Bass takes the reader on the paddle steamer’s journey through Florida’s waterways and history. Florida’s chronicle of a once flourishing industry when steamboats were king.
Excerpt
When Robert Fulton installed a steam engine in the side wheel boat North River Steamboat in 1807, the world changed forever.
With this innovation, rivers-the natural transportation arteries of the South-were opened as routes to transport travelers and goods to previously inaccessible areas. Today, the steamboat triggers romantic images of adventure on the Mississippi from Mark Twain. But the opening of the major rivers in Florida to steamboat navigation was vital to the state’s development.
This fascinating history brings together the author’s unique experiences traveling Florida’s steamboat routes with the historical record of the innovations and explorations that led to the steamboats reign as the preferred mode of transport before the dawn of the twentieth century.
Long before the arrival of the railroads, steamboats opened the interior of Florida to tourists and trade. As early as 1829, steamboats began to ply Florida’s rivers and lakes, traveling upstream with relative ease. These were colorful, raucous, outrageous, sometimes dangerous vehicles that brought a steady stream of goods and supplies, as well as people.
In 1870, Robert E. Lee, perhaps the most famous southerner at the time, toured Florida by steamboat. Ten years later his erstwhile enemy, Ulysses S. Grant, followed his footsteps. As more and more visitors flowed in Florida’s interior from bustling port cities such as Jacksonville, agricultural towns such as Palatka became tourist destinations. Harriet Beecher Stowe was known to wave to passing boats from the front porch of her winter home along the St. Johns River.
Bob Bass treats the waterways themselves as characters on par with those who populated steamboat life in Florida. The Kissimmee,St Johns,Ocklawaha,Suwannee,Apalachicola, and Caloosahatchee Rivers plus Lake Okeechobee and FT. Meyers are explored in the context of this history. Through historical accounts and his own family’s personal experiences, Bass sheds new light on Florida’s steamboat saga.
Copyright 2008 Bob Bass. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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