Steamboats

Interview Contact: Clayton Gross

"The first steamboat to come to Deer Isle came in the 1850's. It came to the Southwest Harbors of Deer Isle and it was named the ROCKLAND. It came in maybe a couple of times a week. But service to Stonington began in the 1870's with a steamer called the ULLYSEES. The ULLYSEES was wrecked in Rockland sometime in the early 1870's and was replaced in the 1870's by the MOUNT DESERT. The MOUNT DESERT ran through Stonington to Bar Harbor and back to Rockland every day. You could get from Rockland to Boston overnight. You could get up in the morning in Boston and go into the city and do your business, get back aboard the boat at five and be deposited in Rockland to take the MOUNT DESERT back to Stonington by four the next morning.

Another company... I forget the name of it now... started to compete with the Rockland Vinal Haven Steamboat Company on the run that they had established between Rockland and the Islands. They cut fares and did everything. They even blew up the other fella's boat in order to get the advantage. One of the vessels that was involved in this so-called steamboat war was called the CLARA CLERADA. The CLERADA was a fast steamer. She had been a yatch, and she had been owned at one time by Leonard Jerone. He was the grandfather of Sir Winston Churchill who was once Prime Minister of Great Britain. She held two records, she made the fastest run ever recorded from Swans Island to Rockland. The steamboat war ended in 1893 with the merger of two companies under the Rockland Vinal Haven name. And the Rockland Vinal Haven Company ran for the close to 50 years ending its service to Stonington in 1942. The eastern steamboat was formed in 1900 by Charles W. Morse of Bath. He consolidated a number of steamship lines, including the Boston and Bangor Steamship Company into one huge steamboat company that covered New England. At his height of power, he was worth about 13 million dollars. Later on, if all his assets had been turned into cash, it is said that he may have been worth as much as three hundred million at one point.

The first steamboat wharf in Stonington was where COOP 2 is now on Atlantic Avenue. After a while in 1896, they decided that this wharf was inadequate, and they moved over behind the Stonington Packing Co. On the dock they built a huge steamboat terminal. For those times it was a big building for this area. At the height of the steamboat operation, this terminal probably had three boats a day in each direction in the summertime; only about two in the wintertime. They went over to Duryea's lobster transport dock adn that became the steamboat dock. That's the steamboat wharf that I remember the NORTH HAVEN coming to when I was a small boy.

Dewey Robbins