TRANSPORTATION: Packets

The public fancy was last week drawn, unexpectedly, to a romantic anachronism in U. S. travel—the oldtime river packet, built like a summer hotel on a flatboat, puffing smoke from tall twin funnels set near the flat round bows, slapping up the river mud with broad paddles set astern. The occasion was a race between the Betsy Ann and the Chris Greene, two packets plying the Ohio between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. Captain Chris Greene of the Chris Greene had boasted that his vessel, a steel craft built in 1925, could beat the...

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