The Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company was the last in a long series of attempts to provide the residents of Conanicut Island (Jamestown) with access to Newport and the mainland. The earliest settlers of the island used their own boats to cross the West Passage to South and North Kingstown and the East Passage to Newport. As the community grew and the rate of passages across the bay increased, however, the need for a more reliable and more regular of transportation became evident.
Local communities, including Jamestown, recognized this need and began licensing individuals to provide regular ferry services between Conanicut and Aquideck Islands (Newport) and the mainland by the late seventeenth century. By 1700 the licensing authority had been assumed by the colonial legislature and the first colonial license to operate a ferry out of Jamestown was issued in May of that year. Prior to the establishment of the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company, ferry licenses were granted for transporting passengers in only one direction. As a result, there were at times as many as six ferry boats plying the water between Jamestown and Newport and Jamestown and the mainland. (See Anna Augusta Chapin and Charles V. Chapin, A History of the Rhode Island Ferries, 1640-1923, Providence: The Oxford Press, 1925 for details of the licensing system).
By 1871, however, only one ferry provided service between Jamestown and Newport, that owned by William H. Knowles. When Knowles raised his rates to what townspeople considered an exorbitant level, the town petitioned the General Assembly for authority to establish ferry service between Jamestown and Newport. The General Assembly in April, 1872, passed an act authorizing Jamestown to establish ferry service between Jamestown and Newport and Jamestown and South Kingstown. The town organized the Jamestown and Newport Steam Ferry Association in May of 1872, but it was never incorporated. A year later the Jamestown and Newport Steam Ferry Company was granted a charter to provide ferry service between Jamestown and Newport. In 1888, the charter was amended to permit service between Jamestown and South Kingstown. The town was from the beginning the majority stockholder of the company, but until 1925 a minority of its stock was publicly held. Jamestown bought up the last of the remaining shares in 1925. The company began service between Jamestown and Newport on May 12, 1873 with the steam ferry Jamestown.
From its inception, and throughout its existence, the Jamestown and Newport ferry Company was a municipally owned and operated corporation. That, along with erratic management, worn out equipment, and lack of state assistance, was one of its many problems. Jamestown was a small town with a relatively small tax base and consequently found it difficult to bear the burden of the Ferry Company. Despite the fact that it provided a vital link in the state’s transportation system, the company received no aid from Rhode Island, either in the form of loans or a subsidy. Its rates were in addition regulated by the State Public Utilities Commission, which urged the company to keep them low to allow full public access. Nor did Newport or North or South Kingstown provide any financial assistance to the company, though the citizens of the three communities depended heavily upon the ferries for transportation back and forth across the bay.
As a result of these and other factors, the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company was never more than a marginally profitable operation and found itself in debt to both banks and the town of Jamestown. It tried to economize in a number of ways, including the purchase of used ferries. This proved to be false economy, however, as these boats, never less than twenty-five years old when purchased, were very expensive to operate and were frequently out of service for repairs. Such misguided attempts to economize only increased the company’s financial burden.
Early in the twentieth century the company’s burden was further increased by the opening of a competitive line providing ferry service on both sides of the bay. Stillman Saunders of North Kingstown received a charter in March, 1907 for the Narraganset Transportation Company to provide ferry services between Jamestown and Newport and Jamestown and North Kingstown (Saunderstown). He built four ferries on the beach at Saunderstown and was able to provide service equal to, if not better than, that of the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company. The competition between the two lines continued for five years until the death of Stillman Saunders in 1911. His heirs, with no apparent interest in operating a ferry company, sold the assets of the Narragansett Transportation Company to the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company.
The “Roaring Twenties” were not a “roaring” success for the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company. It participated only marginally in the booming economy of the 1920’s. Its financial position was, however, strong enough for it to order and build its last new boat, the Governor Carr, in 1926 at a cost of one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars. Four years later it purchased the ferry Hammonton for sixty-five thousand dollars. These two boats remained in service until 1958 when they were scrapped by the then state owned ferry service. The Ferry Company thus met the depression era with two additional boats and hopes for a profitable 1930’s.
