A whistle pierced the mid-afternoon air, smoke belched from tall twin funnels, and great paddles , churned the water, sending a shudder through the single-deck wooden passenger steamer CONSTITUTION at Sandusky, Ohio. Bound for Buffalo, New York, in late April 1842, the side-wheel steamer-149'length on deck (LOD), with a 28'1" beam and 11'10" depth of hold (depth)-was a spectacle as she departed the sleepy hamlet along the southern shore of Lake Erie. Among the voyagers were English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife, Kate, who had arrived in Sandusky by rail the previous evening (see sidebar, on page 85). The Dickenses were on a grand tour of the United States and Canada, reaching as far west as St. Louis, which the author documented in his book American Notes for General Circulation. By the early 1840s, passage aboard steamers through the Great Lakes (Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan, and Superior) was favored by New Englanders and immigrants seeking a fresh start as America expanded westward. Overland travel was a test of a person's sufferance. Stagecoaches, slung on leather strapping between axles and jerked along over crude highways or pikes, were primitive at best. It's little wonder that Dickens booked steamer berths for himself and Kate. CONSTITUTION, launched in 1837 at Conneaut, Ohio, steamed over the horizon, portending the future of travel on the Great Lakes.
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