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THE MEMOIRS
OF
CHARLES H. CRAMP

CHARLES H. CRAMP

THE MEMOIRS

OF

CHARLES H. CRAMP

BY

AUGUSTUS C. BUELL

Author of “Life of Paul Jones,” “History of Andrew Jackson,”

“Life of Sir William Johnson,” Etc.

PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

1906

Copyright, 1906

By J. B. Lippincott Company

Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia

PREFACE

❦

It is not often that the memoirs of a man cover the history of threescore years of active manhood. Still more rare is it that the period covered happens to be the most fruitful of progress known in the annals of mankind. And yet more remarkable, even to the point of the unique, is it that such a career, in such an epoch, should be inextricably interwoven with the history of one of the fairest arts and one of the most fascinating sciences,—Naval Architecture and Ship-building.

All this is true of the subject of this memoir, Charles Henry Cramp.

Such phrases as “prominently identified with” or “an acknowledged leader in” his sphere of creative activity do not adequately express Charles H. Cramp’s personal and professional relation, or rather his individual identification, with the maritime and naval history of his country. Those phrases applied to his status and his rank would be commonplace. His impress is far deeper than that, and the association of his name and his personality with the art and its triumphs have become a symbol.

The generation of naval architects and ship-builders among whom he began his life-work sixty years ago have long since passed away. Of them all he stands alone, the only surviving link that binds the romantic memories of wood and canvas to the grim realities of steel and steam. Even the generation that knew him in the middle of his long and fruitful career is gone. He is the only man who has alike designed and built ships for the navy of the Civil War and for that of to-day,—alike for the navy that fought at Charleston and Fort Fisher and for the navy that won Santiago and Manila Bay,—twoscore years asunder! In all the history of our country there has never been another professional career like his. No other man ever made such an impress as he upon the life, welfare, and progress of the nation. No other man, without ever holding a public office, has so indelibly left his mark upon our greatest and most vital public interests as he has done.

He has passed from the sphere of membership in his profession and has become its exponent. His name is a synonym for the art in which he has so long been master, and the mention of his personality instantly suggests the science whose triumphs he has so often and so well won.

This status and this rank are by no means limited to our own country. Mr. Cramp is as familiar in London as in Philadelphia; as well known in Tokio and St. Petersburg as in New York or Washington.

Undoubtedly, the first impression one will derive from the study of Mr. Cramp’s career and character as mirrored in his acts and his writings is his singleness of purpose, fixity of resolve, and directness of method. These are, in fact, his distinctive traits, and to them, throughout his long and arduous life, all others have been rigorously subordinated. If he appears to be exacting of others, he is yet more so with himself. It is not to be expected that in a life so long, in an experience covering literally the scope of the civilized world, and in a range of endeavor so wide and diversified, all could be plain sailing. On the other hand, few men have encountered more or greater obstacles. No man ever faced them more cheerfully or combated them with more sanguine pluck. If he did not always triumph over them, it was because they were insurmountable, or because those upon whom he relied for a proper share in the sum-total of effort failed him. He himself never left undone anything that a clear head could devise or a resolute will strive for.

But with all his singleness of purpose, fixity of resolve, and directness of method in professional pursuits, Charles H. Cramp, as a member of society at large, is a man of the broadest vision and most comprehensive culture. Intent as he may be upon his work, he “never takes the shop home with him,” as the saying is. He has always possessed the happy faculty of laying down his burdens at the close of each working-day to find mental recreation in social occasions, in general literature, art, and the higher order of social amusements. A clever writer in a magazine sketch of him many years ago said, “Charles H. Cramp knows more about more things than any other man of his time!” Unlike most epigrams, this is true, and in terse fashion it conveys a portrayal of his intellectual make-up. Mastery of the literature of his own profession, rich and varied as it is, forms but a small part of Mr. Cramp’s mental equipment. To all these attainments add the lessons and observations of wide travel and constant association with leading minds and controlling personalities at home and abroad, and the result is a perfectly equipped, all-round man of affairs.

During his whole active career Mr. Cramp has held positions of command. At the age of nineteen he began to direct operations and assume responsibilities; and such status he has maintained for threescore years, with constantly increasing volume of operations and incessantly growing weight of responsibility. But through all he has kept the even tenor of his way, neither elated by triumphs nor depressed by reverses, and guided always by an inflexible integrity and a scrupulous honesty that are proverbial.

CONTENTS

❦

ILLUSTRATIONS

❦

MEMOIRS

OF

CHARLES H. CRAMP

▤

CHAPTER I

Early Ship-building in Philadelphia and Colonies—Paul Jones—Joshua Humphreys—“Alliance”—Truxtun—Embargo—Decade following War of 1815—“Rebecca Sims”—Inauguration of Packet Lines—Thomas P. Cope—Decay of Eastern Trade in Philadelphia—Auction Sales of Cargoes.

The historical value of the character and career of individuals must be rated by their share in and impress upon the events of their time. This is equally true of success and failure. For example, the most famous man of modern time terminated his career in the most colossal failure known to history,—Napoleon Bonaparte. Yet, if we judge by the interest the civilized world takes in every shred of his history and by the perennial halo that envelops his name, people do not think about either his triumphs or his disasters, but fix their attention singly upon the impress he made upon civilization.

On the other hand, George Washington ended his career in success and glory. But few, except students and pedants, know much about Washington beyond that he was the founder of a new nation and the Father of a new country which a century after his death has become the most formidable on earth.

Thus, in either case, whether of success or of failure, both gigantic, mankind rates the importance of each by the impress he made upon the events of his time and by its enduring character.

Viewed broadly, the Europe of to-day as compared with the Europe of 1775 is as completely the creation of the popular forces incarnated in Napoleon Bonaparte, as the American Republic of to-day as compared with the revolted Colonies of 1775 is the creation of the popular forces whose exponent George Washington was. From this point of view, the fact that one failed while the other succeeded in the personal sense cuts no figure whatever.

CLIPPERSHIP MORNING LIGHT

These observations, while they have none other than a general relation to our immediate subject, are pertinent to the main thread of our theme. The real test of greatness in an individual, and therefore of the historical value of his character and career, being the impress he makes upon the events of his time, it follows that, unless the mention of a man’s name instantly suggests some great thing or things that he has done, or in a masterful way has helped to do, that man was not great; he made no impress upon his times, and his biography can possess no historic value. But whenever the name of a man stands as the exponent of some great thing done or as the symbol of notable achievement, then the character and career of that man belong to history, and the obligation devolves upon literature to suitably perpetuate his memory.

This, the prime test and condition of enduring fame, has been fulfilled by the subject of this memoir, Charles Henry Cramp. Not alone in his own country, but in Europe and Asia,—from St. Petersburg to Tokio,—the mention of his name instantly suggests triumphs in the science of naval architecture and marine engineering and successes in the art of building ships. However, before proceeding to a history of the career and life-work of Mr. Cramp himself, it seems proper to survey the historical antecedents of his science and his art in his own field of action.

The art of naval architecture and the industry of ship-building were almost coeval with the primitive establishment of the English-speaking race on the American continent, and this was more particularly true of Philadelphia than of any other place. In the earliest grants of land to settlers, William Penn invariably included a clause requiring them, when clearing the land granted, to “spare all smooth and large oak-trees suitable for ship-timber.”

In 1685, three years after Penn arrived in the Colony, it was reported to the Lords of Trade in London that “six ships capable of sea-voyage and many boats have been built at Philadelphia.” From this early beginning the industry grew rapidly, until in 1700 four yards were engaged in building sea-going ships alone, besides several smaller concerns which built fishing-boats and river-craft. Two rope-walks, two or three block-makers’ shops, and several other special manufactories of ship-building material, had been put in operation. At first the spar-iron work needed was brought from England, but by the beginning of the eighteenth century all the ship-smithing required for Philadelphia-built ships was done on the spot.

The first four yards were located at different points along the beach, between the foot of Market Street and the foot of Vine Street, and there they remained until about the middle of the eighteenth century. By that time the value of that part of the river front for commercial wharf purposes had increased to such an extent that the ship-building industry could not afford to hold it. In the meantime new yards had been established down as far as South Street, others as far north as the present foot of Fairmount Avenue. Obedient to this law of trade the four older yards moved their plants either northward or southward, as convenience or economy might dictate. But after 1744 no ships were built between Market and Vine Streets. The last of these original shipyards of Penn’s time to succumb was the largest and most important one in Philadelphia. It was owned and managed by Mr. West, who was at that time the leading ship-builder in the Colonies; and the ground his shipyard occupied had been deeded to him by William Penn in part payment for a ship he had built for Penn several years before. He removed to the present foot of Green Street.

In 1750-51 two ships were built in West’s new yard, which exceeded in size any merchant vessels previously constructed in America. One of them was of three hundred and twenty and the other of four hundred tons burthen. They were sent to England with cargoes of colonial produce, and on arrival at London were both bought by the East India Company and placed in the regular East India and China fleet. They were as large as any merchant vessels built in England up to that time, and of superior model and construction. One of them—the larger of the two—remained on the list of the East India Company more than thirty years; and in 1751 had for one of her passengers to India, Warren Hastings, who was going out to Madras as a young clerk in the Civil Service, to become the first Governor-General of British India, and founder of the British Empire in Asia.

During this period, the third quarter of the eighteenth century, a new scheme of ship-building commended itself to the enterprise and ingenuity of Philadelphia shipwrights. This was the construction of what they called “raft-ships.”

The local supply of ship-timber in the forests of England, particularly of frames, knees, keels, and the larger spars, had begun to decline to the danger-point by 1750. The size of ships, both for commerce and for war, was constantly increasing. This increase incessantly involved the use of longer and heavier timbers for frames, larger knees and futtocks, and thicker planking. Meantime the forests of England became smaller and smaller. The great old trees had been cut down and sawed or hewn up, and the younger stems had not found time to grow in their stead.

Indeed, before 1750, England had begun to import ship-timber from the Baltic; but it was mostly deal boards used for cabin-work, ceilings, sheathings, etc. Now she began to look to her American Colonies for the heavier materials. It was difficult to load and stow this kind of timber through the hatchways of the ships then available. The ingenuity of Philadelphia shipwrights met this obstacle by building the timbers themselves into the form of ships, and they were then navigated across the Atlantic to be broken up on arrival in British ports. These “raft-ships” were built with bluff bows and square sterns, their sides being several feet thick. To make them water-tight, they were sheathed with two thicknesses of boards which “broke joints,” and were caulked. The largest of these, called the “Baron Renfrew,” measured the equivalent of five thousand tons in a regular merchant ship. She got safely across the ocean, but went ashore on Portland Bill in a fog and broke up. Most of her timber, however, was picked up by English and French vessels which cruised for weeks in search of it. Among the mast-timber she carried was one white pine tree ninety-one feet long by four feet eight inches diameter at the butt inside the bark. This tree was used for the mainmast of the “Royal George,” a three-decker then building at Chatham (1774). It was doubtless still in the ill-fated ship when she heeled over and went down at Portsmouth in 1782. The “Baron Renfrew” was the last of the “raft-ships.” The oncoming Revolution stopped all kinds of commerce for eight years, and though after the peace ship-timber was again exported to England, it went as hold or deck cargo in regular vessels.