Those hopes for a profitable decade were of course not realized. The Ferry Company managed to survive the Great Depression, however, only to be nearly destroyed by the great hurricane of September 21, 1938. Two of its three boats were caught at sea and blown ashore, one of the two destroyed. Its docking facilities on both sides of the bay were destroyed or badly damaged. The federal government supplied Works Progress Administration funds to refloat one of the vessels and to rebuild docking facilities, while the Navy loaned the company a ferry until its own boat could be refloated and repaired. The state, however, was devastated by the hurricane and was unable to provide assistance of any kind.
The Ferry Company’s financial health continued to decline throughout the 1940’s. Its unprofitable West Passage run, which had been suspended periodically during the winter in the 1930’s, was finally dropped altogether when the Jamestown Bridge connecting Jamestown to the mainland at North Kingstown opened in July of 1940. Increased military activity in Narragansett Bay provided the company with Navy and War Department contracts to ferry men and material to bases in the bay and to manufacture machine parts in its small machine shop. Whatever profit the company may have made from these contracts was more than offset, however, by a drastic reduction in civilian passengers due to war-imposed rationing of gasoline and rubber. In addition, the company’s aging ferries, the Governor Carr and the Hammonton, needed even more frequent and costly repairs.
An attempt to upgrade service with the purchase of an additional ferry finally rendered the Ferry Company insolvent in 1951. In 1950, the company purchased for one hundred twenty-five dollars the Gotham, a 24 year old diesel-electric ferry which it renamed the Jamestown. Over the next year, the company spent in excess of one hundred thousand dollars on repairs to the Jamestown, a boat actually in operation for only seventy-six days. By early 1951, the company was insolvent and its Board of Directors went before the annual Jamestown town meeting with a plan to lease the ferry operation to the State of Rhode Island. The Jamestown voters approved and, in June of 1951, the state created Jamestown Ferry Authority which began operating the ferry system on a dollar a year lease arrangement with the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company.
The lease arrangement relieved the Ferry Company and the town of the burden of operating the ferries, but it did nothing to lessen the company’s debts to its creditors, including the town of Jamestown. Finally, in 1956, the state purchased the ferry system from the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company for two hundred seventy-thousand dollars, payable in ten annual installments of twenty-seven thousand dollars which the company promptly turned over to the town of Jamestown.
In 1958 the ferry system was turned over to the Public Works Department and operated by the newly created Jamestown Ferry Division of that department. Among the first acts of the Jamestown Ferry Division was to sell its small old ferries for scrap and purchase two larger ferries from a ferry company in Virginia. Renamed the Jamestown and the Newport, these two boats were used on the run between Jamestown and Newport until the Newport Bridge opened in 1969. The boats made their last trips on June 28, 1969, thus ending ninety-six years of transporting passengers and vehicles across the bay.
Kingston, Rhode Island
January 1985
Any qualified person doing scholarly research is permitted to use material housed in the Special Collections Unit.
Terms governing use and reproduction: Photocopying and scanning of materials is a fee based service available in the repository and is allowed at the discretion of the Archivist when in compliance to the Unit's policy on copyright and publication.
Jamestown and Newport Ferries, Mss. Gr. 48, University of Rhode Island, University Archives and Special Collections.
The records of the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company were acquired by the University of Rhode Island Library in stages in late 1983 and early 1984 from the Jamestown Historical Society. The records were removed to the Library from an unheated barn in Jamestown and from the attic of the Jamestown Historical Society where they had been stored for fifteen years.
The Jamestown and Newport Ferries provided service between Jamestown and Newport from 1873 to 1969 and between Jamestown and Newport from 1873 to 1869 and between Jamestown and North Kingstown (Saunderstown) from 1888 to 1940. Construction of bridges in 1940 and 1969 connecting Jamestown to the mainland and Newport respectively rendered ferry service obsolete. The Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company was a municipally owned corporation, owned by the island community of Jamestown until 1951 when its operation was leased to the State of Rhode Island. In 1956, the state purchased the assets of the company for two hundred seventy thousand dollars and operated it as a division of the Department of Public Works until 1969.
