the location of her machinery below the water-line and hence out of
danger from an enemy’s guns, her novel screw-propulsion, and her
powerful armament made her the centre, not only of national, but of
world interest.
For a number of years following, Ericsson continued his development
of the science of naval engineering, and in 1843 applied for the
first time twin-screw engines to the steamship Marmora. During these
years recognition began to bring to the great inventor the financial
rewards which he had long deserved. In the year 1844 his receipts
from his inventions and contracts amounted to almost $40,000, and the
following year he received almost $85,000. But the road to wealth and
glory contains many obstacles, and the successes that crowned the
work of these few years were in a large measure balanced by reverses,
although in the end triumph out-balanced all.
For several years Ericsson devoted his energies to the perfection
of a model type of warship, but his untiring efforts received scant
recognition from the government. October 28, 1848, was, however, a
day memorable, not only in the life of Ericsson, but in the history
of the United States, for on that day he became a naturalized
citizen. Born in a foreign land, a sojourner in European countries,
it was but natural that the Swedish genius should find in this young
nation of opportunity the field which he needed for the expression
of his wonderful faculties. By his naturalization, Ericsson brought
to the United States the fine inheritance of an ancient nation, and
infused into the blood of the new republic additional strength and
virility. Save for the native Indian, there is no true American;
but in the mingled blood of the people of many lands may be found
to-day a race that combines the best of the nations of the earth, a
composite people, free, prosperous, and masters of their own glorious
destiny.
For many years Ericsson had held faith in the theory of a hot-air
engine in which heated air would produce the effect of steam, but
with greater economy. With characteristic confidence he carried his
experiments to their completion, and expended practically his entire
capital on the necessary models and machines which the working-out of
his plans required. Success crowned his efforts, and the hot-air, or
caloric, engine was generally conceded to be a success.
As the result of these experiments a number of New York capitalists
supplied the necessary money to construct a large steamship, the
paddle-wheels of which were operated by caloric engines designed by
Ericsson. The vessel was named after the inventor and was a most
novel and radical departure from any vessel up to that time designed.
Her cost exceeded half a million dollars: an investment which showed
the high esteem in which her designer was held. The Ericsson was
launched in September, 1852, and made her trial trip on January 4,
1853. Never had so strong or fine a ship been built; the newspapers
of the day were filled with praise, and her designer received from
every quarter the most extravagant congratulations for the mechanical
marvel which he had created.
But unexpected disaster destroyed in a few seconds the product of
these months of thought and energy. Within a few weeks of her
launching the Ericsson encountered a tornado, and capsized and sank
a few miles off New York Light. Although she was believed by many to
mark the end of the use of steam-power and the beginning of a new era
of hot-air dynamics, it is now recognized that this invention reached
its maximum development in the Ericsson; and it is in connection
with a later and far greater invention that history has accorded
recognition to the designer’s great mechanical genius.
Long before Ericsson left England he had thought out the plans for
a strange kind of vessel, protected with iron, which would be able
to fight and defeat any warship of any size. In 1854, the year in
which he perfected the plan for his new type of warship, the navies
of all the great nations were composed, in large part, of huge wooden
vessels, usually sailing-ships, but a few combining sails and steam.
For a number of years the use of iron-plating, or armor, on the sides
of battleships had been discussed, and in 1845 R. L. Stevens, an
American engineer, actually began the construction of a vessel, or
“floating battery,” encased in metal.
To France however, probably belongs the credit for the construction
of the first ironclads, consisting of these floating batteries, the
Lave, Devastation, and Tonnante, protected by 4.25-inch iron plates,
which were used during the Crimean War. The following year France
began the construction of four ironclad steam frigates, and England
immediately followed, with the construction of a number of similar
vessels.
