Paddle steamer
A paddle steamer is a steamship or steamboat powered by a steam engine driving paddle wheels to propel the craft through the water. Earlier ships that are driven by a paddle wheel under manual power are known as paddle wheelers.
File:Blockade-runner2 ADvance.jpg|thumb|, a Greenock-built American Civil War blockade-running sidewheel steamer
In the early 19th century, paddle wheels were the predominant way of propulsion for steam-powered boats. In the late 19th century, paddle propulsion was largely superseded by the screw propeller and other marine propulsion systems that have a higher efficiency, especially in rough or open water.
Paddle wheels continue to be used by some ships that operate as excursion boats, floating restaurants, and casinos; these include replica vessels, and are often diesel powered.
Small pedal-powered paddle boats are also found, typically as novelty attractions.
Paddle wheels
The paddle wheel is a large steel framework wheel. The outer edge of the wheel is fitted with numerous, regularly spaced paddle blades. The bottom quarter or so of the wheel travels under water. An engine rotates the paddle wheel in the water to produce thrust, forward or backward as required. More advanced paddle-wheel designs feature "feathering" methods that keep each paddle blade closer to vertical while in the water to increase efficiency. The upper part of a paddle wheel is normally enclosed in a paddlebox to minimise splashing.Types of paddle steamers
The three types of paddle wheel steamer are sidewheel, with one paddlewheel on each side; sternwheel, with a single paddlewheel at the stern; and inboard, with the paddlewheel mounted in a recess amidships.Sidewheel
The earliest were powered by sidewheels, by far the dominant mode of marine steam propulsion, both for steamships and steamboats until the increasing adoption of screw propulsion from the 1850s. Though the sidewheels and enclosing sponsons make them wider than sternwheelers, sidewheelers may be more maneuverable, since some can move the paddles at different speeds, and even in opposite directions. This extra maneuverability makes sidewheelers popular on the narrower, winding rivers of the Murray–Darling system in Australia, where a number still operate.European sidewheelers, such as, connect the wheels with solid drive shafts that limit maneuverability and give the craft a wide turning radius. Some were built with paddle clutches that disengage one or both paddles so they can turn independently. However, wisdom gained from early experience with sidewheelers deemed that they be operated with clutches out, or as solid-shaft vessels. Crews noticed that as ships approached the dock, passengers moved to the side of the ship ready to disembark. The shift in weight, added to independent movements of the paddles, could lead to imbalance and potential capsizing. Paddle tugs were frequently operated with clutches in, as the lack of passengers aboard meant that independent paddle movement could be used safely and the added maneuverability exploited to the full.
Most sidewheelers used two wheels, but some ships, such as the SS Bessemer, had multiple wheels behind each other.
Sternwheel
Although the first sternwheel powered ships were invented in Europe, they saw the most service in North America, especially on the Mississippi River. was built at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, in 1814 as an improvement over the less efficient sidewheeler. The second sternwheeler built, Washington of 1816, had two decks and served as the prototype for all subsequent steamboats of the Mississippi.Inboard paddlewheel
Recessed or inboard paddlewheel boats were designed to ply narrow and snag-infested backwaters. By recessing the wheel within the hull it was protected somewhat from damage. It was enclosed and could be spun at a high speed to provide acute maneuverability. Most were built with inclined steam cylinders mounted on both sides of the paddleshaft and timed 90 degrees apart like a locomotive, making them instantly reversing.Feathering paddle wheel
A simple paddle wheel has fixed paddles around its periphery, which are inefficient except when perpendicular to the water. To avoid loss of power when angled paddles enter and leave the water surface, linkages connected to a fixed eccentric wheel placed slightly forward of the main wheel centre align them vertically while under water.History
Western world
The use of a paddle wheel in navigation appears for the first time in the mechanical treatise of the Roman engineer Vitruvius, where he describes multigeared paddle wheels working as a ship odometer. The first mention of paddle wheels as a means of propulsion comes from the fourth– or fifth-century military treatise De Rebus Bellicis, where the anonymous Roman author describes an ox-driven paddle-wheel warship:Italian physician Guido da Vigevano, planning for a new Crusade, made illustrations for a paddle boat that was propelled by manually turned compound cranks.
