Steamboats arrive on the Mississippi, cutting travel time and opening economy: Revisiting St. Louis' history

It is fitting that word reached town by horseback before the steamboat could. A single low-pressure engine strained to turn its paddlewheels. The crew sometimes had to use poles to help the craft through swift current. Laboring in the current only during daylight, the Pike needed 30 days to get here from Louisville, Kentucky.

But it was the first powered boat to reach St. Louis, a town that was a hard three-month paddle up the Mississippi River from New Orleans. Things were about to change in the shriek of a whistle.

Not much is known about the Pike besides sluggishness. It was modeled after Robert Fulton’s first bulky, deep-draft steamers in New York harbor. The wild Mississippi needed a different kind of boat.

The Washington, prototype for the classic river packet, arrived on March 1, 1819, after a one-month trip from New Orleans. It had a flat-bottomed hull of shallow draft, two levels of cabins and tall twin smokestacks. It was designed by Henry Shreve, who ran freight on human-powered keelboats before venturing into steam. Shreve often lived in St. Louis.

By 1830, more than 200 steamboats operated on western rivers, and the number kept growing. In one month in 1836, nearly 80 steamboats arrived in St. Louis. The run from Louisville was cut to 50 hours.

A decade later, the St. Louis riverfront was abuzz with hissing steamboats, stacks of freight and produce, and passengers snaking through the commotion. Fed by the water-borne boom, city population exploded. From 5,825 residents in 1830, it jumped to 77,680 by 1850. Five years later it recorded 3,450 steamboat arrivals, more than New Orleans.

Travel time was shattered. In 1844, the graceful sidewheeler J.M. White reached here from New Orleans in three days, 23 hours and nine minutes. The best boats offered fine accommodations and meals.

But more than statistics were exploded. Riverboats were built to be lightweight, their boilers and engines designed more for power than safety. From 1834 to 1870, at least 100 were destroyed on the rivers by boiler explosions, killing at least 4,000 passengers and crew.

Many others caught fire or had their bottoms ripped open by snags, which were dead tree trunks jammed into the river bottom. Few steamboats lasted five years, but they could pay for themselves in a few months.

The first boats, such as the Pike, landed here on the natural riverbank. By the 1830s, the landing was paved with limestone. The red granite levee that still exists was built in 1868-69.

The glory days were fleeting. St. Louis got its first railroads in the 1850s. The Civil War turned the Mississippi into a highway for Union gunboats. By 1870, when the steamboat Robert E. Lee beat the Natchez (and J.M. White’s record), the glamour was fading like smoke from their tall stacks. The Lee made New Orleans to St. Louis in three days, 18 hours and 14 minutes.

The river became a bulk freight route. It still is.

Henry Shreve takes on boat-killing snags

The most spectacular steamboat disasters were caused by boiler explosions. On April 27, 1865, the overloaded Sultana blew up near Memphis, killing as many as 1,900 people.

The Sultana, captained by J.C. Mason of St. Louis and bound for Jefferson Barracks, was jammed with Union soldiers just released from Southern prison camps at the end of the Civil War. It remains America's deadliest maritime accident.

There were plenty of ways to sink a steamboat. On the night of Jan. 3, 1844, the Shepherdess struck a snag — a dead tree lurking underwater — near Cahokia Bend, three miles south of the St. Louis landing. Water reached its main deck within two minutes as the crippled craft drifted in the icy Mississippi River. It sank to its top deck near Carondelet.

As many as 70 people perished that night, passenger lists back then being inexact things. A nearby steamboat rescued many of the survivors.

Snags were a peril of the turbulent western rivers. Enter Henry Shreve, steamboating pioneer.

Shreve designed a double-hulled boat with cranes and power saws that ground up snags and driftwood. His work in clearing the Red River made him namesake of Shreveport, La.

He retired to his farm in St. Louis in 1841 and died 10 years later. He is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery. Shreve Avenue is named after him.