(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
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He was born on October 2, 1780 in Plymouth, then part of Watertown, Connecticut, United States, third of the four sons of David and Ruth (Hitchcock) Smith. His father, a major in the Revolution and a general in the Connecticut militia, was a prosperous storekeeper.
Junius was prepared for college at Bethlehem near by, and went as a sophomore to Yale. After graduating in 1802, he became a fellow student of John C. Calhoun at Tapping Reeve's law school, Litchfield. Yale gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1840.
In 1804 he opened a law office in New Haven. Sent to London in 1805 by his brother's firm, he secured from the Court of Admiralty Appeal the award of liberal damages for the seizure of the New Haven ship Mohawk. He settled in London as a merchant, making his home there, except for a brief sojourn in Liverpool, until 1843.
Smith dealt chiefly with New York, corresponding with his nephew Henry Smith, and constantly suggesting additional articles of export, clover seed being a favorite. In spite of reverses during the War of 1812, he became quite prosperous. Smith's principal distinction arises from his share in establishing regular steamship service across the ocean. The single voyage of the Savannah in 1819, sponsored by Moses Rogers and William Scarborough, had been premature. Smith seems to have conceived the idea of a line of transatlantic steamers about the time of his fifty-four-day voyage to New York in a British sailing vessel in 1832. He actively devoted the next few years to creating public opinion and raising capital for the support of his project.
He returned to London and in February 1833 proposed his idea to the directors of the London & Edinburgh Steam Packet Company without success. He issued several prospectuses, with no immediate response.
In 1836, however, having secured a powerful ally in Macgregor Laird of the great Birkenhead shipbuilding family, he organized the British & American Steam Navigation Company. Great Britain's conversion to ocean steamships, once Smith had overcome the prevailing skepticism, was rapid, and in quick succession a number of rival companies were formed. Smith and Laird, in fact, had only a few hours to spare in being the first to reach New York. Isambard K. Brunel, engineer of the Great Western Railway, persuaded its Bristol backers in 1836 to form a transatlantic steamship company. Their 1340-ton steamship, Great Western, was launched July 19, 1837. Smith and Laird, in the meantime, were encountering disheartening delays. They had ordered a 1700-ton steamship in October 1836, but the failure of the contractor postponed even the laying of the keel until April 1, 1837. Eager to be the first across the Atlantic, they decided not to wait for this vessel to be completed, so chartered from the Cork Steamship Company the little 700-ton Sirius, which left Cork on April 4, 1838, and reached New York, on the voyage that marked the start of permanent transatlantic steam service, on the evening of April 22. Smith's vessel, the British Queen, was finally launched on May 24, 1838, and first reached New York July 27, 1839. Smith was the hero of the hour.
Under Laird's supervision, his company, in December 1839, launched the President, the "largest ship in the world. " She sailed on a return voyage from New York Mar. 11, 1841, and disappeared without a trace. This disaster, coupled with the successful competition of the line established by Samuel Cunard, who received the lucrative British mail subsidy in 1839, soon brought the British & American Steam Navigation Company to a close, and Smith in 1843 ended his long London residence.
Back in America, he purchased a plantation near Greenville, and tried to relieve the country from dependence upon China for tea by growing it in the Southern states. The idea apparently came to him through his daughter, who was married to an army chaplain in India. His death occurred at Bloomingdale Asylum, after some months of illness in his nephew's home, Astoria.
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He was a kind, generous, and very hospitable, little man, barely five feet six.
Quotes from others about the person
It was declared in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine (October 1840) that to him "more than to any other individual, is the final and successful accomplishment of this great enterprise (transatlantic steam service) doubtless to be attributed. "
On April 9, 1812, he married Sarah, daughter of Thomas Allen of Huddersfield, Yorkshire. She died in 1836, leaving one daughter.
