Robert Gudmestad

And they cleaned the rooms and they did the cleaning on the boats.

In some ways, you could think of steamboats as being a combination of an 18-wheeler and a hotel.

Because boats are transporting people, but they're also transporting commercial goods as well.

But for enslaved Americans who are working on these boats...

They're not directly under the thumb of their enslaver.

And as I said, they were typically they're rented out, which means that the wages that they get paid are going not to the enslaved person.

They're going to the owner of the enslaved person.

So the captain of the boat is paying wages to the enslaver.

Yeah, sure.

But these people could also work for tips, right?

And for extra wages.

And over time, they could save that money.

And it was difficult, but it was possible to do self-purchase in the American South.

And there were a few people who ran away using steamboats as the way to do that.

So they would fit in like they would pretend to be a roustabout.

And so they'd pick up things and they'd carry them on the boat and then they would just kind of blend in with the crew if the boat was going north.

And then if it stopped in a place like Cincinnati, then they'd get off in Cincinnati.

Now, there weren't a lot of escape attempts because the authorities would have shut these down, but there were some.

Well, first, you have to understand the geography of the boat, so to speak.

The boat had different levels.