Search for the first steamboat to cross the Atlantic,
the Savannah, on Fire Island, New York. October 1982.
The Savannah made all the history books. She was a fine
ship, well constructed with elegant fixtures for her 32
passenger staterooms and expensive furnishings in her
salons. An early 90-horsepower steam engine with folding
paddles sat in her hull. And on May 22, 1819, she steamed
out across the Atlantic. Twenty-nine days later, with
smoke and sparks bursting from her single stack, she sailed
into Liverpool harbor to the cheers of thousands.
Although she was only under steam for 80 hours, her famous
voyage stands unchallenged in the history books.
Her owners turned their backs on her accomplishment,
however, in favor of black ink and had her engine stripped
off, remaking her into a cargo-carrying coastal ship.
They regarded her as a financial failure, while Britain
was inspired to leap into the world steamship trade,
leaving the Americans far behind over the next decades.
The Savannah was lost when she ran aground on Fire
Island in 1821, across the bay from a village then known
as Fireplace. The approximate impact site was said to
be at a point where there was a break in the island
known as the old Inlet.
She struck and sat "upright and sound", according
to her Captain, whose name was Holdridge. During the
next few days, the wave action split her hull and she
began to bury herself. The last mention of the Savannah's
wreck was an obituary. A man sailing out to guard the
doomed ship, "lying on the beach near Fireplace,
L.I.", drowned in a small boat.
The first search for the site of the legendary steam
ship took place in 1958 when Frank Braynard, noted naval
historian and director of the American Merchant Marine
Institute, organized an extensive effort to find the
Savannah's resting place beneath the sands of Fire Island.
His best projection is that she grounded a hundred
yards out from the 1821 beach line somewhere between
the old Bellport life saving station and the Smith's
point station to the east (see 1878 chart).
Braynard conducted tests with naval blimps using magnetometers.
His 1958 grid area shows six contacts running as far
as 400 yards off the beach. None of the contacts paid
off. At the same time, a group of divers claimed they
struck a copper sheathed wreck off the Old Inlet area
in 20 feet of water. But after repeated efforts, they
could not find the spot again.
Surprisingly, the Fire Island shore has changed little
since 1821. Surveys taken over nearly 200 years show
tide line shifts of less than 150 yards, and then only
after hurricanes have slammed onto the coast.
During our search in 1982, using a more modern gradiometer,
we found no contacts a hundred yards or more off the
shore. A survey of several miles along the Fire Island
beach line strangely revealed the same lack of contact.
This was puzzling because there are literally hundreds
of ships that have run aground on the island over four
centuries, the basis for the adage 'a wreck lies every
hundred yards under Fire Island's beach.
We then gambled on losing the boat and made a run along
the surf line, nearly capsizing in the breakers. Eureka!
The contacts came one on top of the other. The gradiometer
sang like an impaled diva.
This indicated that most of the wrecks lie under the
tide line between the dunes and a parallel line only
75 yards out into the water.
A tight grid search within these perimeters, using
a good metal detector, should strike on the copper hull
sheathing of the Savannah. Then the real fun begins.
An excavation.
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