But the warship of John Ericsson in no way resembled the huge
ironclads of France or England. With characteristic disregard for
precedent he designed a ship which rested so low in the water that
only about three feet of its sides would be exposed. The sides and
deck were protected by heavy plates of iron, and in the centre of the
deck was a circular heavily armored turret which revolved in either
direction and contained powerful guns. These vessels, or monitors, as
Ericsson named them, were to be propelled by steam. The particular
advantages of the type were that so little of the craft showed above
the water that it afforded an exceedingly small target to an enemy;
that the heavy plating protected it from hostile shot, and the
revolving target enabled the crew to fire in any direction without
manœuvring the vessel, while such shot as might strike the turret
would glance harmlessly from its circular side.
During the Crimean War Ericsson offered the plans for this remarkable
vessel to the French Emperor; but they were politely declined as
impractical in much the same way in which, some years earlier, the
British Admiralty had declined to consider the screw-propeller as
little more than an amusing experiment.
When war was declared in 1861 between the Northern States and the
Confederate States of the South, Ericsson was fifty-eight years old.
In this national calamity in which brother was armed against brother,
and the fate of the country seemed hanging by a thread, Ericsson
unhesitatingly cast himself with those who sought the preservation
of the Union and the abolition of slavery from the United States.
Never before had his adopted country needed so vitally his tremendous
services. With superb health derived from a normal life of
conservative habits, and a brain trained by long years of engineering
experiment, Ericsson found himself ready and able to meet the call
for his greatest service to the nation.
The United States navy at the beginning of the war was composed
entirely of wooden vessels. Early in 1861 the Confederates began the
construction of a floating battery heavily armored with iron. For
this purpose the old United States frigate Merrimac, which had been
burned and sunk in the Norfolk Navy Yard, was raised, and the work of
encasing her with armor plates was begun.
Meanwhile, in the North, Congress had called for proposals for
ironclad steam vessels, and less than a month later, Ericsson
addressed to President Lincoln a letter in which he offered to submit
the plans of a monitor, and described the advantages of its unique
design. On September 13, Ericsson went to Washington and personally
laid before the Navy Department his plans and received a contract to
proceed with the construction of the Monitor.
The keel was laid on October 25, and on January 30, she slid down
the ways into the water. A month later she was commissioned. The
Monitor was 172 feet in length and displaced 776 tons. In the centre
of her low flat deck was the revolving turret, twenty feet in
diameter, protected by eight inches of iron-plating. Two heavy guns
were mounted in the turret. The vessel was operated entirely by
steam-engines, placed well below the water-line, which propelled a
screw beneath the overhanging stern.
Rushed to completion in the brief period of three months, the Monitor
was barely commissioned in time to render, at Hampton Roads, the
tremendous service which in a few brief hours revolutionized naval
warfare, made obsolete the navies of the world, rescued the Union
navy from crushing disaster, and immortalized the name of John
Ericsson, her designer and constructor.
The Monitor had been intended to serve with Admiral Farragut’s fleet
at New Orleans, but a crisis nearer at hand made a sudden change of
plans necessary. The Monitor left New York on the afternoon of March
6, 1862, under command of Lieutenant John L. Worden, U.S.N., and
arrived at Hampton Roads on the evening of March 8, after a stormy
passage.
Meanwhile the armored Confederate ram Merrimac had created havoc
with the great wooden warships of the Federal navy. On the seventh,
the Merrimac had rammed and sunk the frigate Cumberland, and then
destroyed the Congress, vessels powerless to inflict injury on the
iron sides of the Confederate ram. The tall frigates, St. Lawrence,
Roanoke, and Minnesota, powerless to resist or to escape, awaited
their inevitable destruction on the following day.
But on that eventful morning, as the Merrimac steamed out into the
stream to complete her work, which would break the blockade the
Federal forces had established, the Monitor glided out from under
the stern of the Minnesota, looking for all the world like “a
barrel-head afloat with a cheese-box on top of it.”
