STEAM NAVY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 F. M. BENNETT 
 
THE STEAM NAVY 
 
 ... OF THE . . . 
 
 UNITED STATES. 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE GROWTH OF THE STEAM VESSEL OF WAR 
 IN THE U. S. NAVY, AND OF THE NAVAL 
 ENGINEER CORPS. 
 
 WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANK M . BENNETT, 
 
 PASSED ASSISTANT ENGINEER, UNITED STATES NAVY. 
 
 1896: 
 
 WARREN & CO., PUBLISHERS, 
 PITTSBURGH, PA. 
 
Copyrighted 1896, by 
 FRANK M. BENNETT. 
 
 Press of W. T. Nicholson, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGB. 
 
 Introductory , « .~ , 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 TJia„D™Ql i oQp^, , ar Fulton, the_Mrjjb,_gJje^|n War_X^S©l.§Y^..Built~-Eobert 
 Fuiton— -Th,e Sea Gull— -The Fulton, 2d— Sr. Chas. H. Haswell, the 
 First Engineer in the United States Navy — Captain M. C. Perry's Rec- 
 omendations Regarding Engineers 1 Force — Regulations Governing Ap- 
 pointment of Engineers — Performance of the Fulton Under Steam — 
 Her Subsequent Career— Captain Perry's Interest in Engineers 8 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Engineer — The Mississippi and Missouri — Establishment of the Engineer 
 Corps by Act of Congress — Destruction of the Missouri — Career of the 
 Mississippi — Steamers Transferred to the Navy from the War Depart- 
 ment—The Michigan 32 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Experiments with the /'Hunter Wh^l'^The Union— The Water Witch— 
 
 The Alleghany — The Stevens Battery 48 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Introduction of the Screw Propeller— John Ericsson— The Princeton, and Her 
 Remarkable Engine — Great-Gun Accident on the Princeton and Con- 
 sequent Breach of Friendship Between Ericsson and Captain Stockton 
 —Subsequent Career of the Princeton 61 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Reorganization of the Engineer Corps — Case of Chief Engineer C. B. Moss — 
 All Assistant Engineers Examined and Rearranged According to Pro- 
 ficiency — Laws and Regulations Affecting the Engineer Corps from 1845 
 to 1850 — Resignation of Chief Engineer John Faron, Jr . 75 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Che War With Mexico — Naval Operatians in California— Important Service of 
 Surgeon William MaxwellWood — Blockade of the Gulf Coast — Commo- 
 dore Perry and the Mississippi — Valuable Professional Service of Engi- 
 neer-in-Chief Haswell — Bombardment of Vera Cruz — "Alvarado Hun- 
 ter " — Steamers Bought for Temporary Service — Naval Engineers En- 
 gaged in the Mexican War — Results of the War....... 88 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Nf,ew Stealers Authorized for the Navy ,|n 1347— The Susquehanna, Pow- 
 hatan, Saranac, and San Jacinto — Mr. Haswell Succeeded as Engineer- 
 in-Chief by Charles B. Stuart — Circumstances Connected with Mr. Has- 
 well' s Leaving the Navy — His Great Services to the Naval Engineer 
 Corps— His Subsequent Career 102 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Expedition to Japan and Treaty with that Country — Services of Engineers 
 in the Expedition — Value of Steamers in Impressing the Japanese — 
 Other Naval Affairs in the Far East. ,.,,..,.•?«>•#• 126 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OHAPTEK X. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 ^^ t j^]l^^]^im^^JP^iod and Beginning of jbjtte Oreation^ry Period^of 
 )£b .-American. ..3^^M^Yy"-^E^ Franklin— The Merrimac Class of 
 Steam Frigates—The Niagara — Services of Chief Engineer Everett in 
 Connection with the Atlantic Cable Laid by the Niagara — The Hart- 
 ford Class of Large Screw Sloops— Mr. Archbold Succeeds Mr. Martin 
 as Engineer-in-Chief — The Mohican Class — The Pawnee— The Paraguay 
 Expedition— Small Steamers Purchased for the Navy — Project to Con- 
 vert Old Line-of -Battle-Ships into Steam Frigates 137 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 The Engineer Corps from 1850 to the Beginning of the Civil War — Congress 
 Petitioned to Increase the Corps — Pay Increased by United Effort of all 
 Officers— Rank of Engineers Defined — New Regulations Governing 
 Appointment and Promotion Issued— Opinions of Chief Engineer Gay 
 in Relation of Sails and Steam 177 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Civil War 193 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 1861— The Civil War, Continued— Engineers and Steam Vessels in the Navy 
 at the Outbreak of Hostilities— Resignation and Dismissal of Officers — 
 Chief Engineer B. F. Isherwood Appointed Engineer-in-Chief of the 
 Navy — Increase of the Engineer Corps— Qualifications of the Volunteer 
 Engineers — Remarkable Career of Don Carlos Hasseltino — Vessels Ad- 
 ded to the Fleet During the Year. — The Kearsearge and Canandaigua 
 Classes of Steam Sloops — The Ninety-Day Gunboats — The First Double- 
 Enders 201 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 1861— The Civil War, Continued — The Norfolk Navy Yard — Attempt to Save 
 the Frigate Merrimac— Endeavors of Engineer-in-Chief Isherwood — 
 Destruction of the Yard — Attack on Hatteras Inlet — Destruction of the 
 Privateer Judah at Pensacola 230 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 1861— The Civil War, Continued — Expedition of Flag Officer DuPont to Port 
 Royal — Loss of the Governor — Naval Battle at Port Royal — Killing of 
 Assistant Engineer Whittemore on the Mohican — Affair of the Trent... 245 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 1861— The Civil War, Continued— ThaJiraLA^ Ste- 
 vens Battery Condemned by" a Board of Naval Officers— Authority^ to 
 Build Armorex! , Vessels Conferred by Act of Congress— Report of Board" 
 on Iron Clad Vessels — The Galena, New Ironsides, and Monitor — 
 Armored Vessels on the Mississippi River 262 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 1862— The Civil War, Continued — Capture of Roanoke Island and Elizabeth 
 City — The Merrimac and Her Raid — Destruction of the Congress and 
 Cumberland— The Monitor Completed and Commisioned — Her Chief 
 Engineer, Isaac Newton — Voyage of the Monitor from New York and 
 Her Arrival in Hampton Roads 286 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 1862— The Civil War, Continued— %sJJFight of Iron Clads— Effects of the 
 Battle — Extraordinary Services tendered by Chief Engineer IS timers — 
 Attack on Drnry's Bluff — The Galena Badly Injured— Gallantry of 
 Assistant Engineer J. W. Thomson , 301 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 v 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. PAGE. 
 
 1862— The Civil War, Continued — Naval Operations in the Mississippi River 
 — Battles Below New Orleans—Catastrophe to the Mound City — Attack 
 on Vicksburg — Warfare on the Atlantic Coast — Wreck of the Adiron- 
 dack — Loss of the Monitor— Peril of the Passaic— Heroism of Assistant 
 Engineer H. W. Robie 318 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 1862— The Civil War, Continued — Increase ofJhe^Navy — Steamers Purchased 
 Mississippi Flotilla TransferrecT^TIiTie " Navy Department — Steam Ves- 
 sels of War Placed Under Construction — The Passaic Class of Monitors 
 — The Dictator and Puritan — The Miantonomoh Class — Other Moni- 
 tors—The Keokuk — The Dunderberg — Legislation Regarding the Navy 
 — Retired List Established — Creation of the Bureau of Steam Engineer- 
 ing—Pensions 387 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 1863 — The Civil War, Continued — Disasters at Galveston — Loss of the Colum- 
 bia — Raid of Rebel Rams off Charleston — Loss of the Isaac Smith — The 
 Florida, and Her Pursuit by the Sonoma — Investment of Washington, 
 North Carolina — Assembling of Ironclads off Charleston — Remarkable 
 Breakdown and Repairs to the Machinery of the Weehawken — Attack on 
 Fort McAllister — First Attack on Fort Sumter — Destruction of the 
 Keokuk — The Atlanta- Weehawken Duel — Protracted Investment of the 
 Charleston Forts by the Monitors — Sinking of the Weehawken 362 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 1863— The Civil War, Continued — The War on the Western Waters — Passage 
 of Port Hudson— Destruction of the Frigate Mississippi — Minor Opera- 
 tions in the West — 9fi3Kj£eg§^^ — The 
 Light-Draft Monitors — ton,B*^BI|-Enjie4:3 — Large Wooden Irrigates 
 and Sloops-of-War— 33*efj^^ Class 
 of Monitors — Assimilated: Rank of Staff Officers Raised — New Regu- 
 lations Governing Promotion in the Engineer Corps Issued 384 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 1863— The Civil War, Continued — Controversy as to the Efficiency of Iron- 
 clads — Rear Admiral DuPont Reports Adversely to Them— Chief Engi- 
 neer Stimers Reports in Their Favor — Rear Admiral DuPont Prefers 
 Charges Against Chief Engineer Stimers — The Case Investigated by a 
 Court of Inquiry — Vindication of Mr. Stimers 403 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 1864— The Civil War, Continued — Confederate Successes in the Use of Torpedoes 
 — Blowing Up of the Sloop of War Hous atonic— -Minor Naval Operations 
 — Boiler Explosion on the Chenango — The Kearsarge -Alabama Fight — 
 The Great Battle in Mobile Bay— Loss of the Tecumseh — Capture of the 
 Privateer Florida by the Wachusett — The Gunboat Otsego Sunk by a 
 Torpedo-— First Attack on Fort Fisher 423 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 1864— The Civil War, Continued — Naval Operations in the North Carolina 
 Sounds — The Ram Albemarle — Sinking of the Socjthfield and defeat of 
 the Miami — The Naval Battle of May Fifth — Disaster to the Sassacus and 
 Heroism of Her Chief Engineer — Daring Attempt of Enlisted Men to De- 
 stroy the Ram — Her Destruction by Lieutenant Wm. B. Cushing — Battle 
 and Capture of Plymouth — Prize Money Distributed on Account of the 
 Albemarle « 447 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 1864— The Civil War, Continued— New JShips andV Machinery Begun—The 
 SerApis Class— -The Resaca Class— ^06mpelftTve ^Machinery of the Quin- 
 nebaug and Swatara— The Stromboli, or Spuyten Duyvil— The Light- 
 Draft Monitors — Petition of the Engineer Corps Addressed to Congress 
 and its Results... ........... 474 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 1865— The Civil War, Concluded— Loss of the San Jacinto— Second Attack 
 on Fort Fisher— The Patapsco Destroyed by a Torpedo— Charleston 
 Abandoned by the Confederates — The Monitors Milwaukee and Osage 
 Sunk — Loss of the Sciota and Ada — Restoration of Peace — Some Naval 
 Lessons.o-f the War — Armed Merchant Vessels Unsuited for Operations 
 
 oT War— Casualties of the Engineer Corps During the Rebellion 495 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Competitive Trials of Steam Machinery— The Nipsic and Kansas — Failure of 
 the Saco — The Famous Algonquin- Winooski Controversy — Performance 
 of the Idaho — Her Success as a Sailing Ship — Trial Trip of the Chatta- 
 nooga — Trial of the Madawaska — Comparative Table of Results of 
 Trials of the Idaho, Chattanooga, Madawaska and Wampanoag — 
 Subsequent Career of the Madawaska, or Tennessee 514 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 The Trial Trip of the Wampanoag— Remarkable Speed Developed— Official 
 Reports of Commanding Officer and Board of Chief Engineers — At- 
 tempt of the Press to Discredit Her Performance — Her Success Verified 
 by the Trial of the AMMONoosuc—TJie Real Reasons for Building Swift 
 £ruise:es During the Civil War — The Wampanoag Condemed by a 
 Board of Naval Officers— Her Subsequent Career 353 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Some Naval Events After the Civil War— The Voyage of the Monadnock to 
 California— The Miantonomoh Visits Europe — The Mohongo in a 
 Pampero — Loss of the Narcissus— Yellow Fever on the Kearsabge 
 and Muscoota— Wreck of the Sacramento — Earthquakes and Tidal 
 Waves — Wreck of the Suwanee — The Affair of the Forward —Loss of 
 the Oneida— Wreck of the Saginaw , 584 
 
 CHAPTRR XXXI. 
 
 Condition of the Engineer Corps after the War— Resignations — The Question of 
 Brevet Rank — First and Second Assistant Engineers Become Commissioned 
 Officers— Chief Engineer J. W. King Appointed Engineer-in-Chief — Sweep- 
 ing Reduction in Rank of Staff Officers — Use of Steam Discontinued on ^ 
 Jhipsof War— The Pay Act of 1870— The Act of 1871.. 603 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 Shipbuilding Prpgress^^i Alaska and Class—Cap- 
 tured Blockade-Runners — Sale of Monitors — Rebuilding of the Mian- 
 tonomoh Class — The Puritan — The New Swatara and Class — Com- 
 pound Engines— Chief Engineer Wood Appointed Engineer-in-Chief— 
 Costly Experiments with Two-Bladed Propellers— The Alert Class of 
 iron Gunboats — The'^ENTiBPRisfe ' ''ClaM~t , rie* 1 l , RENTON---The Nipsic — 
 The Despatch — The Alarm and Intrepid....* 622 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 The Training of Naval Engineers at the Haval Academy, 65$ 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Steam Vessels of the United States Navy in the Arctic Ocean — The Polaris 
 Expedition — Cruise of the Juniata and Tigress — The Je Annette Ex- 
 pedition— Eetreat on the Ice— Heroism and Fortitude of Chief Engi- 
 neer Melville — Voyage and Loss of the Rodgkkrs — Naval and Congres- 
 sional Investigations Into the Loss of the Jeannette — The Greely 
 Relief Expedition — Tardy Promotion of Chief Engineer Melville for 
 
 Heroism Displayed in the Jeannette Expedition 679 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Uniforms and Corps Devices of the Engineer Corps ...» 713 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 The Connection of the Naval Engineer Corps with Technical Education in 
 the United States— Engineers Detailed to Colleges by Authority of 
 Congress—Success of the Experiment— Its Discontinuance 732 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIL 
 
 Brief Mention of Events of Engineering Interest Since 1872— Peril of the Man- 
 hattan — Titles of Assistant Engineers Changed — Chief Engineer Wm. 
 H. Shock Appointed Engineer-in-Chief — Loss of the Huron — Cruise of 
 the Marion to Heard Island — Reduction of Engineer Corps in 1882 — 
 Case of the Discharged Cadet Engineers— Wreck of the Ashuelot — 
 Longevity Pay for Passed Assisant Engineers— Chief Engineer C. H. 
 Loring Succeeds Mr. Shock as Engineer-in-Chief — Naval Disaster at 
 Samoa — Naval Engineers at the Columbian Exposition and Midwinter 
 —Fair Loss of the Kearsarge — Casualty on the Monterey... 744 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 ^JiLlteW«fiavy — Naval Advisory Boards — First Acts of Congress Providing for 
 "~ "The Rebuilding of the Navy — The Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, and 
 Dolphin-— The Newark, Yorktown, and Petrel — The Charleston — 
 The Texas, Maine, and Baltimore— Tiie Dynamite-Qun — The 
 Monterey — The Philadelphia and San Francisco — Chief Engineer 
 George W. Melville Appointed Engineer-in-Chief of the Navy 771 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 The New Navy, Continued — The New York and Olympia— The Detroit Class 
 — The Cincinnati and Raleigh — The Bancroft, Castine and Machias 
 — The Ammen Ram — Coast-Line Battle-Ships — The Ericsson — The 
 Columbia — Her Remarkable Voyage Across the Atlantic Ocean — The 
 Minneapolis— The Brooklyn and low A — New Torpedo Boats and Gun- 
 
 boats — The New Kearsarge i 809 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 Conclusion 845 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 An Alphabetical List of the Names of All Members of the Regular Corps of the 
 
 Navy from the Introduction of Steam to the Present Day.., 853 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 List of Steam Vessels of War of the United States, with Principal Data Regard- 
 ing them and a Brief Synopsis of Service ; Arranged in Chronological 
 Order , 893 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 * Uncle Samuel's Whistle and What it Costs An Illustrated Satire of the Old 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 HAVING completed this work, the author desires to express his 
 thanks to many friends and acquaintances whose assistance, 
 given in the form of books, letters, manuscripts, etc. , has made the 
 collection of much of the contained information possible. Especial 
 thanks are due to Mr. Ohas. H. Haswell of New York, a veteran 
 engineer, and one of the few survivors of the earliest steam period 
 of our navy; his clear mind has supplied a fund of information 
 regarding the birth of our steam navy that could not have been 
 obtained elsewhere, and which has made possible the rescue from 
 oblivion of much of the subject-matter included in the first chapters. 
 Chief Engineer B. F. Isherwood, II. S. Navy, has also kindly sup- 
 plied much information and many references to documents from 
 which valuable knowledge has been derived. 
 
 Chief Engineers James W. King, William H. Shock, Charles 
 H. Loring, George W. Melville, David P. Jones, James Entwistle, 
 F. G. McKean, Harrie Webster, and James H. Perry; Passed 
 Assistant Engineers Eobert S. Griffin, F. C. Bieg, Walter M. 
 McFarland, H. P. Norton, F. C. Bowers, G. Kaemmerling, and 
 Chief Naval Constructor Philip Hichborn, have all afforded so much 
 aid in the way of papers, manuscripts, photographs, etc., that it is a 
 pleasure to thank them by name. Mr. T. C. Brecht, formerly of 
 the naval engineer corps, and Mr. A. O. Blaisdell of New York, 
 have contributed valuable drawings of machinery of older ships, 
 which might not have been found elsewhere, which are greatly 
 appreciated. Mr. E. H. Hart, the well-known photographer of 
 Brooklyn, has placed the author under many obligations by allowing 
 the use of photographs upon which he holds copyrights. Besides 
 those already named, nearly three hundred others — officers and 
 ex-officers of the navy, ship and engine builders, and civilians inter- 
 ested in naval progress — have by letter or verbally given much 
 assistance; all whom are now formally thanked. 
 
 In all matters of historical importance the aim has been to 
 adhere strictly to official accounts written at the time by persons 
 most directly concerned. With this idea in view, the annual reports 
 of the Secretary of the Navy for more than fifty years, covering the 
 
X 
 
 PKEFACE. 
 
 period since steam was introduced into the navy, have been carefully- 
 studied, as have also the reports of commanding officers of fleets, 
 squadrons, and ships, especially those relating to the operations of 
 the Civil War. The records of the naval Bureaus of Steam Engi- 
 neering and Construction and Repair have been found mines of useful 
 knowledge. Many reports made by committees of Congress on 
 naval matters have also been used and much information gained 
 from them, they being official and impartial to the same extent as 
 departmental reports, and therefore equally suitable. From these 
 official sources and from individuals of undoubted reliability the 
 material for this book has been obtained. 
 
 In addition to official documents, many books have been used 
 for reference. Some of these are mentioned in the text; among 
 others, those found most useful have been, " The Atlantic and Gulf 
 Coast, " by Rear Admiral Daniel Ammen; C. B. Boynton, < c History 
 of the Navy During the Cival War;" Charles B. Stuart, " Naval 
 and Merchant Steamers of the United States;" J. R. Soley, "The 
 Blockade and the Cruisers;" Geo. F. Emmons, 6 1 Navy of the 
 United States, 1775-1853;" Rear Admiral Preble, « History of 
 Steam Navigation;" Dr. R. H. Thurston, "Growth of the Steam 
 Engine;" Captain A. T. Mahan, "Gulf and Inland Waters;" 
 T. H. S. Hamersly, u General Register of the U. S. Navy;" J. T. 
 Scharf, "History of the Confederate Stages Navy;" Bennet 
 Woodcroft, "Origin of Steam Navigation;" Wm. C. Church, 
 « Life of John Ericsson;" H. O. Ladd, " The War With Mexico;" 
 Chief Engineer B. F. Isherwood, "Engineering Precedents," and 
 "Experimental Researches;" Chief Engineer George W. Melville, 
 " In the Lena Delta;" Mrs. Emma De Long, " The Voyage of the 
 Jeannette;" Chief Engineer James W. King, "European Ships of 
 War," and Wm. Fairbairn, " History of Iron Ship-Building. " The 
 Journal of the American Society of Naval Engineers has furnished 
 complete data regarding naval and commercial steamers of the 
 United States and foreign countries for the past seven years, or ever 
 since that journal was established. 
 
 Appendix A is known to be imperfect in not containing the 
 names of that great body of patriotic Americans who served their 
 country so well as volunteer engineers in the navy during the long 
 war for the preservation of the Union: they numbered upwards of 
 twenty-five hundred and their names and records when displayed in 
 tabular form were found to fill so many pages as to exceed the limits 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 proposed for this volume, which obliged the author reluctantly to 
 abandon his original intention of including them in the list of officers 
 of the regular service. 
 
 Appendix B is also incomplete for lack of space. To prop- 
 erly present in tables all the important data relating to our naval 
 steamers, their engines, boilers, builders, synopsis of service, etc., 
 would require pages of folio, or at least quarto, size, the tables given 
 being consequently limited by the size of these pages to a few 
 columns of the most important items. Lack of space has also caused 
 the omission from these tables of the names of a large number of 
 steamers purchased or captured during the Civil War and used tem- 
 porarily as war vessels. An excellent list of naval vessels, giving 
 all usMul information, was published in book form in 1853 by 
 Lieutenant (afterwards rear admiral) George F. Emmons, but noth- 
 ing of the kind has appeared recently. Some officer with a liking 
 for statistics could not be better employed at present than in the 
 preparation of similar tables brought up to date, using the Emmons 
 book as a model, for it cannot be improved upon in form and 
 arrangement. Unless this is done soon, much useful and interesting 
 information will be lost, as the author, with all the records of the 
 Navy Department to refer to, found great difficulty in collecting 
 data pertaining to ships not more than thirty years old. 
 
 Appendix C, ' 4 Uncle Samuel's Whistle and What It Costs, " 
 is amusing rather than instructive. It is reprinted to gratify requests 
 made by a number ot present and former members of the engineer 
 corps. It is hoped it will please the older officers of the navy to see 
 it again in print, while it certainly will amuse the younger men of 
 the service who have never seen it. 
 
 The author submits no apology for making this book. It is a 
 custom in armies and navies for the histories of distinct corps, 
 departments, regiments, and even ships, to be written, and, although 
 the supply of books in the world is far too great, there is room for 
 one more to tell the story of steam in the American Navy. The only 
 regret felt by the writer in giving this volume to his friends and the 
 public is because of its imperfections: the subject deserves better 
 treatment, and with more time and better opportunities to bestow 
 upon it could be made more valuable as a history and more attractive 
 in literary form. As- it is, it has cost much research and hard work 
 in the intervals of busy employment afloat and ashore, and it is now 
 open to criticism. F. M. B. 
 
 New York, August, 1896. 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 U. S. S. Demo logos * 7 
 
 Demologos, sections and side view 10 
 
 Launching of Demologos 14 
 
 U. S. S. Fulton, (the second) 20 
 
 U. S. S. Fulton, (the third) boilers 28 
 
 U. S. S. Mississippi 33 
 
 Charles W. Copeland • 37 
 
 U. S. S. Mississippi Engines 43 
 
 U. S. S. Michigan 45 
 
 Hunter's wheels, arrangement 49 
 
 Loper's propeller 51 
 
 XJ. S. S. Alleghany propeller 56 
 
 Ericsson's propeller 1 62 
 
 U. S. S. Princeton, piston movement , 65 
 
 U. S. S. Princeton engines 66 
 
 Charles H. Haswell 83 
 
 IT. S. S. Powhatan, boiler 106 
 
 U. S. S. Powhatan 107 
 
 U. S. S. San Jacinto HI 
 
 Charles B. Stuart 115 
 
 IT. S. S. San Jacinto propellers 118 
 
 IT. S. S. Franklin 139 
 
 U. S. S. Merrimac 143 
 
 U. S. S. Niagara 148 
 
 Daniel B. Martin 154 
 
 U. S. S. Kichmond 159 
 
 XJ. S. S. Iroquois 167 
 
 U. S. S. Pawnee engines 173 
 
 Samuel Archbold 203 
 
 XJ. S, S. Tuscarora 207 
 
 XJ. S. S. Ossipee 211 
 
 XJ. S. S. Canandaigua. « 215 
 
 XJ. S. S. Katahdin, 1861 219 
 
 Martin water tube boiler • 222 
 
 Bartol water tube boiler . • 223 
 
 KobertDanby • 233 
 
 New Ironsides » 275 
 
 Original Ericsson Monitor 250 
 
 Boiler of Monitor 281 
 
 U. S. S. Cairo 283 
 
 Alban C. Stimers 302 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE* 
 
 Monitor-Merrimac duel - 311 
 
 U. S. Monitor Nantucket 341 
 
 U. S. S. Miantonomoh 345 
 
 Stimers' fire tube boiler •«-••• 34 ^ 
 
 TJ. S. S. Dunderberg 351 
 
 U. S. S. Dunderberg, (section) 3 ^ 4 
 
 IT. S. S. Iosco 355 
 
 Engines of Agawan class 3 58 
 
 U. S. S. Shawmut • 3 59 
 
 TJ. S. S. Harriet Lane 365 
 
 Confederate Iron Clad Atlanta • 3 &0 
 
 U. S. S. Guerriere • 3 ^ 3 
 
 U. S. S. Worcester - 397 
 
 Confederate Torpedo Boat 4 24 
 
 Sassacus and Albemarle action 4 59 
 
 Damage to Sassacus 4 ^ 3 
 
 U. S. S. Resaca 4 ^ 
 
 U. S. S. Mayflower 487 
 
 Light draft Monitor 4 90 
 
 Transverse sections of U. S. S. Columbia... 505 
 
 Transverse sections of S. S. Paris 506 
 
 TJ. S. S. Kansas boiler 515 
 
 Wright's Segmental Engine 516 
 
 Dickerson's Boiler 524 
 
 U. S. S. Idaho 527 
 
 TJ. S. S. Chattanooga 533 
 
 TJ. S. S. Madawaska engines 537 
 
 TJ. S. S. Tennessee 546 
 
 TJ. S. S. Wampanoag 551 
 
 Machinery of Wampanoag 556 
 
 B. F. Isherwood 573 
 
 " Last of the Wampanoag " 581 
 
 James W. King Oil 
 
 TJ. S. S. Omaha 625 
 
 TJ. S. S Amphitrite, (section) 631 
 
 TJ. S. S. Swatara 633 
 
 William W. W. Wood 637 
 
 TJ. S. S. Ranger 641 
 
 TJ. S. S. Enterprise engines 644 
 
 TJ. S. S. Enterprise 645 
 
 U. S. S. Trenton - 649 
 
 Torpedo boat Alarm 651 
 
 Steam engineering building, Naval Academy C61 
 
 Cadet Engineers 669 
 
 Uniforms of Cadet Engineers 675 
 
 * 1 Found " 695 
 
 Melville Resolutions 699 
 
 Engineer Corps Devices 714-719-725 
 
 Engineer Corps Uniforms , 727 
 
 Engineer Corps Uniforms , 731 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xv 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 W. H. Shock 747 
 
 Charles H. Loring 759 
 
 Model Battleship Illinois 765 
 
 TJ. S. S. Chicago 779 
 
 IT. S. S. Chicago boilers 782 
 
 Locomotive type boiler , 783 
 
 U. S. S. Maine propellers 791 
 
 U. S. S. Maine boilers 795 
 
 Dynamite Cruiser Vesuvius 799 
 
 U. S. S. Bennington 803 
 
 Engineer-in-Chief George W. Melville 807 
 
 U. S. S. Texas * 810 
 
 U. S. S. Cincinnati.. 814 
 
 Engine of U. S. S. Olympia 815 
 
 U. S. S. Detroit 819 
 
 Screws of U. S. S. Columbia 822 
 
 U. S. S. Castine 823 
 
 U. S. Ram Katahdin 827 
 
 Engines of Katahdin 831 
 
 Boilers of U. S. S, Columbia 835 
 
 U. S. S. Columbia 836 
 
 U. S. S. Brooklyn 837 
 
 U. S. S. Nashville 838 
 
 U. S. Battleship Indiana 839 
 
 U. S. S. Wilmington 842 
 
 Engine of U. S. S. Massachusetts 842-J 
 
 Composite Gunboat — 843 
 
THE STEAM NAVY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNITED STATES 
 
The Steam Navy of the United States. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " For we are to bethink us that the Epic verily is not Arms and the Man, 
 but Tools and the Man— an infinitely wider kind of Epic."— Thomas Carlyle: 
 Past and Present, Booh IV., Chapter 1. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 A glorious epic of the olden world, with the first lines of 
 which most modern men are familiar, sings in stately rythm of 
 " The arms and the man who first from the shores of the Trojan into 
 Italy came," and this association of man and his weapons has re- 
 mained through all the ages as the symbol and corner stone of all 
 human government, power, and progress. The events of the cent- 
 ury now drawing to its end have to a considerable extent shaken 
 this ideal, for other things than arms have come to be recognized in 
 the story of man's development a change in sentiment 
 expressed to perfection by that prince of modern philosophers 
 in the words that appear at the head of this chapter. In under- 
 taking the subject of this volume the author does not propose 
 to sing, or try to sing, of tools and men alone, nor will he 
 attempt to elevate either tools or arms to the disadvantage of the 
 other; but rather, believing that the adoption of steam machinery 
 for purposes of war furnishes the most perfect illustration in exis- 
 tence of the mutual dependence and co-operation of these two great 
 factors in civilization, he will endeavor to treat them as equals, for 
 the arm is a tool and the tool is an arm, and their uses and purposes 
 are identical within the limits of the subject of this book. 
 
 The story of the application of steam power to navigation, 
 especially to the navigation and operation of ships o,f war, is a long 
 one, and one which must be imperfectly told in the following chap- 
 ters for the reason that the slow acceptance and growth of the new 
 element will be considered with reference to one country and one 
 
2 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 navy only. Men who have made a study of the history of war, or 
 who have given evsn a reasonable amount of reading to the subject 
 are familiar with the reluctance with which the older weapons were 
 laid aside for those which came in with the use of gunpowder. 
 "Villainous saltpetre" was for a long era an object of dislike and 
 distrust and those who used it were regarded with disfavor if not 
 with contempt; they did not meet the enemy in hand-to-hand con- 
 flict with sword and spear; they begrimed their hands and clothing 
 with burnt powder; they could not join in the rush and blood- stirring 
 excitement of the charge, but stood off from friend and foe encum- 
 bered with their heavy weapons, creating an ill-smelling smoke and 
 discordant noises, and their labors were very grudgingly admitted to 
 be of any real advantage. So strong was the aversion to the new 
 implement that in 1544, two hundred years after cannon are known 
 to have been used by civilized nations in battle, 1 an historian deal- 
 ing with the subject wrote that a monk was the inventor of cannon; 
 adding that ' ' the villian who brought into the world so mischievous 
 a thing is not worthy that his name should remain in the memory of 
 men. ' 5 
 
 As they did not take part in hand-to-hand conflict, gunners were 
 looked upon as non-combatants, quite inferior to the warriors of the 
 broad-sword and battle-axe variety, and as their weapon was very 
 slow in its development they remained in an inferior military posi- 
 tion for many centuries. It is an historical fact that it was not until 
 just before the beginning of the American Revolution that the artil- 
 lery branch of the British army, after a protracted but triumphant 
 struggle with prejudice, "had vindicated its right to be, and was con- 
 sidered an important combatant arm." 2 So complete has been the 
 change of sentiment with respect to cannon within about one hund- 
 red years that men belonging to military establishments now, especi- 
 ally navies, who make a point of priding themselves upon being es- 
 sentially combatants, base their claim wholly upon the circumstance 
 that their business is to handle cannon and gunpowder. The effect 
 
 1 At Crecy in> 1346. Traditions more or less authentic carry the use of " fire 
 pipes " or other obscurely described weapons back almost to the beginning of the 
 Christian era. 
 
