Baltimore Steam Packet Company
The Baltimore Steam Packet Company, nicknamed the, was an American steamship line from 1840 to 1962 that provided overnight steamboat service on Chesapeake Bay, primarily between Baltimore, Maryland, and Norfolk, Virginia. Called a "packet" for the mail packets carried on government mail contracts, the term in the 19th century came to mean a steamer line operating on a regular, fixed daily schedule between two or more cities. When it closed in 1962 after 122 years of existence, it was the last surviving overnight steamship passenger service in the United States.
In addition to regularly calling on Baltimore and Norfolk, the Baltimore Steam Packet Company at various times provided freight, passenger and vehicle transport to Washington, D.C., Old Point Comfort, and Richmond, Virginia. The Old Bay Line, as it came to be known by the 1860s, was acclaimed for its genteel service and fine dining, serving Chesapeake Bay specialties. Walter Lord, famed author of A Night to Remember, mused that its reputation for excellent service was attributable to "some magical blending of the best in the North and the South, made possible by the Company's unique role in 'bridging' the two sections...the North contributed its tradition of mechanical proficiency, making the ships so reliable; while the South contributed its gracious ease".
In 1947 a former Old Bay Line steamship, President Warfield, became, carrying Jewish refugees from Europe in an unsuccessful attempt to emigrate to Mandatory Palestine. The voyage was commemorated in a book in 1958 and movie in 1960.
History
Just seven years after Robert Fulton proved the commercial viability of steam-powered ships with his North River Steamboat in 1807, small wood-burning steamers began to ply the Chesapeake Bay. Before the arrival of railroads and river steamboats in the early 19th century, overland travel was exceedingly slow and tedious. Rivers were the main means of transportation and most cities were founded on them. This was especially so in North America, where journeys over vast distances of hundreds or even thousands of miles required months of hazardous, uncomfortable travel by stagecoach or wagon on rutted, unpaved trails. In the 1830s, railroads were being built, but the technology was crude and average passenger train speed was only. Perhaps more importantly, most early railroads did not connect. It would be many years before the various lines were knitted together to make intercity rail travel in the U.S. a reality. Not until 1863, for example, was it possible to travel between New York City and Washington, D.C., without changing trains en route.In this period, steamships on rivers such as the Ohio and Mississippi or large inland bodies of water such as the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay offered a comfortable and relatively fast mode of transportation. The first steamboat to serve Baltimore was the locally built Chesapeake, constructed in 1813 to link Baltimore with Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Operated by the Union Line, the boat connected with a stagecoach for the overland portion of the journey. Two years later, the Briscoe-Partridge Line's Eagle was the first steamboat to sail the length of Chesapeake Bay.
The direct ancestor of the Baltimore Steam Packet Company was the Maryland & Virginia Steam Boat Company formed in 1828 to link Baltimore, Richmond, and Norfolk, traversing the Chesapeake Bay and the James River. By 1839, the Maryland & Virginia was heavily in debt from the purchase of two new, large ships the year before: the long Alabama and the Jewess. Alabama was costly to operate and proved impractical for Chesapeake Bay operations, causing the bankruptcy of the Maryland & Virginia later that year.
1840s–1850s
When the Maryland & Virginia collapsed in late 1839, the Maryland legislature convened to grant a charter to the Baltimore Steam Packet Company, organized in Baltimore to provide overnight steamship service on the Chesapeake Bay. The company's incorporators were Benjamin Bush, Andrew F. Henderson, John B. Howell, Thomas Kelso, John S. McKim, Samuel McDonald, Gen. William McDonald, Robert A. Taylor, and Joel Vickers, all of Baltimore.The company was granted a 20-year charter on March 18, 1840, by the Maryland legislature and then acquired three of the former Maryland & Virginia's steamboats: Pocahontas, Georgia, and Jewess. The company began overnight paddlewheel steamship passenger and freight service daily except Sundays between Baltimore and Norfolk. By 1848, the company's steamship Herald was making the trip in less than 12 hours, a time which the line would maintain until the end in 1962. An affiliate, the Powhatan Line, started service between Norfolk and Richmond in 1845, interchanging freight and passengers with the Old Bay Line.
By the 1850s, competition was keen as steamships grew in size and efficiency to serve the fast-growing nation. The Old Bay Line, in particular, served as a link between the antebellum South and northern markets, hauling large quantities of cotton north and manufactured goods south, along with a thriving passenger business between Baltimore and Norfolk. Railroads also began acquiring steamship lines in the 1850s, and the Seaboard & Roanoke Railroad, a predecessor of the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad, acquired a controlling interest in the Baltimore Steam Packet Company in 1851. As competitors entered the field, each line vied to outdo its competitors in the luxurious appointments of their ships' staterooms and dining service. The company acquired newer and larger ships in the 1850s, such as North Carolina in 1852 and Louisiana in 1854, the latter at in length being the largest wooden vessel the company would own. A passenger on Georgia was effusive in his description of an overnight trip in 1853:
North Carolina similarly impressed a Baltimore Patriot reporter in 1852, who described the ship's dining saloon as "having imported Belgian carpets, velvet chairs with marble-topped tables, and white panelling with gilded mouldings".
