‘Bathing girls, airplanes, yachts and bands’ greeted the first passenger steamer at the Port of Palm Beach

The recent troubles of the Palm Beach Princess prompted us to visit the Port of Palm Beach’s history.

In 1915, the Legislature established taxing districts with ocean access, and a local one was charged with dredging a navigable channel and establishing a port.

The Palm Beach Inlet’s entrance opened in 1917 with a 4-foot depth and two short jetties.

It was made 200 feet wide and 10 feet deep in 1919 and eventually had road and rail connections.

The inlet and port would cost a hefty $3.5 million and be completed under the supervision of George Washington Goethals, who oversaw the Panama Canal and for whom a bridge from New Jersey to New York is named.

The first cargo steamer, the Lake Chelan, arrived in 1926.

And in January 1927, even with the Booms busting, folks welcomed the first passenger steamer to the Port of Palm Beach.

The Mary Weems was greeted by the mayors of West Palm Beach, Palm Beach, Lake Worth, Riviera Beach and Kelsey City — now Lake Park.

Also on hand: leaders of area clubs and organizations, along with “bathing girls, airplanes, yachts and bands,” and a seaplane carrying a reporter and photographer from the Palm Beach Daily News — the “Shiny Sheet.”

After one day in port, the Mary Weems left for Miami.

It and its sister ship, the Esther Weems, made the three-day run from Philadelphia and Baltimore, charging $75.21 and $80.67, respectively, for the round trip, including “meals and berth.” The boat sported “best cuisine and service” and “every modern convenience” — rooms with twin beds, showers, and baths and hot and cold running water. The Bust slammed the port; $3.5 million in the bank vanished. It would take a $60,000 bank loan in the 1930s to deepen the channel to 20 feet. Then World War II pushed business and the port was off and running. (Thanks to Judge James R. Knott’s “Brown Wrapper” series.)

Read more about the Port of Palm Beach online at www.portofpalmbeach.com  

Tags: boats, Port of Palm Beach

The Christmas boat parade that almost wasn’t

By Michelle Quigley

The first West Palm Beach Holiday Boat Parade was in 1979, and by 1981 the parade included dozens of boats and drew a crowd of 60,000 spectators. In 1988 the boat parade joined HolidayFest and the Festival of Trees to become a three-day food, arts and entertainment festival complete with Clydesdale horses, water ski shows, and performances by Chuck Mangione and The Turtles.

Bad economic times forced the city to cut HolidayFest and the boat parade from the budget in 1991, but private donors stepped in to save the parade. On December 14, 1991, some 40,000 spectators lined the Intracoastal Waterway as thirty-four boats cruised by, including winner James N. Lonergan’s 36-foot Out & About with its 8,500 Christmas lights, Howard Warshauer’s 46-foot sailboat Kismet with its huge pink flamingo, and the Lighthouse for the Blind entry pulling a dingy carrying a floodlit Santa Claus. The $30,000 raised by donors also paid for a 15-minute fireworks display.

Budget woes again prompted the city to cancel the parade in 1993. But the following year the boat parade was reincarnated as the Holiday Boat Parade of the Palm Beaches, and the tradition continues. The 2009 parade was an official Palm Beach County centennial event with a fireworks display and more than 100,000 spectators.

Enjoy these Palm Beach Post file photos of the West Palm Beach boat parade and the Holiday Boat Parade of the Palm Beaches. You can upload your pictures of holidays gone by to our photo gallery.

Decorators attach porpoise decor to a boat in preparation for West Palm Beach’s Third Annual Boat Parade on December 21, 1982.

Fireworks over Palm Harbor Marina in West Palm Beach kick off the 12th annual Holiday Boat Parade. More than 40,000 people lined Flagler Drive to watch the parade that almost wasn’t.

A brightly decorated boat makes its way down the Intercoastal Waterway during the 2009 Palm Beach Holiday Boat Parade.

Tags: boats, Christmas

Beached freighter made headlines, but Disney didn’t make ‘Palm Beached’ into a movie

The passage of a quarter century hasn’t dampened the outrageous sight of a freighter left high and dry on the beach behind a Palm Beach mansion on Nov. 23, 1984.