Summing up the colonial period, it may be said that, while the records were imperfectly kept and some lost, enough is extant to show that between 1684 and 1744 one hundred and eighty-eight square-rigged ships and over seven hundred brigs and schooners, besides immense numbers of boats, river-sloops, fishing-yawls, etc., were built at Philadelphia. Her only rival in the Colonies during that period was Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but Philadelphia held the ascendency over all in the size and total tonnage of her ships.

That the Colonies should have developed the ship-building industry from their earliest existence was natural and necessary. If you take a modern map of the United States and draw from Maine to Georgia a heavy black line averaging one hundred miles back from the general trend of the sea-coast, you will have in close approximation the geography of colonial settlement at its maximum. In this belt, this “narrow fringe of civilization,” were concentrated for more than a century all the energies of English-speaking pioneers, rapidly increasing in numbers and incessantly augmenting the products of enterprise and industry which, from surplus over home consumption, had to seek markets over sea.

In those early days the population kept within easy reach of the coast or of the arms of the sea and estuaries which abound from the Savannah on the south to the Penobscot on the north. The back country, forming the eastern or Atlantic slope of the Appalachian chain, was little more than a hunting and trapping ground or a field for primitive trade and barter with the Indians. As for the vast “hinterland,” west of the Alleghenies, it was, up to the middle of the eighteenth century, when the final struggle between England and France for supremacy on this continent began, an unbroken wilderness, inhabited only by hostile savages, and unknown to any white men except the Jesuit priests and the cunning traders of French Canada.

For all these reasons, the gaze of the English-speaking colonists from the earliest settlements to the beginning of the conquest of Canada was always bent toward the sea, and all their enterprise and energy were directed to the commerce of the ocean. Under such conditions, the development of skill in ship-building was inevitable; and with that necessity was also bred a scientific alertness in marine architecture itself which, as soon as political independence freed its scope, became supreme throughout the civilized world.

The outbreak of the Revolution of course, for the time being, put an end to merchant ship-building in all American ports. But in Philadelphia the paralysis was only temporary, and the energies heretofore directed toward construction of ships for the uses of peace were soon turned to the conversion of available merchantmen into vessels of war or privateers, and the building of new frigates ordered by Congress. The first American squadron, that of the ill-starred Commodore Esek Hopkins, was composed entirely of merchant vessels taken up in the harbor and converted into men-of-war in the shipyards of Philadelphia during the autumn of 1775.

It was in the selection and conversion of these four merchantmen into cruisers that Paul Jones, founder of the American navy, first gave to the United States his energies and his talents. Thus Philadelphia was the birthplace of a new sea-power, and her shipyards have ever since been the foremost contributors to its growth, until even now, though only a century and a quarter old, it has achieved imperial rank.

In November, 1775, Congress authorized the construction of six 32-gun frigates and seven other war vessels of less dimensions. Four of the frigates were allotted to Philadelphia shipyards. They were the “Washington,” the “Randolph,” the “Delaware,” and the “Effingham.” The first two were frigate-built from their keels, but the “Delaware” and “Effingham,” to save time, were built upon frames already on the stocks for merchant ships when the war began. On this account they were not quite as large as the regular frigates and rated twenty-eight instead of thirty-two guns.

From 1775 till the peace of 1783, Philadelphia yards built a great number of privateers and converted a few ships for the “State Navy,” as it was called, that is to say, ships provided by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and assigned to the Continental service. One of these, a converted bark of two hundred tons and mounting sixteen 6-pounders, has passed into fame as the “Hyder Ali.” Under Lieutenant Joshua Barney she took the “General Monk,” a regular sloop-of-war, mounting fourteen 9-pounders and four 6-pounders. The “Hyder Ali” was a small French bark which arrived at Philadelphia with military supplies early in February, 1782. She was at once bought by the State and placed in Humphrey’s yard for conversion into a cruiser. Within six weeks she was put in commission, and she took the “General Monk,” April 8, about two months after her arrival in port as a merchant vessel. This was the last capture of an English man-of-war in the Revolution.

The peace of 1783 found Philadelphia possessing only thirteen merchant vessels, all built before the war and nearly all of which had served as privateers during the conflict. No new merchant keel had been laid in a Philadelphia yard between 1775 and 1782; but the industry revived with wonderful energy. From 1782 to 1787, one hundred and fifty-five vessels were built, of which fifty-six were square-rigged ships averaging over three hundred tons. From this period on the progress was very great. The outbreak of the wars of the French Revolution in 1793 at once threw a vast carrying trade into American bottoms, the United States being for a long time the only neutral maritime nation. By the year 1801, when the treaty, or truce, of Amiens was signed, nearly three hundred sea-going ships were owned in Philadelphia, all home-built, and fourteen shipyards were in operation,—eight in the northern or Kensington and six in the southern or Southwark district. These were all first-class shipyards, building the largest full-rigged ships of that epoch. In that period and for a long time afterward the leading Philadelphia shipyard was that of Joshua Humphreys, in Southwark, and its proprietor and manager was himself the foremost naval architect of his time. When Congress, in 1794, authorized the construction of six frigates, and thereby laid the foundation of what we call the modern or “regular” navy, as distinguished from the old Continental navy of the Revolution, prominent ship-builders were asked to submit plans, the government then having no naval constructors. The plans of Mr. Humphreys were adopted for all six frigates. Three of them embodied a distinct advance in size and weight of armament over vessels of similar rate in other navies, and were classed as 44-gun frigates. The other three were designed as 38-gun frigates, and were an improvement upon the 36-gun ships of European navies. These six ships were built by contract,—one of the forty-fours and one of the thirty-eights at Philadelphia; one forty-four at Boston; one at New York; one thirty-eight at Baltimore, and one at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In addition to these, a 32-gun frigate, the “Essex,” was built at Salisbury Point, Massachusetts, by private subscription, and given to the government.

CLIPPERSHIP MANITOU

Mr. Humphreys had the contracts for the Philadelphia-built frigates, and on May 10, 1797, he launched the 44-gun frigate “United States,” which was the first ship of the regular navy to be water-borne. Thus to Philadelphia belongs the credit of having fitted out the first squadron of the Continental navy in 1775, and of launching the first ship of the regular navy in 1797. In 1799, Mr. Humphreys completed a third frigate, named the “Philadelphia.” This ship is described in some histories as a “forty-four,” and in others as a “thirty-eight.” As a matter of fact, she was neither; but properly rated, under the rules then in vogue, as a 40-gun frigate. This difference was due to the fact that she carried thirty long 18-pounders on her gundeck as against twenty-eight 18-pounders in the “Constellation” class, or as against thirty long 24-pounders in the “Constitution” or 44-gun class. The “Philadelphia” was beyond question the most perfect frigate of her day. She was the same length as the “Constitution,” but of less beam, slightly less draught, and on finer lines. In her design, Mr. Humphreys had sacrificed to speed some of the battery power of the forty-fours, and therefore had to substitute 18-pounders for 24-pounders on the gundeck. She was the fastest sailing war-ship in the world, beating the “Constitution” by nearly two knots an hour. In her first, and unfortunately her last, voyage, from this country to Tripoli, she logged on one occasion three hundred and thirty-two knots in twenty-four hours, and on another three hundred and thirty-seven, the latter run being an average slightly exceeding fourteen knots. She was lost in Tripoli harbor in 1803. It is not too much or too little to say of either that Joshua Humphreys held a professional rank similar to that of Charles H. Cramp, that of the foremost naval architect of his era; and with exceptions, not worth mention, they are the only American naval architects whose designs for sea-going war-ships have been adopted by the navy.

It is worthy of remark in this connection, that when the plans of Mr. Humphreys were adopted in 1794-95, the government not only had no naval constructors of its own, but in fact no Navy Department, except a Bureau in the War Department, so that Mr. Humphreys could have no competitors but other private ship-builders. Mr. Cramp’s designs, however, have been adopted under the scrutiny of a highly competent and most critical corps of regular naval constructors and marine engineers.

The renewal of general war in Europe in 1803 gave a fresh impetus to the neutral carrying trade of the United States, and with it a corresponding stimulus to ship-building all along the coast, though most pronounced and on a larger scale at Philadelphia than elsewhere. Between the above date and 1812 nine more shipyards were established, making twenty-three all told in operation at one time. The largest merchant vessel up to that time built in America was one of seven hundred and five tons, constructed by Samuel Bowers for the East India trade, and her dimensions were not exceeded in merchant construction until after the War of 1812-15. Her contract price was $24,000; at the rate of $34 per ton gross measurement. At that time vessels of similar class cost ten guineas ($50) per gross ton in British shipyards.

In a public document on the statistics of ship-building, we find a statement that “in June, 1787, the ship ‘Alliance,’ owned by Robert Morris and commanded by Captain Thomas Read, sailed from Philadelphia for Canton and Batavia. She was of seven hundred tons burthen, and the largest ship built for commerce in America at that time.”

The statement that the “Alliance” was “built for commerce” is an error. She was the famous old Revolutionary frigate which Paul Jones and John Barry had commanded at different times. After the peace of 1783 she was sold to Mr. Morris, or rather turned over to him in part payment for advance he had made to the Continental government. She was converted into a merchant ship and made several China voyages. The government then bought her back again in 1790, but she was not refitted as a war vessel.

During the general period under consideration, that is to say, from the end of the Revolution to the beginning of the War of 1812, a new and highly important deep-sea traffic came into existence, of which Philadelphia soon obtained the supreme command. This was the East India and China trade. The first vessel to clear from Philadelphia for China direct was the new ship “Canton,” built by Humphreys and commanded by Captain, afterward Commodore, Thomas Truxtun.

This was the same Thomas Truxtun who, during the Revolution, had seen more service in privateers than any other sailor then afloat. He served either as mate or commander in the Philadelphia privateers, “Andrew Caldwell,” “Congress,” “Independence,” “Mars,” and “St. James,” from 1775 to 1782. His ships made altogether sixty-five captures of British merchantmen and transports. While commanding the “St. James,” of twenty guns, in 1781, he beat off and disabled a British 28-gun frigate. After the Revolution he commanded Philadelphia Indiamen from 1785 to 1798, when he was commissioned one of the original six captains in the regular navy. In the short war with France in 1799 he commanded the “Constellation,” 38-gun frigate, and took the French frigate “l’Insurgente,” of forty guns.