The bulk of the records are from the period of municipal ownership and are primarily financial in nature. They include ledgers, payroll records, check stubs, bank statements, vouchers, service contracts, and pursers’ reports. Non-financial records include captains’ logs and daily reports, correspondence, minutes of meetings, blueprints of ferries, and navigational charts. Unfortunately, little documentation exists for the period prior to 1900 or for the period of state ownership. Apparently, until the early 1920’s, records were routinely destroyed after audit or simply when storage space became a problem. Some records were also taken to the Jamestown dump when the ferry operation was sold to the state. Records from the period of state ownership are also scarce. When the Ferry Division ceased operations in 1969, the records were supposed to have been transferred to the custody of the Jamestown Historical Society. Obviously, very few records from the period of state ownership were transferred, however, and were either discarded or still lie moldering in some as yet undiscovered corner of a basement or attic. Consequently, there are large gapes in the collection.
Many of the existing records are in poor condition due to water and vermin damage incurred while the records were stored in an unheated barn and attic. In addition, many of the earlier records are covered with coal dust, apparently from being stored at some point in company coal bins. As a result of this loss and damage, the documentation is less than complete. The existing records, however, do provide a detailed picture of the operation of a municipally owned corporation and give an idea of changes in wages and working conditions in a specific segment of the maritime industry in the first half of the twentieth century.
After sorting, the records were divided into fourteen series as follows: Ships’ Logs, Captains’ reports, Pursers’ Reports, Office Reports, Ledgers, Payroll Records, Bank Records, Subject Series, Ticket/Turnstile Series, Map and Chart Series, Building and Wharf Plans, Ship Blueprint Series, Paid Vouchers and Memorabilia.
The records are arranged into the following series:
These materials were originally collected and stored by the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Companies. The Jamestown Historical Society donated the research materials to Special Collections in 1985.
The Ships’ Logs Series consists of the daily logs maintained by the captains for each of the ferries owned and operated by the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company. Also included in the series is a small number of engine room and radio logs maintained by the chief engineer and the radio officer respectively. Ferries represented in the logs include the Beavertail, the Conanicut, the Governor Carr, the Hammonton, the second and fourth Jamestown, the second Newport, the Wildwood, the Norfolk, and the Richmond. The latter two ferries were renamed the Newport and the Jamestown when purchased by the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company in 1958. The logs of the Norfolk and the Richmond came north with the vessels from Virginia and are included in this series to provide continuous history of the Richmond/Jamestown and the Norfolk/Newport.
In addition to noting such routine information as the volume of passenger traffic and daily weather conditions, the captains also noted in the logs any unusual events, incidents, or sightings. Particularly interesting in this regard are the logs of the ferries Hammonton and Governor Carr for September 21, 1938, the date of the Hurricane of 1938 which devastated the southern New England coast. The Governor Carr’s propeller fouled while its crew was trying to move it from Jamestown to a safer harbor in Newport and it was blown ashore on Jamestown. It remained there for two and a half months until it was refloated in early December. All of this of this information was routinely recorded in the Governor Carr’s log along with rapidly changing weather conditions. The Hammonton rode out the storm at its slip and the log records the rapidly rising tide which nearly drove the ferry up on the dock. Also included in the logs are accounts of rescues of capsized small boat sailors, aid rendered to disabled vessels, and collisions and near misses. The logs provide a valuable source of information for weather conditions and unusual events in and around Narragansett Bay over a seventy year time span.
The logs are arranged alphabetically by the name of the vessel and chronologically by date for each vessel.
This series contains the daily and monthly reports which the ferry captains had to maintain and submit to the company office. The series has been divided into two sub-series, Daily Reports and Monthly Reports.
