THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610040694
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: 70 lines
On Oct. 11, 1811, the Juliana, the first steam-propelled American ferryboat, made her initial run between Hoboken, N.J., and New York City. Twenty-one years later, the Gosport, a ``neat and handsome vessel'' built in Portsmouth and outfitted with her engines in Philadelphia, became the first steam ferry to ply between Norfolk and Portsmouth. The run from wharf to wharf took five minutes, then considered a fast trip.
Even so, before the advent of the Gosport, Norfolk already had a ferry history dating from 1636, when Capt. Adam Thoroughgood established the first ferry between what is now Norfolk and Portsmouth, using a hand-rowed skiff. Later, this was replaced by rowboats and barges, the latter being propelled and steered by long poles.
These primitive means of ferriage continued until 1821, when ``team boats'' operated by blind horses or mules were put into service, the animals walking in a circular pit on the decks of the boats to activate the paddle wheels. The Gosport's appearance in 1832 was followed by a succession of increasingly larger steam-propelled boats that were finally replaced by diesel powered vessels. These continued to operate until 1955, when the ferry system was seemingly outdated by the first Elizabeth River tunnel linking Norfolk and Portsmouth, which had opened three years earlier.
But the idea of a regular Norfolk-Portsmouth ferry run refused to die, and 28 years later ferry service linking the two cities was resumed by Tidewater Regional Transit, the agency that still continues a time-honored service with its roots in the early 17th century.
Any facility with a hoary history is bound to accumulate a rich folklore, and the 360-year-old Norfolk-Portsmouth ferry run is no exception. For instance, during the early days when hand-rowed boats were used, the man who leased the ferries made a point of hiring only one-legged men to operate them. Once when a persistent two-legged youth kept insisting on being given a job, the captain got rid of him by grabbing a saw and making a dive for the applicant's right leg. Needless to add, the youth fled to seek employment elsewhere.
Then there was the Confederate flag incident that took place when the Federal occupation forces operated the ferries between 1862 and 1865. Hoping to humiliate Confederate sympathizers in Norfolk and Portsmouth, some of the soldiers guarding the Portsmouth ferry terminal stretched the Stars and Barsacross the floor at the entrance to the ticket booth, so that Confederate sympathizers would have to trample it. During the ensuing fracas, a loyal Dixie lass snatched up the flag and escaped before she could be arrested.
There is also the tale dating from the 1850s concerning a prudish male passenger who complained to the ferry authorities concerning the obscene drawings and graffiti he found on the waiting-room walls. Taking a hint, the officials promised to have the room whitewashed every week. Meanwhile, they concluded their letter to the bellyacher with this injunction:
``Go into the waiting room and sit quietly down, not wasting your time reading the scribbling on the walls.''
Earlier, during the period when steam had just replaced the boats operated by blind horses and mules, an unsuspecting Norfolk drunk wound up wishing he hadn't been endowed with an overdose of curiosity. Mistaking a brass-bound exhaust pipe projecting from a wall of one of the ferryboats for a speaking tube, he carried on a one-way conversation until a gush of steam from the boiler room resulted in severe damage to his teeth. In reparation, I am happy to add, he was presented with a set of false choppers by the ferry management.
Best of all, however, I like this ferry yarn told to me many years ago by Marshall W. Butt, the Portsmouth historian. Butt recalled an old man showing him how he used the same ferry ticket over and over again. The codger would pretend to stuff it into the contrivance provided for that purpose, but the cardboard ticket was fastened to a rubber band up his sleeve.
When he released the ticket, it would automatically shoot back up his sleeve out of sight, too fast to be detected by the doddering old ferry employee who operated the wheel of the machine that shredded passenger's tickets to prevent their being used again. by CNB