 2 Lieutenant W. E. Birkhimer: i( Historical Sketch of the Artillery, U. S. 
 Army." 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 3 
 
 of the prejudice of centuries against firearms is still visible in the 
 lingering regiments of lancers, armed with the spear, occasionally 
 met with in the great armies of the most progressive powers. 
 
 The introduction of steam into naval operations has revolution- 
 ized the fighting tactics of navies to fully as great an extent as gun- 
 powder changed the methods of fighting on land, and in precisely 
 the same manner has the development of steam been hindered by a 
 prejudice born of older things and intolerant of change. Gunpowder 
 has long since won its struggle, and steam on shore has been equally 
 successful, but steam at sea is still in the very thickest of the fight 
 for recognition upon its merit, and this in spite of the fact that the 
 vehicle for its use — the marine engine — -has advanced further 
 toward perfection within the hundred years of its life than did 
 the cannon during all the centuries from Crecy to Sedan, and is 
 now in a stage of development fully abreast, if not actually ahead 
 of the most perfected pieces of ordnance. That steam will win an 
 equal place and equal honor with gunpowder and the propelling 
 and auxiliary engines of a ship of war will come to be recognized as 
 arms fully as important in making up the ship's combative qualities, 
 as the turret and machine guns is a matter of simple logic; it only 
 remains to be seen how long it will be before preconceived notions 
 will admit the value of a new weapon. 
 
 It is proposed to begin with the first steam war- vessel ever built, 
 which happened to be in our own navy, and to trace from that clumsy 
 beginning the slow development of the naval steamer, with such il- 
 lustrations as have been obtainable, in such manner that the chapters of 
 this book will be an orderly and progressive account of the growth of the 
 war-steamer and the marine engine in the United States. Into this nar- 
 rative, as a most essential part, will be woven the history of the 
 engineer corps of the navy, whose members have, in the face of much 
 that was discouraging, kept the- standard of our steamers fully up to 
 that of other nations and have made the new navy, with its swift 
 steel ships and perfected machinery, an established fact . Naval histo- 
 ries; of which there are many, deal almost entirely with the deeds 
 of those who fight in ships that they have received completed from 
 the hands of the builders, and in a majority of cases have little or 
 nothing to say of the ships themselves or of their makers, or of that 
 other class of officials who not only design and build the vitals of all 
 
4 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 modern war-ships but fight in the ships themselves as part of their 
 naval duties. In making this work statistical to a considerable ex- 
 tent with regard to our naval steamers it is therefore proper that the 
 lives and deeds of those who have been so intimately connected with 
 them be also told, descriptively as well as statistically, and in so do- 
 ing the author believes he will supply a lack that many beside him- 
 self have noticed in the older and more pretentious histories of our 
 navy. 
 
 It has been written that it is difficult to become sentimental 
 about the engineer. This idea is born of the belief that he deals 
 only with material things and takes no part in the glorious possibili- 
 ties of war or in the victories that are won from storms. This theory 
 is absolutely false; his post of duty is as dangerous, as responsible, 
 and as romantic, if you will, as any in a ship if people did but know 
 it, and it is only because of a cultivated fondness for things that have 
 been long celebrated in song and story that they do not know it. 
 The life of the old-time sailor was in reality commonplace enough to 
 satisfy even a ploughman, but an admiration for the sea and those 
 who face its* dangers on the part of those who never go to sea has 
 made of the sailor's existence a picturesque ideal that has become an 
 article of faith with all landsmen. And this faith excludes the new 
 type of seaman — the man of the engine and boiler rooms — from any 
 share in the romance of the sea because he faces dangers of another 
 kind and performs his duty in another atmosphere, though equally 
 exposed to the dangers that are peculiar to a life afloat. When some 
 poet with a clearer vision and a willingness to enter an untrodden 
 field shall appear and sing the song of steam it will be a revelation 
 to the multitude; for there is music and romance and poetry as well 
 as the embodiment of power about the mechanisms that drive the 
 great ships of to-day. 
 
 From a habit of thought, then, rather than from any real state 
 of affairs, the engine-room men of modern fleets are denied partici- 
 pation and honor in much of the life in which they take a leading part. 
 With but little change, Napier's famous comparision of the condi- 
 tions surrounding the British and French soldiers in the Peninsular 
 War applies most aptly to the relation between the artificer and 
 sailor classes in modern navies. The British soldier, though patiently 
 fighting to conquer, could look forward to no honors to reward his 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 5 
 
 daring; no despatch gave his name to the plaudits of his country- 
 men; his life of danger and hardship was uncheered by hope, his 
 death unnoticed. At the same time, 1 4 Napoleon's troops fought in 
 bright fields, where every helmet caught some beams of glory." In 
 just the same way the naval engineer and his men toil in darkness in 
 the depths of the ship, knowing full well that much they do will be 
 unknown and unnoticed, however important it may be; and they 
 often meet emergencies so bravely that their ships are saved from 
 destruction or disablement both in peace and war, as will be shown 
 hereafter by a few notable instances of duty, well done, that have come 
 to light out of the many that have been performed. 
 
 Few naval engineeers of any length of service have not once at 
 least, been suddenly brought face to face with death in its most fear- 
 ful form by being called upon to act in an emergency resulting from 
 a damaged boiler or steam pipe, and the instances are few where 
 they have failed to prevent a calamity by sticking to their posts and 
 encouraging their men to do the needful work, often so quietly that 
 knowledge of the danger averted does not extend beyond the fire- 
 room. If equal danger were faced from shot and shell in the smoke 
 of battle, popular applause and military rewards would follow, but 
 the engineer, encountering his peril in clouds of scalding steam and 
 in the choke and wither of fierce fires suddenly hauled, does not ap- 
 peal to the popular idea of heroism, though his acts are heroic and 
 his performance of duty in navies is a military act just as much as 
 nailing a flag to a mast, stopping a shot hole, or fishing a mast under 
 fire, are military duties. Nor has he even the consoling thought 
 when confronted with an emergency of meeting a death accounted 
 heroic, for if he dies it must be like a rat in a hole, for which there 
 is no glory, popular fancy regarding no death for one's country 
 glorious, unless it is met not only beneath the flag but in full sight of it. 
 
 Popular ideas of naval administration are based upon a partial 
 knowledge of an order of things that is no more, and not upon fa- 
 miliarity with conditions that really exist. Whatever notions the pub- 
 lic may entertain, the fact remains that a much firmer and finer de- 
 gree of courage is required in the officer who controls a division of 
 men, either in peace or war, imprisoned beneath the battle-hatches 
 of a war-steamer than in him whose men are in the open air and in 
 sight of their danger. If the habit of command is ever needed in an 
 
6 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE TJKHED STATES. 
 
 officer it is in the trying emergencies and conditions that beset the 
 naval engineer, and he who posesses it to the degree that enables him 
 in a critical moment to keep his men at their posts and free from 
 panic, thereby making of them and the machinery they handle a 
 fighting factor that can be relied upon, is aiding his commanding 
 officer in carrying out a plan of battle to fully as great an extent as 
 can any other officer who directs the handling of two or four guns; 
 and the officer who does this is most thoroughly and essentially a 
 combatant, performing duties directly contributory to the fighting 
 capabilities of the ship. This proposition needs no proof to those 
 familiar with modern naval conditions, but as one of the purposes of 
 this book is to set the position of American naval engineers in a true 
 light before the public a number of instances of gallantry and profes- 
 sional efficiency on their part will be recited to prove that they actu- 
 ally and by right, by virtue of the duties they perform, belong to the 
 combatant class of naval officers, of the navy as well as in the navy. 
 
 As the Civil War furnishes the example of the most prolonged 
 and arduous service that our navy has ever been called upon to per- 
 form, and is, moreover, the first and only instance of great naval 
 operations being carried on by means of steam vessels, it will be 
 taken as the proper field for illustrating the nature and importance 
 of the duties that engineers have rendered this country in its naval 
 service. Though nearly one-half of this volume will be devoted to 
 the work of the navy during the Civil War, no idea has been enter- 
 tained of giving even an outline of our naval history during that pe- 
 riod. A sufficient number of naval engagements and undertakings 
 will be narrated in chronological order to give an ordinarily good 
 idea of the general services performed by the navy, and an effort 
 will be made to trace with some care the changes in type of naval 
 steam-ships and marine engines resulting from the experiences of the 
 war. In all of this no undue or undeserved prominence will be given 
 to the naval engineer corps or to any of its members, but where en- 
 gineers have rendered conspicuous service, either in battle or in pre- 
 paring ships and machinery for use in war, full credit will be accorded 
 them. This being a history of engines and engineers, it is natural 
 that engineers should be frequently mentioned, but that does 
 not leave the inference that they were the only officers engaged in 
 carrying on the war on the part of the navy; on the contrary, the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 7 
 
 arm is simply to show that they did. contribute mueh to the success 
 of the Union arms and were much more than civilian adjuncts to the 
 officers charged with the execution of general operations, whom they 
 helped so well. The latter cannot at this late day regret that the 
 story of the devotion of their engineer colleagues is to be told, es- 
 pecially as the story of their own deeds has been told often and well 
 and has become a glorious part of our naval history. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Soon shall thy arm, unconquer'd Steam! afar 
 Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car; 
 Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear 
 The flying chariot through the fields of air." 
 
 Erasmus Darwin. 
 
 The Demologos, 1 or Fulton, the First Steam War- Vessel ever Built — Robert Ful- 
 ton—The Sea GuLL—The Fulton, 2d— Mr. Charles H. Haswell, the First 
 Engineer in the United States Navy — Captain M. C. Perry's Recommenda- 
 tions Regarding Engineers' Force — Regulations Governing Appointment of 
 Engineers— Performance of the Fulton Under Steam — Her Subsequent Ca- 
 reer — Captain Perry's Interest in Engineers. 
 
 THE first steam 
 vessel for war 
 purposes in the 
 United States na- 
 vy, or in any 
 navy for that mat- 
 ter, was the Demo- 
 logos, or Fulton, 
 designed by Mr. 
 Robert Fulton and 
 built under his su- 
 pervision in New 
 I York in 1814, while 
 the war with Great 
 Britain was going 
 on. Owing to diffi- 
 culties in obtaining 
 material and skilled labor, this vessel, or floating battery, was not 
 completed in time to be used against the British fleet, then con- 
 stantly hovering about the port of New York, an unfortunate circum- 
 stance that is to be regretted for more reasons than one. The sub- 
 sequent performance of this peculiar craft under steam makes it 
 
 WAR STEAMER FULTON THE FIRST, OR, DEMOLOGOS. 
 
 " Yoice of the People." 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 0 
 
 certain that with her powerful battery and independence of wind and 
 tide she would have been entirely successful over the sailing-frigates 
 she was built to assail, her advantage over them being not unlike 
 that possessed by a savage, tireless wolf attacking a flock of sheep. 
 Her earlier advent would have saved us the loss of the President 
 frigate, and thus deprived the enemy of one of the very few causes 
 for rejoicing over naval victories that the events of that war afforded. 
 
 Of much more importance would have been the incalculable im- 
 pulse given to steam as a factor in naval warfare that would have 
 followed the success of the Demologos in battle, and which would 
 have set forward the development of the times in this regard almost 
 half a century. The duel between the rudely-fashioned ironclads 
 Monitor and Merrimac completely changed the naval architecture of 
 the world, but who can tell of the absolute revolution, not only in 
 naval architecture but in the methods of naval warfare, that would 
 have resulted from the trial of Fulton's invention in actual war ? In- 
 stead of being afterward obliged to fight its way inch by inch and 
 foot by foot, compelled to struggle against every obstacle and every 
 objection which jealousy, conservatism, and ignorance could bar 
 against its progress, slowly and painfully forcing an unwilling and 
 qualified recognition from the very element that should have cham- 
 pioned its cause, steam-power would have appeared in the arena fully 
 armed and equipped from the brain of its master, and would have 
 been hailed not only as an auxiliary, but as an all-important arm in 
 naval warfare. 
 
 The dimensions of the Demologos were: length, one hundred 
 and fifty-six feet; breadth, fifty-six feet; depth, twenty feet; ton- 
 nage, two thousand four hundred and seventy -five; water-wheel, 
 sixteen feet in diameter, fourteen feet wide, four feet dip; engine, 
 cylinder forty-eight inches diameter, and five feet stroke; boiler, 
 length, twenty-two feet; breadth, twelve feet; depth, eight feet. 
 
 The total cost of the vessel was $320,000, or about the cost of 
 a first-class frigate, the Constitution, built in 1797, having cost origi- 
 nally $302,719. 
 
 A comparision of these dimensions with the views of this pio- 
 neer war- steamer given in this chapter shows that the drawings are 
 somewhat out of proportion to the scale marked on them; they are, 
 nevertheless, of great interest and value as being exact copies of the 
 
Figure!^ TiTW&ir&ye sec7wiA?ier£oiler & tfa s& 
 
 E E her mo ckn, walls 5&eL thick , dvni/ziskvy to befowtke vnderiuiti a$ afFF; 
 drom^ilofwakr9ieeiJ)S^h£r yaA deck , 
 
 Fig. I. 
 
 i 
 
 JFjtff/M. 
 
 ROBERT FWL1 1 OM 
 November 
 
 from stuart's naval and mail steamers of the united states. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 originals made by Eobert Fulton and exhibited by him to the Presi- 
 dent of the United States when advocating his plan of applying steam 
 to naval warfare. Fulton had his interview with the Executive late 
 in 1813 and his project was zealously accepted, Congress, in March, 
 1814, authorizing the President to have built and equipped one or 
 more such floating batteries for the defense of the coast. 
 
 The Coast and Harbor Defense Association, having charge of 
 the building of war vessels, committed the building of the Demologos 
 to a sub-committee of five prominent gentlemen, and Robert Fulton 
 was appointed the engineer in charge of the work. The complete 
 vessel — hull, engines and boilers — was designed by Fulton and the 
 engines and boilers were built by him at his machine works on the 
 North River. The hull was built at the ship-yard of Adam and Noah 
 Brown on the East River and was launched in the presence of a great 
 multitude of spectators, October 29, 1814, a little more than four 
 months after the heels were laid. The plural is used intentionally, 
 as the structure, as may be seen from the drawings, consisted of two 
 hulls with the paddle-wheel working in a channel or canal between 
 them; this canal was not continuous from end to end of the vessel, 
 but is described as occupying a space of about sixty feet adjacent to 
 the wheel, with its approaches presumably sloped off to prevent the 
 action of the wheel from being inutile. 
 
 In November the hull was moved from the ship-yard to Fulton's 
 engine works and the machinery installed, that labor being com- 
 pleted by the end of May, 1815. Certain changes were made in the 
 vessel about this time on the recommendation of Captain David Porter, 
 who had just returned home from his unfortunate cruise with the Es- 
 se® and had been assigned to the command of the war-steamer. The 
 original plan was to rely upon steam alone for propulsion, but Por- 
 ter regarded this with misgiving and caused two large masts to be 
 stepped to support latteen sails, and bowsprits for jibs, with all the 
 accompanying top-hamper; he also had the sides, originally stopped 
 flush at the spar deck, carried up to form protecting bulwarks for the 
 sailors who would be on deck attending to the sails and rigging that 
 had been added. The boiler, or " caldron for preparing her steam," 
 as the gentlemen having charge of the work called it in their report, 
 was also changed, probably by Fulton's direction, and two boilers 
 were installed instead of one. Owing to the rigor of the British 
 
12 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 blockade about New York, guns for the vessel had to be hauled over- 
 land from Philadelphia, they having been taken from an armed British 
 ship named John of Lcmcaster, captured by the President early in the 
 war. In June, 1815, the Dernologos steamed about New York Bay 
 to try her machinery and found its performance to exceed every ex- 
 pectation; in the words of an early writer, 4 4 she exhibited a novel 
 and sublime spectacle to an admiring people. ' ' 
 
 On the fourth of July of the same year, she made a passage to 
 the ocean and back, steaming fifty-three miles in all, without any aid 
 from her sails, in eight hours and twenty minutes; the wind and tide 
 were partly in her favor and partly against her, the average rather in 
 her favor. In September she made another trial trip to the sea, and 
 having at this time the weight of her whole armament on board, she 
 went at an average of five and a half miles an hour, with and against 
 the tide. When stemming the tide, which ran at the rate of three 
 miles an hour, she advanced at the rate of two and a half miles an 
 hour. This performance was not more than equal to Kobert Fulton's 
 expectations, but it exceeded what he had promised to the govern- 
 ment, which was that she should be propelled by steam at the rate 
 of from three to four miles an hour. 
 
 The British were not uninformed as to the preparations which 
 were making for them, nor inattentive to their progress. It is cer- 
 tain that the steam battery lost none of her terrors in the reports or 
 imaginations of the enemy, as we find the following information in a 
 treatise on steam vessels published in Scotland at that time, the au 
 thor stating that he had taken great care to procure full and accurate 
 accounts: 
 
 4 4 Length on deck, three hundred feet; breadth, two hundred 
 feet; thickness of her sides, thirteen feet of alternate oak plank and 
 cork wood — carries forty-four guns, four of which are hundred pound- 
 ers; quarter-deck and forecastle guns, forty-four pounders; and 
 further to annoy an enemy attempting to board, can discharge one 
 hundred gallons of boiling water in a minute, and by mechanism 
 brandishes three hundred cutlasses with the utmost regularity over her 
 gunwales; works also an equal number of heavy iron pikes of great 
 length, darting them from her sides with prodigious force, and with- 
 drawing them every quarter of a minute!" 
 
LAUNCHING OF FULTON THE FIRST, OR BEMOLOGOS. 
 
14 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 By one of those inexplicable cruelties of fate, Mr. Fulton, whose 
 heart and soul were absorbed in the progress of his structure, was 
 taken ill and died suddenly in February, 1815, before the vessel was 
 completed, so he never knew of the great success he had achieved. 
 Referring to this sad event, the report of the construction committee 
 says: "Their exertions were further retarded by the premature and 
 unexpected death of the engineer. The world was deprived of his 
 invaluable labors before he had completed his favorite undertaking. 
 They will not inquire, wherefore, in the dispensations of a Divine 
 Providence, he was not permitted to realize his grand conception. 
 His discoveries, however, survive for the benefit of mankind, and will 
 extend to unborn generations. ' ' 
 
 The same committee report, signed by Messrs. Samuel L. 
 Mitchell, Thomas Morris, and Henry Rutgers, contains many opin- 
 ions and recommendations of great wisdom, indicating that the men 
 of those days were more far-seeing and thoughtful than those of a 
 later generation, and more disposed to appreciate the importance of 
 new discoveries. Although written eighty years ago, the following 
 paragraphs from the report sound not unlike the more progressive 
 naval opinions of to-day, especially in that part relating to the neces- 
 sity of training men for steam service, a subject that has been re- 
 commended and as regularly neglected from time to time ever since 
 1815: 
 
 u The Commissioners congratulate the Government and the na- 
 tion on the event of this noble project. Honorable alike to its au- 
 thor and its patrons, it constitutes an era in warfare and the arts. 
 The arrival of peace, indeed, has disappointed the expectations of 
 conducting her to battle. That last and conclusive act of showing 
 her superiority in combat, has not been in the power of the Commis- 
 sioners to make. 
 
 "If a continuance of tranquility should be our lot, and this 
 steam vessel of war be not required for the public defense, the nation 
 may rejoice that the fact we have ascertained is of incalculably greater 
 value than the expenditure — and that if the present structure should 
 perish, we have the information never to perish, how, in a future 
 emergency, others may be built. The requisite variations will be 
 dictated by circumstances. 
 
THE STEAM ETAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 15 
 
 ' 'Owing to the cessation of hostilities, it has been deemed inexpe- 
 dient to finish and equip her as for immediate and active employ. In 
 a few weeks everything that is incomplete could receive the proper 
 adjustment. 
 
 " After so much has been done, and with such encouraging re- 
 sults, it becomes the Commissioners to recommend that the steam 
 frigate be officered and manned for discipline and practice. A dis- 
 creet commander, with a selected crew, could acquire experience in 
 the mode of navigating this peculiar vessel. The supplies of fuel, 
 the tending of the fires, the replenishing of the expended water, the 
 management of the mechanism, the heating of shot, the exercise of 
 the guns, and various matters, can only become familiar by use. It 
 is highly important that a portion of the seamen and marines should 
 be versed in the order and economy of the steam frigate. They will 
 augment, diffuse, and perpetuate knowledge. When, in process of 
 time, another war shall call for more structures of this kind, men, 
 regularly trained to her tactics, may be dispatched to the several sta- 
 tions where they may be wanted." 
 
 There being no active service in the navy against the enemy; 
 the Demologos, or Fulton, as she was afterward named, was taken 
 to the Brooklyn navy yard and used as a receiving ship for many 
 years, until, on the fourth day or June, 1829, her magazine, containing 
 two and one -half barrels of damaged powder used for firing the morn- 
 ing and evening gun, blew up, entirely destroying the vessel, killing 
 twenty-four persons and wounding nineteen others. Lieutenant S. 
 M. Breckenridge was among the killed, as was also a woman who 
 happened to be on board at the time. The cause of the explosion has 
 never been known, although there was a tale current at the time that 
 it was the deliberate act of a gunner's mate who had been disrated 
 and flogged the morning of the day on w T hich the catastrophe occur- 
 red. It is also said to have resulted from gross carelessness, survi- 
 vors stating that the powder was kept in open kegs and that in the 
 " bag-room" next the magazine, and separated from it only by a 
 light bulkhead in which was a sliding door, the marine sergeant had 
 a desk and was allowed to use an open light. Whatever the cause, 
 the destruction was complete, and terminated the history of the 
 first steam vessel of wa/r ever bxtilt* 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 No engineers came into the navy because of the existence of 
 the Demologos, men from Fulton's works having operated the machin- 
 ery on the three occasions when she was under way with her own 
 steam, and her engines were not moved after she was laid up m the 
 navy yard. The next steamer to appear in the navy was the galliot 
 Sea Gull, of one hundred tons, purchased in New York for $16, #00 
 in 1822 and used as a despatch boat in Porter's " Mosquito fleet," 
 employed in the West Indies for the suppression of piracy in 1823- 
 24. There is no record of the men who had charge of the machinery 
 of this little craft and we can only surmise that they were probably the 
 same who had run her before she was purchased, and that their con- 
 nection with the service was merely temporary. The Sea Gull was 
 laid up in 1825 at Philadelphia, where she remained until 1840 when 
 she was sold for $4,750. 
 
 For ten years after the Sea Gull was laid up, steamers do not 
 appear in the official literature of the navy, though the same period 
 witnessed a most wonderful development of the application of steam 
 to navigation for commercial purposes, and steamers had visited "In- 
 dia, China, the West Indies and other parts of the world, as well as 
 having made the trans- Atlantic voyage no longer a marvellous one 
 when performed under steam. That our navy was not the only one 
 to remain in ignorance and indifference while this great change in 
 marine affairs was going on all about it, is shown by the circumstance 
 that in 1831 a steamer built in Quebec was, while on a peaceful voy- 
 age to London, fired on by a British frigate in the Gulf of St. Law- 
 rence and compelled to heave-to until the officers of the frigate were 
 satisfied that there was nothing diabolical in her construction. This 
 same steamer, the Royal William by name, was sold after arriving 
 in London to the Spanish government, and, under the name of Isa- 
 bella the Second, became the first steam war-ship of that nation. 
 
 In 1835, under date of June 26, Mr. Mahlon Dickerson, then 
 Secretary of the Navy, addressed a letter to the Board of Navy Com- 
 missioners, calling attention to an act of Congress dated April 29, 
 1816, which authorized the construction of a steam vessel, and re- 
 questing that the Board take immediate measures for commencing and 
 completing such vessel; further directing that plans of the vessel 
 and machinery be submitted to the Department for the approval of 
 the President. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 17 
 
 At that time there were about 700 steam vessels in use on the 
 waters of the United States, the most of them being on the rivers and 
 lakes, although some coastwise steamship lines had been established: 
 with few exceptions these vessels were not larger than a modern steam 
 tug, and their machinery was of the most crude design and workman- 
 ship, the chief object being to hammer together a boiler that would not 
 leak too much to prevent the accumulation of some steam within it, 
 and to hew out of heavy iron castings a cylinder with a roughly-fitted 
 piston that could be forced to move back and forth under steam-pres- 
 sure with reasonable regularity. There were at that time, of course, 
 men of scientific attainments who were giving attention to the theory 
 of the steam engine, and who had made considerable progress toward 
 the solution of those thermo-dynamic problems, the knowledge of 
 which in our own day has made the steam engine a comparatively 
 economical machine. 
 
 To these experts, who were usually the managers or superintend- 
 ents of the larger engine-building establishments then in existence, 
 the Board of Navy Commissioners appealed for advice and help, but 
 it does not appear from the records that any great amount of comfort 
 was derived in this manner. One Wm. Kemble, who was the agent 
 for the West Point Foundry Association, cheerfully supplied the Board 
 with dissertations on the comparative merits of condensing and high- 
 pressure engines and the theory of working steam expansively, giv- 
 ing copious opinions of Watt, Trevithick, Oliver Evans, and other 
 authorities, all of which must have been highly interesting reading 
 for the Board. One of these letters closes as follows: "I have given 
 you our views candidly, but we are ready to execute any plan which 
 the more extensive views and experience of the Board may decide 
 on. 55 Whether this was the irony of an expert who appreciated the 
 humor of the situation, or was simply the homage demanded by the 
 standing of the Board of Navy Commissioners, is open to doubt, but 
 as no catastrophe to Mr. Kemble followed, we may conclude that the 
 Board accepted this insinuation of its engineering wisdom as a proper 
 and customary due. 
 
 Construction work on the hull of the vessel went forward rapidly 
 at the New York navy yard, but the Navy Commissioners do not seem 
 to have made corresponding progress in mastering the science of ma- 
 rine engineering, for we find them presently driven to the extremity 
 of addressing the following letter to the Secretary of the Navy: 
 
18 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 "Navy CojJoiissioflEfis' Office, JJecember 30, 1835. 
 
 " Sib: The Commissioners of the Navy have, in conformity with 
 the terms of your letter of the 26th instant, caused an advertisement 
 to be published asking for proposals for furnishing the steam engines 
 for the the steam vessel now building at New York. From their ig- 
 norance upon the subject of steam engines they are in doubt whether 
 the advertisement gives the necessary information to enable persons to 
 make proper offers. They are satisfied that they are incompetent 
 themselves, and have no person under their direction who could fur- 
 nish them with the necessary information to form a contract for steam 
 engines that may secure the United States from imposition, disap- 
 pointment, and loss, should the lowest offers happen to be made by 
 persons whose general character and responsibility would not offer 
 great security for their completing the engines in the best manner, 
 according to the intentions and wishes of the board, in case the pre- 
 cise terms of the contract should leave them a legal opportunity of 
 evading its spirit. 
 
 "The board beg leave, therefore, to request your authority for 
 engaging some person who may be deemed competent to advise them 
 upon this subject, and to superintend and inspect the engines during 
 their progress, and until they shall be satisfactorily tested, and to 
 designate the fund from which his compensation shall be paid. 
 
 44 Respectfully, etc., 
 
 4 4 John Rodgers." 
 
 This request for the professional services of an engineer not meet- 
 ing with any immediate response from the Secretary, the board re- 
 newed its call for help a month later by the following communication: 
 
 "Sir: The board would respectfully recall your attention to 
 their letter of the 30th ultimo, in relation to the employment of an 
 engineer; his services will be much wanted in superintending the con- 
 struction and arrangement of the engines and boilers, and afterwards 
 to work them in the vessel. As it will be desirable to obtain satis- 
 factory testimonials of the qualifications of any person who may be 
 thus employed, which may consume some time, an early decision may 
 prove advantageous. 
 
 "Respectfully, etc., 
 
 "John Rodgers." 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 19 
 
 Mr. Charles H. Hasweli of New York became an applicant for 
 the position of engineer which the Board of Navy Commissioners was 
 so anxious to have filled, but his appointment was not made until the 
 Board had taken occasion, while admitting the excellence of his pro- 
 fessional knowledge as shown by his testimonials and conversation, 
 to express grave doubts as to his practical familiarity with the manipu- 
 lation of marine machinery, from which circumstance we of this day, 
 who not infrequently encounter the same criticism, may see that the 
 mistrust, inconsequential as it is, is by no means new. The Board 
 qualified its doubt in Mr. HaswelPs case with the following ingenu- 
 ous confession : ' ' How far such practical knowledge may be absolutely 
 necessary, or can be supplied by superior information upon the con- 
 struction of the engine itself, the Board has no means of determining, 
 except such as are common to other persons." Mr. HaswelPs ap- 
 pointment, made two days after the comments of the Board were sub- 
 mitted to the Department, reads as follows: 
 
 " Navy Department, February 19, 1836. 
 u Sir: In your letter to the Commissioners of the Navy yester- 
 day, you offer to furnish draughts of a high and low-pressure steam 
 engine and boiler, on different elevations, suitable for the steam ves- 
 sel now constructing by the Government of the United States, for the 
 purposes stated. 
 
 "You are therefore appointed, for the term of two months, to 
 make such draughts and report the same to the Board of Navy Com- 
 missioners, for which you will receive a compensation of two hundred 
 and fifty dollars. 
 
 " Mahlon Dickerson. 
 "To Mr. C. H. Hasweli, Washington." 
 
 In mid-summer following, under date of July 12th, 1836, Mr. 
 Hasweli was appointed chief engineer for the Fulton, as the steam- 
 vessel then building was named; he thus becoming the first person to 
 hold the position of engineer in the United States navy. Mr. Has- 
 weli was then an engineer of ability and established professional rep- 
 utation, being earnestly engaged in the task, at that time a doubtful 
 one, of proving the reliability of steam as a marine motor, independ- 
 ent of any aid from sails. To him has been granted a privilege that 
 
20 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 eomes to few men in any calling on this earth, for it has been his for- 
 tune to witness the emblem of his profession — the steamship— grow 
 from its awkward infancy to its present gigantic and perfected form, 
 a development in which he has had a prominent part during all these 
 decades, and which in the completeness of the changes that have been 
 wrought, far exceeds the magical transformations of a dream or the en- 
 chantments of a fairy-tale. In the great harbor where, as a young 
 man, he saw the embryo steamer timidly and alone making its uncer- 
 tain wake, an object so rare that curious crowds always flocked to 
 watch it, he has been spared until now to see in his old age the crude 
 and clumsy Fulton transformed into the Columbia or the New York, 
 and the pioneer passenger steamers changed, as if by the magician's 
 wand, into the Umbria, the Majestic, and the Carwpmia. 
 
