When horses walked on water : horse-powered ferries in nineteenth-century America / Kevin J. Crisman and Arthur B. Cohn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Crisman, Kevin James, 1959-

Contributor:

Cohn, Arthur B.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Team boats--United States.

Team boats.

Team boats--Canada.

Canada.

United States.

Physical Description:

xviii, 292 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Washington : Smithsonian Institution Press, [1998]

Summary:

North America's era of horse-powered boats began and ended in the shadow of the steamboat, but between 1814 and the early twentieth century, ferries propelled by teams of horses walking onboard treadmills provided inexpensive and reliable crossings on hundreds of rivers, lakes, and bays. Nearly forgotten today, horseboats were instrumental to travel and settlement on a rugged frontier that was not only interlaced with waterways but also suffering from a shortage of the human labor needed for other kinds of ferries.

Kevin J. Crisman and Arthur B. Cohn show how a confluence of geographic, technological, economic, and social conditions in the United States and Canada turned an ancient idea into a practical alternative to more expensive and dangerous steamboats. Reviewing evidence from travelers' memoirs, regional histories, pictorial records, and the only horseboat ever studied by archaeologists -- a wreck on the floor of Lake Champlain's Burlington Bay in Vermont -- the authors trace the evolution of horseboats from mechanisms that forced the animals to walk in tight circles to "endless floor" treadmills that resembled modern exercise machines. In a lively narrative interspersed with quotes from passenger accounts, the book charts the rise and demise of horseboat businesses on the Hudson River, as well as in New York City, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and St. Louis, Missouri. The authors also describe and record the underwater excavation of the Lake Champlain wreck.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-279) and index.

ISBN:

1560988436

OCLC:

37315298