CHAPTER VIII.
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.