I never saw people packed so close as they were that night in the mens' salon. I and my remaining son had our accustomed berths in a corner; every other one of the three tiers around the walls was occupied. Mattresses completely covered the floor, on which people lay as close as possible. The dinner table was covered with sleeping humanity more thickly than captain David ever strewed it with beefsteaks, and those who lay under the table thought themselves favored, inasmuch as they could not be trodden upon.
The Wabash, Adventures of an English Gentleman's Family in Indiana. J. Richard Beste. 1855

Last night it rained and thundered terribly. There was a leaky place right above my bunk, and some drops of water kept up a tattoo, first on the sheet, then on my face. It was soon over, and then a delicious cool feeling came over me, and I slept ' til long after daylight.
Stories of Indiana. Thompson. p 220 "Extract from a private letter written 1851.

In these conditions, a hot summer night in the midwest meant a sweltering battle with humidity, humanity, and insects. Ropes festooned with garments shut off vagrant breezes, bodies radiated heat like stoves, and audible to all was every cough, sneeze, snore and nightmare screech. Open windows ( no screens) let in hordes of vicious little winged varmints. Should deep-seated fears of night air cause windows to be closed, humidity was worse, and insects invaded by other routes.
Indiana Canals. Paul Fatout. Purdue University Press 1972

We descended to the cabin and found that the passengers had already crawled into their berths. One little corner of the cabin we found curtained off for the little Irish lady. The odor of the cabin was decidedly unpleasant, but there was no help for it. As there was no better arrangement possible, we decided to pack ourselves away on the little shelves, that had been prepared for us, and see if "kind natures sweet restorer" would come to our assistance. Mr. A's shelf was immediately above mine, the space between being little more than one foot. As Mr. A was a pretty heavy man I felt somewhat fearful that his tackling might give way, and I get a little more squeezing than would be comfortable. But feeling some confidence in his cords I pulled off my coat, vest and shoes, lay myself along, and rolled in. The berth was hard and narrow, and though my limbs ached exceedingly from lying so long in one position, there was no turning over, though I did manage once to get partly on my back for a few minutes. The clatter of men upon the deck of the boat, and my unusual and painful position kept me, for a long time, wakeful and restless. At length, however I lost all consciousness of me real troubles in sleep; but then, alas! dreams of narrow passages, and if being stifled in some pent up hole, added ten fold to my former uneasiness. Soon my position became still more wretched and It seems resolved, at all hazards, to make my way out of that, and commenced crawling from the horrid place. When I became more conscious, I found myself stumbling over the chairs of the cabin, on my way to the door. But still I found that it was not all a dream, that a little fresh air would, in reality, be very comfortable; so I kept on to the door, and felt much refreshed by the cool night air.....

Becoming sleepy, I concluded I would try once more to stow myself away, as to obtain a little sleep. I exchanged berths, so as to obtain one, near a window, where I could get fresh air. The space from the berth to the roof of the cabin was about four feet, so that I now had room to turn over. I found this berth quite comfortable, and I slept soundly.

The most usual manner, with myself, was to lie at full length upon the fine cushioned seats, and place my carpet bag for the support of my head and shoulders. SO expert was I in this custom, that the palm was given to me by all, as being the most successful in finding out comfortable positions. Even Mr. A. who had even considered himself first in that way, was, as he frankly acknowledged, forced to give in.
Through Indiana by Stage Coach & Canal Boat Indiana Mag. of History. LXXXV, 1989

In the long parlor, which was the men's dormitory by night, sleeping arrangements were as public as those of an army barracks, but less comfortable. Berths rigged up in three tiers of removable platforms something like enlarged luggage racks, each six feet long and twenty inches wide and held in place by ropes, accommodated twenty four to thirty passengers. When forty of fifty were aboard, as often happened, men were jammed into bunks, distributed on tables, and laid out on thin mattresses covering the floor, the ladies quarters being equally congested.
Indiana Canals. Paul Fatout. Purdue University Press 1972

The steward, however, soon solved their doubts by hanging up some shelves to the wall, and laying mattresses and sheets upon them....