 U. S. STEAMER FULTON (THE SECOND) , 1837. 
 
 The following were the principal dimensions of the Fulton: 
 Length of vessel between perpendiculars . . 180 ft. 
 
 Beam on deck (extreme) 34 " 8 in. 
 
 Depth of hold 12 " 2 " 
 
 Mean draft 10 " 6 " 
 
 Immersed midship section at mean draft. . . 308 square ft. 
 
 Weight of hull 470 tons. 
 
 Depth of keel 12 inches. 
 
 Displacement at mean draft (about) .........1,200 tons. 
 
 The engines and boilers were built by the West Point Foundry 
 Association of New York, under a contract dated January 23, 1837, 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 21 
 
 the engines in type and location being from the designs prepared 
 for the Board of Navy Commissioners by Mr. Haswell, and the 
 boilers from the designs of Mr. Charles W. Copeland, the engineer 
 of the West Point company. There were two horizontal condensing 
 engines located on the spar deck, the cylinders being of nine feet 
 stroke and fifty inches in diameter, each engine turning a side-wheel 
 twenty-two feet nine inches in diameter, and eleven feet six inches 
 wide. The contract provided for a thwartship shaft to connect the 
 two wheel shafts, at an additional cost of $2,000, if required, but the 
 requirement was not made and the vessel was completed without such 
 connection. So undeveloped was the art of iron manufacture at that 
 time that the cranks and shafts were made of cast iron. The con- 
 tract price for the engines was $40,000, to which was added $198.57 
 for authorized changes. The wheels cost $9,000. The boilers were 
 built by the contractors at the New York navy yard for eight and 
 one-half cents a pound, the Government furnishing the material, 
 which consisted of copper plates and rivet rods provided in 1816 for 
 another vessel like the Demologos, which was never built. The total 
 cost of boilers, including the material and labor, was $93,396.06. 
 Originally there were four wagon-shaped boilers of the return-flue 
 type, each sixteen feet long, ten feet six inches wide, and nine feet 
 three inches high, but these were afterward changed to two boilers 
 twenty-five feet nine inches long, the other dimensions remaining 
 unchanged. These boilers were located in the hold under the en 
 gines, and were supplied with separate smoke pipes. The total cost 
 of the vessel when completed — hull, equipments and machinery — 
 was $299,649.81. 
 
 The weight of engines was 81 tons; of boilers, including smoke 
 pipes, steam pipes and connections, 119 tons, and water in the boil- 
 ers, 41 tons. On a trial trip the following winter, Chief Engineer 
 Haswell computed the horse-power developed to be 625, from which 
 we observe that the weight of machinery per horse-power was about 
 three times as much as under present practice. 
 
 The steamer was launched May 18, 1837, and the work of in- 
 stalling the machinery immediately undertaken ; this work was much 
 hindered by the action of the Board of Navy Commissioners in re- 
 fusing to allow the hull to be taken to the engine builders' works on 
 the North river, thus compelling the contractors to transport the en- 
 
22 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 gines in pieces to the navy yard. The Commissioners, in refusing 
 the application to have the hull moved, said that they did not "feel 
 themselves justified in permitting the vessel to he moved from the 
 navy yard to a place over which they have no control," although 
 why they should have felt this way is not apparent, as they had pre- 
 viously confessed their incompetency to deal with matters relating to 
 the vessel's machinery. This action forced the contractors to file a 
 claim for "increased expense in the putting up of the work, together 
 with an additional delay of not less than three weeks," just as con- 
 tractors do now when their work is retarded by the interference of 
 naval officers. Truly, there is no new thing under tho sun. 
 
 About the first of September Captain Matthew C. Perry took 
 general charge of the steamer, and immediately began investigating 
 the subject of personnel required for her operation, the result of his 
 researches being communicated to the Navy Commissioners by the 
 following report: 
 
 4 4 New Yobk, September 11, 1837. 
 
 "Gentlemen: — I have sought to obtain the best information in 
 reference to the number of engineers, firemen, &c. , that will be re- 
 quired for the steam frigate Fulton, and the following is the result 
 of the combined opinions of the various persons consulted: 
 
 "The lowest number for putting the engines in operation — 
 
 "2 lst-class assistant engineers, at $800 per annum. 
 
 "2 2nd-class assistant engineers, at $500 per annum. 
 
 " 8 firemen, at from $25 to $30 per month. The firemen to be 
 paid either of those amounts, at the discretion of the captain, as suit- 
 able persons can be obtained. 
 
 " 4 or 6 coal heavers, at $15 per month. 
 
 "Add to this when the vessel is in actual operation — 
 
 " 1 chief engineer, 4 additional firemen and 4 coal heavers. 
 
 4 c The coal holes are at the ends of the boilers, opposite to the 
 furnaces, and the coal must necessarily be transported some dis- 
 tance. 
 
 "These are the estimates of Mr. Haswell, Mr. Kimble, and 
 several other competent persons with whom I have conferred on the 
 subject. 
 
 " It is apparent that no less than four engineers will answer, as 
 it requires two constantly at the levers, by which the engines are 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 2b 
 
 stopped and put in motion, which are worked on the spar deck, and 
 two at the engines and boilers below deck, to watch the machinery 
 and attend the water in the boilers — a most important consideration, 
 as by the least neglect in this particular some accident occurs or the 
 boilers are burnt. 
 
 u It is necessary, also, that the firemen should be somewhat ac- 
 quainted with the operation of the engines, the mode of supplying 
 the boilers, &c. , as also the mode of placing the coals to prevent 
 the burning of the furnaces. 
 
 "The gentlemen all agree that the above is the least number 
 that prudence and economy would authorize. 
 
 u The large North river and Khode Island boats have three en- 
 gineers each, and their firemen understand starting and stopping the 
 engines, regulating the steam, &c. Their wages are — for the chief 
 engineer, % 1,000 per annum; two assistants, at $360 and $600 per 
 annum. Add to this their board, which, in the navy, would be de- 
 frayed by themselves all beyond the ration of 20 cents per day. 
 
 "Those denominated first-class assistants for the navy should 
 correspond in qualifications with the chief engineers of private 
 steamers, and their assistants with the second-class proposed for the 
 navy, as it is supposed that the Government can hire persons on 
 lower terms. 
 
 "It has been suggested, in which I fully concur, that there 
 should be these several described rates among the engineers and 
 firemen in our national steamers, the better to distribute authority 
 and responsibility, and to produce a proper ambition with the in- 
 ferior rates to rise to the higher classes. 
 
 "I enclose herewith a letter from Captain William Comstock, 
 giving his views on the subject. And it may be remarked here, 
 that all concur in the opinion of the necessity of separating the reg- 
 ular crew from any interference with the engineers. 
 
 " I would respectfully invite the attention of the Commission- 
 ers to the consideration of the tenure by which these assistant engin- 
 eers are to hold their appointment, and by what authority they are 
 to be granted. It seems to me the process of their discharge, at 
 least, should be summary, and entirely divested of the legal forms of 
 arrest, court-martial, &c. The slightest appearance of intemperance, 
 neglect, carelessness, &c. , should be sufficient cause for their certain 
 
24 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 dismissal from the service. With whom is to rest the authority to 
 judge of these delinquencies, and the necessity of the infliction of 
 the penalty, will, of course, be determined on in time, and made 
 known to the persons on receiving the appointment. 
 
 U I have the honor to be, gentlemen, your obedient servant, 
 
 "M C. Perry, 
 44 To the Commissioners of the Navy, Washington, D. C." 
 
 This letter is important in our history as a corps, being the earl- 
 iest official document containing so much as a hint of the necessity 
 of organizing a permanent corps of naval engineers. 
 
 The Board of Naval Commmissioners agreed to Captain Perry's 
 recommendations as to wages for engineers and firemen, although 
 remarking that for the latter the pay appeared high in addition to 
 the ration, and referred the matter to the Department with various 
 recommendations. The Department let the matter rest for more than 
 a month, until, about the end of October, Captain Perry reported 
 the vessel ready for steam, and called attention to the fact that no 
 authority existed for the employment of assistant engineers, adding 
 that their services were much needed. The suggestions made by the 
 Board of Navy Commissioners on September 15 were promulgated 
 as the regulations of the Department governing the appointment of 
 4 4 these descriptions of persons for the steamer." The recommen- 
 dations of the Board, which became the Department's regulation, is 
 another important document in the history of the engineer corps, and 
 is here given: 
 
 44 Upon the subject of appointments of the engineers, etc., the 
 Board respectfully suggest the expediency of allowing, for the pres- 
 ent, the commandant to nominate the assistant engineers, after col- 
 lecting, as far as practicable, proofs or certificates of their character 
 and qualifications, subject to the confirmation of the commander of 
 the station, when time will allow of an immediate reference; in other 
 cases, to be made by the commander of the vessel. 
 
 4 4 That they receive a letter of appointment, revocable at any 
 time by the commander of the station upon complaints of intemper- 
 ance, incapacity, insubordination, negligence, or other misconduct, 
 by the commander of the vessel, if proved to the satisfaction of such 
 commanding officer of the station. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 25 
 
 "The commander of the vessel, of course, to have the power 
 of suspending them from duty, if he deems it necessary. 
 
 "The engineers to sign some proper instrument, which will legally 
 render them liable to the laws for the government of the navy, but 
 to be exempt from corporal punishment; which instrument is to be 
 transmitted to the Secretary of the Navy, with the letter accepting 
 their appointment. 
 
 " The firemen and coal-heavers to sign the shipping articles and 
 be removable at the pleasure of the commander of the vessel, as 
 authorized for the reduction and punishment of petty officers and 
 seamen." 
 
 This order was dated October 31, 1837, and was carried into 
 effect by the appointment of John Faron, Jr., and Nelson Burt as 
 first assistant engineers on November 15, and of J. 0. Hines and 
 Hiram Sanford as second assistants on November 21. These ap- 
 pointments were made by Captain Perry himself, as shown by the 
 following extract from a report made December 16 on the steam 
 trial of the Fulton: 
 
 " The assistant engineers appointed by me promise to be highly 
 industrious and useful men. I have been much pleased with their 
 conduct, and, so far as I am yet capable of judging, consider them 
 well acquainted with their duty; of one thing I am certain, that if 
 the vessel is to be employed at all, sixteen, instead of eight firemen 
 will be indispensably necessary." 
 
 On November 1 the engines of the Fulton were put in motion 
 for the first time and the result was highly satisfactory; "twelve inches 
 of steam was produced in less than an hour by chips from the yard," 
 to quote from Captain Perry's report. During the ensuing winter 
 the Fulton was thoroughly tried in free route and proved herself a 
 success as a steamer, although certain peculiarities in construction 
 precluded her use as a cruiser for general sea purposes: in fact she 
 was not built for such service, the primary idea in her construction 
 being to provide a harbor-defense vessel to take the place of the first 
 Fulton^ or Demologos. 
 
 Captain Perry reported in February that her usual speed at a 
 medium pressure of steam and twenty revolutions per minute of the 
 engines had been proved to be about twelve knots, and that her 
 
26 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 maximum speed, at a forced pressure, might be extended to fifteen 
 knots. He spoke highly of her efficiency as an armed vessel, in 
 comparision with vessels of war not propelled by steam, and gave 
 an opinion resulting from his observations that " there is not the least 
 doubt that sea steamers of 1,400 or 1,500 tons can be constructed and 
 equipped to cruise at sea, for limited periods (say twenty days,) as 
 efficient vessels of war, to be as safe from the disasters of the sea as 
 the finest frigate, and at an expense considerably less. " Lieutenant 
 Lynch, attached to the vessel, in a written report stated that u For 
 harbor and coast defense, in light winds and calms, with a battery 
 of long 64-pounders, the Fulton, with slight alterations, would be 
 perfectly efficient, and more useful than any number of armed ships 
 not propelled by steam, ' ' and the opinions of the other officers, all 
 whom had to make reports to Captain Perry, generally agreed to this. 
 In Chief Engineer Has well's report we find the following carefully 
 itemized statement of current expenses of running the engines, which 
 is both curious and interesting at this date: 
 
 Engines, 3 quarts of oil, at 18|c $0.56 
 
 Engines and boilers, 5 pounds of tallow, at 10c 50 
 
 Engines, 2£ pounds of hemp, at 12c 30 
 
 2 pounds of spun yarn, at 12c 24 
 
 i pound of black lead, at 10c... 10 
 
 Paints and brushes 75 
 
 Boilers, Indian meal 24 
 
 Engines and boilers, white lead, 2 pounds at 12c 24 
 
 Lamps and lanterns 10 
 
 Shovels, brooms, and axes 23 
 
 Tools 50 
 
 For twelve hours $3.66 
 
 Off one-sixth per diem of ten 
 
 hours 61 
 
 $3.05 
 
 More light on the operation of the machinery is given by the 
 synopsis of the engine-room log, here following in the form of the 
 engineer's weekly report for one of the weeks that the vessel was 
 under steam a considerable part of the time: 
 
ENGINEER'S WEEKLY REPORT, (ENDING MONDAY, 22d, 1838), UNITED STATES STEAMER FULTON, 
 
 M. C. PERRY, Esq., COMMANDER. 
 
 Time of getting fire. 
 
 to 
 a 
 
 • rl 
 
 m 
 
 <4-( 
 
 O 
 CD 
 
 a 
 
 n3 
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 02 
 
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 02 
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 02 
 
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 bp 
 
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 !> 
 
 02 
 
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 r— t 
 
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 © 
 
 SP 
 
 <D 
 
 OQ 
 
 B 
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 03 
 
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 bo 
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 r— I 
 rQ 
 
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 -s 
 
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 02 
 • p— I 
 
 bfl 
 
 cd 
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 • l-H 
 
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 02 
 Pi 
 
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 CD 
 
 n3 
 CD 
 
 02 
 
 • o 
 
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 02 
 
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 CD 
 
 a 
 
 r-< 
 r— 
 
 GQ 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 r— I 
 
 o 
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 o 
 
 PS 
 
 Total time firing, 20 hours, 34 minutes. 
 Total wood consumed, 23 cords, 96 feet. 
 Total coal consumed, 78 ch., 12 bushels. 
 
 17th, A. M 
 18th, A. M 
 20th, A. M 
 22d, A. M 
 
 H 
 
 1030 
 
 8'40 
 
 I 
 
 845 
 
 H 
 11 
 10 
 9 
 
 9 
 
 40 
 0 
 30 
 50 
 
 4 
 2 
 
 2 
 2 
 
 10 
 
 7.5 
 
 11 
 
 6 
 
 11 
 
 11 
 
 10 
 
 12 
 12 
 
 12 
 
 17 
 
 14 
 
 18 
 13 
 
 17.5 
 
 H 
 
 I 
 
 
 H 
 
 I 
 
 H 
 
 I 
 
 fl 
 
 M 
 
 
 
 REMARKS. — Slip joints of starboard en- 
 
 0 
 
 15 
 
 P,M. 
 
 3 
 
 17 
 
 3 
 
 22 
 
 4 
 
 47 
 
 10 
 
 105 
 
 gine leaked some, but were screwed up after 
 
 
 
 
 
 every trip. Lost five water-wheel arms and 
 
 0 
 
 40 
 
 P.I. 
 
 12 
 
 12 
 
 1 
 
 32 
 
 3 
 
 07 
 
 6 
 
 65 
 
 three buckets. Lengthened larboard piston 
 
 0 
 
 20 
 
 P.I. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2| 
 
 
 rod one-fourth of an inch. Set grate bars in 
 
 2 
 
 35 
 
 4 
 
 45 
 
 5 
 
 55 
 
 205 
 
 after larboard furnaces for burning coal. On 
 
 1 
 
 0 
 
 PJL 
 
 3 
 
 30 
 
 4 
 
 40 
 
 6 
 
 45 
 
 
 285 
 
 20th let fires in forward boilers go down after 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 under way, and carried six inches steam, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 23f 
 
 
 and engines made thirteen revolutions with 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 19 
 
 20 
 
 34 
 
 660 
 
 the two remaining boilers. 
 
 Approved: M. C. PERRY, Captain. 
 
 New York, January 23, (S. A.), 1838. 
 
 CHAS. H. HASWELL, Engineeb. 
 
28 
 
 THE STEAM NAY Y OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 When the Fulton was put in commission with a regular com- 
 plement of officers and men on board, the question of what to do 
 with the engineers as to their quarters and messing arrangements 
 came up, and was a difficult one to settle, because there were no pre- 
 cedents to follow and no regulations regarding the new class of offi- 
 cials. Fortunately for Mr. Haswell, and for those who came after 
 him as well, his social status was such, that his place among the offi- 
 cers was obviously in the ward room, and to that part of the ship he 
 was assigned irrespective of the fact that he held no commission and 
 no rank in the service. The precedent thus established of assigning 
 the chief engineer to the ward-room operated to the benefit of other 
 chief engineers in the following years, until, in 1842, the quarters 
 for chief engineers on board ship were specified by law to be in the 
 ward-room. The assistant engineers of the Fulton were berthed and 
 messed with the warrant officers. 
 
 In April, 1838, the Fulton visited Norfolk and Washington and 
 was an object of general attention, especially at the national capitol. 
 In September of the same year, in consequence of a discussion that 
 was related to the Secretary of the Navy, she was ordered back to 
 
 RETURN DROP-FLUE BOILERS, U. ». S. FULTON (3d), 1850. 
 
 Diameter of shells 10 feet, 6 inches. Length, 22 feet. 
 Length of furnace, 7 feet. Height of furnace 6 feet, 3 inches. 
 Diameter of flues, two upper rows, 16 inches. Lower row, 25 inches. 
 Diameter of steam drum, 7 ft, 3 in. Diameter of smoke pipe, 5 ft. 3 in. 
 
 New York for the express purpose of testing her' speed with that of 
 the British steamer Great Western, running between New York and 
 Liverpool. The Fulton followed the latter vessel to sea on the oe- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 29 
 
 casion of her regular departure, ranged up alongside and passed her 
 rapidly. After being employed in active service along the Atlantic 
 coast of the United States until 1842, the Fulton was laid up in or- 
 dinary at the New York navy yard, where she remained a neglected 
 and useless hulk until 1851. In the latter year the machinery was 
 entirely replaced by a different type, designed under the direction of 
 Mr. Charles B. Stuart, then engineer-in-chief of the navy. There 
 was a single inclined engine mounted on a wooden frame, the cylin 
 der being fifty inches in diameter and ten feet four inches stroke, 
 provided with a Siekel's cut-off. The old copper boilers were re- 
 placed with two wrought iron ones of the double-return, drop-flue 
 variety, ten feet six inches in diameter and twenty-two feet long, 
 feathering paddle wheels were substituted for the original radial 
 wheels. The shaft of this engine was of wrought iron. 
 
 The hull was hauled on the ways and thoroughly repaired, the 
 upper deck and high bulwarks being removed and the interior ar- 
 rangements were completely changed because of the altered arrange- 
 ment of the machinery, but the original lines of the ship were not 
 disturbed. The rig was changed to a two-masted fore-topsail 
 schooner. A trial trip was run January 1, 1852, in New York har- 
 bor, seventy-one and one-half miles being run under steam between 
 various intervals of stopping, sailing, backing, etc., which interrup- 
 tions completely destroy the results as a steam trial. The report of 
 this trial gives the average steam pressure as twenty-five pounds; 
 average vacuum, twenty six inches; average revolutions, twenty- 
 one, and average speed, 13.34 miles per hour. For a period of 
 twenty-one minutes at the end of the performance, with thirty pounds 
 of steam and twenty-three revolutions, the distance run is given as 
 seven miles, or at the rate of twenty miles per hour. Unfortunately 
 the report does not state the condition of the wind and tide at that 
 period, so we do not know whether the high speed was due entirely 
 to the engines or not. It is a matter of record, however, that the 
 vessel had a reputation in the service as a very fast steamer. She 
 was employed on general cruising duty in the home squadron and 
 West Indies for several years, was one of the vessels of the Paraguay 
 expedition in 1858, and in 1861 was in ordinary at the Pensacola 
 navy yard. 
 
 The Pensacola yard was surrendered to the Confederates Jan- 
 
30 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 uary 10, 1861, and the Fulton thus fell into their hands ; she was 
 then in very bad condition, having sometime previously been strand- 
 ed and nearly wrecked near Pensacola, but her captors hauled her 
 on the building- ways and began repairing her. May 9, 1862, mil- 
 itary operations compelled the Confederates to abandon the yard, 
 they burning everything behind them. An account of this destruc- 
 tion is given in Mr. J. T. Scharf's History of the Confederate 
 States Navy, in which account appears the last historical reference 
 
 to this famous old steamer — -"The Fulton, that was on the stocks 
 in the navy yard, was burned." 
 
 This story of the old Fulton would be incomplete without a 
 special reference to the invaluable services rendered by Captain M. 
 C. Perry to the steam navy which her example called into life, his 
 able championship of engines and engineers in connection with her 
 having properly given him a place in our naval history as the father 
 of the American steam navy. Matthew C. Perry was a younger 
 brother of that other Perry who overcame the British on Lake Erie 
 in 1813, which event is so nearly synonymous in the public mind 
 with the name of Perry that the deeds of the younger brother, some 
 of which were of more lasting importance than the mere winning of 
 a battle, have been dimmed by contrast. Captain Perry's services 
 to the naval engineer corps in connection with his command of the 
 Fulton were both important and lasting, and can best be told by 
 quoting from his biography, written by a distinguished civilian, Rev- 
 erend fm. E. Griffis, another of whose books, " The Mikado's 
 Empire," has been a source of instruction and pleasure to hundreds 
 of our naval officers of the present time who have had the privilege 
 of seeing the shores of beautiful Japan: 
 
 " Perry took command of the Fulton October 4th, 1837, when 
 the smoke-pipes were up, and the engines ready for an early vtrial. 
 His work meant more than to hasten forward the completion of the 
 new steam battery. He was practically to organize an entirely new 
 branch of naval economy. There were in the marine war service of 
 the United States absolutely no precedents to guide him. 
 
 " Again he had to be 4 an educator of the navy.' To show how 
 far the work was left to him, and was his own creation, we may 
 state that no authority had been given and no steps taken to secure 
 firemen, assistant engineers, or coal heavers. The details, duties. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 31 
 
 qualifications, wages, and status in the navy of the whole engineer 
 corps fell upon Perry to settle. He wrote for authority to appoint 
 first and second-class engineers. He proposed that $25 to $30 a 
 month, and one ration, should be given as pay to firemen, and that 
 they should be good mechanics familiar with machinery, the use of 
 stops, cocks, gauges, and the paraphernalia of iron and brass so 
 novel on a man-of-war. 
 
 "Knowing that failure in the initiative of the experimental 
 steam service might prejudice the public, and especially the incred- 
 ulous and sneering old salts who had no faith in the new fangled 
 ideas, he requested that midshipmen for the Fulton should be first 
 trained in seamanship prior to their steamer life. He was also 
 especially particular about the moral and personal character of the 
 'line 5 officers who were first to live in contact with a new and strange 
 kind of 'staff.' It is difficult in this age of war-steamers, when a 
 sailing man-of-war or even a paddle-wheel steamer is a curiosity, to 
 realize the jealousy felt by sailors of the old school towards the 
 un-naval men of gauges and stop-cocks. They foresaw only too 
 clearly that steam was to steal away the poetry of the sea, turn the 
 sailor into a coal heaver, and the ship into a machine. 
 
 "Perry demanded in his line officers breadth of view sufficient 
 to grasp the new order of things. They must see in the men of 
 screws and levers equality of courage as well as of utility. They 
 must be of the co-operative cast of mind and disposition. From the 
 very first, he foresaw that jealousy amounting almost to animosity 
 would spring up between the line and staff officers, between the deck 
 and the hold, and he determined to reduce it to a minimum. The 
 new middle term between courage and cannon was caloric. He 
 would provide precedents to act as anti-friction buffers so as to 
 secure a maximum of harmony. 
 
 "That was Matthew Perry — ever magnifying his office and 
 profession. He believed that responsibility helped vastly to make 
 the man. He suggested that engineers take the oath, and from 
 first to last be held to those sanctions and to that discipline, which 
 would create among them the esprit so excellent in the line officers. " 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 " So shalt thou instant reach the realm assigned, 
 
 In wondrous ships, self-moved, instinct with mind; 
 » » • • • • • • 
 
 Though clouds and darkness veiled the encumbered sky, 
 
 Fearless, through darkness and through clouds they fly." 
 
 Alexandeb Pope, translation of the Odyssey. 
 
 The Engineer — The Mississippi and Missouri — Establishment of the Engineei 
 Corps by Act of Congress— Destruction of the Missouri— Career of th« 
 Mississippi — Steamers Transferred to the Navy from the War Depart- 
 ment—The Michigan. 
 
 BEFORE the completion of the Fulton, a single steam vessel ap- 
 peared in the navy in the form of a small paddle-wheel tug- 
 boat of 142 tons, which was bought in Baltimore in 1836 for $18,- 
 997, and was named the Engineer. This boat had a single beam 
 engine of about one hundred horse-power, and one iron flue boiler: 
 the vessel was used as a tug and dispatch boat about the Norfolk 
 navy yard for a number of years, and also did some service on the 
 southern coast as a surveying vessel. Although not a war ves- 
 sel in any sense, this craft is here referred to because she was for a 
 short time the only steamer in the navy, and was a familiar object 
 to the early members of the engineer corps, many of whom were as- 
 signed to her for temporary service while getting broken in to the 
 rules of the navy. 
 
 In 1839 two boards of officials were convened in Washington 
 to consider the method of carrying out the provisions of an act of 
 Congress authorizing the construction of two or more steam vessels 
 of war. One of these boards was composed of commodores, and was 
 directed to 4 ' consider and decide upon the qualities and power which 
 it was desirable to secure in the vessels:" the other was composed 
 of naval constructors and one engineer, Mr. Haswell being the latter, 
 with instructions to scrutinize the report of the commodores, and 
 determine whether the qualities and powers recommended by them 
 could be combined practically, and if so, to prepare the details for 
 carrying them out. The result of this labor set in process of con- 
 struction two large side- wheel frigates named the Mississippi and 
 
U. S. S. MISSISSIPPI (AND MISSOURI), 1842. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 35 
 
 Missouri, precisely alike in all respects, except the type of engines. 
 It is not to be supposed that the inauguration of the policy of build- 
 ing steam vessels for the navy was unattended with skepticism and 
 opposition; like the application of all great scientific discoveries, the 
 introduction of steam power was com batted and misunderstood, abroad 
 as well as in our own country. The logic, if it may be so called, of 
 the opposition is well indicated by the vehement utterance of Lord 
 Napier in the British House of Commons in a speech fiercely antag- 
 onistic to the building of steamers of war: "Mr. Speaker, when 
 we enter Her Majesty's naval service and face the chances of war, 
 we go prepared to be hacked in pieces by cutlasses, to be riddled 
 with bullets, or to be blown to bits by shot and shell; but, Mr. 
 Speaker, we do not go prepared to be hailed alive." 
 
 The principal data common to both the Mississippi and Missouri 
 were the following: 
 
 Length over all 229 feet. 
 
 Beam... 40 feet. 
 
 Mean draft 19 feet. 
 
 Displacement at mean draft 3,220 tons. 
 
 The vessels were bark-rigged, spreading 19,000 square feet of 
 canvas in plain sails to top-gallant sails inclusive. Each vessel had 
 three copper boilers of the double return ascending flue variety, 
 with three furnaces and eighty square feet of grate surface in each 
 boiler; the heating surface of each boiler was 2,000 square feet, or 
 exactly twenty-five times the grate surface. The paddle-wheels 
 were twenty-eight feet in diameter and eleven feet broad. The bat- 
 tery of each vessel consisted of two X-inch and eight VTII-inch 
 shell guns. The Mississippi had two side-lever engines with cylin- 
 ders seventy-five inches in diameter and seven feet stroke, and the 
 Missouri had two inclined direct-acting engines with cylinders sixty- 
 two and one-half inches diameter and ten feet stroke: the cubical 
 contents of the cylinders of the two vessels were practically the same, 
 a difference being made in the length of the stroke to test the relative 
 merits of long and short stroke engines. 
 
 The hulls were of wood, that of the Mississippi being con- 
 structed at the navy yard, Philadelphia, and that of the Missouri at 
 the New York navy yard. The Mississippi's machinery was built 
 
 4 
 
86 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 by Merrick and Towne in the city of Philadelphia, and that for the 
 Missouri by the West Point Foundry Association at their works at 
 Cold Spring, New York. The machinery for both vessels was de- 
 signed by Mr. Charles W. Copeland, referred to in a previous chap- 
 ter as the superintending engineer of the West Point Foundry Asso- 
 ciation at the time the engines for the Fulton were built. He had 
 been employed as a consulting engineer for the Board of Navy Com- 
 missioners, and, with the title of Principal Engineer, held that posi- 
 tion for several years, during which time he did much excellent 
 work in designing machinery for the new steam navy, although he 
 never was in the naval service in the sense of holding a commission 
 as an officer or being amenable to military law and discipline. 
 
 In the fall of 1839, when the work of building these two ves- 
 sels began, Mr. Haswell was detached from the Fulton and assigned 
 to duty with Mr. Copeland in New York to prepare drawings of 
 machinery for both vessels. It was in the course of this work that 
 Mr. Haswell laid down the boilers of both the new vessels in full 
 size, designed and determined the dimensions of each plate, and 
 thus for the first time in the history of boiler manufacture were the 
 plates rolled and trimmed to measure. In January, 1840, Mr. 
 Faron, the senior engineer of the Fulton, was promoted to be a 
 chief engineer, detached from the Fulton and detailed to superin- 
 tend the building of the Mississippi^ engines in Philadelphia, his 
 place on the Fulton being filled by Mr. Andrew Hebard, who was 
 appointed chief engineer from civil life. Shortly afterward Mr. 
 Haswell was named as superintendent of the engines building for 
 the Missouri. 
 
 The two frigates were completed early in 1842, and a number 
 of engineers were appointed in the manner indicated by the Depart- 
 ment's regulation on the subject, quoted in a former chapter. A re- 
 markable fact in connection with the building of these two ships is the 
 close parallelism of their cost, although they were built in different 
 cities, and had engines radically different in details of construction: 
 in 1853 the Navy Department, in obedience to a resolution of the 
 House of Eepresentatives, informed Congress that the actual cost of 
 the Mississippi to the time of her first sailing, exclusive of ordnance, 
 was $569,670.70, and of the Missouri, $568,806. Mr. Faron was 
 the first chief engineer of the Mississippi, and Mr. Hebard of the 
 
MB. CHARLES W. COPKLAND, 
 
 Principal Engineer, U. S. Navy. Designer of the machinery of 
 Mississippi, Missouri, etc. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 33 
 
 Missoitri, he being temporarily assigned to that vessel while Mr. 
 
 Haswell was engaged with Mr. Copeland on the designs of a new 
 
 steamer — the Michigan. This latter work was completed in Octo- 
 ber, 1842, when Mr. Haswell returned to the Missouri as her chief 
 engineer. 
 
