Maybe the most appaelled to imagination kind of paddle-boats. With their lenght arround 45 m those vessels completely builded in wood and provided of a steam- engine were, in those days, ideal for the caprisious and fickly Missisipi. From simple "work- horses" till super luxury water- palaces for wealthy passengers, a few thousand of them, where builded between 1811 and the twenties of former century (when diesels toke over). But .... those boats received hardly any maintenance and, after barely five years, were already ripe for scrap. Safety was an illusion, an example: between 1840 and 1860, about 500 boats were distroyed by fire or boiler-explosions, by which 4000 people lost their lives. Today the tourist-boats of this type are all new builded vessels.