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Updated: May 5, 2025
Another objection was that they were side-wheelers, and it would be a very easy thing for a cannon ball to knock an exposed side-wheel into a worthless condition.
Most of the main-stream packets were side-wheelers; but those of lighter draught, bound far up the Red, the Arkansas, the Yazoo, the Sunflower, or other tributary rivers, were provided with great stern wheels that made them look like exaggerated wheelbarrows.
These craft were built after the pattern of the Walk-in-the-Water side-wheelers with a steering wheel at the stern. No cabins or staterooms on deck were provided; and amid such freight as the thriving young towns provided were to be found the twenty or thirty cords of wood which the engines required as fuel.
Here, as in the Siberian rivers, the custom prevails of carrying freight in barges, which are towed by tugs. All the steamers I saw were side-wheelers. We changed horses on the south bank of the Volga, only twelve versts from Kazan. The right bank of the river presents an unbroken line of hills or bluffs, while the opposite one is generally low.
The pioneer Bremen-Havre line began its service on the first day of June 1847, with two steamers. These were the Washington and the Hermann, built in New York, strong and large, of 1640 tons and 1734 tons, respectively, side-wheelers, bark-rigged. Four years before, the original company, because of financial difficulties, had organized a separate corporation for the Havre service.
Following and rivaling American enterprise, side-wheelers, marvels of speed and luxury for the day, were put on the lakes in the thirties. Canals were built, the Lachine in 1821-25, the Welland around Niagara Falls in 1824-29, and the Rideau, as a military undertaking, in 1826-32, all in response to the stimulus given by De Witt Clinton, who had begun the "Erie Ditch" in 1817.
The finest and fastest boats were side-wheelers, but a large wheel at the stern, or two stern wheels, side by side, capable of independent action, were common modes of propulsion.
All side-wheelers were these pioneers, wooden of course, and but sorry specimens of marine architecture, but they opened the way for great things. For some years longer the rushing torrent of the Ste.
From this outlook we count over two hundred steamers in sight at the same time, all side-wheelers and clipper-built, drawn hither by the exigencies of the local trade growing out of the great annual fair.
The Austrian fleet had the benefit of some war experience against Denmark in the North Sea two years before, but it was far inferior and less up-to-date, its armored ships consisting of 7 screw frigates armed chiefly with smoothbores. Of the wooden ships, there were 7 screw frigates and corvettes, 9 gunboats and schooners, and 3 little side-wheelers a total of 19.
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