Steamboat Books in McGuire Library

American Heritage Picture and History Cards

STEAMBOATS 1788 - 1957

Springfield MA, Milton Bradley Co., 1961

A set of forty cards picturing representative American steamboats from their origins to 1957, with a succinct history of each. Seven Long Island Sound boats are included, among them "Connecticut," built in Noank, Connecticut, in 1889 as flagship of the Providence & Stonington Line (below) 

"By the time she was built...big wooden boats were already outmoded...However, the Connecticut summed up the best traits of wooden hulled Sound sidewheelers: imposing paddleboxes, hog frames, twin stacks in line rather than abreast, and a huge layer-cake superstructure 87 feet wide, mounted on a hull only 48 feet in breadth. She was scrapped after barely 20 years' service."

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Norman J. Brouwer

STEAMBOATS ON LONG ISLAND SOUND - Images of America

Charleston, Arcadia, 2014

A profusely illustrated account of the subject offering concise histories of the lines and interesting factual information on the most notable boats of the era. Brouwer is a respected maritime historian and editor of the International Register of Historic Ships.

Gift of the author

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Fred Erving Dayton

STEAMBOAT DAYS 

The History of the Steamboat in America

New York, Tudor, 1939

A detailed, somewhat folksy account of the complex, ever-changing evolution of the steamboat on American rivers, lakes, bays and sounds.  Names dozens of the entrepreneurs, shipbuilders and captains who populated the "days of the steamboats." Illustrated with detailed line drawings by John Wolcott Adams.

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Edwin L. Dunbaugh

THE ERA OF THE JOY LINE - A Saga of Steamboating on Long Island Sound

Westport CT, Greenwood, 1982

The story of a small independent steamboat line which tried to compete on the New York - Providence route with the lines controlled by the New Haven Railroad monopoly by offering simpler accomodations and lower fares. Ellery Thompson refers often to the 1907 sinking of the Joy Line steamer Larchmont, which collided with another vessel off Watch Hill, Rhode Island, when he was eight years old - one of the worst disasters of the steamboat era.

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Edwin L. Dunbaugh

NEW ENGLAND STEAMSHIP COMPANY

Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2005

Published for the Steamship Historical Society of America

Against the historical background of the competing Long Island Sound lines and their railroad connections, Dunbaugh gives a year-by-year account of the efforts of J. P. Morgan and the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad to gain control of the lines. Widely regarded at the time as cut-throat schemes to create a transportation monopoly, the formation of the New England Steamship Company led to more economical use of the boats formerly operated by separate companies, improved service to travelers, and likely postponed the eventual demise of the industry.

Below: Back of dustjacket with City of Lowell and testimonials

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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, Potentials Group Inc., 1989

Another richly illustrated history of the exciting age of the steamboats that traveled through Long Island Sound between New York and southern New England night and day and often made weekend excursions in the Hudson River. Includes photographs, maps, posters, machinery diagrams and boat plans from dozens of museums, libraries, individuals and other sources.

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J. Howland Gardner

THE DEVELOPMENT OF STEAM NAVIGATION ON LONG ISLAND SOUND

Reprints in Marine History No. 2

Providence, Steamship Historical Society of America, 1994

The author, a naval architect, summarizes the evolution of steamboat design from 1792 to 1908, the year he saw his greatest achievement, Fall River Line's Commonwealth, enter service - the largest steamboat ever to sail on the Sound. Technical details of the most important vessels of the later 19th century are given, such as length, beam, draft, boilers, steam pressure, horsepower, freight capacity, and number of staterooms. Gardner served for many years as president of the New England Steamship Company. This article was originally published in 1945 in the Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers.

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George W. Hilton

THE NIGHT BOAT

Berkeley, Howell-North, 1968

Hilton's coverage of the Long Island Sound night boats is exemplary, somewhat tighter than Splendor Sailed the Sound but equally well illustrated with black and white photographs, maps, boat plans, and poster reproductions. But the scope is far broader, to include the Hudson River Night Line, three Chesapeake Bay lines, the Louisville & Cincinnati Packet Co., Canada Steamship Lines, two Great Lakes lines, and others.  

"...this book is a fond farewell to a vanished institution. May it serve alike to remind those of us who loved the night boat what the fates have denied us..."                --- from the Preface

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Roger Williams McAdam

COMMONWEALTH - GIANTESS OF THE SOUND

New York, Stephen Daye, 1959

McGuire Library owns five titles by Ellery Thompson's friend, Roger Williams McAdam, doyen and historian of the Fall River Line. At 455 feet the Commonwealth was the largest of the Sound steamers and engines which could generate 12,000 horsepower. As with all the Line's boats, she was a sidewheeler even though many naval architects had shifted to propellers before the turn of the century. Passenger capacity was 2,002 in summer, 652 in winter. She was laid up at Fall River when the line ceased operations in 1937 and towed to Baltimore for scrapping the next year.

Below: Commonwealth in all her glory

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Roger Williams McAdam

FLOATING PALACES - New England to New York on the Old Fall River Line

Providence, Mowbray, 1972

More elegy than historiography, Floating Palaces is an expanded version of The Old Fall River Line, first published in 1937, the year the Line closed down in a labor strike. Not for nothing was McAdam known as "Mr. Fall River Line," proud to be called "an unabashed sentimentalist" for his "unqualified devotion" to the Line. It is not surprising that the book ends with an emotional lament for the loss of one of America's most beloved institutions: a steamboat line with no equal in the annals of 19th century transportation.

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Roger Williams McAdam

PRISCILLA OF FALL RIVER

New York, Stephen Daye, 1956

Priscilla was the most popular and opulent of the Fall River Line boats and gets much attention in this exhibit because Ellery Thompson had so much to say about her, starting with his time as a bow watchman on the City of Lowell. Other boats were as impressive, but Priscilla radiated an aura that drew travelers back time and again for a trip to New York or Boston. Entering service in 1894, she could accomodate even more passengers than the larger Commonwealth, and her dining service was exceptional by any standard. Even so, her time ran out and she was towed to Baltimore for scrapping in 1938.

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Roger Williams McAdam

SALTS OF THE SOUND

Brattleboro, VT, Stephen Daye, 1939

McAdam was proud of the fact that he knew many of the captains of the Sound steamers, an august fraternity of uncommonly skilled navigators who in their heyday occupied a rarefied position in society. They were of many types, from kindly to stern, even forbidding, but they all knew what they were about and earned wide respect. After years of immersion in the lively world of the steamboats as both passenger and observer McAdam had the material to compile an admiring collection of character sketches, replete with anecdotes about tight situations requiring quick decisions by the "salts of the Sound."

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John H. Morrison

HISTORY OF AMERICAN STEAM NAVIGATION

Illustrations by Samuel Ward Stanton

New York, Stephen Daye Press, 1958

First published in 1903, this meticulous account of steam vessels from the earliest experiments in the 18th century through their steady development in the 19th warranted re-publication for new generations of readers. Marine historian Frank O. Braynard furnished a new Foreword, from which we quote: "It is a mine of material concerning steamships and steamboats of the ninety-five years following Fulton's famous North River Steamboat, commonly known as Clermont...It is clearly the outpouring of decades of enthusiasm coupled with painstaking research."

Morrison filled 630 pages with his story. Chapter Five's 98 pages are devoted to the steamboat lines of Long Island Sound. A four-year old when the book first appeared, Ellery Thompson was nearly 60 when this edition came out and almost certainly knew of it.

A certain poignance permeates the final pages of the chapters: the most recently launched boats, such as Priscilla and City of Lowell, were in their prime as Morrison was writing.