The death of David C. Holly, 83, last month in Annapolis, was the second within a year of a prominent Chesapeake Bay steamboat historian.
Last May, H. Graham Wood, 87, co-author of "Steamboats Out of Baltimore," published by Tidewater in 1968, died at his Roland Park home.
Written with Robert H. Burgess, the book has become one of the standard works for anyone interested in the era when white packet boats, with their single straight black funnels belching the aroma of soft coal smoke, plied the bay, stitching together via a waterborne highway the entire Delmarva region.
The sound of their melodious steam whistles heralded their arrival or departure for such far-off and bustling ports of call as Old Point Comfort and Norfolk. Or, sometimes, less glamorous but equally as important (in terms of freight and passenger revenues) destinations such as Abell's Landing, the Galesville Wharf on the West River or Porto Bello on the St. Mary's River.
Both Holly and Wood kept alive 1989 PHOTO David C. Holly in words and pictures a period of bay transport history that flourished from 1815 until 1962, and since has vanished without a trace.
On the surface it would seem that the authors were competitors. But they were friendly rivals, for there was plenty of material to go around and they were linked together by their shared affection for Chesapeake Bay steamboats.
Wood took his first steamboat trip in 1914, and recalled in a 1991 Evening Sun interview looking over the boat's rail and "seeing nothing but sea nettles."
He then spent much of his youth aboard steamboats accompanying his father, an official of a lumber company, on buying trips up and down the bay and into its remotest corners and rivers.
Of the experience, Wood said in the interview, "There was nothing quite like it. Waiting on a country wharf for what seemed like hours before sighting the smoke and then the steamer's stack over the willow trees."
At his death last year, co-author Burgess described Wood's love of bay steamers as something "he was obsessed with. It was something that he had grown up with."
Like Wood, it was as a child that Holly fell under the spell of the steamboats, whose straight bows once shadowed the Pratt and Light street wharves, their arrival and departure accounting for much of the city's downtown waterfront activity in those years.
"The steamboat era was inescapably romantic," Holly wrote. "It smacked of plantations, gracious living, and a leisurely pace unmeasured by time. It smelled of the salt air of the sea, oyster shells mountains high, masses of seaweed rotting on a sandy shore, the fragrance of pine and loam and honeysuckle from the passing forest, the stench of a fish factory pressing menhaden for oil and 'chum' for fertilizer, the aroma of roasting coffee and old wooden wharves and smoke and the harbor of Baltimore at sailing time. ... It recalled the steamboats themselves, trim and graceful, their white sides glistening and paddleboxes glowing with gold leaf."
In 1969, his book "Exodus 1947," followed the career of the Old Bay Line steamer President Warfield from the Chesapeake Bay to her role transporting Jewish refugees to Palestine in 1947. The ship, the first to fly the Magen David, the white and blue flag of Israel, was later stopped by British destroyers, escorted into Haifa Harbor, and its human cargo of 4,500 refugees removed. The ship later burned in Haifa and was sold for scrap in 1952.
His other books included "Steamboat on the Chesapeake," "Tidewater by Steamboat" and "Chesapeake Steamboats."
"For a century and a half, some 300 vessels steamed out of Baltimore, as many as 140 out of Washington, and up to 150 out of Norfolk," wrote Holly.
"Although these numbers may include a few boats listed as steam-driven barges, tugs and other craft scarcely worthy as classification as steamboats (in the conventional and aesthetic meaning of the term) the total of at least 500 reflects the size and importance of the industry. At its height, from around the turn of the century until the First World War, some 50 steamboats at one time operated out of Baltimore alone."
On April 14, 1962, the Old Bay Line steamer City of Norfolk, steaming northward from Norfolk to Baltimore under the command of veteran bay captain Patrick L. Parker, was warped into the Pratt Street pier for the last time.
With the ringing down of her engine room telegraphs to "Finished with Engines," Parker had without ceremony ended a century and a quarter of bay steam navigation that had commenced for the Old Bay Line in 1840.
No longer would overnight packet boats jockey for position as they cast off lines at 6: 30 p.m. and prepared to steam southward for Norfolk.
With a great show of harbor water being kicked up from their propellers and the smell of hot greasy steam and coal smoke filling the air, they gallantly put Baltimore astern as the city's lights came up in the twilight.
As they grandly processed around Federal Hill and out into the broad Patapsco River near Fort McHenry, passengers dressed in tweed traveling caps, plus-fours or seersucker suits and straw boaters lined the rail, catching a glimpse of the historic fort as they got their "bay legs" and adjusted to the rhythm of the engines throbbing far below.
Once inside the steamer's dining salon, turn of the century trenchermen were greeted with a bounty that included such seasonal delicacies as diamondback terrapin, canvasback duck, quail, Norfolk spot, turkey, Mobjack Bay oysters and beefsteak -- all for the pre-income tax price of a $1.
Even in the 1950s and 1960s, the Old Bay Line still set an elegant, inexpensive table.
Manhattan or Martini cocktails sold for 70 cents while travelers could dine on hamsteak or crab cakes for $2.75. The most expensive item on the menu was the filet of mignon at $4.75 and a traveler desiring an accompanying bottle of 1957 Bordeaux or 1959 Burgundy would be charged only a mere $1.25 for the pleasure.
In the end, it was the competition from automobiles, interstate highways and even the airliner that conspired to do in the overnight packet boat, just as it had done with the long-distance passenger train. Also, a 12-hour overnight cruise had become decidedly unfashionable in view of the faster automobile for a comparable trip.
A Sun editorial in 1962 lamenting the end of the Old Bay Line said, "And so, a picturesque survival is going, one more of the distinctive features which made up the local scene.
"One day, perhaps, some will revive the steam packets, all decked out in old world trappings as a Disneyland tourist attraction. It will not be the same thing. Their honored place in local history was earned by being of use and not by being quaint -- though quaint they became. They were not useful enough to enough people, not an economic proposition, and so, sadly, we say farewell."
Pub Date: 3/06/99