletal remains of trees stand forlorn against the howling Arctic winds. Sulphur dioxide poisoning has snuffed the life out of all that lived here. Norilsk is the world's worst emitter of sulphur dioxide by a substantial margin.

"For 80km south of here everything is dead," Mr Ryabinin says, "and for at least 10km in that direction too. Everything here depends on the wind."

Immediately after the spill, Mr Ryabinin filmed and took samples from the Daldykan river just a few kilometres from the fuel tank which had leaked. By that point the river was a churning mix of diesel and red sludge dredged up from the riverbed by the force of the leak. Norilsk's rivers have turned red before and the chemical residues have sunk to the bottom, killing all life there. Nothing has lived in those rivers for decades.

In his capacity as deputy head of the local environmental watchdog, Mr Ryabinin says he insisted that he be allowed to fly further north to check the levels of contamination in Lake Pyasino and beyond.

Nornickel at the time claimed the lake was untouched by the spill. Mr Ryabinin says his boss encouraged him to let things be.

"I can't be sure I would have found anything, but this sort of confrontation - making sure I didn't go there with a camera, let alone with bottles for taking samples, it was all very clear to me. It was the final straw."

Rosprirodnadzor refused to comment to Sky News on Mr Ryabinin's allegations or suggestions that the agency was working hand in hand with Nornickel.

Georgy Kavanosyan is an environmental blogger with a healthy 37,000 following on YouTube. Shortly after the spill, he set out for Lake Pyasino and to the Pyasina River beyond to see how far the diesel had spread.

"We set out at night so that the Norilsk Nickel security wouldn't detect us. I say at night, but they've got polar nights there now, north of the Arctic Circle. So it's still light but it's quieter and we managed to go past all the cordons."

He is one of the few to have provided evidence that the diesel has in fact travelled far beyond where the company admits. Not just the 1,200km (745m) length of Lake Pyasino but into the river beyond.

He says his measurements indicated a volume of hydrocarbons dissolved in the water of between two and three times normal levels. He thinks after he published his findings on YouTube, the authorities' vigilance increased.

Greenpeace Russia have spent the last two weeks trying to obtain samples from Lake Pyasino and the surrounding area. They have faced difficulties getting around and flying their samples out for independent analysis.

They are now waiting for results from a laboratory in St Petersburg but say the samples remain valid technically for just four days after collection and that they weren't able to make that deadline due to the authorities' actively obstructing their work.

Elena Sakirko from Greenpeace Russia specialises in oil spills and says this has happened to her before. This time, a police helicopter flew to the hunter's hut where they were staying and confiscated the fuel for the boat they were using. Then a deputy for the Moscow city parliament tasked with bringing the samples back from Norilsk was forced to go back empty-handed.

"We were told at the airport we needed permission from the security department of Nornickel," Ms Sakirko says. "We asked them to show us some law or statement to prove that this was legal or what the basis for this was, but they haven't showed us anything and we still don't understand it."

Nornickel announced this week that the critical stage of the diesel spill is over. The company is now finalising dates for a press tour for foreign media and for other international environmentalists.

Mr Ryabinin thinks this should have happened weeks ago.

"If we don't let scientists come to the Arctic region to evaluate the impact of the accident, then in the future if anything similar happens, we won't know what to do."

A spokesperson for Nornickel said the company "is actively cooperating with the scientific community and will meticulously assess both the causes and effects of the accident."

Nornickel considers permafrost thawing to be the primary cause of the accident, but is waiting for the end of investigation before making a final statement, the spokesperson said.

They added that the company "accepts full responsibility for the incidents on its sites these past two months and holds itself accountable for any infrastructural deficits or poor decisions by personnel.

"The imperative is to do everything to clean up our sites, instil a stronger culture of transparency and safety in our workforce, and ensure that such situations do not occur in the future."

Tens of thousands of Russians freeze as hot water pipes burst around the country

T ens of thousands of people across Russia are currently living with no heating or hot water following an unprecedented wave of infrastructure failures.

