SHIPBUILDING AT QUINCY
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The first man-made craft which floated on the waters of what is now Fore
River was probably a little dugout, a crude boat made by an Indian, who
burned out the center of a pine log which he had felled by girdling with
fire. After he had burned out as much as he could, he scraped out the
rest with a stone tool called a "celt." The whole operation probably
took one Indian three weeks. The Rivadavia which slid down the ways of
the Fore River Shipbuilding Corporation in August, 1914, weighed 13,400
tons and had engaged the labor of 2000 men for fifty months.
Between these two extremes flutter all the great sisterhood of shallops,
sloops, pinks, schooners, snows, the almost obsolete batteau and
periagua, the gundelow with its picturesque lateen sail, and all the
winged host that are now merely names in New England's maritime history.
We may not give in this limited space an account of the various vessels
which have sailed down the green-sea aisles the last three hundred
years. But of the very first, "a great and strong shallop" built by the
Plymouth settlers for fishing, we must make brief mention, and of the
Blessing of the Bay, the first seaworthy native craft to be built and
launched on these shores--the pioneer of all New England commerce. Built
by Governor Winthrop, he notes of her in his journal on August 31, 1631,
that "the bark being of thirty tons went to sea." That is all he says,
but from that significant moment the building of ships went on
"gallantly," as was indeed to be expected in a country whose chief
industry was fishing and which was so admirably surrounded by natural
bays and harbors. In 1665 we hear of the Great and General Court of
Massachusetts--which distinctive term is still applied to the
Massachusetts Legislature--forbidding the cutting of any trees suitable
for masts. The broad arrow of the King was marked on all white pines,
twenty-four inches in diameter, three feet from the ground. Big ships
and little ships swarmed into existence, and every South Shore town made
shipbuilding history. The ketch, a two-masted vessel carrying from
fifteen to twenty tons, carried on most of the coasting traffic, and
occasionally ventured on a foreign voyage. When we recall that the best
and cheapest ships of the latter half of the seventeenth century were
built here in the new country, we realize that shipyards, ports, docks,
proper laws and regulations, and the invigorating progress which marks
any thriving industry flourished bravely up and down the whole New
England coast.
It is rather inspiring to stand here on the bridge which spans the Fore
River, and picture that first crude dugout being paddled along by the
steady stroke of the red man, and then to look at the river to-day.
Every traveler through Quincy is familiar with the aerial network of
steel scaffolding criss-crossing the sky, with the roofs of shops and
offices and glimpses of vessels visible along the water-front. But few
travelers realize that these are merely the superficial features of a
shipyard which under the urge of the Great War delivered to the Navy, in
1918, eighteen completed destroyers, which was as many as all the other
yards in the country put together delivered during this time. A shipyard
which cut the time of building destroyers from anywhere between eighteen
and thirty-two months to an average of six months and a half; a shipyard
which made the world's record of one hundred and seventy-four days from
the laying of the keel to the delivering of a destroyer.
It is difficult to grasp the meaning of these figures. Difficult, even
after one has obtained entrance into this city within a city, and seen
with his own eyes twenty thousand men toiling like Trojans. Seen a
riveting crew which can drive more than twenty-eight hundred rivets in
nine hours; battleships that weigh thirty thousand tons; a plate yard
piled with steel plates and steel bars worth two million dollars; cranes
that can lift from five tons up to others of one hundred tons capacity;
single buildings a thousand feet long and eighty feet high.
Perhaps the enormousness of the plant is best comprehended, not when we
mechanically repeat that it covers eighty acres and comprises eighty
buildings, and that four full-sized steam locomotives run up and down
its yard, but when we see how many of the intimate things of daily
living have sprung up here as little trees spring up between huge
stones. For the Fore River Plant is more than an industrial
organization. It is a social center, an economic entity. It has its band
and glee club, ball team and monthly magazine. There are refreshment
stands, and a bathing cove; a brand-new village of four hundred and
thirty-eight brand-new houses; dormitories which accommodate nearly a
thousand men and possess every convenience and even luxuries. The men
work hard here, but they are well paid for their work, as the many
motor-cycles and automobiles waiting for them at night testify. It is a
scene of incredible industry, but also of incredible completeness.
To look down upon the village and the yard from the throbbing roof of
the steel mill, seven hundred and seventy feet long and a hundred and
eighty-eight wide, is a thrilling sight. Within the yard, confined on
three sides by its high fences and buildings and on the fourth by
Weymouth Fore River, one sees, far below, locomotives moving up and down
on their tracks; great cranes stalking long-leggedly back and forth;
smoke from foundry, blacksmith shop, and boiler shop; men hurrying to
and fro. Whistles blow, and whole buildings tremble. The smoke and the
grayness might make it a gloomy scene if it were not for the red sides
of the immense submarines gleaming in their wide slips to the water.
