The cost of a ticket on a packet boat, which also included the price of meals and a sleeping bunk, usually amounted to about five cents for a mile of distance traveled.
The History of Travel in America. Seymour Dumbar. 1915

Cost of the passage was cheap, averaging about 50 cents a day, or five cents per mile. Children were charged much lower rates, and on some of the packet lines those under eight were carried free. Meals were usually included in the price of the bigger packets, but on smaller boats, without cooking facilities, passengers would stop at small towns or farm houses for food.
Canals of Mid America. Leslie C. Swanson. Moline IL 1964

Fare on the line boats was about 1 1/2 cents a mile, as against 3 of 4 cents on the packets
Old Towpaths. Alvin F, Harlow 1926 D. Appleton Co.

By 1844, the packet boats maintained regular schedules between Fort Wayne and Toledo, a distance of 104 miles, and by 1847 this service had been extended to Lafayette.
Fort Wayne During The Canal Era. Charles R. Poinsatte Ind. Hist. Review 1969

When passengers came aboard, they usually signed a register which determined their rights to sleeping and eating accommodations. Those who arrived late had to be prepared to sleep on the floor or deck. Printed rules of conduct were usually displayed in conspicuous fashion to catch the eye of the traveler at the outset of his journey. Some of the strictly enforced laws were as follows:

No gentleman could lie in bed with his boots on, and gentlemen were not allowed to go to the table in their shirt sleeves.
Canals of Mid America. Leslie C. Swanson. Moline IL 1964

We went on board, by way of a board, a gang-plank, that is, and soon found ourselves in a dark, hole-like room, where it was hard to breathe and impossible to see plainly. There was a queer smell, Tom says all canal boats have that odor. Of course, this being my first experience, I cannot say how true it is.
Stories of Indiana. Thompson. p 218 "Extract from a private letter written 1851.



Sleep or no sleep, all were routed out early to allow the steward's crew to clear away for breakfast. The long parlor became a dining room. On well-managed packets cooks were usually good, fare plentiful and often varied by fresh corn, turnips and greens taken aboard from farms along the way. No exotic dishes on the table, but meals plain and solid, served family style at a cost of about twenty five cents for breakfast and supper, thirty seven and one half cents for dinner. Staples were ham, pork chops, sausage, liver, potatoes, boiled beans, catfish, mackerel, all cooked in plentiful grease and likely to appear three times a day, along with bread, butter, pickles, and bitter coffee. As an adjunct of the commissary, the bar was a perquisite of the steward, who dispensed drinks from a cubicle about four square feet.
Indiana Canals. Paul Fatout. Purdue University Press 1972

Then came the breakfast. The bread was hot and very heavy, and the beefsteaks were dry, small, and much underdone. I do not know how papa managed. Captain Davis looked very black if anyone asked to be helped a second time.
The Wabash, Adventures of an English Gentleman's Family in Indiana. J. Richard Beste. (Lucy writes) 1855

Thrice each day, at morning noon and evening, the Captain and two other members of the crew appeared and speedily converted the apartment into a dining room. The process was effected by setting up a long work table composed of wide boards placed on a system of trestle-work. These necessary appurtenances of lumber, when not in use, were stowed away somewhere in a small stateroom As soon as the meal was finished, the tables were taken down, and the main cabin again assumed its function of general gathering place. In short, this principal section of the boat combined within itself all those features of utility and comfort which are now to be found in the various longing rooms, restaurants, libraries, reading rooms and smoking rooms of a modern ocean steamship.
The History of Travel in America. Seymour Dumbar. 1915

I found my breakfast this morning (Thurs. June 22) rather uneatable; either from the want of appetite or because the breakfast was, in reality, poor. Perhaps a little of both. The coffee certainly was not drinkable; and I seem suddenly to have lost all relish for eggs and bacon - the staff of life in this country. So i nibbled away at a cracker, awhile, and drank a little cold water, concluding I could wait until dinner time, and see if an appetite would relish almost any type of food; and still more luckily I found what I can relish at most time, viz:good boiled eggs, good chocolate evidently beginning to dispair of ever getting rid of me. Though I found a tolerable excuse in the fact that the chocolate was so hot, I must necessarily wait for it to cool. But, surely, I did eat a very abundant dinner.
Through Indiana by Stage Coach & Canal Boat Indiana Mag. of History. LXXXV, 1989

While the passengers were thus assuming their daytime appearance, the allotted members of the crew were busily dismantling the sleeping berths and converting the cabin into an eating room. The cook in his little cabin at the extreme after end of the boat had been busy since four o'clock at his work of preparing breakfast, and that meal was generally announced at six. Everything was put on the table at once. after the custom prevailing in the taverns of the day, and the man who ate most swiftly was sure to secure a substantial meal, be its after-effects what they might. From the very nature of things it was not possible to serve on a canal boat a meal of such variety or excellence as could be obtained on dry land. The food was limited in variety, and to say often limited in quantity also. The breakfast in the women's cabin was served at the same time to all the women and children on board, and after the meal was finished, it again became the privilege of the two sexes to meet and spend the coming day together. Families were once more united.
The History of Travel in America. Seymour Dumbar. 1915



The packet barges on the Wabash & Erie were popularly called mosquito boats.
Huntington Herald Press. Wed April 21, 1976. Huntington heritage series. VM

Soon our thoughts reverted to ourselves, and we began to make laudable efforts to preserve our lives, from the dense swarms of large, fat musquetoes (sic) that, with indomitable courage and untiring perseverance, seemed resolved to have a breakfast of our blood. After fighting manfully, for some time, and losing much blood, I fairly retreated to the cabin: and , jumping into my berth, actually gave up the struggle and hid myself under the bed clothes. Here, though I could still hear their buzzing, and felt appalled at their cruelty in dealing so unmercifully with a fallen foe, I found that I was comparatively safe from their bloody instruments, and I lay quite comfortably for a couple of hours.

On rising again for breakfast, I found them still fresh and vigorous, and their ardor by no means cooled. Of course, breakfast could not be enjoyed; for, besides their buzzing and biting, it was difficult to get a morsel of food into one's mouth without taking more or less of them along with it. I succeeded, however, in making a light breakfast without being indebted to many of them for adding to the support of that body, they were treating so blood-thirstily; and afterwards, by dint of smoking and brushing we fairly drove them from the cabin, and then proceeded to make ourselves comfortable, after the most approved method.
Through Indiana by Stage Coach & Canal Boat Indiana Mag. of History. LXXXV, 1989

It seemed that all of the heat spent by the sun during the day had settle down into that hot and stuffy little room, and that all the mosquitoes ever hatched in the mud puddles of Indiana were condensed into one humming ravenous swarm right around my hard little bed. Tom went up into the open air on top of the boat and spent the night. How I did wish I was a boy! All night I lay there under a smothering mosquito bar and listened to the buzzing of insects, perspiring as I never supposed that anyone could. It was awful, horrid! It seemed that daylight was never going to come again. Every once in a while I heard men's voices, the boatmen talking, probably; but they sounded strangely. Chickens sometimes crowed in the distance. About morning, I fell asleep, and did not wake up until some shouting voices startled me."
Stories of Indiana. Thompson. p 218 "Extract from a private letter written 1851.

After tea we all began a most murderous attack upon the mosquitoes that swarmed on the windows and inside our berths in expectation of feasting upon us as soon as we should go to bed; but those on whom we made war were soon replaced by others, and the more we killed, the more they seemed to come to be killed...At last, we gave up the task as hopeless and resigned ourselves as well as we could to passing a sleepless night.
The Wabash, Adventures of an English Gentleman's Family in Indiana. J. Richard Beste. 1855