Browse the Vineyard Gazette's coverage of the steamships and ferries that have shuttled residents and visitors across Vineyard Sound.

Nobska stranded off Oak Bluffs beach
The steamer Nobska stranded off Oak Bluffs beach in 1971
Richard Beattie Photo

Ferry Islander Nears Historic Mark: She Becomes Ship of Longest Service

Tom Dunlop |

She was christened by the eight-year-old daughter of Jimmy Cagney. A truckload of 200 live quail once opened up her freight deck (“They were pulling them out of the rafters,” Donna Honig of Edgartown said of the crewmen that trip in 1991. “They were diving after them”). And once on a night back in the fall of 1972, an assassination nearly took place on her darkened hurricane deck when a man, angered by Robert S. McNamara’s role in the Viet Nam war, tried to throw the former Secretary of Defense over the side.

To these events, add one more that will happen at the end of this month:

Steamships and Ferries
M/V Islander
 

 

 

Reviews 150 Years of Steamship History

Vineyard Gazette
Dealing with the more than 150 years-history of steamboat transportation between the Island and mainland, Mr. Love styled his talk, The Evolution of Operation, Wood Boilers to Gas Turbines. He also brought out the little-known fact that far from being a new idea, the inclusion of Hyannis in the Island boat system was carried out over a long period of years and with a high degree of success.
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Nantucket Drops In But Briefly For A Vineyard View: Impressions of Strength, Minus the Beauty – her Narrow Passages

Joseph Chase Allen
The new ferryboat Nantucket, hailing (God save the mark!) from New Bedford, stopped briefly at Vineyard Haven on Tuesday – about an hour and a half – to give the people who are paying half the bill an opportunity to see the new boat. Some of them did, but the view was hardly satisfactory, the time being limited and the boat swarming with children taking advantage of the spring vacation from school.
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