Everywhere one sees the long gray sides of freighters, destroyers,
merchant ships, and oil tankers heaving like the mailed ribs of sea
animals basking on the shore. Practically every single operation, from
the most stupendous to the most delicate, necessary for the complete
construction of these vessels, is carried on in this yard. The eighty
acres look small when we realize the extent and variety of the work
achieved within its limits.
Yes, the solitary Indian, working with fire and celt on his dugout,
would not recognize this once familiar haunt, nor would he know the
purpose of these vast vessels without sail or paddle. And yet, were this
same Indian standing on the roof with us, he would see a wide stream of
water he knew well, and he would see, too, above the smoke of the
furnace, shop, and boiler room, the friendly green of the trees.
Perhaps there is nothing which makes us realize the magical rapidity of
growth so much as to look from this steel city and to see the woods
close by. For instead of being surrounded by the sordid congestion of an
industrial center, the Fore River Shipyard is in the midst of
practically open country.
While we are speaking of rapidity we must look over toward the Victory
Plant at Squantum, that miraculous marsh which was drained with such
expedition that just twelve months from the day ground was broken for
its foundation, it launched its first ship, and less than two years
after completed its entire contract. Surely never in the history of
shipbuilding have brain and brawn worked so brilliantly together!
In this way, then, the history of the ships that have sailed the seven
seas has been built up at Quincy--a dramatic history and one instinct
with the beauty which is part of gliding canoe and white sails, and
part, too, of the huge smooth-slipping monsters of a modern day, sleek
and swift as leviathans. But all the while the building of these ships
has been going on, there has been slowly rising within the selfsame
radius another ship, vaster, more inspiring, calling forth initiative
even more intense, idealism even more profound--the Ship of State.
We who journey to-day over the smooth or troubled waters of national or
international affairs are no more conscious of the infinite toil and
labors which have gone into the intricate making of the vessel that
carries us, than are travelers conscious of the cogs and screws, the
engines and all the elaboration of detail which compose an ocean liner.
Like them we sometimes grumble at meals or prices, at some discourtesy
or incompetence, but we take it for granted that the engine is in
commission, that the bottom is whole and the chart correct. The great
Ship of State of this country may occasionally run into rough weather,
but Americans believe that, in the last analysis, she is honestly built.
And it is to Quincy that we owe a large initial part of this building.
It is astonishing to enumerate the notable public men, who have been
influential in establishing our national policy, who have come from
Quincy. There is no town in this entire country which can equal the
record. What other town ever produced two Presidents of the United
States, an Ambassador to Great Britain, a Governor of the Commonwealth,
a Mayor of Boston, two presidents of Harvard University, and judges,
chief justices, statesmen, and orators in such quantity and of such
quality? Truly this group of eminent men of brilliance, integrity, and
public feeling is unique in our history. To read the biographies of
Quincy's great men would comprise a studious winter's employment, but
we, passing through the historic city, may hold up our fragment of a
mirror and catch a bit of the procession.
First and foremost, of course, will come President John Adams, he who,
both before and after his term of high office, toiled terrifically in
the public cause, being at the time of his election to Congress a member
of ninety committees and a chairman of twenty-five! We see him as the
portraits have taught us to see him, with strong, serious
face,--austere, but not harsh,--velvet coat, white ruffles, and white
curls. He stands before us as the undisputed founder of what is now
recognized as American diplomacy. Straightforward, sound to the core,
unswerving, veracious, exemplifying in every act the candor of the
Puritan, so congruous with the new simple life of a nation of common
people. I think we shall like best to study him as he stands at the door
of the little house in which he was born, and which, with its pitch
roof, its antique door and eaves, is still preserved, close to the
street, for public scrutiny.
Next to President John Adams comes his son, John Quincy Adams, also a
President of the United States. Spending much of his time abroad, the
experience of those diplomatic years is graven upon features more subtly
refined than those of his sire. But for all his foreign residence, he
was, like his father, a Puritan in its most exalted sense; like him
toiled all his life in public service, dying in the harness when rising
to address the Speaker of the House. Him, too, we see best, standing at
the door of his birthplace, a small cottage a stone's throw from the
other cottage, separated only by a turnstile. Fresh white curtains hang
in the small-paned windows; the grass is neatly trimmed, and like its
quaint companion it is now open to the public and worth the tourist's
call. Both these venerable cottages have inner walls, one of burnt, the
other of unburnt brick; and both are unusual in having no boards on the
outer walls, but merely clapboards fastened directly on to the studding
with wrought-iron nails.
