Seaboard Air Line Railroad - Steamship Operations

Steamship Operations

The "Old Bay Line," as the Baltimore Steam Packet Company was commonly known, operated steamships between Norfolk, Virginia, and Baltimore, Maryland, carrying mail and freight as well as passengers and vehicles on the overnight run.

The Seaboard and Roanoke acquired a controlling interest in the steamship company in 1851, providing valuable northward connections from the docks at Norfolk for the railroad's passenger and freight business. Control passed to the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad in 1901, but in 1922, with S. Davies Warfield as its president, the Old Bay Line became a wholly owned subsidiary of the SAL. In that same year, Warfield, who was already was named president of the Seaboard as well.

In 1941, the Chesapeake Steamship Company, jointly owned by the Atlantic Coast Line and the Southern, was merged into the Old Bay Line. Due to the decline of business with the rise of interstate highways and air travel, the steamship company was liquidated in 1962.

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