The Stonington Option

When Ellery Thompson was born in 1899 the coastal port of Stonington, a few miles east of New London, had moved beyond its own "golden age" of steamboating. Since 1837 it had provided an option for travelers to or from New York: trains of the Providence & Stonington Railroad (later the New York, New Haven & Hartford) met the steamboats of the "Stonington Line" and carried passengers to Boston by way of Providence. Now it was about to be shut down.

In 1892 it was the first of seven Sound lines to be acquired by the New England Steamship Company, a subsidiary of the New Haven Railroad. Eight years later, with six other lines under its control (and the blessing of government regulators) the company enjoyed the flexibility to re-deploy its large fleet and adjust schedules as needed for better service and improved efficiency.

The most dramatic of these changes occurred in 1900 when the company closed down the Stonington Line, by then seen as redundant. We offer a brief account of the line because the village of Stonington figured prominently in Ellery Thompson's career as a well known dragger, even to living aboard his boat, Eleanor, at the fishing docks that gradually replaced the steamboat terminal.

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Below: The steamboat docks and rail yard at Stonington, ca. 1875. A single track came through the village and fanned out into sidings for passenger and freight operations. 

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After years of operating some of the most celebrated sidewheelers of the mid- to late 19th century, the last two boats acquired by the Stonington Line were the speedy propeller vessels Maine and New Hampshire, placed in service in 1892.

Maine went aground on Execution Rocks and could not be salvaged, but New Hampshire carried on and in 1935, now with the New London Line, she made the last run to New York in 1935, returning empty the next day as the Line ceased operations. 

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Below: A Sanborn Insurance Co. map from the Library of Congress provides a detailed look the tracks and docks at Stonington in the late 19th century, an area now occupied by docks of the Stonington fishing fleet. In this west-oriented map Gold Street runs north and south. 

Another Sanborn map shows the east-west path of the tracks through the village between Pearl and Grand Streets, near the junction of Elm and Main. By this time the large Wadawanuck Hotel, where travelers could break their trip, had been demolished, replaced by Wadawanuck Park (now Square) and the Stonington Free Library.

After the Stonington Line ceased operations some of the vessels of the New England Steamship Co. were laid up in Stonington pending a return to service -- or to be sold for scrap. The famous City of Worcester was among them, as were Puritan and Pilgrim and perhaps others.

In Draggerman's Haul Ellery writes of visiting the Stonington docks with his father in about 1913:

     "We got to Stonington in the early afternoon and went to the steamboat dock, where the retired [Fall River Line] steamers Puritan and Pilgrim lay in depressing idleness. The father of Bert Ford - who was later to fish with me - was caretaker of the boats and invited us aboard. From an upper deck of the Puritan, now ghostly in its vast, lifeless emptiness, we watched a lazy scene in Stonington harbor...Directly beneath us, lying under the shelter of the Puritan's huge bow, were several small draggers, hand-liners, and lobster boats." (p.57)

Note: The photograph below was taken while the Stonington Line was still in operation, but the scene would have been much the same when Ellery and his father went aboard the laid-up Puritan. Pilgrim and Puritan were towed to New London's T. A. Scott Co. in 1916 for a slow process of dismantling, and were gone by 1920.