Paddle Steamers

A paddle steamer, paddleboat, or paddlewheeler is a ship or boat propelled by one or more paddle wheels driven by a steam engine. more...

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Boats with paddle wheels on the sides are also called sidewheelers, while those with a single wheel on the stern are known as sternwheelers. The paddle steamer is obsolete technology and few have been built since the 1940s.

Paddle wheels

The paddle wheel is a large wheel, generally built of a steel framework, upon the outer edge of which are fitted numerous paddle blades (called floats or bunkets). In the water, the bottom quarter or so of the wheel is underwater. Rotation of the paddle wheel produces thrust, forward or backward as required. More advanced paddle wheel designs have featured feathering methods that keep each paddle blade oriented closer to vertical while it's in the water; this increases efficiency.

Early Developments

The use of a paddle wheel in navigation appears for the first time in the mechanical treatise of the Roman engineer Vitruvius (De architectura, X 9.5-7), where he describes multi-geared paddle wheels working as a ship odometer. The first mention of paddle wheels as a means of propulsion comes from the late 4th century military treatise De Rebus Bellicis (chapter XVII), where the anonymous Roman author describes an ox-driven paddle wheel warship:

Paddleboats were built in China from the 5th-6th Centuries, and according to the Water Margin were used in the 12th century. In 1543 Blasco Garay in Barcelona made an experimental vessel propelled by a paddle-wheel on each side, worked by forty men, and in 1787 Patrick Miller of Dalswinton invented a double-hulled boat, which was propelled on the Firth of Forth by men working a capstan which drove paddles on each side.

The first paddle steamer was the Pyroscaphe built by Marquis Claude de Jouffroy of Lyon in France, in 1783. It had a horizontal double-acting steam engine driving two 13.1 ft (4 m) paddle wheels on the sides of the craft. On July 15, 1783 it steamed successfully up the Saône for fifteen minutes before the engine failed. Political events interrupted further development.

The next successful attempt at a paddle-driven steam ship was by the Scottish engineer William Symington who suggested steam power to Patrick Miller of Dalswinton. Experimental boats built in 1788 and 1789 worked successfully; in 1802, Symington built a barge-hauler, Charlotte Dundas, for the Forth and Clyde Canal Company. It successfully hauled two 70-ton barges almost 20 miles (30 km) in 6 hours against a strong headwind on test in 1802. There was much enthusiasm, 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.

Read more at Wikipedia.org