stagecoach

Description

The stagecoach was a closed four-wheeled vehicle drawn by horses or hard-going mules. It was regularly used as a public conveyance on an established route usually to a regular schedule. Spent horses were replaced with fresh horses at stage stations, posts, or relays. In addition to the stage driver or coachman who guided the vehicle, a shotgun messenger armed with a coach gun might travel as a guard beside him. Thus, the origin of the phrase "riding shotgun".

Always a headed vehicle, fitted with roof seats or gammon boards, from the early 19th century. ... Driven from an elevated box seat, its footboard supported by brackets. At first unsprung or dead axle, but later hung on braces, elbow and finally Telegraph springs, as with the Mail Coach. ... Most stage coaches were named and painted in special liveries.

The American mud wagon was an earlier, smaller, and cruder vehicle, being mostly open-sided with minimal protection from weather, causing passengers to risk being mud-splashed. A canvas-topped stage wagon was used for freight and passengers, and it had a lower center of gravity, making it harder to overturn.

Until the late 18th century, stagecoaches traveled at an average speed of about 5 miles per hour (8 km/h), with the average daily mileage traversed approximately 60 to 70 miles (97 to 113 km). With road improvements and the development of steel springs, speeds increased. By 1836 the scheduled coach left London at 19:30, travelled through the night (without lights) and arrived in Liverpool at 16:50 the next day, a distance of about 220 miles (350 km), doubling the overall average speed to about 10 miles per hour (16 km/h), including stops to change horses.

Historical context

[Stage coaches operated] between stages or stopping places, both in the ancient world and modern Europe/America. Revived in England during the late 16th or early 17th centuries, although a nationwide system was not organised until 1658. Considerable improvements came during the 18th century with the turnpike system and better engineering of public roads. ... Forced from its main trunk routes by railway competition from the late 1830's, although some lingered in remoter areas until the 1850's. In North America a few Concord Coaches survived until the first half of the 20th century.

Britain

The first crude depiction of a coach was in an English manuscript from the 13th century. The first recorded stagecoach route in Britain started in 1610 and ran from Edinburgh to Leith. This was followed by a steady proliferation of other routes around the island. By the mid 17th century, a basic stagecoach infrastructure had been put in place. A string of coaching inns operated as stopping points for travellers on the route between London and Liverpool. The stagecoach would depart every Monday and Thursday and took roughly ten days to make the journey during the summer months. Stagecoaches also became widely adopted for travel in and around London by mid-century and generally travelled at a few miles per hour. Shakespeare's first plays were performed at coaching inns such as The George Inn, Southwark.

By the end of the 17th century stagecoach routes ran up and down the three main roads in England. The London-York route was advertised in 1698.

The novelty of this method of transport excited much controversy at the time. One pamphleteer denounced the stagecoach as a "great evil [...] mischievous to trade and destructive to the public health". Another writer argued it was an "excellent arrangement" for carrying passengers (men and women) and mail, covering in an hour distances other countries' services required a day.

The speed of travel remained constant until the mid-18th century. Reforms of the turnpike trusts, new methods of road building and the improved construction of coaches led to a sustained rise in the comfort and speed of the average journey - from an average journey length of 2 days for the Cambridge-London route in 1750 to a length of under 7 hours in 1820.

Robert Hooke helped in the construction of some of the first spring-suspended coaches in the 1660s and spoked wheels with iron rim brakes were introduced, improving the characteristics of the coach.

In 1754, a Manchester-based company began a new service called the "Flying Coach". It was advertised with the following announcement - "However incredible it may appear, this coach will actually (barring accidents) arrive in London in four days and a half after leaving Manchester." A similar service was begun from Liverpool three years later, using coaches with steel spring suspension. This coach took an unprecedented three days to reach London with an average speed of eight miles per hour (13 km/h).

France

The diligence, a solidly built stagecoach with four or more horses, was the French vehicle for public conveyance with minor varieties in Germany such as the Stellwagen and Eilwagen.

Diligence. Late 18th century name for a French public coach working on long distance routes. So-named from its reputation for promptitude and good time-keeping, as with the English Mail Coach. Although normally well-sprung and enclosed, seating eight or more passengers, some types had a semi-open seat, for three or more passengers, shared with the driver. This latter was known as the banquette. Although most vehicles were coachman driven, others were in the care of postillions. The number of horses varied according to difficulties of the route. Three, or a unicorn team were not unfamiliar, especially on the flatter roads of the north west. In Germany, Austria and some parts of Switzerland the Diligence was known as the Post Coach or Malle Post. —D. J. M. Smith in A Dictionary of Horse Drawn Vehicles

The diligence from Le Havre to Paris was described by a fastidious English visitor of 1803 with a thoroughness that distinguished it from its English contemporary, the stage coach.

A more uncouth clumsy machine can scarcely be imagined. In the front is a cabriolet fixed to the body of the coach, for the accommodation of three passengers, who are protected from the rain above, by the projecting roof of the coach, and in front by two heavy curtains of leather, well oiled, and smelling somewhat offensively, fastened to the roof. The inside, which is capacious, and lofty, and will hold six people in great comfort is lined with leather padded, and surrounded with little pockets, in which travellers deposit their bread, snuff, night caps, and pocket handkerchiefs, which generally enjoy each others company, in the same delicate depository. From the roof depends a large net work which is generally crouded with hats, swords, and band boxes, the whole is convenient, and when all parties are seated and arranged, the accommodations are by no means unpleasant.

