Object Story: The Steamboat "Peter Crary"

Take a close look at this painting by James Bard. It is called The Steamboat “Peter Crary.” It shows a sailing vessel on the right, called a “sloop,” being pulled by a steamboat.

The steamboat was a major invention of the nineteenth century. The earliest attempts to use steam to power a ship instead of wind or human power started in the late 1780s. By the early 1800s, steamboats were becoming a major method to move people and goods up and down rivers across the country. By the 1850s, when the Peter Crary was built, steam-powered boats were the norm and older wind-powered ships like the sloop were becoming obsolete. The Peter Crary was used to tow boats on the Hudson river.

When artist James Bard painted this image of a steamboat named “Peter Crary,” the American value of embracing change and technological progress was gaining momentum. We were becoming a nation of inventors such as Samuel F.B. Morse and Eli Whitney, and later Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and George Washington Carver. America seemed to be poised to join the world’s industrial nations by late nineteenth century. Through his art, James Bard shows us how much pride he had in that part of American identity.

James Bard’s World and His Fascination with Steam Boats

James Bard grew up in a little house overlooking the Hudson River in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, which was in the midst of rapid industrialization during Bard’s formative years. He was born in 1815, just eight years after Robert Fulton sent the first steamboat up the Hudson. We can only imagine what he would have seen in an area that was changing so quickly: new railroad tracks being laid, newly invented telegraph cables being buried, and dozens of steamers going by his house each day. Ships brought goods and people from all over the world to the New York harbor. By 1840, Bard’s waterfront view had turned into America’s busiest port, bringing in 70 percent of America’s imports.

An Alternate View

Not everyone fully embraced the changes that the loud, smoke-belching steamboats brought to the environment. A very different group of people were painting around the same time as Bard and they wanted to focus on the glory of nature, not technological progress. They wanted to show how industry was having destructive effects on the wilderness.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, landscapes showing sweeping views of American nature became popular subjects for painters. They offered an alternative view from the increasingly crowded and urbanized cities that were growing across the country. A group of painters who portrayed scenes of the area around the Hudson River Valley in New York came to be known as the Hudson River School (“school” designates a group of artists who share similar ideas). In this group, artists like Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and Frederic Edwin Church used paintings of the vastness and power of nature to examine concepts of American character, spirituality, and morality. By emphasizing the virtues of nature, many of these landscapes also pointed out the opposite. They suggested that the growth of cities, technology, and industry were problems.

Over time, Americans seem to have embraced James Bard’s interpretation of technological advances and industry as evidence that the United States is a creative and innovative country. The Hudson River School painters’ view is still an important one, but mainstream American culture continues to place importance on devices and inventions that make our lives easier, faster, and more convenient. 

Questions for Discussion

• What might be important about the image of a steamboat pulling a sailboat?
• Why would ship captains want to have steam-powered ships?
• Since the artist made very precise measurements and collected detailed information about the ship, what might we be able to say about steamboats, or about the time in which these steamboats were working?
• Compare Bard’s Steamboat “Peter Crary” and Duncanson’s Landscape with Ruin.
  • What do you notice about the artistic style of each painting? 
  • What is the “star of the show” in each painting? How can you tell? 
  • What seems to be each painter’s interpretation of nature and industry? How can you tell? 
  • How do you think the artists’ attitudes towards technological advances and industry may have been influenced by their own experiences? Why might they have had different reactions to their industrial hometowns?  
  • How has your life been positively and negatively affected by new inventions, technology, or industry? Write a paragraph and give a few examples.  

Suggested Activities

• For younger grades: Read Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House and discuss the similarities and differences with the idea of change and progress.
• For older grades: You can find evidence of American values hidden in the media we consume. Not all Americans have the same values concerning technological innovation or progress. Search for two examples of technological innovation (like James Bard) and two examples against it (like Robert Scott Duncanson). Look in children’s books, popular songs, advertisements, and movies. You may even find an example that acts as a hybrid: technology that solves a problem brought on by technology!