ietta,
Cincinnati, Louisville, and Fort Massac were made ports of entry.

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!

As early as 1805, two years before the trip of the Clermont, Captain
Keever built a "steamboat" on the Ohio, and sent her down to New Orleans
where her engine was to be installed. But it was not until 1811 that the
Orleans, the first steamboat to ply the Western streams, was built at
Pittsburgh, from which point she sailed for New Orleans in October
of that year. The Comet and Vesuvius quickly followed, but all three
entered the New Orleans-Natchez trade on the lower river and were never
seen again at the headwaters. As yet the swift currents and flood tides
of the great river had not been mastered. It is true that in 1815 the
Enterprise had made two trips between New Orleans and Louisville, but
this was in time of high water, when counter currents and backwaters had
assisted her feeble engine. In 1816, however, Henry Shreve conceived
the idea of raising the engine out of the hold and constructing an
additional deck. The Washington, the first doubledecker, was the result.
The next year this steamboat made the round trip from Louisville to New
Orleans and back in forty-one days. The doubters were now convinced.

For a little while the quaint and original riverman held on in the new
age, only to disappear entirely when the colored roustabout became the
deckhand of post-bellum days. The riverman as a type was unknown except
on the larger rivers in the earlier years of water traffic. What
an experience it would be today to rouse one of those remarkable