"Sternwheelers & Sidewheelers: The Romance of Steamdriven Paddleboats in Canada" (used book)

Sternwheelers & Sidewheelers: The Romance of Steamdriven Paddleboats in Canada

by Dr. Peter Charlebois

About the Book

Used Book. Paperback. Good Condition.

-- From the back

The first book to deal comprehensively with those thrashing, puffing monsters of yesteryear. The smell of smoke, the slapping of the paddles on the water, the shrilling of the steam whistle as the boat comes in to dock, in towns large and small, all across Canada.

The steam engines in paddlewheel boats developed along two lines: the horizontally inclined engine drove the sternwheeler (which had the paddle wheel at the back) and the vertical walking-beam engine drove the sidewheelers. These boats were designed to operate without difficulty in 18 to 24 inches of water. They were the only large craft which could be used commercially in shallow or narrow rivers or poor harbours.

Paddlewheelers range from locally built crude boats, such as those on the Athabaska, to the opulent pleasure palaces that plied the St. Laawrence and the Great Lakes.

Gabriel Dumont’s barn boards were used to arm the Northcote which fought and lost Canada’s first naval battle in the middle of the prairies in the Uprising of 1885. The Beaver, belonging to the Hudson’s Bay Company, hugged the BC coast, picking up furs from the native peoples. The Wabuno sank without a trace in Georgian Bay after a bride dreamed of her husband’s death by drowning.

A book to delight the “boat buff” and the general reader, Sternwheelers & sidewheelers covers Canada from the Atlantic provinces to BC, the Yukon and the N.W.T.