The Steamboats of New London
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The Golden Age of the steamboat was beginning to fade when Ellery was a young man, but the finest steamboats of the era continued to ply Long Island Sound until 1937, the culmination of a century of invention that began with Robert Fulton's North River Steamboat in 1807.
One or two lines would carry on briefly after World War II, but soon succumbed to the automobile and the railroads.
We are given a glimpse of New London's early steamboat history in Robert Owen Decker's The Whaling City. From the first regular service - a steamboat connection with New Haven in 1817 - nearly twenty different companies came and went over the next hundred years, providing service from Norwich and New London to New Haven and beyond, to Newport and beyond, to small riverfront or coastal towns such as Montville, Mystic, and Stonington, and of course to Block Island, Fishers Island and Long Island.
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Fred Erving Dayton's Steamboat Days - A History of the Steamboat in America (New York, 1939) devotes an entire chapter to the New London area boat lines from their earliest days.
The most enduring was the Norwich & New York Transportation Co, formed in 1860, first referred to as the Norwich Line and later as the New London Line after the terminus was moved from Norwich to New London.
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Below: In the 19th century the most photographed New London boat was Norwich Line's City of Worcester, often shown on postcards pulling away from the waterfront before the new railroad station hid the view. In this picture she is temporarily indisposed after hitting Cormorant Reef off New London in 1898!
City of Worcester, the "Belle of Long Island Sound," was an iron-hulled sidewheeler launched in 1881. Old-fashioned in many respects, she was among the last of her kind before the radically new propeller-driven City of Lowell went into service opposite her in 1894.
City of Worcester was laid up at Stonington before being dismantled in 1915, the year Ellery Thompson joined the crew of the Lowell.
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As Ellery recounts in Draggerman's Haul, the Thompson home on Groton's Granite Street provided a grandstand view of New London harbor:
"We lived in Quiambaug a year...then went back to Groton, eastward across the Thames River from New London. Here we could watch the new lighthouse in the process of construction at Southwest Ledge, the ferryboat plying back and forth between Groton and New London...the endless parade of tugs and coal barges moving into the harbor when an approaching storm drove them to shelter.
"We watched naval vessels, excursion steamers and Sound steamers, and during the hours of darkness we often watched the searching beam of a steamer's light probing a channel for a marker, or sweeping for the house of a ship's officer or one of his friends.
Below: In 1909 or 1910 the battleship USS Connecticut anchored off New London for public visitation. She had returned from duty as the flagship for the Great White Fleet, President Theodore Roosevelt's round-the-world projection of American naval power (1907-1909). (Photo taken at a fleet review in the Hudson River in 1911.)
"'Playing hooky from school will be good for both of us,' said my grinning father...The deep-draft Connecticut was anchored in 20 fathoms off New London, nearly on a pet spot where Pop dragged his net for flounder...A Navy launch at New London's Public Landing was waiting, and after a half-hour trip down the harbor...it ran alongside the huge battlewaggon towering far above.
"After being awed by turrets of long range guns, her near-700 feet in length, code flags flying aloft in the breeze, band playing snappy music...I got curious about horsepower...An engineering officer informed us that the Connecticut had engines capable of delivering 15,500 horsepower. New England had the biggest and the best."
Below: Another naval vessel, the cruiser U.S.S. Texas at anchor in the harbor, ca. 1905.
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Below: A view of the New London waterfront from the Groton side of the river near the Thompson home. At the left, the night boat Chester W. Chapin is tied up at the steamboat wharf, a smaller boat is at the Fishers Island pier and a another lies at the wharf beyond the railroad station, possibly Orient of the Montauk & New London Line.
Below: Young Ellery's world - Groton, New London and the waters of the Thames. The Parade and Union Railroad Station are at the end of State Street, and a ferry is in mid-river to the left of the spire.
The twin funnels of a Sound steamer are visible to the right of the puff of smoke.
Groton Bank, the oldest part of town, stretches in both directions on the slope above the river. Ellery's home was in the area above the anchored schooner.
Below: A view of New London from the heights of Groton Bank. The residential neighborhood slopes down below the trees.
Old postcards invariably show a large, white Sound steamer tied up at the pier, as here; the night boats arrived in the morning from New York, passengers disembarked, cargo was offloaded, and the crew readied the boat for another evening departure for Manhattan's Pier 40.
In addition to the arrivals and departures of the New York night boats, New London also saw daytime steamboat operations by smaller lines such as the Montauk & New London Steamboat Co., the New London Steamboat Co., the Fishers Island Navigation Co., and the freighters of the Central Vermont Railway.
Below: The Fishers Island boats tied up at this pier which stretched into the harbor directly behind Union Railroad Station, so called because when built it served both the New Haven Railroad and the Central Vermont.
Below (two images): The Montauk & New London Steamboat Co. offered scheduled service between the eastern end of Long island and New London. Two of its boats were Orient and Wyandotte. The Groton-New London ferry slip is at the right.
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The New London Steamboat Co. offered daily service from Norwich to Block Island with stops along the way. The largest boat was the sidewheeler Block Island, seen passing through the open railroad bridge. She could also be chartered for excursions and as a spectator boat for the Yale-Harvard regatta, seen below somewhat unbalanced by the enormous crowd.
Above: Courtesy of the Henry Ferguson Museum, Fishers Island
Below: This photo with its caption is from a 1967 publication of the Steamship Historical Society, one of several reproduced in our exhibit titled "Down to the Shore," a memoir by a Connecticut College professor of his boyhood excursions to Block Island. It may be viewed by selecting "Browse Exhibits" at the top of these pages and scrolling down the list.
