ABSTRACT
Living conditions aboard early American steamers varied significantly depending on geographic location and the organization of the particular steamboat enterprise. A good portion of what is known about life aboard steamboats of the western and eastern rivers, as well as the inlands seas and waterways, comes from contemporary accounts, travel journals, and late 19th- and early 20th-century studies on steam propulsion in America. Passenger steamboats from this era were typically designed to attract well-off passengers. Although applicable to passenger steamers of the East, this was especially the case for the western river steamboats, whose passengers and workers traveled extremely long distances for days and weeks on end from one destination to another. American and European travelers alike were critical of the living conditions and social dynamics aboard American steamboats. Likewise, Silliman's travel journal described the steamboats on which he traveled in the northern lakes and rivers of North America.