 After the appointments for the two new frigates were made 
 there were twenty engineers in the service, with prospects for the 
 need of many more in the near future, as the policy of building war 
 steamers was so well established that there was no longer any hope 
 for success on the part of the conservative element which had strug- 
 gled against the new order of things so stubbornly. The engineers 
 were very much dissatisfied with various anomalies and evils inci- 
 dent to their connection with the navy, and began an agitation 
 which speedily resulted in the legal establishment of the engineer 
 corps as a permanent part of the naval organization. Their pay did 
 not compare favorably with the wages of competent engineers in 
 civil employment, and consequently was unsatisfactory to them; the 
 irregular manner in which they were appointed, and their uncertain 
 tenure of office, were also grievances, and early in the year with 
 which we are now dealing an incident occurred which so provoked 
 the engineers that they felt constrained to lay their troubles before 
 Congress. This incident was the appointment as an engineer in the 
 navy of a young man who made no pretense to knowledge of engi- 
 neering, he being the protege of a powerful politician and simply 
 wanted a salaried position under the Government, without bothering 
 himself as to what the duties of that position might be. That the 
 engineers then in the service resented this appointment is good 
 proof that there already existed among them that pride in their 
 calling and the esprit de corps that have for so long kept them united 
 and made continuous progress possible in the midst of many dis- 
 couragements. 
 
 Mr. Haswell, as the senior and most prominent of the engiiseers, 
 took the matter in charge, and appealed to Congress for a redress of 
 grievances. Mr. Gilbert L. Thompson, a prominent politician and 
 man about town in Washington in those days, took up Mr. Haswell 's 
 cause and gave him much assistance, although his motives were not 
 entirely philanthropic, as we shall presently see. The result of this 
 effort was an act of Congress regulating the appointment aad pay of 
 
40 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 engineers in the navy, which act was approved August 81, 1842, 
 and read in full as follows: 
 
 Section 1. Beit enacted, etc., That the Secretary of the Navy shaft appoint 
 the requisite number of ehief eDgineers and assistant engineers, not to exceed one 
 chief engineer, two first assistant, two second assistant, and three third assistant 
 engineers for each steamship of war, for the naval service of the United States, who 
 shall be paid, when in actual service, as follows : 
 
 To the chief engineer, fifteen hundred dollars per annum and one ration per 
 day ; to the first assistant engineer, nine hundred dollars per annum and one ration 
 per day ; to the seeond assistant engineer, seven hundred dollars per annum and one 
 ration per day ; to the third assistant engineer, five hundred dollars per annum and 
 one ration per day. The chief engineer shall be entitled to mess in the wardroom of 
 ships of war, and in all cases of prize-money he shall share as a lieutenant ; the first 
 assistant engineer shall share as a lieutenant of marines ; the second assistant engin- 
 eer shall share as a midshipman ; the third assistant engineer shall share as the 
 forward officers ; but neither the chief nor the assistant engineers shall hold any 
 other rank than as engineers. 
 
 Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That the Secretary of the Navy shall be 
 authorized to enlist and employ the requisite number of firemen, who shall receive, 
 eaeh, thirty dollars per month and one ration per day ; and the requisite number of 
 coal-heavers, who shall receive, each, eighteen dollars per month and one ration per 
 day ; and the said firemen and coal-heavers shall in all cases of prize-money share as 
 seamen. 
 
 Sec. 8. Andbeit further enacted. That the said chief engineer and the assist- 
 ant engineers when waiting orders shall be paid as follows : to the chief engineer, 
 twelve hundred dollars per annum ; to the first assistant engineer, seven hundred 
 dollars per annum ; to the second assistant engineer, five hundred dollars per annum; 
 to the third assistant engineer, three hundred and fifty dollars per annum. 
 
 Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That the Secretary of the Navy shall 
 appoint a skillful and scientific engineer-in-chief, who shall receive for his services 
 the sum of three thousand dollars per annum, and shall perform such duties as the 
 Secretary of the Navy shall require of him touching that branch of the service. 
 
 Sec. 5. And be it further enacted, That the Secretary of the Navy shall be 
 authorized to prescribe a uniform for the said chief engineers and assistant engineers, 
 and to make all necessary rules and regulations for the proper arrangement and 
 government of the corps of engineers and assistant engineers not inconsistent with 
 the Constitution and laws of the United States. The said engineers and assistant 
 engineers shall be in all respects subject to the laws, rules, and regulations of the 
 naval service in like manner with other officers of the service. 
 
 Sec. 6. And be U further enacted. That the said chief engineers shall be 
 appointed by commission, and the assistant engineers shall be appointed by warrant 
 from the Secretary of the Navy, in such form as he may prescribe. 
 
 Sec, 7. And be it further enacted, That the Secretary of the Navy be and he is 
 hereby authorized to establish, at such places as he may deem necessary, suitable 
 depots of coal or other fuel for the supply of steam ships of war. 
 
 The day following the approval of this act Mr. Gilbert L. 
 Thompson was appointed engineer-in- chief of the navy ; this to th§ 
 
THE STEAM NAVY Of THE tmiTED STATES. 41 
 
 great amazement and disgust of Mr. Haswell, who had seen in him 
 only a benevolent and influential gentleman disposed to devote his 
 time to the support of the cause simply because it was right. 
 Benevolent gentlemen with unlimited time and influence to expend 
 in the righting of wrongs abound in the harmless works of fiction 
 distributed by the tract societies, but in real life they are extremely 
 rare. Of Mr. Gilbert L. Thompson one of his contemporaries has 
 written the author : "Mr. Thompson was a lawyer, and knew ab- 
 solutely nothing of engineering. He was a gentleman, a scholar, a 
 diplomatist, and a son of a previous Secretary of the Navy; but 
 his engineering was purely nominal, and confined to a very prompt 
 and efficient drawing of his salary." 
 
 In the spring of 1843 the Missouri, after a prolonged cruise in 
 the Gulf of Mexico, was ordered to Washington, where Mr. Thomp- 
 son caused her smoke-pipe, seven feet in diameter, to be removed 
 and replaeed with two pipes, each three feet six inches in diameter. 
 The two pipes diverged out towards the sides and connected with 
 the wheel-houses with the idea that the centrifugal action of the 
 wheels would induce a strong draught by forcing air up through the 
 pipes. In this connection it must be known that the boiler room of 
 the Missouri was abaft the engines and the wheels consequently 
 were forward of the smoke-pipes, which arrangement would have 
 seriously interfered with the operation of the forced draught scheme 
 in a head wind, even if there had been any merit in it under other 
 conditions. Mr. Haswell, the chief engineer of the Missouri, pro- 
 tested against the design and declared it impracticable, but his pro- 
 fessional opinion was unheeded. Engineer-in-Chief Thompson was 
 so confident of success that he had the members of the Cabinet in- 
 vited on board to witness the trial of his discovery, but they attended 
 a funereal feast, for the scheme failed most dismally in operation. A 
 
 scapegoat being necessary, Mr. Haswell was selected and suspended 
 from duty because he had "not used sufficiently inflammable ma- 
 terial in lighting the fires," although it is not apparent at this late 
 date just what the manner of lighting fires would have to do with 
 any subsequent performance with steam raised. Mr. Haswell was 
 later offered to be restored to duty and proceed with the ship to the 
 Mediterranean, where she had been ordered, on condition that he 
 
42 
 
 THE STEAM ftAVY Qfc THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 would apologize to the captain for bis error ^#), bet this he ctecliaed 
 to do, notwithstanding the requests of his messmates, saying that he 
 would "rather suffer injustice from another than be unjust to him- 
 self." Whereupon he was detached from the vessel and Chief 
 Engineer Faron ordered to take his place. 
 
 The experiment, above related, definitely established the fact 
 that Mr. Thompson was not an engineer, whatever ability he might 
 have in other directions, and his opinions were no longer sought in 
 the councils of the Navy Department. After leaving the Missouri, 
 Mr. Haswell was employed in designing machinery f or four Revenue 
 cutters, and in December was completely vindicated for his affair on 
 the Missouri by being ordered to the Navy Department and assigned 
 
 to the duties of engineer-in-chief ; October 3 of the following year 
 (1844) Mr. Thompson's name was dropped from the list and Mr. 
 Haswell was regularly appointed engineer-in-chief of the navy. 
 
 The smoke-pipe of the Missouri was restored to its original 
 form and the vessel proceeded to the Mediterranean, arriving at 
 Gibraltar on the 25th of August after a voyage of nineteen days 
 from the Capes of the Chesapeake. The next day, August 26, 
 1843, the engineer's yeoman broke a demijohn of spirits of tur- 
 pentine in the store- room, which ignited and started a fire that 
 spread so rapidly that all hope of saving the vessel had to be aban- 
 doned, and the crew barely escaped with their lives. In a few 
 hours this splendid vessel was reduced to a blackened and sinking 
 hulk. Her commander, Captain J. T. Newton, and Chief Engineer 
 John Faron, Jr., were tried by court-martial upon their return home 
 and were sentenced to suspension from duty, the former for a period 
 of two years, and the latter for one year, which sentences were re- 
 mitted after the captain had served four months and the chief 
 engineer eight months. Congress appropriated sixty thousand dol- 
 lars later to be expended in removing the sunken wreck from Gib- 
 raltar harbor. When chief engineer of the Missouri the year 
 before she burned, Mr. Haswell had asked for a leaden tank in 
 which to keep the spirits of turpentine, but the requisition was 
 refused. 
 
 The Mississippi had a long and famous career, but eventually 
 met a far more tragic fate than did her sister ship. She is said to 
 have been a beautiful vessel, and from having had a succession of 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 43 
 
 able commanders and common-sense officers in full accord with each 
 other, she won the enviable reputation of being a "happy ship," 
 and with this reputation was the most popular and best known of all 
 the steamers of the old navy. She was the flagship of Commodore 
 M. 0. Perry in the Mexican "War, and also his flagship in the expe- 
 dition to Japan ; she carried the famous Hungarian exile, Kossuth, 
 from Turkey to France, and brought a number of his fellow-exiles 
 to the United States. As the flagship of Flag Officer JosiahTatnall 
 in 1859 she was present at the engagement in the Pei Flo river, 
 
 SIDE LEYEK ENGINE, U. S. S. MISSISSIPPI. 
 
 where the " blood is thicker than water," sentiment is said to have 
 originated, and at the outbreak of the Civil War was one of the first 
 vessels to go to the front. She had twice circumnavigated the globe, 
 and it was said of her, probably truly, that she had cruised more 
 miles under steam than any war vessel of her time. Eventually a 
 combination of circumstances, so strange that their suggestion during 
 her palmy days would have been scouted as the climax of absurdity, 
 brought this noble frigate with hostile intent into the great river 
 
44 
 
 THE STEAM JSAYY OF TEE UNITED STATES. 
 
 whose name she had so long and so worthily carried about the 
 world, and there one dark night in a storm of shot and shell, in fire 
 and smoke, she sank to her long rest, a coffin for many of her crew, 
 on the bosom of her false srod-mother. 
 
 While the Mississippi and Missouri were being built, the Gov- 
 ernment was bringing to an end a long and bloody war with the 
 Seminole Indians of Florida. It had been decided to remove this 
 tribe from its lands and deport it to the wilds beyond the western 
 frontiers, but when efforts were made to carry the decision into effect 
 the savages declined to be moved, they viewing the matter in the 
 same light that we may imagine the present inhabitants of Florida 
 would regard a similar project to eject them from their homes and 
 belongings. Under their great chief, Osceola, the Seminoles took 
 np arms and a long and devastating war followed, costing the United 
 States ten million dollars and nearly fifteen hundred lives. The re- 
 sult was the same as of all other weary struggles on this continent of 
 the original possessors of the soil against the encroachments of the 
 dominant race, and the aborigines went to the wall. The nature of 
 the country in which the struggle took place made the employment 
 of small steamers for the transportation of men and war material 
 absolutely necessary, and the War Department accordingly found 
 itself with a number of such vessels on its hands when the Seminole 
 War was over, three of which were disposed of by transfer to the 
 Navy Department. 
 
 The steamers thus added to the navy establishment were the 
 General Taylor, of 152 tons; the Colonel Barney, of 300 tons, and 
 the Poinsett, of 250 tons. They were employed for a few years on 
 the Florida waters to prevent the spoliation of Government live oak 
 preserves, one or two naval engineers being usually attached to 
 each. The Poinsett was sold in 1845 for $5,000, and the Harney 
 was returned to the War Department in 1846. The General Taylor^ 
 after being the tender at the Pensacola navy yard for several years, 
 was sold in 1852 for $3,000. 
 
 In 1841 and 1842 plans were prepared for the paddle-wheel 
 steamer Michigan, the hull being designed by Naval Constructor 
 Samuel Hartt, and the engines and boilers by Mr. C. W. Gopelaud. 
 There were two inclined direct acting condensing engines, placed 
 side by side, the cylinders being 36 inches in diameter and eight 
 
U. S S. MICHIGAN. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 4P 
 
 feet stroke; these engines are now, more than fifty years after the 
 Michigan was first commissioned, still in the vessel and in excellent 
 working order. The two original return-flue iron boilers lasted 
 nearly fifty years, they having been replaced as recently as the 
 winter of 1892-93. The engines and boilers were built by Stack- 
 house & Tomlinson in Pittsburgh, Pa. The hull was built of iron, 
 the plates, frames and other iron material being all prepared in 
 Pittsburgh ready for assembling and then transported overland to 
 Erie, Pa., where the vessel was put together and launched in 1843, 
 making her first cruise on the Great Lakes in 1844. She was the 
 first iron vessel afloat on those waters, and is still in active service, 
 a striking illustration of the difference between fresh and salt water 
 as agents for the deterioration of iron vessels. It should be men- 
 tioned, however, that the extraordinary longevity of the Michigan 
 is partly due to the fact that she has to lie up in a winter harbor for 
 about six months each year, and thus the chances for her untimely 
 destruction by the usual perils of the sea have been reduced one- 
 half. The first commander of the Michigan was William Inman, 
 and her first chief engineer Andrew Hebard. 
 
CHAPTER IT. 
 
 w A little learning is a dangerous thing." 
 
 Alexander Pope. 
 
 Experiments with the " Hunter Wheel"— The Union— The Water Witch— The 
 
 Alleghany — The Stevens Battery. 
 
 THE work of the engineers in designing and building machinery 
 for the new naval steamers, while it excited suspicion and op- 
 position from some who were well satisfied with the navy as it was, 
 attracted a certain amount of admiration from others and it was not 
 long before amateur imitators of their work sprung up in the ser- 
 vice* Early in 1842, Lieutenant W. W. Hunter of the navy se- 
 cured a patent for a submerged wheel, claiming a great improve- 
 ment over the ordinary side wheels in propelling vessels. Experi- 
 ments were made on the old canal in Washington with a small boat 
 named the Germ fitted with Hunter's wheels, and the results ob- 
 tained presented to the Navy Department in such a favorable light 
 that it was determined to build a war-steamer to test the invention 
 on a large scale. 
 
 The Hunter wheel consisted essentially of a drum with the pad- 
 dles projecting from its surface like the teeth of a, large gear wheel 
 or pinion; the axis of the wheel was placed vertically and the wheel 
 so located in the vessel, below the water line, that as it revolved the 
 paddles, when at right angles to the keel, would project their whole 
 width from the side of the ship through a suitable aperture. To 
 keep the water from flowing into the ship through this opening the 
 drum was cased inside the ship with a box or coffer-dam made to fit 
 as closely as safety permitted, in practice a clearance of about two 
 inches on all sides being allowed. A wheel was fitted on each side 
 of the ship. In operation it will be observed that this wheel would 
 act on the water on precisely the same principle as that governing 
 the ordinary side wheel, but unlike the latter its idle side, instead of 
 revolving through the air, had to do work all the time by sweeping 
 around the water inside the casing. It had an advantage in dispens- 
 ing with the large wheel-houses which were exposed to shot and of- 
 fered much resistance to the wind, beside blocking space belonging 
 
TffE SfEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 49 
 
 to broadside guns, but this was practically offset by the disadvantage 
 of having so much space in the hold occupied by the drum cases, 
 while the enormous loss of work involved in constantly churning the 
 water inside the cases, appeared at once to every engineer and me- 
 chanic to be a fatal defect in the device. 
 
 Sketch showing section of vessel and arrangement of Hunter's wheels* 
 This is a reproduction of a drawing submitted by Lieut. Hunter to the Navy De- 
 partment under date of Nov. 29, 1843, and is particularly interesting from the fact 
 that it shows the principle of the protective or shield deck, believed by many to 
 be a recent invention. None of Hunter's vessels had such a deck as built. This 
 drawing was first published in the annual report of the secretary of the navy, 
 about 1844. 
 
 However, the Navy Department ordered the building of a ves- 
 sel on Mr. Hunter's plans and the work was carried out at the Nor- 
 folk navy yard in 1842. The vessel, named the Union, was 185 
 feet long, 33 feet beam, and displaced 900 tons on a draft of eleven 
 feet. The rig was that of a three-masted topsail schooner, and the 
 battery consisted of four 68-pounder guns. The engines were built 
 at the Washington navy yard according to Mr. Hunter's ideas and 
 consisted of a horizontal non-condensing engine for each wheel, the 
 cylinders being twenty-eight inches in diameter and four feet stroke. 
 There were three iron tubular boilers, eighteen feet long and six feet 
 six inches in diameter, they being of the usual commercial pattern for 
 
land service. The propelling wheels were fourteen feet in diameter, 
 each fitted with twenty paddles four feet long and ten inches wide. 
 
 The Union was completed at the end of 1842 and Mr. William 
 P. Williamson, who had assisted Mr. Hunter in his experiments 
 with the Germ, was appointed a chief engineer in the navy and 
 ordered to the new vessel. In 1843 she was engaged in experi- 
 mental cruising about the coast, under command of Lieutenant Hun- 
 ter, but was unable to develop a better average than five knots per 
 hour, while the slip or lost work of the wheels in pumping water 
 through the drum cases, was from fifty to seventy per cent. The 
 boilers, carrying nearly one hundred pounds of steam for the high- 
 pressure engines, rapidly accumulated scale causing an equally rapid 
 deterioration, they being intended only for land service, were un- 
 provided with means or accessibility for scaling, and in about a year 
 new boilers fit for use at sea were supplied from designs of Chief 
 Engineer Haswell, but the wheels continued to waste their energy 
 by acting as centrifugal pumps instead of propelling the vessel. An 
 average of five knots on a daily expenditure of eighteen tons of coal 
 was the best that could be done with the ship. With a favorable 
 wind she made on some occasions nine and ten knots for short peri- 
 ods, and Lieutenant Hunter reported one performance of about 
 twelve knots sustained for five hours with a moderate breeze. In 
 1846 it was concluded the engines were not powerful enough, so 
 they were removed and replaced with a pair of condensing engines, 
 four feet stroke and forty inches diameter of cylinders; at the same 
 time the boilers were thoroughly repaired and the wheels so altered 
 that they had ten paddles each instead of twenty, the new paddles be- 
 ing four feet long and two feet wide; all this failed to increase the 
 efficiency of the wheels and the Union was finally, in 1848, put to 
 use as a receiving ship at the Philadelphia navy yard. The ma- 
 chinery was removed at this time and sold for $3,840. The total 
 cost of this experiment was: 
 
 Hull, to period of first sailing « $107,065.67 
 
 Engines and dependencies, do...... 51,062.98 
 
 Repairs at various times 4 . 68, 549. 18 
 
 Total 
 
 $226,677.18 
 
THE STEAM OF THE UNITED SPATES. 5! 
 
 *— »«*~— « .1 i j i i .1. i.i . 4 ' m, il i n m i II ,m . 
 
 While the troubles of the " Hunter wheel " in the Union werfe 
 progressing, similar experience was being gained with a small iron 
 steamer named the Water Witch. This vessel was built at the 
 Washington nary yard in 18£3 from Lieutenant Hunter's plans and 
 was intended for a steam water tank to supply the vessels at the 
 Norfolk station, but when completed it was discovered that she could 
 not go through the locks of the Dismal Swamp canal, which had to 
 be done in order to get at the water supply, so she was fitted for a 
 harbor vessel and tug. Her length was 100 feet and beam 21 feet; 
 the machinery consisted of two non-condensing engines with cylin- 
 ders 22 inches in diameter and four feet stroke, driving two Hunter 
 wheels 16 feet in diameter. The maximum speed of this contri- 
 vance was six and one-half knots per hour, which was so unsatisfac- 
 tory considering her small size and great power > that the vessel was 
 condemned and taken to Philadelphia to be rebuilt. The experi- 
 ment with the Hunter wheel in this vessel stops at this point, but it 
 will be interesting to trace the subsequent career of the Water Witch 
 since she has been introduced. 
 
 lopek's pkopeller. 
 
 A peculiarity claimed by the inventor for this instrument was that it was 
 not a sciw because "the propeller blades form an angle with the center Kne 
 the same*" 
 
52 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 At Philadelphia the vessel was lengthened thirty feet and the 
 entire machinery removed, new machinery driving a " Loper " pro- 
 peller as an experiment being substituted. This also was pronoun- 
 ced unsatisfactory, although when tried by a committee of the Frank- 
 lin Institute in the Delaware river a speed of nearly nine knots was 
 obtained, and in 1847 an inclined condensing engine driving side 
 wheels, designed by Engineer-in- Chief Haswell, was substituted. 
 With this alteration the Water Witch was actively employed in the 
 Gulf during the Mexican War, but she had been the victim of so 
 much patch- work on an originally faulty model that it required much 
 labor to keep her in working order* In 1851 she sailed from Nor- 
 folk for a coastwise voyage and hopelessly broke down on the first 
 day out, after which exploit the machinery was removed and the hull 
 put to good practical use as a target for gunnery practice at Washing- 
 ton. The machinery being perfectly good, a new hull of wood, 
 somewhat larger than the old was built at the Washington yard in 
 1852 and a reasonably efficient little gunboat thus produced, still 
 bearing the original name. This new steamer was employed for a 
 number of years in the Kio de la Plata region of South America, 
 and later saw some very active service during the first three years 
 of the Civil War. June 3, 1864, she was captured in Ossabaw 
 Sound by a large boarding party of the enemy after a most desper- 
 ate struggle, in which her paymaster, Mr. Luther G. Billings, killed 
 Lieutenant Pelot the Confederate commander in a hand-to-hand fight, 
 and also saved the life of his own commanding officer by killing the 
 man who had cut him down ^nd was about to despatch him. The 
 Union prisoners were taken to Savannah where they came under the 
 
 control of the Confederate officer commanding that naval station, and 
 who, singularly enough, was the same Hunter whose wheels had pro- 
 pelled the original Water Witch, he having resigned as a commander in 
 1861 and cast his fortunes with the Confederacy. The coincidence 
 does not seem to have appealed to his magnaminity to any great ex- 
 tent, for it is a matter of official record that he treated his prisoners 
 with considerable harshness. 
 
 To return to the experience of the Navy Department with the 
 Hunter wheel. The experiments with the Union and Water Witch 
 not being conclusive to Mr. Hunter and his supporters, the Depart- 
 ment was prevailed upon to try the invention on a larger scale than 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 53 
 
 before. On the 11th of July, 1843, the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. 
 A. P. Upshur, directed Captain Beverly Kennon, chief of the Bu- 
 reau of Construction, "to take proper steps for building at Pitts- 
 burgh, Pennsylvania, an iron steamer on plans to be submitted by 
 Lieutenant William W. Hunter," and a contract was accordingly 
 made with Joseph Tomlinson for an iron steamer on Hunter's plan, 
 together with engines, propellers, machinery, and all metal appurte- 
 nances, and Lieutenant Hunter was ordered by the Navy Depart- 
 ment to superintend the construction of the whole. Work on this 
 vessel, named the Alleghany, began in 1844 and was completed in 
 April, 1847, when she descended the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to 
 New Orleans, and thence steamed around to Norfolk, Va. 
 
 The Alleghany was 185 feet long, 33 feet beam, 13 feet 6 inches 
 mean draft, at which her displacement was 1,020 tons. She was 
 bark-rigged and mounted originally four 8 -inch Paixham guns, 
 weighing 10,000 pounds each, but this battery was reduced one-half 
 before the vessel sailed for a foreign cruise. There were two hori- 
 zontal condensing engines with cylinders of four feet stroke and 60 
 inches diameter, and two iron return-flue boilers containing 2,000 
 square feet of beating surface and 55 square feet of grate surface each. 
 The boilers were designed by Mr. Haswell, but the engines and hull 
 were Mr. Hunter's, modified by such suggestions as he collected 
 from the engineers and constructors. The horizontal propelling 
 wheels were 14 feet 8 inches outside diameter, fitted with eight pad- 
 dles each, the paddles being 3 feet 6 inches long and 2 feet 2 inches 
 wide. 
 
 On the trip from New Orleans to Norfolk the mean results of 
 her best steaming performances in smooth sea and calms gave a 
 speed of 4.9 knots on an expenditure of 2,000 pounds of coal per 
 hour. At Norfolk it was concluded to cut out every other paddle, 
 leaving only four in each wheel, and thus altered the Alleghany 
 sailed for Brazil, on which station and in the Mediterranean she was 
 employed until 1849, when she returned to the United States and 
 went on duty in the Gulf of Mexico until October of that year. 
 After the reduction of the paddles the average performance for 
 eighty- eight hours' steaming at sea in calm weather was 5.9 knots 
 per hour on an hourly consumption of 2,096 pounds of coal. The 
 mean results of eleven hundred and ninety hours under steam and 
 
54 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 sail in the Atlantic and Mediterranean during her cruise were as 
 follows: 
 
 Mean pressure in boilers 11.77 pounds 
 
 Throttle. ....... . . One-half open 
 
 Cut-off. . 28. 100 of stroke 
 
 Coal consumption per hour 1,940 pounds 
 
 Average revolution of wheels 27.2 per minute 
 
 Vacuum. 25 inches 
 
 Speed of vessel per log 5,883 knots 
 
 Upon the return of the Alleghany from the Gulf of Mexico in 
 October, 1849, a survey was held on her by order of Commodore 
 C. W. Skinner, chief of the Bureau of Construction, etc., the board 
 of survey being composed of Commander J. B. Montgomery, Naval 
 Constructor John Lenthal, Engineer-in-Chief C. H. Has well, Chief 
 Engineer Wm. P. Williamson, and Mr. Wm. Ellis,; the supervising 
 engineer of the Washington navy yard. Their report was a con- 
 demnation of the Hunter wheel, and a recommendation to substitute 
 a common side wheel, but as the engines could be adapted to a 
 screw propeller, and not to paddle wheels, a propeller was decided 
 upon, as the cost of new engines would thereby be saved. This re- 
 port definitely ended the career of Hunter's wheel and put a stop to 
 needless expenditure of public money. The entire history of these 
 experiments in the navy only confirms the correctness of an old adage 
 a " shoemaker should stick to his last. " 
 
 The actual cost of the Alleghany to the period of her departure 
 from Pittsburg was: 
 
 Hull and fittings $118,635.27 
 
 Engines, boilers, fittings and connections 113,64:0.65 
 
 Patent right for Hunter's wheels 10,320.00 
 
 Total $242,595.92 
 
 In 1851-52 the Alleghany was rebuilt at the works of A. Me- 
 haffy & Co., Portsmouth, Va., under the supervision of Chief En- 
 gineer Wm. P. Williamson, U. S. Navy. The iron hull, having 
 been constructed by an establishment accustomed to building vessels 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 55 
 
 for river service, had been found too weak for rough cruising in the 
 open sea, a number of frames having buckled inward, and an at- 
 tempt to remedy this was made by putting in additional frames and 
 braces. The openings in the side for the Hunter wheels were built 
 in, and a new stern post, suitable for the passage of a propeller shaft, 
 was substituted for the old one. The cylinders of the old engines, 
 which worked fore and aft, were used in the new engine to work 
 athwartship from the diagonally opposite corners of a new bed plate, 
 the connecting rods reaching backward from cross-tails, and many 
 of the minor parts of the old engines were likewise adapted in the 
 new structure. The alterations in the engines were regarded by en- 
 gineers at the time as very ingenious and were devised by Mr. B. 
 F. Isherwood, a young chief engineer who had entered the service 
 a few years previously. His arrangement of the cylinders with a 
 back-acting motion, will be recognized as the fore-runner of the type 
 so universally known some years later as the Isherwood engine. 
 
 Three new iron boilers, aggregating 5,500 square feet of heating 
 surface and 200 square feet of grate surface were provided; these were 
 of an English patent type known as u Lamb and Summer " boilers, 
 hitherto unknown in the United States, although used successfully 
 to some extent in England. They were installed in the Alleghany 
 at the instance of Mr. Charles B. Stuart, the engineer-in-chief at the 
 time, a royalty of forty-five cents per superficial foot of heating sur- 
 face being paid to the patentees. Pirsson's patent double- vacuum 
 condenser, to which was attached an evaporator for making up the 
 waste of fresh water, was fitted in this steamer at this time, which 
 was the first appearance in our naval service of that once popular 
 type of condenser. 
 
 The cost of all these alterations and additions was about $130,- 
 000, which, when added to the original cost of the vessel and about 
 $25,000 spent for repairs when she was in service, brings the total 
 cost up to nearly $£00,000. 
 
 The screw propeller was made of cast iron, 13J feet in diame- 
 ter, with four blades Z\ feet wide, having an expanding pitch from 
 27 to 33 feet. So curious was this propeller in comparison with the 
 modern pear-shaped development of the same instrument, that a re- 
 duced copy of the original drawing is shown on next page, the au- 
 thor feeling confident it will interest all his readers who ever hacf 
 any connection with the profession of marine engineering. 
 
56 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 The Alleghany was promised for the Perry expedition to Japan, 
 which fitted out in the summer of 1852, but so many vexatious de- 
 lays in her rebuilding occured that she was not ready for a steam 
 trial .until nearly a year after Commodore Perry sailed for Japan in 
 the Mississippi. On trial the Alleghany proved to be an absolute 
 and unqualified failure; the hull was too weak to withstand the action 
 of the engines and this resulted in the engine bed plates breaking in 
 several places; the boilers were entirely inadequate for supplying the 
 
 SCREW-PKOPELLER, U. S. S. ALLEGHANY, 1852. 
 
 engines with steam, and things were at sixes and sevens generally. 
 Misfortunes with other ships will be referred to in due time, which 
 occurred during the same year and with the fiasco of the Alleghany 
 caused public attention and much adverse criticism to be directed at 
 the management of the Navy Department. Mr. Secretary Dobbin, 
 in response to the popular clamor, organized a board of engineers 
 with instructions to institute a searching investigation, not only as to 
 the causes of the disasters, but also the officers or individuals who 
 were responsible. This board consisted of Engineer-in-Chief D. B. 
 Martin (Mr. Stuart had resigned in June of that year) ; Chief Engi- 
 neer Henry Hunt, U. S. Navy, and Mr. C. W. Copeland. Mr. John 
 Lenthal, the chief constructor of the navy, was ordered to act with 
 the board and advise its members in matters relating to his specialty. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 57 
 
 In the case of the Alleghany, the report of this board was not 
 especially flattering to any who had been concerned in her building 
 and repair, amounting to a general condemnation of the vessel as be- 
 ing totally unsuited for naval purposes. The hull, originally built 
 for the reception of Hunter's wheels, was of a very peculiar form, 
 the cross section being shaped like an inverted bell; a shape mani- 
 festly inconsistent with structural strength to withstand outside pres- 
 sure, as well as a dangerous model for sailing, and it was found that 
 the additional frames put in were so placed and fastened as not to 
 add to the strength, while considerably increasing the weight. The 
 English boilers, originally adopted as experimental, had been radic- 
 ally altered after another set of the same boilers had failed in another 
 ship — the Princeton — and this fact was unfavorably dwelt upon by 
 the board, although there was no reason for believing that this type 
 would have been successful in the Alleghany after it had failed in 
 another case. Chief Engineer Isherwood was scored for not provid- 
 ing, in the design and strength of the engine frames, for the weak- 
 ness of the ship's bottom, and on his side he of course contended 
 that it was his task to provide an engine only ; not a hull to support 
 it. "With more experience, at a later period of his prof essonal ca- 
 reer, when it became his duty to provide power for a great number 
 of war vessels with all sorts of hulls, his engine frames were made 
 proof against any amount of racking they might receive, and then a 
 hue and cry was raised again, not because the engines were too light, 
 but because they were too heavy. Philosophers say that it is much 
 easier to be critical than correct, and the belief that the most suc- 
 cessful critics are those who have failed in other callings has long 
 since passed into a proverb. 
 
