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Robert Fulton built the world's first commercially successful steamboat in 1807, but it was not until after the War of 1812 that these vessels entered service along the Long Island Sound. For 127 years, between 1815 and 1942, steamboats provided a link between New York and cities in southern New England, greatly reducing travel time. Steamboats served the Connecticut cities of Stamford, Norwalk, Bridgeport, Derby, New Haven, Hartford, New London, Norwich, and Stonington. They also linked New York to the Rhode Island cities of Newport, Bristol, and Providence as well as the southern Massachusetts cities of Fall River and New Bedford. The rapid expansion of industries in southern New England gave steamboats the additionally important role of transporting raw materials to mills and factories and their finished products to New York. Rivalries between steamboat services led to the construction of faster, larger, and more elegantly furnished boats, resulting in the "floating palaces" that were some of the largest and most majestic steamboats the world had ever seen.
Robert Fulton built the worlds first commercially successful steamboat in 1807, but it was not until after the War of 1812 that these vessels entered service along the Long Island Sound. For 127 years, between 1815 and 1942, steamboats provided a link between New York and cities in southern New England, greatly reducing travel time. Steamboats served the Connecticut cities of Stamford, Norwalk, Bridgeport, Derby, New Haven, Hartford, New London, Norwich, and Stonington. They also linked New York to the Rhode Island cities of Newport, Bristol, and Providence as well as the southern Massachusetts cities of Fall River and New Bedford. The rapid expansion of industries in southern New England gave steamboats the additionally important role of transporting raw materials to mills and factories and their finished products to New York. Rivalries between steamboat services led to the construction of faster, larger, and more elegantly furnished boats, resulting in the floating palaces that were some of the largest and most majestic steamboats the world had ever seen.
Originally commissioned by Cornelius Vanderbilt as he built his maritime empire in New York, the Steamboat Lexington eventually became the most prestigious steamship on the heavily trafficked Long Island Sound... But in 1840 a fire broke out on the ship, igniting poorly placed bales of cotton which destroyed the ship in minutes. Emergency rafts sank and rescue boats were unable to reach the ship in time. Only four among the over one hundred and forty on board survived by clinging to bales of cotton. The incident would be the worst maritime disaster in Long Island history. Author Bill Bleyer presents the harrowing story of a ship's journey from glory to tragedy.
Night Boat to New York: Steamboats on the Connecticut, 1824-1931, is a portrait of the vanished steamboat days–when a procession of stately sidewheelers plied between Hartford and New York City, docking at Peck’s Slip on the East River in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. At one time, Hartford could boast two thousand steamboat arrivals and departures in a year. Altogether, some thirty-five large steamboats were in service on the Connecticut River in these years, largely on the Hartford to New York City route. These Long Island Sound steamers, unlike the tubby, wedding cake dowagers of Western waters, were long, sleek craft, with sharp prows cutting a neat wake as they cruised along. Departing each afternoon from State Street or Talcott Street wharf in Hartford, the “night boats” reached New York at daybreak, inaugurating a pattern of city commuting that continues to this day. Steamboating not only brought people and goods—Colt’s firearms and Essex’s pianos—down river to New York for export to world markets, but also helped America’s inland “Spa Culture” transplant itself to the seashore, making steamboating not just convenient transportation but also a social phenomenon noted by such writers as Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. No wonder crowds wept in the fall of 1931, when the last steamboats, made obsolete by the automobile, churned away from the dock and headed downriver—never to return.
Death by Fire and Ice tells the little-known story of the sinking of the steamboat Lexington on Long Island Sound in January 1840. Built in 1835 by Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Lexington left Manhattan bound for Stonington, Connecticut, at four o'clock in the afternoon on a bitterly cold day carrying an estimated one hundred forty-seven passengers and crew and a cargo of, among other things, baled cotton. After making her way up an ice-encrusted East River and into Long Island Sound, she caught fire off Eaton's Neck on Long Island's north shore at approximately seven o'clock. The fire quickly ignited the cotton stowed on board. With the crew unable to extinguish the fire, the blaze burned through the ship's wheel and tiller ropes, rendering the ship unmanageable. Soon after, the engine died, and the blazing ship drifted aimlessly in the Sound away from shore with the prevailing wind and current. As the night wore on, the temperature plummeted, reaching nineteen degrees below zero. With no hope of rescue on the dark horizon, the forlorn passengers and crew faced a dreadful decision: remain on board and perish in the searing flames or jump overboard and succumb within minutes to the Sound's icy waters. By three o'clock in the morning the grisly ordeal was over for all but one passenger and three members of the crew--the only ones who survived. The tragedy remains the worst maritime disaster in the history of Long Island Sound. Within days, the New York City Coroner convened an inquest to determine the cause of the disaster. After two weeks of testimony, reported daily in the New York City press, the inquest jury concluded that the Lexington had been permitted to operate on the Sound "at the imminent risk of the lives and property" of its passengers, and that, had the crew acted appropriately, the fire could have been extinguished and a large portion, if not all, of the passengers saved. The public's reaction to the verdict was scathing: the press charged that the members of the board of directors of the Transportation Company, which had purchased the Lexington from Commodore Vanderbilt in 1839, were guilty of murder and should be indicted. Calls were immediately made for Congress to enact legislation to improve passenger safety on steamboats. This book explores the ongoing debate in Congress during the nineteenth century over its power to regulate steamboat safety; and it examines the balance Congress struck between the need to insulate the nation's shipping industry from ruinous liability for lost cargo, while at the same time greatly enhancing passenger safety on the nation's steamboats.
Spanning the shores of Connecticut and Long Island, New York, the Long Island Sound is one of the most picturesque places in North America. From the discovery of the Sound in 1614, to the adventures of Captain Kidd, to the sinking of the Lexington in the sound in 1840, the Long Island Sound also holds a unique place in American history. The Long Island Sound traces the growth of fishing and shipbuilding villages along the sound to the development of major industrial ports, resort towns, and suburban communities along the sound. Marilyn Weigold discusses the subsequent overcrowding and pollution that resulted from this prosperity and expansion. Originally published in 1974 as The American Mediterranean and long out of print, The Long Island Sound has been updated by the author with a new preface and final chapter describing the Sound in the twenty-first century. In this new edition, Weigold particularly focuses on environmental concerns, and describes more current milestones, like the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, who fought and won in 1995 to set aside 100,000 acres as NY State's first forest preserve; the continuous construction of the Long Island Expressway, with its forty-one miles of HOV lanes; the attempt made by several of Connecticut's coastal cities to reinvigorate urban redevelopment; and the Long Island Sound Study's investigation of toxic substances—both natural and man-made—which continue to contaminate the waterway. Through over 40 stunning photographs and many fascinating stories, The Long Island Sound tells the history of a vastly populated, but underdiscussed, part of America.