Revolutionary War Transportation

Following the Revolutionary War, there was an age of industrialization primarily keyed toward merit transportation. The most important contribution was the steam engine, which went from helping ships navigate colonial rivers to being the primary choice of Naval powers across the globe. Due to its flexibility in the water, steam ships were prized for being able to go against the current and wind. The downside to the steam ship was that it required constant fuel, coal being the main source. This made it difficult to refuel, eventually leading to a search for new a new, more efficient, source of fuel. The transition from sails to steamers originally came about from the difficulty of navigating rivers. River travel was the main means of transportation in the United States following the Louisiana Purchase and prior to the construction of the railroads. The problem with sailing ships was that reaching the destination often depended on the strength of the current and the amount of manpower aboard the ship. Sailing ships had no choice but to follow …show more content…
For the United States, coal powered steam vessels had been in use since Fulton built the first Navy steamship in 1815 and had been used mainly as transport vessels before industrialization swept the common sail away to be replaced with steam power. It was not until The Spanish American war of 1898 that the United States began seriously working on finding an alternate fuel source. The amount of space that coal took up as a fueling source was tolerable given how large the ships were but the need to refuel was revealed to be a major weakness when the Navy was required to fight in battles far from continental shores. There was a limit to how far the ships could stray from the coaling station and refueling took time, time that could be better spent fending off Spanish