Read my post 1074. Not only Southern shipbuilders fell behind but Northern ones too, compared the builders in Great Britain.
Hey, are you now claiming that there were no Southern built steamboats?
I saw that, but that was later, and does not address the issue of the northeast "closed shop" creating government policy that favored their interests at the expense of Southern industries.
Hey, are you now claiming that there were no Southern built steamboats?
You told me there were, and I believe you. BroJoeK tried to say the northern shipping industry prospered because they had access to modern (for that time) steam engines, and the Southern states did not.
I then asked him how they were building all those side wheel paddle boats then?
They could have bought steam engines from England, but i'm pretty certain the protective tariffs made that prohibitively expensive, and it probably also ran afoul of the navigation act of 1817 which required American ships to be built with American parts and labor.