1908 - A Cruise on the Steamboat Emma Giles In the 1900's, many families vacationed by renting summer cottages on "the Shore." "The Shore" was usually on the Chesapeake Bay. There were cottages available to rent in many communities south of Annapolis on the western shore. At these cottages, guests could swim, row boats, fish, and simply enjoy the coolness of a country summer. One of these communities was called Shadyside. Photo courtesy of Maryland Historical Society To get to your vacation spot, your family and many others would have boarded the Emma Giles, a steamboat built in 1887 and named after a little girl. About 1,500 passengers could ride on Emma Giles at one time, although they could not all have stayed overnight on the boat. You would have boarded the boat in the afternoon. The boat left Baltimore at around 4:30 PM and traveled down the Patapsco River to Chesapeake Bay. Then it turned south, toward your vacation destination. You would have ridden on the boat all night, tucked safely in a berth, or a small bed, in your family's stateroom. Your family would have paid about $5 per person for overnight passage to Shadyside. To get the boat safely to its destination, many men were needed. There was the captain, his first mate, and his second mate. These men were responsible for giving the correct orders to the men who worked the controls for moving and steering the boat. The captain's orders were carried out by the workleader and his two helpers who were called deckhands. These men handled the lines when the boat was docking and helped steer the boat when she was underway. The captain also relied on the chief engineer. The engineer usually had about 3 helpers. These men kept the engines running. Then there were coal shovelers. There were usually three men whose job was to supply the boat with a constant stream of coal, so that her boiler could keep producing steam. There were also workers that took care of passengers. There was a steward and his two helpers, whose job was to make sure that passengers were comfortable in their staterooms. A cook and his two helpers provided delicious meals and served them to passengers and crew. In 1908, only men worked on jobs aboard steamships. Your family would have eaten dinner in the steamboat's beautiful dining room. To get to the dining room, you would have passed a portrait of a little girl wearing a gold cross. She was Emma Giles. Perhaps your father, or if you were very lucky, the captain, would have told you the story of how the boat came to be named after her. She was the only daughter of the man who lent the steamboat company the money to build the boat. He said that the boat had to be named after his daughter and that she had to christen the boat. Emma Giles officially named the boat after herself, by breaking a bottle of champagne on her bow, in a ceremony in Baltimore in February, 1887. If you had been a child in a family lucky enough to be able to afford a week at the Shore in the summer of 1908, you might have been a passenger on Emma Giles when she offloaded some of the very first automobiles. You might have watched the autos being towed off the steamboat from the deck. Because of cars, steamboat travel would eventually end on Chesapeake Bay. But in 1908, it would have seemed that the steamboat would be around for a long time to come.

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