Metropolitan Steamship Company

The Metropolitan Steamship Company was for 75 years one of the chief transportation links between New York City and Boston, Massachusetts. It was closely associated with the Whitney family until its acquisition by Charles W. Morse in 1906. Even after being merged into Eastern Steamship Lines, it was maintained as a distinct service, the Metropolitan Line, until 1941.

The Metropolitan Steamship Company was established by Boston business interests soon after the end of the American Civil War in 1866 to operate steamships on the "outside route" between Boston and New York City around Cape Cod. The company was organized in February 1866 by Peter Butler, James B. Taft, Thomas Clyde, Brigadier General James Scollay Whitney, and Whitney's elder son, Henry Melville Whitney. One of the objectives of the investors was to place in remunerative service vessels they owned which were presently idle. James S. Whitney, who had been collector of customs for the Port of Boston in 1860–61, was elected president; Henry M. Whitney was named agent at Boston. Other members of the family eventually became financially interested in the company, including Whitney's younger son, William Collins Whitney, and his sons-in-law, Henry F. Dimock and Charles T. Barney.

Service was inaugurated in 1866 by Captain George L. Norton with the steamer Ashland, a wooden propeller of 843 gross tons, built in 1853 at Philadelphia and owned by Thomas Clyde. The Ashland was soon followed into service by the Jersey Blue, City of Bath, Mary Sanford, Salvor, Relief, Miami, Monticello and Fairbanks. Oldest of these was the Jersey Blue, a 368-ton, 133-foot wooden propeller built in 1850 at Newark, New Jersey. All were propellers except the Miami, a sidewheeler built in 1861–62 by the Philadelphia Navy Yard as the gunboat USS Miami and sold for mercantile use in 1865. The line's New York offices were at first located at the foot of Catherine Street, East River, but soon moved to Pier 10, North River, where they remained for nearly half a century.

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