''Phoenix'' was a sidewheel
steamboat built in 1807 by
John Stevens and his son,
Robert L. Stevens
Colonel Robert Livingston Stevens (October 18, 1787 – April 20, 1856) was an American inventor and steamship builder who served as president of the Camden and Amboy Railroad in the 1830s and 1840s.
Early life
Stevens was born in Hoboken, New ...
, at
Hoboken
Hoboken ( ; Unami: ') is a city in Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 60,417. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 58,69 ...
,
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
.
Phoenix measured long, wide and deep. She had 25 cabin berths and additional 12 berths in
steerage
Steerage is a term for the lowest category of passenger accommodation in a ship. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century considerable numbers of persons travelled from their homeland to seek a new life elsewhere, in many cases North America ...
.
Originally built to sail from
New Brunswick
New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...
, New Jersey, to
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
, ''Phoenix'' became the first steamboat to sail the open
ocean
The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the wo ...
, from
New York to
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
, in June 1809. The reason for this journey was that the restrictions placed on Stevens by the New York steamboat monopoly held by
Robert Fulton
Robert Fulton (November 14, 1765 – February 24, 1815) was an American engineer and inventor who is widely credited with developing the world's first commercially successful steamboat, the (also known as ''Clermont''). In 1807, that steamboa ...
and
Robert Livingston meant that he could not operate profitably. Stevens decided to risk a journey over the open ocean so that he could operate on the
Delaware River.
The journey was hazardous, and a schooner accompanying ''Phoenix'' was driven off by a storm. ''Phoenix'' made harbor at
Barnegat, New Jersey, and after waiting several days for the storm to subside, eventually sailed around New Jersey and up the Delaware River.
Following the journey, ''Phoenix'' made her first trip on the Delaware between Philadelphia and
Trenton, on July 5, 1809.
References
''A Chronological History of the Origin and Development of Steam Navigation'' George Henry Preble, 1883, pp. 42, 49, and 56
Steamships
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