0 a boat with a flat bottom and square ends for transporting things or people along rivers:
He had come down the Ohio river in a flatboat.
Flatboats were constructed to haul produce downstream, such as whiskey, chickens, or corn.
A flatboat required a crew of five to 20 men to steer it and guide it.
Abraham Lincoln took a flatboat down the Mississippi in 1828.
River transport by rafts or flatboats was considered to be difficult, hazardous, and costly.
Then they began their trip by flatboat and steamer in 1836.
The steamboat also changed the nature of flatboat crews, making them more professional and more skilled.
Early on, the river became an important industrial shipping route, with lead, iron, and timber being sent downstream by flatboat and shallow-draft steamboat.
A flatboat is almost always a one-way vessel, and is usually dismantled for lumber when it reaches its downstream destination.