 The great fault in this affair appears, from a careful study of 
 the documents in the case, to have been the original attempt to make 
 a serviceable war vessel out of a structure that in shape and scant- 
 ling of material was utterly unfit for the reception of adequate power. 
 After her lamentable failure the Alleghany was laid up in ordinary 
 at Washington navy yard for a year or two and was then moved to 
 Baltimore, where she remained for many years as a store ship, be- 
 ing eventually sold in 1869 for $5,250. 
 
 During this same experimental period a project for constructing 
 an iron-clad steam battery was submitted to the government by Mr. 
 Kobert L, Stevens of Hoboken, New Jersey, and was so well re- 
 
58 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ceived that Congress, by an act approved April 14, 1842, author- 
 ized the Secretary of the Navy to enter into contract with Mr. Ste- 
 vens "for the construction of a war steamer, shot and shell proof, 
 to be built principally of iron, upon the plan of the said Stevens, ' ' 
 the act appropriating two hundred and fifty thousand dollars towards 
 carrying the law into effect and providing that the whole cost of the 
 steamer should not exceed the average cost of the Mississippi and 
 Missouri. Although the steamer thus originated was never com- 
 pleted, and its history reached forward into a period far ahead of 
 that with which we have yet begun to deal, it was such an object of 
 interest to the early engineers that it is entitled to mention in this 
 place, especially as the present chapter has been devoted to the re- 
 cital of upset theories and blasted hopes. 
 
 Mr. Stevens was the son of the famous American inventor, John 
 Stevens, who, as early as 1804, had successfully operated a small 
 experimental steamer with twin screw propellers in place of paddle- 
 wheels; who, in 1812, had prepared a complete set of plans for a 
 circular iron-clad steam battery, and whose name was for many years 
 intimately associated with the beginning of steam navigation and 
 railway operations in this country. Robert L. Stevens inherited his 
 father's inventive genius and his incomplete inventions, among them 
 the idea of the armored steam battery. The original plan for this 
 vesssel was for a large iron steamer (about two hundred and fifty 
 feet long) to be protected with plates of four and one-half inch iron 
 armor plate, Mr. Stevens having proved to the satisfaction of the 
 Coast Defense Board, composed of army and navy officers, that iron 
 plates of this thickness could withstand the fire of any possible gun. 
 Unfortunately for Stevens, another great genius, who will appear 
 prominently in the next chapter, arrived on the scene about this time 
 with a large wrought-iron gun of English manufacture, with which he 
 proceeded to demonstrate by actual experiments that plates of iron 
 four and one-half inches thick could be easily penetrated. This was 
 a great discouragement to Mr. Stevens and occasioned so much offi- 
 cial interference with his work that the project languished until 1854, 
 when work on a modified battery was begun in earnest and carried 
 almost to completion before it was brought to a stand still by the 
 death of Mr. Stevens in 1856. The vessel thus constructed was 
 much larger than the original design, being 420 feet long, 53 feet 
 keam ? and of about 6,000 tons displacement. The iron armor pro- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 59 
 
 jected for this formidable craft was to be six and three quarter inches 
 in thickness. 
 
 The machinery, which was completed in 1856, was designed for 
 8,600 horse-power, then an enormous engine power and equal to that 
 of the famous Great Eastern. The vessel had twin screws, the shafts 
 being eight feet apart at the engines and diverging towards the stern, 
 at which point they were twenty-two feet apart; they also were 
 designed to point down a little to get a better hold of the water, the 
 screw ends being about a foot lower than the engine ends. The to- 
 tal length of each shaft was 184 feet, with a maximum diameter of 
 seventeen inches. Each shaft was operated by a row of four verti- 
 cal cylinders placed outboard of the shaft and connected to the cranks 
 by means of overhead walking beams six feet long and the usual in- 
 terposition of connecting rods, an arrangement that engineers fami- 
 liar with our modern navy will recognize as remarkably like the beam 
 engines adopted by the Advisory Board for the Chicago. The cyl- 
 inders of these two sets of engines were all of the same dimensions, 
 viz: forty-five inches in diameter and forty-two inches stroke. The 
 four cranks of each shaft were placed ninety degrees apart, and the 
 crank shafts, forged separately, were coupled together in a manner 
 closely similar to modern practice. The engine frames were built 
 up of iron plates. The fore-and-aft fire-room, seventy-six feet long, 
 had five boilers on each side, aggregating 26,000 square feet of heating 
 surface. Unlike the typical boilers of that time, these boilers were 
 fitted with tubes two and a quarter inches in diameter instead of the 
 large flues so generally used. 
 
 Up to this time the government had appropriated five hundred 
 thousand dollars for this undertaking and the inventor had expended 
 two hundred thousand dollars of his own money on it besides. At 
 Kobert Stevens' death, the unfinished structure became the property 
 of his two brothers, Edwin A. and John C. Stevens, who, being very 
 wealthy from having successfully followed out the railway and shipping 
 enterprises of their father, offered in 1861 to complete the vessel at their 
 own expense if the government would pay for it if it proved to be 
 successful. This liberal offer was rejected by the Navy Department 
 through the medium of a board of naval officers who reported ad- 
 versely to the project, in spite of the fact that the country was sorely 
 in need of armored vessels and at that very time another naval 
 board was in daily session listening to the claims of every inventor 
 
60 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 who came along with a scheme of any kind for an iron clad. In an 
 effort to prove the practicability of their plan the Stevens brothers 
 fitted out at their own expense a small steamer named the Nauga- 
 tuck, with their arrangement of protective armor, and loaned her to 
 the Navy Department; this craft was in action at Drury's Bluff on 
 the James river in 1862 and had to fall out of battle owing to the 
 bursting of her Parrott gun, so her armor did not receive the desired 
 test, and she never figured as a national vessel on the official navy list. 
 
 In 1868 Mr. Edwin A. Stevens died, and by the terms of his will 
 gave the unfinished battery to the State of New Jersey, bequeathing 
 $1,000,000 to be used in completing it. General George B. McClel- 
 lan of Army of the Potomac fame, was appointed as the engineer to 
 determine on the plans for completing the vessel, and Mr. Isaac New- 
 ton, who as an engineer in the navy during the war had won a high 
 professional reputation, was appointed General McClellan's techni- 
 cal assistant. These officials determined to convert the structure 
 into a ram, with a revolving turret similar to that of Ericsson's moni- 
 tor type. The bow was strengthened accordingly, an inner skin, on 
 the double bottom principal, and transverse water-tight bulkheads 
 were introduced, and the old machinery was entirely replaced with 
 ten large boilers and two sets of powerful engines of the ' 4 Maudsley 
 & Field" vertical overhead-crosshead type, designed to propel the 
 vessel at a speed of fifteen knots per hour. 
 
 In 1874 the million dollars left by Mr. Stevens was exhausted and 
 the vessel not yet completed, although far enough along to justify 
 the claim that she would be the most formidable war vessel in the 
 world if completed. New Jersey was not disposed to spend the 
 necessary money for her completion and opened negotiations for her 
 sale to the United States, a bargain to that end being practically 
 completed so far as the Navy Department was concerned, but Con- 
 gress refused to appropriate the money to make the necessary pay- 
 ments, and the structure fell back upon the hands of the State of 
 New Jersey. Proposals for her sale, either as a whole or in parts, 
 were then advertised, and in 1874 and 1875 the most of the material 
 and machinery was disposed of in that way, even the new engines 
 being sold for old iron. 
 
 Although borne on the official navy list as a national vessel for 
 several years, this troublous craft never had any other name than 
 the designation of the "Stevens Battery." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ' 'Ericsson's career proved that the pencil, as well as the pen, is mightier than 
 the sword. Napoleon did not effect greater changes in the face of Europe than has 
 Ericsson produced in naval warfare, and these latter are lasting, while the former 
 have long since passed into other forms." 
 
 J. Vaughan Merrick in Church's Life of John Ericsson. 
 
 Introduction of the Screw Propeller— John Ericsson. — The Princeton, and Her 
 Remarkable Engine,— Great-gun Accident on the Princeton and Consequent 
 Breach of Friendship Between Ericsson and Captain Stockton. — Subsequent 
 Career of the Princeton. 
 
 THIS narrative of the early steam vessels and engineers of our 
 navy has now progressed to the point where there appears on 
 the scene the most remarkable marine engineer whose genius has ever 
 impressed itself upon the engineering practice of the world, his 
 advent into our naval history being due to the adoption of a war- 
 steamer, the product of his brain, which in many particulars rad- 
 ically and successfully departed from the accepted dogmas of 
 engineers of the time regarding the application of steam power to 
 marine propulsion. Experiments with screw propellers of various 
 types had been made in the United States, England, and, elsewhere 
 and the practicability of the instrument had been visibly demons- 
 trated by more than one inventor, notwithstanding which many 
 engineers persisted in maintaining that its theoretical loss by oblique 
 action, and other alleged defects, were fatal to its adoption in 
 practice. Foremost among the experimenters in England was the 
 Swedish engineer, John Ericsson, who, failing to gain recognition 
 from the Admiralty although he had constructed entirely successful 
 screw-propelled vessels, left that country in disgust and came to the 
 United States, if not at the instance, certainly to the gratification of 
 Captain Richard F. Stockton of the U. S. Navy. 
 
 Captain Stockton had been in England at the time the experi- 
 ments with Ericsson's propeller were attracting public attention and 
 he became thoroughly converted to the importance and value of the 
 invention. Becoming well acquainted with the great engineer, he 
 had talked to him at length of his wish to have the United States 
 
62 
 
 THE ST SAM tfAVY OF THfi UNITED StATES. 
 
 Government build a steamer on Ericsson's plan of propulsion, and 
 had made many flattering promises of success to the latter should 
 he ever take up the practice of his profession in America. The Act 
 of Congress of 1839, under which the Mississippi and Missouri were 
 built, had authorized the construction of three vessels, and at the 
 urgent and repeated solicitations of Captain Stockton the Depart- 
 ment, late in 1841, directed the construction of the third vessel from 
 plans suggested by him. As soon as authority to build the ship was 
 granted, Stockton summoned Ericsson to his aid and engaged him 
 to make all the necessary designs for the hull and machinery, as 
 well as to act as general superintendent of the construction of the 
 same. 
 
 This vessel, named the Princeton after Captain Stockton's 
 home town in New Jersey, was built in Philadelphia during the 
 years 1842 and 1843, the hull at the navy yard and the machinery 
 by the engineering firm of Merrick and Towne. She was 164 feet 
 long, 30i| feet beam, and displaced 954 tons at her mean draft of 
 
 ERICSSONS SCREW PROPELLER. 
 
 16^ feet. The peculiarity of model consisted in a very flat floor 
 amidships, with great sharpness forward and excessive leanness aft, 
 
THE STEAM tfAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 63 
 
 the run being remarkably fine. She was ship-rigged, spreading 
 fourteen thousand four hundred and thirteen square feet of canvas 
 in plain sails. The screw propeller originally used was of the form 
 known as " the Ericsson " : it was composed of a cast brass hub 
 with six arms, the latter being surrounded by a copper band or 
 drum, on which six brass blades were riveted, the general appear- 
 ance of the instrument being shown as in the annexed sketch. Both 
 arms and blades were of true helicoidal twist. In Mr. Kobert Mac- 
 farlane's History of Steam Navigation, published in 1851, this form 
 of propeller is thus spoken of : — "The advantage of the Ericsson 
 screw is in having a ring within the arms, whereby any number of 
 blades can be fixed, and a large area of surface obtained." The 
 Princeton's propeller was of the following dimensions : 
 
 Diameter, extreme 14 feet. 
 
 Diameter of drum 8 
 
 Diameter of hub 1 
 
 Pitch of screw 35 
 
 Length of hub and arms in direction of axis. 2 
 
 Width of blades 4 
 
 8 in. 
 
 < 1 in. 
 
 Weight of screw 12,000 pounds. 
 
 In 1845, about a year after the completion of the vessel, the 
 original propeller was removed and a six-bladed screw without any 
 supporting drum was substituted, the new screw being 14^ feet in 
 diameter, 323^- feet pitch, with blades about 4£ feet wide. Experi- 
 ments made on the Princeton under similar conditions showed that 
 the common screw was about 11 per cent, more efficient than 
 Ericsson's. The Princeton had three iron boilers, designed by 
 Ericsson to burn hard coal, aggregating 2,420 square feet of heat- 
 ing surface and 124 square feet of grate surface. 
 
 The Princeton was the first screw steam, war -vessel ever built , 
 although followed closely by EL. M. S. Rattler^ launched soon after 
 she was. The Rattler was begun some time before the Princeton 
 and was intended originally for side- wheels, but was changed while 
 building owing to a change in sentiment regarding screw propellers. 
 To this circumstance may be attributed the fact that the Rattler is 
 frequently claimed to have been the first screw war-steamer. The 
 Princeton was also the first vessel of war in which all the machinery 
 
64 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 was placed entirely below the water line out of reach of shot. She 
 was also the first war- vessel with boilers designed to burn anthracite 
 coal, thus avoiding the volume of black smoke to betray her presence 
 to an enemy : blowers were used for the first time in naval practice, 
 and she was the first steamer provided with a telescopic smoke pipe. 
 Ericsson was the first engineer to couple the engine direct to the 
 screw shaft, other experimenters with screws using intermediate 
 gearing in deference to the theories of the day. 
 
 The engine of the Princeton may be roughly described as a 
 half-cylinder, in which a rectangular piston vibrated like a barn door 
 on its hinges, and was beyond doubt the most remarkable modifica- 
 tion of the steam engine ever carried into successful practice. The 
 principle of a vibrating rectangular piston is an old mechanical 
 device, so old, in fact, that it was embraced in Watt's patent as one 
 of the modes of transmitting the power of steam to machinery, but, 
 until Ericsson's time ; engineers had failed to build successful 
 engines on this plan. Ericsson's plan differed radically from pre- 
 vious attempts, from the fact, that he introduced, opposite the main 
 semi- cylinder, a much smaller one with its piston a prolongation of 
 of the large one on the opposite side of the shaft, both being acted 
 on by the steam at the same time and the difference in their powers 
 being the effective force transmitted to the crank levers. 
 
 In the Princeton this combined or double semi- cylinder was 
 eight feet long and placed horizontal with the smaller semi-cylinder 
 uppermost. The smaller, or re-acting, piston was ten inches wide 
 and the lower, or working piston thirty-six inches wide. This 
 difference leaves twenty-six inches of effective width of piston, with 
 its center of pressure located 10+13=23 inches from the center of the 
 piston shaft. The effective piston area therefore was 26x96=2,516 
 square inches, moving back and forth through an arc of ninety 
 degrees with an arm or radius of twenty-three inches, the distance 
 of the center of pressure from the center of the piston shaft. 
 
 Before laughing at this contrivance as a crude effort of olden 
 times it is well to investigate a little, and we will find that it pos- 
 sessed peculiar merits. The vibration of the working piston will be 
 found to correspond closely to the beat of a pendulum ; and there- 
 fore its swing during the first half of each vibration would be mater- 
 ially assisted by the force of gravity. The arrangement with the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OP THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 65 
 
 steam ports underneath, facilitated the outflow of condensed water 
 and prevented any dangerous accumulation in the cylinder. Centri- 
 fugal force aided the outward tendency of the packing, and in the 
 case of the lower piston this was further assisted by the force of 
 gravity. The crank levers were attached to the piston shafts in 
 nearly the same plane with the pistons, which relieved the journals 
 of that shaft from irregular strains. The small angular movement 
 (ninety degrees) of the main piston was also an important feature. 
 A greater motion would increase the power of any given sized 
 engine but would also increase the strain on all the principal bear- 
 
 PISTON MOVEMENT U. S. S. PRINCETON (ERICSSON'S PATENT.) 
 
 ings, as the force of the piston obviously increases in the inverse 
 ratio of the sines of the angles of the piston shaft cranks, with refer- 
 ence to the position of the connecting rods. A moderate increase 
 of diameter would make up the loss of power due to the short arc 
 through which the piston vibrates. Another advantage resulting 
 from this short vibration was the possibility of fitting deep cylinder 
 covers to resist the upward pressure of the steam. Finally it will be 
 noticed that there are very few working parts, and the moving parts 
 are fewer than in any other type of steam engine, except possibly 
 the oscillating engine with the piston rod connected directly to the 
 crank. 
 
ARRANGEMENT OF ENGINES OF U. S. 8. PRINCETON, 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 67 
 
 Ordinary slide valves of the locomotive type were fitted to this 
 peculiar engine. Two of these engines were fitted in the Princeton, 
 parallel to the crank-shaft and imparting motion by the connections 
 shown in the outline sketch. 
 
 The ship was completed and ready for sea about the first of 
 January, 1844:, and was exhibited as a marine wonder at various 
 places along the coast. Although this was some time after the 
 enactment of the law regulating the appointment of engineers in the 
 naval service. Captain Stockton appointed the first ones for this ship 
 as though the ship belonged to him ; indeed it is not improbable he 
 felt a certain right to ownership, he being a man of wealth had spent 
 much of his own money on the vessel. When the vessel was com- 
 pleted he sent the following report to the Secretary of the Navy, 
 which is very interesting and gives the best description of the Prince- 
 ton in existence : 
 
 " U. S. Ship PftiNCETOsr, 
 " Philadelphia, Feb. 5th, 1844. 
 
 " Sir: 
 
 ' ' The United States Ship Princeton having received her arma- 
 ment on board, and being nearly ready for sea, I have the honor to 
 transmit to you the following account of her equipment, etc. : 
 
 "The Princeton is a full rigged ship of great speed and power, 
 able to perform any service that can be expected from a ship of war. 
 Constructed upon the most approved principles of naval architecture, 
 she is believed to be at least equal to any ship of her class with her 
 sail, and she has an auxiliary power of steam and can make greater 
 speed than any sea going steamer or other vessel heretofore built. 
 Her engines lie snug in the bottom of the vessel, out of reach of an 
 enemy's shot, and do not at all interfere with the use of the sails, 
 but can at any time be made auxiliary thereto. She shows no chim- 
 ney, and makes no smoke, and there is nothing in her external ap- 
 pearance to indicate that she is propelled by steam. 
 
 u The advantages of the Princeton over both sailing ships and 
 steamers propelled in the usual way are great and obvious. She can 
 go in and out of port at pleasure, without regard to the force or di- 
 rection of the wind or tide, or the thickness of the ice. She can ride 
 safely with her anchors in the most open roadstead, and may lie-to 
 
68 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 in the severest gale of wind with safety. She can not only save her- 
 self, but will be able to tow a squadron from the dangers of a lee 
 shore. Using ordinarily the power of the wind and reserving her 
 fuel for emergencies, she can remain at sea the same length of time 
 as other sailing ships. Making no noise, smoke, or agitation 
 of the water (and if she chooses, showing no sail), she can surprise 
 an enemy. She can take her own position and her own distance from 
 an enemy. Her engines and water wheel being below the surface 
 of the water, safe from an enemy's shot, she is in no danger of be- 
 ing disabled, even if her masts should be destroyed. She will not 
 be at daily expense for fuel as other steamships are. The engines 
 being seldom used, will probably outlast two such ships. These ad- 
 vantages make the Princeton, in my opinion, the cheapest, fastest, 
 and most certain ship of war in the world. 
 
 u The equipments of this ship are of the plainest and most sub- 
 stantial kind, the furniture of the cabins being made of white pine 
 boards, painted white, with mahogany chairs, table, and sideboard, 
 and an American manufactured oil cloth on the floor. 
 
 " To economize room, and that the ship may be better venti- 
 lated, curtains of American manufactured linen are substituted for 
 the usual and more customary and expensive wooden bulkheads, by 
 which arrangement the apartments of the men and officers may in 
 an instant be thrown into one, and a degree of spaciousness and com- 
 fort is attained unusual in a vessel of her class. 
 
 "The Princeton is armed with two long 225-pounder wrought 
 iron guns, and twelve 42-pounder carronades, all of which may be 
 used at once on either side of the ship. She can consequently throw 
 a greater weight of metal at one broadside than most frigates. The 
 big guns of the Princeton can be fired with an effect terrific and al- 
 most incredible, and with a certainty heretofore unknown. The ex- 
 traordinary effects of the shot were proved by firing at a target, 
 which was made to represent a section of the two sides and deck of 
 a 74-gun ship, timbered, kneed, planked and bolted in the same 
 manner. This target was 560 yards from the gun. With the 
 smaller charges of powder, the shot passed through these immense 
 masses of timber (being fifty-seven inches thick), tearing it away and 
 splintering it for several feet on each side, and covering the whole 
 surface of the ground for a hundred yards square with fragments of 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OP THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 69 
 
 wood and iron. The accuracy with which these guns throw their 
 immense shot (which are three feet in circumference), may be judged 
 by this: the six shots fired in succession at the same elevation struck 
 the same horizontal plank more than half a mile distant. By the ap- 
 plication of the various arts to the purposes of war on board the 
 Princeton, it is believed that the art of gunnery for sea service has 
 for the first time been reduced to something like mathematical cer- 
 tainty. The distances to which these guns can throw their shot at 
 every necessary angle of elevation has been ascertained by a series 
 of careful experiments. The distance from the ship to any object is 
 readily ascertained with an instrument on board, contrived for that 
 purpose by an observation which it requires but an instant to make, 
 and by inspection without calculation. By self-acting locks, the guns 
 can be fired accurately at the necessary elevation, no matter what the 
 motion of the ship may be. It is confidently believed«that this small 
 ship will be able to battle with any vessel, however large, if she is 
 not invincible against any foe. The improvements in the art of war 
 adopted on board the Princeton may be productive of more important 
 results than anything that has occured since the invention of gun- 
 powder. The numerical force of other navies, so long boasted, may 
 be set at naught. The ocean may again become neutral ground, and 
 the rights of the smallest as well as the greatest nations may once 
 more be respected. All of which, for the honor and defense of every 
 inch of our territory, is most respectfully submitted to the honorable 
 Secretary of the Navy, for the information of the President and Con- 
 gress of the United States. 
 
 ' 4 By your obedient and faithful servant, 
 
 " R. F. Stockton, 
 
 ''Captain, TJ. S. Navy. 
 
 On February 28, 1844, the Princeton sailed from Washington 
 on a pleasure and trial trip down the Potomac river, having on board 
 President Tyler and his Cabinet and a distinguished party of civil 
 and military officials, invited by Captain Stockton to witness the per- 
 formance of the vessel and her machinery. The trip was a great suc- 
 cess professionally and convivially, and Captain Stockton was lion- 
 ized as the greatest inventor of the times, it being the general im- 
 pression that the ship and all that was in her had sprung from his 
 
70 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 vigorous brain. On the return trip one of those irresponsible per- 
 sons who are always doing something that ought not to be done and 
 whose names are never known afterward, wanted to have the big 
 gun known as "Peacemaker," fired again "just for fun," to which 
 Captain Stockton dissented, as the guns had been thoroughly exer- 
 cised earlier in the day; he yielded, however, upon the good-natured 
 wish expressed by the Secretary of the Navy to let the guests have 
 all the sport they wished, and the gun was fired. It burst, injuring 
 many people, among them Stockton himself, and killing the Hon. 
 Abel P. Upshur, Secretary of State; Hon. Thomas. W. Gilmer, 
 Secretary of the Navy; Captain Beverly Kennon, U. S. Navy; Hon. 
 Virgil Maxey of Maryland; Mr. David Gardiner, and a colored ser- 
 vant. Mr. Gilmer had been Secretary of the Navy less than two 
 weeks, and Mr. Upshur had been Secretary of the Navy at a period 
 shortly before he received the portfolio of the Department of State. 
 Mr. Gardiner was a descendant of the " lords of the manor" of Gar- 
 diner's Island, and his tragic death was the cause of an interesting 
 romance; his body was taken to the White House by direction of-the 
 President, and in the resulting distress and sympathy President Ty- 
 ler developed such an interest in Gardiner's beautiful daughter Julia 
 that he afterward married her. 
 
 When Ericsson came to the United States he brought among 
 many other inventions a large wrought iron gun, designed by him- 
 self and made in England. On trial this gun developed cracks 
 which Ericsson remedied by an expedient now in general use in gun 
 making, namely, by shrinking bands on it. Thus altered it was 
 fired more than one hundred times with great success, its projectiles 
 piercing a 4^-inch wrought iron target, and it was placed on board 
 the Princeton, with the name of " Oregon," as one of the two heavy 
 guns of that vessel; the name "Oregon " was adopted because that 
 word was in everybody's mouth owing to an international contro- 
 versy then in progress, the British Lion being engaged in an attempt 
 to place his heavy paw upon our extreme north-western territories. 
 The other great gun of the Princeton — the " Peacemaker " — was 
 Captain Stockton's gun, and was simply an imitation of Ericsson's, 
 being regarded as an improvement over the latter, as its breach was 
 a foot greater in diameter and the gun was heavier throughout, the 
 quality of its metal being over looked in the effort to provide quan- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 71 
 
 tity; it was of the same calibre, viz, twelve inches. Its weight was 
 about ten tons and was claimed to be the largest forging then in the 
 world and a great manufacturing triumph, as only a few years before 
 the forges of the United States could not produce a wrought-iron 
 shaft for the second Fulton. 
 
 It is a matter of simple history that Captain Stockton allowed 
 the belief to become general that he was the originator of everything 
 connected with the Princeton and tacitly, if not directly, withheld 
 from Ericsson the credit which was his due. In the eulogistic ac- 
 count of the Princeton before quoted, the name of John Ericsson 
 does not appear, although every detail mentioned with so much en- 
 thusiasm as great improvements was his invention. The hull of the 
 Princeton was designed by Ericsson ; the engines were of his patent, 
 and so was the screw propeller; the telescopic smoke pipe and fire 
 room blowers were his; the banded gun was his invention; the range 
 finder was his; the automatic gun lock was his; the Princeton was 
 essentially the child of Ericsson's brain. So long as the career of 
 the Princeton amounted to a triumphal procession from one city to 
 another, John Ericsson remained in the shadow of obscurity, but 
 with the bursting of the u Peacemaker " he was remembered and 
 summoned to Washington. "Captain Stockton," as Mr. Church 
 very pointedly remarks, " bethought himself of Ericsson. If he was 
 not disposed to share the credit of success with him he was quite 
 ready to give him his full measure of responsibility for disaster. ' ' 
 Ericsson declined to be held responsible for an imitation gun not of 
 his making and his letter in reply to the summons to proceed to 
 Washington is a veritable gem of irony and independence. Stock- 
 ton never forgave him and greatly injured him afterward by prevent- 
 ing the payment by the Government of Ericsson's bill for his patents 
 and his invaluable professional work for the two years that the ship 
 was under construction. In denying Ericsson's claim for payment 
 for his services Stockton referred to him as a " mechanic of some 
 skill, ' ' and made the remarkable statement that he had allowed him, 
 u as a particular act of favor and kindness," to superintend the con- 
 struction of the Princetons machinery. Not many months before, 
 at a dinner in Princeton, celebrating the launching of the ship, Cap- 
 tain Stockton had introduced Ericsson as the man for whom he had 
 searched all over the world, who was capable of inventing and 
 carrying out all that was necessary to make a complete ship of 
 
 6 
 
72 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 war. Ericsson experienced all the weary circumlocution of bills in 
 Congress, suits in the court of claims, &c. , and to the great shame 
 of our country eventually died with the bills for his services on the 
 Princeton still unpaid. The whole miserable story is told in Mr. 
 Wm. 0. Church's admirable history of the life of John Ericsson, a 
 book that is well worth the study of all engineers. 
 
 The Princeton was employed in the home squadron during the 
 years 1845, '46 and '47, and was actively engaged in the Mexican 
 War, her performance under sail and steam at all times being high- 
 ly satisfactory, and her reliability as a steamer remarkable. The 
 mean results, when under steam alone during this period, were as 
 follows: 
 
 Mean steam pressure in boilers 11.75 pounds. 
 
 Mean initial pressure in cylinders (throttle 
 
 one-fifth open) 6.3 " 
 
 Double vibrations of piston, per minute. . .22.58 " 
 Consumption of anthracite coal per hour, 
 
 fan blast 1,293 " 
 
 Mean effective pressure throughout stroke, 9 u 
 
 Horse-power developed by engines 191.893 
 
 Speed of ship in knots, per hour 7.29 
 
 Slip of the screw 10.38 per cent. 
 
 Sea water evaporated per hour per pound 
 
 of coal 6.64 pounds. 
 
 In 1847 the Princeton was supplied with new boilers of the 
 same number and external dimensions as the old, but with about 
 twenty per cent, more heating surface, thus improved she sailed for 
 the Mediterranean station where she remained two years under the 
 command of Commander Frederick Engle. Mr. Henry Hunt was 
 her chief engineer the first part of this cruise, succeeded by Joshua 
 Follansbee. On this cruise the performance under steam was much 
 better than it had been with the original boilers and it was claimed 
 that she. was, considered in connection with the amount of fuel con- 
 sumed, the most efficient steamer in existence. She was an object 
 of interest and admiration to European engineers and her cruise in 
 the Mediterranean did much to break down the prejudice of sailors 
 against steamers, and of engineers against the screw and the practice 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 73 
 
 of coupling engines direct to the shaft. At sea she was readily han- 
 dled, either with steam or sail, and had no bad quality except the 
 fault of pitching violently owing to her great leanness forward and 
 aft. Under sail, with the propeller uncoupled, she was claimed to 
 be as fast and handy as most sailing vessels, and she is said to have 
 beaten some sloops of war and frigates in clawing off a lee shore in 
 a heavy gale, under sail and dragging her screw. 
 
