ship as a sailing packet between New York and 

 Savannah under the ownership and command of 

 Captain Holdridge, and her stranding and loss during 

 an east-northeast gale on November 5, 1821, at Great 

 South Beach, off Bellport, on the south shore of Long 

 Island. He also states that the steam cylinder of her 

 engine was exhibited at the Crystal Palace Fair in 

 New York during 1853, and that the ship proved 

 uneconomical due to the large amount of space 

 occupied by the engine, boilers, and fuel, leaving 

 little space for cargo. Morrison apparently used some 

 of the statements made in 1836 and 1856 by Stevens 

 Rogers, who was the sailing master on the famous 

 voyage. 



Tyler '" names the stockholders of the Savannah 

 Steamship Company, owner of the Savannah. The 

 company was proposed by Capt. Moses Rogers, and 

 its shareholders were William Scarborough, John 

 McKenna, Samuel Howard, Charles Howard, Robert 

 Isaacs, S. C. Dunning, A. B. Fannin, John Haslett, 

 A. S. Bullock, James Bullock, John Bogue, Andrew 

 Low, Col. J. P. Henry, J. Minis, John Sparkman, 

 Robert Mitchell, R. Habersham, J. Habersham, 

 Gideon Pott, W. S. Gillet, and Samuel Yates. Tyler 

 establishes, by the company's charter, that the objec- 

 tive was to institute a New York-Savannah packet 

 service, for which the Savannah was to be the first ship. 

 He shows that, due to the economic depression of 

 1819, the Savannah sailed to Liverpool in ballast and 

 without passengers. Her fuel capacity is given as 

 1,500 bushels (75 tons) of coal and 25 cords of wood. 

 [It should be noted that 1,500 bushels of bituminous 

 coal does not quite equal 75 tons.] Tyler quotes 

 S. C. Gilfillan " as to criticisms of the engine and 

 its design. 



Partington '* estimated coal consumption to be 

 nearly 10 tons a day; remarked on the uneconomical 

 arrangement of the ship, with the engine and boiler 

 occupying the greater part of the space amidships, 

 between fore and main masts; and located the axle of 

 the paddle wheel "above the bends," that is, in the 

 topsides above the wale. The description he gives of 

 the unshipping of the wheels is that the pivoted blades 

 were removed and the fixed blades, in horizontal 

 position, were left on the shaft. This agrees with a 

 Russian description referred to later. The logbook 



12 David Budlong Tyler, Steam Conquers the Atlantic, New York 

 and London, 1939. 



13 S. C. Gilfillan, Inventing the Ship, New York, 1935. 



1* Charles Frederich Partington, An Historical and Descriptive 

 Account of the Steam Engine, London, 1822. 



repeatedly speaks of "shipping" and "unshipping" 

 the paddle wheels, indicating that the wheels were 

 entirely removed from the shafts and stowed on deck. 



Watkins '^ showed, by the account books of Stephen 

 Vail, owner of the Speedwell Ironworks near Morris- 

 town, New Jersey, that the engine was built by Vail, 

 but apparently to designs by Daniel Dod. The latter 

 built the Savannah^ boiler at Elizabeth, New Jersey, 

 and made some parts of the engine, which he furnished, 

 incomplete in some instances, to Vail. These account 

 books, which were in the possession of John Lidgerwood 

 of New York City in 1 890, show the steam cylinder to 

 have had an inside diameter of 40% inches and a 5-foot 

 stroke. Reference in the account books to an error 

 in Dod's draught of a piston proves that Dod designed 

 the engine. 



Watkins states that the engine was rated at 90 

 horsepower. He does not give the diameter of the 

 pump cylinder, but, judging by the scaling of 

 Marestier's drawing and by a rather indefinite entry 

 in the Vail account book, it appears to have been 

 between 17 and 18 inches. Quoting Captain Collins 

 at some length, Watkins writes that the mainmast 

 was placed farther aft than was usual in a sailing 

 ship, and that the vessel had a round stern. Collins 

 apparently based his opinion upon an unidentified 

 "contemporaneous lithograph" and upon "all other 

 illustrations of this famous vessel." Collins' con- 

 ception of the appearance of the Savannah is shown 

 in a drawing by C. B. Hudson that is reproduced 

 as the frontispiece in Watkins' publication. A state- 

 ment by Stevens Rogers that was published in the 

 New London Gazette in 1836 appears to have been 

 the original source for statements regarding the 

 Savannah's fuel capacity, her sale, and her loss in 1821 

 while owned and commanded by Capt. Nathaniel 

 Holdredge, "now master of the Liverpool packet ship 

 United States." Watkins also gives a picture of Stevens 

 Rogers' tombstone, on which there is a small carving 

 purported to be of the Savannah. The tombstone was 

 made in 1868. 



From a Russian newspaper contemporary with the 

 Savannah^i visit to St. Petersburg, Frank Braynard 

 found a statement that the vessel had two boilers, each 

 27 feet long and 6 feet in diameter. ^^ It was also 

 shown she had at least one chain cable. Considerable 



'^ J. Elfreth Watkins, "The Log of the Savannah," in Report of 

 the U.S. National Museum for the Tear Ending June 30, 1890, 

 1891, pp. 611-639. 



16 Previously, the author had assumed there was one boiler 

 with two flues. 



68 



BULLETIN 228: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