For four hours these two strange vessels fought this greatest duel
of naval history, which, on the ships and the shores, was watched by
the anxious eyes of soldiers and sailors of North and South to whom
the outcome was of such tremendous import. Manœuvring like boxers,
the two vessels circled each other, black smoke pouring from their
low funnels and the red flame of the great guns spurting from the
gun-ports. As she had rammed the Cumberland, so did the Merrimac
endeavor to crush the Monitor with her ram; but the Monitor either
slipped past her heavier and more ungainly adversary or allowed the
Merrimac to push her aside. Round and round the circular turret
swung, turning away in order to load the two guns which protruded,
and then swinging back to deliver a volley of metal against the
plated sloping side of the Merrimac.
Unable to damage the Monitor and herself severely pounded by the
forty-one shots which the Monitor had fired, the Merrimac finally
withdrew, leaving the strange warship of the Swedish-American
inventor the victor. The Minnesota, the Roanoke, and the St. Lawrence
were saved. The blockade remained unbroken.
In the words of a Confederate who witnessed the battle, “The Monitor
was by immense odds the most formidable vessel of war on this planet.”
During the following years of the war, Ericsson devoted his vast
energies to the service of his country, and at great financial loss
and immeasurable personal sacrifice constructed a large number of
vessels of the Monitor type for the navy.
With the close of the war Ericsson continued the marvelous series of
inventions which he had given to the world. For a number of years he
gave his best thought to the building and mounting of heavy guns;
and later he turned his energies to the construction of a practical
submarine torpedo. In these later experiments he personally invested
over a hundred thousand dollars.
From the United States and foreign countries came recognition of
his services to the world. In 1866 the Department of State offered
him the appointment of Commissioner to the Universal Exposition at
Paris. The previous year he had received a resolution of thanks from
the Swedish Parliament. Among other honors conferred upon him were
his election to the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, honorary
memberships in the Royal Military Academy of Science of Stockholm and
the Royal Military Academy of Sweden, a joint resolution of thanks
from the United States Congress, a resolution from the State of New
York, the Rumford gold and silver medals, and a gold medal from the
Society of Iron Masters of Sweden. In 1863 he received the honorary
degree of LL.D. from Wesleyan University; and later he was made a
Knight Commander with the Grand Cross of the order of the North Star
and a Commander of St. Olaf, two Swedish honors. In later years came
many other distinctions, not only from the United States and Sweden,
but from Denmark, Spain, and Austria.
In these later years came also many demands on Ericsson’s generosity,
and to the near members of his family, and even to his most distant
relatives, he invariably responded with a substantial gift. Realizing
the tremendous value of education, he gave freely when money was
needed to provide schooling for the children of members of his family
whom he had never seen. But these benefactions to relatives and
friends were invariably made only when Ericsson believed in the true
need and the sincerity of the request. Out of the considerable income
which came to him from his inventions in later years he gave also
with a liberal hand whenever public or private distress was brought
to his attention.
Ericsson’s own wants were few. His temperate habits, his love of
physical exercise, and his simple tastes made but slender demands on
his income. Vigorous by inheritance, and possessing a fine physique
from his early activities, he preserved his splendid vigor throughout
his long life. Rarely has been given to the world a finer example of
health and character contributing to a career of splendid usefulness.
On the eighth of March, 1889, John Ericsson died in his New York
house, where for a quarter of a century he had lived his active and
solitary existence. The significance of his death was recognized,
not only by his native Sweden and the United States, the land of his
adoption, but by the entire civilized world, in which his inventions
had brought such revolutionizing changes. But the story of his
achievements can never die, and in the history of his useful life
is an inspiration to every succeeding generation to whom the United
States unfolds an ever-increasing opportunity.
III
LOUIS AGASSIZ
_Born in Motier, Switzerland, 1807_
_Died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1873_
When men first received the names which they have handed down through
succeeding generations there was undoubtedly an appropriate reason
for the name which each man bore. The Smiths quite probably worked
with iron, the Carpenters labored with saw and hammer, and the son of
John became Johnson to his friends. But centuries have passed, and it
rarely happens to-day that a man’s name describes his vocation or his
characteristics.
