Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr |

The Old Fall River Line – Everyone from presidents to swindlers sailed the Sound on “Mammoth Palace Steamers” in the heyday of the side wheelers.

Cruise History – The Old Fall River Line – Everyone from presidents to swindlers sailed the Sound on “Mammoth Palace Steamers” in the heyday of the side wheelers and night boats. The Fall River Line was a combination steamboat and railroad connection between New York City and Boston that operated between 1847 and 1937.

It consisted of a railroad journey between Boston and Fall River, Massachusetts, where passengers would then board steamboats for the journey through Narragansett Bay and Long Island Sound to the line’s own Hudson River dock in Manhattan.

For many years, it was the preferred route to take for travel between the two major cities.

The line was extremely popular, and its steamboats were some of the most advanced and luxurious of their day.

Holiday Magazine 1951 Advertisement for the United States Lines SS America.

Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., 1898–1974, became a well-known writer, newspaper publisher, and movie producer. By 1951, he had made 140 trans-Atlantic crossings from New York to Europe.

SS America leaving New York Harbor.

His mega-bucks parents, General and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, bailed out Vanderbilt on several occasions including paying California tabloid creditors $2,257,000 to keep their lanky ex-publisher son Cornelius Jr., out of “debtor’s prison.”

For a while Cornelius was estranged from his parents for writing in what they considered the lurid, gumchewerish William Randolph Hearst Sunday Magazine.

In 1951 Cornelius joined many celebrities by being part of transportation and other advertisements.