It is singular that the spirit of invention and enterprise, which New
England has displayed in the advance of civilization, should have
been apparently indifferent in the development of steam navigation.
It is true that her activities have been fully exerted in other
directions, and that, as necessity is the mother of invention, the
requirements of her manufacturing industries have demanded to the
fullest extent the display of her genius. The Hudson River and
New York bay seem to have been the theatre in which those early
experiments were made, which laid the foundation in this country of
successful navigation by steam. In these experiments, as early as
1803, Robert Fulton, assisted by Chancellor R. Livingston, seems
to have led the way. In 1804 Col. John Stevens made a trial of a
propelling power, consisting of a small engine and a screw. He later
attached two screws to the engine, and the identical machine which
he used is now owned by the Stevens Institute of Technology in
Hoboken, New Jersey. It was placed on a new hull in 1844, and made
on the Hudson eight miles an hour. In 1806 Robert Fulton built a
sidewheel boat one hundred and thirty feet long, propelled by steam,
with paddles 15 feet in diameter, and floats with two feet dip, and
went to Albany at the rate of five miles an hour. This boat was
called the Clermont, the name of the seat on the Hudson of Chancellor
Livingston, and in 1808 made regular trips from New York to Albany.
While these operations were going on, causing a complete revolution
in the commercial life of the country, New England never saw the
smoke of a steamboat. The first boat to enter Massachusetts Bay was
the Massachusetts, built in Philadelphia, and designed by its owners,
Joseph and John H. Andrews, Wm. Fettyplace, Stephen White, Andrew
Watkins and Andrew Bell, to run between Boston and Salem. After a few
unsuccessful trips she was sent to Charleston, S. C., and was lost on
the passage.
The next steamboat to enter the waters of Massachusetts was the
Eagle, which was built in New York and had been for a time in
Chesapeake Bay, under command of Capt. Moses Rogers, who was later
commander of the steamboat Savannah, the first steam vessel to
cross the Atlantic. She came to Plymouth in 1818, commanded by
Lemuel Clark. Capt. Clark was either a Plymouth man, or the son of
a Plymouth man, and had married in 1817 Lydia Bartlett, daughter of
the late Ezra Finney, who lived, as many of my readers will remember,
on the westerly corner of Summer and Spring streets. He had a son,
William, one of my school and playmates, the father of William Clark,
now living on Cushman street, who at one time was the master of the
bark Evangeline of Boston. It is probable that Capt. Lemuel Clark was
induced by his connection with Plymouth to bring his vessel here,
where she must have been an object of great interest to the people of
Plymouth and the adjoining towns. She remained here a number of days,
having her berth at Carver’s wharf and taking daily excursion parties
into the bay. She was eight hours on her passage from Boston, making
about five and one-half statute miles per hour. On her return to
Boston she ran for a time on the Hingham line, but I have no record
of her later history. A picture of her in oil hangs on the walls of
Pilgrim Hall, taken from a contemporaneous drawing, and presented,
through the good offices of Mr. George P. Cushing, the manager of the
Nantasket Steamboat Company, by the artist to the Pilgrim Society,
and occupies a frame given by the grandchildren of Capt. Lemuel Clark.
There is no record of the visit of any other steamboat to Plymouth
until the advent of the General Lafayette, in 1828. She was built
in New York in 1824, and bought in Boston by James Bartlett, Jr.,
James Spooner and Jacob Covington, with the view of establishing
a steamboat line between Plymouth and Boston. According to her
enrolment in the Plymouth Custom House, issued September 16, 1828,
her name was General Lafayette, with one deck, two masts, 82 feet, 7
inches long, 6 feet, 1 inch deep, and measured 92 54-95 tons. For her
better accommodation the owners of the boat bought Jackson’s wharf
at the foot of North street, and contracted with Jacob and Abner S.
Taylor to build at the end of the wharf an extension nine hundred
feet long and twenty-eight feet wide with a T at the end projecting
northwesterly one hundred feet square. The extension built of piles
and timber and plank was not completed until the autumn of 1828.
