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.
CHAPTER IX.
Allusion has been made to the embargo and to the Yankee shrewdness which evaded the watchfulness of government officers whose duty it was to prevent departures from port. The following narrative, for the incidents in which I am indebted to Capt. Charles C. Doten, illustrates the shrewdness to which I referred.
During the Embargo, Plymouth’s fishing fleet was laid up in the docks, and the owners found themselves cut off from the trade with the West India Islands. The catch of fish from the Grand Banks could not be sold to advantage for want of this market, and after being cured remained stored in the fish houses.
England and France then being at war their West India dependencies were subject to blockade, and as a consequence provisions which could be run into the ports of either nationality, commanded high prices. With such a temptation it was not strange that there were found adventurous men in fishing ports to hazard the loading of vessels with dry fish, and disregarding embargo penalties of our own government, surreptitiously depart “for the West Indies and a market.”