The “Canton” sailed from Philadelphia on December 30, 1785. She returned in May, 1787, having made the round voyage to Canton, Batavia, and home in a little over sixteen months. Her venture was highly profitable. From this beginning the far eastern trade grew steadily until, in 1805, Philadelphia alone owned twenty-seven ships plying in it, ranging from four hundred and twenty to seven hundred and five tons. Between 1805 and 1812, inclusive, the number of Philadelphia Indiamen and China ships increased to forty-two, notwithstanding the injurious effect of President Jefferson’s ill-advised embargo. In fact, that measure was not much observed by ship-owners in the India and China trade. President Jefferson did not attempt to enforce his embargo by either civil or military power, and very soon after he proclaimed it, the understanding became general among merchant ship-owners that if they chose to take the risks entailed by the British “Orders in Council” and Napoleon’s “Decrees of Milan and Berlin,” they could do so at their peril, with no recourse for protection or indemnity in case of misfortune. Under these conditions, ship-owning merchants, in other coast cities who traded with European or West India ports, for the most part hesitated to take the chances. But the Philadelphia merchant princes, who controlled the American trade with the British and Dutch East Indies and China, were not so easily foiled. They loaded and despatched their ships during the embargo, a period of nearly two years, almost as freely, if not as ostentatiously, then as they had done before or as they did afterward. This policy was founded upon the soundest judgment. The India and China merchants of Philadelphia understood perfectly that the titanic struggle between England and Napoleon involved conflicting policies and ambitions relating only to the commerce between America and Europe, not to that between America and the Orient. Occasionally an American ship bound for India or China or thence for home would be brought to by an English or a French cruiser and searched. But, as those ships never carried anything contraband of war, the worst that ever happened to them was the occasional impressment of parts of their crews by the English or the levying of a small tribute by the French. The voyages, as a whole, were seldom interrupted, and almost never terminated by detention or capture. These were the halcyon days of Philadelphia’s trade with the far East. From 1803 to 1815 the French could not trade to the Orient at all. And though the East India Company kept up the sailings of its fleet with more or less regularity, yet the war rates of insurance and the expense and inconvenience of constant convoy placed their traffic at signal disadvantage as compared with that of the neutral Americans.

The Philadelphia-built Indiamen and China ships of that day had another and even more important element of safety: Given plenty of sea-room and clear weather, with sailing wind, no British or French cruiser of their time could get anywhere near them.

For example, the “Rebecca Sims,” built by Samuel Bowers in 1801, and overhauled, coppered, and newly sparred and rigged in the winter of 1806-07, passed Cape Henlopen the 10th of May, 1807, and took a Liverpool pilot aboard off the mouth of the Mersey the 24th, having run from the Delaware Capes to the Mersey in fourteen days. Notwithstanding all the improvements in clipper ships after her time, the “Rebecca Sims” still holds the sailing record between Henlopen and Liverpool!

The “Woodrup Sims,” built for the same owner by Mr. Humphreys in 1801, was chartered for the China trade in 1808. She passed out of the Capes the 8th of April and anchored in Whampoa Roads, Canton, the 6th of August, one hundred and seventeen days from the Delaware. But from this must be deducted two days hove-to in Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope; three days in port at the Isle of France (now the Mauritius), and two days hove-to in Angier Road, Java Head, the actual running time having been one hundred and ten days. Manifestly, ships capable of that kind of sailing had little need to fear the cruisers of England or of France.

To give an approximate idea of the value of Philadelphia’s East India and China trade in its halcyon days, it may be related that in the autumn of 1812 the ship “Montesquieu,” belonging to Stephen Girard, left Canton for the Delaware via Batavia. At the latter port she took on board, in addition to her China cargo from Canton, a rich freight of spices. She left Batavia before the news of the War of 1812 reached there. Her commander had intended to touch only at the Cape of Good Hope on his voyage home, that being a British colony. But when about five hundred miles east of the Cape he spoke a Portuguese vessel bound for Macao, whose captain informed him that England and the United States were at war. He then ran for Tristan d’Acunha, where he obtained needed supplies of water and wood, with such fresh provisions as the island afforded. Thence shaping his course homeward he arrived off the Capes of the Delaware in April, 1813. There she was brought to and taken by the British frigate “Tenedos.” But Mr. Girard was on the alert, and, judging about the time she ought to arrive, had been waiting for her in a cottage he owned at or near Lewes, and she was taken in plain sight of the shore. He at once put off in a pilot-yawl under a flag of truce, boarded the British frigate, and after some parley succeeded in ransoming the “Montesquieu” for £37,000 sterling in specie bills on London! He then took his ship up the river to Philadelphia. The blockade had raised the value of China and East India products enormously in the American market, and Mr. Girard realized the handsome sum of $1,220,000 from the sale of her cargo over and above the $185,000 he had paid as ransom. He was also offered a large sum for the ship herself to fit out as a privateer, but part of his agreement with the British captain was that she should not be used for that purpose, and so she was laid up during the rest of the war.

Upon the conclusion of peace in 1815, the India and China trade of Philadelphia was renewed with great vigor, and ship-building became more brisk than ever before.

The war had nearly obliterated the whaling fleet of New England and New York. Unable to replace those lost or destroyed as quickly as they desired in their own ports, the whaling owners resorted to Philadelphia, and in the seven years between 1815-1822 sixty-four ships, ranging from three hundred to four hundred tons, were built on the Delaware for the whale fishery to hail from New Bedford, Nantucket, New London, Sag Harbor, and other whaling ports. A peculiarity of these transactions was that most of the contracts for building whale-ships were taken by New England builders and then sublet to Philadelphia yards.

At the same time, that is, in the decade following the peace of 1815, a new element of ocean commerce came into being. This was the inauguration of regular packet-lines. The pioneer of this enterprise on any considerable scale was the famous “Cope Line,” founded by Thomas P. Cope in 1820, and employing at first five ships which were among the largest and best vessels then afloat. This line continued to run until the Civil War. Its ships were from five hundred and sixty to one thousand two hundred and eighty tons. They sailed from Philadelphia the 20th of each month and from Liverpool the 8th, their trip-time averaging thirty days and being almost as regular as the modern steamship lines. In addition to this regular monthly service, extra ships were frequently despatched as the exigencies of trade and travel might require.

Mr. Cramp, in one of his reminiscences, relates an interesting anecdote of the Cope Line. Soon after Jackson was inaugurated President, he appointed John Randolph, of Roanoke, Minister to Russia. The Cope Line being then far ahead of all other channels of ocean travel from Philadelphia to Europe, Mr. Randolph presented himself at its shipping-office. In his usual grandiloquent manner he said to the first man he encountered: “Sir, I want to see Thomas P. Cope.” He was shown to Mr. Cope’s office, and said to him, “I am John Randolph of Roanoke. I wish to take passage to Liverpool in one of your ships.” Mr. Cope replied, “I am Thomas Cope; if thee goes aboard the ship and selects thy state-room and will pay $150, thee may go.” Mr. Cope apparently could see no reason why a Philadelphia ship-owner and head of a great packet line should stand in awe of even a Virginia statesman.

About 1828-30 the India and China trade of Philadelphia suddenly declined, and in a few years passed almost entirely into the hands of New York and Boston. In a historical paper, Mr. Cramp describes the conditions of this traffic at its zenith, and suggests the cause or causes of its remarkable decline.

The custom, he says, was upon the arrival of the vessels to announce in the papers not only of Philadelphia but also of New York, Boston, Baltimore, and even less important cities, that the goods would be sold at auction, to begin on a certain day. These auction sales brought great numbers of merchants from other cities to Philadelphia, and during the first quarter of the nineteenth century it was beyond doubt the most profitable single line of traffic on the continent. The merchants engaged in it were not mere buyers and sellers as the term is understood now. They were important public characters, diplomatists and financiers, and their influence extended to the remotest parts of the earth. They amassed enormous fortunes and lived like princes. Some of them, either singly or in associations, owned fleets that would compare favorably with our then existing navy in numbers and tonnage. At its highest development, say, between 1825 and 1836, the volume of Philadelphia’s Oriental trade frequently reached sixty millions a year.

CRUISER YORKTOWN

Finally, however, causes began to operate which gradually changed the tide of affairs. These causes, as stated in the historical paper by Mr. Cramp, were numerous. Among them was the fact that, as the original merchants who had built up the trade grew old or died, their immediate heirs or descendants did not care to carry on the enterprises of their fathers or their grandfathers, and many of them lived permanently abroad. Eventually, at the moment when the jealousy, envy, and ambition of rivals, particularly in New York and New England, had reached the critical stage, the Legislature of Pennsylvania enacted a law imposing a certain tax on all auction sales within the State. This was a tax ostensibly universal and covering the whole business of sales by auction, but its real purpose was to get at and derive revenue from the great auction business of the China and India trade of Philadelphia. In those days it might easily happen that the auction sales of two or three ships’ cargoes would exceed in value, and therefore in revenue, all the rest of the auction sales in the State at large during the same time.

Of course, this was a development of a tendency on the part of the rural or country legislator of that time, which unfortunately has not entirely died out, to tax the great cities by special enactments for the benefit of the general revenue of the State.

As already stated, other causes had for some time been operating to weaken or shake Philadelphia’s supremacy in the Oriental trade, but the imposition of this tax, falling upon the heels of those causes, proved to be the last straw that broke the camel’s back. The result was that between 1825 and 1836 the great India and China traffic of Philadelphia almost disappeared. However, and notwithstanding the diversion of this trade to other ports, principally in New England, the marine architects and ship-builders of Philadelphia managed to retain the better part of the construction of vessels, which for many years afterward were employed by their successful rivals.

This somewhat extensive and discursive survey of the early colonial and post-Revolutionary conditions of Philadelphia ship-building seems requisite to a proper understanding of the state of the art and its accompaniments at the time when the subject of this Memoir first appeared upon the scene, and it also serves to indicate or explain what he had to do and the prior achievements which he had to equal or excel in his pursuit of professional success and eminence.

CHAPTER II

Birth—Relatives—High School—Magnetic Observatory—Note on Davidson—Surf-boats for Mexican War—First Propeller Tug “Sampson”—Ship-builders of New York and Philadelphia—Clipper Ships, 1850—Zenith of American Carrying Trade—Crimean War—Cunard Line—“Libertador”—Armored Ships—Board Appointed to Take Charge of Appropriation to Build Them—Account of “New Ironsides”—The “Monitor”—Speech of Bishop Simpson—Sub-Department of Navy—Light-draught Monitors—Sinking of the First—Collapse of Sub-Department—Rebuilding of “Yazoo,” “Tunxis,” and others—“Miantonomah”—Origin of Fast Cruisers—Evolution of Modern Marine Engineering in this Country.

Charles Henry Cramp was born May 9, 1828. He was the eldest son of William Cramp and Sophia Miller. At the time of his birth his father was a master shipwright, not yet engaged in ship-building on his own account, or at least not the proprietor of a shipyard.

The Cramp family are of the old German descent, and they were among the first settlers on the banks of the Delaware. The name was Krampf up to the Revolution, when, according to the fashion at that time, it was anglicized. They came from Baden.

The fact that the art of ship-building “ran in the blood” may be judged from the fact that in 1788 Paul Jones, commanding the Russian Black Sea fleet during the Turkish war of that period, under the reign of Catherine the Great, says in his journal that among the foreign employees of the Russian Ministry of Marine was a naval architect named John Cramp, who held the position of secretary to the Russian Black Sea administration and had charge of the dock-yard which had been established at Kherson.

