vessels resorted to all manner of schemes and contrivances to attract
attention. They were compelled to do so in order to secure their share
of freight and passengers, so spirited was the competition between
steamboats from 1836 to 1840. There were no railroads in the West
(indeed there were but one or two in the East), and all traffic was by
water. Consequently steamboat-men had all they could do to handle the
crowds of passengers and the tons of merchandise offered them.

Shippers and passengers had their favorite packets. The former had
their huge piles of freight stacked upon the wharves, and needed the
earliest possible intelligence of the approach of the packet so that
they might promptly summon clerks and carriers to the shore. The
passengers, loitering in neighboring hotels, demanded some system of
warning of a favorite steamer's coming, that they might avoid the
disagreeable alternative of pacing the muddy levees for hours at a time,
or running the risk of being left behind.

Without a whistle, how was a boat to let the people know it was coming,
especially if some of those sharp bends for which the Ohio River is
famous intervened to deaden the splashing stroke of its huge
paddle-wheels, or the regular puff, puff, puff, puff, of its steam
exhaust-pipes?

The necessity originated several crude signs, chief among which was the
noise created by a sudden escapement of steam either from the rarely
used boiler waste-pipes close to the surface of the river, or through
the safety-valve above. By letting the steam thus rush out at different
pressures, each boat acquired a sound peculiarly its own, which could be
heard a considerable distance, though it was as the tone of a
mouth-organ against a brass-band, when compared with the ear-splitting
roar of our modern steamboat-whistle. Townspeople of Cincinnati and
elsewhere became so proficient in distinguishing these sounds of steam
escapement that they could foretell the name of any craft on the river
at night or before it appeared in sight.

It was reserved for the steamboat _Champion_ to carry this idea a little
further. It purposed to catch the eye of the patron as well as his ear.
The _Champion_ was one of the best known vessels plying on the
Mississippi in 1836. It was propelled by a walking-beam engine. This
style of steam-engine is still common on tide-water boats of the East,
but has long since disappeared from the inland navigation of the West.
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