In the nineteenth century, steamboats revolutionized river transportation of people and goods because they could swiftly traverse rivers regardless of current. A mystique was created by the dangers they faced: explosions, sinkings, Indian attacks and daring races.

Launched in 1872, the Sylvan Dell was one of the fastest steamboats built for the Harlem and New York Navigation company. She carried passengers between Harlem and lower Manhattan until the elevated train line opened in 1883. From then until 1889 she took people on pleasure trips around New York. After, she was sold and ferried commuters between Philadelphia and Salem, New Jersey until she sank in the Salem Creek in 1919. The stamp illustration of the Sylvan Dell may have been based on a nineteenth century photograph of her at the Pusey and Jones Company dock in Wilmington, Delaware.

The Far West, launched in 1870, was a steamboat that traveled on the shallow Missouri River. In 1876, she brought back the news and the fifty-two survivors of Custer’s massacre at Little Bighorn. In 1883, she sank just seven miles from St. Charles, Missouri.

The Robt. E. Lee was built in 1866 and is most famous for winning the race against a rival steamboat, the Natchez, as told in Roy Barhau’s The Great Steamboat Race and captured in a painting by Currier & Ives. In 1874, she hit a sandbar and in a couple of years was replaced by a larger Robt. E. Lee.

The Bailey Gatzert was launched in Seattle in 1890 and was used to transport passengers between Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia, Washington. She also traversed the Columbia River and raced the opponents. She had a broom attached to her mast as a symbol of her ability to sweep the competition. She was sold in 1918 after losing a race and was dismantled in 1926. The Rebecca Everingham was launched in 1880 and worked the Chattahoochee-Apalachicola river basin that covered 700 miles in the states of Florida and Georgia. She could transport 900 bales of cotton, seventy-five cabin passengers as well as more passengers on her deck. In 1884, she burned to the waterline.