Steamship historical library sails into a welcome port

Joe Kernan
Posted 8/13/14

Anyone who dropped by the old New England Institute of Technology (NEIT) Library has found Matthew Schulte, the executive director of the Steamship Historical Society of America (SSHSA), in a most …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

E-mail
Password
Log in

Steamship historical library sails into a welcome port

Posted

Anyone who dropped by the old New England Institute of Technology (NEIT) Library has found Matthew Schulte, the executive director of the Steamship Historical Society of America (SSHSA), in a most pleasant quandary about where to put everything. Since the non-profit started to consolidate its considerable plentitude of all things steamship into the former school library building located at 2500 Post Road, Schulte has been slowly working his way through boxes, crates and mailing tubes, to inventory and sort the contents of a number of attics, mostly things that members of the Society have been amassing since they started the historical organization in the 1930s.

“We have been spending some pretty late hours going through the stuff that has been arriving here,” said Schulte.

In addition to the 18 truckloads of crates and boxes and the 28 pallets, each holding 30 boxes of books, Schulte and his assistants have to find shelf space for.

“We have some rare books, but most of our books were kept at the University of Baltimore until 2006, then in warehouses that were separate from our offices over several states,” said Schulte. “This is the first time we have a place to have the collections and our offices all in the same place.”

The plan to consolidate into one location has been the dream of the members for years. The dream acquired some urgency in 2006, when the library they used for 30 years closed. The maritime art collections of prints and models were in storage in New York. Executive offices were in East Providence and the photographs, ephemera and artifacts were scattered among the various addresses, members and collectors around the country and the world.

Schulte said they planned to buy and move into the NEIT location several years ago but the recession made that impossible.

“We wanted the place but we just didn’t have the money to buy the building,” said Schulte.

In the meantime, NEIT has moved into its new campus in East Greenwich and the Post Road building was still looking for a tenant when the mayor’s office explained the SSHSA’s situation to the school. With the encouragement of Mayor Scott Avedisian, NEIT president Richard Gouse stepped in to offer a six-year lease on the building to the Society, with the right of first refusal if the building goes on sale in the future.

“I saw it as a great fit for the area,” said Avedisian. “It was a really important part of promoting our 39 miles of coastline and our maritime history.”

Avedisian said the fact NEIT situated its new shipbuilding program next door was also a good sign and it was in the city’s best interest to have such a valuable resource as part of its revival of that part of Warwick.

“It’s important to have a little bit of everything in the area,” he said. “It all works toward creating the energy and enthusiasm we need for the area.”

And it came none too soon. The society’s lease on storage space in Cranston expired and the new rent was too high. The arrangement with NEIT gives the SSHSA breathing room to achieve what Schulte set out to do when he took over as director seven years ago.

“I had initially planned to expand the membership and find ways to help the Society live well into the future,” said Schulte. “Then the economy went bad and that became a much more difficult goal.”

What the new location allows, said Schulte, is to put real estate concerns on the back burner while they find ways to make the Society more attractive to new members and to the community, and to pursue the sort of partnerships with other institutions and schools that will assure a future for the Society.

The Society has survived largely by improvised maneuvering since its founding in 1935, moving people and collections around as they sought a more permanent home to contain its historical treasures. Impressively, the SSHSA has managed to survive beyond the age of steam, which was its stated mission in the first place, to encompass the wider world of powered ships.

“For many years, our magazine was called Steamboat Bill,” said Schulte. “But the society and the magazine have grown beyond the narrower compass of steam to embrace all types of ships. That’s why we now call the magazine PowerShips, to reflect the advances in technology since steam.”

Schulte said the historical group plans to create exhibits for the public and open its archives to researchers. It has also formed alliances with other maritime groups, such as the Herreshoff Museum in Bristol and Mystic Seaport and to mount movable shows that will visit other cities and towns where marine history is appreciated.

The SSHSA is a non-profit organization with 2,500 members in 15 countries “dedicated to recording, preserving and disseminating the history of engine-powered vessels for education, information, and research purposes.”

In addition to books and ephemera, the SSHSA maintains one of the largest collections of engine-powered ship material, with several hundred thousand images, ship artifacts and memorabilia accrued since its founding, which brings us back to the nearly blissful Schulte as he unwraps rare artifacts and books, like the first French book about American steamboats published in 1824, “Memoire sur les bateaux a vapeur des Etats Unis,” which was a formal account of the advances in steam-powered boats in America since Robert Fulton’s “North River Steamboat” in 1807.

Often erroneously called “The Clermont,” which was actually the name of Robert Livingston’s estate on the Hudson River. Livingston was Fulton’s patron and partner in the North River Steamboat adventure, which actually plied the river between New York and Albany until 1814, hardly “Fulton’s Folly” even by modern standards. But that’s the sort of story that the SSHSA hopes to continue to tell.

“We are already planning a program called ‘From Sail to Steam,’ for high school kids,” said Schulte. “Education is going to be a large part of our future.”

In what can only be described as a felicitous coincidence, New England Institute of Technology’s Shipbuilding/Marine and Advanced Manufacturing Institute is right next door to the new home of the Steamship Historical Society of America.

The library anticipates opening in October and Schulte hastens to thank all of the individuals and foundations that support the SSHSA such as The Champlin Foundations, the Rhode Island Foundation and the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities.

Knowing that steam technology was waning, a group of historians and steamship aficionados gathered in a garage in West Barrington in the mid-1930s and also met with kindred spirits in New York City. Now, the SSHSA finally has a home for all its collections.

Last Friday, Matt Schulte stood amid the decades of maritime clutter with every intention of having everything in its place by October. He could brag if they can accomplish that gargantuan task within a year. And, it still remains to be seen if the 8,000 or so square feet of the library can actually contain it all, once it is out of the boxes.

“Look at this box,” he said Friday. “This is from a collection of a man who collected stuff from every trip he took between 1890 and 1970. He saved every piece of ephemera he came across in his travels. He always went first class and he always put a little star beside the names of the ‘important’ people he met … He collected lamps, bars of soaps, ashtrays all leading up to this collection.”

Of course, not all of the artifacts are as mundane as that. Records of sea trials, cargos, passenger lists, plans, blueprints and manifests for countless commercial and passenger ships are also in there … somewhere.

Schulte said that the organization is grateful to the city and New England Tech president Richard Gouse for providing them with a more permanent “attic” for their stuff. He said that the society has a six-year lease that includes an option to buy if it is ever for sale.

Chances are, the more people know of this unique collection, the more they will want to visit the place … Or join the society and get the latest news about powerboats of the past.

To learn more about the Steamship Historical Society of America, visit www.sshsa.org. To subscribe to their magazine, PowerShips, visit www.powerships.com.

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here