Tag Archives: wagons

Circus wagons

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The heyday of the American Circus occurred in the early 1900s. Hundreds of circuses, both small and large, toured the United States, performing for audiences of a few hundred or several thousands. Trains took the circuses all over the country and by then the circus was the circus we think of. Canvas tents had been invented and adopted in the mid-nineteenth century and exotic animal acts became a feature of the performances. The trapeze, invented in France, was added to the line-up.

But in 1800, if the circus came to Durham, Maine, it would be far different. As discussed in previous blogs, there were no tents; the circus constructed a small roofless amphitheater. Instead of elephant and lion acts, the animals were dogs and pigs. The trapeze, adapted from the tightrope, had not been invented. And trains did not carry the circus across the country,

Horse drawn wagons would have been the vehicle used.

As my model for the wagons used in A Circle of Dead Girls,

I used the Burton wagon. It is the oldest example of a wagon used as a home in Great Britain. 

The history of the wagon, however, is older. By the late 17th century, most of the roads in Europe were paved. It is thought that the first wagons used as living quarters appeared in France and were designed for the actors of the circus. They were large, horse drawn caravans. By the middle of the 18th centuries, the carriages became smaller and only needed one or two horses to pull them.

The Burton wagons had small wheels placed under the body of the carriage itself and were undecorated. These wagons evolved into the elaborately embellished wagons, with large wheels necessary for going off-road, used by the Romani. According to Wikipedia and other sources, they began using such wagons about 1850 called a vardo.

Since John Asher, the circus owner, is from England and has traveled through Europe, I imagined that he would have seen such living wagons in France and other places and used them for the models of his own horse-drawn circus wagons. These living wagons would be a practical solution to traveling from town to town.

The decorated wagons did not disappear when the circus began touring via train. They evolved into parade wagons, the brightly painted and gilded wagons that paraded through town to advertise the circus. The circus museum in Sarasota, Florida has some fine examples of these wagons.

Wheels

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Wheels did not exist before 4000 BCE But within a few hundred years pictures of wheels were turning up on pottery and whole wagons were turning up in graves. As I mentioned in a previous post, wheels are not the only invention necessary for a wagon. Axles and axle arms are important for smooth turning of the wheels. Since, at this time, all the wagon pieces would be carved from wood, everything had to fit perfectly. Too loose and the wheels wobbled, too tight and the wheels struggled to turn. Drag, (remember I mentioned drag?) meant that these early wagons were narrow. Some of the wagons found in these old old graves are only three feet wide.

 

Wagons had to have something that connected to the draft animal: called harness pole, traces etc. Yes, by the time that wheels and then wagons were invented, horses had already been domesticated. But more about that later.

 

Later on, say 5000 years later, most of these inventions had been fine tuned. Wagons, such as the one my character Rees would drive, would be wide, fairly heavy, but constructed in such a way it rode smoothly over the crummy roads of the time. The front wheels would be smaller than the back ones, to turn easily, and also slightly cupped. The axle, although still made of wood, had other pieces attached, and by now most were made of iron. The wheels had spokes and iron rims. Sounds relatively simple, doesn’t it? Well, not so much. Even without brakes, there are a number of other parts, with names like bolster stake and flange and hound braces. (Really.)

 

Before 1860, most wagons were hand built by blacksmiths, wheelwrights and carpenters, probably all three.

 

Wheels are arguably one of the most important, if not the most important, inventions in human history. Although humans have always wandered, wheeled vehicles made us really mobile, and mobile as communities. Some of the early settlers on the steppes moved from place to place as a lifestyle. For those who settled, wagons enabled the farmers to carry manure to the fields and produce back home. In American history, the wagon is an icon. Think of the Conestoga – canvas covering over a wagon body.

 

But to be truly efficient, a wheeled vehicle has to have an animal to pull it. The Incas had wheels – which they used on toys – but they had no access to draft animals. The llama is not built properly to pull wagons. (And that’s not even mentioning the topography of the Incan Empire – high mountains, deep valleys and lots of up and down in -between)

 

Oxen are certainly one choice, in fact they were the first choice, as draft animals but they are not fast. The onager, which is a member of the horse family but more closely resembles an ass, is another. Although fast, they are small. Same goes for mules.

 

Onto the mighty horse.

Horses, buggies and wagons, Part I

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Think about this fact for a moment: humans have used horses and wagons for millennia. Yet, in the space of 100 years, less, actually, the use of horses had ended.
Most of us no longer have a connection to these beautiful animals or the really elegant inventions that shaped the wagons and buggies that were used for most of human civilization. True, the advances made for the creation of the humble axle did set up the use of axles in cars. How many of us think about this tool which was really the product of many years of trial and error investigation?

First came the wheel?
Not exactly. Remnants of sledges using rollers, not wheels, have been discovered n eastern Europe. There is a lot of discussion about the dating of these rollers and some estimates put it back to about 4000 B. C. (To my amazement, when I began researching wagons and horses, I discovered that Eastern Europe and the steppes were actually the home of many inventions that today we take entirely for granted. Axle is actually an evolved word (aks) from some Proto Indo-European tongue that spawned of the languages from Greek to German, Iranian to Celtic that we are familiar with today. Honey bees. Pigs. Sheep who were domesticated first for meat – they were short fibers so the wool was unspinnable. No one is sure whether it was a mutation or human intervention that created sheep with the wool we use today. )
But I digress.
Sledges had to be pulled by teams of oxen and were very heavy. Also, and this is where the axle comes in, they didn’t move smoothly. Drag is very important in the movement of objects since it pulls back. Think of trying to move something through heavy mud. Later wheeled wagons and of course our current cars don’t have drag – not from the wheels nor to this degree – because the wheels and axle and all the other pieces are constructed in such a way that the vehicle moves as though it is much lighter, without the clutch of another force holding it back. From mud to a smooth asphalt road, for example.
Are we to wheels yet?