Salts of the Sound
Ellery’s friend Roger Williams McAdam knew several of the steamer captains and gathered enough anecdotal information to write lively character studies of the men he called "salts of the Sound. Published in 1939, Salts of the Sound is a tribute to these uniquely talented individuals, but it may also be read as a eulogy for the boats that were being towed to scrapyards even as McAdam was writing.
The "floating palaces" demanded uncommon navigational skill as well as coal to make them come alive: to wend their way through the tricky East River; to sail safely through the night from one end of the Sound to the other as their passengers slept; to maneuver up to a wharf using only propellers or sidewheels and deftly handled hawsers. Salts of the Sound recounts dozens of navigational feats, adventures, and unusual maneuvers, usually involving an emergency: mechanical failure, grounding, collision, or a rescue.
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The “salts” of the Sound occupied a rarefied position in society comparable to the whaling captains before them. They were maritime royalty, their expertise inspiring admiration from subordinates as well as the travelers in their care.
The launching of ever larger and faster boats required that captains stay abreast of new procedures and challenges, honing their skills to operate their vessels in such a way that the reputation of the companies would remain untarnished.
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"Memories of voyages upon various Sound Lines dating back to boyhood, during which I came to know intimately and to esteem a score of the "Salts of the Sound," prompted this attempt to chronicle a glorious chapter in American marine history." (from the Preface)
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Salts of the Sound is one of many books given to the McGuire Library by the late Archie Chester, a longtime trustee of the New London Maritime Society with a special interest in its library.
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Below: From the Hudson River to the Cape Cod Canal, the book's endpapers provide a clear look at the jagged coastline of southern New England and the waterways plied by the Sound boats.
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One of the "salts" was New London's James D. Pettigrew, in charge of City of Lowell when Ellery was hired, and later of New Hampshire. He worked on the New London Line for 48 years, making his way steadily up the ladder from quartermaster to captain. Quiet, kindly and unassuming, "night after night, summer and winter, he brought the liners through," wrote McAdam. He was among the last of the New London-New York steamboat commanders.
Capt. Philip Ollweiler, who grew up in Stonington, commanded at least fifteen of the great boats, including the Lowell and the most beloved of them all, Priscilla. Much admired for his skill, he occupies a tragic place in the annals of the salts of the Sound: it fell to him to take both City of Lowell and Priscilla to layup in Providence in 1937 when the New England Steamship Company ceased operations. McAdam recounts that as Ollweiler watched Priscilla being towed away to Baltimore for scrapping in 1938, he said to his companions, "This is breaking my heart."
In an article in The Mystic River Press, July 18, 2019, Steven Slosberg wrote of Philip Ollweiler's suicide in 1945, seven years after the last voyage of the Priscilla, observing that it was the fate of these highly accomplished captains "to watch as their profession died before they did."
"Thousands of eyes were wet with tears when tugs towed the Priscilla and the Commonwealth down Narragansett Bay bound south toward a marine junkyard. Of course they had been stripped, and parts of these vessels may now be scattered in a thousand homes and offices. Our family had a heavy mahogany salon chair from the City of Worcester..."
William Muller's striking painting of Priscilla on an excursion, flags flying on a brilliant afternoon, evokes the exhilaration felt by travelers and spectators alike when the Sound boats were in their prime. When the Fall River Line suddenly ceased operations in 1937, prompted by a labor strike, the shock was enormous. Somehow everyone expected the glorious boats to go on forever, part of the established nature of things. A world without the night boats and their exciting daytime excursions was inconceivable.
William Muller was one of the marine artists who augmented the priceless black-and-white photographs of the boats by recreating many of them in living color, as seen in this exhibit. He did so out of a love kindled when working summers aboard the Hudson River steamboats, first cousins to those on Long Island Sound:
"What character they had, these steamboats with their nodding walking-beams, their sharp bows that knifed through the water like racing shells, and the mellow, mournful sounds produced by their wonderful steam whistles."
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This exhibit began with the memoirs of Ellery Thompson, and now ends with more, bringing the curtain down on a unique chapter of America's maritime history that played out so vividly on Long Island Sound.
"To see a nightly parade of passenger steamboats strung out along Long Island Sound lit up like glittering cathedrals, tooting salutes to steamers going in the opposite direction, left its mark on me and thousands of others."
"Passenger steamboating came to a rather painful and dramatic end in 1937 when the great Fall River Line took its famous paddlewheel steamers out of service. Depression, competition (afloat and ashore) and a sit-down strike in New York had a lot to do with it. But if the golden era of floating mansions ended a little tarnished, the wake it left astern will glow forever."
