Tidewater by Steamboat: A Saga of the Chesapeake by David C. Holly

Abstract

152 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Tidewater by Steamboat: A Saga of the Chesapeake. By David C. Holly. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Pp. xix + 314; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $29.95. For much of its relatively brief history, steamboating on the Chesapeake Bay was synonymous with the name Weems. It was George Weems who was primarily responsible for bringing together the technology of the steamboat and the culture of the agrarian tidewater regions of Maryland and Virginia. No easy task to begin with, it was a struggle throughout to maintain markets as well as the amity of his patrons. To compound difficulties, service was interrupted by the upheaval of civil war and on a number of occasions by severe weather. Although there was an obvious need to move agricultural products and people from the farmland that surrounded the myriad tributaries of the bay, convincing the staid “insular and somewhat clannish society” (p. 11) of the utility of the boats seemed to be his major obstacle. Steamboats arrived on the broad expanses of the Chesapeake Bay during the first decades of the 19th century and regularly plied its waters until the late 1930s. Baltimore, at the head of the Chesapeake, was not only the base of operation for the Weems line, it was also where most of the boats were built, and the marketplace and shipping point for the goods they would carry. The early years were spent in trial and error, sorting out such technical matters as the most appropriate engine and hull and deck design that would be suitable for conditions on and around the bay. As Weems developed his agricultural markets, moving farm prod­ ucts and livestock in one direction, he sought to bolster business by moving people in the opposite direction. To encourage steamboat travel he also developed his country property, Fair Haven, as a resort. City dwellers could escape the summer heat at this salubrious setting on the Patuxent River, only a day’s travel down the bay. It was the first of a bevy of amusement parks and resorts that sprang up later in the century—many with landings for Weems line boats. In addition to the countless Maryland river landings, service finally came to include those on Virginia’s Rappahannock River as far inland as Fredericks­ burg, and overnight service to Norfolk and the City of Washington was added as well. By the end of the century, the monopolistic tendencies of the railroads were felt in the steamboat industry. As the Pennsylvania Railroad sought to consolidate control over all forms of transporta­ tion that served Maryland’s eastern shore, it set about acquiring independent rail and steamboat lines. In 1905 the Weems Steamboat Company was sold to a group backed by the Pennsylvania Railroad. Nonetheless, the fleet continued to sail the bay for many years, although service gradually diminished, and the steamer Anne Arundel—and the line—made its last sailing in late 1937. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 153 David Holly’s book concludes with seven appendixes, including specifications of each vessel in the Weems fleet, a representative sample of scheduling and board meeting minutes, construction agreements and costs, a Weems family history, and a comprehensive listing of river landings visited by Weems boats. Notes and a bibliog­ raphy round out the volume. It is, as the subtitle claims, truly “a saga of the Chesapeake,” although what is an otherwise splendid history suffers from a slight indulgence in nostalgia. (Almost as if in antici­ pation of such criticism, the author points out that “the steamboat era was inescapably romantic” [p. xvii].) It is interesting that Holly concludes that one of the contributing factors that led to the sale of the company in 1905 was the automobile. Company president Henry Williams had seen several autos on the streets of Baltimore, and a few had been carried as freight on Weems boats. From this and the increasing number of improved roads he “knew instinctively what the statistics portended” (p. 157). Perhaps so, but this conclusion sounds very much like late-20th-century hind­ sight. It does not equate with the author’s observation that “the period from 1905 to the 1920s marked...