One of the drawings of the Anonymous Author of the Hussite Wars shows a boat with a pair of paddlewheels at each end turned by men operating compound cranks. The concept was improved by the Italian Roberto Valturio in 1463, who devised a boat with five sets, where the parallel cranks are all joined to a single power source by one connecting rod, an idea adopted by his compatriot Francesco di Giorgio.
In 1539, Spanish engineer Blasco de Garay received the support of Charles V to build ships equipped with manually-powered side paddle wheels. From 1539 to 1543, Garay built and launched five ships, the most famous being the modified Portuguese carrack La Trinidad, which surpassed a nearby galley in speed and maneuverability on June 17, 1543, in the harbor of Barcelona. The project, however, was discontinued. 19th century writer Tomás González claimed to have found proof that at least some of these vessels were steam-powered, but this theory was discredited by the Spanish authorities. It has been proposed that González mistook a steam-powered desalinator created by Garay for a steam boiler.
In 1705, Papin constructed a ship powered by hand-cranked paddles. An apocryphal story originating in 1851 by Louis Figuire held that this ship was steam-powered rather than hand-powered and that it was therefore the first steam-powered vehicle of any kind. The myth was refuted as early as 1880 by, though still it finds credulous expression in some contemporary scholarly work.
In 1787, Scottish banker and inventor Patrick Miller of Dalswinton designed a double-hulled boat that was propelled on the Firth of Forth by men working a capstan that drove paddles on each side.
One of the first functioning steamships, Palmipède, which was also the first paddle steamer, was built in France in 1774 by Marquis Claude de Jouffroy and his colleagues. The steamer with rotating paddles sailed on the Doubs River in June and July 1776. In 1783, a new paddle steamer by de Jouffroy,, successfully steamed up the river Saône for 15 minutes before the engine failed. Bureaucracy and the French Revolution thwarted further progress by de Jouffroy.
The next successful attempt at a paddle-driven steam ship was by Scottish engineer William Symington, who suggested steam power to Patrick Miller of Dalswinton. Experimental boats built in 1788 and 1789 worked successfully on Lochmaben Loch. In 1802, Symington built a barge-hauler,, for the Forth and Clyde Canal Company. It successfully hauled two 70-ton barges almost in 6 hours against a strong headwind on test in 1802. Enthusiasm was high, but some directors of the company were concerned about the banks of the canal being damaged by the wash from a powered vessel, and no more were ordered.
While Charlotte Dundas was the first commercial paddle steamer and steamboat, the first commercial success was possibly Robert Fulton's Clermont in New York, which went into commercial service in 1807 between New York City and Albany. Many other paddle-equipped river boats followed all around the world; the first in Europe being designed by Henry Bell which started a scheduled passenger service on the River Clyde in 1812.
In 1812, the first U.S. Mississippi River paddle steamer began operating out of New Orleans. By 1814, Captain Henry Shreve, an inventor and namesake of Shreveport, Louisiana, had developed a "steamboat" suitable for local conditions. The term stuck for vessels operating on the Mississippi River system, and landings in New Orleans went from 21 in 1814 to 191 in 1819, and over 1,200 in 1833.
The first stern-wheeler was designed by Gerhard Moritz Roentgen from Rotterdam, and used between Antwerp and Ghent in 1827.
Team boats, large paddle boats driven by horses or mules, were used for ferries the United States from the 1820s–1850s, as they were economical and did not incur licensing costs imposed by the steam navigation monopoly. The mechanism comprised either a capstan or a treadmill, transferring the drive through gearing. In the 1850s, they were replaced by steamboats.
After the American Civil War, as the expanding railroads took many passengers, the traffic became primarily bulk cargoes. The largest, and one of the last, paddle steamers on the Mississippi was the sternwheeler Sprague. Built in 1901, she pushed coal and petroleum until 1948.
In Europe from the 1820s, paddle steamers were used to take tourists from the rapidly expanding industrial cities on river cruises, or to the newly established seaside resorts, where pleasure piers were built to allow passengers to disembark regardless of the state of the tide. Later, these paddle steamers were fitted with luxurious saloons in an effort to compete with the facilities available on the railways. Notable examples are the Thames steamers which took passengers from London to Southend-on-Sea and Margate, Clyde steamers that connected Glasgow with the resort of Rothsay and the Köln-Düsseldorfer cruise steamers on the River Rhine. Paddle steamer services continued into the mid-20th century, when ownership of motor cars finally made them obsolete except for a few heritage examples.