Eastern Steamship Lines

Eastern Steamship Lines was a shipping concern created through successive mergers by Wall Street financier and speculator Charles Wyman Morse. It built numerous ships for the United States government in World War I, and served as operator of a large number of vessels on behalf of the War Shipping Administration in World War II.

In 1911 Morse consolidated the Metropolitan Steamship Company and Maine Steamship Company with the Eastern Steamship Company to form Eastern Steamship Corporation. It went into receivership in 1914 and emerged in 1917 as Eastern Steamship Lines.

Morse's father had a large role in the towing business on the Kennebec River in Maine. Charles was already involved in the shipping business while a student at Bowdoin College, and at his graduation in 1877 he had accumulated a sizable capital. After college he went into business with his father and a cousin, Harry F. Morse, forming C.W. Morse & Company and engaging in an extensive business shipping ice and lumber.

After profiting in the creation and sale of substantial holdings known as the "Ice Trust," Morse returned to the realm of shipping in 1901, when he established the Eastern Steamship Company by consolidating the Boston and Bangor Steamship Company, dating from 1834; the Portland Steam Packet Company, organized in 1843; and the International Steamship Company, established in 1859.

In 1902 Morse acquired control of both overnight steamboat lines on the Hudson River - the People's Line, established in 1835, and the Citizens' Line, established in 1872 - and organized the Hudson Navigation Company to operate them. They were collectively known as the Hudson River Night Line. The People's Line named its new 411-foot steamer C.W. Morse in his honor in 1904. (Morse's uncle James Thomas Morse, his father's brother, was the namesake of the Rockland-Bar Harbor, Maine, steamer J.T. Morse, also built in 1904.)

Morse acquired control of the Metropolitan Steamship Company from the Whitney interests in 1906. He organized the Consolidated Steamship Company in January 1907 as a holding company for the Eastern Steamship Company, Metropolitan Steamship Company Clyde Steamship Company and Mallory Steamship Company. Despite an initial announcement of such a sale, Morse failed in an attempt to purchase the Long Island Sound steamers of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. He did, however, acquire control of the New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Company and the New York and Porto Rico Steamship Company in 1907.

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