Don Wildman
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Did they do many night trips?
Was it a multi-day kind of thing?
There's the origin of the name Tom Sawyer, isn't it?
Because Samuel Clemens was a riverboat captain.
And yet the era thrived up until its ending.
And when we come back after this break, we're going to discuss the decline of the steamboat and its legacy.
Spoiler alert, it has something to do with the Civil War.
Robert, how does this decline come about for the steamboat?
What marks the end of the golden age?
Now, nobody wants to travel during the Civil War.
I mean, they use it for obviously cargo and so forth.
But what had been developing was this sort of culture of, I don't know, tourism is the wrong word for it, but passenger travel for sure.
And of course, that gets stemmed by the threat of war.
How much were steamboats used in the war?
I mean, as battleships of sorts?