The Millers and Byerlys of the mother’s family were also ship-builders. Mr. Cramp’s maternal grandfather, Henry Miller, who had become proficient as a shipwright, at twenty-one invested his small fortune in an interest in the cargo of a vessel in one of the earliest voyages after the Revolution from the port of Philadelphia to the East, taking in China, the Indies, and the Philippines. His departure was witnessed by his fiancée, Elizabeth Byerly, who waited faithfully and patiently his return.

These vessels were fitted out “man-of-war fashion,” with the captain and mates, carpenter and boatswain as officers, and the latter were the battery commanders.

They always carried a supercargo, and sold the cargoes at the various ports and invested the proceeds in China shawls, teas, spices, and other products of the East.

At that time the waters of the East Indies and China swarmed with adventurers, pirates, rovers, and privateers; and the armed merchantmen had frequent brushes with them. In fact, many merchantmen of that time became imbued with the restless, adventurous spirit of the age and, commanding vessels heavily armed, took possession of some of the weaker ships they encountered, becoming veritable pirates for a time, and then returning to their homes under peaceful guise when the profits of their voyage had reached a satisfactory figure. The foundations of many fortunes in our Atlantic cities were laid upon such practices.

Mr. Miller embarked again with his augmented capital, in fact, making four voyages, each time with the profits of previous voyages in the new one, encountering many adventures with the pirates that infested the waters of the East and with an occasional privateer.

It was on his return from the fourth voyage when he, with the accumulations of his original venture sufficient to secure a life of ease and comparative luxury, and eager to meet his fiancée, who would be patiently awaiting his arrival, was in sight of Cape Henlopen, with the full assurance that his voyages were ended and with every anticipation of a happy consummation of his eager wishes, a large privateer carrying a French flag hove in sight in a position of advantage.

The privateer, carrying a heavier armament and larger crew, captured the vessel before she could get inside of the Capes, and took the whole party to Martinique, where the whole property was confiscated and all the crew and officers were put in jail.

Mr. Miller, who was a Mason, was astonished to find that the French jailer was also one, and, as a mark of kindness, took him out and made a body-servant of him. His ingenuity and adaptability to circumstances enabled him to escape, and he reached Philadelphia without a cent and but little raiment. When Elizabeth Byerly was seen next day on Point-no-Point Road in a buggy with him, she looked as happy as if fortune was already in her hands. When they were married the next day, a serviceable loan from a friend facilitated the marriage festivities.

His restless, adventurous spirit, augmented by his voyages at sea, now took a different turn, and his time was taken up by trips from Pittsburg to New Orleans in arks that he and his companions built in Pittsburg, and with cargoes of produce and other freight they floated down the Ohio and Mississippi, relieving each other at steering or playing the violin and taking an occasional shot at a deer that would be found swimming across the river. The rivers Ohio and Mississippi ran through a wilderness at that time, and its fascinations had a wonderful effect on him.

After the cargoes and the lumber of which the arks were built were sold and the proceeds lost in speculation, they would make their way up to Natchez or other river towns, where they would be sure to get a steamboat or a flat boat or two to build, and then return to Philadelphia for a while. Henry Miller became well known on the rivers, and could always secure a commission to build the various craft that were found in the waters of the West.

One of Henry Miller’s sisters married John Bennett, a ship-builder of repute, who went to live in Bordentown while engaged with his sons at Hoboken as shipwright and ship-builder for the celebrated Stevens family. It was there that with other vessels they built the yacht “Maria,” named after the wife of John Stevens. The building of the “Maria” was an event, and Maria Stevens spent most of her spare time at the yard in looking over her construction and finish. The Stevens battery was begun during the Bennett period.

Mrs. Miller’s brother was John Byerly, and her sister married William Sutton, both noted ship-builders. So when William Cramp, who had learned his profession under Samuel Grice, married Sophia Miller, two families of ship-builders were united.

Charles H. Cramp was two years old when his father acquired frontage on the Delaware in Kensington and established a shipyard of his own.

This early enterprise of William Cramp, who was then twenty-three years old, has since grown to be the great establishment known as The William Cramp & Sons Ship and Engine Building Company.

It does not seem necessary here to recount the progress of that pioneer enterprise. Suffice it to say that at the time when William Cramp founded his shipyard it was one of fourteen on the Delaware at different points on the river front between Southwark and Kensington, and it is the only one of the fourteen that remains in existence.

Of Charles Henry Cramp’s childhood and early youth, it is not necessary to speak here in detail. He was, it might be said, born into the atmosphere of naval architecture and the art of ship-building, and from his earliest activity he never practised or attempted to practise any other profession.

When about fourteen years of age he had exhausted the educational possibilities of the ordinary schools and entered the old Central High School, which was then presided over by Alexander Dallas Bache, the most consummate master of the science of applied mathematics and the physical sciences of his time in this country, if not in the world. While at the High School, Mr. Bache was appointed to take charge of the appropriation of a million dollars by Congress to defray the cost of a series of observations on terrestrial magnetism in co-operation with similar observations along the same lines in Europe, and also for the purpose of making certain observations in meteorology. The appropriations for the last-named observations were made on the recommendations of Professor Espy. This was about 1846.

While Washington was the central point of the observations, Philadelphia was practically the head-quarters, because Professor Bache and his associate. Major Bache, resided there.

Observations were established at Charleston, New Orleans, and Utica, and they communicated with Toronto, the Canadian station.

Professor Bache took his observers at Philadelphia from among the pupils of the High School for night work, and he had the day observers from the University.

George Davidson, Charles H. Cramp, and William H. Hunter were among the number, and the observations, after being collated at Washington, were ultimately deposited at the Smithsonian Institute, and later on formed the basis of the operations of the “Signal Service Bureau.” At the time the observations were made, the magnetic telegraph had not as yet been utilized, and the course of storms was portrayed by mail after they had occurred.

Not long after this period, Professor Bache was appointed to succeed Mr. Hasler as head of the Coast Survey. He invited the young men who were in the group of the magnetic installation to accompany him in his new field of labor, and Mr. Cramp was invited with the rest, but desiring to engage in ship-building he pursued that art.

Mr. Davidson, who was in the magnetic observations with Mr. Cramp, and was a school-mate and life-long friend, remained on the Coast Survey under Mr. Bache, and spent the greater portion of his life on the Pacific in that capacity; and it was under his direction and control that the great Triangulation of our newly acquired possessions there from the Rocky Mountains to the coast was made by him, and said to be by scientists the greatest work in geodesy ever made by or under one man.

He is now Professor of Commercial Geography in the University of California. He has filled nearly every position there that required the highest attainments in the physical sciences. The Alaska Commission, inauguration of Lick Observatory, expeditions for the observation of eclipses of the sun, are a small portion of the important positions that he has filled. His contributions to science would fill volumes.

At the end of a term of three and one-half years under the tutorship of Professor Bache, Mr. Cramp entered the shipyard of his maternal uncle, John Byerly. This arrangement was made, notwithstanding the fact that his father, William Cramp, was then actively engaged in ship-building on his own account; the idea being that it would be better, all things considered, for him to begin his practical experience under other tutorage than that of his own father.

About 1846, or in his nineteenth year, Mr. Cramp, having attained to a certain point the qualifications of a practical ship-builder in his uncle’s shipyard, went to that of his own father.

MONITOR TERROR

Among the first things undertaken when in his father’s yard, Mr. Cramp designed the pioneer propeller tug-boat ever built in the United States, the “Sampson,” and it fixed the type now so numerous in the waters of America. She was of a peculiar build. Her dimensions were eighty feet long and twenty feet beam. She had as much dead rise as a pilot-boat or “pungy,” and had a keel three feet wide at the stern-post. In getting up the design, it was considered indispensable by the marine engineers at that time to have the screw entirely beneath the bottom of the vessel, and, as the screw was six feet in diameter, the engine-builders wanted the keel six feet wide. When shown the impracticability of this, they were content to have three feet of the screw beneath the bottom of the ship. The propeller shaft ran on top of the floors and the bearings were between the frames. The crank was between the frames and just cleared the outside planking in its sweep. She proved to be a profitable investment for the owners, Michael Molloy & Son, who ordered another one. This was the “Bird.” She had a narrower keel, and the bearings of the propeller shaft were secured to the top of the floors. Another one was built a short time after, and, in view of the shallow water in which she had to run, the keel was only ten inches wide. This was considered a great detriment to the efficiency of the screw; but on the trial it was found that the importance of wide keels was overestimated, and the practice came to an end.

A considerable operation of unusual and interesting character was undertaken by his father about that time, and in which Mr. Cramp himself assisted. This was the design and construction of a fleet of surf-boats intended for the purpose of facilitating the landing of General Scott’s army at Vera Cruz. The naval and military authorities of that time were doubtful of the capacity of the ordinary boats of the fleet itself to land a sufficient body of troops at one time to command the shore. The intention at first was to provide a sufficient number of boats to land the whole army at once, and three hundred boats were contracted for upon a design made by William Cramp.

Only a part of them was built by Mr. Cramp, but they were all built upon his plans. They were large surf-boats of three different sizes, and were carried to Vera Cruz on the decks of schooners chartered for the purpose. The thwarts were taken out of the larger boats and the smaller ones of different sizes were stowed in them.

The “Standard History of the Mexican War” shows that out of the total number (three hundred) designed by Cramp and contracted for with different boat-builders, only one hundred and eighty-six (186) were actually delivered and used, and in the operations against Vera Cruz, General Scott’s army was landed by divisions. The Regular Division commanded by General Worth was put on shore first, then the Volunteer Division of General Robert Patterson, and, finally, the mixed Regular and Volunteer Division of General Twiggs.

After these boats had been used for their original purpose they were cast adrift. Their sea-worthiness may be estimated from the fact that some of them were picked up in mid-Atlantic months afterward.

There are stories in history about invading armies burning their bridges behind them, but this is unquestionably the only instance where an army deliberately cast loose the boats in which it had landed upon the soil of an enemy. Burning bridges might mean, and doubtless would, the simple destruction of means of recrossing a river in the case of disaster, but the destruction or dispersion of the boats in which Scott’s army landed at Vera Cruz meant the obliteration of any possible means they might have had of crossing a gulf and ocean had the fortune of war been adverse to them.

Starbuck, in his “History of the American Whale-fishery,” refers to this incident, and says that some of these boats were picked up by whaling-ships, whose crews highly prized them, and that they were used for years afterward in the sperm and right-whale fisheries of the Pacific Ocean.

At the beginning of the career of Mr. Cramp in ship-building, the profession had arrived at its highest state of efficiency in everything that related to the design, finish, and outfit of ships. They were with but few exceptions all of wood, and it was in the wooden ship and during the period between 1840 and 1860 that the art and everything belonging to it attained its highest proficiency. Ship-building as an art, profession, and science culminated about this time,—the great transition from wood to iron.

From the earliest period up to that time the professional ship-builder or “master builder,” as he has always been called, was a master in reality. He designed, modelled, and built his own ships, and his appreciation of the beautiful and his artistic taste were of the most refined and cultivated character, and were everything that the term sculptor, artist, and constructor meant. He was acutely sensitive; his contempt for the quack and commonplace in his profession was as great as that of the physician in regular practice for the medical quack.

