Captain Henry M. Shreve

Shreve was a merchant-navigator on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. In 1816 he built a steamboat in Wheeling, West Virginia, of his own design. One hundred thirty-six feet in length and twenty-eight feet in beam, spectators said she looked like an overgrown keelboat. Shreve name it the George Washington. He used revolutionary ideas by installing the engines on the deck not down below, and running the boat on the water not in it. He succeeded in making the upstream trip from New Orleans to Louisville, Kentucky, in twenty-four days.This image is used in the curriculum for Steamboat A-Comin': The Legacy of the New Orleans, sponsored by Rivers Institute at Hanover College