Flatboat

A flatboat (or broadhorn) was a rectangular flat-bottomed boat with[1] square ends used to transport freight and passengers on inland waterways in the United States.Yoder's ancestors immigrated from Switzerland, where small barges called weidlings are still common today, having been used for hundreds of years to transport goods downriver.[6] Flatboats carried a variety of goods to New Orleans, including agricultural products like corn, wheat, potatoes, flour, hay, tobacco, cotton, and whiskey.Indiana native May Espey Warren recalled that as a young girl she saw a flatboat loaded with thousands of chickens headed down the Mississippi.[8] The invention of the steamboat greatly reduced the costs of flatboat journeys, and caused the trade to boom through the antebellum period.[9] The flatboat trade stayed vigorous and lucrative throughout the antebellum period, aided by steamboats (and later by railroads) in returning crews upriver.Steamboats and railroads simply carried freight much more quickly than flatboats, and could bring cargo upriver as well as downriver.
A flatboat passing a long cigar-shaped keelboat on the Ohio River .
Flatboat on an American river in the 1800s carrying barrels of whiskey and food
George Caleb Bingham , Jolly Flatboatmen in Port , (1857, St. Louis Art Museum )
An Alfred Waud engraving showing persons traveling down a river by flatboat in the late 1800s.
Flatboats among the river traffic at New Orleans, 1873
Modern replica of an old-time flatboat, located at Mud Island, Tennessee
keelboatOhio Riverflat-bottomed boatfreightwaterwaysUnited StatesGeorge Caleb BinghamSt. Louis Art MuseumAlfred WaudJacob YoderOld Redstone FortMonongahela RiverweidlingsMississippi RiverNew Orleanscurrentantebellum eraWar of 1812Old NorthwestUpper SouthCincinnatiMemphis, TennesseeBrownsville, PennsylvaniaDeep SouthsteamboatGaliotNarrow boatPünteRedstone Old FortMississippi River Squadron