Occasionally, however, there is an exception, and the name of Agassiz
is one of these. Lover of nature, and particularly of the living
things which have for hundreds of thousands of years inhabited the
earth, Louis Agassiz bore a name that suggested his ruling interests;
for Agassiz, or Aigasse as it was written in old French, is the name
of the magpie, a lovable, friendly bird that was known to every
peasant in the beautiful countryside of La Sarraz.
Louis Agassiz was a naturalist and a geologist. Wise in all
departments of these wide fields of nature study, and the leading
teacher in his time, he will always be remembered for his discoveries
in two particular departments of his great subject. Agassiz was an
ichthyologist and a palæontologist. These are hard Latin names, but
they are easily understood, for an ichthyologist is a man who studies
fishes, and a palæontologist is one who is a student of the ancient
life of the globe as it may be seen in the fossil remains deep buried
in the earth. Moreover, to the science of geology Agassiz contributed
a great discovery which revolutionized the thought of scientists of
his day; for it was he who proved beyond all doubt that at one time,
far back in the world’s history, great moving glaciers covered a huge
part of the earth’s surface, and where now the summer sunshine warms
green fields, at one time, in an arctic temperature, these same lands
were deep buried under grinding, creeping fields of ice.
Not far from Lake Neuchâtel, in western Switzerland, is the little
village of Motier, a place so small that it is hard to find it on the
maps of ordinary atlases. Below the village the blue water of Lake
Morat gleams like a bit of sky in the green of hills and fields, and
beyond, like a blue wall against the sky, the Bernese Alps look down
over the ancient country.
Here on May 28, 1807, was born Jean Louis Rudolph Agassiz. His father
was a clergyman and his mother the daughter of a physician, and the
boy inherited from them a love of study and a delight in teaching
which always distinguished him. From the beautiful country of his
birth came also an inheritance of nature that kept him throughout his
long life always a boy at heart.
The lakes of Switzerland are among the oldest dwelling-places of
mankind since human life began. Beneath the waters of Lake Morat
are still found traces of an ancient race that once lived there in
huts built over the water; still may be seen, far down in the blue
deeps, the earthen vessels which, perhaps, fell from their dwellings;
occasionally are found the stumps of piles on which their houses
rested. They were a water-loving people, and Agassiz, born on the
shores of the same lake as this ancient people, found in the water a
natural and congenial element.
He was a normal, wholesome boy, but from the very first his love of
nature displayed itself at every turn. He delighted in birds and
animals and insects, and he was constantly scouring the vineyard-clad
hillsides and the woods and meadows for new specimens. But it was
on the waters of the lakes and in their cold clear depths that his
insatiate curiosity found its greatest gratification. He was a
skilful fisherman and he soon learned the haunts and habits of every
kind of fish that dwelt there. With his brother Auguste, the bright
summer days fled past in one long excursion. Like the fish which they
hunted, the boys found in the lakes a friendly element. They were
splendid swimmers, so skilled that they would often abandon entirely
the hook and line, and, diving swiftly into the water, catch the
gliding fish in their hands.
Like all boys who live in the country, Louis had made collections
of every kind, and in the garden near the house he kept constantly
increasing families of rabbits, field-mice, guinea-pigs, and birds.
These were not merely pets which he loved and cared for; even in his
youthful eyes they seemed to have a deeper significance, for he
studied them and observed their habits in a way that gave him a basis
for the scientific observations of his later life.
It was natural that such a boy should be fearless, and in this
respect Louis was far above the average. Strong, alert, and
resourceful, he was a splendid swimmer and a strong skater. Many are
the tales of boyish fearlessness that are told about him, tales of
boating exploits, of long excursions, and particularly of how once he
made a bridge of his body across a deep fissure in the ice too wide
to jump, that his brother Auguste might creep across.