In the meantime the Lafayette ran through the summer of that year
from Hedge’s wharf, leaving Plymouth at hours when the tide served,
and leaving Boston at hours which on her arrival would enable her
to reach her dock. Of course her fuel was wood, and she made the
passage in five hours, making about eight and one-half statute miles
per hour. The point reached by the wharf was that point on what was
called the Town Guzzle, where at mean low tide there were four or
five feet of water. With that depth of water a small steamboat like
the General Lafayette could reach the extreme end of the wharf at all
times of tide. The Town Guzzle was a circuitous one. It left Broad
channel at its extreme southwesterly end, and running southwesterly
five or six hundred feet, it made an easy curve; thence running
northwesterly about eight hundred feet, and thence with another
easy curve running southwesterly about four hundred feet to a point
reached by the wharf. It was perhaps forty feet wide, and with
sufficient water beyond that width for the dip of paddle wheels, at
any time except within an hour of low water, there was rarely any
detention. Steamboats of moderate length found little difficulty in
rounding the curves, but those of greater length found it anything
but easy work. I remember once the steamboat Connecticut left the
wharf at near low tide, with a spring line from her bow to the wharf
to twitch her round the curve, and as the line tautened, it snapped,
the hither end coming back like a whip lash and tripping up, without
serious injury, about a dozen persons standing near the cap log. I
learned the lesson then and there to always stand at a distance from
a spring line.
In the angle where the T joined the main wharf, there was a flight of
substantial steps, where boats at all times could land, drawing not
over two feet of water. This was a great convenience, enabling Sam
Burgess, with his fish for the market, lobster boats from the Gurnet,
and the Island and Saquish boats, to land without regard to the
stage of the tide. Many a householder with his mouth made up for a
fish dinner has sat by the hour together at the head of those steps,
waiting for Sam. In those days, too, the only purveyor of lobsters
was Joseph Burgess, the keeper of the light, and as regular as the
day he would appear with his lobsters and wearing his red thrum cap,
would wheel his barrow full about the town. There was no talk then of
short lobsters, nor of extravagant prices, for nine pence, or twelve
and a half cents in the currency of the time, would buy a three or
four pound lobster. The scarcity and small size of this delicious
shell fish in our day have not been satisfactorily explained. I am
inclined to think that the cause is not to be found in the excessive
amount of their catch, but in the appearance on our shores, and
the increasing numbers, of the tautog, which not only exhausts the
food, which the lobster feeds upon, but also feeds on the lobster
itself. In my early boyhood, if I am not mistaken, the tautog was an
unknown fish north of Cape Cod. The sandy shores of Barnstable county
formed an effectual barrier to its northern migration. I think that
about 1830 Capt. Josiah Sturgis, commander of the Revenue Cutter
Hamilton, brought some live tautog round the Cape and dropped them
in Plymouth Bay. A very few years afterwards the first tautog was
caught off Manomet, and one or two years later several were caught
off the Gurnet, while now they are found all along the shores of
Massachusetts and Maine. To this new fish, in my judgment, may fairly
be attributed the gradual disappearance of a food fish which was once
abundant and cheap.
Returning now to the Lafayette, it can only be said that her career
was a short one. Under the command of Capt. Truman C. Holmes, with
Seth Morton as steward, she ran through the seasons of 1828 and 1829,
the latter year making her berth at Long wharf, or steamboat wharf,
as for many years it was called, and then was laid up in Tribble’s
Dock, or building yard, as it was called, north of the wharf to
die. Her upperworks were removed, and her engine taken out, and my
only recollection of the vessel is of a dismantled hulk with her
planking stripped off, and her timbers fastened to the keel, standing
otherwise unsupported, just visible at high tide above the surface
of the water. The only incident of her service, which I remember,
was an attempt with a party of excursionists, of which my mother was
one, to go to Boston and return the same day. Night came without her
return, and about midnight my mother reached home, having ridden
from Scituate, where the steamboat had put in out of wood. Capt.
Holmes, her commander, took command in 1830 of the new packet sloop
Atalanta, and served with her several years until she was altered to
a schooner, and placed under command first of Sylvanus Churchill, and
then of Samuel H. Doten. He died March 14, 1880, eighty-five years of
age.
In 1830, the year after the Lafayette ceased to run, the steamboat
Rushlight, Capt. Currie, came to Plymouth and advertised to carry
passengers to Boston for a dollar and a quarter, the fare by stage
being two dollars, but how long this arrangement continued I do not
know.
I know of no other steamboat in Plymouth until 1839, when the Suffolk
ran on excursions to Boston and elsewhere during July and August. In
1840 a small steamboat, the Hope, Capt. Van Pelt, with a light draft,
made regular trips to and from Boston during a part of the season. I
recall an incident suggested by the mention of her name. On the 11th
of September in that year I was called to Plymouth, being then in
college, on account of the death of my brother-in-law, Ebenezer G.
