Art and Commerce in Jacksonian America: The Steamboat Albany Collection

Travel accounts from 1827 suggest that during its first year of operation, the Albany usually carried between one and two hundred passengers. By keeping fares high and the number of travelers comparatively low, the Stevenses minimized wear and tear on the furnishings and enabled the staff to provide unusually fine service. Thus, after a trip in late May 1827, the often prickly English traveler Margaret Hall noted that the cabins on the Albany were "magnificently furnished and the dinner the best and most neatly served that I have seen in any hotel in this country. You may imagine how spacious the accommodation is when altho' a hundred covers were laid for dinner and made use of, there never appeared to be more than twenty persons on board." After his late July trip on the Albany, Arthur St. Clair Nichols reported "good attendance and excellent fare and very good company on board, about 120 passengers." [69] Both Hall and Nichols mention the paintings. They were the kind of genteel travelers for whom the art gallery was designed. Already familiar with the conventions of art interpretation, they would have known how to "read" the collection and could have used it to fill the empty hours of their passage. [70]

By the beginning of the 1828 season, the Stevenses had decided to drop premium service and match fares offered by the common day boats. Although I have not found any direct evidence of their motives, the comparatively small number of passengers described by Hall and Nichols suggests the Stevenses had discovered that the market for premium service was too small to be profitable. In April 1828, they replaced the New Philadelphia with the North America and announced that they were reducing fares to two dollars, meals not included. Breakfast and dinner, the main meals of the day, each cost fifty cents. [71] The Stevenses maintained this fare through the beginning of the 1829 season, but by September they had again slashed prices on both the Albany and North America to one dollar, meals extra. Less desirable boats were offering passage for as little as fifty cents. By 1831, price wars had driven the weakest competitors out of the market, and fares for the better day boats, including the Albany and the North Ameri ca, rebounded to two dollars, meals extra. In October 1832, the Stevenses joined with other leading operators to form a private monopoly known as the Hudson River Steamboat Association, which led to an agreement that all the best boats would charge three dollars, meals extra. Although independent operators regularly caused fare wars by offering cheaper service, the association was able to maintain the three-dollar fare for most of the 1830s. [72]

Travel narratives confirm that lower fares attracted larger numbers of more socioeconomically diverse travelers. After an 1829 trip on the Albany, a well-to-do young girl from Delaware named Sophie du Pont sardonically reported that there had been five hundred passengers on board and that she had thought she was on Noah's ark, "there being des betes de toutes especes." In 1830, John Fowler noted that the Albany often carried "five hundred or six hundred persons ... at a time." After an 1828 trip on the Albany's sister ship, the North America, the British traveler James Stuart was struck by the absence of restricted fares (there was "no difference between the descriptions of people in any part on deck") and reported that the boat "has oftener than once conveyed 1000 passengers at a time." It is doubtful that either the Albany or the North America often carried that many passengers, but the travel accounts suggest that they regularly carried at least three or four hundred. [73]