"We'll see ice before we dock in Stonington," said Manchester.

"The old Lex is the strongest boat on the Sound." Child pulled a cigar from his coat pocket and lit it. "She'll see us through."

A veteran ship's officer with four years' experience in steamboats traveling the Sound, Child routinely served as master of Mohegan, another of the passenger line's steamers. But this night he was substituting for the boat's regular master, Captain Jacob Vanderbilt.

The brother of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was in the early stages of amassing a fortune in ship and rail transportation, "Intrepid Jake," as he was called, had a reputation that bordered on the foolhardy. He often drove the Lexington on her runs across Long Island Sound at a furious rate. Fortunately for Jake, as it turned out, he was home with a nasty head cold and had no choice but to Turn over his command to Captain Child.

Unlike Jake Vanderbilt, George Child was a cautious skipper who rarely took chances. He stood by Manchester as the pilot concentrated on navigating the Lexington through the dangerous tides of Hell Gate.

From there, the tortuous narrows of the East River widened slightly until the boat passed Throgs Neck and steamed into the often treacherous waters of the Sound.

He left the comfortable heat of the wheelhouse and made a brief inspection of the cargo. The space beneath the promenade deck was packed with nearly 150 bales of cotton, some piled within a foot of the smokestack casing. For some strange reason Child failed to be concerned about the heavy concentration of inflammable cotton stacked so close to the casing that had caught fire only a few days before. So long as the necessary repairs had been made, he chose to ignore the potential hazard.

The rest of the cargo, in wooden crates, was stowed around the shields surrounding the engine. Satisfied the cargo was tied down properly and would not shift under the onslaught of heavy waves, he dropped by the cabin occupied by Jesse Comstock. The boat's clerk was busily counting the money taken in from the passengers, who paid for their meals in advance. Child did not interrupt Comstock's concentration, but stepped to a hatch and dropped down a ladder into the center section of the boat, where the engine and boilers were mounted.

The Lexington was powered by one of the most efficient steam engines of her day, built by the West Point Foundry. This was a vertical-beam engine, commonly called a walking beam, activated by a forty-eight-inch-diameter steam cylinder with an eleven-foot stroke.

The engine's piston rod was connected to a long shaft that drove the forward pivot on the walking beam, converting the up-and-down thrust to the aft shaft that powered the crank that turned the Lexington's big twenty-three-foot-diameter paddle wheels with their nine-foot sweeps.