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THE MEMOIRS OF CHARLES H. CRAMP
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: Publisher’s Logo]
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
❦
CHAPT. PAGE
I. Early ship-building in Philadelphia and 11
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
II. Birth—Relatives—High School—Magnetic 39
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
III. Foreign Commerce in 1865—The Clyde and George 97
W. Clyde, and Introduction of Compound
Engines—Commerce of 1870—Merchant
Marine—Lynch Committee—Mr. Cramp and
Committee—Lynch Bill—American Steamship
Company—Visit to British Shipyards—John
Elder—British Methods—Interchange of
Methods—Merchant Marine, Continued—Dingley
Bill—Defects—Act of 1891, Providing
Registry for Foreign Ships—St. Louis and
St. Paul—Extract from _Forum_—Remarks on
Article—Committee of ship-builders and
Owners—New Bill Introduced by Frye and
Dingley—North Atlantic Traffic
Association—New Shipyards—Tactics of North
Atlantic Traffic Association—Our Navigation
Laws, _North American Review_—Mr.
Whitney—Unfriendly Legislation—Mr.
Whitney’s Letter—Effects of Letter—Mr.
Cramp’s Letter to Committee of Merchant
Marine—International Mercantile Marine
IV. Condition of Navy after Civil War—Admiral 154
Case’s Fleet—Virginius Scare—Huron, Alert
and Ranger—Secretary Hunt—First Advisory
Board—Secretary Chandler—Puritan
Class—Finished—Steel—Hon. J. B. McCreary
and Appropriation Bill for New Navy—Members
of Second Naval Advisory Board—Standard for
Steel for New Ships Chicago, Boston,
Atlanta and Dolphin—Secretary
Whitney—Beginning of New Navy, by Charles
H. Cramp—Baltimore, Charleston and
Yorktown—Purchase of Drawings by Navy
Department—Commodore Walker—Premium
System—Mr. Whitney’s Views—Premiums
Paid—Attack on System—Secretary Tracy—War
College Paper—Classifying Bids
V. Armstrongs—Russian war-ship 205
Construction—Arrival of Cimbria at Bar
Harbor—Visit of Wharton Barker to
Shipyard—Visit of Captain Semetschkin and
Commission to the Yard—Purchase of
Ships—Newspaper Accounts—Captain
Gore-Jones—Mr. Cramp’s Account of
Operations—Europe, Asia, Africa and
Zabiaca—Popoff and Livadia—Visit to Grand
Duke Constantine—Anniversary Banquet in St.
Petersburg of Survivors of Cimbria
Expedition—Object of Visit to Russia—Mr.
Dunn and Japan—Contract for Kasagi—Jubilee
Session of Naval Architects in London—Visit
to Russia—Correspondence with Russian
Officials—Visit to Armstrongs’—Japanese
war-ship Construction—Coming Sea
Power—Correspondence with Russian
Officials—Invited to Russia—Asked to Bid
for war-ships—Our Ministers
Abroad—Construction of Retvizan and
Variag—Maine
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ILLUSTRATIONS
❦
PAGE
CHARLES H. CRAMP _Frontispiece_
CLIPPERSHIP MORNING LIGHT 12
CLIPPERSHIP MANITOU 24
CRUISER YORKTOWN 36
MONITOR TERROR 48
CRUISERS BALTIMORE AND PHILADELPHIA 60
CRUISER NEWARK 72
CRUISERS PENNSYLVANIA AND COLORADO 84
CRUISER COLUMBIA 96
ARMORED CRUISER BROOKLYN 108
ARMORED CRUISER NEW YORK 120
BATTLESHIP NEW IRONSIDES 132
BATTLESHIP IOWA 144
BATTLESHIP ALABAMA 156
BATTLESHIP MAINE 158
BATTLESHIP RETVIZAN IN COMMISSION 180
BATTLESHIP RETVIZAN DOCKING 192
CRUISER VARIAG 204
AMERICAN LINER ST. PAUL 216
MEDI-J-IEH LAUNCHING 228
MEDI-J-IEH IN COMMISSION 240
BATTLESHIPS INDIANA AND MASSACHUSETTS 264
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
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