Boats are the subject of this feature article, which explores such topics as the age of steamboats, commercial boats, recreational boats, boating vocabulary, and the Mississippi River in American literature. "There is nothing--absolutely nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats," one animal character famously tells another in the children's book "The Wind in the Willows." The millions of recreational boaters in the United States would undoubtedly agree.