On February 20, 1858, the northbound steamer Louisiana collided with a sailing vessel hauling a catch of oysters, William K. Perrin, causing the sailboat to founder near the mouth of the Rappahannock River. In a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, Haney et al. v Baltimore Steam Packet Company, Louisiana was found to be at fault. The high court considered the rules of the sea pertaining to steamers and sailing ships approaching one another and concluded that "entire disregard of these rules of navigation by the steamer" caused the collision, reversing a Circuit Court ruling.
North Carolina burned on January 29, 1859, when a fire started in a passenger stateroom. She sank the following day with the loss of two lives. The following month, the line acquired to replace the lost steamer.
1860s–1910s
The outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861 immediately affected the Baltimore Steam Packet Company. On April 19, two days after Virginia's secession, a violently pro-Southern mob in Baltimore attacked Union soldiers en route to Washington, D.C., as the troops marched through the city's streets between railroad stations. Thereafter known as the Baltimore riot of 1861, the resulting loss of life and local unrest also threatened the, a U.S. Navy ship in Baltimore at the time. Later that same day, the Baltimore Steam Packet Company declined to transport Union forces from Baltimore to the beleaguered Union naval yard facility at Portsmouth, Virginia.Two weeks later, on May 7, the US Navy chartered Adelaide and attached her to the Atlantic Blockading Squadron. In that role, she was used to transport Federal troops in support of operations in North Carolina's Outer Banks, directed against the Confederate-held forts guarding Hatteras Inlet. Later that year, Adelaide was returned to the Baltimore Steam Packet Company.
As a steamship line connecting northern cities and the south, the Old Bay Line hauled a considerable volume of freight between the two regions and their ships' cargo holds were filled with bales of cotton, produce, and other goods. When hostilities commenced, Southern ports were blockaded by the Federal Navy and the Old Bay Line was unable to serve Norfolk for the duration of the war, going no further south than Old Point Comfort. Passenger traffic as well as cargo shipping declined significantly. The Powhatan Line discontinued operations altogether between Norfolk and Richmond until the war's end.
As soon as the war ended in 1865, the Leary Line of New York briefly challenged the Baltimore Steam Packet Company on the Chesapeake, starting its own Baltimore-Norfolk steamship service. A fare war ensued, with one-way prices reduced to $3.00. Emphasizing the longevity of its service compared to their upstart rival, the Baltimore Steam Packet Company began referring to itself as the "Old Established Bay Line" in advertising, a moniker that would soon become simply the Old Bay Line for the next century.
The Leary Line withdrew in January 1867, selling its George Leary to the Old Bay Line. Two years later, the Norfolk Journal of August 2, 1869, described the vessel as having a "gorgeous style of furniture and elegant fittings...magnificently furnished with upholstered sofas and lounges of rich red velvet...". Another competitor, the Chesapeake Steamship Company, began directly competing on the Baltimore-Norfolk route in 1874. Controlled by the Southern Railway, a rival of the RF&P, it would be a formidable competitor until 1941, when the two steamship lines merged. Cargo traffic was also booming in the 1870s as the South recovered from the Civil War, resulting in the Old Bay Line's freight revenue surpassing passenger revenue by the end of the decade.
By the time of John Moncure Robinson's retirement as president of the company in 1893, the Old Bay Line had upgraded its fleet with propeller-driven, steel-hulled steamers equipped with modern conveniences such as electric lighting and staterooms with private baths. Georgia introduced in 1887 was the first Old Bay Line boat to have a modern screw propeller instead of old-fashioned side paddlewheels and Alabama launched in 1893 was the company's first steel-hulled vessel. Robinson served the Old Bay Line as president for 26 years, longer than any other person in the company's history.
The halcyon days of the 1890s were the company's heyday, under president Richard Curzon Hoffman, when the prosperous line's gleaming steamships were heavily patronized by passengers enjoying the well-appointed staterooms and Chesapeake Bay culinary delights while dining to the accompaniment of live music. The nightly menu on board included oyster fritters, diamondback terrapin, duck, and turkey.
The company built a new terminal and headquarters in Baltimore on Light Street in 1898 to accommodate the increasing traffic. Rebuilt after the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, the building with its four-sided clocktower would be a landmark for decades on Baltimore's Inner Harbor waterfront.
The Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad, which had first acquired a controlling interest in the Baltimore Steam Packet Company in 1851, gained total control of the company's stock on September 5, 1901. The Old Bay Line continued to be managed separately from the RF&P, however.