Parker, and left an order at the stage office in the City Hotel on
Brattle street, to be called for by the stage at my grandmother’s in
Winthrop Place, leading out of Summer street. The Hope left Boston at
two o’clock, reaching Plymouth at six. The leaving hour of the stage
was the same, and as the passengers on that day were few in number,
it was exactly two when I took my seat by the side of Samuel Gardner,
the driver. As we started, Mr. Gardner said to me, “Mr. Davis, I am
going to beat the boat today.” The air was clear and exhilarating,
the four horses were in good trim, and the road was in its best
condition. Mr. Gardner did not leave the box during the trip, the
horses were ready at the three places where changes were made, and as
I dismounted at my mother’s house at Cole’s Hill, the boat passengers
were coming up the wharf. I doubt very much whether any regular stage
line in this country has ever travelled as our stage did that day,
thirty-six miles in four hours.
Shortly after 1840 the steamboat Connecticut came to Plymouth and
took excursion parties into the bay, but I do not remember that she
made any regular trips to Boston. In 1844, if I am correct in the
dates, the steamboat Express, Capt. Sanford, ran between Boston and
Barnstable, stopping at Plymouth to leave and take passengers. She
was a good boat, and made the passage to Plymouth in three and a
half hours. Her managers had built a flat bottomed barge with scow
ends, which, under the charge of Capt. Richard Pope, at low water
met her at the upper end of Broad Channel, and exchanged passengers
and freight. The return of the barge, by the way of the Guzzle,
especially with wind and tide against her, was sometimes tedious,
frequently consuming an hour. In 1844 the steamer Yacht ran a part of
the season.
After 1845 I know of no steamboats coming to Plymouth, except
occasionally on excursions from Boston for the day, until 1880. In
the meantime the wharf began to suffer from storms and decay. Of
course it was convenient for vessels to make fast to, until they
could reach their regular berths, and in northeast storms it served
as a barrier to protect the vessels at the short wharves from the
wind and waves. At one time a bathing house was constructed beneath
its flooring. Two bathing pools were built in two bays of the wharf,
with plank floors and walls, and steps leading up into two dressing
rooms above the wharf, to which subscribers, or those buying tickets,
were admitted. These bathing rooms served their purpose for a time,
but soon, like the wharf, needed repairs and were abandoned.
In 1880 the steamboat Hackensack, owned, I think, by the Seaver
fish guano factory of Duxbury, made regular daily trips to or from
Boston, or both, during the summer, except while she was repairing
damages occasioned by a fire at Comey’s wharf in Boston, where she
lay. At that time the whole wharf, except about three hundred feet,
which had been kept in repair, had by the action of storms and ice
been practically destroyed, leaving only about a hundred piles
within sight above the water. These were pulled up in 1880 by the
tug Screamer, some of them requiring a force of thirty-three tons to
start them from their beds.
In 1876 an appropriation made by Congress was expended in dredging
a channel fifty feet wide, and six feet deep from Broad channel to
the wharf, and in later years the width has been increased to one
hundred and fifty feet, and the depth to nine feet, at mean low
water. A basin connecting with the channel has been dredged in front
of the short wharves so that not only can steamboats of sufficient
size reach the docks, but barges drawing sixteen feet of water find
no difficulty in berthing at the pockets of the coal dealers. In
1881 the steamboat Stamford, commanded by E. W. Davidson, began to
run regularly from Boston to Plymouth and back daily, and continued
to run uninterruptedly until 1895, under the same command, except
during a part of one season, when, owing to some difficulty between
Capt. Davidson and her owner, Nathaniel Webster of Gloucester,
the former was temporarily displaced. Capt. Davidson also ran the
Shrewsbury and Wm. Story each one season, and as a supplementary
freight boat after the close of one season the Shoe City of Lynn.
Since 1897, or about that time, the following boats have run on the
route: The Lillie, Putnam, O. E. Lewis, Henry Morrison, Plymouth,
Cape Cod, Governor Andrew, and Old Colony. During one season the
Stamford ran after her name was changed to Endicott. During the
last three seasons the Nantasket Steamboat Co. have had exclusive
leases of available wharves, and have run the Governor Andrew and
the Old Colony. The latter is a new boat running in 1904 for the
first time, and is recognized as the most convenient, safest and most
elegant excursion boat in the waters of Massachusetts. The wharf is
now, with three hundred feet of its old timber and pile extension,
owned by Charles I. and Henry H. Litchfield of Plymouth who, having
fitted it expressly for steamboat purposes, keep it in excellent
repair, and have leased it to the Nantasket Steamboat Company. The
Pilgrim Society, owning Pilgrim wharf, refrain from leasing it to any
competing line, believing that the Nantasket Co. should be encouraged
in their efforts to establish a permanent and successful enterprise.