"The first ocean crossing by a steam-propelled vessel was in 1819, when the Savannah voyaged from Savannah, Ga., to Liverpool in 29 days, 11 hr. It was a full-rigged sailing ship fitted with engines and side paddlewheels; during the crossing the engines were in use for about 85 hr." ("History of the White Star Line") Elsewhere: "1819 After a 29-day voyage, the Savannah steamed into Liverpool, England becoming the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean. With smoke billowing from its stacks, the Savannah sailed from its namesake city in Georgia on May 22. Once at sea, however, most of the voyage would be made under sail, as the ship's supply of fuel (coal and wood) was exhausted after 105 hours of steam power." (GeorgiaInfo, The University of Georgia) Wikipedia has a wonderful humorous story about it under "SS Savannah" and under "Passenger ship".
The first "steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean" was later stripped of the machinery that had been designed by a New Jersey engineer and had been cast in a Robert Fulton associate's foundry ( Historic Speedwell Ironworks, Morristown, NJ) by a British firm who bought it. "After only two brief years she ran aground off Long Island and broke into pieces." I read somewhere off Fire Island, near Fireplace it sank in a storm and due to its historical significance (built in New York City at Corlears Hook, though the US "National Maritime Day" May 22 declared by Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1933, celebrates its voyage out of the port of Savannah, Georgia, for Liverpool) some have tried to find it using different techniques.
"The Savannah was lost when she ran aground on Fire Island in 1821, across the bay from a village then known as Fireplace." from Dr. Clive Cussler's site
Also: "In 1962 the first commercial nuclear-powered ship, the NS Savannah, was launched in Camden, New Jersey. Named for the Savannah, the famous 19th century steamship that pioneered transatlantic steam travel, NS Savannah measures 182 m (596 ft) and is powered by nuclear-driven turbines. Although it was an engineering success, NS Savannah proved a commercial failure. It could not carry enough cargo to be competitive and required a larger crew than comparable oil-powered ships." (Encarta entry "Ship")
"NS Savannah remains the only commercial nuclear-powered vessel ever built. Nuclear power proved prohibitively expensive for commercial purposes. The military recognized the potential for nuclear power. Unrestricted by cost, navies of the United States, Russia, Britain, and France developed a variety of naval vessels operated by nuclear power." (Ibid.)
I've put a pushpin in the vicinity of the Atlantic Ocean in line with the toponym "Fireplace Neck" which appears on Bellport Bay. Ironically there is another Fireplace, NY toponym, across the water from Gardiners Island's white windmill, placed on the National Register of Historic Places Dec. 27, 1978. I placed a pushpin near it also. The other Fireplace that appears on maps is just north of Acabonack Harbor south of Hog Creek Point.
Google Earth Board for Savannah location
Back in the early 1980's I recall a gentleman proposing a number of archaeology surveys for the Savannah wreck location that archaeologist and alumnus Edward Johanneman, MA had been forwarded. One an aerial magnetometer survey which I think had been done but had not found anything. The gentleman was referred to as a millionaire. At the time the proposed new Federal wilderness designation, the only one in New York State to this day, for the Fire Island National Seashore, required an archaeological assessment which I carried to the public hearing at the William Floyd High School in Shirley, NY. I also stated that the Suffolk County Archaeology Association was for the new designation for the public record.
"Old Inlet" was through which much produce from "truck farming" had once, in reported upwards of 100 small ships, had been carried to nearby New York City. The story I was told was that a ship had gotten caught up in the inlet, another crashed into it and the whole thing filled in quite quickly, cutting off the former access to the Atlantic Ocean nearby Bellport, NY. Bellport was settled by people who actually solved a similar problem that had occurred in the 17th century! Ship salvors, they were hired to clear the "Old Inlet" and decided to stay in the "Belle Port" according to the story at a real estate office there. It was also known to the native locals for large fish.
