Exploding Steamboats, Senate Debates, and Technical Reports: The Convergence of Technology, Politics, and Rhetoric in the Steamboat Bill of 1838, and: Twisted Rails, Sunken Ships: The Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Steamboat and Railroad Accident Investigation Reports, 1833-1879 (review)

Abstract

Exploding Steamboats, Senate Debates, and Technical Reports: The Convergence of Technology, Politics, and Rhetoric in the Steamboat Bill of 1838. By R. John Brockman. (Amityville, NY: Baywood, 2002. Pp. vii, 147. Cloth, $36.95.)Twisted Rails, Sunken Ships: The Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Steamboat and Railroad Accident Investigation Reports, 1833-1879. R. John Brockman. (Amityville, NY: Baywood, 2004. Pp. xiii, 273. Cloth, $58.95.)These paired books by an eminent scholar of technical communications explore the relationship between evolving steam propulsion technology and technical writing. Steamboat and railroad accident investigations were a natural venue in which they came together. Brockman begins his analysis of steamboat accident reporting in Exploding Steamboats, Senate Debates, and Technical Reports with the passage of an 1838 bill, the first legislation passed by Congress to regulate interstate commerce to ensure safety. Nearly 3,000 Americans had been killed in steamboat explosions since the first boiler exploded in 1816. As Brockman points out, this time in the early 19th century, nothing else created by humans could wreak such havoc outside of war (55). Public outcry over these accidents led Congress to fund a study by the Franklin Institute that resulted in a report written by some of the nation's top scientists and engineers, which in turn formed the basis of the 1838 bill. However, a Senate select committee deleted a key passage in the bill, rendering it ineffective. Deaths from steamboat boiler explosions mounted for another fourteen years, until Congress passed effective legislation regulating the operation of steamboats.Brockman argues that many worlds converged in this deleted passage, including evolving and often poorly understood steam technology, public hysteria over the accidents, and a new world of technological persuasion (1-3). Brockman is most effective at exploring the public's reaction to steamboat accidents and how they helped to create new genres of accident reports and, for the general public, sensationalist disaster literature. He makes excellent use of contemporary illustrations and artifacts that captured concern over these accidents, such as sheet music commemorating accident victims (songs like I Do Not Want to Be Drowned and Mamma! Why Don't Papa Come Home?) and a children's jigsaw puzzle called Blown Up Steamboat.Brockman extends his discussion in the second book, Twisted Rails, Sunken Ships, to include railroad accidents. …