THE WRECK OF BERTRAND
In the frontier West of the mid-to late 1800s the cutting-edge method of travel, both commercially and privately, was the steamboat. The continental United States is blessed with excellent waterways, none grander than its two mightiest rivers, the Missouri and the Mississippi. While the Mississippi wends a relatively languid and gentle course, the Missouri has earned its reputation as an unpredictable and sometimes hazardous body of water.
American Indians were undoubtedly first to ply the Missouri by boat, but it was the big 19th century fur companies, principally John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Co., that initiated the first large-scale attempts to conduct commercial and passenger transportation along the Missouri. The benefits of a steamboat for transporting trade goods to