The builder, the shipwright, the commander, and sailor of this period have never been equalled in any of their professions since, and with but few exceptions the modern steel ship is a retrograde in everything pertaining to the real art as compared to the ship of the period we refer to. The ships, of course, are larger now, and that is all. This period was not only noted on account of the high character of the art, but ship-building plants in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore turned out the finest specimens of construction in the world. All of the workmen—shipwrights, ship-joiners, ship-smiths, ship-painters, and caulkers—were without equals on the planet.

The Webbs, the Westervelts, the Steers family, Jere Simonson, Smith and Dimon and others of New York, and John Vaughan, John Byerly, the Van Duzen family, John K. Hammett and William Cramp, of Philadelphia, were the leaders of their profession the world over. In the navy were to be found the Grices, the Humphreys, the Hanscoms, Delano, and others.

The introduction of the iron ship was made under very unfavorable conditions. The first to take hold of the new material were people, mechanically speaking, of commonplace character both here and abroad, and the art or profession as a rule retains the original taint up to this time. There are some exceptions; some ship-builders in Great Britain carried their art into the Iron Age,—the Napiers, the Ingliss family, and others in Great Britain, and the Cramps in the United States.

Mr. Cramp’s mould loft practice and methods as carried on from the wooden-ship period is the practice now in use in the construction of the navy.

The great advance in the steamship of the period thence up to this time has been in the machinery; and in marine engineering the English were our masters. There has been no advance here in the ship-building art in any respect.

The decade following the Mexican War and preceding that of the Rebellion was marked chiefly by the final or ultimate development of the clipper type of sailing-vessel, and also by the gradual surrender of sail to steam in propulsion and of wood to iron in construction. The clipper idea was undoubtedly of Baltimore origin, and, in fact, the name of that city was given to the type,—the “Baltimore Clipper.” They were, of course, sailing-vessels. In all respects of model, of structure, size of spars and sails, dimensions of hull, etc., the type was distinctly American. It is known, however, that the earliest clippers built in Baltimore were intended for and used in the African slave-trade. In this nefarious traffic they were extremely successful, because in the day of their beginning there were no steam cruisers to enforce the laws making the slave-trade piracy, and there was no sailing cruiser afloat which could keep within sight of a Baltimore clipper in the slave-trading days.

The type, though originating in Baltimore, was not developed there to its ultimate capacity, but the idea was taken up by Philadelphia, New York, and New England ship-builders and embodied in the famous lines which plied between this country and the Pacific Ocean. The discovery of gold in California also gave a great impetus to commerce in sailing-vessels. Of course, steamships soon began to run from New York to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus and from the Pacific side to San Francisco, but there was no railway across the Isthmus at first, so that very little freight traffic could be handled by these steamers. The result was that all freights between the Atlantic coast and California had to go around Cape Horn, and in this traffic the clipper ship fully asserted its value.

The decade of the 50’s was really the zenith of the American carrying trade on the ocean. Relatively to the total amount of ocean commerce, our ships carried a larger proportion of it than ever before in time of peace. Of course, during the Napoleonic wars, when our flag was neutral, we carried a larger proportion of our own products than in the 50’s, but never before in a time of general peace.

The Crimean War, which happened during this period, also helped American commerce in the ocean carrying trade, because the French and English took up a great deal of their tonnage for transporting troops and military supplies during the years 1854, 1855, and 1856, and to a great extent the places of these ships were filled by vessels under the American flag.

All these causes combined to create marked activity in American ship-building.

To this might be added the effort to establish a trans-Atlantic steamship line under the American flag in opposition to the heavily subsidized Cunard Line. This was known as the Collins Line, and while the government aid lasted it held its own in competition with its British antagonists, but the subsidy was soon withdrawn, and with it the Collins Line collapsed.

On the whole, so far as American ocean commerce and ship-building are concerned, the decade of the 50’s was one of the most interesting in our history. During that period the Cramp concern built from the designs and under the superintendence of Charles H. Cramp a considerable number of important sailing merchant vessels, together with several steamers, mostly constructed for the coasting trade between the ports on the Atlantic and on the Gulf. Cramp also built during that period seven steamers for Spanish or Cuban account to be used in the coasting trade of the Spanish West Indies. They were called “Carolina,” “Cardenas,” “Alphonso,” “Union ‘Maisi,’” “General Armero,” and “Union No. 2.” The last one was not finished until the outbreak of the Rebellion, when she was taken possession of temporarily by the government and converted into a gun-boat, now in the navy list as the “Union.” An interesting incident in Mr. Cramp’s career was his visit to Havana for the purpose of delivering these ships. In their delivery and in making settlement for their construction he spent several months at Havana, where his knowledge of the Spanish language, in which he always retained considerable proficiency, was of great service to him.

The first war vessel designed by Mr. Cramp was the “Libertador,” built for Venezuela. She was fitted with a pair of trunk engines by Messrs. Sutton & Smith, who were noted for their skill in building trunk and oscillating and other marine engines. She mounted a large pivot-gun on her quarter-deck, and when fired off on her trial trip at Market Street, the windows there were broken and the gun nearly kicked herself overboard.

We now arrive at the period of the Civil War, in the operations connected with which Mr. Cramp’s genius first became conspicuous in the broad or national sense.

The work hitherto described, although important in its time and place and under its conditions, which were those of peace, had really served little more than the purpose of a practical training-school to fit him for the broader and more comprehensive duties and responsibilities which the exigencies of the Civil War imposed.

At the outbreak of that struggle, optimistic statesmen, like Mr. Seward, dreamed that it would be over in ninety days. Those dreams went up in the smoke of the first Bull Run. Then the authorities at Washington awoke to the fact that they had on their hands a long and stubborn war.

It is a fact not generally known, or usually lost sight of, that during the first six months of the Civil War, that is to say from April to September, 1861, inclusive, the South raised and embodied a larger number of troops than the North did, and the scale in that respect did not turn until the government had begun to realize the results of its call for five hundred thousand men. But the problem that confronted our authorities was not military alone. It soon became clear to sagacious minds that a great sea power must be created as well as an overpowering force by land. It was a foregone conclusion that notwithstanding the great numerical disparity between the white population of the South and that of the North,—the proportion being about six millions in the South to twenty-five millions in the North,—it would be impossible to overcome them so long as their ports remained open. If the Southern people could continue without serious hindrance to exchange their cotton for European, principally English, arms, ammunition, military supplies, and munitions of war of all kinds, together with provisions and clothing of the kind which they had habitually imported, their armies could keep the field; their railroad system could be kept in fair running order, and the numerical superiority of the North must thereby to a great extent be neutralized. Therefore an effective blockade became an immediate and absolute necessity.

The total coast-line of the Confederacy, Atlantic Ocean and Gulf together, was three thousand six hundred miles long, measured in straight lines. The shore-line, or sinuosities, was considerably more than twice that length. It is a coast indented with numerous inland bays and estuaries, affording easy access to the immediate interior and safe refuge for their ships or the ships of those with whom they traded. Of course, a mere blockade by proclamation would not be respected by any foreign maritime power. Paper blockade so-called had been ruled out of consideration years before in solemn congress or conference of the Great Powers.

At that moment our navy was at its lowest ebb, and, of the few ships available for immediate service, many were on foreign stations and could not easily or quickly be recalled, as the cable system of communication was then unknown.

The task therefore became that of immediately improvising a navy capable of enforcing a real blockade. To accomplish this, before the end of 1861 every steamer of every description that could keep the sea or carry a gun was pressed into the service, and our commercial fleet, so far as steam navigation was concerned, ceased to exist.

These converted vessels served a fairly good purpose ad interim, or until the government could bring its resources to build a more effective fleet of regular men-of-war.

In addition to this necessity for the immediate improvisation of a blockading fleet, the question of armored vessels presented itself, because, besides the blockade, bombardment of sea-coast fortifications which had been seized by the Confederates must be an essential part of the general plan of operations.

CRUISERS BALTIMORE AND PHILADELPHIA

The idea of armored ships was then entirely novel. In 1861 only two efforts had been made, one by England and the other by France, to construct an armored sea-going vessel. To meet this necessity of having ships capable of attacking heavily armed forts, Congress passed an act, approved August 3, 1861, authorizing the construction of armored vessels. This act authorized and directed the Secretary to appoint a board of skilled naval officers to investigate plans and specifications that might be submitted for the construction of iron- or steel-clad steamships or steam floating batteries; and, on their favorable report, authorizing the Secretary to cause one or more armored or iron- or steel-clad steamships to be built, making an appropriation of $1,500,000 to carry the act into effect. Pursuant to this act, the Secretary appointed on August 8 a board consisting of Commodore Joseph Smith, Commodore Hiram Paulding, and Commander Charles Davis, to examine such plans as might be submitted, and issued an advertisement, under date of August 7, calling for plans and prices. The advertisement stated that a general description and drawings of the vessels’ armor and machinery, sufficient to indicate the character and probable efficiency of the vessel, would be required; also that the offer must state the cost and time for completing, exclusive of armament and stores, the rate of speed proposed, etc. Persons proposing to make offers under this advertisement were required to inform the Department of their intention before the 15th of August, and to have their propositions presented within twenty-five days from the date of the advertisement.

On September 16, 1861, the board reported that seventeen offers had been laid before them. All but three, however, were ruled out, mainly on account of insufficiency of data or lack of drawings. Several of them were, in fact, mere suggestions.

The three selected were: First, one to be built of wood and plated with four inches of iron; to be a full-rigged ship of about three thousand three hundred tons displacement; price, $780,000; length of the vessel, two hundred and twenty feet; breadth of beam, sixty feet; depth of hold, twenty-three feet; contract time, nine months; draught of water, thirteen feet; speed, nine and one-half knots.

The second, offered by C. S. Bushnell & Co., of New Haven, was of the low freeboard monitor type, the invention of which is commonly ascribed to John Ericsson; and the third, offered by same parties, which was afterward known as the “Galena.”

The first vessel described afterward became the “New Ironsides.” Her hull was designed entirely by Mr. Cramp. Generally speaking, her type was that of a broadside sea-going iron-clad. She was a roomy, comfortable ship for her officers and crew. Her fighting quarters were well protected against the shot of that day. Although engaged with forts and batteries a greater number of times than any other one vessel in the service, her armor was never pierced.

Perhaps at this point a description of the vessel and the conditions attending her construction, in the form of a paper read some years ago by Mr. Cramp before the Contemporary Club, of Philadelphia, will be more pointed and interesting than any other delineation.

It is as follows:

“NEW IRONSIDES”

“When the ‘New Ironsides’ was contracted for there was no white oak timber available outside of Pennsylvania. Timber of this kind was cleaned out in Delaware and Maryland, and Virginia was for the time-being inaccessible. So the timber that must be used was growing in the forests of Pennsylvania when the contract was signed.

