Z•E•S•T

FOR LIVING
Chronicling area

By gloria stravelli
Staff Writer

Z•E•S•T FOR LIVING Chronicling area’s maritime history picks up steam By gloria stravelli Staff Writer

FOR LIVING
Chronicling area’s maritime history picks up steam
By gloria stravelli
Staff Writer


The sight of steamboats plying the waters of the Navesink and Shrewsbury rivers was a very common one in 19th-century Monmouth County where the proliferation of steam-powered vessels surprised one historical researcher.

"I expected to find maybe 50 boats," said Megan E. Springate, assistant curator of the Monmouth County Historical Association, whose research revealed that, at their peak, the number of steamboats in use in the county was actually much higher.

"I did a year of research and found that more than 200 vessels ran in Monmouth County from the beginning of the steamboat boom in 1819 through the late 1960s," said the Shrewsbury Township resident. "I couldn’t believe it. Some came only once, some ran their whole lives here."

Springate’s research on the steamboats that plied the waterways of Monmouth County for a period of roughly 150 years provided the material for "Steamboat!" an exhibit at the MCHA museum that ran through April.


Mandalay ferryMandalay ferry

When her extensive research turned up more steamboats than could be featured in the exhibit on the rise and fall of the steamboat industry in Monmouth County, she decided to publish the information for future use by historians.

"I did all this research and looked at the notes. There were more than 200 boats and I was astounded. We couldn’t put all the boats in the exhibit," ex-plained Sprin-gate, whose volume Steam-boats in Mon-mouth County: A Gazeteer,was published this year by the MCHA. "I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be a shame if all this information just goes in the files?’ So we decided to put it together as a book."

A Toronto native, Springate came to the United States for an internship with the MCHA while studying for a master’s degree in archaeology. When she completed the internship in 1998, she was hired as assistant curator. In addition to working at the MCHA museum in Freehold Borough, she spends one day per week at the Allen House in Sbrewsbury, where she established and runs the association’s annual summer Archaeology Camp for students.

The MCHA exhibit on steamboats gave Springate insight into the role of steamboats in Monmouth County.


City of Keansburg ferryCity of Keansburg ferry

"They were incredibly important. I really had no idea," she said. "You didn’t have the turnpike or the parkway. When steamboats started running, roads were dirt. It could take you a week to get to New York City. Then steamboats started running and all of a sudden it took you a day."

Her research centered mainly on period newspapers in the MCHA’s archives. Periodicals like the Monmouth Democrat, Keyport Weekly, Matawan Journal, Red Bank Register and Farmers’ and Workingmen’s Advocate provided a wealth of information in the form of advertisements and timetables for the steamers.

"I did a lot of reading of newspapers looking for advertisements for boats because they often listed the captain, sometimes the crew, what docks they sailed from, routes, timetables and sometimes who owned it," she explained.

Most of the 153 images in the volume come from the extensive John C. Mills Collection that was donated to the MCHA by the Hazlet steamboat aficionado and collector.


City of Keyport ferryCity of Keyport ferry

Mills’ collection of photos, ephemera, advertisements, illustrations, timetables, tickets and blueprints of steamboats, drawings and notes "was full of these incredible photos," Springate said.

Steamboats in Monmouth County is divided into three sections, beginning with the text and images from the "Steamboat!" exhibit, which starts with the invention of the steamboat by Robert Fisk and its popularization by Robert Fulton.

For the second part of the gazetteer — the heart of the 211-page volume — Springate compiled data on all 200 steamboats, including build date, specifications, routes, captains, crew, life span of each, accidents and history.

The third, and final, section is an appendix of information on the steamboat companies that operated in the county.


Megan E. SpringateMegan E. Springate

"I was having trouble keeping track because the names all sounded alike," she explained, "so I kept a tally on a piece of paper, and it turned into an enormous list with roughly 53 steamboat companies, all running boats into Monmouth county docks."

According to Steamboats in Monmouth County, the Franklin, built in 1819 by Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat Co., was the first steamboat to visit the Navesink and Shrewsbury rivers. The vessel made three trips per week from a dock near the present location of Fort Monmouth to New York.

Steam-powered water travel was an instant success when introduced. The wooden sidewheelers and sternwheelers didn’t rely on wind and weather like sloops and schooners, and offered dependable, scheduled travel for freight and passengers.

The boats, she noted, carried huge amounts of farm produce from the heavily agricultural county to markets in New York City where the produce brought a good price.

By the mid-Victorian era, some of the steamboats shifted the focus to carrying passengers out of the city bound for seaside resorts in Long Branch and Asbury Park.

According to Springate, the enormous vessels (the Monmouth measured 270 feet in length) were perfect for traveling the Navesink and Shrewsbury rivers.

"They were shallow draft, which meant they could come into the rivers and pull into shallow ports," she explained."The sidewheelers in particular were well suited for this area because they could turn in a small radius, and the river was a tight turn."

"Steamboats reached their peak around the 1860s-80s, even stretching into the early 1900s, all the while becoming bigger and more elaborate," she said.

But World War II changed things, and they began a decline in the 1940s when it became expensive to update the vessels to meet new safety regulations, she explained. "By the 1950s, the automobile was becoming more popular, the turnpike and parkway were opened."

Despite the march of progress, steamboats remained on local rivers as late as 1968. Local captain Henry Gelhaus kept the 241-foot City of Keansburg plying the route between Atlantic Highlands and New York City long after it wasn’t profitable anymore, Springate said. ‘

"Gelhaus ran the boat at a loss for years," she noted. "He couldn’t let it go."

Boat building in the county centered in the small town of Keyport, population less than 200, which became the largest steamboat-building port in the state by the 1860s, according to the book.

There, boatwrights like Benjamin Terry built steamboats for companies like the Keyport and Middletown Steamboat Co., Red Bank Steamboat Co. and Farmers Transportation Co. of Keyport. By the time the last steamboat was built in Keyport in 1861, 55 steamboats had been built there, 45 of those by Terry.

"I started because I was interested in steamboats, and then it really became almost a quest," said Springate. "The sad thing is they are all gone. There was a big push in the 1970s; it seemed they were going to open floating restaurants and museums, but it never panned out.

"The boats would fall apart, sink in a storm, get salvaged, and by the 1980s they had disappeared.

"I think it’s sad because they were very neat. Life is faster now, so people want to take faster, diesel ferries," said Springate, who has traveled on a steamship in her native Canada, "but they’re not nearly the same."