The Daily Reports include the number of passengers and vehicles carried on each trip which the ferries made. Beginning in the early 1940’s, they also contain general information on the weather conditions each day. They complement in many respects the ships’ logs. By examining these reports one can gain information on traffic volume, busiest and least busy trips, and weather conditions over an extended period of time. The reports are divided into West Ferry and East Ferry reports until 1940, when West Ferry service ceased, and are arranged chronologically by date within folders.
The second sub-series, Monthly Reports, represent a compilation of the daily reports. Included are daily and monthly totals for trips, vehicles, and passengers for each vessel, as well as a brief description of the weather conditions for each day of the month. The monthly reports were submitted on a form especially designed for the purpose. They are arranged chronologically by month within folders.
The Pursers’ Reports Series consists of daily reports compiled by the ships’ pursers and submitted to the company office on a standard form. The reports contain information on the number and types of tickets sold, passes issued and used, and cash receipts. The Ferry Company sold a number of different kinds of commuter tickets (e.g. twelve and twenty trip packages) and the pursers’ reports reveal how well or how poorly each of them sold.
The pursers’ reports are divided into East and West Ferry reports up to 1940, when the West Ferry was replaced by the Jamestown Bridge, and are arranged chronologically by date within folders. Beginning in November, 1942, the company no longer filed the pursers’ reports separately, but filed them with a group of daily reports in an office reports file. From November of 1942 forward, the pursers’ reports can be found in the Office Reports Series, Series IV.
This series contains a variety of daily reports which the company required to be submitted to its business office. It includes turnstile reports, summary of turnstile and pursers’ reports, freight reports, daily ticket reports, daily office reports, and beginning in late 1942, pursers’ reports. Much of the information contained in the various reports is duplicative. For example, pursers’ reports, turnstile reports, summary of turnstile and pursers’ reports, and daily office reports present virtually the same information in different formats.
The daily ticket reports represent a special kind of ticket sold between 1940 and 1945 in conjunction with the Jamestown Bridge Authority. Commuters were able to purchase one ticket which would allow them passage over both the newly opened Jamestown Bridge and the Jamestown and Newport ferries at a reduced rate. The receipts from the sale of these tickets were divided evenly between the Ferry Company and the Bridge Authority. Daily ticket reports were submitted to the Ferry Company, and presumably to the Bridge Authority, indicating the volume of ticket sales and receipts. Prior to November of 1942, these reports were filed separately and are contained in the Ticket/Turnstile Series, Series IX. Turnstile reports were similarly filed in the Ticket/Turnstile Series prior to June, 1943.
The office reports are arranged chronologically by date within folders.
The Ledger series consists of a number of bound and unbound ledgers used to record the financial transactions of the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company over a period of seventy-two years. Included are accounts payable and receivable ledgers, disbursement and receipt ledgers, payroll ledgers, stock ledgers, and general ledgers.
Payroll records were kept as part of the Disbursement/Receipt Ledgers from 1897 to 1919, and from 1919 to 1928 were maintained in separate payroll ledgers. After 1928 different payroll accounting procedures were instituted and an individual payroll card was created for each employee for each year. These can be found in the Payroll Record Series, Series VI.
Other items of interest in this series include the company’s stock ledger. The town of Jamestown was majority owner of the company since its inception, but did not succeed in buying up all outstanding shares and becoming sole owner of the company until 1925. The stock ledger reveals the names of prominent citizens of late nineteenth century Jamestown who invested in the company in hopes of ensuring reliable transportation across the Bay to Newport and the mainland.
The Disbursement/Receipt Ledgers are also valuable in that they provide a month by month accounting of receipts and expenditures. Both the source of receipts and the name of the individual or company to whom disbursements were made were included in the monthly accounting. A perusal of these ledgers allows one to get a general idea of the company’s financial health, as well as to determine the identities of individuals and businesses whose services the Ferry Company most frequently used.
The series is arranged alphabetically by name or type of ledger.
