The magnificent ''Grand Saloon ''... was two stories high and easily the most elegant public room on any inland steamer.
The Grand Saloon of the Priscilla of 1894 shows our forebears' ideas of ease and elegance at the height of the Gilded Age. This best-loved of all Sound steamers continued in service until the 90-year history of the Fall River Line came to an end following a strike in the summer of 1937. Photo: Mariners Museum.
stern of the steamer onto the Quarter Deck. Here you left the noise and confusion of the pier for the sedate serenity of the Priscilla's lovely Quarter Deck entrance hall, a large room with elaborately carved wooden paneling alternating with plaster friezes of classical subjects. Your porter would lead you across this hall to the window of the purser's office (now preserved at the Mariner's Museum in Newport News, Virginia) where you would choose and pay for a stateroom and be handed a big brass key. Then you would follow your porter up the carved mahogany stairway, with its gleaming brass plating on each riser, to the Saloon Deck. On reaching the top of the stairway, you might hardly believe your eyes, for this stairway led into the Priscilla's magnificent "Grand Saloon," which, with the large ballustraded well opening between the two decks, was two stories high and easily the most elegant public room on any inland steamer. At one end of the open well the "Grand Staircase" led from the Saloon Deck up to the open balcony of the Gallery Deck. Overhead, and extending the length of the open well, rose a low vaulted dome surrounded by small clerestory windows, which were the only source of daylight (not a major consideration on an overnight steamer), since the Grand Saloon on both levels was surrounded by staterooms. On the Priscilla, suspended from the center, hung a huge chandelier in the form of an inverted dome of tinted glass, while on the richly carpeted deck below stood rows of armchairs, sofas, writing desks, and an assortment of potted palms. Victorian? Yes, indeed. Dated? Of course. But even in her old age, the Priscilla was elegance unsurpassed. After passing through this Grand Saloon, your porter would lead you down a series of paneled corridors with deep plush 12
carpeting to your stateroom. If by this time you had become accustomed to the size and opulence of the steamer, you might be somewhat taken aback on entering your stateroom, for most of them were limited in size (perhaps eight feet square) and decidedly Spartan in furnishing, containing only upper and lower bunk beds, a stool, a corner sink, and a rack on the wall that held a water pitcher, two glasses, and a few small hand towels. If you were lucky enough to have obtained an "outside" stateroom (the Fall River Line steamers were exceptionally wide, so that, of necessity, most of the staterooms were "inside"), there would be a small window with a wooden louvred shade that could be lowered only with difficulty after many generations of revarnishing. There were, of course, a few larger rooms with big brass beds that could be obtained for a much higher price (about four or five dollars as opposed to one or two dollars for the smaller rooms). Once you deposited your bags in your stateroom and felt the first pangs of claustrophobia, you would probably elect to go out on deck. After tripping over the brass-plated raised sill under the door leading to the open deck, you would find that you had stepped rather precipitously out of the world of plush Victorian opulence into one of clean nautical austerity. On deck, all of the bulkheads are painted an unrelenting white and the canvascovered decks a battleship grey. Brass fittings are all brightly polished, and everything else, except the crew, recently painted. As you stood on the Priscilla's high deck observing the traffic in the North River, checking the big Colgate clock across in New Jersey, or leaning over the railing to watch last-minute cargo being trundled up the freight gangway, somewhere in the distance you would hear someone, usually the Assistant Steward, walking aroung the steamer shouting "All ashore that's going ashore," your first indication that someone up there in that remote pilot house was actually thinking about sailing this enormous hotel to Fall River that night. Then you would jump with a start when the Priscilla's whistle directly overhead shrieked three long blasts to announce that it was five minutes to sailing time. From this point the bustle suddenly accelerates. Freight gangways are dragged onto the pier with a loud crash. Longshoremen would race along the outer bulkhead of the pier ready to release the lines. Last-minute passengers would rush up the Quarter Deck gangway before it too is pulled ashore. Someone on a higher deck shouts "Cast ofr' to the men on the pier and the great hawsers are tossed into the water and dragged dripping onto the lower deck. Then the big steamer, very lowly at first, starts to glide forward. Sidewheel steamers move with so little apparent effort that at first you are tempted to believe that the pier has started to move slowly backward until reality takes over and you accept the fact that you are actually underway. As the big white sidewheeler noses into the Hudson, she lets out one long piercing blast of her whistle as a warning to other craft in the area. No sooner has the Priscilla pulled away from her pier and made the sharp turn to port downriver than the noisy, bustling, grimy city is quickly reduced to a backdrop, as, standing high on Priscilla's forward deck, you feel that first fresh invigorating blast of sea air. Ahead to starboard stands the Statue of Liberty, but instead of steaming past her toward the ocean, the Priscilla takes another sharp turn to port at the Battery and heads northward up the narrow East River, carefully avoiding the confusion of ferryboats carrying commuters to Staten Island or Brooklyn. Just after the turn the Priscilla passes under the graceful Brooklyn Bridge, which seems to hang so low that the uninitiated passenger is tempted to duck and is somewhat surprised when the big Priscilla, masts and all, glides easily beneath its span. At about six-twenty, after having passed unscathed under the Manhattan, SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1981