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Books > Sport & Leisure > Transport: general interest > Ships & shipping: general interest > General
On April 1, 1865, the steamboat Bertrand, a sternwheeler bound from
St. Louis to Fort Benton in Montana Territory, hit a snag in the
Missouri River and sank twenty miles north of Omaha. The crew
removed only a few items before the boat was silted over. For more
than a century thereafter, the Bertrand remained buried until it
was discovered by treasure hunters, its cargo largely intact. This
book categorizes some 300,000 artifacts recovered from the Bertrand
in 1968, and also describes the invention, manufacture, marketing,
distribution, and sale of these products and traces their route to
the frontier mining camps of Montana Territory. The ship and its
contents are a time capsule of mid-nineteenth-century America, rich
with information about the history of industry, technology, and
commerce in the Trans-Missouri West. In addition to enumerating the
items the boat was transporting to Montana, and offering a
photographic sample of the merchandise, Switzer places the Bertrand
itself in historical context, examining its intended use and the
technology of light-draft steam-driven river craft. His account of
steamboat commerce provides multiple insights into the industrial
revolution in the East, the nature and importance of Missouri River
commerce in the mid-1800s, and the decline in this trade after the
Civil War. Switzer also introduces the people associated with the
Bertrand. He has unearthed biographical details illuminating the
private and social lives of the officers, crew members, and
passengers, as well as the consignees to whom the cargo was being
shipped. He offers insight into not only the passengers' reasons
for traveling to the frontier mining camps of Montana Territory,
but also the careers of some of the entrepreneurs and political
movers and shakers of the Upper Missouri in the 1860s. This unique
reference for historians of commerce in the American West will also
fascinate anyone interested in the technology and history of
riverine transport.
In the early morning hours of April 15, 1912 the R.M.S. Titanic
slipped below the waters of the Atlantic becoming one of the
greatest maritime disasters of the 20th century. 68 years later, a
young boy would learn about the lost liner while spending the day
with his grandfather. This is the story of that day and the
collection of memorabilia which would be amassed over the years,
the unbreakable bond between a grandfather and grandson joined
together by the interest in the unsinkable ship.
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