history of the uss eastport - Vicksburg District - U.S. Army

History and Archaeology of Two Civil War Steamboats
deck and had no elaborate figurehead at the bow.
Frederick Way (1994:137) reports that the steamer
had five boilers and was fitted with two high-pressure
engines, each with a cylinder measuring 26 inches
in diameter and with a 9-ft stroke. The Eastport
would have resembled a typical, mid-nineteenth century
western river sidewheeler, such as the Buckeye State
shown in Figure 2-2. Built at Shausetown, Pennsylvania,
in 1850, the Buckeye State, at 260 ft long,
was slightly longer than the Eastport, but the two
boats would have resembled one another in many
characteristics (Way 1994:63). General construction
techniques for steamboats followed well-established
patterns and during the late antebellum period
there was considerable uniformity in hull design
and construction procedures. Other than size,
variation was usually expressed in the superstructure
rather than the hull, and standardized hull designs
for western river steamers had developed by
1840. These hulls were flat-bottomed, shallow, long
and narrow, specifically adapted to the shallow and
often swift rivers found in the west. The bow and
stern had varying degrees of sheer, while the sides
were perpendicular to the bottom. Inside the hull
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was a single or multiple series of longitudinal arches
or braces. These were occasionally planked as bulkheads,
extending almost the entire length of the vessel
to provide strength to the long and relatively limber
hull. Initially, steamboat hulls were built with heavy
timbers, but as speed and shallow draft became more
important so did lightness, and the timbers used decreased
in size (Hunter 1949). By mid-century, standard
hull construction used either 3-x-6-in or 4-x-5-in timbers
with 2-in-thick oak hull planking. White oak, which
grew in abundance in the Ohio River Valley region,
was the standard timber and planking material for
steamboat hulls. Lighter materials, such as pine, cedar,
or poplar, were used for decking, superstructure, and
cabin construction. Walls of the upper decks were
often made of thin, 0.25- or 0.5-in-thick boards in
an effort to reduce weight (Hunter 1949:80-82).
The largest deck on a steamboat was the main
deck and this is the deck referenced in the statement
about “one deck” in the Eastport’s 1852 enrollment
(Figure 2-3). This indication that the Eastport had
only a single deck is somewhat misleading, because
it was a reference to decks attached directly to the
Figure 2-2. Plan and side views of the sidewheeler Buckeye State, built in 1850 (source: Sawyer 1978:Figure
2).