In this series are found records of the Ferry Company’s payroll. The series is divided into two sub-series: Annual Pay Cards, 1928-58 and Timesheets/Pay Vouchers, 1920-51.
Beginning in 1928, the payroll was kept on individual pay cards for each employee for each year. On the pay card is recorded the individual employee’s weekly pay for each week of the year. Used in conjunction with the Disbursement/Receipt Ledgers and the Payroll Ledgers from previous series, in which weekly payrolls were recorded from 1897 to 1928, the payroll cards provide valuable information on annual incomes and changing wage scales in a particular segment of the maritime industry over a sixty year period.
They also allow one to determine the impact, if any, on wages of unionization of company employees in 1936. One can also determine from examining payroll records the uncertain and seasonal nature of the work involved. Number of employees and hours worked varied significantly from season to season.
The pay cards are arranged chronologically by year and alphabetically by name of employee within folders.
Sub-series II, Timesheets/Vouchers, consist of weekly timesheets and weekly or monthly payroll vouchers. The vouchers list each employee by name, his or her wages, and the total amount of the payroll for the week or month in question. Used with other series in the collection, particularly the Ledger Series, this series gives an accounting of the weekly payroll burden of the company.
The series is arranged chronologically by date.
The Bank Records Series consists of check stubs and bank statements and is divided into two sub-series. Sub series I, Check Stubs, consists of the record stubs of checks written by the company treasurer or general manger to pay the bills and legal obligations incurred by the company. On each stub is recorded the number of the beck, the date, the amount, the person to whom it was written, the balance remaining, and the purpose for which the money was paid. Although there are a number of gaps in the record, the check stubs provide a detailed record of the financial transactions of the Ferry Company. They serve as a complement to the ledgers. The stubs are arranged chronologically by date.
Sub-series II, Bank Statements, consist of the monthly statements of transactions on its checking accounts sent by the banks to the Ferry Company. The bank statements to some extent fill in the gaps left by the missing check stubs. They also indicate the daily balance in the company’s checking accounts.
The statements are arranged chronologically by date.
This series is at one the most comprehensive and the most diverse of the fourteen. It contains both the earliest and the most recent records in the collection and was the series of records most lacking any original order. It is an artificial series in the sense that it contains a variety of records which did not appear to fit logically in any other series. Included in the series are annual reports, audit reports, the articles of incorporation for the company, board of directors’ minutes, stock certificates, correspondence with individuals and corporations with whom the Ferry Company did business, contracts, records relating to the ferries, and miscellaneous reports.
Of particular interest in this series are the Board of Directors’ minutes from 1886 to 1956. They contain a summary of the discussions and the policy decisions made by the Board with respect to the company’s operation and they reveal the constant struggle to keep the company financially afloat. Also of interest in this series is the material relating to the Conanicut Inland Boatmen’s Union and the National Association of Masters, Mates, and Pilots. These were the two unions which, beginning in 1936, represented the employees in bargaining with the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company. The materials in these folders include contracts, lists of employees, and correspondence and provide insight into the struggle the company had in coming to grips with the idea of dealing with unionized employees after over sixty years of contracting with them on an individual basis. The annual audit reports of company finances are also of interests when used in conjunction with other financial records.
The bulk of the series consists of correspondence, contracts, and orders for equipment and supplies with individuals and corporations with whom the Ferry Company did business. Particularly interesting in this regard are contracts and related correspondence pertaining to agreements with the Navy and War Departments to provide ferry service to military personnel and equipment traveling to and from bases located in Newport and Narragansett Bay. Such military business kept the company in operation during World War II when the town of Jamestown which owned the Ferry Company and thus had a vested interest in its operation.
The series is arranged alphabetically by name or subject and chronologically by date within folders.
The Ticket/Turnstile Series contains materials relating to ticket sale sand turnstile counts for the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company. Included in the series are daily ticket reports for Jamestown Bridge and ferry tickets from 1940 through October, 1942. These are reports of sales of a combined Jamestown Bridge and the Jamestown and Newport Ferries at a reduced rate. Receipts from the sales of these tickets were divided equally between the Bridge Authority and the Ferry Company. Beginning in November, 1942, these reports were combined with several other daily reports and can be found in the series to June, 1943 and in the Office Reports Series after that date.