 The old navy captains had strenuously asserted that steam could 
 never be practically applied to naval warfare, and the defects in the 
 first side wheel steamers and failure of Hunter's system of submerged 
 propulsion added weight to their predictions. The appearance and 
 successful performances of the Princeton, without any objection 
 able side-wheels and with the machinery entirely below the water 
 line, left the objectors with no argument except their own sentimen 
 tal predilections in favor of sails, and for this reason the Princeton 
 may truly be credited with the honor of being the germ of our steam 
 navy, for after her first service there was no longer any doubt in the 
 minds of sensible men that the old order of things must yield to the 
 new. Besides inaugurating the era of steam men of war, the Prin- 
 ceton may be credited with introducing another new factor into the 
 problem of marine warfare. It has been previously mentioned that 
 Ericsson's wrought-iron gun had been used to perforate an iron 
 target, and, although that particular gun was removed from the ship 
 after the disaster to its copy, this fact set people thinking about how 
 to resist the fire of such guns. As Lieutenant Jacob W. Miller very 
 aptly says in an essay read before the U. S. Naval Institute, " "When 
 the IT. S. S. Princeton, propelled hy Ericsson's screw and armed by 
 Ericssons wrought-iron gun, was launched the war between armor 
 and projectiles began." 
 
 When the Princeton returned from the Mediterranean in 1849 
 she was condemned by a survey and immediately broken up at the 
 Boston Navy Yard. It is asserted in Commodore Stockton's biog- 
 raphy that the hasty condemnation and destruction of this ship was 
 the work of certain naval captains who were jealous of the fame and 
 popularity he had won in championing the cause of steam in the 
 navy, and it is certain that much hard feeling was occasioned by the 
 event, but this quarrel may well be passed over in silence, especially 
 as its principals have long since ceased the contentions of this world. 
 Two years later when Stockton was a member of the United States 
 
74 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Senate he prevailed upon the Navy Department to rebuild his ship, 
 and a new hull was accordingly built at the Boston navy yard, such 
 of the old timbers as were fit being worked into the new structure. 
 The new Princeton was a clipper-built ship, 177 feet long, 33 feet 
 8 inches beam, and of 1370 tons displacement at mean draft, which 
 dimensions it will be noticed correspond very closely with those of 
 our present Enterprise class of corvettes. The old Ericsson semi- 
 cylinder engines, being in good order, were not destroyed with the 
 ship, and these were taken to Baltimore and thoroughly overhauled 
 at the Yulcan Iron Works, under the supervision of Chief Engineer 
 Wm. H. Shock, U. S. Navy. The only material change made in 
 them was in the addition of SickePs adjustable cut-off. Three iron 
 boilers of the " Lamb and Summer " patent, previously referred to 
 in connection with the Alleghany, were supplied by the Baltimore 
 firm; also a four-bladed composition propeller, 16 feet in diameter, 
 not unlike in general form the propellers in use fifteen years ago. 
 
 A long delay in completing the ship occured on account of a 
 controversy between the engine builders and the Navy Department 
 as to whether the machinery was to be installed in Boston or Balti- 
 more, but the Department, being anxious to get the ship for the Ja- 
 pan expedition, finally sent her to Baltimore and the machinery was 
 put in place during the summer of 1852. Eventually completed, the 
 Princeton sailed from Annapolis in November, 1852, in company 
 with the Mississippi, but on the voyage down Chesapeake Bay the 
 boilers gave so much trouble that she was detained at Norfolk and 
 the Mississippi sailed without her. The Board of Engineers named 
 in Chapter IY. as having been organized to investigate the failures 
 of certain vessels, reported in the case of the Princeton that the ad- 
 dition of the SickePs cut-off was injudicious and that the failure of 
 the ship was attributable to the patent boilers; so far as any individ- 
 ual was to blame for the failure, the report stated that Mr. Stuart, 
 the former engineer-in- chief, who had recommended the use of the 
 Lamb and Summer boilers was the responsible person. Commodore 
 Stockton felt that his pet ship had been terribly bungled in rebuild- 
 ing, possibly maliciously so, and he denounced the whole affair by 
 a vigorous speech in the Senate, referring to the new Princeton as 
 6 c an abortion in the naval service." After lying idle in Norfolk 
 for a year or two, the Princeton was taken to Philadelphia and used 
 as a receiving ship until October 9, 1866, when she was sold. 
 
CHAPTEE VI, 
 
 "I hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of 
 course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to en- 
 deavour themselves by way of amends to be a help and ornament thereunto," 
 
 Feancis Bacon. 
 
 Eeorganization of the Engineer Corps— Case of Chief Engineer C. B. Moss— All 
 Assistant Engineers Examined and Ee-arranged According to Proficiency — 
 Laws and Eegulations Affecting the Engineer Corps from 1845 to 1850— 
 Eesignation of Chief Engineer John Faron, Jr. 
 
 THE act of August 31, 1842, creating the engineer corps of the 
 navy, authorized the Secretary of the Navy to appoint the en- 
 gineer-in-chief and the chief engineers, as well as the assistant engi- 
 neers. In the original draft of this bill it was provided that the 
 engineer-in-chief and chief engineers should be commissioned offi- 
 cers, nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, which 
 provision met with approval, but disappeared at the last moment 
 when the bill assumed its final form. This omission was said to be 
 due to the exertions of Mr. Gilbert L. Thompson, who had arranged 
 to be appointed to the new office of engineer-in-chief, and, not being 
 an engineer by profession, was fearful that the Senate would not 
 confirm him when nominated; so he used his political influence to 
 further his interests by making the way to the desired office as free 
 from legislative and legal forms and ceremonies as possible. 
 
 After Mr. Thompson's short career as engineer in-chief, his 
 successor, Mr. Haswell, immediately undertook the task of remedy- 
 ing the defect in organization occasioned by the diplomacy of his 
 predecessor, his efforts being so successful that the naval appropria- 
 tion bill of the following year (approved March 3, 1845) contained 
 the following: — 
 
 Sec. 7. And be it further enacted, That in lieu of the mode heretofore pro- 
 vided by law, the engineer-in-chief and chief engineers of the navy shall be ap- 
 pointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and that 
 the President, by and with the like advice and consent, may appoint six engineers, 
 to be employed in the revenue service of the United States, and the Secretary of the 
 Treasury may appoint six assistant engineers, to be employed in the like service, one 
 engineer and one assistant to be assigned to each steamer in the said service, if the 
 
76 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 same shall be deemed necessary by the Secretary of the Treasury, who shall pre- 
 scribe the duties to be performed by said officers respectively; each of the said engi- 
 neers shall be entitled to receive the same pay as now is, or hereafter may be, by 
 law, allowed to first lieutenants in the revenue service; and that each assistant engi- 
 neer shall be entitled to receive the same pay that now is, or hereafter may be, by 
 law, allowed to third lieutenants in said service. 
 
 The enactment of this law made it necessary for the names of 
 the chief engineers to be sent to the Senate for confirmation for 
 commissions, and this furnished the engineer-in-chief with an op- 
 portunity to re- arrange them in what, according to his judgment, 
 was their proper order of merit, his recommendation on the subject 
 to the Secretary of the Navy, dated May 9, 1845, being approved 
 and a re-arrangement accordingly made by numbering the commis- 
 sions. There were then seven chief engineers ranking with each 
 other according to date of appointment in the following order: 
 
 John Faron, Jr., appointed January 13, 1840. 
 Andrew Hebard, appointed February 6, 1840. 
 James Thompson, appointed April 14, 1842. 
 ¥m. P. Williamson, appointed October 20, 1842. 
 Charles B. Moss, appointed May 29, 1844. 
 Wm. Sewell, Jr., appointed February 11, 1845. 
 W. W. W. Wood, appointed March 15, 1845. 
 
 By Mr. HaswelPs recommendation, this order of precedence 
 was changed to the following, in order of number of commission: 
 
 This new arrangement was of course not agreeable to those who 
 were reduced in standing, Mr. Williamson especially feeling ag- 
 grieved at having Messrs. Sewell and Wood, who had just entered 
 the corps as chief engineers direct from civil life, placed above him, 
 and the case does appear to savor of hardship, but the judgment of 
 the engineer-in- chief was allowed to stand as final, and Mr. Will- 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 5. 
 6. 
 7. 
 
 John Faron, Jr. 
 Andrew Hebard. 
 Wm. Sewell, Jr. 
 
 W. W. W. Wood. 
 
 James Thompson. 
 Wm. P. Williamson. 
 Charles B~ Moss. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 77 
 
 iamson's protests to the Department availed him nothing. Chief 
 Engineer Moss also came to grief at the hands of the Department at 
 the same time. He was a close friend of President Tyler, and had 
 been his private secretary prior to receiving an appointment as a 
 chief engineer in the navy, and after that remained in Washington 
 as a member of the President's household. President Tyler's term 
 of office expired March 4, 1845, and the following day the Navy 
 Department took possession of Mr. Moss by ordering him to Pitts- 
 burgh as inspector of machinery, building in that city for the Alle- 
 ghany. Two months later, when Mr. Haswell recommended the re- 
 arrangement of the chief engineers, he reported to the Department 
 that "Mr. Moss, without the advantages of personal observation 
 consequent upon the immediate management of the steam engine, 
 has made himself well acquainted with its operation and possesses 
 high attainments in physics and mathematics." Proteges of Presi- 
 dent Tyler were not popular with the new administration, however, 
 and the Navy Department detached Mr. Moss from his duty in 
 Pittsburgh, placed him on furlough, and ordered him to report at a 
 future date to the engineer-in-chief for an examination as to his 
 qualifications for sea duty, the letter of explanation accompanying 
 the order stating: 
 
 "In consequence of the Department's want of confidence in 
 your ability to assume the detailed direction and perform the prac- 
 tical duties of a chief engineer attached to a sea-going steamer, and 
 at the same time, entertaining the disposition to concede to you all 
 proper indulgence and facilities, it has decided that for the purpose 
 of giving you an opportunity practically to acquire the knowledge 
 which it conceives you to be in want of, you will be detached from 
 your present duties and put on furlough until the 15th of December 
 next." 
 
 About the middle of January following, Mr. Moss was ordered 
 before an examining board composed of the engineer-in-chief and 
 the two senior chief engineers of the navy, which resulted in his re- 
 ceiving the following notification from Secretary Bancroft: 
 
 "In consequence of the result of your examination, which has 
 been communicated to you, I am authorized by the President to in- 
 form you that your commision as a chief engineer in the navy of the 
 
^8 
 
 THE STEAM AVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 United States is hereby revoked, and you are no longer a chief en- 
 gineer. 
 
 "A warrant as a second assistant engineer in the navy, in ac- 
 cordance with the report of the Board of Engineers before which 
 you were examined, will be given you upon your signifying your 
 readiness to accept it." 
 
 This letter was dated January 30, 1846, and as Mr. Moss did 
 not signify his willingness to accept the proffered warrant, his con- 
 nection with the service ceased on that date. The affair is narrated 
 as an illustration of the danger of relying upon political influence 
 for official position, and also as serving to show the uncertain tenure 
 of a commission in the navy in olden times, which latter uncertainty 
 was not confined to the young engineer corps, but menaced all com- 
 missioned officers alike. 
 
 Having disposed of the chief engineers, Mr. Haswell turned 
 his attention to the assistants, and recommended that they all, irre- 
 spective of grade or length of service in the navy, be subjected to an 
 examination to establish their fitness for the service and determine 
 their relative merits, which recommendation was approved by Sec- 
 retary Bancroft, and an examining board convened by his order in 
 the city of Washington on the 9th of July, 1845. This board con- 
 sisted of Engineer-in- Chief Haswell as president and Chief Engi- 
 neers ,John Faron, Jr., and Wm. W. W. Wood as members, and 
 before it all the assistant engineers who were within summoning dis- 
 tance were ordered to appear. 
 
 The proceedings of the examining board partook largely of 
 "star chamber " methods, as may be seen from the following letter 
 of instructions issued to the board by the chief of the Bureau of 
 Construction, Equipment and Repairs, who represented the Secre- 
 tary of the Navy for the time, and to which bureau the engineering 
 branch was attached as a sub- department or bureau: 
 
 " Messes. C. H. Haswell, ) 
 
 John Faron, y Engineers. 
 W. W. W. Wood. ) 
 
 INSTEUCTIONS FOE A BOARD FOE EXAMINATION OF 
 
 ASSISTANT ENGINEEES. 
 
 ' ' The board will take particular care to ascertain the qualifica- 
 tions of the candidates for all the duties that may be required of 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 79 
 
 them, as assistant engineers, and satisfy themselves of their moral, 
 as well as professional fitness for the public service. 
 
 " Having ascertained the merits of the candidates as above, 
 the board will proceed to class them as first, second and third assist- 
 ants — taking into view professional and moral fitness and other cir- 
 cumstances which may give claim to preference. 
 
 "Having classed the candidates as above, the board will ar- 
 range them in their several classes according to merit. 
 
 ' 4 The appointments now held by assistant engineers are to be 
 considered as temporary, and not giving claim to precedence, ex- 
 cept in cases when candidates may be thought to be equal in merit, 
 then preference will be given to the senior appointment. 
 
 "The board will admit but one candidate for examination at a 
 time, the examination is to be considered private and confidential, 
 and it will impress upon the mind of each candidate, and enjoin it on 
 him, that he is not to disclose to any one the course of examination, 
 the questions asked him, or anything that may occur in the session 
 of the board. 
 
 " The decisions at which the board may arrive are to be com- 
 municated to no one; but are, when the whole examination is com- 
 pleted, to be submitted to the Secretary of the Navy, for such action 
 as he may deem proper. 
 
 u By order of the Secretary of the Navy. 
 
 U W. B. Shubeick, 
 ' 6 for Com. Morris, 
 "Bureau of Construction, Equipment and Repairs, July 8, 1845." 
 
 At that time the different grades of assistant engineers were 
 composed of the following members, arranged in order of seniority 
 according to length of service: 
 
80 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 FIRST ASSISTANTS. 
 
 SECOND ASSISTANTS. 
 
 -I TT' CI f - ~t 
 
 1. Hiram Sanford, 
 
 9 William QonH 
 
 3. James Cochrane, 
 
 4. Henry Hunt, 
 
 5. D. B. Martin, 
 
 6. John Alexander, 
 
 7. James Atkinson, 
 
 8. Thomas Copeland, 
 
 9. Levi Griffin, 
 
 10. B. F. Isherwood, 
 
 11. Alexander Birkbeck. 
 12 
 
 A. S. Palmer, 
 j. o. xvuiineiiuiu., 
 J. K. Mathews, 
 Gilbert Sherwood, 
 N. C. Davis, 
 Daniel Murphy, 
 J. M. Middleton, 
 William Luce, 
 Levi T. Spencer, 
 J. F. Dryburgh. 
 
 13 
 
 
 14 
 
 
 THIED ASSISTANTS. 
 
 Smith Thompson, 
 Joshua Follansbee, 
 Wm. F. Mercier, 
 John Gallagher, 
 William Taggart, 
 Samuel Archbold, 
 John Serro, 
 Thomas Dickson. 
 Theodore Zeller, 
 M. M. Thompson, 
 James W. King, 
 Eobert Danby, 
 William H. Shock, 
 Charles Coleman. 
 
 After examining all the available assistant engineers the result 
 of the examination was reported as follows: 
 
 "Office of Engineer Corps, U. S. N., 
 
 " July 28th, 1845. 
 
 "Sir:— 
 
 "In behalf of the Board for the examination of Assistant 
 Engineers that was convened on the 9th instant, I have to report: 
 
 "That there were twenty- seven Assistants examined, one of 
 whom was rejected. 
 
 "The accompanying paper contains a list of the names of those 
 that were passed, arranged in the several grades and numbered in 
 the order in which they are recommended to be placed. 
 
 "In consideration of this being the first occasion since the 
 organization of the Engineer Corps that duty of this nature has been 
 performed, and as many changes in the different grades are recom- 
 mended to be made, I deem it proper to recur to the irregular 
 manner in which the present tenure of appointments of those ex- 
 amined originated. 
 
 "Thus from 1837 to 1842 there did not exist the grade of 
 Third Assistant, and not until 1842 was there an examination prior 
 to admission into the corps, and even up to the present time there 
 has not been an appointment under any defined regulations or re- 
 strictions. 
 
 "With these facts in view it is fair to infer that errors of 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 81 
 
 position could not have been avoided; added to which, observation, 
 ambition, and a difference in capacity, have secured to some (since 
 their appointments in the service) that advantage which is so readily 
 obtained when their attendant results are contrasted with indiffer- 
 ence and a less regard to the exactions of advancement. 
 
 u The want of a working model of a condensing engine for the 
 purposes of illustration and reference was much felt, and in future 
 examinations of candidates for admission into the corps much incon- 
 venience will be experienced without the use of one. I recommend 
 that one be constructed at the navy yard in Washington — the cost of 
 which should not exceed $300. 
 
 " Mr. Alexander Birkbeck, Jr., is recommended as worthy of an 
 examination for promotion to a Chief Engineer whenever the De- 
 partment may see fit to add to the number of that grade. First 
 Assistant Thomas Copeland from physical infirmity, added to the 
 want of professional experience as a marine engineer, is considered 
 unfit to discharge the duties pertaining to an Assistant Engineer in 
 the Naval Service. 
 
 1 1 am, very respectfully, 
 
 s 4 Tour obedient servant, 
 
 "Chas. H. Haswell.*" 
 
 The paper referred to in the above report as giving the names 
 of the assistant engineers, re -arranged in the order of merit recom- 
 mended by the examining board, shows that the following order, 
 which was officially approved, was recommended: 
 
 FIRST ASSISTANTS. 
 
 SECOND ASSISTANTS. 
 
 THIKD ASSISTANTS. 
 
 1 . Alexander Birkbeck, Jr 
 
 2. Henry Hunt, 
 
 3. Daniel B. Martin, 
 
 4. Hiram Sanford. 
 
 5. James Cochrane, 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 11 
 
 Joshua Follansbee, 
 John Alexander, 
 James Atkinson, 
 Levi Griffin, 
 Levi T. Spencer, 
 Albert S. Palmer, 
 Jesse S. Rutherford, 
 Samuel Archbold, 
 Nay lor 0. Davis, 
 Daniel Murphy, 
 
 John M. Middleton, 
 Wm. F. Mercier, 
 William Taggart, 
 William Luce, 
 James W. King, 
 James K. Dry burgh, 
 Theodore Zeller, 
 Kobert Danby, 
 William H. Shock, 
 John Serro, 
 M. M. Thompson. 
 
 
 
82 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Of the eight assistants not examined in July, two, Second As- 
 sistant Gilbert Sherwood and Third Assistant Smith Thompson, de- 
 clined the examination and resigned. The other six, the vessels to 
 which they were attached having returned to the United States, were 
 ordered before the board in December and January following, and 
 examined, Chief Engineer Andrew He bard being then one of the 
 examiners in place of Mr. Wood, who had been sent to New Orleans 
 to superintend a general overhauling of the machinery of the 
 General Harney . Those examined were first assistants Wm. Scott 
 and B. F. Isherwood; second assistant John K. Mathews, and third 
 assistants John Gallagher, Thomas Dickson, and Charles Coleman. 
 The result of the examination was that Messrs. Scott and Isherwood 
 were reduced to second assistants; Mr. Mathews advanced to the 
 head of the second assistants list; Mr. Gallagher promoted to 
 second assistant, and Messrs. Dickson and Coleman placed on the 
 list of third assistants next after Wm. H. Shock and M. M. Thomp- 
 son respectively. 
 
 This whole proceeding was most radical and arbitrary, and occa- 
 sioned much heart-burning among those unfortunates who lost grade 
 or numbers in the final arrangement; nevertheless, it was demanded 
 by the lack of homogeneity in the corps which had resulted from the 
 irregular manner in which the first engineers had been appointed, 
 and the advantages of establishing professional competency as a 
 requisite for membership in the corps, and of starting fair, even 
 though a trifle late, with the engineering personnel graded according 
 to merit, much more than offset any grievances of individuals re- 
 sulting from the rearrangement. Of high professional ability and 
 broad general education himself, Mr. Haswell felt that the require- 
 ment of similar ability from all the members of his corps was the 
 only proper method of elevating its standard, and the imposition of 
 this arbitrary examination upon the junior engineers was the first 
 step in that direction. That the step was of great subsequent bene- 
 fit to the corps is manifest, and its inception indicates a degree of 
 corps pride and far-sightedness on the part of the engineer-in-chief 
 to be admired and commended more than any other of his numerous 
 acts which operated to the lasting benefit of his corps. Moral 
 courage of a high order was necessary to the carrying out of this 
 reform, for it could be of no possible personal benefit to its pro- 
 
CHAS. H. HASWELI,. 
 
 The first engineer in the United States Navy : appointed Chief 
 Engineer July 12, 1836. Engineer-in-chief of the Navy 
 from October 3. 1844, until December 1, 1850. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 85 
 
 jector, and by its character was bound to make enemies for him 
 within his own corps, where friends were most needed; enemies 
 who treasured up their wrongs, real or imaginary, and patiently 
 waited for the time, which eventually came, when they could safely 
 combine to seek their revenge. 
 
 Mr. Haswell's scheme for the reformation and reorganization 
 of his corps was further perfected this same year by the promulga- 
 tion of a set of regulations governing the admission and promotion 
 of members of the engineer corps. This order was dated July 8, 
 1845, and established limits of age for candidates, made the per- 
 formance of a certain amount of sea service in each grade a re- 
 quirement for promotion, and fixed a scale of mental requirements 
 much in advance of what had been previously demanded. The 
 initial examination for admission as a third assistant engineer was 
 elementary compared with modern requirements, but the subsequent 
 advances in grade were guarded by examinations that increased in 
 difficulty in what may be termed geometrical progression, until the 
 candidate for promotion to the list of chief engineers was required 
 to pass a very exacting ordeal, calculated to establish the possession 
 of much scientific and mechanical ability. 
 
 Chief engineers of excellent professional and general informa- 
 tion were habitually selected for the duty of examiners, and it was 
 an established rule that a failure to pass the required examination 
 meant an end to the naval career of the delinquent. This furnished 
 a strong incentive to the young engineers to fit themselves for ad- 
 vancement, and almost immediately after the reorganization of the 
 corps a much keener incentive to study and self improvement ap- 
 peared in the development of an intense spirit of corps pride which 
 made the engineers quick to recognize their own short-comings and 
 to strive to overcome them. Opposition from within the service to 
 the new branch was the chief cause for the early inception of this 
 esprit de corps, and, although disagreeable to those who had to re- 
 sist it, should now be regarded as a blessing in disguise to the 
 engineers, for it prompted all but the laggards not only to overcome 
 the deficiencies charged against them, but to outstrip their competit- 
 ors in the pursuit of knowledge. 
 
 The Naval Academy was opened the same year that the sys- 
 tematic reorganization of the engineer corps was effected, and as 
 
86 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 soon as the two systems were well in operation the young men of the 
 two branches of the service fell into an intellectual rivalry, which 
 was good for both classes, and especially for the engineers. The 
 result of this feeling was frankly confessed by a distinguished naval 
 captain some years ago, who, in a discussion regarding naval educa- 
 tion, remarked that under the old system a newly graduated mid- 
 shipman was much better informed on general subjects than was a 
 newly appointed third assistant engineer, but at the end of the first 
 cruise the young engineer would generally be found to be much the 
 better informed man of the two. 
 
 Immediately after being appointed engineer-in-chief, Mr. Has- 
 well prepared a list of instructions for the government of the 
 engineer department of vessels of war, which instructions were 
 issued by the Secretary of the Navy in the form of a general order 
 to commanding officers under date of February 26, 184:5. This 
 order defined in general, the duties and responsibilities of engineers 
 afloat, precautions to be observed in the care and preservation of 
 machinery, etc., and were so well considered and prepared that 
 some of the sections still remain in the steam instructions without 
 modification, except in matters of detail demanded by the changes 
 in engineering practice. 
 
 August 1, 1847, the Navy Department issued a circular order 
 regarding the enlistment of firemen and coal heavers, which directed 
 that no fireman should be shipped in the future until he had passed 
 a satisfactory examination before a board of engineers and demon- 
 strated his ability to manage fires properly with different kinds of 
 fuel, and to use skillfully smiths' tools in the repair of boilers and 
 machinery. Two classes of firemen were established by the order, 
 and a regular system of promotion from coal heaver to the two 
 grades of firemen was directed. First class firemen were declared 
 eligible for advancement to the warrant rank of third assistant engi- 
 neer if they could qualify before the examining board. 
 
 The next year Congress, by an Act approved August 11, 1848, 
 extended the benefits of existing laws, respecting naval pensions, 
 to the engineer corps and to enlisted men of the engineers' force, 
 the wording of the act being as follows: 
 
 ''Sec. 2. — That engineers, firemen, and coal heavers in the navy shall be 
 entitled to pensions in the same manner as officers, seamen, and marines, and 
 the widows of engineers, firemen and coal heavers in the same manner as the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 87 
 
 widows of officers, seamen, and marines : Provided, That the pension of a chief 
 engineer shall be the same as that of a lieutenant in the navy, and the pension 
 of the widow of a chief engineer shall be the same as that of the widow of a 
 lieutenant in the navy; the pension of a first assistant engineer shall be the same 
 as that of a lieutenant of marines, and the pension of the widow of a first as- 
 sistant engineer shall be the same as that of the widow of a lieutenant of marines; 
 the pension of a second or a third assistant engineer the same as that of a forward 
 officer, and the pension of the widow of a second or third assistant engineer the 
 same as that of the widow of a forward officer.' ' 
 
 A new schedule of pay for engineer officers, by which an in- 
 crease for all grades was effected, was created by the following sec- 
 tion from the naval appropriation bill approved March 3, 1849: 
 
 Sec. 6. And be it further enacted, That the engineers in the navy shall 
 
 hereafter receive the following pay, viz: 
 
 Chief engineers on duty first five years $1,500 
 
 Chief engineers on duty after five years 2,000 
 
 Chief engineers on leave first five years 1,200 
 
 Ghief engineers on leave after five years 1,400 
 
 First assistant engineers on duty 1,000 
 
 First assistant engineers on leave 850 
 
 Second assistant engineers on duty 800 
 
 Second assistant engineers on leave 600 
 
 Third assistant engineers on duty 600 
 
 Third assistant engineers on leave 400 
 
 The engineer corps experienced a decided loss at this period by 
 the resignation of the senior chief engineer in the service, Mr. John 
 Faron, Jr., who tendered his resignation in April, 1848, in order to 
 accept the position of Superintending Engineer of the newly estab- 
 lished Collins line of transatlantic mail steamers. Mr. Faron. it 
 will be remembered, was the first assistant engineer appointed to the 
 Fulton in 1837, and became a chief engineer in January, 1840. He 
 was a thoroughly capable and efficient marine engineer, and was 
 prominently identified with the designing, building and management 
 of the early naval steamers, as well as being a prominent factor as 
 a member of the examining board, in the work of reorganizing the 
 engineer corps. His name was continued on the navy list by the 
 admission into the corps of a third assistant engineer named John 
 Faron, a few months after his resignation. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " I believe that if the question had been put to Congress before the march 
 of the armies and their actual conflict, not ten votes could have been obtained in 
 either house for the war with Moxico under the existing state of things." — 
 Webstek. 
 
 The War With Mexico — Naval Operations in California — Important Service of 
 Surgeon Wm. Maxwell Wood—Blockade of the Gulf Coast — Commodore 
 Perry and the Mississippi — Valuable Professional Service of Engineer-in- 
 Chief Has well — Bombardment of Vera Cruz — "Alvarado Hunter" — Steam- 
 ers Bought for Temporary Service — Naval Engineers Engaged in the Mexi- 
 can War— Results of the War. 
 
 THIS volume being devoted to the deeds of naval men, it is 
 hardly within its province to deal with the causes, or pretexts, 
 which brought about the war with Mexico. Without referring to the 
 political and sectional interests involved, it will be sufficient to say in 
 regard to the direct cause of the war that the Mexican State of 
 Texas, after having achieved its independence after a short but 
 exceptionally cruel war, and after having enjoyed the dignity of a 
 sovereign republic for ten years, asked for admission into the North 
 American Union, and was admitted late in 1845, bringing with her 
 a bitter quarrel with her parent country as to the exact boundary line 
 between them, and a vast assortment of fierce and bloody border 
 feuds handed down from the days of the Alamo, Goliad and San 
 Jacinto. The new administration, that of President Polk, resolved 
 to defend by force if necessary the position taken by the Texans in 
 regard to their boundary dispute, and within a few months collisions 
 of troops in the disputed territory gave the American Congress the 
 opportunity of declaring, May 11, 1846, that u By the acts of the 
 Eepublic of Mexico, a state of war exists between the United States 
 and that Republic. ' 5 
 
 Mexico, being miserably poor, distracted, misgoverned, and 
 revolutionary, had no national navy, and the navy of the United 
 States therefore was restricted to a rather limited share in the opera- 
 tions of the war, being forced to unromantic blockading and trans- 
 port duties along the coasts, and denied the glory of battles at sea 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 8? 
 
 for lack of an enemy to meet ob that element. Nevertheless, some 
 of the acts of the naval force were productive of most important 
 and lasting results in the prosecution of the war, while the main- 
 tenance of a blockade, imperfect as it was from being held by a fleet 
 mainly composed of sailing ships on coasts famous* for sudden 
 storms, contributed greatly to hasten the end of hostilities : 
 otherwise the war might have been prolonged by the sending of war 
 material and supplies into Mexico by other nations had her ports 
 been left unguarded. 
 
 One of the very first events of the war was of the greatest im- 
 portance, and in all human probability its result was to give to the 
 United States instead of Great Britain possession for all time of 
 the vast region then composing the Mexican territory, or province, 
 of California. The Mexican national debt was largely held by Brit- 
 ish capitalists, and fearing they would never realize on their invest- 
 ments because of the constant political turmoil of the feeble young 
 republic, had appealed to their own government for assistance, which 
 was readily attempted, as the foreign policy of England very proper- 
 ly includes the protection of the pockets of her subjects as well as 
 their personal safety. Through the regular diplomatic channels 
 propositions were made to Mexico to mortgage California and allow 
 its occupation by England until the bonds were paid: a most astute 
 scheme, and one that would have resulted in due time in the British 
 government assuming the payment of the debt to its subjects and 
 becoming the owner in fee simple of the territory held as security. 
 While negotiations to this end were pending, the prospect of war 
 between the United States and Mexico became threatening, and a 
 subject of great interest to the British admiral in the Pacific, who is 
 believed to have had instructions to seize upon California at the first 
 news of hostilities, and thus insure his countrymen against financial 
 loss. 
 
 In the spring of 184:6 the American Pacific squadron, composed 
 of sailing vessels, was lying at Mazatlan on the west coast of Mexico, 
 Commodore John D. SI oat in the frigate Savannah being in com- 
 mand. The British admiral, Seymour, in the Gollingwood^ was also 
 there, both watching each other and waiting eagerly for news, which 
 came slowly in those days, without railways and telegraphs. It 
 often happens that important events in the history of nations result 
 
90 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 from the acts of individuals not prominently connected with them, 
 or from obscure circumstances of which the public is not cognizant, 
 and one these events was now to come about. Surgeon Wm. Max- 
 well Wood, of the Savannah, having been relieved by another sur- 
 geon, left Mazatlan April 30 on his way home, his plan being to 
 cross Mexico and take a steamer for the United States before war 
 began, if a war was really to result. He was commissioned by 
 Commodore Sloat to convey important information verbally to the 
 Secretary of the Navy, the condition of the country being such that 
 it was not deemed safe to trust his despatches or letters to be carried 
 across the country. Dr. Wood spoke Spanish fluently, and when 
 well started on his journey, at Guadalajara, overheard a conversa- 
 tion not intended for his ears from which he learned that hostilities 
 had actually occurred on the Rio Grande. He was a most phleg- 
 matic man, and consequently was able to absorb the startling intelli- 
 gence without any outward show of interest; furthermore, his man- 
 ner and personal appearance were those of a prosperous Englishman, 
 in which character he was traveling, so he was comparatively free 
 from suspicion. 
 