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New London once hosted a unique freight operation as regular in its service to New York as the more glamorous passenger night boats. From the later 19th century to 1946 the Central Vermont Railway, a subsidiary of the Canadian National, operated freight trains between New London and the Montreal area, and intermediate points. Lines of boxcars were run out onto the CV Pier so the freight could be transferred to the waiting boats and carried to New York every night.
Ellery again:
"The Central Vermont freight pier was midway between the New London City Dock and the railroad drawbridge. The C.V. black-hulled freight steamers -- New London and New York - usually left for New York around 9 p.m. Prior to 1917, when our family lived on Granite Street, Groton, the boat show in the river, night or day, had more attractions for me than our old Victrola. Radio and TV were years in the future.
"Capt. Charles Pettigrew was skipper on one of the C. V. boats, and he had a habit of beaming his searchlight on the Thames Street home of the Pettigrew family and their moored pleasure boat Emma Augusta."
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In 2022 a major change to the 1876 pier is under way. Though listed on the National Register of Historic Places, most of it will disappear when it and the parallel State Pier are rebuilt as a staging area for offshore wind turbine assembly and deployment. Only the granite stonework of the city-facing side will remain, one of the "mitigations" negotiated among the involved parties after it was agreed that the pier could not be preserved in its original configuration.
Above: The Central Vermont Railway Pier, loaded with cars, as seen from East New London in 1912.
Below: Map showing tracks on the Pier, which also cross Winthrop Cove to Union Railroad Station and the New London Line Pier.
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We conclude "The Steamboats of New London" by returning to the night boats of the New London Line and four of the big white steamers which were as familiar to Thames-side residents as they were popular with travelers: City of Lowell, Chester W. Chapin, Richard Peck, and New Hampshire.
These four splendid boats, now forgotten ninety years later, offered a gracious, comfortable mode of travel embraced for generations - and sorely missed by many when the Line ceased operations in 1935.
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Below: A painting by marine artist Fred Tansing (1841-1932) depicts the first of these, Ellery Thompson's beloved City of Lowell under full steam in Long Island Sound. She operated on the Norwich/New London Line from her launch in 1894 to 1920 when she was replaced by Richard Peck. Much admired for her speed, City of Lowell was assigned to the New York - New Bedford route, then to the Providence route, and saw war duty as a barracks ship. She was scrapped in 1947, over half a century after her launch at the Bath Iron Works.
Another in the quartet was the Chester W. Chapin, seen here in a rare photograph of a night boat at the New London pier. She was similar to the Lowell, and also fast. Built for the New Haven Line in 1899, the year of Ellery's birth, the Chapin (named for a president of the New Haven Line) was transferred to what was still called the Norwich Line in 1903, running opposite the City of Lowell until 1920.
The third boat of the New London quartet was Richard Peck, built for the New Haven Line in 1892 and also named for one of its presidents. She too was transferred to New London, running opposite Chester W. Chapin from 1920 to 1922 on the New York run, and opposite New Hampshire (below) from 1922 to 1931.
She could also be chartered for excursions in the Thirties, seen here as a spectator boat for the annual Yale-Harvard Regatta on the Thames.
Richard Peck was the longest serving of any of the great Sound boats. Sold after the New England Steamship Company went out of business in 1937, she was a day boat in western Long Island Sound until requisitioned by the War Shipping Administration in 1942 as a barracks ship at Argentia, Newfoundland, for merchant mariners in convoy duty. From 1943 to 1953 she was renamed Elisha Lee and used by the Pennsylvania Railroad for its Chesapeake Bay rail-ship connections. She was scrapped at Baltimore in 1953 after a remarkable sixty-one years of service.
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Fourth of the boats familiar to New Londoners was New Hampshire, which first went into service for the Stonington Line in 1892. That line stopped carrying passengers in 1900 and New Hampshire operated summers on the New Bedford Line until 1920, and occasionally on the New London Line in winter with Chester W. Chapin.
From 1922 to 1932 she operated opposite Richard Peck on the New London Line, and from 1932 to 1935 she operated out of New London alone.
On November 15, 1935, New Hampshire left New London on the last night run to New York at which point the New London Line ceased operations. She returned empty the next day and was in lay-up until 1937 until being towed to Baltimore for scrapping.
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While the big white boats, as large as many ocean-going freighters and coastal ships, were best known as the New York night boats, they earned their keep in the daytime as well, as explained by Ellery:
"The big Sound steamers enjoyed a long spell of running Sunday and holiday excursions from one port to another. The Fall River Line steamers made Sunday excursions from Fall River and Newport to New London. The Lowell or the Chapin or Richard Peck made excursions to Newport. Sometimes in her Sunday layover in New York, City of Lowell took hundreds of excursionists up the Hudson."
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A footnote to this account of the boats of New London is a story about the Boston, a vessel operated by the main competitor of the New England Steamship Co. which came to New London on an unusual mission.
A pair of boats launched in 1924 for Eastern Steamship Lines, Boston and New York, offered service between their namesake cities via the new Cape Cod Canal. The more opulent Fall River boats were still preferred by many over the "modern" Eastern Steamship boats, but when the Fall River closed down in 1937 Boston and New York carried on until requisitioned in 1941 for war duty.
As it happened, Boston was sent to New London's Fort Trumbull as a barracks ship for the US Maritime Service Officers School then being hastily expanded with national mobilization. An urgent need for more dormitory space was met by the 345-stateroom Boston, which stayed for nearly two years until she was assigned to Atlantic convoy duty which led to her loss by a U-Boat torpedo in 1942.
Edward R. Geer, one of the most admired and resourceful captains of the Sound boats - a "Salt of the Sound" - was now New London's harbormaster and would come by to see the vessel he had saved from foundering off Point Judith years before: as captain of Fall River's Commonwealth, he had lashed his ship to the Boston in an extraordinary maneuver and towed her to safety at Newport.