Key West's First Henry

Although today Henry Plant takes a back seat to that other Henry, Mr. Flagler, it was Plant who first saw the value of Key West as a shipping port. It's only because Flagler outlived Plant by more than a dozen years, and happened to bring the train to town, that his name evokes more reaction in Key West in the twenty-first century.

Henry Bradley Plant was born in October of 1819. Though privileged and private-schooled, at the age of eighteen he passed up a full scholarship to Yale in favor of joining the crew of a steamship as a deck hand. He knocked about for a few years, learning the steamship business and discovering an interest in and a knack for express shipping. Aligning with the Adams Express Company, he first managed their New England region and then took over the Southern region ­ covering all area south of the Potomac and Ohio rivers. The company, fearful of confiscation of their Southern properties at the start of the Civil War, transferred their Southern interests to Plant as a reward for twenty years of excellent service on their behalf. He organized these holdings into the Southern Express Company, became its president, and served as official agent to the Confederacy. Following the Civil War, when the railroads in the South were either bankrupt or ruined, Plant bought both the Charleston & Savannah Railroad and the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad and Steamboat Company at foreclosure sales. By 1884, Plant had grown the company to include 14 railway companies with 2,100 miles of track and several steamship lines. Basing his business in Tampa, Plant did there what Flagler would do 20+ years later in Key West ­ he built a train track to the water, put up hotels, and created piers for his steamships. A small city, Port Tampa, grew up around the port and remained a viable community until absorbed by Tampa in the mid 20th Century.

By 1886, Plant held the postal service contract for mail delivery between there, Key West and Havana. In 1887, regularly scheduled steamship travel between Key West and Havana began courtesy of the Plant Steam Ship Line.

The ships coming to Key West were the best that could be built, with no expense spared in their construction. The Mascotte and Olivette (above) maintained regular routes on the Tampa-Key West-Havana run. In 1910, long after Plant's death when the company was presided over by his son, Morton F. Plant, the Plant line merged with Flagler's ship out of Miami to form the Peninsular and Occidental Steamship Company.

Henry B. Plant was as important an influence on Key West's history as any other great shipping magnate named Henry. Luckily, for Key West, we had two.

Next: The Grand Tour, circa 1910