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  • Steam Coffin: Captain Moses Rogers and the Steamship Savannah Break the Barrier
  • Ray Davis
John Laurence Busch, Steam Coffin: Captain Moses Rogers and the Steamship Savannah Break the Barrier. New Canaan, CT: Hodos Historia LLC, 2010. 726 pp. ISBN 978-1-893616-00-4. US$35.00

America’s psychological need for transportation speed is as new as high-speed trains and as old as Fulton’s Folly. Americans need speed. This psychology appears to have been the same in the early 1800s when steam power was being introduced. Cost, danger, and thrill of change were in the air. So above all, Steam Coffin is a book about people, places, and steam.

The adventure starts with Captain Moses Rogers guiding the steamboat Charleston to Savannah, Georgia.

On this early December morning in 1817, he initiated the first steamboat service between Charleston and Savannah. The protected inland route that Moses planned to take required him to snake his way through a number of shallow waterways, and across several ocean inlets, until he reached the Savannah River.

But Captain Rogers turned out to be the person with the perfect combination of skill, knowledge, luck, and determination to start the steam revolution in shipbuilding. He, of course, ended up being the captain of the first steam-powered transatlantic voyage on the steamship Savannah.

But how he got to be captain of the first voyage involves many other events and individuals. There was Robert Fulton, inventor of the first practical steam-powered boat in 1807. Next was William Scarbrough, “ President of the Savannah Steam Ship Company,” who came to prominence in helping to finance the transatlantic voyage. James P. Allaire built the steam engine that powered the Savannah. Last, the man who would retell the story, Stevens Rogers, a distant cousin of Moses Rogers, was the first mate on that [End Page 256] inaugural voyage. His logbook entries and recollections would survive until 1868 when Steve died of heart failure.

Second, the book is set between New England and Georgia. America had turned to its waterways for transportation. Charleston, Savannah, New York, and Philadelphia were, and still are, major hubs of transportation and trade. The book reports that Moses Rogers captained sailing ships or steamboats in all of these areas and gained the knowledge needed to be a pioneer steamboat captain.

The climax of this book is the voyage of the Savannah to Europe and back. But before that passage could happen, Moses Rogers had to conquer some old psychological fears. “In due course, the mariners of New York effectively responded to the . . . floating contraption tied up to the wharves with a description of their own—‘steam Coffin.’” Eventually, the steamship Savannah was manned with able-bodied sailors. Other dignitaries, kings, and even the president of the United States, James Monroe, visited the ship. However, the economic conditions of the time marred that first voyage.

Finally, Captain Moses Rogers learned how to use steam power. In the days of sail power, people would be at the whim of the wind. But with a steam-powered ship that was needed was fuel to run the engine. This hybrid ship was a transportation revolution in the early 1800s. No longer did the passenger have to wait. The author speculates:

Moses made it to Gotham in plenty of time for first advertised commercial run of Fulton’s newly registered North River Steam Boat. . . . Nevertheless, many years later, Moses Rogers would be described as having been “actively and usefully engaged on the North River in the earliest experiments” of Robert Fulton.

The story ends as all stories must with bittersweet memories of what history does to people, places, and things.

The author tried to include the research that he so carefully collected in this book, but he speculates all too often. Do we really know the whereabouts of Moses Rogers in 1807 when Fulton’s steamboat powered to Albany? How did James Allaire come to build the steam engine? Finally, what were the real reasons why William Scarbrough and the shareholders would not sail on the Savannah? This book is a tome of over 700 pages, which to this reviewer seems to be overly verbose. Finally...

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