Transportation - Overview
Americans have always been a people on the move—on rails, roads, and waterways (for travel through the air, visit the National Air and Space Museum). In the transportation collections, railroad objects range from tools, tracks, and many train models to the massive 1401, a 280-ton locomotive built in 1926. Road vehicles include coaches, buggies, wagons, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and automobiles—from the days before the Model T to modern race cars. The accessories of travel are part of the collections, too, from streetlights, gas pumps, and traffic signals to goggles and overcoats.
In the maritime collections, more than 7,000 design plans and scores of ship models show the evolution of sailing ships and other vessels. Other items range from scrimshaw, photographs, and marine paintings to life jackets from the Titanic.
"Transportation - Overview" showing 51 items.
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Ship Tools from the Propeller Indiana, Shovel
- Description
- All the hand tools were found in the engine and boiler space below decks in Indiana’s hold, indicating that they were used for the machinery. The crew used the shovel to add coal to the fires.
- date made
- mid-1800s
- when the Indiana was found
- 1972
- ID Number
- 1979.1030.58
- catalog number
- 1979.1030.58
- accession number
- 1979.1030
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Propeller Indiana’s Capstan
- Description
- The capstan, most commonly found on the decks of early steamboats, was used as a vertical winch for raising or lowering anchors, hoisting sails and cargo, hauling heavy lines, or other jobs where individual manpower was not enough.
- It was operated manually, by putting timbers into the holes and using the resulting leverage to wind a line wrapped around the center of the device more easily. Sea chanties, or rhythmic songs, were often employed by ship crews to ensure that everyone hauled at the same time. Later in the 19th century, steam capstans and donkey engines replaced human muscle on the larger vessels.
- date made
- mid-1800s
- ID Number
- 1984.0359.02
- accession number
- 1984.0359
- catalog number
- 1984.0359.02
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Ship Tools from the Propeller Indiana, Hand Truck
- Description
- These hand tools were found in the engine and boiler space belowdecks in Indiana’s hold, indicating that they were used for the machinery. The crew used the shovel to add coal to the fires.
- The hand truck—virtually identical to modern examples—is one of four found aboard Indiana and used for moving cargo into, out of, and around the cargo hold of the ship. This hand truck was the artifact that actually identified the vessel when it was located in 1972, for the words “PROPR INDIANA” were stamped into its handle. The other three had different ships’ names stamped on them, indicating that they were secondhand or borrowed equipment.
- Date made
- ca 1858
- when the Indiana was found
- 1972
- ID Number
- 1994.0033.01
- catalog number
- 1994.0033.01
- accession number
- 1994.0033
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Scow Schooner Milton
- Description
- The 102-foot three-masted scow schooner Milton was built by Ellsworth & Davidson at Milwaukee, Wis., in 1867. It spent 20 years hauling lumber on Lake Michigan, along with hundreds of other small boats nicknamed the “mosquito fleet.” Built to carry as much cargo as possible, many of these flat-bottom boats did not sail very well.
- The Milton collided with the ship W.H. Hinsdale at Milwaukee in December 1867, causing about $100 in damage to each vessel. It also ran aground twice during its career.
- On 8 September 1885, while transporting a cargo of cedar posts and cordwood, the Milton sank off Two Rivers, Wis., during an autumn storm. The entire crew of five men was lost—three of them brothers.
- Date made
- 1962
- Milton built
- 1867
- ID Number
- TR*321529
- catalog number
- 321529
- accession number
- 246222
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Model of Snagboat Charles H. West
- Description
- Introduced in the early 19th century, snag boats were designed to clear trees, stumps, and other obstructions from navigable rivers and channels. Most were in the form of a catamaran, with two parallel hulls between which trees were hauled in, cut up, and disposed of on land.
- Designed by the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for maintaining the national waterways, Charles H. West was built at Nashville, Tenn., in 1933-34 by the Nashville Bridge Co. at a cost of $227,260.48. It measured 170’ in length and 38’ in beam but only drew 4’-6” of water. Instead of a catamaran design, the West had a normal, shallow sternwheeler hull. At the flat or scow bow, two A-frames hauled snags up a ramp for disposal. It cleared snags along the lower Mississippi River for many years.
- In 1969, the West was sold to a private party and converted to the restaurant boat Lt. Robert E. Lee in St. Louis, Mo. the following year. The name was fitting. Although best known as a Confederate general, in the late 1830s, Lee had been an officer in the Corps of Engineers. His work installing pilings and wing dams had helped the Mississippi currents to clear silt and keep open the main St. Louis landing.
- Moored on the Mississippi near the St. Louis Arch, the Lee was a successful restaurant until a 1993 flood devastated the waterfront. After several failed attempts to reopen, the vessel was auctioned on December 19, 2008, for $200,000. Its new owners plan to renovate and reopen the famous ship once again as a restaurant and nightclub in St. Louis.