The berths were in tiers three rows high. I was put in the top one....I lay awake, but still, for a long time. At last I heard every one turning and sighing with the heat, so I gave way to my own feelings and did so, too. But the shelves or tiers on which we lay were so short that I found my pillow constantly slipping down below my head; and if I put it lower down, my feet hung out the other end; so that, although I was not very tall, I was obliged at last to curl myself up and be quite still, while the mosquitoes devoured and the heat melted me.
The Wabash, Adventures of an English Gentleman's Family in Indiana. J. Richard Beste. 1855

At night, there came still another change, and the big compartment, through a metamorphosis likewise accomplished by the Captain and two of his assistants, was converted into a floating dormitory. Small shelves of wood, about six feet long and three and a half feet wide, were attached to the walls. These were held up at their outer edges by slender supports of wood or wrought iron, and became the beds on which men passengers were privileged to repose. Each shelf was equipped with a thin clump of clotted straw contained in a flat rectangular bag of blue canvas, the whole being commonly known as a mattress.

A similar contrivance, very much smaller in size but closely allied to the mattress in species and called a pillow, was also placed on each shelf, and one blanket was likewise supplied. The beds were arranged in tiers, the lowest being a few inches off the floor, and the one immediately above being at a distance of about three feet from the bottommost bunk. A like interval of space separated the middle shelf from the upper one. The space between the top bunk and the cabin roof was not usually so great as that between the lower beds.

There were thus three identical compartments in each tier, and a large packet generally had seven tiers of bunks along each side of the cabin. This arrangement permitted forty two passengers to complete those preparations which are ordinarily followed by sleep. But as the cabin was virtually void of ventilation, and as sundry other conditions as are about to be described entered into conflict with the ostensible purpose of sleeping berths on a canal boat, a comfortable nights rest under such conditions was hardly to be expected. It should here be said that the night arrangements in the women's cabin were substantially identical with those just mentioned.

The usual method of allotting berths on a canal boat was to permit passengers to choose their sleeping quarters in the order in which they embarked. Travelers customarily chose the lower shelves as long as any still remained vacant, though a lower bunk had one undesirable feature in that there always existed the possibility of a collapse of those immediately above it.

During periods of especially heavy travel it constantly happened that the number of people embarking on a canal boat far exceeded the number of sleeping berths with which it was equipped. At those times it was necessary

Sometimes seventy-five or eighty or even a hundred men were thus closely packed into a room designed for the accommodation of forty two. Few indeed were the canal boat voyagers who dared to venture upon such preparations for a nights repose as were usual under home conditions. A man would take off his hat, collar, cravat, and his coat and waistcoat, and then climb into his allotted bunk. If unusually fastidious, he would divest himself of his trousers and shoes before retiring, but such passengers as went to the extreme here indicated were not uncommonly regarded as fops or swells.

There remains still another condition which arose during the process of going to bed on a crowded canal boat. When the floor and tables were all occupied as well as the shelves, it became necessary to erect a zigzag series of clotheslines back and forth across the cabin, on which the discarded garments of the passengers might be hung, and the scenic effect produced in the sleeping room when this process had been completed somewhat resembled that displayed by the back yard of a modern tenement house on wash day.

Finally, after all the travelers were spread out upon their berths and on the tables and floor and the light had been put out, the unhappy assemblage subsided into a restless but unseen throng in which the stillness was only broken by faint moanings, the creaking of the boat and an occasional stentorian snore. After suffering for several hours amid the conditions here outlined, it was a common occurrence that some passenger abandoned his endeavor to obtain rest in an upper berth and decided to quit for the better air and greater comfort to be found on the roof. He, therefore, cautiously lowered his feet in the direction some table whose position as it stood when he went to bed was remembered by him.

He would try to perform this operation of getting a foothold with utmost quietude in order that he might not disturb his fellow travelers. Hanging from his shelf by his elbows and feeling in the darkness with his foot for the table he was seeking, he might al last find it, only to step on the prostrate form of some belated passenger to whom it had been allotted.
The History of Travel in America. Seymour Dumbar. 1915