The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 gave a marked impulse to inland
shipbuilding; but the embargo of 1807, which prohibited foreign
trade, following so soon, killed the shipyards, which, for a few
years, had been so busy
The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 gave a marked impulse to inland
shipbuilding; but the embargo of 1807, which prohibited foreign
trade, following so soon, killed the shipyards, which, for a few
years, had been so busy. The great new industry of the Ohio
Valley was ruined. By this time the successful voyage of Fulton”s
steamboat, the Clermont, between New York and Albany, had
demonstrated the possibilities of steam navigation. Not a few men
saw in the novel craft the beginning of a new era in Western
river traffic; but many doubted whether it was possible to
construct a vessel powerful enough to make its way upstream
against such sweeping currents as those of the Mississippi and
the Ohio. Surely no one for a moment dreamed that in hardly more
than a generation the Western rivers would carry a tonnage larger
than that of the cities of the Atlantic seaboard combined and
larger than that of Great Britain!
