WORLD SHIP SOCIETY

At our October meeting, the PONY Branch welcomed Brian E. O’Connor, author of Death by Fire and Ice: The Steamboat Lexington Calamity, who discussed the little-known story of the sinking of the steamboat LEXINGTON on Long Island Sound in January 1840. Built in 1835 by Cornelius Vanderbilt, the LEXINGTON left Manhattan bound for Stonington, Connecticut, on a bitterly cold day carrying an estimated one hundred forty-seven passengers and crew and a cargo of, among other things, baled cotton. After making her way up an ice-encrusted East River into Long Island Sound, she caught fire off Long Island’s north shore. With the crew unable to extinguish the fire, the blaze burned through the ship’s wheel and tiller ropes, the engine died, and the ship floundered in the prevailing wind and current.

As the night wore on, the temperature plummeted to well below zero. With no hope of rescue on the dark horizon, the forlorn passengers and crew faced a dreadful decision: remain on board and perish in the searing flames or jump overboard and succumb within minutes to the Sound’s icy waters. By early morning all but one passenger and three members of the crew perished. The tragedy remains the worst maritime disaster in the history of Long Island Sound.

Within days, the New York City Coroner convened an inquest to determine the cause of the disaster and after two weeks of testimony it concluded that if the crew had acted appropriately the fire could have been extinguished and a large portion, if not all, on board could have been saved.

The public’s reaction to the verdict was scathing. Calls for criminal charges and improved passenger safety legislation were made. The Congressional solution balanced the need to insulate the nation’s shipping industry from ruinous liability for lost cargo, while at the same time greatly enhancing passenger safety on the nation’s steamboats.

Our presenter, Brian E. O’Connor, was born in Brooklyn, New York. He received a BA, magna cum laude, in government and politics from St. John’s University and a JD from St. John’s University School of Law, where he served as the publication’s editor of the Law Review. After beginning his legal career with a clerkship on the New York Court of Appeals, he became a partner in a prominent Wall Street law firm, where he specialized in complex commercial litigation for thirty-eight years before retiring as the firm’s General Counsel in 2017.

(Image: Naval Institute Press)