William Scarbrough

William Scarbrough (1776-1838) was a leading Savannah businessman who drove the effort that in 1819 sent the first steamship across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1818, Scarbrough and his associates obtained a Georgia legislative charter for the Savannah Steam Ship Company, declaring their purpose to apply steam propulsion, as an auxiliary or principal power, to seagoing vessels for navigation on the Atlantic and other oceans. Built in the North to the specifications of Scarbrough and his business associates, the 350-ton side-wheel steamship Savannah departed Savannah on May 22, 1819, on its epoch-making voyage to Europe and reached Liverpool 27 days later. The son of a wealthy planter of the Beaufort District, South Carolina, Scarbrough was educated in Europe, moved to Savannah about 1798, and became one of the city's so-called Merchant Princes. His handsome residence on West Broad Street was a center of Savannah social life, and there he and his wife, Julia Bernard Scarbrough (1786-1851), entertained President James Monroe as a house guest in 1819.

Savannah, Georgia · United States