The steamboat Lexington left its Manhattan pier on the bitterly cold afternoon of January 13, 1840, bound for Stonington, Connecticut. It would never get there. Before the night was over, all but four of the approximately 150 people on board would be dead in the worst maritime disaster in the history of Long Island.
Today, few people have heard of the fire that consumed the steamboat launched by ‘Commodore’ Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1835, sending it to the bottom of Long Island Sound off Port Jefferson, New York. But at the time, the disaster was major news that captivated and inflamed the public.
Vanderbilt designed the to be the fastest, safest
