A CAPE CODDER——
Pioneered Our
Trans-Atlantic Steamship Service
Truro, Cape Cod, looks out over the heaving Atlantic to the horizon, and beyond lies Spain. Great romance colors the adventures of Truro’s seafaring men of long, long ago. There is also, in consistent fashion, the darkest tragedy.
Truro is the birthplace of Edward K. Collins, who established the first trans-Atlantic steamship service from the American shore. His elegantly equipped paddle-wheel steamer, “Atlantic”, embarked on the first crossing on April 27, 1850 and completed the voyage within 11 days.
The story of Edward Collins’ career has all the elements to make an exciting novel or a Hollywood movie—for the lad of 15 who went to New York to become the nation’s mightiest ship operator—launching “the most ambitious and spectacular attempt of the American merchant marine to challenge British supremacy”—finally ended up as a hum-drum land-bound provision dealer, yet “rosy, hearty and not careworn as when he had those mighty American steamships resting on his shoulders.”
Seafaring was deep-rooted as the trade of the Collins family. Edward began with his father in the shipping and commission business; they operated a service to Vera Cruz and New Orleans. The father died, then the E. K. Collins & Co. firm was founded and its sign was prominent on the New York waterfront for almost a half century. Associated with Collins was a Count Foster of New Orleans.
CALLED “THEATRICAL LINE”
The spectacular Cape Codder and his partner established the Dramatic Line, to run packets between New York and England. Capt. Lorenzo D. Baker of Wellfleet, Cape Cod, was scoffed at when he announced he was going to popularize the banana in the United States and so was Collins when shipping men heard he was building ships of 1000 tons. His critics argued there would not be cargoes large enough to fill them, nor would merchants trust their goods in them. So, in their hoots, they coined a name for the Dramatic Line. They called it the “Theatrical Line” because Collins named his vessels for famous authors and actors: Shakespeare, Siddons, Garrick, Sheridan and Roscius, to mention a few.
Collins had become one of New York’s richest men when the curtain raised on the era of steam. He visioned the possibilities and watched closely after England gave Samuel Cunard a subsidy mail contract in 1838. The Cunard Line berthed its first ship at this shore on July 18, 1840. Collins, according to the record at this point, saw a challenge in the British enterprise. He barged into a financing spree, determined “to drive the Cunarders out of business.”
Collins went to the nation’s capital for the money he needed. There he began on a grandiose scale and gradually descended with a series of headaches to ultimate ruin. His first triumph was the granting of a government subsidy of $385,000 a year for a period of ten years. He and his associates were pledged to build five steamers in the Collins-style, which would make twenty round trips annually, carrying the mails. In 1852 fortnightly service was established and the subsidy was increased to $858,000 annually.
The Collins Line prospered for two years. Then the clouds began to gather.
THE TRAGIC DECLINE
On Sept. 27, 1854, off Cape Race, New York, a Collins steamer, the Artic, collided with a small French steamer, the Vesta. The Arctic went down with a loss of 233 passengers and 135 members of the crew. Among the victims was Edward Collins’ wife, the former Mary Ann Woodruff, and his son and his daughter. The master of the Arctic, Capt. James C. Luce, of Martha’s Vineyard ancestry, held his own child in his arms through the awful scenes of panic. As he was about to launch a raft, some debris from the paddlebox struck and killed the child.
Then came the second blow. The steamer Pacific of the Collins Line put out from Liverpool on January 25, 1856, with 45 passengers and a crew of 141. She was never heard from again. No clue to her fate was ever turned up.
Meanwhile Collins had been having his troubles in Washington, and now they were piling up. A public clamor was on; the general theme was that the Cunard Line competition was too keen. Congress withdrew the second subsidy. A contract was made with the rival line of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Gradually the Collins Line sank to failure and the panic of 1857 put a period to its glorious adventuring. Fortunes were lost by investors in the line.