Also of interest in this series are the monthly reports of tickets issued and ticket issue books. Both were designed to provide the Ferry Company with a means of controlling its ticket inventory. Both provide similar information in a slightly different format and include the date of the month, the names of the vendors, to whom the tickets were issued, and the number and types of tickets distributed to that person. The monthly reports appear to have been phased out when the state took over operation of the system in 1951, while the issue books contained in use until at least 1957.
The series is arranged alphabetically by type of record and chronologically by date within folders.
In this series can be found maps and navigation charts of Narragansett Bay and adjacent waters. The charts may have been used by the ferry captains to navigate the Bay, but it is more likely, given the shortness of their route and the number of trips they made daily, that the captains simply kept the charts as a source of reference. The charts are of historical interest because they indicate areas of the Bay closed to civilian shipping due to use as naval anchorages or gunnery ranges. A large number of maps of Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, which probably came with the purchase of the Jamestown and the Newport from a Virginia ferry company in 1958, were removed from the collection and incorporated into the University of Rhode Island’s Library’s map collection.
Each of the maps and charts in this series has been an arbitrary number and arranges numerically by that number in map cases.
This series contains blueprints and architectural drawings of buildings wharves, equipment, and ferry slips owned by the Jamestown and Newport Ferry Company at its facilities at Newport, East and West Jamestown Landings, and at Saunderstown Landing. Due to storm damage, accidents, and ordinary wear, docking facilities had to be regularly repaired and/or rebuilt. Among the plans for these structures are blueprints for ferry slips, ferry bridges, frameworks and supports for bridges, and assorted other structures used to assist in docking ferries and off-loading passengers and vehicles.
In addition, the Ferry Company constructed a number of buildings along its wharves and rented them to local businesses as a source of additional income. Blueprints for some of these buildings are included in the series.
As with the Maps and Charts Series, each of the blueprints and drawings has been assigned an arbitrary number and arranged numerically by that number in map cases.
This series contains blueprints and marine architectural drawings of several of the ferries used by the Jamestown and Newport Company during its years of operation. The blueprints and drawings have been divided into two sub-series. Sub-series I includes scattered blueprints and drawings for three ferries owned and used by the company from the early 1920’s to the late 1950’s: the second Jamestown, the Governor Carr, and the Hammonton. Sub-series II contains over one hundred blueprints and drawings relating to the last two ferries used to transport passengers and vehicles across the Bay, the Jamestown and the Newport, acquired in 1958. Since the two ships were identical, the one set of plans was used for both.
Although sub-series I contains only a few scattered drawings, it is possible to compare them with the plans from the Jamestown and the Newport to see how little ferry design changed over the years. Unfortunately, there is not a complete set of plans for any ferry owned by this company.
In each sub-series, the drawings and blueprints have been assigned an arbitrary number and arranged numerically by that number in map cases.
This series contains blueprints and marine architectural drawings of several of the ferries used by the Jamestown and Newport Company during its years of operation. The blueprints and drawings have been divided into two sub-series. Sub-series I includes scattered blueprints and drawings for three ferries owned and used by the company from the early 1920’s to the late 1950’s: the second Jamestown, the Governor Carr, and the Hammonton. Sub-series II contains over one hundred blueprints and drawings relating to the last two ferries used to transport passengers and vehicles across the Bay, the Jamestown and the Newport, acquired in 1958. Since the two ships were identical, the one set of plans was used for both.
Although sub-series I contains only a few scattered drawings, it is possible to compare them with the plans from the Jamestown and the Newport to see how little ferry design changed over the years. Unfortunately, there is not a complete set of plans for any ferry owned by this company.
In each sub-series, the drawings and blueprints have been assigned an arbitrary number and arranged numerically by that number in map cases.