Picturing and Modeling the S.S. Savannah: What Did She Look Like?

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Savannah with a straight smokestack

Frontispiece in James Rogers of New London 

and His Descendants, 1902

Frank L. McGuire Maritime Library

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Frank L. McGuire Maritime Library

The iconography of the Savannah has a checkered history: her plans had disappeared and errors were perpetuated in early drawings and engravings. Artistic license led the artist of the frontispiece of the Rogers genealogy to substitute a conventional smokestack for the ship's unusual bent stack. 

Even the attractive stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service in 1944, on the 125th anniversary of Savannah's voyage (shown later), uses an inaccurate drawing, probably based on the flawed model in the Smithsonian dating from about 1890. 

In 1961 Howard I. Chapelle, Smithsonian curator of transportation, published an account of research undertaken to build a more accurate model. Information was assembled from the Savannah's logbook, the registry description in the Savannah Custom House, drawings by Jean-Baptiste Marestier, a French naval architect who spent two years in the U.S. studying steam vessels, and a St. Petersburg newspaper account of the ship's visit.

When the new model was displayed, historian Frank O. Braynard believed that certain features were still incorrect, in particular the height of the smokestack and the placement of the paddlewheels and wheel house, features that distinguished her so radically.  

In his 1981 study of American steamships, Cedric Ridgely-Nevitt, a naval architect and historian, also criticized Chapelle's rendering and, though generally dismissive of the Savannah's historic achievement, regarded Jean-Baptiste Marestier's drawing (shown below at end of this section) as the most accurate depiction on record, a view supported by John Laurence Busch in Steam Coffin.

Of one thing we can be sure:  the hybrid Savannah looked like no other ship of her day.

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Above: Chapelle's drawing of the Savannah

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Above: The Smithsonian's new model, ca. 1961

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May, 2022

This exhibit was updated in May, 2022, to present new material about what the Savannah looked like. Because her plans have long since disappeared, modelers have not attempted to recreate her interior in any detail, in particular her boilers, engine, cylinder, flue and pumps.

Six years ago Richard "Dick" Barns, an engineer wishing to try his hand at ship modeling, decided to see if he could build a plausible model of Savannah that displayed her interior. A view of the finished work, minus deck, masts and rigging, is shown here:

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Barns has made a convincing model by analyzing the observations of contemporaries who inspected Savannah before, during and after the historic voyage. The most famous of these was Jean-Baptiste Marestier, a French naval architect studying American steamship and steamboat design. Less well known was Baron Axel Leonhard Klinkowstrom of Sweden, who observed the fabrication of the engine at close hand and sailed aboard Savannah prior to the Atlantic crossing. Notes from other commentators appear in the historical record as well, together with her registry measurements at the Savannah Custom House. 

Below: The boilers are shown without the engine assembly they lie under, followed by the view of the engine in place. 

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After studying these observations and Chapelle's research, and making adjustments to certain angles and dimensions based on his own engineering knowledge, Barns created his model using Chapelle’s hull design and Marestier’s locations of the masts and paddle wheels. The mechanical motion is also correct: the piston and pumps move in synch with the paddle wheel.

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Dick Barns claims that he is not an expert ship modeler, but these photographs suggest otherwise. The Savannah is only his second model and he welcomes comments using the "Contact us" function (top of page) from viewers knowledgeable in the construction of wooden ships and their models. Comments will be relayed to him by the exhibit curator.

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Picturing and Modeling the S.S. Savannah: What Did She Look Like?