Steamboats: The Means of Travel in the 1900s
The Joy Line Company was the steamship transportation. They used boats and trains throughout the United States. The mode of transport back in the 1900s were mostly boats especially for coastal areas leaving more mainland areas for the trains. The graph above represents all waters throughout the United States including rivers and lakes, which was information taken from the 1880-1920 government census. Traveling by boat, although convenient, was quite dangerous due to unknown weather patterns or human error. According to the, there were roughly about 18,000 deaths through 1880-1910. This is also including crew members on top of the passengers. The numbers increase throughout the years up until the automobile and interstates were more common. The number of passengers and crew members increases drastically as well throughout the decades but the deaths stay around the same hitting a max of 5900 in the 1890-1900 era.
This graph represents the amount of increase in the popularity of ship travel in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The increase in passengers and the hiring of crew members increases throughout the three decades. It also represents the increase in jobs it provided for the United States. Which is providing many opportunities for an area of work that was increasing in popularity. This graph also shows that deaths were quite common on boat transportation and this also shows that Ezra Gerry must have known the dangers of the shipping industry. Yet he still wanted to use it as a way to gain different opportunities which were exactly what the industry offered. Unfortunately, he was the victim of the many deaths that occurred on the ships during this period.