 At the earliest possible moment Surgeon Wood wrote out a de- 
 tailed account of what he had heard, and despatched it by messen- 
 ger to Commodore Sloat at Mazatlan, this act involving great per- 
 sonal risk, for had the despatch been intercepted its author would 
 certainly have been hunted down and treated as a spy. By good 
 luck more than anything else the letter reached Commodore Sloat 
 safely, and that officer was not slow to appreciate the importance of 
 the news and the exigency of the occasion. He at once sent two of 
 his vessels — the Cyane and Levant, names that had before been his- 
 torically associated — to the northward, and followed soon after in 
 the Savannah, Within a few days the British admiral learned of 
 the beginning of the war, and, surmising the mission of the Ameri- 
 can squadron, sailed at once on the same errand; but he was too 
 late. On the 7th of July the American vessels took possession of 
 Monterey, the chief city of Upper California, and of San Francisco, 
 the best harbor, and that territory has ever since remained a part of 
 the American Eepublic, thanks in the first instance to Surgeon 
 Wood for his quick perception of his duty in the emergency in which 
 he was accidentally placed, and in the second to Commodore Sloat 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. Ul 
 
 for assuming the responsibility of seizing upon a vast territory with- 
 out orders and without any assurance that his action would be up- 
 held, or that a force sufficient to hold it would be supplied. 
 
 That Commodore Sloat acted wholly on his own judgment is 
 proved by the fact that orders from Washington directing him to 
 take possession of San Francisco Bay in the event of war were re- 
 ceived by him long after the act had actually been performed. The 
 importance of Surgeon Wood's part in the affair is testified to by 
 Commodore Sloat, who, writing him some years later in relation to 
 the event, said: "The information you furnished me at Mazatlan 
 from Guadalajara (at the risk of your life) was the only reliable in- 
 formation I received of that event, and which induced me to pro- 
 ceed immediately to California, and upon my own responsibility to 
 take posession of that country, which I did on the 7th of July, 
 1846." Had California become a British instead of American pos- 
 session, the subsequent influence upon the progress of the United 
 States, especially in the ultimate settlement of differences between 
 the free and the slave states, is a subject quite beyond the bounds 
 of any possible historical speculation. 
 
 Commodore Sloat was succeeded in command of the Pacific 
 squadron by Commodore Stockton (of Princeton fame,) who, in co- 
 operation with a small army under General Kearney, quelled an 
 insurrection in the captured province and held it in hand until by 
 the terms of the treaty of peace it became definitely a possession of 
 the United States. His vessels also maintained as good a blockade 
 of the ports on the western coast of Mexico as the nature of their 
 motive power permitted. The action of Commodore Sloat in seizing 
 upon the California coast was by all odds the most far-reaching move 
 of the war, and the credit for it rests entirely with the navy. 
 
 An account of naval operations on the gulf coast of Mexico is 
 largely a history of Captain M. C. Perry and his favorite war-vessel 
 — the steamer Mississippi. Within a few weeks after the beginning 
 of hostilities on the Rio Grande a reasonably efficient blockade of 
 the Mexican ports was established, although the stormy character of 
 that coast made blockading a rather difficult matter with the force 
 at hand. This squadron, under the command of Commcdoro 
 Connor, consisted of the steamers Mississippi and Princeton, the 
 frigates Paritan and Potomac, several sloops-of-war, among whicfc 
 
92 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 were the ill-fated Alhcmy and Cumberland, and a number of schoon- 
 ers, bomb-ketches and small steamers, the latter being mentioned 
 more particularly hereafter. The principal military operation under- 
 taken by Commodore Connor was an expedition against Alvarado in 
 October, but owing to the grounding of a schooner on the bar and 
 signs of an approaching "norther," signal was made to return to 
 the station off Vera Cruz, the abandonment of the attack greatly 
 displeasing the subordinate officers and eventually proving some- 
 thing of a reflection upon Commodore Connor. 
 
 In August, Captain Ferry was ordered to take two small steam- 
 ers to Mexico and upon his arrival to relieve Captain Fitzhugh in 
 command of the Mississippi. The steamers were the Vixen and 
 Spitfire, small side-wheel vessels of about 240 tons burden, fitted 
 with horizontal half-beam engines. They were twin vessels and 
 had been built by Brown & Bell of New York for the Mexican 
 government, but being unfinished at the time the war began they 
 were bought by the United States from the builders for about $50,000 
 each. The Spitfire was sold at the close of the war and was lost on 
 her first voyage as a commercial vessel ; the Vixen was continued 
 in the navy until 1855, when she was sold. Captain Perry 
 arrived on the station with these steamers in September, after which 
 there was a practical division of the squadron, Commodore Connor, 
 who does not seem to have had much faith in steamers as war 
 vessels, allowing Perry to control the steamers while he directed the 
 operations of the sailing vessels, although he of course, as the sen- 
 ior, officially commanded the whole squadron. 
 
 At the time of Commodore Connor's demonstration against 
 Alvarado, Perry with the Mississippi, Vixen, and some gun-schoon- 
 ers, reinforced by two hundred marines from the sailing ships, went 
 to attack Tobasco up the river of the same name. Frontera, at the 
 mouth of the river, was taken without resistance on October 23, a 
 river steamer named Petrita which was afterward of great use being 
 taken at this time. On the 26th Tobasco was captured after a 
 smart fight, but the enemy, after having surrendered, attacked the 
 naval force unexpectedly and this act obliged Perry to bombard the 
 town, doing it a great deal of damage and completely subduing the 
 war spirit of the Mexicans, the Vixen taking a prominent part in the 
 cannonading. Not having a force with which to occupy the town t 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 93 
 
 !Perry took away the small vessels he had captured and returned to 
 rejoin the fleet. One of the vessels taken at Tobasco was a steamer 
 named the Champion, formerly employed on the James River in 
 Yirginia, which as a despatch boat became afterward most useful to 
 the American squadron. Although the captured city was not 
 occupied, the expedition against it was not without value, for it 
 infused new life into the men who were growing discontented under 
 the monotony of looking at the enemy's shores from a distance. 
 
 About the middle of November both Connor and Perry went to 
 attack Tampico, about two hundred miles north of Vera Cruz, and 
 gained possession of that place without firing a shot, the appearance 
 of the squadron off the bar being the signal for surrender. It being 
 desirable for military reasons to retain this place, Perry with his 
 ever-ready Mississippi was sent to Matamoras near the mouth of the 
 Rio Grande to communicate with the army authorities and ask that 
 troops be sent. After doing this he went on his own responsibility 
 to New Orleans, where he obtained from the governor of Louisiana 
 a battery of field guns and a quantity of shovels, picks, wheel- 
 barrows, etc., much needed for entrenching purposes. Returning, 
 (he arrived at Tampico after just one week's absence, his quick trip 
 amazing the old seamen in the fleet who were almost persuaded into 
 the belief that a steamer might after all be good for something. 
 
 By the end of the year constant service under steam began to 
 tell on the Mississippi, repairs being so urgently needed that early 
 in January, 1847, Perry proceeded in her to Norfolk, where he 
 turned her over to the navy yard authorities, going himself to Wash- 
 ington to consult with the Navy Department officials relative to the 
 conduct of the war. A board of survey reported that it would 
 require six weeks to fit the Mississippi for service, which was very 
 discouraging news to Perry who felt that important events were 
 impending in Mexico and who had his own reasons for wishing to 
 be present during their occurrence. In this emergency he fell back 
 on his old friend Haswell, the engineer-in-chief, knowing that if 
 anyone could help him out Haswell was the man. The engineer-in- 
 chief went to Norfolk and, after a critical examination of the ship, 
 declared that she could be made ready in two weeks by working 
 night and day, and this feat was actually accomplished under his 
 personal direction. " We may safely add that, by his energy, and 
 
94 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 ability in getting the Mississippi ready at this time, Mr. Has- 
 well saved the government many thousands of dollars and contri- 
 buted largely to the triumphs of a quick war .which brought early 
 peace." 1 
 
 Commodore Perry's familiarity with steam vessels was utilized 
 during his enforced stay in the United States at this time by putting 
 him in charge of the fitting out of a flotilla of lightdraft vessels for 
 service in Mexico. These were the steamers Scourge and Scorpion, 
 and a number of bomb-ketches with imported volcanic names — 
 Vesuvius, Stromboli, and the like — intended to be towed by the 
 steamers. The Scourge was a small vessel of 230 tons burden, pur- 
 chased in New York for 144,825 ; she was fitted with two of the 
 Loper flat-bladed propellers, and was sold at New Orleans at the 
 close of the war. The Scorpion was a paddle-wheel steamer of 340 
 tons burden, bought in New York for 180,505, and sold in 1848 
 for $14,500. Although not a part of this flotilla, two other steam- 
 ers added to the naval establishment for Mexican War service may 
 properly be mentioned here. These were the Iris, a paddle-wheel 
 vessel of 388 tons burden, fitted with a steeple engine, bought in 
 New York in 1847 for $35,991 and sold in Norfolk in 1849 for 
 about one-fourth that amount, and the Polk, a revenue cutter very 
 similar to the Scorpion ; the Polk was transferred to the Navy 
 Department is 1846, but was found unseaworthy and defective in 
 machinery, having broken down on an attempted voyage to the 
 Gulf, in consequence of which she was returned to the Treasury 
 Department. 
 
 Perry returned to Yera Cruz with the Mississippi early in 
 March, carrying with him orders to relieve Commodore Connor and 
 take command of the American fleet, which he did March 21, 1847, 
 and immediately thereafter a vigorous and aggressive policy was in- 
 augurated. General Winfield Scott's army had already landed and 
 begun the siege of Yera Cruz, but found itself without ordnance 
 heavy enough to make much impression upon the city walls. To 
 General Scott's request for the loan of heavy guns from the fleet, 
 Ferry refused, unless his own men might go with their guns, a con- 
 dition that Scott first declined, but when he fully realized that his 
 
 1 William E. Griffis ; < ' Biography of Matthew Calbraith Perry ; " p. 211. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 95 
 
 own batteries could not breach the walls he accepted it, and a heavy 
 battery of six guns with ship's mounts and picked crews was at once 
 landed and laboriously dragged through the sand in the night-time 
 some three miles to the spot where it was to be located for most 
 effective use. The earthwork defenses for this battery were laid 
 out by an engineer of General Scott's staff — Captain Robert E. Lee. 
 It may be interesting to mention that in the army before Vera Cruz 
 at this time, gaining experience for a far greater war, were the fol- 
 lowing named young officers: First Lieutenants James Longstreet, 
 P. G. T. Beauregard, John Sedgwick, and Earl Van Dorn, and 
 Second Lieutenants U. S. Grant, George B. McOlellan, Fitz John 
 Porter, W. S. Hancock, and Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson. 
 
 After the installation of the naval battery the cannonading be- 
 came more deadly and furious, resulting in the surrender four days 
 later of the beleagured city. The details of this exploit are not es- 
 pecially pleasant for the American historian to dwell upon. The 
 Mexican general, Morales, had declined General Scott's summons 
 to surrender and had not availed himself of the privilege offered to 
 remove the inhabitants of the city before the bombardment began. 
 The fire of the heavy naval guns was directed successfully to the 
 breaching of the wall, but the army guns and mortars kept up an 
 incessant storm of shot, shell and bombs, rained over the walls into 
 the city. Ages ago Cicero established the maxim that "Laws are 
 silent in war," and the truth of this was well illustrated by the 
 tragedy of Vera Cruz. Whole families were destroyed in the ruins 
 of their shattered homes; women and children praying in an agony 
 of fear before the altars of their churches were torn and mangled 
 by bombs and shells crushing through the roofs; even the sepul- 
 chres of the dead were torn to pieces and the corpses scattered about 
 the streets. The damage done to combatants was small compared 
 with the horrors inflicted upon the wretched populace. 
 
 An exhibition of bravado in the fleet was the only touch of 
 comedy connected with the bombardment of Vera Cruz. The 
 famous stone castle of San Juan d'Ulloa, built by the Spaniards in 
 the 16th century at a cost of forty million dollars, stands in the 
 harbor about a mile in front of the city, and its fire soon proved a 
 serious annoyance to some of tne investing batteries, the exact range 
 of which had been ascertained by repeated firing. To divert this 
 
96 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 fire, Ferry ordered Commander Tatnall in the steamer Spitfire to 
 approach and open fire on the castle. Tatnall, always disputatious, 
 asked for specific directions as to what point he should attack, to 
 which "Ursa Major," as Perry was known behind his back, replied 
 not too gently, "Where you can do the most execution, sir!" 
 With this flea in his ear Tatnall proceeded with the Spitfire, in 
 company with the Vixen, Commander Joshua K. Sands, to within a 
 stone's throw of the castle and opened furiously against its massive 
 walls. This close proximity probably saved the two little steamers, 
 for they were untouched, although the men on board were thoroughly 
 drenched with the water splashed over them by the storm of 
 cannon balls. The spectacle was exciting to the crews of the 
 on-looking ships, and ludicrous as well on account of its futility. 
 Perry, both amused and provoked at the exhibition of temper on 
 the part of his subordinate, made signal for the steamers to with- 
 draw, but Tatnall failed to see any signals, assuring the officer who 
 reported them that he was mistaken and was looking the wrong way. 
 It finally became necessary to endanger a boat's crew by sending it 
 to call him back. Mr. Wm. H. Shock, who was the engineer in 
 charge of the machinery of the Spitfire on this occasion, has stated 
 in a magazine article that when the vessels went out of action he 
 heard Tatnall say in tones of regret, "Not a man wounded or 
 killed." 
 
 After the fall of Vera Cruz, a combined army and naval expe- 
 dition was planned against Alvarado, the place that had previously 
 been proceeded against without results by Commodore Connor. The 
 chief object in gaining this town was to supply Scott's army with 
 animals for transportation in his projected invasion of Mexico, 
 horses being abundant in the Alvarado neighborhood. General 
 Quitman with a considerable force of artillery, cavalry and infan- 
 try, started overland, while Perry organized an expedition with 
 small steamers manned by picked men from the fleet to proceed 
 against the place by water. Lieutenant Charles G. Hunter in the 
 Scourge was directed to blockade the threatened town and report 
 the movements of the enemy to Captain Breese of the sloop-of-war 
 Albany. This young officer, observing signs of the enemy" aban- 
 doning the town, landed some men and took possession of it, a very 
 presumptuous act when a general and a commodore had designs 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 97 
 
 upon the position and the honor of capturing it. Hunter was 
 promptly arrested by order of Commodore Perry, tried by court- 
 martial for disobedience of orders, and sent home in disgrace. In 
 the United Statqs he was given many dinners and receptions, and as 
 "Alvarado Hunter" was the hero of the hour, while Perry was 
 made the target for a multitude of newspaper attacks. All of which 
 was natural enough on the part of the public, which saw nothing in 
 the affair except the capture of a town without regard for the rank 
 of the captor. As a matter of fact, by exceeding his authority 
 Hunter completely defeated the real object of the expedition; his 
 
 act forewarned the Mexicans and gave them ample time to remove 
 with their horses and portable property before the army forces had 
 hemmed them in. 
 
 The next naval operation of consequence in this war was Perry's 
 capture in June of the city of Tobasco, after severe fighting. This 
 is an important event in our naval history, as it is the first occasion 
 on which a large force of blue-jackets was regularly organized into a 
 naval brigade for prolonged military operations on shore, which was 
 done under the personal direction and command of Commodore 
 Perry. The necessity for this proceeding was brought about by 
 the circumstance that the marines of the fleet had been formed into 
 a regiment and sent with Scott's army on the march to the city of 
 Mexico. The year before, Commodore Stockton had used his sailors 
 to some extent for guard and garrison duty in California, but the 
 credit for the first real naval brigade is given to Perry by the his- 
 torians of our navy. The small steamers of the fleet were invalu- 
 able in the capture of Tobasco; in fact, without them the expedition 
 would hardly have been practicable. Commodore Perry so fully 
 appreciated the value of this type of vessel that he repeatedly asked 
 for more light- draft steamers from home, and eventually so pro- 
 voked the conservative old officers about the Navy Department that 
 he got a stiff reprimand from the Secretary of the Navy for his per- 
 sistence in this regard. 
 
 To First Assistant Engineer George Sewall is due credit for 
 having repaired in a most ingenious manner without any convenient 
 appliances the two steamers Vixen and Spitfire, which had become 
 unseaworthy and unfit for use owing to leaky Kingston valve con- 
 nections, thus giving to the Government two steamers for war 
 operations. 
 
98 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Yellow fever broke out in July on the Mississippi, and that in- 
 valuable ship eventually had to be sent off the station, going to 
 Pensacola with about two hundred invalids on board. A short time 
 before the appearance of this pestilence a fire from spontaneous 
 combustion had gained such headway in the Mississippi's coal 
 bunkers that it was only extinguished by flooding the bunkers, and 
 it was believed that the moisture remaining in the nooks and corners 
 of the ship after this accident gave a foothold for the disease. Two 
 of the Mississippi's engineers — First Assistant Charles A. Mapes, 
 and Third Assistant Emerson Gr. Covel — died on board their ship 
 of this epidemic and were buried in the soil of Mexico. 
 
 General Scott entered the city of Mexico on the 17th of Sep- 
 tember, 1847, and that practically ended the war, although the 
 naval force continued the blockade of the coast until the treaty of 
 peace was signed the following February. Then the vessels were 
 gradually withdrawn, the larger ones to other stations and the small 
 purchased steamers were sold for what they would bring. The most 
 beneficial lesson to the navy derived from this war was that steamers 
 were vastly superior to sailing vessels for war purposes, and the 
 prejudice against the new motor were so broken down that naval 
 opposition to the policy of building war steamers was ma- 
 terially diminished thereafter, although not wholly extinguished. 
 The demonstrated value of the small steamers for river and harbor 
 operations had quite as much to do with bringing about this change 
 of sentiment as had the general utility exhibited by the Princeton 
 and Mississippi. 
 
 With the return of peace, the steam navy was augmented by the 
 transfer from the War Department of two steamers which had been 
 used for troop-ships. The larger of these was the Massachusetts, a 
 full-rigged ship of 750 tons burden with auxiliary steam power, 
 which had been bought in 1847 for $80,000. This ship had been 
 the pioneer in a line of auxiliary steam packets employed in the New 
 York and Liverpool trade, and was fitted with two small engines of 
 Ericsson's design, driving an Ericsson screw only 9-J- feet in 
 diameter, the screw being attached to the shaft by a coupling that 
 could be disengaged and the screw hoisted on deck in a few min- 
 utes. The propeller shaft passed out of the stern at the side of the 
 stern post, to which was bolted the stern bearing of the shaft, the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 99 
 
 latter projecting far enough to allow the screw to operate abaft the 
 rudder. The rudder had a slot, or " shark's mouth" cut in it to 
 prevent its striking the projecting shaft when put hard over. Both 
 the stern bearing attached to the post and the cut in the rudder were 
 features patented by John Ericsson. The Massachusetts was some 
 years afterward converted into a bark-rigged sailing vessel, and 
 under the name of FarraMones remained in the naval service until 
 after the Civil War, when she was sold. 
 
 The other transferred transport was the auxiliary steam bark 
 Edith, of 400 tons burden, which had Ericsson machinery of the 
 same type as that described in the case of the Massachusetts* She 
 had been in the East India trade and was on record as having made 
 the quickest voyage then known between Calcutta and Canton. 
 After being fitted for war purposes the Edith was sent on a cruise 
 to the Pacific station, where, in 1850, she was run ashore and 
 wrecked, but without loss of life. 
 
 The following list of engineers of the navy who served on 
 vessels actively employed in the Mexican War is made up from a 
 list given in General C. M. Wilcox's History of the Mexican War: 
 
 Chief Engineer John Faron, Jr. 
 " 44 D. B. Martin. 
 44 " William Sewell. 
 First Assistant Engineer Saml. Archbold. 
 44 4 4 4 4 L. S. Bartholomew. 
 
 44 4 4 4 4 E. G. Covel. 
 
 4 4 4 4 4 4 T. H. Faron. 
 
 4 4 4 4 4 4 Jesse Gay. 
 
 4 4 4 4 4 4 J. K. Matthews. 
 
 44 4 4 4 4 Hiram Sanford. 
 
 4 4 4 4 4 4 George Sewell. 
 
 Second Assistant Engineer James Atkinson. 
 4 4 4 4 44 N. C. Davis. 
 
 4 4 4 4 4 4 Joshua Follansbee. 
 
 4 4 4 1 4 4 John Gallagher. 
 
 4 4 4 4 4 4 A. P. How. 
 
 • 4 ii k4 B. F. Isherwood. 
 
 4 4 4 4 ki E. M. Johnson. 
 
100 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Second Assistant Engineer, J. M. Middleton. 
 " " " A. S. Palmer. 
 
 " " " Theodore Zeller. 
 
 Third Assistant Engineer J. M. Adams. 
 
 Lafayette Caldwell. 
 John Carroll. 
 Charles Coleman. 
 Wm. E. Everett. 
 Edward Faron. 
 B. F. Garvin. 
 J. E. Hatcher. 
 J. W. King. 
 William Luce. 
 Charles A. Mapes. 
 J. W. Parks. 
 W. H. Shock. 
 William Taggart. 
 J. C. Tennent. 
 M. M. Thompson. 
 J. A. "Van Zandt. 
 Wm. C. Wheeler. 
 Edward Whipple. 
 
 The material benefits to the United States resulting from the 
 Mexican War were enormous, and entirely out of proportion to the 
 outlay of life and treasure involved, notwithstanding it is difficult at 
 this distance in time for one to grow enthusiastic over the events of 
 that unequal struggle. Desperate battles were fought; many note- 
 worthy deeds of valor were performed, and both army and navy 
 achieved that peculiar distinction called glory r , but to the American 
 student of his country's history the fact that the military power of 
 our great republic was ruthlessly used to overwhelm with woe and 
 desolation a small sister republic struggling to maintain self-govern- 
 ment on the democratic principles professed by the nation which in- 
 flicted upon her the horrors of war, must ever remain prominent. 
 The cause of freedom had then enough to contend with, without tho 
 greatest nation governed by its own people tearing to pieces a fee- 
 ble follower of its institutions. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 101 
 
 The territory of the United States was increased one-third by 
 the terms of the treaty which concluded the war, and a vast extent of 
 sea coast on the Pacific Ocean was gained. The benefits to our 
 country and to the world in general, resulting from this transfer of 
 territory cannot be over-estimated, and this, as a manifestation of 
 Providence forwarding the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race, must 
 be our chief apology for the manner in which that vast region 
 changed hands. California under Mexican rule gave little promise 
 for the future, but in the hands of the energetic and investigating 
 American became almost in a day both famous and wealthy. It 
 had long been known to the Mexicans of California that their rivers 
 ran over golden sands, but the indolent and ease-loving people pre- 
 ferred the shade of their haciendas to the labor of exploring the 
 mountains; rncmana or u the day after, " would be ample time in which 
 to investigate, and thus the great discovery bade fair to be neglect- 
 ed for an indefinite time. 
 
 The prying American lost no time in exploring his new posess- 
 ions and within a year had proclaimed such wonderful discoveries 
 that ships freighted with tools and men were converging upon the 
 Golden Gate from every quarter of the globe ; steamship lines 
 before impossible, were established, and the transcontinental rail- 
 ways, which have hastened the development of the North American 
 continent and the civilization of the Far East at least a century, 
 were projected. It is a favorite statement of historians that the amount 
 of gold produced by California since 1848 exceeds in value the 
 enormous national debt incurred by the United States in the war 
 for the preservation of the Union. v Granting this to be true, and 
 admitting that the mineral wealth of the territory acquired from 
 Mexico is yet beyond computation, the greater truth remains that all 
 this is actually secondary in value to the wonderful agricultural 
 resources of the same region. But for the aggressive and perhaps 
 undemocratic policy which led the United States to despoil a 
 neighbor whose form of government should have been her defense, 
 California, with sources of wealth far greater than those possessed 
 by more than one empire which has ruled the world, might yet be 
 the hunting ground of hungry savages, her fields untilled, her 
 orchards unplanted, and the treasure of her streams and mountain 
 ledges still undisturbed save by the hoof of the antelope and the 
 paw of the bear. 
 
CHAPTEK VIIL 
 
 " The wheel of fortune turns incessantly round, and who can say within 
 himself, * I shall to-day be uppermost.' Confucius. 
 
 New steamers authorized for the navy in 1847 — The Susquehanna, Powhatan, 
 Sabanac, and San Jacinto — Mr. Haswell Succeeded as Engineer-in-Chief 
 by Charles B. Stuart — Circumstances Connected with Mr. Haswell Leav- 
 ing the Navy— His Great Services to the Naval Engineer Corps— His Subse- 
 quent Career. 
 
 STEAM, as we have seen, did not play an important part in the 
 naval operations of the Mexican war, but the numerous oppor- 
 tunities and advantages lost or not used simply for lack of 
 motive power more reliable than the winds, served as excellent ob- 
 ject lessons to direct naval and public attention to the necessity of 
 having a fleet of steam war vessels if the navy were to be thereafter 
 a useful military arm. In the report of the Secretary of the Navy 
 for the year 1846 a policy of building war-steamers was urged, and 
 in December of that year Mr. Fairfield, Chairman of the Senate 
 Committee on Naval Affairs, asked the Department by letter for a 
 statement as to the size, type, cost, &c, of the vessels desired. The 
 reply was to the effect that at least four steamers, at an average 
 cost of $500,000 each should be immediately undertaken, and the 
 authority asked for was conferred by the naval appropriation bill 
 then under consideration, which was approved March 3, 1847. The 
 same act directed the Secretary of the Navy to enter into contract 
 with E. K. Collins and his associates for the transportation of the 
 United States mails between New York and Liverpool; with A. G. 
 Sloo for the transportation of the mails between New York and 
 New Orleans, touching at Havana, and, with some other agent, not 
 named, for the transportation of the mails from Panama to Oregon 
 Territory. In the first two cases, the steamers of the contractors 
 were to be built under the supervision of a naval constructor and 
 were to be adapted to use as war vessels, the contractors being also 
 required by the terms of the act to receive on board each of their 
 steamers four passed midshipmen of the navy to act as watch offi- 
 cers. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 1U3 
 
 Mr. John Y. Mason, Secretary of the Navy, on March 22, 
 1847, ordered a board, consisting of Commodores Morris, Warring- 
 ton and Smith, Engineer-in-Chief Haswell, Naval Constructors 
 Grice, Lenthall and Hartt, and Mr. Charles W. Copeland, the emi- 
 nent civilian engineer employed by the Navy Department, to assem- 
 ble in Washington and determine upon the various features of the pro- 
 posed vessels, the order stating in general terms some of the require- 
 ments to be observed, and directing that one of the vessels " should 
 be propelled by some of the various screw propellers." Later, 
 Commodore Skinner and Chief Engineer John Faron, Jr. were ad- 
 ded to the board, which met at frequent dates from March 23 until 
 July 3, 1847, on which latter date its final report and recommenda- 
 tions were submitted to the Department. So many interesting 
 points arose later about the ships recommended by this board, and 
 such a bitter controversy grew out »of alleged defects in the design 
 of at least one of them that the matter eventually became the subject 
 of congressional inquiry, and its history in detail thus got into print 
 in the form of a public document — Executive Document 65 House 
 of Kepresentatives, Thirty-third Congress; First Sess on: this docu- 
 ment the author has been fortunate enough to discover in that vast 
 mine of information almost inaccessibly buried in the crypt of the 
 Capitol, and from it the principal facts presented in this chapter are 
 derived. 
 
 The proceedings of the board indicate that the Mississippi was 
 
 regarded as a model from which to copy as much as possible. With- 
 out going into all the differences^ ^opinion, lengthy debates, and 
 yea and nay votes indulged in by the commodores, constructors 
 and engineers of the board, it is sufficient to say the resultant 
 recommendations were the building of two large side- wheel steamers, 
 similar to the Mississippi, but sufficiently large to carry coal, provi- 
 sions, &c, for long voyages to foreign stations, and two smaller 
 steamers, of about 2,100 tons displacement, one of the latter, to be 
 fitted with a screw propeller. Wood was designated as the material 
 from which these vessels were to be built, the vote of the Board 
 showing that Mr. Haswell was the only member who favored iron 
 as building material for even one of them. The board also decided 
 that Naval Constructors Grice and Lenthall should each design the 
 hull of one of the larger steamers and that Mr. Hartt should design 
 
104 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 both of the smaller ones, Messrs. Haswell and Copeland each to de- 
 sign machinery for one large and one small vessel. All these rec- 
 ommendations were approved by the Navy Department, and on the 
 13th of July, 1847, the Secretary promulgated the President's order 
 that the two large ships be built at Philadelphia and Norfolk respec- 
 tively, and the smaller ones at Kittery and New York. 
 
 The large steamer designed by Mr. Lenthall was named Sus- 
 queJianna, and was built in the navy yard at Philadelphia, where she 
 was launched in April, 1850, and was entirely completed with ma- 
 chinery ready for service at the end of that year. She was bark- 
 rigged, 250 feet long, 45 feet beam and displaced 3,824 tons at 
 ber load draft of 19£ feet. The engines, designed by Charles W. 
 Copeland, were built by Murray & Hazelhurst of Baltimore, under 
 the supervision of Chief Engineer Wm. P. Williamson, TJ. S. Navy, 
 and consisted of two inclined direct-acting condensing engines, with 
 cylinders 70 inches in diameter and 10 feet stroke, fitted with 
 inclined air pumps. The paddle wheels were of the ordinary radial 
 type, 31 feet in diameter. There were four copper boilers 
 of the double return, ascending flue type, containing 342 square 
 feet of grate surface and 8,652 square feet of heating surface. 
 
 In June, 1851, the Susquehanna sailed for the Asiatic station, 
 then known as the East India Station, her first commander being 
 Captain J. H. Aulick and her chief engineer Mr. Samuel Archbold. 
 On the passage to Rio de Janeiro some defects or injuries to her 
 engines and spars were discovered, resulting in a delay of some two 
 months at the Brazilian capital, during which time repairs to the ex- 
 tent of about $3,500 were made at the marine arsenal, mostly 
 to the air pumps and paddle-wheels. Her performance thereafter 
 was excellent, and most creditable to her engineers, as may be seen 
 from the following report of the commanding officer, which report 
 is of special interest in these days when we rather pride ourselves 
 on our ability to cross wide seas under steam without an extravagant 
 use of fuel, showing that the men of a previous generation were not 
 wholly ignorant of the same desirable experience: 
 
 U, S. Steam Fbigate Susquehanna, 
 Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope, October 17, 1851. 
 
