Steamboat Montana and the Opening of the West: History, Excavation, and Architecture

Foreword

Foreword Water is unquestionably the most important natural feature on earth. By volume the world’s oceans compose 99 percent of the planet’s living space; in fact, the surface of the Pacific Ocean alone is larger than that of the total land bodies. Water is as vital to life as air. Indeed, to test whether the moon or other planets can sustain life, NASA looks for signs of water. The story of human development is inextricably linked to the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers that dominate the earth’s surface.The University Press of Florida’s series “New Perspectives on Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology” is devoted to exploring the significance of the earth’s water while providing lively and important books that cover the spectrum of maritime history and nautical archaeology broadly defined. The series includes works that focus on the role of canals, rivers, lakes, and oceans in history; on the economic, military,and political use of those waters; and upon the people,communities, and industries that support maritime endeavors. Limited by neither geography nor time, volumes in the series contribute to the overall understanding of maritime history and can be read with profit by both general readers and specialists. Steamboat activity on the extensive North American river systems is not a topic commonly associated with American maritime history or with nautical archaeology.Yet this account of the steamboat Montana,the largest mountain river steamer the Rocky Mountains and High Plains West ever witnessed, illustrates the importance of steamboats for the nineteenth century development of the United States. The vessel, which collided with a railroad bridge caisson on June 22,1884,and sunk off St.Charles,Missouri,had such a short life span that it left few historical clues for the record.The identification of the vessel in September 2002 provided the opportunity to combine history and xi xii · Foreword archaeology on a shipwreck of immense size, broadening our understanding about the construction and technology of western river steamboats. The study of this river-going leviathan goes far beyond history and a synthesis of what people recorded about the vessel. Corbin and Rodgers incorporate an archaeological analysis of the technology and tools that helped fabricate and improve the technical design of this vessel. Competing against railroads in the contest to carry passengers and transport cargo to support the westward expansion and settlement of the Great American West, steamboats played a key role that is often overlooked in studies that oversimplify the transition from roads to steamboats and canals to railroads, neglecting the overlapping and coexistence of the modes of transport. The future may have belonged to railroads, but riverboats did not cede hegemony without a contest. The Montana was one of the last great steamboats constructed, and the authors demonstrate that it represented the epitome of western river steamboats,displaying an advanced combination of technical design features. Stretching some 252 feet in length and 48 feet 8 inches in beam, the flat-bottomed craft had a proportionally greater width and beam to depth than its predecessors. By constructing floor timbers, decking, and bulkheads from lightweight pine,the Montana drew less than 20 inches when empty and only 4 feet when fully loaded. These qualities permitted the vessel to navigate the treacherously shallow, snag-laden waters of the Missouri River. Overseeing Montana’s construction in Pittsburgh during winter 1878 and 1879 for the exorbitant price of $48,000, owner Sanford Coulson defied convention by decorating the craft elaborately and outfitting it to accommodate approximately one hundred cabin passengers. In late June 1879 a tornado blew through Bismarck, North Dakota, ripping the great cabin from the vessel’s deck and doing approximately $12,000 in damages. Almost five years later to the day, Montana suddenly struck a bridge pier off St. Charles, Missouri, and struggled to reach the southern shore of the river. During the following few weeks, salvagers removed the cargo, machinery, and even some of the steamboat’s hull.Stripped and dismantled down to the waterline,Montana’s remaining timbers eventually sunk into the river mud, where they lay for a century until being uncovered early in the twenty-first century. Steamboats seemed ever present in the Antebellum Era, but their importance in the development of the post–Civil War West, the region west of the Mississippi River, remains a largely neglected topic. The construction and Foreword · xiii design of these vessels have virtually been...