Savannah: The Steamship City

SS Savannah

Forget New Orleans, Hannibal, St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, and other cities that have a proud history of steamshipping the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The real steamship city is none other than our own Savannah. I believe in backing my statements with evidence and here it is.

Do you know what is special about May 22nd? Okay landlubbers, the answer is it is National Maritime Day. It celebrates the date that the SS Savannah became the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. On May 22, 1819 the SS Savannah left the harbor for Europe. Ten days before it sailed, President James Monroe came to Savannah to take a quick cruise on this steamship.  Before returning to Savannah the ship visited St. Petersburg, Crondstadt, and Stockholm. It even had a Danish Navy ship shoot over its bough to stop it to tell the captain of the ship, Moses Rogers, that it was on fire because the Danes had never seen a steamship in the middle of the ocean. One of the leading proprietors of the Savannah Steamship Company was William Scarborough whose home on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is now the Ships of the Sea Museum.

If this is not enough, consider the SS John Randolph. This ship was to be the first iron steamship used in commerce in the United States. For many years it sailed up and down the Savannah River and elsewhere. Being made of iron was important because the wood ships such as the SS Savannah had trouble attaining a crew for its famous trip because the sailors felt wood and the fire from the steam engines did not go well together. In fact some sailors and maritime watchers called it the ‘Steam Coffin’. So the SS Randolph removed the wood and fire combination from the equation. The Randolph launched from the Savannah Harbor on July 9th, 1834. It was once again the work of Savannah businessmen G. B. Lamar whose son Charles Lamar would later become infamous because of the illegal slave smuggling ship the Wanderer.

Now some of you cynics may say is that all the proof you have? Of course not. To emphasize my point further I present the Ocean Steamship Company of Savannah or known as the Savannah Line to some. The company was founded in 1872 to sail passenger and cargo in steamships between Savannah and New York. Along the way they would offer other lines to Boston, Philadelphia, and Jacksonville.

 In 1874 the Central Rail Road became owners of the Ocean Steamship Company of Savannah and it became a subsidiary of the Central Rail Road and Banking Company of Georgia. By 1928 it had eight steamships in its fleet. Thus when you read of the frequent trips to New York, Boston or Philadelphia by Savannahians, know the ships had luxury suites and dining rooms for the wealthy of Savannah
The company’s biggest challenge came when war started in September 1939 in Europe. City of Chattanooga was chartered by the Government to transport troops to Iceland in 1940. The ships were turned to the war efforts and as such became objects of the vagaries of war and during the war did not carry passengers. The City of Atlanta was, on January 19, 1942, torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine near Cape Hatteras with the loss of fifty four crew members. On July 30, 1942 the City of Birmingham was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U. 202, two passengers and seven crew members lost their lives. The government purchased the other ships in the fleet so when the war ended the company was left with no ships.

For seventy years steamships had carried passengers on their various lines. But by 1947, there were no longer any vessels operated by the Savannah line. In 1958, the terminal property of the Company was sold to put it to use in the expanding Port of Savannah.
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You should be convinced by now. So the next bit is so you are up to speed on riverboats and Savannah. The Georgia Queen, built in 1995 as a luxury floating casino on the Mississippi River at a cost of 14 million dollars, is now proudly transporting people up and down the Savannah River. So the 1800s majestic paddlewheel style riverboat, which spent many years traveling the Mississippi River, came to Savannah last year. I guess it realized it needed to come to the real Steamship City.

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