When I was seven years old, my parents decided that we would take a family vacation to Florida. To this day, the highlight and most memorable facet of the trip was sailing on the steamboat, The District of Columbia, from Washington to Old Point Comfort.
The trip began as we drove to the steamboat dock on Maine Avenue in Washington, where my father collected the tickets he had pre-ordered and we waited in line with many other cars for our signal to board.
At 5 p.m. the side of the ship opened, and the gangplank was lowered allowing the cars to drive onboard. Once parked with our car chocked, we were directed to our stateroom, a large venue with wonderful water views. As it was June, we had daylight until we got down the river, passing Mount Vernon and Fort Washington.
At 7 p.m. we proceeded to the dining salon, where we were shown to a table with a linen tablecloth and napkins. The waiters wore white coats and were hospitable and welcoming, replete with interesting stories and excellent menu recommendations. Each day the chef offered an extensive daily printed menu specific to what was being served. The menus were of a quality worthy of being framed as souvenirs.
After our leisurely dinner, our family, with nearly everyone else on board, went to the top deck to watch us go under the old Potomac River Bridge, which passage produced an impromptu cheer from all on deck. Next, we passed the lights of the hotels along The Front at Colonial Beach, after which we retired for the night. While we were eating dinner, a steward had turned down our beds. The voyage was exciting to such a great extent that I slept very little, despite the comfort of the bed.
The following morning at 6 a.m. the steamboat pulled into the shipping dock at Old Point Comfort, next to The Chamberlin Hotel. We disembarked and headed south. The automobile trip was pleasant, but after the steamboat, all that happened seemed anti-climactic.
Over the years since that childhood adventure, I periodically have followed the plight of
The District of Columbia. It was built in 1924 by the Pusey and Jones Company in Wilmington, Del., for service on the Norfolk and Washington Steamboat Company routes, but after a 1948 collision with the Texas Company tanker, Georgia, in which one passenger was killed and three were injured, the N. & W. Company was taken over by the Baltimore Steam Packet Company, better known by its nickname, “The Old Bay Line.” The word “packet” in the company’s title referred to the mail packets that its boats carried for the U.S. Post Office Department.
It remained in service between Baltimore, Washington, Old Point Comfort and Norfolk, until the Washington leg was discontinued in 1958. Four years later steamboat travel on the Chesapeake and its tributaries via The Old Bay Line came to an end after 123 years with the retirement of The District of Columbia, the company’s last steamboat. Sadly, the halcyon days of the steamboat passed into history, fortuitously remembered today in the exhibits of the Steamboat Era Museum in Irvington.
At the time of its last voyage, the District of Columbia was less than 40 years old. Thereafter, the ship saw service out of Boston as The Providence, in transit to Nantucket Island, and then it returned to Baltimore harbor to languish unattended, the luxury of its form of travel having been supplanted by the joys of motoring between Washington and Norfolk along Interstates 95 and 64.
