Through Hell Gate In a Steamboat

By Bill Bleyer | Staff Writer

Bunker showed the way for steamboats like the United States to ply the Sound. (From the book "American Steam Vessels")

At 5 a.m. on March 21, 1815, Capt. Elihu S. Bunker eased the steamboat Fulton out of an East River slip and did what other mariners thought impossible: He piloted the first powered vessel through the treacherous rocks and currents of Hell Gate into Long Island Sound.

Bunker ushered in a new era of steamboat travel to Long Island and New England ports. While his interest was speeding travel to Boston, other steamboaters followed him with routes to ports on the North Shore and East End of Long Island, boosting the Island's economy and its development as a suburb and resort area for the wealthy.

Born on Nantucket in 1772, Bunker eschewed the whaling industry that employed other members of his family and many other island men. He shipped out on coastal trading vessels and eventually moved to New York to become master of Hudson River freight and passenger carriers. After Robert Fulton launched the Clermont, the first commercially successful steamboat, in 1807, Bunker had to compete with it. He quickly realized steamboats were the future and organized a syndicate to build two steamboats to compete with Fulton and his backer, Robert Livingston. The investors launched Hope and Perseverance, and with Bunker at the helm, Hope proved faster than Fulton's North River.

But Fulton and Livingston had been granted a monopoly in New York waters by the state Legislature, and Bunker's boats were beached. Unable to beat Fulton, Bunker decided to join him. Fulton agreed to build a boat to Bunker's specifications; the captain oversaw construction and named the vessel Fulton. Unlike the flat-bottomed river steamboats, the Fulton had a V-shaped bottom and was built as strong as an oceangoing vessel because Bunker planned to use it on Long Island Sound, where no steamboat had gone before.

After successfully negotiating the surging current and jagged boulders of Hell Gate on the maiden voyage, Bunker steered the 134-foot ship 75 miles to New Haven in 11 hours. The captain went on to build more steamboats, including the President, which was the first steamboat without masts and sails as a back-up. Built in 1829, the President was also the first steamer to provide individual staterooms rather than the standard curtained-off berths.

By this point, though, Bunker was in his late 50s and tired of running the steamboats he was building. He turned the helm of the President over to his son Robert and became a federal steamboat inspector, helping regulate the industry he had pioneered.