page_title: Seine River Steamers
section_title: Cement to the City of Light
hierarchical_section_title: Seine River Steamers / Cement to the City of Light
context_page_description: The Seine River was the scene of many early experiments with steam navigation. The steamship has a long ancestry, dating back at least to 1783 when the Marquis de Jouffray d'Abbans steamed his little boat, the Pyroscaphe, across the Seine. Robert Fulton even exhibited one to Napoleon's regime. With the success of the steam engine by the 1820s, the Second Republic embarked on a series of navigation improvements to raise weirs and locks with which to deepen the navigation channel. By the 1860s improvements had changed the riverbed from low-lying sand banks and trickle to a series of cascading ponds with a depth of 6 and a half feet.
context_section_description: With Baron Haussmann's levelling of the centre of Paris and building the sewers and Boulevards, the river bank was also reconstructed the famous Quais on the Seine banks were erected.
  The river provided the key to moving in building materials: timber, sand, bricks, stone, gravel and ironware were moved; wine, fruit, and hay; while manure, litter and rubble were removed from town. The Quais at Bersy, Rapee, Hotel de Ville and Louvre carried on trade. And by 1880, the trade was duty-free from tariffs.
  The Canal de l'Ourcq was constructed in 1808 between the River Ourcq and the Seine. Its purpose was to provide Paris with drinking water and a new navigable waterway. Geometricians at heart, the engineers of the Empire dug the canal along the axis of the Rotunda. With the industrial revolution along came mechanical workshops and boiler-works, replacing the countryside. Warehouses sprang up along the banks as 10,000 barges delivered to the city each year their cargo of cereals, coal, and building materials. Factories were constructed and products as diverse as sugar and boots were produced.
  During the Paris Commune bloodshed was so bad that the Seine ran red with blood.
caption: Arrival of "la Dorade" at Courbevoie on 14 December 1840. Painting by Félix Philippoteaux, 1867. Château de Malmaison.
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