Upon the roof, on the outside, is the imperial, which is generally filled with six or seven persons more, and a heap of luggage, which latter also occupies the basket, and generally presents a pile, half as high again as the coach, which is secured by ropes and chains, tightened by a large iron windlass, which also constitutes another appendage of this moving mass. The body of the carriage rests upon large thongs of leather, fastened to heavy blocks of wood, instead of springs, and the whole is drawn by seven horses.

Continental Europe

Across continental Europe, stagecoaches and long-distance public coaches were known by a variety of regional terms. These terms reflect local postal systems and coach traditions, many of which paralleled or adapted the French diligence model.

France – diligence (long-distance public coach); turgotine (18th-century mail coach).

Spain – diligencia (public stagecoach service).

Italy – diligenza or carrozza di posta (postal coach).

Portugal – mala-posta (mail coach service).

Belgium and the Netherlands – postwagen or diligence (postal or public coach).

Germany, Austria, Switzerland – Postkutsche, Postwagen, or Malle-Post (mail coach).

Scandinavia – postkjørsel (Norway), diligens (Sweden) for long-distance coach travel.

Austria – Postkutsche (Austrian imperial mail coach).

Hungary – posta or postakocsi.

Poland – poczta for postal coach routes.

Russia – yam or yamshchina for relay-station coach and courier systems.

United States of America

Beginning in the 18th century, crude wagons began to be used to carry passengers between cities and towns, first within New England by 1744, then between New York and Philadelphia by 1756. Travel time was reduced on this later run from three days to two in 1766 with an improved coach called the Flying Machine. The first mail coaches appeared in the later 18th century carrying passengers and the mails, replacing the earlier post riders on the main roads. Coachmen carried letters, packages, and money, often transacting business or delivering messages for their customers. By 1829 Boston was the hub of 77 stagecoach lines; by 1832 there were 106. Coaches with iron or steel springs were uncomfortable and had short useful lives. Two men in Concord, New Hampshire, developed what became a popular solution. They built their first Concord stagecoach in 1827 employing long leather straps under their stagecoaches which gave a swinging motion.

Describing a journey he took in 1861, in his 1872 book, Roughing It, Mark Twain wrote that the Concord stage was like "an imposing cradle on wheels". Around twenty years later, in 1880, John Plesent Gray recorded after travelling from Tucson to Tombstone on J.D. Kinnear's mail and express line: That day's stage ride will always live in my memory – but not for its beauty spots. Jammed like sardines on the hard seats of an old time leather spring coach – a Concord – leaving Pantano, creeping much of the way, letting the horses walk, through miles of alkali dust that the wheels rolled up in thick clouds of which we received the full benefit ... It is always a mystery to the passenger how many can be wedged into and on top of a stagecoach. If it had not been for the long stretches when the horses had to walk, enabling most of us to get out and "foot it" as a relaxation, it seems as if we could never have survived the trip. The horses were changed three times on the 80-mile (130 km) trip, normally completed in 17 hours.

The stagecoach lines in the U.S. were operated by private companies. Their most profitable contracts were with U.S. Mail and were hotly contested. Pony Express, which began operations in 1860, is often called first fast mail service from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast, but the Overland Mail Company began a twice-weekly mail service from Missouri to San Francisco in September 1858. Transcontinental stage-coaching ended with the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.

Australia

Cobb & Co was established in Melbourne in 1853 and grew to service Australia's mainland eastern states and South Australia.

New Zealand

A Cobb & Co (Australia) proprietor arrived in New Zealand on 4 October 1861, thus beginning Cobb & Co (New Zealand) stagecoach operation.

Southern Africa

The railway network in South Africa was extended from Mafeking through Bechuanaland and reached Bulawayo in 1897. Prior to its arrival, a network of stagecoach routes existed.

Ottoman Palestine

Stagecoach and other horse-drawn travel to Jerusalem was used in Ottoman Palestine before cars and railways fully displaced it. A travel account from 1891 describes departing from Jaffa and then taking place in a stagecoach traveling toward Jerusalem over difficult roads.

In popular culture

Stories that prominently involve a stagecoach include:

1936, Winds of the Wasteland, a Western film about two partners who start a stagecoach line when the arrival of telegraph ends the Pony Express business.

1937, Wells Fargo, a Western set around early development of Wells Fargo's mail and transportation business.

1939, Stagecoach, a Western film centered on a group of passengers traveling by stagecoach through dangerous territory.

1941, Arizona Bound, a Western about threats to a stage line from criminals and sabotage, and the efforts to keep stagecoach service running.

1946, Stagecoach to Denver, a Western film focused on a perilous stagecoach journey carrying a young boy who needs medical help.

1948, Black Bart, a Western film about the notorious outlaw the outlaw and the crimes associated with stagecoach robberies.

1950, A Ticket to Tomahawk, a Western/comedy in which people tied to stagecoach travel fight to protect their livelihood as rail service threatens to take over.

1954, Riding Shotgun, a Western about a stagecoach guard who uncovers a plot to ambush and rob a coach.

1956, Dakota Incident, a Western film built around passengers traveling by stagecoach who are attacked and forced into a survival ordeal.

1957, Gunsight Ridge, a Western film involving investigations into a series of stagecoach robberies.