A party of merchants stood around the stoves discussing business and debating politics. Banker Robert Blake politely disagreed with business proprietors Abram Howard, William Green, and Samuel Henry over the New York bank's tightening of interest rates. John Leniist, treasurer of the Boston Leather Company, had nothing good to say about the bankers, who had recently charged his firm a high rate of interest on a loan to increase inventory.

The lounge was heavily attended this trip by sea captains, who had made port after months at sea and were traveling to their own firesides and their cherished loved ones. Captains J. D. Carver, Chester Hillard, E. J. Kimball, David McFarland, John Mattison, Theophilas Smith, and Benjamin Foster, who was returning from a three-year voyage to India, took turns swapping sea tales with each other.

Other notable passengers included Dr. Charles Follen, a respected professor of German literature at Harvard College, and Adolphus Hamden, of Hamden's Express, who was transporting $20,000 in silver coin and $50,000 in bank notes for the Merchants Bank.

Dinner was served at 6 P.m. by Job Sand and his staff of waiters.

Chef Joseph Robinson and his assistant cooks, Oliver Howell and Robert Peters, offered passengers a choice between mutton with boiled tomatoes and baked flounder in a wine sauce with rice.

Amid the clink of glasses and the soft murmur of voices engaged in small talk, none of the 115 souls assembled around the dining tables could have known that, except for one man seated among them, this would be their last meal on earth.

Shortly after 7:30, the first mate, Edwin Furber, came to the wheelhouse door and alerted Captain Manchester that the boat was on fire. Manchester immediately stepped outside and stared aft. Flames were coming through the promenade deck around the smokestack casing.

He scanned the darkened shoreline and took a quick bearing. The boat was well past the beacon at Eatons Neck Point and approaching the lighthouse on Old Field Point, both on the Long Island side of the Sound.

The lights of Bridgeport to the north appeared further away. He immediately took the helm from steersman Johnson and swung the wheel hard-a-starboard in a vain effort to Turn the boat and beach her on Long Island.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Captain Child rushed into the wheelhouse. "We've a fire on board!" he shouted. "Set a course for the nearest land!"

"I'm bringing her about now," Manchester answered, "but the wheel is not answering the helm."

Together, the three men gripped the spokes and applied their strength in an effort to steer the boat toward safety four miles and twenty minutes away. Suddenly, the wheel spun out of their hands.

"She's not responding," Johnson muttered in dazed bewilderment.

"The fire must have burned through the port steering rope below the wheelhouse," said Child.

Now out of control, with the engines still turning, the Lexington began helplessly running in wide circles. Child leaned out the door and gazed toward the stern. The beautiful boat, once the pride of the Vanderbilts, was vomiting fire and smoke from her entire Midsection.