Or the image of the colorful lady in big white sunglasses who turned it into a media event: Mollie Netcher Wilmot.

The horse breeder, heiress to a department store fortune, and ex-wife of a New York publicist  awoke after a violent Thanksgiving storm to find the 197-foot, 660-ton Venezuelan freighter Mercedes I behind her home at 1075 N. Ocean Blvd., next to the old Kennedy compound.

The ship stayed for the next 105 days, hard aground next to the poolside cabana that had been planned for a photo spread in Town and Country.

The formerly low-key Millie, accompanied by her tiny designer dog, Fluff, fed the crew caviar and cookies in her gazebo and served icy martinis to the media throng that gathered from throughout the world.

Palm Beach police assigned extra officers to guard the ship, control traffic and write hundreds of tickets to gawkers who’d parked illegally.

Mollie couldn’t bear to watch when the ship finally was towed off on March 6, 1985.

But, she said, “It’s just sensational to have that big, blue ocean back again.”

Broward County paid $30,000 for the ship and sank it for an artificial reef a mile off Fort Lauderdale. Palm Beach County tried to go one better, sinking a Rolls-Royce.

When Disney studios tried to turn the saga into a movie called “Palm Beached,” Wilmot went along at first.

But when she discovered producers envisioned a twisted comedy along the lines of Down and Out in Beverly Hills, with Bette Midler playing Mrs. Wilmot and cavorting with the Mercedes’ captain, Mollie backed out.

She died at 78 in September 2002.

Three months later, an investor paid $6.9 million for the estate and tore it down. It’s now the site of a mansion valued at about $19 million.

Palm Beach Post file photo
Palm Beach socialite Mollie Wilmot is all smiles as she gets her first clear view of the ocean beyond the Mercedes I, a grounded Venezuelan freighter. The ship, which ran aground and had been stranded behind her Palm Beach mansion since the previous Thanks giving, was finally towed on March 6, 1985.

Tags: boats, Palm Beach

1947: Refugees from Estonia land at the Port of Palm Beach

On October 26, 1947, twenty-four Latvian and Estonian refugees landed at the Port of Palm Beach in a 55-foot boat. The six children, five women and 13 men were “suprisingly healthy and clean” after the 56-day voyage through two hurricanes and an electrical storm that one of the crew said was “something like I have never seen.” The Svea Malmon was the fifth such boat to land in Florida since 1946. After the first Estonian refugee boats braved the Atlantic crossing in order to escape Russian tyranny, President Truman issued a statement directing that “all avenues be explored” to allow the refugees to become citizens, saying also “this is the type of pioneering spirit that built this Nation.”

Tags: boats, immigrants

Rail Ferry Service Got Its Start In 1915

Readers: Our Aug. 13 column about the ferry between the Port of Palm Beach and Cuba prompted this from John Blades, executive director of the Flagler Museum (Whitehall):
“Regular rail ferry service to Cuba was begun in 1915 by the Florida East Coast Railway out of Key West.
“It operated for two decades until the Labor Day Hurricane destroyed the Over-Sea Railroad in 1935. One was named the Henry M. Flagler.
“Those same ferries later served in WWII as Navy ships laying nets and mines. After WWII, the ferries were again used in a ferry service to Havana, but this time out of Palm Beach, which is where your story picked up.”
Update: Our Sept. 18 column, marking the 80th anniversary of the great 1928 hurricane, ran out of space in telling the story of Eugene McCann’s birth at Good Samaritan Hospital at the height of the storm. Here’s the rest:
McCann moved with his family in 1934 from their home near the hospital. He followed his grandfather to the West Palm Beach Police Department, where he spent 15 years as a vice cop, then six as chief investigator for State Attorney Marvin Mounts.
He also belonged to the National Guard, and helped transport refugees to shelters in the 1949 hurricane.
In 1971, McCann left police work and trained to become a Seventh-day Adventist minister. He spent the next two decades serving congregations across Florida before retiring in 1993 at Bushnell, northeast of Tampa, where he was interviewed May 24, 2002, for my book, Black Cloud.
McCann died in February 2003, just six months short of the simultaneous 75th anniversaries of the storm and his birth.

Tags: boats, Cuba, hurricanes, World War II, WWII