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Updated: May 8, 2025
At seven bells the first gong rang; at eight there was breakfast, for such as were not too seasick to eat it. After that all the well people walked arm-in-arm up and down the long promenade deck, enjoying the fine summer mornings, and the seasick ones crawled out and propped themselves up in the lee of the paddle-boxes and ate their dismal tea and toast, and looked wretched.
Including the paddle-boxes the breadth was 44 feet; and, as each box was 8 feet broad, there were 28 feet clear between them. The depth of hold was 17 feet 9 inches, the draught 14 feet. The rig was that of a three-masted topsail schooner. There were fifty passenger berths and a good saloon. The three trips between Quebec and Halifax in 1831 were most successful.
The passengers who did not dance, including Cytherea and Springrove, lapsed into silence, leaning against the paddle-boxes, or standing aloof noticing the trembling of the deck to the steps of the dance watching the waves from the paddles as they slid thinly and easily under each other's edges.
She made signals continually by flashing different coloured lights rapidly from the paddle-boxes, the meaning of which I tried my best to make out, so that I might be able to avail myself of the knowledge of the blockade signals at some future time; but I could not manage to make head or tail of them. Suddenly the firing ceased, and our pioneer turned out to sea again.
A large, handsome steamer was the "Empire State," of the line which ran between Newport and New York. She was painted white, had walking-beam engines, and ornamented paddle-boxes, and had been known to run nearly twenty knots in an hour. On the evening of the twenty-seventh of May, in the year of which we write, she left her Newport dock as usual, with a full list of passengers.
Then you know we shall go down to the Nore, and back, and have a regular capital cold dinner laid out in the cabin before we start, so that everything may be ready without any confusion; and we shall have the lunch laid out, on deck, in those little tea-garden-looking concerns by the paddle-boxes—I don’t know what you call ’em.
She is long and sharp and trim and pretty; she has two tall, fancy-topped chimneys, with a gilded device of some kind swung between them; a fanciful pilot-house, a glass and 'gingerbread', perched on top of the 'texas' deck behind them; the paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture or with gilded rays above the boat's name; the boiler deck, the hurricane deck, and the texas deck are fenced and ornamented with clean white railings; there is a flag gallantly flying from the jack-staff; the furnace doors are open and the fires glaring bravely; the upper decks are black with passengers; the captain stands by the big bell, calm, imposing, the envy of all; great volumes of the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys a husbanded grandeur created with a bit of pitch pine just before arriving at a town; the crew are grouped on the forecastle; the broad stage is run far out over the port bow, and an envied deckhand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a coil of rope in his hand; the pent steam is screaming through the gauge-cocks, the captain lifts his hand, a bell rings, the wheels stop; then they turn back, churning the water to foam, and the steamer is at rest.
The steamer was unworthy of the noble river, and if the palatial boats of the Hudson could be run upon its waters, they would lend a new charm to the scenery. The Rhine steamers are small, compared with the Hudson river boats, and far from being elegant. They have no saloon on deck, though a couple of small apartments, abaft the paddle-boxes, are pretentiously called "pavilions."
The boat would plunge into a sea and bury to her paddle-boxes, then pitch upward as if she were going to jump bodily out of water, and slap down into it again, while her guards would spring and quiver like card-board. The engine began to complain, as they will when a boat is laboring heavily. You could hear it take, as it were, long breaths, and then stop for a second altogether.
First there is the dining-saloon, with cabins all round it; above is the drawing-room, with more cabins; then above that is the hurricane deck, with numerous deck-houses for the captain and officers; and then, towering above all, there is the large beam-engine right between the paddle-boxes.
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