Flatboat
A flatboat is a rectangular flat-bottomed boat with [notes 1][1] square ends used to transport freight and passengers on inland waterways. The flatboat could be any size, but essentially it is large, sturdy tub with a hull.
A flatboat is almost always a one-way vessel, and is usually dismantled for lumber when it reaches its downstream destination.[notes 2]
Flatboat Media
George Caleb Bingham, Jolly Flatboatmen in Port, (1857, St. Louis Art Museum)
An Alfred Waud engraving showing persons traveling down a river by flatboat in the late 1800s.
Flatboats among the river traffic at New Orleans, 1873
References
- ↑ NOTE: "[bracketed]" wordings in the quote below are notes added to clarify
- There were a variety of specialized flatboats [eventually developed] to ship cargo to world markets. Some [later, meaning c. 1815–20, after steam boats became common] flatboats were built with raked bows to be used on return trips alongside steamboats, serving as 'fuel flats', first hauling wood, then coal. These flatboats with raked bows evolved into coal boats. (Later,) Coal boats were tied together in fleets to be pushed by steamboats. Those coal boats evolved into the steel barges of today (plying the rivers servicing the coal fields of the Ohio River watershed).
- —Nancy Jordan Blackmore, Janes Saddlebag
- ↑ Nancy Jordan Blackmore. Ohio River Info and History (2009)Big Bone Lick Historical Society, Janes Saddlebag. Retrieved 2010-11-30.
- ↑ Nancy Jordan Blackmore. Flatboat History (2009)Big Bone Lick Historical Society, Janes Saddlebag.