page_title: PS Commonwealth (1854)
section_title: Loss
hierarchical_section_title: PS Commonwealth (1854) / Service history / Loss
caption_attribution_description: English: Stern view of the 1854 Long Island Sound steamboat, illustration by Stanton.
context_page_description: Commonwealth was a large sidewheel steamboat built in 1854–55 for passenger service on Long Island Sound. The most celebrated Sound steamer of her day, Commonwealth was especially noted for the elegance and comfort of her passenger accommodations, which included gas lighting, steam heating, and an "enchantingly beautiful" domed roof in her upper saloon. Her stability of motion led her captain to describe Commonwealth as the finest rough weather steamboat ever built in the United States.
  Commonwealth would spend her entire career on Long Island Sound routes, first from New York to Allyn's Point, Connecticut under the management of the Norwich and New London Steamboat Company, and later to Stonington and Groton with the New Jersey Steam Navigation and the Merchants' Steamship companies. During the American Civil War, she was part of the transport network that moved northern state Union regiments to the battlefront. Commonwealth's end came prematurely when she was destroyed by a dockyard fire at Groton in December 1865.
context_section_description: Following her acquisition by the Merchants Steamship Company in December 1863, Commonwealth appears to have continued working the New York to Groton route almost without incident for the next two years, the one exception being another minor scrape with a New York ferry on November 22, 1864.
  Commonwealth departed New York on her usual run on December 28, 1865. Shortly after arriving at Groton, at about 1:30am on the morning of the 29th, a fire broke out at the Groton depot which could not be contained. An attempt to tow Commonwealth to safety was made by a local ferry, but an unusually low tide, combined with the weight of Commonwealth's freight which was still aboard, had grounded the vessel on a sandbar, and Commonwealth caught fire at the bows and was burned to the water's edge. Fortunately, most of Commonwealth's passengers had already disembarked and departed by train, but a young medical student named J. Dickson Ripley, a nephew of Connecticut Governor William A. Buckingham, could not be aroused despite repeated poundings on his cabin door and was presumed to have suffocated from smoke inhalation in his sleep.
  In addition to the loss of Commonwealth, the entire depot at Groton was destroyed, so thoroughly that the Railroad was forced to move its terminus back to its former location of Stonington for a time. Total damage from the fire was estimated at $1,500,000. Because of Commonwealth's well maintained firefighting facilities, her proprietors had only insured the vessel for $80,000, with replacement value estimated at $600,000.
  Salvage of Commonwealth continued well into 1866, with the steamer's safe, containing about $500 and "many valuable papers", recovered in July. According to Fred Dayton, author of the 1925 history Steamboat Days, Commonwealth was subsequently raised, "rebuilt from the burned wreck", and returned to service on her former route, before being "wrecked in a storm off Orient Point", but this account is uncorroborated.
caption: Stern view of Commonwealth; illustration by Stanton
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