Lloyd's Steamboat Directory: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 05:08, 30 September 2023
 Lloyd's Steamboat Directory cover featuring an illustration of the explosion of the Moselle (digital.library.pitt.edu) | |
| Publisher | John T. Lloyd & Co. |
|---|---|
Publication date | 1856 |
| LC Class | F353 .L80 |
| Internet Archive HathiTrust, Library of Congress, University of Michigan, University of Pittsburgh, Yale University | |
Lloyd's Steamboat Directory, and Disasters on the Western Waters is a book published in Cincinnati in 1856 listing steamboat businesses in the United States along with an illustrated catalog of American maritime disasters. It covers "mainly river material, with a substantial scattering of lake items."[1]
History
John T. Lloyd heavily advertised the book in 1855, promising "The STEAMBOAT DIRECTORY will contain a complete list and description of all the Steamboats now afloat in the Western and Southern waters. The length, model, speed, power and tonnage of each boat, where and by whom built, the name of the boat, with the trade she is in...The RIVER DIRECTORY will contain a list and description of all the steamboat disasters that have occurred on the Western and Southern waters, beautifully illustrated, with a list of all those who have perished by their burning, sinking and exploding, op the Western and Southern waters. The Directory will contain maps of the Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, White, Red, Ouachita, Yazoo and other rivers, with the towns and cities, laid down, with correct distances."[2]
After receiving a copy, the Journal and Messenger, of Macon, Georgia, editorialized:[3]
Horrible Sacrifice of Life on Western Waters in Forty-Four Years.—From Lloyd's forthcoming Steamboat Directory we learn that since the application of steam on the Western waters there have been thirty-nine thousand six hundred and seventy-two lives lost by steamboat disasters, three hundred and eighty one boats and cargoes lost, and seventy boats seriously injured amounting in the aggregate to the enormous sum of sixty-seven millions of dollars. It is to be hoped that this forthcoming work will have the effect of arresting the attention of the Government to the importance of western interests so far as our great rivers and lakes are concerned.[3]
Similarly, in 1858 the National Intelligencer newspaper used statistics from Lloyd's Steamboat Directory to support their argument for Congressional action to regulate the steamboat industry.[4]
J. T. Lloyd also published Lloyd's American Railroad Weekly and early maps of the America Civil War.[5] He was a "prolific" publisher during the war, selling material both original and appropriated.[6] In 1861 he advertised that both Millard Fillmore and the library of the U.S. Department of State had ordered copies of his maps.[7] In 1863 his advertisements included a letter from U.S. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles authoring purchase of Lloyd's map of Mississippi for the Mississippi Squadron under Rear Admiral Charles H. Davis.[8]
The unabridged title of the steamboat book is Lloyd's steamboat directory, and disasters on the western waters: containing the history of the first application of steam, as a motive power; the lives of John Fitch and Robert Fulton ... history of the early steamboat navigation on western waters, full accounts of all the steamboat disaster, a complete list of steamboats and all other vessels now afloat on the western rivers and lakes, maps of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, lists of plantations on the Mississippi River, one hundred engravings and forty six maps.
Influence
Lloyd's Steamboat Directory remains an object of fascination for its "morbid litany of ships snagged, exploded, burned, and sunk."[9] In 1918 it was described as "an interesting but in many particulars an unreliable book".[10] A 21st-century scholar concurs, writing that Lloyd's Steamboat Directory "gives more room for doubt than it does for study, dwelling as it does on the horrific and lurid catastrophes before 1856".[11] Despite its flaws, the text and illustrations of Lloyd's Steamboat Directory have often been used by many historians as starting point for studies of steamboats of antebellum America.[12][13][14][15][16][17]
The "disasters on the western waters" portion of the book is illustrated with woodcut etchings that "reveal a repetitive motif when looked at in a larger format: bodies thrown in the air, depicted in flight at the moment of explosion."[18] The illustrations of boiler explosions and snag-wrecked steamboats in Lloyd's Steamboat Directory should be presumed to be fanciful representations.[19] For example, the illustration of the Louisiana (which exploded catastrophically while pulling back from the dock in New Orleans in 1849) is considered "obsolete" and at odds with the historical record: "A contemporary description of the vessel exists and does not agree in any particular with this illustration. According to the contemporary description, the New Orleans was not a stern wheeler and had no deckhouse."[19] A review of "the Mississippi River as artistic subject" found some merit in the Steamboat Directory illustrations as artwork in that they were "an example of the crude but vivid illustration of the river...The glory of the book, however, is the series of cuts picturing explosions, sinkings, capsizings and burnings of steamships. Explosions are most satisfactory and complete; but undoubtedly the lugubrious tone of all of them rightly interprets the horror of disaster."[20]
Fugitive-slave narratives and Lloyd's Steamboat Directory were "some of [19th-century America] most graphically violent literature."[14] Historian Walter Johnson describes the table of contents of Lloyd's Steamboat Directory as a "nightmare poem of alphabetized Americana: America, explosion of; America South, burning of; Anglo Norman, explosion of; Atlantic and Ogdensburg, collision of..."[14]
Additional images
-
Index (page 1 of 2) to Lloyd's steamboat directory, and disasters on the western waters -
Index (page 2 of 2), and list of illustrations -
View of the port of New Orleans in the 1850s, etching signed Scattergood
_to_Lloyd%27s_steamboat_directory,_and_disasters_on_the_western_waters_01.jpg)
_and_List_of_Illustrations_-_Lloyd%27s_steamboat_directory,_and_disasters_on_the_western_waters_02.jpg)
References
- ^ Steamboat Bill of Facts. Steamboat Historical Society of America. 1955. p. 60.
