Guest Speaker: Bill Breyer

The Sinking of the Steamboat Lexington: Long Island’s Worst Maritime Disaster

A PowerPoint lecture about the 1840 fire and sinking in Long Island Sound that claimed the lives of all but four of the up to 150 people on board. The survivors escaped by using cotton bales as life rafts with one drifting for 40 hours in subfreezing weather before landing in Riverhead.  The disaster became a milestone in journalism history because young lithographer Nathaniel Currier rushed to make an image of the fire for the New York Sun, which put out extra editions using the illustration, one of the first times a daily newspaper had an illustration with a breaking news story. The loss of the Lexington also led to an important Supreme Court decision and helped lead to tougher safety regulations for steamboats.

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   Bill Bleyer was a prizewinning staff writer for Newsday for 33 years specializing in history and maritime issues before retiring in 2014 to write books and freelance for the newspaper and magazines.

   He is co-author, with Harrison Hunt, of Long Island and the Civil War (The History Press, 2015). He is the author of Sagamore Hill: Theodore Roosevelt’s Summer White House (The History Press, 2016); Fire Island Lighthouse: Long Island’s Welcoming Beacon (The History Press, 2017), and Long Island and the Sea: A Maritime History, (The History Press 2019); George Washington’s Long Island Spy Ring: A History and Tour Guide (The History Press, 2021), and The Sinking of the Steamboat Lexington on Long Island Sound (History Press, May 2023).

   The Hofstra University graduate has taught economics and journalism there and history at Webb Institute, the naval architecture college in Glen Cove.