The persistence of sail in the age of steam

This study addresses interrelated issues pertaining to nineteenth-century merchant marine technology and the economic system in which that technology functioned. Specifically, it aims to study why the middle to late nineteenth century merchant sailing industry resisted the use of steam propulsion and how it attempted to compete with steamships through technological adaptation and risk taking behavior in order to maintain their traditional seafaring lifeways. In explaining the persistence of sail in the age of steam, this project explores the impact of economic demand factors in the bulk cargo trade and their relationship to anomalous rates of change in the adaptation of newly introduced technologies. It considers the effects of specialized skills that had developed in the merchant sailing industry over centuries and their relationship to technological change. The factor of risk and risk taking behavior is outlined and the material correlates of this behavior, or archaeological signatures, are identified and considered in relationship to the economic stress imposed on the merchant sailing industry by competing with steam propelled vessels.;Six shipwreck sites in the Dry Tortugas National Park are evaluated to address the issue of the persistence of sail in the age of steam. The Pulaski Site is the focus of the study because it contains what is arguably the richest archaeological assemblage of deck machinery and related hardware of any shipwreck site known so far from this period. This site and the machinery observed on it represent a crucial period in the transition from sail to steam and the integration of steam technology with machinery that had previously operated manually. Five other shipwreck sites that represent merchant marine activity in the Dry Tortugas during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were selected for comparison to the Pulaski site.