- Date made
- 1966
- ID Number
- TR*326538
- catalog number
- 326538
- accession number
- 265606
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Model of Towboat Valley Belle
- Description
- The sternwheel steamer Valley Belle was built as a packet boat at Harmar, Ohio, in 1883. It measured 127.4’ long by 22.9’ in beam and a shallow 3.4’ in draft. As a packet delivering people, cargo and the mails, the Belle worked for decades along several rivers from the Ohio to the Kanawha in West Virginia. In 1891, the Belle transported 8,320 tons of cargo and 6,241 passengers along the Ohio River.
- In 1917, the Valley Belle was operating along the Ohio River between Marietta and Middleport, Ohio. In March 1919 it was purchased by Billy Bryant of the famous showboating family. Bryant had just built a fancy new showboat and needed a larger towboat than they owned to tow it.
- The Belle towed Bryant’s New Showboat for several years down the Kanawha, Ohio, Monongahela, Illinois, and Mississippi Rivers before being replaced by a smaller boat. Competition from movie theaters had shortened the range of the showboats, which were forced to go to ever-smaller and more remote towns for willing audiences. The Belle continued to tow on various rivers until 1943, when it sank in the Ohio River at Kanauga, Oh. Its career as a wooden-hulled river steamer in nearly continuous use for 60 years is unmatched.
- Date made
- 1970
- ID Number
- TR*330213
- catalog number
- 330213
- accession number
- 288672
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Self-unloading Ore Carrier James R. Barker
- Description
- The James R. Barker was built in 1976 by the American Shipbuilding Co. at Lorain, OH for the Interlake Steamship Co. It was named after the head of the Moore-McCormack Steamship Company, which owned Interlake. Costing over $43 million, Barker was the third 1000-footer to sail the Great Lakes, and the first built entirely on the Lakes. These big bulk coal and ore carriers were constructed to fit the largest locks connecting the Great Lakes.
- Barker's two big 8,000-hp engines turn two 17-1/2-foot propellers, pushing the vessel at a speed of 15.75 knots (18 mph). The ship can transport 59,000 tons of iron ore pellets or 52,000 tons of coal. The self-unloading rig has a 250-foot-long boom that can unload 10,000 tons of ore or 6,000 net tons of coal per hour. By contrast, Interlake’s first bulk carrier, the 1874 wooden-hulled steamer V.H. Ketchum, could carry only 1,700 tons of ore and took nearly twelve days to unload using manual wheelbarrows.
- The Barker was still in service in 2009.
- Date made
- 1978
- year the James R. Barker was built
- 1976
- built James R. Barker
- American Shipbuilding Co.
- bought the James R. Barker
- Interlake Steamship Co.
- maker
- Boucher-Lewis Precision Models, Inc.
- ID Number
- TR*336153
- catalog number
- 336153
- accession number
- 1978.0374
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Abraham Lincoln Patent Model Replica
- Description
- Abraham Lincoln had considerable maritime background, although it is usually eclipsed by his political heritage. At the age of 19 in Anderson Creek, Ind., he built a flatboat for $24, loaded it with a local farmer’s produce, and floated it 1,000 miles down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, where he sold both the boat and its cargo. When he was 22, he was hired by an Illinois store owner to take some goods down the Mississippi and sell them in New Orleans. Lincoln built another flatboat and successfully piloted it from New Salem, Ill. to New Orleans over a three-month period.
- In the mid-1840s, as a lawyer in Springfield, Ill., his law partner William Herndon recalled watching Lincoln working on a large boat model with a local craftsman. A Springfield resident recalled Lincoln demonstrating the idea for his model in public. His model embodies an idea Lincoln had for raising vessels over shoal waters by increasing their buoyancy. That idea became patent #6,469 in May 1849—the only patent ever obtained by an American president. After he became president in 1860 and moved to Washington, he visited his model in the nearby Patent Office at least once. He also enjoyed reviewing naval vessels and ideas, and he personally approved inventor John Ericsson’s idea for the ironclad warship Monitor.
- Lincoln’s original patent model was acquired by the Smithsonian in 1908 and has left the Mall only once since then, for an exhibit at the US Patent Office. This replica was built by the Smithsonian in 1978 for long-term display to preserve the fragile original.
- date made
- 1978
- ID Number
- TR*336769
- accession number
- 1978.2284
- catalog number
- 336769
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Scrimshaw Ivory Whale Stamp
- Description
- Carved from the teeth of captured sperm whales, whale stamps were used to record the type of whale and number of barrels of oil they yielded.
- The stamps were inked onto the page of whaleship logbooks or sailors’ journals, with an empty space in the whale’s body for writing in the number of barrels. This example in the form of a sperm whale is decorated with steel pin heads and a turned handle.
- date made
- 1800s
- ID Number
- 1978.0052.06
- accession number
- 1978.0052
- catalog number
- 1978.52.6
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Wood and Ivory Parallel Rule
- Description
- Part of the navigator’s tool kit, parallel rules were used to transfer compass points, course lines and other directional information across large charts without change. This large wooden set has a carved ivory whale inlaid into its surface, with a brass tack for the whale’s eye.
- ID Number
- 1978.0052.08
- accession number
- 1978.0052
- catalog number
- 1978.52.31
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center