When Horses Walked on Water: Horse-Powered Ferries in Nineteenth-Century America

About this book

Kevin J. Crisman and Arthur B. Cohn show how a confluence of geographic technological economic and social conditions in the United States and Canada turned an ancient idea into a practical alternative to more expensive and dangerous steamboats. Reviewing evidence from travelers memoirs regional histories pictorial records and the only horseboat ever studied by archaeologists - a wreck on the floor of Lake Champlains Burlington Bay in Vermont - the authors trace the evolution of horseboats from early mechanisms that forced the animals to walk in tight circles to "endless floor" treadmills that resembled modern exercise machines. In a lively narrative interspersed with quotes from passenger accounts the book charts the rise and demise of horseboat businesses on the Hudson River as well as in New York City St. Louis and Halifax Nova Scotia. The authors also describe and record the underwater excavation of the Lake Champlain wreck revealing a wealth of detail about the construction and operation of a typical treadwheel horseboat of the 1830s and 1840s.