
Steamboats sometimes use the prefix designation SS, S.S. 1860-1865 Dutch river steam-tugboat Mascotte IIĪ steamboat is a boat that is propelled primarily by steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels. Lookout, transport steamer on the Tennessee River, c. Most steamboats were eventually retired, except for a few elegant “showboats” that today serve as tourist attractions.Smaller than a steamship boat in which the primary method of marine propulsion is steam power By 1900, railroads had long since surpassed steamboats as the dominant form of commercial transport in the United States. Millions of Europeans immigrated to the United States aboard steamships. Steamships became the predominant vehicles for transatlantic cargo shipping as well as passenger travel. The Great Western, one of the earliest oceangoing steam-powered ships, was large enough to accommodate more than 200 passengers. In the later years of the 19th century, larger steam-powered ships were commonly used to cross the Atlantic Ocean. This meant that steamboats had a short life span of just four to five years on average, making them less cost-effective than other forms of transportation. Sometimes debris and obstacles-logs or boulders-in the river caused the boats to sink. The boilers used to create steam often exploded when they built up too much pressure.

Steamboats were a fairly dangerous form of transportation, due to their construction and the nature of how they worked. For this reason, they were enormously important in the growth and consolidation of the U.S. Compared to other types of craft used at the time, such as flatboats, keelboats, and barges, steamboats greatly reduced both the time and expense of shipping goods to distant markets. Packet boats carried human passengers as well as commercial cargo, such as bales of cotton from southern plantations. The most common type on southern rivers was the packet boat. There were numerous kinds of steamboats, which had different functions. Following this introduction, steamboat traffic grew steadily on the Mississippi River and other river systems in the inland United States. Fulton then began making this round trip on a regular basis for paying customers. Fulton’s craft made its first voyage in August of 1807, sailing up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany, New York, at an impressive speed of eight kilometers (five miles) per hour. It was built by Robert Fulton with the assistance of Robert R. The first truly successful design appeared two decades later.

In 1787, John Fitch demonstrated a working model of the steamboat concept on the Delaware River.

There was a need for more efficient river transportation, since it took a great deal of muscle power to move a craft against the current. The United States was expanding inland from the Atlantic coast at the time. Several Americans made efforts to apply this technology to maritime travel. These boats made use of the steam engine invented by the Englishman Thomas Newcomen in the early 18th century and later improved by James Watt of Scotland. However, the term most commonly describes the kind of craft propelled by the turning of steam-driven paddle wheels and often found on rivers in the United States in the 19th century. Any seagoing vessel drawing energy from a steam-powered engine can be called a steamboat.
