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The Steamboat Montana and the Opening of the West: History, Excavation and Architecture

What does nautical archaeology bring to the study of the past? In a telling analogy Corbin and Rodgers argue, ‘A shipwreck is unique, like a fingerprint’ (p.xv) but they go on to stress that it can also be the key to much larger issues. Built in 1879 near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Montana was one of three unusually large (1000 tons capacity) wooden stern-wheel steamers built for service on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers by ambitious shipping company owner Stanford Coulson. At this time the steady westward extension of the railroad system was changing the operation and economics of river steamers, but Coulson saw a gap in the market for massive ships, with high-profile accommodation, to complement the iron road. Damaged by a tornado soon after entering service Montana was repaired and ran on the Missouri for five years, only to be lost on 22 June 1884, after striking the pier of a railroad bridge at St Charles, Missouri. Despite extensive salvage operations at the time the wreck remains in situ, becoming more accessible when river levels fall, prompting a major investigation by East Carolina University and SCI Engineering Inc. for the State of Missouri. Excavation in the muddy river margins proved quicker and cheaper than working under water, enabling the team to examine enough of the ship, mostly the port-side stern quarter, to recover many aspects of a largely-unknown technology, one that was able to turn wood and simple steam engines into a highlysophisticated, specialised vessel purpose-built for the navigation of a vast, shallow, and chartless Missouri river (2341 miles long), one that dominated the opening of the west to European settlement. A more detailed map of the Missouri River system, locating the key staging posts between St Louis and Fort Benton, places like Yankton and Sioux City, would have been a useful addition for those less familiar with the region. This new transport system that moved people and produce was the ultimate cultural manifestation of the Western mindset, the impetus that took settlement across America. Although serious scholarship on these craft began in 1949, with Louis C. Hunter’s Steamboats on the Western Rivers, attempts to understand the construction and operation of these vessels have been largely dependent on archaeology, because few construction drawings were made, and the methods employed were entirely different from those used for Eastern river steamers, or ocean-going vessels. The combination of fieldwork, archival research and model-making has enabled the team to recover key aspects of that technology, from the method of hullconstruction which produced a 76.8-m-long, 14.8-mwide hull with a shallow draught of under 2 ft, that could carry almost 2000 tons of cargo with only 4 ft draught. Other contemporary steamers using the Missouri were rarely even half that size. Only the use of innovative carpentry and hogging-chains, long iron rods with threaded ends that literally tied the extremities of the ship together, made the western steamboat possible, and the Montana is among the giants of the genre. Other key features included the inherently-flexible hull, the spoonbill bow and the striking stern configuration. Deep skegs on each side of the ship helped maintain directional stability—the role of a keel on an oceangoing vessel—and also shaped the flow of water under the ship and improved the efficiency of the twin rudder and massive 5.5-m-deep stern paddlewheel. The three-dimensional model proved especially helpful in uncovering these examples of highlydeveloped engineering practice. The stern was also the location of the two horizontal high-pressure, noncondensing cylinders which drove the wheel. Aligned on top of the massive beams that also supported the wheel these simple engines were powered by very-highpressure steam generated in boilers that, with the rest of the design, depended on the peculiar conditions of a river where the rolling action of wind and waves was absent. Burning coal or wood, depending on the local supply, the power-plant was easy to build and maintain, but hugely wasteful. Less than 5% of the energy fed into the stokehole actually reached the stern wheel, but fuel was cheap, and reliability mattered more than economy. Generating 370 horsepower the engines pushed the ship along at 10 knots. Although inefficient, the stern wheel was the ideal system for use in shallow waters, protected from floating debris by the hull, and easily repaired without recourse to a dry dock. While engines and boilers have long gone, salvaged at the time, this excavation has revealed the skilful integration of the components that made up the propulsion, steering and directional fit of the ships. If the Western River steamboat was a uniquely American artefact, then the mountain steamers of the Reviews The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology (2009) 38.2: 426–451 doi: 10.1111/j.1095-9270.2009.00244.x