Steam Packets (ships) On the Che

From the Introduction: "In 1940, The Baltimore Steam Packet Company, then and still the oldest shipping line in the US, marked an anniversary celebrating its first hundred years of smooth sailing on the Chesapeake. The Old Bay Line, for this is the familiar title earned by the company in the maturity of its years, was chartered by the States of Maryland Virginia in 1839 and, the following year, began to provide a dependable steam packet service between the ports of Baltimore and Norfolk at opposite ends of the Bay. With the US ringed by thousands of miles of navigable coastal waters and the services of the Old Bay Line confined merely to some two hundred miles on the Chesapeake, naturally it is not claimed that the attainments of this little company is by any means world-shaking. It is significant, however, that this venerable organization, which has been in the transportation business under the same corporate name for almost a century and a quarter, may be considered a microcosm of the entire field of American steam navigation...For the historian, the compilation of a record of this kind is not as easy a task as might be first imagined Source material has proved both scarce and elusive. Four times during the hundred year period, the Company has had valuable old records destroyed, three times by fire, once by flood. The search for material has been both pleasant and rewarding. "