Browse the Vineyard Gazette's coverage of the steamships and ferries that have shuttled residents and visitors across Vineyard Sound.

Nobska stranded off Oak Bluffs beach
The steamer Nobska stranded off Oak Bluffs beach in 1971
Richard Beattie Photo

Ferry Islander Nears Historic Mark: She Becomes Ship of Longest Service

Tom Dunlop |

She was christened by the eight-year-old daughter of Jimmy Cagney. A truckload of 200 live quail once opened up her freight deck (“They were pulling them out of the rafters,” Donna Honig of Edgartown said of the crewmen that trip in 1991. “They were diving after them”). And once on a night back in the fall of 1972, an assassination nearly took place on her darkened hurricane deck when a man, angered by Robert S. McNamara’s role in the Viet Nam war, tried to throw the former Secretary of Defense over the side.

To these events, add one more that will happen at the end of this month:

Steamships and Ferries
M/V Islander
 

 

 
Islander

Going, Going, Gone Online: Ferry Islander is Sold on Ebay

Sam Bungey

A farmer and trucker from upstate New York bought the Islander this week for $23,600, placing bid 58 on Ebay Monday for the vessel that ferried Islanders to and from the rest of America for over fifty years.

The auction looked like it might be a humiliating episode with the old girl fetching a starting bid of just $10, with offers crawling to a few thousand in the first days.

But after a flurry of late offers from a total of 19 bidders it finally went to Donald Slovak of Valatie, N.Y.

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Final Farewell to Historic Steamer Nobska

Jim Hickey

Time has finally run out for the Nobska, the last coastal steamer in America and the car and passenger vessel that served the Vineyard between 1925 and 1973. Preliminary work to dismantle the historic vessel began in the Charlestown Navy Yard early this week, and on Wednesday the wrecking ball came down on her upper deck.

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