As the Long Island Railroad reached easterly it stopped in Patchogue, probably carrying the produce once carried by ship, silk mills there too, where there had been many small mills in small estuaries. In fact I think the second cotton mill in the US was there or something like that. Travelers started to summer vacation in the vicinity of Bellport and the area east of Patchogue became known for its arts and politics. The musician/artists John Lennon and Yoko Ono thought of living there, the former Governor of Massachusetts lives there today, he once a candidate for ambassador to Mexico under President Clinton, Mr. Weld, whose family once had an estate in Smithtown on Long Island, now a Suffolk County Park, Blydenburg Park, and old former water powered industrial center near the NY State center in Hauppauge, NY. The artist who designed the "Atoms for Peace" stamp during the Eisenhower days lived in Bellport and today there are a number of interesting architectural sites, both old and new houses there. A ball bearing was patented there on March 13, 1866, at "Site of the Invention of Ball Bearing," Bellport, Long Island, NY by Oliver Hazard Perry Robinson stated on a small monument erected by the Bellport Brookhaven Historical Society in 1968.
However, with the closing of "Old Inlet" there has been a noticeable marsh land growth and former sediments that washed around pilings and docks have grown up into land where water once flowed according to a letter in the "New Jersey Geologist" I read in Drew University library a number of years ago.
Thirty years ago I won a summer job lottery with Brookhaven Parks, which administers Davis Park, about 7 3/4 miles from Smiths Point County Park. To get there one drove below the high tide line, and not on the trail there known as the "Burma Road" and crosses over the "Old Inlet". It was the summer of "Jaws" and some problems with "tar balls" washing up on the beaches, and I still remember being "on the beach" that day and told that we might have to have shots had we been in the water on the way to Davis Park. Turns out I later met the organizer of the study Mr. Swanson, for the NOAA at Stony Brook University, that determined that most of the material had come from some pier fires in New Jersey, according to the report I have.
I think I met him in a "security breach" at the Foundry Cove in Cold Spring, NY in the EPA National Priority Superfund cleanup of the Marathon Battery Site. That is they came around a fence and had been there already, but the tide was too high to come in under the rail bridge. I also heard that one researcher with him had been the original "finder" of the pollution from the cadmium, supposedly cleaned up once before, when the researcher decided to compare the tidal riparian Foundry Cove with the study site Stony Brook University has in lease, the tidal (now?) "Flax Pond" on the north shore of Long Island on the Long Island Sound near the university. For comparison, to study, and I think how the cove was found to be still contaminated.
Foundry Cove has since been dammed, hauled out mixed with concrete and transported out on rail cars, on the old rail bed once used by the West Point Foundry in the 19th and by the early 20th century. The earthen dam was torn open and the marsh is being restored to its more natural condition. Behind the broken historic stone dike, which was the only way over by foot to Constitution Island before the railroad perhaps, is Constitution Marsh, once a National Audubon holding, now a NY State Park of which its said the dike was for a rice production experiment, however. Constitution Island is clearly still part of West Point Military Academy, as stated on the warning at the railroad bridge egress.
Mrs. Swanson, who I met when they first moved to Long Island from Seattle, WA years ago, showed me some buried tree limbs turning up in the vegetable garden of the Setauket Presbyterian Church, where she was an Elder, and asked if I knew how we might find the locations of the burials in its graveyard as it was known that some of the stones had been moved and replaced during the Revolutionary War and it would be good to be able to verify what had been restored. Since then, great strides have been made in ground-penetrating radar and other remote, non-destructive means of testing that have developed, some of which I have had the opportunity to work with, though under less than ideal circumstances. However, at the time, I thought some illegal builder had buried the trees there, they seemed too new, but maybe they were part of the fort the church once turned into as did the Caroline Anglican church, the second oldest one in the US, a short distance away across the village green, with musket balls still lodged in it and from it. They both have been there since the middle of the 17th century. The Presbyterians when they left the Charles River in Massachusetts. The first minister, a doctor of theology, was of the first graduating class of Harvard University.
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