- ^ "100,000 Copies!!!". The Opelousas Patriot. August 11, 1855. p. 1. Retrieved 2023-09-30.
- ^ a b "Horrible Sacrifice of Life". Georgia Journal and Messenger. October 10, 1855. p. 4. Retrieved 2023-09-30.
- ^ "Protection of Steamboat Passengers". Daily Nashville Patriot. October 11, 1858. p. 2. Retrieved 2023-09-30.
- ^ Richard W. Stephenson, Civil War Maps. "Commercial Mapping | History of Mapping the Civil War | Articles and Essays | Search | Civil War Maps | Digital Collections | Library of Congress". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2023-09-30.
- ^ "Missouri & Virginia - Places in History (Library of Congress)". www.loc.gov. Retrieved 2023-09-30.
- ^ "Agents can make $5 per day". The Courier-Journal. December 3, 1861. p. 2. Retrieved 2023-09-30.
- ^ "Highly important to the world". The Courier-Journal. April 28, 1863. p. 1. Retrieved 2023-09-30.
- ^ Eigen, Edward (2004). "Lincoln's Log, or A Tree is Best Measured When it Is Down". Log (2): 39–47. ISSN 1547-4690.
- ^ Notes and Queries - The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine - volume 1 - issue 2 - Pittsburgh Penn. Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. April 1918. p. 111.
- ^ Kane, Adam I. (2004). The Western River Steamboat. Texas A&M University Press. pp. XIII. ISBN 978-1-58544-322-2.
- ^ Leslie, Frank (1888). Early Navigation of the Ohio by Mary M. Meline - Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly - pages 407–414. Frank Leslie Publishing House.
- ^ Quick, Herbert; Quick, Edward (1926). Mississippi Steamboatin': A History of Steamboating on the Mississippi and Its Tributaries. H. Holt.
- ^ a b c Johnson, Walter (2013). River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. pp. 107, 111. ISBN 9780674074880. LCCN 2012030065. OCLC 827947225. OL 26179618M.
- ^ Bausman, Joseph Henderson (1904). History of Beaver County, Pennsylvania: And Its Centennial Celebration. Knickerbocker Press.
- ^ Hunter, Louis C. (April 30, 2012). Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History. Courier Corporation. p. 282. ISBN 978-0-486-15778-8.
- ^ Hunter, Louis C. (1943-11). "The Invention of the Western Steamboat". The Journal of Economic History. 3 (2): 201–220. doi:10.1017/S002205070008356X. ISSN 0022-0507.
{{cite journal}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Onion, Rebecca (March 20, 2015). "Bloody Accounts of Steamboat Disasters, Sold to Tourists on the 19th-Century Mississippi". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 2023-09-29.
- ^ a b Chapelle, Howard I.; Bathe, Greville (Autumn 1964). "The Rise and Decline of the Paddle-Wheel". Technology and Culture. 5 (4): 611. doi:10.2307/3101231.
- ^ Illinois State Historical Society (1937). Lucius W. Elder - The Mississippi River as Artistic Subject - Papers in Illinois history and transactions for the year 1937. The Illinois State Library. Springfield, Ill. : The Society. p. 40.
