 The packet ship Sully, one of a series of ships named after heroes of French history,
was built by C. Bergh & Co. in New York in 1827 and sailed the Atlantic as a part of the Havre Old Line until 1846.
She was a three-masted square rigger with a square stern and round tuck, no galleries, a man figure head, two decks and three masts,
measuring 120 feet in length and displacing 456 tons. Her average westbound passage was 38 days, with her
shortest being 25 and longest being 62 days.
Not only was this vessel
renowned for the longest term of trans-Atlantic service (nearly 19 years) but it was aboard this ship in the autumn of 1832 that
Samuel F. B. Morse first developed theories resulting in the telegraph. Morse, a noted artist of his time,
was sailing home from an extended period of art study in Europe. He had little to do, and he passed the time practicing
fencing with the captain and absorbing some talk he had heard on the ship about electromagnets in France. Morse thought
about what he had heard and arrived at his concept for the telegraph during the long hours of the voyage. He told the
captain of the ship, "Captain, if you should in future hear of the telegraph as one of the wonders of the world, please
remember that the discovery was made aboard the Sully." The first telegraph
transmission occurred in 1844 between Baltimore and Washington, DC with the message, "What hath God wrought!"
On Apr. 1, 1846 the figure head was removed and a billet head put in its
place. The register was surrendered on Apr. 24 of that same year and the vessel was sold to foreigners. It was cleared the following day for
Bremen by Meyer & Stucken. There is no further record of the ship Sully. |
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