Still another Adams follows, Charles Francis Adams. Although a little
boy when he first comes into public view, a little boy occupying the
conspicuous place as child of one President and grandchild of another,
yet he was to win renown and honor on his own account as Ambassador to
England during the critical period of our Civil War. America remembers
him best in this position. His firm old face with its white chin
whiskers is a worthy portrait in the ancestral gallery.
Although the political history of this country may conclude its
reference to the Adamses with these three famous figures, yet all New
Englanders and all readers of biography would be reluctant to turn from
this remarkable family without mention of the sons of Charles Francis
Adams, two of whom have written, beside valuable historical works,
autobiographies so entertaining and so truly valuable for their
contemporaneous portraits as to win a place of survival in our permanent
literature.
A member of the Adams family still lives in the comfortable home where
the three first and most famous members all celebrated their golden
weddings. This broad-fronted and hospitable house, built in 1730 by
Leonard Vassal, a West India planter, for his summer residence, with its
library finished in panels of solid mahogany, was confiscated when its
Royalist owner fled at the outbreak of the Revolution, and John Adams
acquired the property and left the pitch-roofed cottage down the street.
The home of two Presidents, what tales it could tell of notable
gatherings! One must read the autobiography of Charles Francis Adams and
"The Education of Henry Adams" to appreciate the charm of the succeeding
mistresses of the noble homestead, and to enjoy in retrospect its many
illustrious visitors.
To have produced one family like the Adamses would surely be sufficient
distinction for any one place, but the Adams family forms merely one
unit in Quincy's unique procession of great men.
The Quincy family, for which the town was named, and which at an early
date intermarried with the Adamses, presents an almost parallel
distinction. The first Colonel Quincy, he who lived like an English
squire, a trifle irascible, to be sure, but a dignified and commanding
figure withal, had fourteen children by his first wife and three by his
second, so the family started off with the advantage of numbers as well
as of blood. At the Quincy mansion house were born statesmen, judges,
and captains of war. The "Dorothy Q." of Holmes's poem first saw the
light in it, and the Dorothy who became the bride of the dashing John
Hancock blossomed into womanhood in it. Here were entertained times
without number Sir Harry Vane, quaint Judge Sewall, Benjamin Franklin,
and that couple who gleam through the annals of New England history in a
never-fading flame of romance, Sir Harry Frankland and beautiful Agnes
Surriage. The Quincy mansion, which was built about 1635 by William
Coddington of Boston and occupied by him until he was exiled for his
religious opinions, was bought by Edmund Quincy. His grandson, who bore
his name, enlarged the house, and lived in it until his death when it
descended to his son Edmund, the eminent jurist and father of Dorothy.
The old-fashioned furniture, utensils and pictures, the broad hall, fine
old stairway with carved balustrades, and foreign wall-paper supposed to
have been hung in honor of the approaching marriage of Dorothy to John
Hancock, are still preserved in their original place. Of the Quincy
family, whose sedate jest it was that the estate descended from 'Siah to
'Siah, so frequent was the name "Josiah," the best known is perhaps the
Josiah Quincy who was Mayor of Boston for six years and president of
Harvard for sixteen. The portrait of his long, thin face is part of
every New England history, and his busy, serene life, "compacted of
Roman and Puritan virtues," is still upheld to all American children as
a model of high citizenship.
But not even the long line of the Quincy family completes the list of
the town's great men. Henry Hope, one of the most brilliant financiers
of his generation, and founder of a European banking house second only
to that of the Rothchilds, was a native of Quincy. John Hull--who, as
every school-child knows, on the day of his daughter's marriage to Judge
Sewall, placed her in one of his weighing scales, and heaped enough new
pine-tree shillings into the other to balance, and then presented both
to the bridegroom--held the first grant of land in the present town of
Braintree (which originally included Quincy, Randolph, and Holbrook).
From the picturesque union of John Hull's bouncing daughter Betsy and
Judge Sewall sprang the extraordinary family of Sewalls which has given
three chief justices to Massachusetts, and one to Canada, and has been
distinguished in every generation for the talents and virtues of its
members. In passing, we may note that it was this same John Hull who
named Point Judith for his wife, little dreaming what a _bête noir_ the
place would prove to mariners in the years to come.