Even large cities like Novosibirsk and Vladivostok, as well as the suburbs of Moscow, have experienced burst hot-water mains, ruptured heating pipelines, and crumbling municipal infrastructure. These incidents have escalated since the beginning of 2024, with temperatures dropping to -30 degrees and below in some parts of the country.

While such failures are not a new phenomenon, considering Russia's frigid winters and aging Soviet-era infrastructure, they are now occurring at a significant political moment, just before a presidential election and amid growing fatigue over the protracted invasion of Ukraine.

As temperatures plummet, the deteriorating state of municipal services, particularly heating, poses a significant political challenge for the authorities. With much of the government's budget redirected towards the war effort, many local authorities have experienced a reduction in funding, limiting their capacity to promptly address any infrastructure issues.

The surge in bursting pipes coincides with Russia's efforts to shield the population from any adverse effects of the war in Ukraine. Until recently, the average Russian had not experienced a significant impact on their life due to the conflict. However, as cash-strapped local governments grapple with the urgent need to address various problems, concerns may arise that residents will perceive the so-called Special Operation as a drain on resources.

The Kremlin itself has admitted that a significant portion of Russia's infrastructure is ageing, but it has attributed the recent outages to unusually cold weather.

Speaking on the subject, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that 'everyone did everything that could be done' to address the issue and expressed sympathy for those who had to endure 'sitting in the cold without electricity.'

'Despite all titanic efforts to upgrade all the housing and utilities systems, a certain part of them remains in a rather dilapidated state,” Peskov said. “These programmes will continue, but it is impossible to renew all pipes and all housing and utilities systems in 10-15 years. Of course, these programmes are time-consuming,' he said.

In Podolsk, a city in the Moscow Region, 180 high-rise buildings lost power due to a burst heating main at the Klimovsk Specialised Ammunition Plant. In response, locals took to the streets, demanding the restoration of power and urging accountability for those responsible. In response, the deputy head of Podolsk, Roman Ryazantsev, was arrested. According to investigators, Ryazantsev was warned more than once that the infrastructure was not up to standard.

In Elektrostal, also in the Moscow Region, residents gathered outside to start fires in order to keep warm, as temperatures inside apartments dropped as low as -18 degrees Celsius. In a video, a group of locals appealed to Governor Andrey Vorobyov, urging him to address and resolve the heating issue.

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Us violent crime decreased in 2023, continuing to reverse pandemic-era spike, fbi data shows.

Lindsay Whitehurst

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – New FBI statistics show overall violent crime in the U.S. dropped again last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic-era spike.

Murders dropped 13% in the last three months of 2023 compared with the same period the year before, according to FBI data released this week. Violent crime overall was down 6%.

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Property crime also ticked downward about 3% in the nation as a whole, though in the Northeast and in large cities over a million people it increased by about the same amount.

The quarterly report released Tuesday is based on data sent to the FBI from about 80% of the law enforcement agencies in the country. Final detailed data for 2023 is expected to be released in the fall.

President Joe Biden said the drop in the murder rate was one of the steepest in the country’s history. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, passed in 2021 by a Democratic-led Congress and signed by Biden, allowed cities and states to invest $15 billion on public safety, he said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland called the data encouraging and touted law enforcement efforts to target gangs, illegal guns and other issues.

The FBI’s report was in line with the findings of the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice, which found that homicides were down an average of 10% in a survey of 32 cities over the year before, though it found violent crime still remained higher than before the coronavirus pandemic in many cities.

Homicides showed a steep 29% increase in 2020, the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records. The rise defied easy explanation, though experts said possible contributors included the massive disruption of the pandemic, gun violence, worries about the economy and intense stress.

Crime appeared to stay steady the following year, though a record-collecting overhaul at the FBI meant many big cities weren't included in the report that year.

FBI data showed violent crime across the U.S. decreased in 2022, nearing pre-pandemic levels, though property crimes rose that year.

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