When he was ten years old, his active schooling began. In the nearby
town of Bienne was a public school for boys. The rules were strict
and the hours long, for the boys were required to study for nine
hours every day. But the father had given Louis a good grounding
in the elements of education, and this, combined with his natural
aptitude, gave him an advantage over his fellow students.
Vacations, however, were as welcome to Louis and his brother as they
are to boys of the present day; and long before dawn on the first
day of each vacation, the two boys would be up and homeward bound,
swinging along the twenty miles of country road which lay between
Bienne and Motier. These were happy days, for although the Agassiz
family had but the very small income which the office of a country
minister afforded, there was a wealth of good fun and love and
wholesome out-of-door happiness in the lives of the young people who
made merry in the little town.
Four years were spent at the school at Bienne, and as the end of
the fourth year neared, Louis, although only fourteen years old,
announced to his parents his desire to become an author. “I wish to
advance in the sciences,” he wrote his father. “I have resolved to
become a man of letters.” And then he expressed his hope that he
might be permitted, after spending a year and a half in commerce at
Neuchâtel, to pass four years at a university in Germany, and finally
finish his studies at Paris. “Then, at the age of twenty-five,” he
concluded, “I could begin to write.” Mature ambitions these, for a
boy of fourteen years!
It was fortunate that the elder Agassiz recognized in the boy those
qualities which were uppermost, and encouraged his studious desires.
The year and a half of business training was abandoned, and in
its place Louis was sent for two years of additional study at the
College of Lausanne. Already he had felt the charm of study, and
his boyish pastimes had now become studious investigations which
absorbed his interest and energy. His work was as orderly as his
mind; his notebooks, written with remarkable neatness in a small
fine handwriting, are excellent examples of clear classification of
whatever branch of study he undertook. Everything was arranged and
classified; subjects were clearly separated and subdivided under
marked headings; nothing was begun that was not completed in every
detail.
At Lausanne, Agassiz had access to the first natural history
collection that he had ever seen; and there also he found friends who
sympathized with his favorite tastes. While he was at Lausanne, it
was decided that he should study medicine, a profession which would
meet his natural inclinations and at the same time ultimately yield
him the income necessary for his support.
Accordingly, during his seventeenth year, Louis entered the medical
school at Zürich. Here he found still more congenial surroundings;
for among the faculty of the university were men of reputation in the
particular branches of natural history which most deeply interested
him. Under the professor of natural history the study of ornithology
was opened to him. Here also the sciences of zoölogy and geology were
taught, and Louis eagerly enrolled in the classes that were held in
these subjects.
In 1826, after two years at Zürich, Louis entered the great German
University of Heidelberg, and there his true university life began.
The four years that he passed there were among the most important
years of his entire life. They were years of hard conscientious
study, combined with wholesome recreation. “First at work, and
first at play,” was his motto. Here he made friendships that were
tense and enduring. Two fellow students, Braun and Schimper, became
particularly his intimates, and with Agassiz formed a trio which
their fellow students called “the Little Academy.”
It was an ambitious atmosphere, and the friendships which were
formed were based on a love of intellectual pleasures. There was
also the vivid vital student life beyond the classrooms; there were
long excursions on foot in vacation times; there were duels and
love-affairs, and there were boisterous evenings thick with tobacco
smoke. Agassiz was a powerful gymnast and an expert fencer. There
was nothing in the student life that was good in which he did not
participate.
Of the many friendships which his open and affectionate nature so
easily formed, his friendship with Alexander Braun was deepest and
most lasting. Soon he began to visit Braun at his home in Carlsruhe,
where he met his friend’s two talented sisters, one of whom was later
to become his wife. And it was here, in the spring of 1827, that
the friendly Braun family nursed him back to health after a serious
attack of typhoid fever.