The Advent of Maritime Steam Power

Dennis Griffiths

STEAM AT SEA

Two Centuries of Steam-powered Ships

London, Conway Maritime Press, 1997

This gift from the late Augustin Borneuf is a fitting choice to celebrate the bicentennial of National Maritime Day.* When Congress established the observance in 1933, May 22 was chosen to honor the achievement of Capt. Moses Rogers, the New London mariner who, on that date in 1819, took the first ship equipped with a steam engine across the Atlantic. The S.S. Savannah is given her due in these pages, noting that her engine, however “basic,” demonstrated for the very first time that steam power could be adapted for an ocean voyage.

The book gives even more attention to the work of another Connecticut maritime entrepreneur, John Fitch (1743-1798), a “farm boy” from Windsor, with an engineering bent and little formal education, who built a steamboat that briefly operated on the Delaware River in 1790. Fitch’s pioneering if ultimately unsuccessful venture was eclipsed seventeen years later by Robert Fulton’s success with the North River Steamboat. 

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John Laurence Busch

STEAM COFFIN

Captain Moses Rogers and the Steamship Savannah Break the Barrier

[New Canaan, CT], Hodos Historia, 2010

This selection celebrates the author's lecture at the Custom House in 2018 about the Savannah, the first ship to cross the Atlantic using steam power.  The saga of this hybrid vessel has unusual significance for us: Moses Rogers was a New Londoner as was the ship's sailing master, his distant cousin Stevens Rogers, and they recruited a few New Londoners for their crew. While some historians downplay the importance of Savannah's voyage because the engine was only fired up for three or four days of the crossing, that didn't deter President Franklin Roosevelt from proclaiming May 22 as National Maritime Day in 1933, the 114th anniversary of the converted sailing packet's 1819 departure for Europe.

The first observance of Maritime Day took place in New London at the impressive Cedar Grove gravestone of Stevens Rogers. He had returned to New London from Savannah, outlived his illustrious cousin, briefly served as customs collector, and related the Savannah story firsthand to Frances Manwaring Caulkins, then hard at work on her history of New London.

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Frank O. Braynard

S. S. SAVANNAH: THE ELEGANT STEAM SHIP

New York, Dover, 1988

We have a special interest in this first major study of the Savannah because author Braynard pays tribute to the New London mariner who was her builder and captain, Moses Rogers (1779 - 1821.) Braynard asserted that Rogers’s pioneering experiment using steam power for ocean navigation had not been properly recognized, arguing that Savannah’s transatlantic voyage using steam power for the first time should be cited in history books alongside such achievements as Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight to Europe or the completion of the transcontinental railroad. In 2010 Braynard’s view was confirmed and expanded upon by John Laurence Busch in Steam Coffin, his definitive study of the Savannah.

Frank Braynard (1916 - 2007) was a prominent ship historian and writer. McGuire Library owns eight of his books on liners of the 20th century along with others for which he wrote an introduction, among them The Tall Ships - A Sailing Celebration, and the republication of John Morrison’s 1903 History of American Steam Navigation. We are particularly proud to have on our shelves Braynard's six-volume magnum opus, The World’s Greatest Ship - The Story of the Leviathan, also included elsewhere in this exhibit. In 2008 Braynard's huge collection of ocean liner memorabilia was auctioned at New York's prestigious Swann Galleries.

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Norman J. Brouwer

STEAMBOATS ON LONG ISLAND SOUND

Images of America Series

Charleston, SC, Arcadia Publishing, 2014

As a maritime historian and author of the International Register of Historic Ships, we can be sure that Norman Brouwer's new book is an authoritative look at this subject which figures so largely in New London's maritime past. City of Worcester, the largest boat of the Norwich Line, is shown here, while the familiar picture of her passing close to New London's waterfront landing in 1881 is among several images of the company's boats and operations. Other chapters are devoted to the Fall River, Stonington, New Haven and Bridgeport Lines, each with historic photos and informative captions.

Several references are made to the once prominent Palmer Shipyard in nearby Noank, Connecticut, where some of these impressive vessels were built or rebuilt in the 19th century. 

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George H. Foster and Peter C. Weiglin

SPLENDOR SAILED THE SOUND

The New Haven Railroad and the Fall River Line

San Mateo, CA, Potentials Group, 1989

An entire chapter of this lavishly illustrated book is devoted to the shipping lines serving New London and Norwich. The subtitle hints at the sometimes ruthless competition between the railroads and the steamboat lines operating in Long Island Sound between New York, Boston and points between. An account of the bridging of the Thames at New London in 1889, closing the last gap in the shoreline railroad, foretells the demise of the steamboat as the most important (and comfortable) mode of travel between New York City and New England.