There is another Quincy man whom it is pleasant to recall, and that is
Henry Flynt, a whimsical and scholarly old bachelor, who was a tutor at
Harvard for no less than fifty-three years, the one fixed element in the
flow of fourteen college generations. One of the most accomplished
scholars of his day, his influence on the young men with whom he came in
contact was stimulating to a degree, and they loved to repeat bits of
his famous repartee. A favorite which has come down to us was on an
occasion when Whitefield the revivalist declared in a theological
discussion: "It is my opinion that Dr. Tillotson is now in hell for his
heresy." To which Tutor Flynt retorted dryly: "It is my opinion that you
will not meet him there."
The procession of Quincy's great men which we have been watching winds
its way, as human processions are apt to do, to the old graveyard. Most
of the original settlers are buried here, although not a few were buried
on their own land, according to the common custom. Probably this
ancient burying ground, with its oldest headstone of 1663, has never
been particularly attractive. The Puritans did not decorate their
graveyards in any way. Fearing that prayers or sermons would encourage
the "superstitions" of the Roman Catholic Church, they shunned any
ritual over the dead or beautifying of their last resting-place.
However, neglected as the spot was, the old stone church, whose golden
belfry is such a familiar and pleasant landmark to all the neighboring
countryside, still keeps its face turned steadfastly toward it. The
congested traffic of the city square presses about its portico, but
those who knew and loved it best lie quietly within the shadow of its
gray walls. Under the portico lies President John Adams, and "at his
side sleeps until the trump shall sound, Abigail, his beloved and only
wife." In the second chamber is placed the dust of his illustrious son,
with "His partner for fifty years, Louisa Catherine"--she of whom Henry
Adams wrote, "her refined figure; her gentle voice and manner; her
vague effect of not belonging there, but to Washington or Europe, like
her furniture and writing-desk with little glass doors above and little
eighteenth-century volumes in old binding."
It has been called the "church of statesmen," this dignified building,
and so, indeed, might Quincy itself be called the "city of statesmen."
It would be extremely interesting to study the reasons for Quincy's
peculiar productiveness of noble public characters. The town was settled
(as Braintree) exclusively by people from Devonshire and Lincolnshire
and Essex. The laws of the Massachusetts Colony forbade Irish
immigration--probably more for religious than racial reasons. On reading
the ancient petition for the incorporation of the town one is struck by
the fact that practically every single name of the one hundred and fifty
signers is English in origin, the few which were not having been
anglicized. All of these facts point to a homogeneous stock, with the
same language, traditions, and social customs. Obviously there is a
connection between the governmental genius displayed by Quincy's sons
and the singular purity of the original English stock.
Little did Wampatuck, the son of Chickatawbut, realize what he was doing
when he parted with his Braintree lands for twenty-one pounds and ten
shillings. The Indian deed is still preserved, with the following words
on its back: "In the 17th reign of Charles 2. Braintry Indian Deeds.
Given 1665. Aug. 10: Take great care of it."
Little did the Indian chief realize that the surrounding waters were to
float hulks as mighty as a city; that the hills were to furnish granite
for buildings and monuments without number; and that men were to be born
there who would shape the greatest Ship of State the world has ever
known. And yet, if he had known, possibly he would have accepted the
twenty-one pounds and ten shillings just the same, and departed quietly.
For the ships that were to be built would never have pleased him as well
as his own canoe; the granite buildings would have stifled him; and the
zealous Adamses and the high-minded Quincys and Sewalls and all the
rest would have bored him horribly. Probably the only item in the whole
history of Quincy which would have appealed to Wampatuck in the least
would have been the floating down on a raft of the old Hollis Street
Church of Boston, to become the Union Church of Weymouth and Braintree
in 1810. This and the similar transportation of the Bowditch house from
Beacon Street in Boston to Quincy a couple of years later would have
fascinated the red man, as the recital of the feat fascinates us to-day.
Those who care to learn more of Quincy will do well to read the
autobiography of Charles Francis Adams and "The Education of Henry
Adams." Those who care more for places than for descriptions of them may
wander at will, finding beneath the surface of the modern city many
landmarks of the old city which underlies it. They may see the
scaffolding of the great shipyards latticing themselves against the sky,
and the granite quarries against the hills. They may see the little
cottages and the great houses made famous by those who have passed over
their thresholds; they may linger in the old burial ground and trace out
the epitaphs under the portico of the golden-belfried church. But after
they have touched and handled all of these things, they will not
understand Quincy unless they look beyond and recognize her greatest
contribution to this country--the noble statesmen who so bravely and
intelligently toiled to construct America's Ship of State.
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