“With the exception of pine decking every stick of timber was of white oak, and being the largest wooden ship ever built, the frames were very heavy,—the floor timbers were two to each frame, and, being without first futtocks and running from bilge to bilge, they required a tree large enough to be twenty-two inches in diameter at a height of forty-five feet from the ground. Trees of this kind were very scarce in Pennsylvania, and frequently only a single tree would be found in a township, which had been preserved as an heirloom by the owner, and it was often difficult to persuade him to sell.

“During the month of October, 1861, we advertised in the country papers that we would pay a dollar a running foot for every tree that was brought to us by the first of January, under the requirements that they were to be at least twenty-two inches in diameter at forty-five feet from the ground, and the logs were to be sided on two sides anywhere from thirteen inches up to eighteen inches.

“At this time, the beginning of the war, farming and business in country towns being very slack, all suitable trees in the forests of Bucks, Berks, Delaware, and Chester counties and some counties more remote were prospected by the country-people and farmers, who worked very hard utilizing moonlight nights as well as daytime in cutting and shipping this timber. These counties were traversed by the North Pennsylvania Railroad, and the various stations from Quakertown down were soon gorged with logs that had to be delivered at our shipyard on or before the first of January to meet our requirements. By the first of January we had logs sufficient to make all the floors of the ship, and quite a number were left at the stations where they had accumulated too rapidly for the railroad to handle them, and they could not be delivered within our time limit. This timber was afterward bought at a reduced price.

“Not being able to get yellow pine, the beams and water-ways were made of white oak. Some of these pieces were sixty feet long and were sided up to sixteen inches. But notwithstanding these difficulties and the fact that all the frame-timber was standing in the forest when we took the contract, yet the vessel was launched in six months after it was signed.

“The region traversed by the North Pennsylvania Railroad in furnishing the frames, water-ways, and beams became exhausted in its turn, so that toward the termination of the war white oak for the beams of the light-draught monitors had to be procured chiefly in Columbia County, in the interior of the State of Pennsylvania.

“There was also difficulty in securing timber for the curved futtocks, which were principally made of roots and were obtained from Delaware.

“The frames were fitted together solidly and caulked before ceiling or planking was secured, and the outside planking below the lower edge of armor was twelve inches thick, tapering off to the lower turn of the bilge to five inches. So the ship in her defensive capabilities was a war machine of no mean type.

“If the ship had been built of steel instead of wood, she would have been sunk when she was struck by a spar torpedo off Charleston.

“The explosion took place at the height of the orlop-deck, where the outside planking was twelve inches thick, and where the end of a sixteen-inch beam backed the frames. The side sprung in about six inches at the point of contact with the torpedo, ‘brooming’ the end of the sixteen-inch oak beam, and considerable water came in for a short time. The side of the ship, through the elasticity of the material, came back to its original form in a short time and the leak stopped. A gigantic marine, who was sitting on his chest at that part of the deck near the point of the explosion was thrown upward against the beams above him, breaking his collar-bone, and he was the only person injured on the ship.

“The time involved in the construction of the ‘New Ironsides,’ launching in six months from the laying of the keel, was remarkable in view of the fact that, besides the timber difficulty, nearly all the skilled workmen and ship-wrights here had gone into the navy-yard, and we were compelled to scour the country for men who were mostly indifferent mechanics. A large number of ship-carpenters and other men came from Baltimore and Maine, who had left their homes to avoid conscription or to secure the high rates of wages paid here.

“An interesting incident connected with the building of the ‘New Ironsides’ was the fact that during the first half of her construction the progress in naval ordnance had advanced so rapidly that the authorities concluded to enlarge the caliber of her guns sufficiently to double the power of the original design. The ship was at first planned to carry sixteen 8-inch smooth-bore guns, which was at that time considered the heaviest caliber that could be worked in a broadside mount. Having in view the fact that all war-ships heretofore built, particularly steam-ships, exceeded their calculated draught, I determined to avoid a similar error in this ship. I provided against it in my calculations of displacement by allowing a foot for a margin. The draught was not to exceed fifteen feet; I allowed for fourteen feet. The minimum height of the port-sills above water at load draught, to insure sea-worthiness and ability to fight the guns in sea-way, should have been seven feet, according to our instructions. But in getting up the plans I arranged that the port-sills with the 8-inch battery would be eight feet above water. My calculations having been correctly made, I had a foot to spare.

“About three months after we began work, and when the frames were up and the beams in, the Department decided to arm the ship with fourteen 11-inch Dahlgrens in broadside and two 200-pounders (8-inch Parrotts). They were all muzzle loaders. This, together with the increased weight of ammunition for the larger guns, exactly consumed my foot of margin and brought the port-sills down to the normal height of seven feet above water, and the draught of ship there was not over fifteen feet, the original design.

“It may not be improper to say that I received much credit and congratulation from the Board and others for my foresight in allowing the margin as I did, and for the correctness of my calculations. But for that the modified battery would have brought the port-sills down to six feet or less, which would have rendered it dangerous to open the main-deck ports in much of a sea.

“During the earlier stages of the construction of this ship but little attention was paid to it by the people of the country; the exciting conditions of the war on land; battles won and lost; the movement of troops, etc., occupied the entire attention of the people; so that while the yard was left open and no fence around it there were no visitors.

“When the battle between the ‘Monitor’ and ‘Merrimac’ took place a short time before launching the ‘New Ironsides,’ the whole world was aroused, and their attention was called to the fact that there were such things as armor-clad ships.

“When the number of visitors who applied for admission was so great that we had to build a high fence around the shipyard, and only admitted those who secured tickets issued by us, and when the launch took place, it was under conditions of great excitement and enthusiasm. The completion of the ship was accomplished in a very short time, and her first scene of operations was before Fort Sumter, which she bombarded eleven months and two days after the contract was signed.

“At this point the history of the contracts may be stated:

“When the appropriation was made by Congress for the purpose of constructing iron-clads, the Secretary of the Navy, as has been remarked, created a board on armored ships, consisting of Commodores Paulding, Smith, and Davis, who were fully authorized to carry out the provisions of the law and make contracts, keeping in view what had been done by England and France in the way of iron-plated floating batteries. These gentlemen advertised for plans and specifications accompanied by proposals for accomplishing the purpose of the act of Congress. There were twenty-five or thirty proposals, embracing a great diversity of projects, the principal features of most of which were lack of well-defined plan, type, and character.

“After considerable investigation, the board decided to accept three plans and award the contracts. They were the ‘New Ironsides,’ the original ‘Monitor,’ and the ‘Galena.’ Those three vessels exhibited a vast diversity in form, construction, and outfit.

“A number of fables have originated and have come to be believed as truths about many of the circumstances attending the selection of plans. Among others, it was said that Mr. Lincoln himself, being impressed with the claims of Mr. Ericsson, had to interfere, and ordered the board to select the ‘Monitor.’ This is entirely false, for no such demonstration was ever made by Mr. Lincoln, and the board was not influenced at all by any considerations of that or any other kind except their own judgment.

“The contract for the ‘New Ironsides’ was awarded to Merrick & Sons; the design, plans, and specifications of hull complete had been made by me in connection with Mr. B. H. Bartol, who conceived the project and had charge of the proposal to the government,—Mr. B. H. Bartol was Superintendent of Merrick & Sons at that time. When the contract was awarded to Merrick & Sons, they sub-let the hull together with the fittings to our firm, in accordance with a previous agreement with Mr. Bartol. The contract price was about $848,000. Merrick & Sons furnished the engines and armor plate. The engines were designed by I. Vaughan Merrick, and were duplicates of those which they had completed for a sloop-of-war, and were for a single screw. The speed was about seven knots. She was bark-rigged with bowsprit.

“After completing the ‘New Ironsides,’ I proposed to build two more of similar type with certain modifications and improvements, that is, sea-going iron-clads, with twin screws instead of a single one, and in increasing the speed and the efficiency of the armor. But at that time what was known as the ‘Monitor craze’ was in full blast, and, notwithstanding the excellent all-around performance of the ‘New Ironsides,’ she remained the only sea-going broadside iron-clad in the navy, and was the first to fire a gun at an enemy, and fought more battles than all other sea-going battleships past and present put together.

“The armor plate of the ‘New Ironsides’ was made partly at Pittsburg and partly at Bristol, Pennsylvania, and was of hammered scrap iron. It was four inches thick, and the plates, which could now be rolled in many mills and be considered light work, were then looked upon as marvels of heavy forging.

“When the contract was made for the ship, wages for shipwrights were $1.75 per day, and in less than two months they rose to $3 per day. We contracted for all the copper sheathing and bolts the day after signing the contract at twenty-nine cents per pound; in four months it was sixty cents per pound. Materials in general went up from 50 to 100 per cent. before we finished the ship.

“Great and radical changes have since occurred, but, primitive as the ‘New Ironsides’ seems in comparison with modern battleships, it is doubtful if any one now existing will ever see as much fighting or make so much history as she did. Last July, in an address read before the Naval War College at Newport, I said:

“‘I cannot better illustrate my point than by comparing the first and the last sea-going battleships built and delivered to the government by Cramp. The first was the ‘New Ironsides,’ built in 1862. The last is the ‘Iowa,’ completed in 1897. Each represented or represents the maximum development of its day.

“‘The ‘New Ironsides’ had one machine, her main engine, involving two steam-cylinders. The ‘Iowa’ has seventy-one machines, involving one hundred and thirty-seven steam-cylinders.

“‘The guns of the ‘New Ironsides’ were worked, the ammunition hoisted, the ship steered, the engine started and reversed, her boats handled, in short, all functions of fighting and manœuvring, by hand. The ship was lighted by oil lamps and ventilated, when at all, by natural air currents. Though, as I said, the most advanced type of her day, she differed from her greater battleship predecessor, the old three-decker ‘Pennsylvania,’ only in four inches of iron side armor and auxiliary steam propulsion. She carried fewer guns on fewer decks than the ‘Pennsylvania,’ but her battery was nevertheless of much greater ballistic power.

“‘In the ‘Iowa’ it may almost be said that nothing is done by hand except the opening and closing of throttles and pressing of electric buttons. Her guns are loaded, trained, and fired, her ammunition hoisted, her turrets turned, her torpedoes, mechanisms in themselves, are tubed and ejected, the ship steered, her boats hoisted out and in, and the interior lighted and ventilated, the great search-light operated, and even orders transmitted from bridge or conning-tower to all parts by mechanical appliances.

“‘Surely no more striking view than this of the development of thirty-five years could be afforded.’

“The battery of the ‘New Ironsides’ was mounted in broadside, and she had eight ports of a side, out of which she fought seven 11-inch Dahlgrens and one 200-pounder Parrott, the maximum train or arc of fire being about 45 degrees.

“The ‘Iowa’s’ four 12-inch guns are mounted in pairs in two turrets, and train through arcs of about 260 degrees forward and aft respectively. Her eight 8-inch guns are mounted in pairs in four turrets, and each pair trains through an effective arc of about 180 degrees.

“The ‘New Ironsides’ had no direct bow or stern fire.

“The ‘Iowa’ fires two 12-inch and four 8-inch guns straight ahead and straight astern.

