Highfalutin stacks on steamboats and steam locomotives

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On April 25, 2021 I blogged about how The Joy of Search, a 2019 book by Daniel M. Russell, is an extremely useful guide about how to do research both online and offline. Mr. Russell also has a blog titled SearchReSearch. Earlier this month he posted SearchReSearch Challenge (5/11/22): Why…in New Orleans? His first item asked about if the elaborate patterning at the tops of smokestacks on river steamboats (like one shown above in a drawing) was merely decorative or functional.

 

I looked for an answer via Google, and found one in Chapter 10 (Language of the Rivers) in Jerry M. Hay’s 2006 book, Beyond the Bridges. It also can be found titled High Falutin’ at Riverlorian.com, where he says the following:

 

“Steamboats had tall smokestacks. The boats originally had boilers fired by wood. Along with the smoke there would often be flaming embers coming up from the furnace and out of the top of the smokestack. Those embers could and did start fires when they landed on the top deck or cargo. Tall stacks would give the embers a better chance to burn out before reaching the deck. In addition, the tops of the stacks were ‘fluted.’ Fluting consisted of wire or steel mesh and acted like a small fence that would break the embers into small pieces. Smaller embers were more likely to burn out than larger pieces. As fancier boats were built, the fluting became more ornamental and eventually came to be considered an essential decorative element of the smokestack. Those vessels with the fancy smokestacks and decorative flutes became known as high-falutin’ boats.”

  

His explanation for the word highfalutin makes sense. The Oxford English Dictionary entry for that word says it is of uncertain origin, perhaps formed within English by compounding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I asked myself if steam locomotives with high stacks also had flutes. As shown above, the famous Rocket built by Robert Stephenson (that won a competition known as the Rainhill trials in October 1829) had a set of flutes. I remembered seeing a replica at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan some time before 1984.

 

The drawing of the steamboat Ouachita came from page 390 of the 1895 book American Steam Vessels by Samuel Ward Stanton, found at the Internet Archive. A drawing of Stephenson’s Rocket came from Wikimedia Commons.