The First Steamship to Cross the Atlantic

It was under the American flag that the first steam vessel crossed the Atlantic Ocean. The Savannah, built at New York by Francis Pickett, was a vessel of three hundred tons burden, and was still on the stocks when Mr. William Scarborough, a wealthy merchant of Savannah, Ga., who had conceived a fancy for trying the effect of steam navigation on the high seas, bought her as she stood. She had a fuel-storage capacity of 75 tons of coal and 25 cords of wood, and her wheels were so constructed as to be removable in rough or stormy weather. She was launched August 23d, 1818, and began her first outside voyage, a trip from New York to Savannah, on Sunday, March 28th, 1819. Stephen Vail, of Morristown, N. J., furnished her engines. Savannah was reached on Tuesday, April 6th. Scarborough and McKinnee were the consignees, and they advertised extensively for passengers and freight to make the trans Atlantic voyage in her, to start May 20th; there were no responses; the people everywhere were enthusiastic, but few were confident enough to risk either life or property in such an undertaking. On the 20th of May she started as advertised. She did not venture upon the high seas, however, until the 25th. Her voyage thence-forward was uneventful until June 16th, when the Irish coast was sighted. On the 17th, Lieut. Bowin, of the king's cutter "Kite," boarded the "Savannah," under the impression, from the smoke rising out of her smoke-stack, that she was a ship on fire. On the 20th, the wheels were shipped and the sails furled, and she ran "into the river Mersey, and at 6 p. m. came to anchor off Liverpool, with the small bower anchor," according to the log. Afterward the vessel visited Copenhagen, Stockholm, Cronstadt, St. Petersburg and other foreign ports. Captain Rogers tried to dispose of the ship to the King of Sweden, but that negotiation failing, she started for home again, reaching the city of her name on Tuesday, Nov. 30th, 1819, and, although they had rough weather, Captain Rogers writes, "not a screw, bolt or rope-yarn parted." It should be added that the actual voyage out from land to land consumed twenty-two days, on only fourteen of which the engines were used. Mr. Scarborough died in 1838; it is not recorded that he ever repeated his experiment in steam navigation. Capt. Rogers died at the age of forty-two, after considerable service as steamboat captain on the great Pedee River, in South Carolina.