“The maximum shell-range of the heaviest guns of the ‘Ironsides’ was about a mile and a quarter, that of the ‘Iowa’s’ heaviest guns is about eight miles. The muzzle energy of the ‘Ironsides’’ 11-inch smooth bores was to that of the ‘Iowa’s’ 12-inch rifles about as 1 to 26.

“The fate of the ‘New Ironsides’ is well known: she was destroyed by fire at League Island in 1866, about a year after her last action.”

Judged by modern standards of construction, the time expended in building the “New Ironsides” was marvellously brief, six months, because, as Mr. Cramp said, she was in action against Fort Sumter within eleven months from signing of the contract.

Of course, there can be no comparison between the methods of her construction or the nature of her appliances and those of a modern battleship, yet in her time and for her day she was the most formidable and powerful sea-going battleship afloat.

Mr. Cramp, notwithstanding that he was entering upon a new and untried field without any prior guidance of observation or experience, undertook the design and construction of this remarkable vessel with all the confidence that a sense of professional mastery never fails to inspire; and so confident was he that the “New Ironsides” would prove a success that, while she was building, he proceeded to design two other vessels of the same type, but embodying numerous improvements which his experience in construction of the “Ironsides” from day to day suggested to him, and when these designs were completed he offered them to the Department.

He then discovered that the Navy Department had become entirely under the influence of what might be called the “Monitor craze,” which absolutely dominated the councils of the Department and of Congress in respect to armor-clad vessels.

A combination, or “ring,” was formed, with head-quarters in New York, to prevent the construction of any type of iron-clad vessel except monitors, and it had sufficient power to carry its determination into effect.

CRUISER NEWARK

A sudden halt was made in the development of the armored sea-going type which originated during the Crimean War. France had finished the construction of “La Courunne,” “La Gloire,” and several others, one of which had made a voyage to Vera Cruz before our Civil War, and certain lessons derived from that ship during the voyage were utilized in the construction of the “New Ironsides.” Both England and France were proceeding slowly in the development of the very complete type of battleship of the present day. While they built several vessels of an improved monitor type and adopted the turret on a roller base, in many cases they adhered to the course first laid out. The late British battleships have fixed barbettes and shields for their heavy guns.

The old Timby turret is practically a revolving barbette extending above the guns, which had to be loaded at the muzzle and the rammer being jointed, eleven minutes being occupied in loading and firing.

In the operations before Charleston, the Confederates would leave their bomb proofs after a shot was fired, and prepare for the next one during the eleven minutes and retire unharmed, ready to renew the contest. Under these conditions, the defence became a system of guns in a casemate connecting with a bomb proof.

The old-fashioned monitor, viewed simply as a floating battery for use in smooth water, was serviceable. It was not in any sense a sea-going vessel, and it was always in danger of foundering as it crept along the coast from harbor to harbor. Besides this, it was almost intolerable to its officers and men in the living sense. In fact, service in the monitors developed a new and distinct disease known in the war-time pathology as the “monitor fever.” Whenever one was torpedoed, as for example the “Tecumseh” in Mobile Bay, she sank immediately; so quickly, in fact, that her crew below deck were unable to escape. The torpedo which the “New Ironsides” resisted practically without injury would have instantly sunk any monitor then existing. The “Ironsides,” on the contrary, was a sea-going vessel of the best and stanchest type, capable of any length of voyage with comfort and perfect safety to her officers and crew.

A wise administration of the Navy Department, or one not affected by the influence of cranks and combinations, would have built at least half a dozen vessels of that type as soon as they could be constructed.

Mr. Cramp, realizing and appreciating the value of the type, and knowing that the influences which prevented its multiplication in the navy were unworthy, keenly felt the sting of his repulses. However, he proceeded to build such ships as the Department required, including a monitor, and from that time to the end of the war gave the navy the full benefit of his experience and skill in all directions, both in new construction and repair.

Partly through the natural unthinking enthusiasm of the people in times of great excitement and partly through a carefully planned campaign of sentiment adroitly managed by the ring, the monitor became almost the symbol of patriotism.

After the repulse of the “Merrimac” in Hampton Roads, Ericsson was almost deified, particularly by that class of people who consider rant synonymous with eloquence. Yet such sentiments were actually cherished at the time by a great many people who knew nothing whatever about the actual merits of different types of vessels. But their fanaticism made the operations of the monitor ring easy, and at the same time made it impossible to introduce or carry forward any other type of armored vessel during the whole Civil War, no matter how efficient or how desirable it might be.

Captain Ericsson is popularly credited, and doubtless will be in history, with the complete invention of the monitor. So far as the form and structure of the hull, which was simply “scow bottom,” and the fantastic type of its propelling engine and the Ericsson screw were concerned, this is probably true, at least so far as known; but the main distinguishing feature of the monitor was not its model of hull nor its propelling engine, but its revolving turret; and this device had been invented and patented by Mr. John R. R. Timby several years before the outbreak of the Civil War. Timby had proposed to use the revolving turret system for sea-coast defence, as a primary proposition. However, in his description, upon which his letters-patent were issued, he suggested that it might also be applied to floating structures or batteries. All that Ericsson did in the application of the turret system to his monitor was to appropriate Timby’s invention and act upon his suggestion; a fact which was abundantly demonstrated afterward when Mr. Timby received compensation for the infringement.

But all these facts probably went for little or nothing. It seemed that the people had determined to make a demigod of Ericsson, and there was no gainsaying them. They would have it so, and so it is.

Mr. Cramp, in a hitherto unpublished paper, deals with the history and operations of the monitor ring with regard to its personnel and the details of its origin and methods, the origin of the “fast cruisers of the navy,” and the “state of marine engineering of this country as it existed at that time.” In this paper, as will be seen, he hews to the line.

THE “MONITOR.”

“The coming out of the ‘Merrimac’ for the last time, and her successful repulse by the ‘Monitor’ having driven her back into Norfolk, gave a boom to the monitor system, the extent of which had never been witnessed in this country before.

“The enthusiasm that always greets successful combats in war-time was on this occasion of an extraordinary character, and the whole country was aroused to the highest pitch of excitement.

“The designer of the ship, John Ericsson, already well known as one of the principal promoters and successful advocates of screw propulsion, and Alban C. Stimers, who was engineer during the fight, and some of the officers, were the recipients of the most extravagant and hysterical demonstrations in the way of hero worship.

“An illustration of the effect that this battle had on the popular mind at that time may be found in an address of Bishop Simpson at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.

“During the war, frequent addresses were made throughout the country by well-known orators, states-men, and ministers of the gospel, intended to promote a patriotic spirit and encourage the doubtful.

“I was present at the Academy of Music shortly after the ‘Monitor’ had been made famous by repulsing the ‘Merrimac,’ when, in referring to Mr. Ericsson, the Bishop stated that ‘the Almighty had directly interposed in the contest between Captain Ericsson and Robert Stephenson in England,’ both of whom had responded to the offer of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company of a premium of £500 sterling for the most improved locomotive engine. This was at the very beginning of the introduction of railways in Great Britain, and the following engine entered for the prize:

“The ‘Novelty,’ by Ericsson and Braithwait; the ‘Rocket,’ by Robert Stephenson; the ‘Sans Pareil,’ by Timothy Hackworth, the ‘Perseverance,’ by Mr. Burstall.

“Mr. Joseph Harrison states in his book, the ‘Locomotive Engine,’ that ‘the prize was easily won by the “Rocket,” built by George and Robert Stephenson, having fulfilled, in some respects, more than all of the requirements of the trial.’

“Bishop Simpson, in referring to this incident, said that ‘the Almighty had interposed to prevent Captain Ericsson from succeeding there, so that he might become disgusted with England and shake the dust of that country from his feet and depart for America, in order that he might be here ready to save the country.’

“In using the words ‘in saving the country,’ Bishop Simpson looked on the fight between the ‘Monitor’ and the ‘Merrimac’ as a great many other people did; that is to say, if the ‘Merrimac’ had escaped, she would have bombarded Philadelphia and New York and other cities of the North, thereby compelling the government to submit to the South. But the ‘Monitor’ having destroyed her before she got out, John Ericsson was therefore entitled to all the credit due to a person who had been specially delegated by the Almighty for saving the country. John Ericsson had already become famous on account of conspicuous efforts in promoting screw propulsion in the United States generally, and particularly with reference to the use in war-ship construction. In view of his unceasing labors in this direction his name had become inseparably associated with the screw propeller. This added much to the enthusiasm that prevailed at that time, and all minor considerations being overlooked. It was discovered a very short time after the war was ended that, even if the ‘Merrimac’ could have escaped at that time from her encounters with the ‘Cumberland,’ ‘Congress,’ and ‘Monitor,’ it would have been impossible for her to go as far north as Philadelphia or New York. It was found that she was in a very badly crippled state as a result of her ramming the ‘Cumberland’ and ‘Congress;’ and the statement was made by those who temporarily repaired her in Norfolk that her bow was split to a great distance below the water.

“To use the words of one of the workmen, he had ‘put more than a bale of oakum in the opening.’

“The construction of the ‘New Ironsides,’ ‘Monitor,’ and ‘Galena’ had already been practically taken out of the hands of the Construction Department of the Navy by the Secretary of the Navy, who became a convert to the monitor craze after the battle with the ‘Merrimac.’ The ‘Monitor’ had become the ideal type of armored war-ship, and a sort of sub-department of the navy was created and located at New York for the sole purpose of building and fitting out monitors.

“This establishment in New York was placed under the immediate supervision of Admiral Gregory, the active head being Chief Engineer A. G. Stimers, who had been the chief engineer of the ‘Monitor’ during her engagement with the ‘Merrimac.’ He had associated with him Isaac Newton and Theodore Allen, the nephew of Mr. Allen of the Novelty Works in New York. This board was in direct communication with the Secretary of the Navy.

“The monitor party, which may be described as the executive of the ring or the New York section of the Navy Department, soon assumed a position of great power and responsibility; the balance of the Department amounting to practically mere nothing in the way of new construction.

“Mr. Stimers and Mr. Allen were autocrats. They spent money lavishly, ordered vessels, designed them, made contracts, sub-contracts, made purchases, and carried everything with a high hand.

“Mr. Lenthall, the Chief Constructor of the Navy, and Mr. Isherwood, who was on his staff as engineer, were entirely set aside, and practically disappeared from the scene as far as new constructions were concerned.

“A large number of monitors were built, slightly improved in structural detail over the original, and were engaged as soon as finished in the operations before Charleston.

“The head-quarters in New York was often called the ‘draughtsmen’s paradise,’ on account of the great number of draughtsmen employed there, and who were getting twenty dollars a day. The most extraordinary displays of drawings were issued to the various machine-shops which were building monitors at that time. They were particularly noticeable on account of the extravagant character of the shading of the circular form of the turrets, smoke-stacks, conning-towers, etc.

“The inspectors of construction that were employed by the New York party emulated their superiors in carrying things with a high hand at the various concerns where they inspected the vessels.

“Up to that time our concern had not built any monitors. We were not in what was called the ‘Monitor Ring,’ not having indorsed the type nor manner of construction, besides being the authors of the ‘New Ironsides’ type, which the ring had determined to suppress.

