Let's see some steamships!

gsalex

Tookybandits's thread on sailing ships produced some terrific illustrations. But there are also some impressive steamships out there -- sternwheelers, riverboats, ocean liners and more. Just leave the sails to Tooky! Share your notes, checks, stocks, and such with some of these great maritime images.

Here are two from my collection:
First a wharf scene from a check, showing the sidewheels of a steamer in the background.



The second is an obsolete reprinted by American Bank Note on a $1-2-3-5 sheet of the City Council of Brunswick (GA) notes, engraved around 1857. The ship depicted is the U.S. mail ship "Illinois." I happen to have a lot of background on her, but don't feel obligated to research anything you post.



The Illinois was a Collins Line mail steamer, at least for a time. She was constructed by the renowned New York shipbuilding firm of Smith & Dimon and entered service in August 1851. She had a deck length of 267 feet and a breadth of 40 feet. Two oscillating engines drove her 9-foot stroke pistons, with 85-inch diameter cylinders. She had four tubular iron boilers, 12 feet long by 13 feet high. Each paddlewheel was 33 foot, 6 inches in diameter, with 28 paddles to the wheel and paddle buckets measuring 11 feet wide.

Originally launched as the "Louisiana" in the spring of 1851, she was was soon purchased by Collins Line partner George Law, who changed her name and put her on the New York to Chagres route (the Isthmus of Panama). This was the first leg on the route to Oregon and California, and Law no doubt wanted to capitalize on the demand for passage, sparked by the 1849 discovery of gold. Her captain noted the Illinois' top performance in a log of a May 1852 trip from NY to Chagres and back via Havana: Average consumption of coal, 60 tons per day; average speed 11 miles per hour; max. speed 13.5 mph. Running time from Havana to NY, 94.5 hours; distance run, 1032 miles. The Illinois was nearly lost in August 1857 after running aground on a reef near Havana, but continued to service this route until the spring of 1859. Cornelius Vanderbilt bought her on auction in 1860 and she plied his New York to Havre, France run that year.

Early in the Civil War, she was chartered by the Union Army to ferry supplies and troops. In March of 1862, just after the first rebel ironclad CSS Virginia (a.k.a. the Merrimack) made its devastating combat appearance, the panicked War Department desperately scrambled to cobble together a fleet of civilian steamships to ram the ironclad should it attack again. Though committed to the Army, the Illinois was hastily transferred to Navy control for the mission. Short of military personnel, the Navy contracted each ship's civilian crew along with the vessel. Four steamships were eventually assembled at Fort Monroe (near Norfolk, VA) where the Merrimack was lurking up the Elizabeth River. The Illinois arrived on March 18.

Thanks to a gross miscommunication, her crew wasn't informed of their true mission to "run down the Merrimack" (a likely suicide for some) until after they arrived in port — whereupon nearly all the appalled seamen refused duty in that capacity. Since the military had no authority over civilians, the Illinois was grudgingly released to return to New York. Another civilian crew was eventually procured and she returned on March 30. Fortunately for the small fleet, the Merrimack's captain learned of the plan and stayed out of sight, buying the Union enough time to get their own ironclad, the Monitor, on the scene to counter the Confederate naval advantage. The Illinois never saw combat and after the episode reverted to Army service for the duration of her charter.

From October 1863 to June 1864, she returned to civilian duty on the New York-Panama run. After the war, the Illinois served as a quarantine ship at Hoffman's Island in lower New York Harbor until about 1900.

MAM0912

tomtomtomtom

techwriter

Here we go:

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gsalex

Those battleships are terrific, Les, thanks for posting! I managed to dig up a few more of my own, in odd places. This ABNC reprint of a $500 Hawaiian note has both a steamship and sailing ship.




The vignette on this stock certificate for West Shore & Ontario Terminal Co. is entitled "The Ferry" and shows a variety of vessels.



This proof vignette by American Bank Note, titled "Iron Steamship Co" was used on the company's letterhead. It depicts the "Bristol," a lavish steamer that plied the Fall River Line from New York to Fall River, MA.


And last, another steamship I know well. The "Adriatic" is shown on (of all things) a proof of an insurance policy from the Adriatic Fire Insurance Company, engraved by the National Bank Note Co. It's got a great image of it's namesake vessel steaming through the open ocean.



The SS Adriatic, a wooden steamer, was completed in 1856 for the United States Mail Steamship Company, commonly known as the Collins Line. The Adriatic weighed a whopping 4,145 tons, a remarkable size at that time. She was billed as the "largest ship in the world," although at 354 feet not quite the longest. (By comparison, the Queen Mary, launched in 1934, is 1,019 feet and has a gross tonnage of 81,237 — but she is, after all, a modern steel liner.) The Adriatic had a 50-foot breadth, her paddlewheels were 40 feet in diameter, and her twin engines, with their 12-foot stroke pistons and 101-inch diameter cylinders, could generate an estimated 2,800 horsepower, propelling the Adriatic along at a brisk 15 knots per hour. She accommodated 400 passengers (300 of them first-class) and had a crew of 188, including 36 seamen, an equal number of coal-passers and of waiters, 24 firemen (coal stokers), two pastrycooks, two lampkeepers, a surgeon, a barkeeper, and a barber.

The Adriatic only made one voyage for Collins between New York and Liverpool before the company went belly-up in 1858, after the company's mail contract for the Atlantic run was not renewed. She was then laid up and sold the following year to the fledgling Atlantic Steam Navigation Company, a.k.a the Galway Line, for an astonishing pittance of $50,000. (The estimated building cost of the Adriatic was cited in the press at just under £250,000 -- roughly $1.2 million.)

The Adriatic also graces a U.S. postage stamp, issued in 1869, with a smaller version of the illustration on the insurance policy. The irony being that, by that time, the Adriatic was actually a British ship, carrying mail between Galway and New York.

techwriter

I sort of like this small little 5 Leke from Albania. It has a TRAIN on the face.

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== and face of this little 'double duty' note

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techwriter

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techwriter

And another from the China Bank of Communications

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== Dominican Republic note with a few ships

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