Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Steamboat
In an annual ritual, Naval Academy plebes must work together to climb a greased obelisk that honors the captain of the SS Central America.
Editor's Note: Gary Kinder is author of the New York Times bestseller Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea: The History and Discovery of the World’s Richest Shipwreck. He wrote the introduction for a book recently published by the Naval Institute Press,
A determined collector brings a steamboat to her museum of Americana—by rail.
She lived only six years, but it was a history-packed career
Old rivermen used to talk of the first time the steamboat Yellow Stone reached the fur-trading posts on the upper Missouri.
The 1,200-Mile Race Between the Natchez and the Robert E. Lee
The first days of July, 1870, found busy river ports along the Mississippi stewing in an unprecedented atmosphere of oppressive, sticky heat and blazing excitement all the way from St. Louis to New Orleans.
Her life preservers weighted with scrap-iron, her lifeboats mere decoration, the excursion steamer General Slocum left New York’s Third Street pier at 9:30 on the morning of June 15,1904, with thirteen-hundred picknickers bound for a Long Island beach. Less than an hour later, she was afire.
June in Middle Village—a time of flowers. Along block after block in that quiet section of Queens in New York, front yards glow with their colors. Roses by the thousands, the tens of thousands.
A Portfolio of Paintings
Americans have always loved steam. We cannot claim the steam engine as our invention, but we did adopt it at once and brought it to the peak of its development.
The wonderfully evocative photograph spread across the two preceding pages has a great deal to say, in the way that pictures do, about America, its heritage, and the importance of historic preservation.
Self-taught, the Bard brothers specialized in the painting of gleaming, accurate little steamboats
Teetotaling twin brothers built the most wonderful car of their era, and its day of glory may not be over yet
Featured Authors