“Immediately after the ‘New Ironsides’ had been engaged in a small way in the first fight at Charleston, we recommended that the government should build other vessels like her, but with twin screws and with other improvements.

“By request of Assistant Secretary Fox, we prepared plans of the proposed ships, some all iron, and others of iron and wood in the construction of the hull; but the Department in Washington refused to listen to or recommend anything. The New York section continued to be paramount, and we were ruled out of naval construction for a time.”

LIGHT-DRAUGHT MONITORS.

“The next development of the craze was that of the so-called ‘Light-draught Monitors.’ These were intended to operate in Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds and various other shallow waters in the South. Twenty of them were authorized, and we responded to the advertisement of them by bidding for one or more.

“It was found that, with the exception of Harlan & Hollingsworth, we were the lowest bidders. We were a little higher than Harlan & Hollingsworth, but the time in which we offered to build them was shorter than theirs.

“The government promptly gave us one and the Harlan yard one, and notified eighteen other bidders that they could have one each at the same price as ours, which amounted, as near as I can remember, to $350,000.

“Some of the bids ran as high as $750,000, and these bidders had some delicacy in accepting prices at one-half, because, to accept the contract at one-half, it would be an acknowledgment that they did not know what they were about, or that they were trying to rob the government.

“The fact is, that none of the bidders except Harlan & Hollingsworth and ourselves were ship-builders. They were in other lines of mechanical construction, and of course they did not have the slightest idea of what was to be done or what it would cost.

“The drawings on which the vessels were to be built were of the crudest character; only a midship section and one or two vague longitudinal sketches being furnished as a guide or basis of construction.

“Notwithstanding, as I said before, we were the lowest bidder, thereby saving millions of dollars to the government, only one was awarded to us. The balance was offered to the other bidders at our price, and the offer was accepted by most of them.

“Having received our contract, we promptly visited New York to get the details of construction and engines in order to begin work and procure materials. The demand for materials was greater than the supply, and all were in a feverish state of excitement. To get our orders out quickly, I immediately made application to Mr. Stimers for plans, and had a long and detailed conversation with him and Theodore Allen over what plans they had developed, and numerous alterations were made to the plans as drawn.

“Their first plan permitted the boilers to come within three and one-half inches of the bottom plating of the ship, practically landing the boilers on the three and one-half inch angle-bars, which had at that time no floors.

“I suggested in a rather strong way that this would not do, and after considerable discussion they concluded to make the vessels a little deeper, give the deck more spring, and put shallow floors in. Other important alterations were made as the work progressed.

“We would have had our vessel overboard first, but the northward march of General Lee previous to the battle of Antietem interfered with the furnishing of materials, and also with our own working force in the shipyard.

“Our employees, with those of the rolling-mills supplying materials near Philadelphia, organized themselves into military companies for the purpose of defence. Two companies were formed in our establishment.

“While these delays affected us, they did not interfere with the progress of the monitor which was building in Boston; but when this vessel was launched, she sank to the bottom from lack of buoyancy, and a halt was called on the nineteen other vessels.

“These vessels had been constructed on very vague plans and conditions. Mistakes were made in the original design, and weights added without investigating the correctness of the original sketch, which, with the so-called ‘calculations,’ were furnished by Mr. Ericsson; at least they had been examined, approved, and signed by him. They were not furnished to bidders.

“The day after this launch, the ‘Monitor Ring’ was in a state of collapse! Mr. Lenthall and Mr. Isherwood now reasserted their proper authority. They ordered Mr. Stimers and Mr. Allen to reduce the weights in the turrets, and wherever else it was possible to do so sufficiently to make the vessels float.

“These reductions in equipment, outfit, etc., were communicated to the builders at Chester, before they launched the ‘Tunxis’; but these vessels, by the reductions, were rendered entirely useless for their designed service, or any other.

“Finding that the Boston vessel and the ‘Tunxis,’ built at Chester, notwithstanding the alterations, lacked efficiency to a serious degree, they decided to rebuild most of the others by deepening them, and the whole matter was placed in my hands by Chief Engineer King, who with some others were designated by the Secretary of the Navy to investigate and prepare plans for the deepening, and to ascertain the cost of the alterations.

“After a careful investigation, I found it would be necessary to increase the depth of the hulls about thirty-three inches, involving the necessity of raising the solid oak decks to that extent with the hull proper, and the armor backing and armor which had to be taken off and replaced.

“A so-called expert was detailed to assist me in my calculations, but, having no use for him, I did not avail myself of his services.

CRUISERS PENNSYLVANIA AND COLORADO

“When I sent my plans and our price for the deepening of the vessel to the Secretary, he immediately awarded us the contract for deepening ours (the ‘Yazoo’), and accepted our price, and notified the eighteen other people that he would give them the same price for deepening theirs. The other contractors would not accept my price, and they denounced me for not having put a ‘higher price on the job,’ when I had the opportunity to do so. I told them that I had estimated that we would make 30 per cent. profit, and I contended that that was enough, notwithstanding we were under the influence of war prices, and that I had been delegated to do what I considered was right. In other words, I held that the Secretary had placed me upon honor.

“These eighteen other builders ultimately got higher prices than we did. They made all sorts of claims to the government through their representatives, and made life a burden to the Secretary by showing, or endeavoring to show, him that wages were higher everywhere else in the localities where these vessels were built than they were in Philadelphia.

“In fact, every one of the other builders ultimately received higher prices than we did, and later on some were awarded additional sums by act of Congress, notwithstanding that the drawings, specifications, plans, and designs for the alterations were made by me without pay! without even thanks!

“Subsequently the Department decided not to alter all alike, and about one-half of them were finished without the turrets, and the big guns were taken out, thereby relieving their builders of the necessity of making them deeper. The decks were finished, and they were designated as a sort of torpedo boat for harbor defence. These vessels, as altered according to my recommendations, would have been efficient factors in the operations in the southern waters if the war had not ended before they were finished.

“The ‘Sub-Department’ in New York, with all its investitures and appointments, was abandoned, and the Navy Department took up the monitor matter from that time onward. But the mischief had been done. The service had been debauched and the Treasury robbed of millions, which an intelligent policy from the start might have saved.

“During the alterations on the ‘Yazoo,’ the Chester light-draught monitor was sent to our place to be altered. Notwithstanding she had been finished with the reduced weights recommended by Mr. Stimers, she still continued defective, and was sent to our yard to be altered according to my new plan.

“As it was necessary to raise the turret in order to raise the deck, and as we were compelled to haul the vessel out of the water, we took the guns out of the turret and proceeded to remove it also. Hoisting out the guns was an easy accomplishment, but the removal of the turret was a difficult problem.

“At first sight, cutting out the rivets and bolts, taking apart and rebuilding it, appeared the most feasible. This, however, was an expensive transaction. After careful investigation, we concluded that it could be hauled off the ship on to the dock on sliding-ways if the work was done with the greatest rapidity with the best men at it. The removal of guns and turret to the dock was successfully accomplished.

“On account of the great cost due to occupying a dry-dock long enough to make the change, it was determined to haul her out on sliding-ways, reversing the process of launching, and that without using a coffer-dam for laying the ground-ways.

“The vessel was hauled out by the use of six 12-inch falls, two of which were attached to end of upper ways, two to a chain that passed around the stem extending to amidships, the ends lashed to the ship just above high-water mark, and the other two to holes in the bow made for the purpose.

“When the six large ‘crabs’ were started with all of the men that could be put on them, they never stopped until the vessel was entirely out of the water, taking a day and a night for the operation.

“This was by all odds the heaviest vessel ever hauled out on ways in this country, and, in view of the simplicity of its preparations and the limited cost, was one of the great achievements of the time occupied by the Civil War. But little or no notice was taken of it by the papers, as battles lost and won were the sensation of the day.

“While the craze for constructing monitors had possession of the country, the government built nothing else in the way of armored vessels.

“Mr. Lenthall and Mr. Isherwood, who was on Mr. Lenthall’s staff at that time, had no power to antagonize the monitor craze successfully, and a large one of wood was ordered to be built in each navy-yard, to be designed by the constructor of that particular yard as far as the hulls were concerned. But little money of the vast expenditures of the navy during the war was devoted to other iron-clad constructions than that of the monitor class.

“The ‘Miantonomah,’ which was one of these vessels built in one of the navy-yards and designed by the constructor at the navy-yard in which she was built, was sent to Russia under command of Commodore John Rodgers with Assistant Secretary Fox, as Special Envoy to convey to the Emperor certain congratulations. The idea was that the government of Russia would construct a number of large monitors. The trip, so far as that was concerned, was a failure. Commodore Rodgers, who went in command, was formerly in command of one of the original monitors which had been engaged in the contests before Charleston, and also in the Savannah sounds in the Civil War, and he was one of the strongest of the captains in favor of that type. As a rule, the captains and other officers were all adverse to them.

“While the Navy Department and Naval Committee of Congress were favorable to the monitor type, Messrs. Lenthall and Isherwood were against it; but they were very backward in doing or in recommending anything else, and permitted themselves to be overlooked. In view of this negligence on their part, it was argued that it was better to try to do something, even if it turned out wrong, than to do nothing at all.”

ORIGIN OF FAST CRUISERS.

“On account of the heavy loss of our ships captured by the Confederate cruisers, and our failures to capture any of them with the exception of the ‘Alabama,’ which was accidentally discovered and destroyed by the ‘Kearsarge,’ our Navy Department conceived it necessary to have constructed a number of very fast cruisers, faster than any known afloat.

“The Department delegated Messrs. Stimers and Allen, when in the height of their power in their ‘Sub-Department’ in New York, to design and have them constructed.

“Not being naval architects, and not having any naval architect of competent knowledge in connection with their ‘Sub-Department,’ but having an exalted idea of their own abilities not only as naval architects and engineers, and everything else in that direction, they designed some ships of a peculiarly fantastic model, and engines of equally fanciful character which they called, for short, the ‘grasshopper engine.’

“Having the power to design these vessels and contract for them, they invited me to inspect the plans and build two of them.

“On looking over these designs, I began to criticise them, and recommended modifications.

“I was wound up suddenly by the observation that, as they intended to give us two ships and give us what they considered a fair price for them, we must build them exactly as they were designed.

“As the price they offered was high, and feeling that we would practically have our own way with them, provided we adhered to the general type of design, and having no responsibility, we thought that we had better take them and make a handsome sum out of them than to stand out on trifles and fight for glory alone.

“I had commenced at the beginning of the war with criticising the monitors, and our concern got nothing, and the grass might have been growing in our yard if we adhered to that course. So the price was fixed for these ships, and we were about going on, when the fatal contretemps of the launching of the Boston light-draught monitor occurred. The ‘fast cruiser’ contracts of Stimers and Allen were set aside, and a large sum of money saved to the government. The ring was broken. They who had had unlimited power heretofore suddenly found themselves without the power to contract for a dingy.

“This was really a great disappointment to us and several other contractors, because the price they fixed for the cruisers was liberal, and, as they would not listen to suggestions, they were naturally expected to take the responsibility.