When Moses Rogers was making his pioneering steam-powered voyage across the Atlantic, it must have been surprising, not to say horrifying, to be fired on off the coast of Ireland. The incident was a direct consequence of his ship’s cutting-edge technology, which some considered so dangerous that they labeled such vessels “steam coffins.“

Moses was born in New London in 1779. He worked for Stonington merchants William Williams and Coddington Billings, sailing a coastal trade route that sometimes extended to Newfoundland and Cuba. On one return trip, he failed to report some cocoa to custom officials. When the mistake was discovered, Williams & Billings let him go. The case of The United States vs. Three Bags of Cocoa sounds funny, but it could have been a calamity for Moses. Instead, it opened the way for his love affair with steam and an astonishing new career.

Moses, now a self-employed trader, was in New York in 1807 when he witnessed the first run of the Clermont, a steamship designed by Robert Fulton and mockingly called Fulton’s Folly. Moses saw the potential of this game-changing technology that enabled schedules to be met whether or not the wind was blowing. For a decade, he commanded steamships on New York waterways and was master of the Phoenix, the first American steamship to ply ocean waters between New York and Delaware.

Moses’s big opportunity came when some Georgia businessmen, looking for a better way to ship cotton to Europe, hired him to secure a ship and become the captain. Moses found a sailing packet, had her fitted with an engine, dubbed her the SS Savannah, and steamed into Savannah, Georgia in 1819. The hybrid vessel, equipped with both sail and steam, created great excitement. President James Monroe, who was in South Carolina at the time, came to view this wonder and take a day cruise aboard her.

But despite the interest stirred up, no one was willing to ship merchandise or risk their lives as passengers on the Savannah, so Moses finally left the city in May 1819, accompanied only by his crew. It was one thing to traverse rivers, lakes, and bays, but the ocean was another matter altogether; many experienced mariners thought it couldn’t be done. Still, Moses was determined to demonstrate that trans-Atlantic travel by steam was commercially viable; he thought a successful proof of concept would attract European buyers.

The experimental journey, alternately powered by steam and sail, was relatively uneventful until the Savannah’s plumes of smoke were spotted off Ireland. The cutter HMS Kite tried to overtake her to render aid to a ship that seemed to be on fire. When the Kite couldn’t catch her, the crew fired warning shots, and Moses cut the Savannah’s engine. Once the misunderstanding was straightened out, Moses was on his way again. Liverpool, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia lay ahead.

In every port, the Savannah drew throngs of wildly cheering spectators. Government dignitaries, including the Swedish king and the Russian tzar, were intrigued, but there weren’t any acceptable offers to purchase her. After five history-making, but disappointing months, Moses headed for home.

When he arrived back in Savannah, he found a city that had been devastated by fire and a nation in the midst of a recession. No one wanted to buy a steamship. People were still afraid of the technology, and, from a commercial perspective, space occupied by the engine and coal limited the payload the ship could carry. Finally a sea captain from Groton, Nathan Holdridge, bought her, removed the engine, and refitted her as a sailing packet for coastal trading.

It was nearly 30 years before another American steamship would cross the Atlantic.

In a move that must have been a letdown after his epic adventure, Moses found new employment as captain of a steamboat on the Great Pee Dee River in South Carolina. The introduction of swift, reliable transportation created an economic boom for the plantations along the river, but soon Moses contracted typhoid. He died in 1821.

That same year, the Savannah ran aground off Long Island, not to be seen again until 2022 when Hurricane Ian washed a large piece of weathered wood onto Fire Island. Analysis shows that it’s probably the remains of the Savannah.

When I told a friend that I thought this was a sad ending for such an historically important ship, he replied that ships were really just trucks of the sea and that I probably wouldn’t romanticize the wreckage of an 18-wheeler. Trucks of the sea, indeed! Tell that to Moses Rogers.

“Steam Coffin: Captain Moses Rogers and the Steamship Savannah Break the Barrier” by John Laurence Busch was a valuable source of information for this column.