 Sie: I have the honor to report our arrival here on th6 15th 
 jistant, eighteen days from Rio de Janeiro. 
 
TH35 STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 10! 
 
 This passage has thoroughly and severely tested the strength 
 of our masts and engines. The weather for the greater part of the 
 time was very stormy, and the sea higher than I have ever known 
 it before, causing the ship to roll and plunge to such a degree that 
 frequently one wheel was eight or ten feet entirely clear of the sea, 
 when the other was full half its diameter buried in it; but nothing 
 of any importance gave way, and the engines were never stopped 
 from the time we weighed our anchor in "Bio;" until it was let go 
 in this bay. I, however, did not neglect to use our sails and econ- 
 omize fuel; when the wind was fair, and the weather permitted, 
 we used only two boilers, and with a daily expenditure of less than 
 fourteen tons of coal, "keeping up only sufficient steam to turn our 
 wheels, we averaged for a number of days more than two hundred 
 miles in the twenty-four hours. I adopted this course in preference 
 to taking off the floats, for the reason that it is very difficult, if not 
 impossible, to un-ship and re-ship them in a heavy seaway. We ex- 
 pended on the passage only about half the coal with which we left 
 "Kio." I am, &c, 
 
 J. H. Aulioh, 
 Commanding Squadron, East Indies and China. 
 Hon. William A. Graham, Secretary of the Navy, 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 The Susquehanna continued an efficient cruising steamer for 
 many years, and was a prominent ship during the war of the rebel- 
 lion; a few years after its close her machinery was entirely removed 
 and the work of converting her into a screw steamer undertaken, but 
 never completed, and she never went to sea again. 
 
 Constructor Grice's steamer was the Powhatan, launched at 
 the Norfolk navy yard February 14, 1850. The principal dimen- 
 sions of the hull were practically the same as those of the Susque- 
 hanna, but as her load draft when completed was about a foot less 
 than that of the latter vessel, her displacement was also somewhat 
 less; she was bark-rigged. The engines were designed by Engineer- 
 in-Chief Haswell and were built by Mehaffy & Co., of Gosport, 
 Va., under the inspection of Chief Engineer William Sewell, U. S. 
 Navy. There were two inclined direct-acting condensing engines 
 with the same cylinder dimensions as those of the Susqeuhanna, but 
 
106 
 
 THE STEAM HAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 differing from that vessel in design, having vertical air pumps and 
 a novelty in engine framing, the frames being of wrought iron, built 
 up on the box-girder principle. There were four copper boilers of 
 the same general dimensions as those of the sister ship^ but differ- 
 ing from them considerably in details of arrangement, fittings, etc. 
 The lower flues were made elliptical to increase the heating surface. 
 
 COPPER BOILER, U. S. S. POWHATAN; ASCENDING-FLUE RETURN TYPE. 
 
 Length, 16 feet; breadth, 15 feet 3 inches; height* 13 feet; grate surface, 88 J square 
 
 feet; heating surface, 1,971 square feet. 
 
 A new feature in marine engineering practice appeared in this ves- 
 sel in the introduction of a small one-furnace auxiliary boiler, inten- 
 ded primarily for supplying a hoisting engine to aid in coaling ship. 
 The JPowhatcm also was fitted with two Worthington steam pumps, 
 which is believed to be the first appearance in our navy of that now 
 familiar auxiliary. 
 
 Owing to a lack of professional and clerical aid, Engineer- in- 
 Chief Has well personally designed every detail of the Powhatan's 
 machinery and made the working drawings with his own hands in 
 the intervals between attention to the necessary duties of his office. 
 So pressed was he for time that he was unable to lay out a general 
 design of the engines to work up to, but had to develop the various 
 parts progressively. This feat is probably unprecedented in design- 
 ing work of such magnitude, and, considered together with the re- 
 markable success of the Powhatan's engines, furnishes a most valu- 
 able index to the rare professional accomplishments of Mr. Haswell. 
 
V. S. S. POWHATAN (AND SUSQUEHANNA), 1850. 
 
 (When first put in service the smoke pipes of these ships had flaring or bell mouthed tops). 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 109 
 
 The Powhatan was employed in service, almost continously 
 for a longer period than any steamer ever in the navy, with 
 the sole exception of the Michigan, which latter vessel owes her 
 longevity, as has been pointed out before, to the fact that her career 
 has been confined to summer cruising on the fresh-water lakes of the 
 Northwest. The copper boilers of the Powhatan of course had to 
 be replaced in time, but her original engines remained thoroughly 
 efficient w and trustworthy to the end, a monument to the ability of 
 their designer and the skill of the men who built them. When the 
 Powhatan was attached to the Japan expedition squadron, her chief 
 engineer, George Sewell, wrote home that in a trip of three thou- 
 sand miles under steam a hammer had not been touched to her en- 
 gines, which ran with such rhythmic regularity that they seemed set 
 to music. 
 
 Even in her old age the Powhatan was a faster steamer than 
 almost any other on the navy list and was decidedly the most com- 
 fortable and popular with both officers and men. /With ten pounds 
 of steam and her great wheels making ten revolutions per minute 
 she was proverbially capable of making ten knots an hour, and that 
 without much reference to the state of the weather. In 1878, after 
 she had outlived almost every steamer of her date, she fought for 
 her lite off Hatteras, under the command of that splendid old sea- 
 man, Captain T. S. Fillebrown, through one of the most awful cy- 
 clones that any ship ever survived, and though terribly battered 
 and strained, remained able to breast the sea for several years there- 
 after. In that storm it is reported by the indisputable evidence of 
 many observers that her fore yard-arm dipped into the sea. In 
 1887, to the genuine regret of all in the navy, the Powhatan was 
 condemned by a board of survey, being actually worn out in the ser- 
 vice, and an unsentimental administration s°ld her poor old bones to the 
 
 ghouls of the ocean — the ship-breakers. 
 
 One of the two smaller vessels was built at the navy yard at 
 Kittery, Maine, and named Saranac. She was the first of the 
 four steamers to be completed, being launched in November, 1848, 
 and sailed for a cruise in the West Indies in April, 1850. She was 
 216 feet long, 38 feet beam, and of 2,200 tons displacement at the 
 mean draft of 17 feet. The machinery, designed by Engineer 
 Cope! and, was built by Coney & Co. of Boston, under the inspec- 
 
110 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 tion of Chief Engineers Wm. W. W. Wood and D. B. Martin, and 
 consisted of a pair of inclined direct-acting condensing engines with 
 cylinders 60 inches in diameter and 9 feet stroke, driving radial 
 paddle-wheels 27 feet in diameter. The engines were fitted with 
 Stevens' patent cut-offs. There were three copper double-return 
 drop-flue boilers, designed to carry twelve pounds of steam pressure, 
 aggregating 188 square feet of grate surface and 5,127 square feet 
 of heating surface. At an ordinary engine speed of about twelve- 
 revolutions per minute about eight knots an hour could easily bo 
 maintained. The rig was that of a bark, and her lines were so grace- 
 ful and the external finish so perfect that she was regarded as an or- 
 nament to the service. After a long career for a war vessel the 
 Saranac came to a violent end in June, 1875, by running ashore and 
 becoming a total wreck in Seymour Narrows, while on her way to 
 Alaska. 
 
 The fourth one of these steamers — the San Jacinto — was, like 
 the wrath of Achilles, " the direful spring of woes unnumbered," to 
 almost everyone ever prominently connected with her, her campaign 
 of destruction beginning with blasting the naval career of Engi- 
 neer-in- Chief Haswell. Designed by the same constructor, Mr. 
 Hartt, who designed the Saranac, the hull was an exact counterpart 
 of that vessel, and the rig was the same. She was built at the navy 
 yard, New York, where she was launched in April, 1850. The en- 
 gines were designed by Mr. Haswell and were built by Merrick and 
 Towne of Philadelphia, under the inspection at different times of 
 Chief Engineers Earon, "Wood and Hunt, and finally Mr. Haswell 
 himself. They consisted of two "square" engines, as they were 
 termed, operating the shaft of a screw propeller; the cylinders were 
 62-J- inches in diameter and 50 inches stroke, and were placed 
 athwartship, inclined upward and outboard with the inner, or lower 
 heads, in contact over the crank shaft. Long cross-heads carried 
 two connecting rods for each engine, reaching backward and down- 
 ward on each side of the cylinders to take hold of the cranks. There 
 were three copper boilers of the same external dimensions as those 
 of the Saranac, but somewhat better designed, as they displayed 
 more grate and heating surface. 
 
 There were some strange things about this ship, one of which 
 was the location of the propeller shaft twenty inches to one side of 
 
U. S. S. SAN JACINTO, 1850. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 113 
 
 the center line of the keel, which was done at the instance of the 
 three naval constructors, members of the board that settled upon 
 the plans for the vessel. These gentlemen were eminent in the 
 business of ship designing and building, but screw-propelled ships 
 were new to them and they could not bring themselves to agree to 
 any application of steam power that involved cutting a big hole for 
 a shaft through the stern post. It transpired that Ericsson, who had 
 patents on a multitude of marine appliances, useful and other- 
 wise, had a patent on a precisely similar arrangement. This loca- 
 tion entailed the projection of the propeller shaft far enough beyond 
 the stern to allow the screw to work abaft the rudder, which plan 
 Mr. Haswell had opposed in the Board, but made his designs in ac- 
 cordance when it was finally decided upon. The board also fixed 
 the location of the engines so far aft and in such a cramped space 
 that the engineer who had to design them was so handicapped that 
 it was practically impossible for him to arrive at an arrangement of 
 details that would allow proper room for examination, repairing and 
 adjustment of the machinery when assembled in place. The screw 
 itself as designed was a ponderous six bladed afiair, five feet wide 
 axially and weighing some seven tons, which weight, overhanging 
 the stern five feet at least, was manifestly a menace to the safety of 
 the ship. Mr. Haswell claimed, and with propriety as the records 
 of the Board show, that he was forced to such a design by the 
 board's exaction that no patents be infringed, and the lighter types 
 of screws then in use, having thin supported blades, were covered 
 by Ericsson's patents. 
 
 As the engines of the San Jacinto approached completion it be- 
 gan to be gossiped abroad among engineers that the engineer-in- 
 chief had made a fearful botch of his designs, and the various naval 
 engineers and machinery contractors who fancied they had been 
 wronged by him in the fearless performance of his official duties, ac- 
 cording to his conscientious judgment, gathered their forces for his 
 overthrow, the movement being simply a manifestation of the natural 
 tendency of mankind to assail and humble the eminent. In a prim- 
 it ve state of society, man kills his rival with a club and eats him, 
 partly in revenge, partly to remove an obstacle to his ambition, and 
 partly to provide subsistence for himself. As we become enlightened, 
 the older and more natural code of ethics is abandoned in deferenc 
 
114 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 to certain artificial prejudices which are adjuncts of civilization, and 
 while less rude are equally effective methods of personal warfare. 
 This seems to be a necessity, for the natural predilection of man is 
 a love of hostility to his species, as exhibited in personal rivalries 
 and jealousies when a state of war does not afford an outlet for his 
 passions under the guise of patriotism. 
 
 Such a condition of society may be sad to contemplate in these 
 closing years of the nineteenth century, and there are doubtless 
 many who are thoughtlessly ready to controvert the proposition. A 
 little reflection, however, will be convincing to the majority; for as 
 w^look about the world it appears that in spite of all the doctrines 
 of peace and good-will to man, promulgated by the apostles of Chris- 
 tianity and other great religions, there does not and never has exis- 
 ted, the nation large enough to permit of the harmonious existence 
 within its borders at the same time, two great statesmen, soldiers, 
 or others of the same calling; nor is there a village so small that 
 two carpenters, shoemakers or blacksmiths within its limits fail to 
 become rivals, each claiming his fellow craftsman to be incompetent 
 and an imposter. Even the clergy, the anointed iapostles of the 
 doctrine of peace, take delight in bitter quarrels of creed, or, failing 
 in* opportunities for that, turn upon each other in the same denomi- 
 tion and institute heresy trials, and critical inquisitions regarding 
 their profession of faith. 
 
 Unpalatable as it maybe, it is nevertheless a plain, unvarnished 
 truth that fondness for war and strife is an instinct inherent in the 
 human breast. Without this instinct success in any under- 
 taking is well-nigh impossible, as society is at present consti- 
 tuted. Nothing proves this more clearly than the history of 
 nations, which, when analyzed, are simply tales of the con- 
 tention of individuals striving for supremacy. He who becomes 
 foremost in any walk in life must succeed at the expense of his fel- 
 lows who are struggling for the same eminence, and it is literally 
 "to him that overcometh, " who, according to Revelation, "shall 
 be given power over the nations." 
 
 Returning to the subject, after this digression, it must be ad- 
 mitted that there were some radically bad features connected with 
 the design of the San Jacinto machinery, but the assertions freely 
 made at the time that the engines were an 44 object of ridicule to all 
 
Mr. Charles B. Stuart, 
 Engineei-in-Chief of the Navy, December 1, 1850, to June 30, 1853. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 117 
 
 engineers who have seen them, " and a " standing monument of Mr. 
 Haswell's incompetency and folly," were more ridiculous in view 
 of Haswell's reputation and achievements as an engineer than any 
 defect in these engines could possibly have been. Some of the 
 faults of the San Jacinto } s engines were forced upon the designer 
 by conditions imposed by superior authority and were as well 
 known to him as they could have been to any of his critics, 
 while many of the other alleged defects existed chiefly in the minds 
 of those who had decided the time had come to thrust him from the 
 pedestal he occupied above all other scientific engineers of his time. 
 
 The hue and cry had its effect, and late in November, 1850, 
 the President appointed Mr. Charles B. Stuart of New York to the 
 office of engineer-in- chief of the Navy from December 1st, Mr. Has- 
 well resuming his place at the head of the list of chief engineers. 
 Mr. Stuart was a civil engineer of prominence, being the superin- 
 tendent of the Erie Canal at the time of his appointment, and made 
 no pretense to knowledge of marine engineering, though he acquired 
 considerable knowledge by experience while engineer-in-chief. His 
 was purely a political appointment as a reward for party service, 
 and he never was an enrolled member of the naval engineer corps. 
 Some serious engineering mistakes, which have been or will be 
 noted in these pages, occurred in the navy during his administra- 
 tion, the result of which was that when he resigned, after an occu- 
 pancy of his office for two years and a half, the custom was adopted 
 of selecting the engineer-in-chief from the chief engineers of the 
 navy, who were familiar with the service and the peculiarities of its 
 steam vessels. While engineer-in-chief, Mr. Stuart performed good 
 service for the engineering world by collecting the necessary data 
 and publishing two remarkably valuable and reliable books on naval 
 material— ' < The Naval Dry Docks of the United States," and 4 4 The 
 Naval and Mail Steamers of the United States." 
 
 The day after Mr. Stuart's induction into office, Mr. Haswell 
 was ordered to assume the duty of superintendent of the installation 
 of the San Jacinto's machinery, and Chief Engineer B. F. Isher- 
 wood, who before entering the naval service had been associated 
 with Mr. Stuart in the civil engineering work of the Erie canal, was 
 detached from duty under the Light House Board and ordered as 
 sechnical assistant to the engineer-in-chief. ^ Shortly thereafter, let- 
 
118 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ters expressing grave doubts about the San Jacinto were sent by 
 the engineer-in-chief to the chief of the bureau of construction, and 
 requests made that a survey be held before the work of completing 
 the ship was Allowed to go further. As a result, a board consisting 
 of Chief engineers Wm. P. Williamson, Wm. Sewell and Henry 
 JIiiFit, provided with a categorical list of fifteen questions, the ans- 
 wers to which, it was supposed would damn the machinery of the 
 San Jacinto, was assembled at New York to examine the vessel 
 and report discoveries, a report being made February 10, 1851. It 
 
 PROPOSED PROPELLER. ADOPTED PROPELLER. 
 
 Diameter, 14J feeet. Diameter, 14J feet. 
 
 Pitch, 35 to 39 feet. Pitch, 40 to 45 feet. 
 
 was decidely unfavorable to the engines in general, and especially 
 severe in regard to the heavy projecting propeller and the side loca- 
 tion of the shaft, both of which objectionable features were recom- 
 mended^for alteration. The propeller was altered accordingly, it 
 so happening that the one originally designed had not yet been cast, 
 although its mold was completed; the modified screw, as recommen- 
 ded by the Board and designed by Mr. Isherwood, together with 
 the bne originally designed being represented by the outline sketches 
 here inserted. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 119 
 
 The shaft passage through the stern having been cut, the rec- 
 ommendation of the board of engineers regarding its modification 
 was not carried out. It has been previously noted that Captain 
 Ericsson had a patent on such an arrangement and he, through an 
 attorney promptly made claim for infringement; the claim was 
 referred to Engine 8r-in- Chief Stuart for an opinion, and that official 
 made a most lengthy report, acknowledging in rather indirect terms 
 that the shaft arrangement was practically the same as that described 
 in the specification of Ericsson's patent and was therefore an 
 infringement for which the patentee was entitled to damages. 
 Besides this question, which was the only real point raised by 
 Ericsson's claim, the engineer-in- chief dilated upon other features 
 of the San Jacinto's machinery involved very indirectly, if at all, 
 in the claim, and of course proved they were not infringements, 
 the object of this digression being apparently to make an occasion 
 to reflect upon the machinery designs of the ex-engineer-in-chief, 
 which reflection was introduced into the report somewhat neatly by 
 the following sentence: u I cannot discover that the construction of 
 the ' engines ' of the San Jacinto involves the infringement of Cap- 
 tain Ericsson's patent in any particular, nor do I think he would 
 upon inspection of them, make any claim for the 6 novelties ' intro- 
 duced in their construction." 
 
 The chief of the bureau of Construction was unable to extract 
 any conclusions from the mass of verbiage with which the engineer- 
 in-chief 's opinions were clothed, and returned the report to him as 
 being "too indefinite to authorize a settlement of the question." 
 In replying to this, Mr. Stuart did himself no great credit by saying 
 that if the report was indefinite it was " owing to the extreme illness 
 under which I was suffering at the time of writing the report." This 
 excuse, taken into consideration with the uncalled-for comments 
 injected into the original report, has been conclusive proof to the 
 author in his patient investigation of this case, that professional zeal 
 was not the only motive that inspired the engineer-in-chief, and that 
 in his effort to disparage his predecessor he rather stultified himself. 
 
 Chief Engineer Haswell, not giving satisfaction as an inspector 
 of machinery to the new administration of the steam department, 
 was eventually relieved from that duty and placed on waiting 
 orders, the San Jacinto being completed and fitted for soa under 
 
120 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES.' 
 
 the supervision of Chief Engineer Henry Hunt. When the ship 
 was ready for sea, Mr. Haswell was ordered to her, his orders being 
 brought about by the following recommendation, which explains 
 itself fully as to animus and motives : 
 
 Office of the Enoineer-in-Chief, U. S. N., 
 
 August 25, 1851. 
 
 Sie : I respectf ully recommend that chief engineer Henry 
 Hunt be detached from the United States steamer San Jacinto, 
 and ordered to the United States steamer Fulton ; and that chief 
 engineer Charles H. Haswell, now waiting orders at JSfew York, be 
 ordered to the United States steamer San Jacinto. 
 
 The propriety of the above recommendations will be obvious 
 froiti the following considerations : 
 
 The machinery of the San Jacinto was designed by Mr. 
 Haswell, and has been executed (with the exception of the propeller) 
 in conformity with those designs. Upon my acceptance of the office 
 of engineer- in- chief, the machinery of the San Jacinto was one of 
 the first things that came under my notice, and struck me so entirely 
 unfavorably, that I reported my opinion to the bureau, with the 
 recommendation that a board of chief engineers be ordered to 
 examine it, and report their opinion. The bureau acted on this 
 recommendation, and the resulting report of the board completely 
 sustained my own views ; their condemnation of the engines and 
 propeller was full and unlimited^ while, with a view to save the 
 ■vessel from utter failure, the board proposed a new propeller of such 
 proportions as the mal-design of the machinery had rendered neces- 
 sary. This report was approved by the bureau, the new propeller 
 was made in conformity with it, and is at present fitted to the vessel 
 now about completed. 
 
 As the professional reputation of Mr. Haswell is involved in 
 the performance of the machinery of this vessel, the propriety of 
 sending him to sea in charge of it, instead of in charge of chief 
 engineer Hunt, who was one of the board that condemned it, is too 
 apparent for argument. 
 
 Furthermore., the Fulton has machinery designed by me, and 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 121 
 
 executed in conformity with my instructions ; and as it is necessary, 
 owingfto the limited number of chief engineers in the service, that 
 Mr. Haswell be ordered either to the San Jacinto or Fulton, as he is 
 the only chief engineer unemployed, the impropriety of putting 
 him in charge of machinery designed by one who was compelled by 
 his position and sense of duty to the disagreeable task of ^pointing 
 out the defects of, and condemning Mr. Haswell 's machinery, can- 
 not fail to be properly appreciated. 
 
 Independently of the above considerations, the health of Mr. 
 Hunt is such as to utterly incapacitate him for a long cruise, while 
 he is sufficiently able to perform the short runs which will probably 
 constitute the chief duty of the Fulton. 
 
 I have, therefore, in justice and delicacy to all parties, to con- 
 clude with the suggestion that the detachment of Mr. Hunt from the 
 San Jacinto and ordering to the Fulton, and the ordering of Mr. 
 Haswell to the San Jacinto, be made, to take effect on the 15 th 
 September next, which will give sufficient time for the performance 
 of the trial trip of the San Jacinto, and the putting her in the hands 
 of Mr. Haswell with her machinery in complete order. 
 
 I have the honor to be, sir, very respectfully your obedient 
 servant. 
 
 Ohas. B. Stuart, 
 
 En gin eer-in- Chief . 
 
 Per B. F. Isherwood, 
 Chief Engineer, 
 
 Com. Chas. ¥m. Skinner, 
 
 Chief of Bureau of Construction, &c. 
 
 At that time Mr. Haswell was a confirmed invalid from a 
 torpid liver and chronic dyspepsia, which caused his subjection to 
 a medical survey, two of the three members of the medical board 
 reporting him unfit for sea service. When this report reached the 
 Department the Secretary was absent and the Secretary of War was 
 acting in his stead; that official, although he had said in private 
 conversation that Mr. Haswell was unfit for service, inadvertantly 
 signed a dissent from the decision of the medical board, which the 
 chief clerk, had laid before him with all the letters of the day. As 
 Booii 'as the San Jacinto was put in commission, the surgeon reported 
 
122 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Mr. Haswell as being unfit for sea duty, and not long afterward the 
 surgeon and his assistant joined in a report to the same effect. No 
 notice of these reports being taken, Mr. Haswell wrote to Commo- 
 dore Morris, with whom he had been associated for several years, 
 saying that he would be forced to resign on account of his health, 
 but he was dissuaded from that by the commodore obtaining from 
 the Secretary of the Navy a promise that in case the chief engineer's 
 health did not improve by the time the vessel arrived at Gibraltar 
 he would be invalided home, upon which assurance Mr. Haswell 
 agreed to remain in the ship. 
 
 When the ship was about to sail, the surgeon and commanding 
 officer both reported that Mr. Haswell was unable to proceed, 
 and he, fearing that his friend, Commodore Morris, would think 
 he had been instrumental in obtaining these reports, and thus 
 had broken faith both with him and the agreement with the Secre- 
 tary as to his remaining in the ship, telegraphed to Commodore 
 Morris that the reports were not made at his instance. The com- 
 modore went to the Secretary, who was in the act of signing the 
 order relieving Haswell from duty, and by exhibiting the tele- 
 gram convinced him that the detachment was unnecessary. In this 
 manner it happened that from an over sensitiveness regarding the 
 estimate of his integrity he remained in the ship, and the misunder- 
 standing of the telegram lost him his detachment, and in the end 
 his commission as well. Three days after the vessel sailed he was 
 put on the sick list and relieved from duty. Upon the arrival of 
 the vessel at Cadiz he proceeded to Gibraltar to get the necessary 
 orders for detachment from the commander-in-chief of the station, 
 in accordance with the promise of the Secretary of the Navy, but 
 that officer declined to take any action in the matter. 
 
 Sick, relieved from duty, denied the immunity of four reports 
 of surgeons as to his physical unfitness, the promise of the Secretary 
 of the Navy ignored, disgusted with his treatment, and mentally 
 depressed, Chief Engineer Haswell left his ship on his own respons- 
 ibility and returned to his own country, for which act, regardless 
 of his past invaluable services for the steam navy, he was drop- 
 ped from the rolls of the navy, the date of this action of the 
 Department being May 14, 1852. Some years later (in 1859) the 
 President at the close of a session of Congress sent his name to the 
 
TUF, V -TK S M NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 123 
 
 Senate for confirmation as a chief engineer in his former position, 
 but Congress adjourned before the nomination was reached, and Mr. 
 Haswell made no effort to have the matter revived, as he was yery 
 profitably employed at the time. 
 
 The engineer corps owes much to Mr. Haswell as its organizer 
 and steady champion, and we of this day cannot but wonder at the 
 great progress he made considering his limited official power and 
 the intense prejudice he had to struggle against. Not only were 
 many of the most influential of the old naval officers bitterly 
 opposed to the invasion of steam into the domain they regarded as 
 their own, but at least one Secretary of the Navy shared the same 
 conservative sentiment. Mr. Secretary Paulding, who ruled the 
 Navy Department when the steam navy was very young, set naval 
 progress back a number of years by blocking the attempts to intro- 
 duce the new power. In his diary he complained of being steamed 
 to death, and wrote that he " never would consent to see our grand 
 old ships supplanted by these new and ugly sea-monsters," the 
 sea-monsters referred to especially being the beautiful steamers 
 Mississippi mid Missouri. 
 
 Mr. Haswell was master of the engineering science of his time 
 and fully appreciated the magnitude of the change in naval methods 
 meant by the introduction of steam, never missing an opportunity 
 to teach and preach his belief. Without having any faith in Lieu- 
 tenant Hunter's scheme of submerged propulsion, he nevertheless 
 gave that officer much aid in his projects and furnished him with 
 designs for machinery simply because Hunter needed steam, and 
 his vessels, although fore-doomed to failure, were still additions to 
 the steam navy. Captain Stockton, also, found in him a staunch 
 supporter, always ready to supply professional facts and arguments 
 in refutation of the many objections raised by the old conservatives 
 against Stockton's scheme for a war-steamer. 
 
 Especially fortunate was Mr, Haswell in being associated with 
 Captain M. C. Ferry at the beginning of his naval career, for in 
 him he found a friend of his profession and a supporter broad- 
 minded enough to realize that a new era in naval construction had 
 dawned, and that the interests of the naval service demanded its 
 recognition to the subordination of all the prejudices of the past. 
 To quote from Captain Perry's biographer, he, "first, last, and 
 
124 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 always honored the engineer and believed in his equal possession, 
 with the line officers, of all the soldierly virtues, notwithstanding 
 that the man at the lever, out of sight of the enemy, must needs 
 lack the thrilling excitement of the officers on deck. He felt that 
 courage in the engine-room had even a finer moral strain than the 
 more physically exciting passions of the deck." 
 
 As this is probably the last appearance in this history of the 
 eminent engineer who was the first leader and pioneer of the naval 
 engineer corps, except by occasional reference to his works, it is 
 fitting that this chapter should close with a brief review of his 
 career and achievements, 
 
 Charles H. Haswell was born in the city of New York in the 
 year 1809, and from earliest youth exhibited a decided talent for 
 mechanical investigations and pursuits, having at the age of fifteen 
 constructed a small fire-engine and later a steam engine of such 
 excellence that both were readily disposed of to pecuniary advan- 
 tage. After receiving a classical education, he entered upon the 
 calling to which his natural bent directed by entering the employ of 
 the engineering establishment of James P. Allaire of New York, 
 where he developed into a thorough competent theoretical and 
 practical mechanical engineer. In 1836, when twenty-seven years 
 of age, and with the reputation of being one of the best scientific 
 engineers in New York, he was appointed by the Navy Depart- 
 ment as superintending engineer and later chief engineer of the 
 steamer Fulton, his naval career in connection with that vessel and 
 others having already been told. While connected with the Fulton 
 at the New York navy yard Mr. Haswell (in 1837) lengthened the 
 gig of the sloop-of-war Ontario and fitted in it a small engine and 
 boiler with which the boat was run about the harbor; this was 
 undoubtedly the first successful essay of a steam launch, notwith- 
 standing the many claims that have been put forth regarding the 
 origin of that useful application of steam. 
 
 In 1846, while engineer-in- chief of the navy, Mr. Haswell con- 
 ceived the idea of placing zinc slabs in marine boilers to divert 
 oxidation from their plates and had zinc placed in the boilers of the 
 Princeton that year for the same purpose. He also had zinc placed 
 in the hold of an iron steamer, the Legare of the Kevenue Marine 
 fleet, with the same object in view* This use of zinc was nearly 
 thirty years before it was tried in England as a new invention. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 125 
 
 Since leaving the naval service in 1852, Mr. Haswell has been 
 actively engaged in the professions of civil and mechanical engine- 
 ering in his native city. He has been a Member and President of 
 the Common Council of the city of New York; a trustee of the New 
 York and Brooklyn bridge; Surveyor of steamers for Lloyd's and 
 the Underwriters of New York, Boston and Philadelphia; Consult- 
 ing Engineer for the Health Department, Quarantine Commission, 
 and Department of Public Charities and Correction of New York; 
 etc., etc. He designed and superintended the construction of the 
 long crib at Hart's Island, and the filling in of Hoffman's Island 
 and the erection of buildings on same; designed and superintended 
 many commercial steamers, foundations for some of the heaviest 
 buildings in New York, tests of water works plants, etc. One of his 
 greatest works is the volume of rules and formula pertaining to 
 mathematics, mechanics and physics, compiled in the engineer's 
 handbook that bears his name, a book so invaluable that it has 
 reached its fifty-ninth edition and has won the name of the 
 "Engineer's Bible. " Mr. Haswell is an honorary life member of 
 the American Society of Naval Engineers ; a member of the 
 American Society of Civil Engineers; the Institution of Civil 
 Engineers, and the Institution of Naval Architects of England; the 
 Engineer's Club of Philadelphia, the New York Academy of 
 Sciences, the American Institute of Architects, the New York 
 Microscopical Society, etc., etc. 
 
CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 •'Into the city of Kambalu, 
 
 By the road that leadeth to Ispahan 
 
 At the head of his dusty caravan, 
 
 Laden with treasures from realms af&i. 
 
 Baldacca and Kelat and Kandahar, 
 Eode the great captain Alau." 
 
 The Expedition to Japan and Treaty with That Country — Services of Engl- 
 neers in the Expedition — Yalue of Steamers in Impressing the Japanese— Other 
 Naval Affairs in the Far East. 
 
 HPHE opening of the ports of Japan to the world's commerce wa& 
 
 1 one of the direct sequences of the settlement of California by 
 citizens of the United States, for the latter event was accompanied 
 with an immediate marine traffic in the Pacific and this in turn 
 demanded the establishment of coaling ports, harbors of refuge, and 
 other necessities to navigation on all the shores of that ocean. An 
 extensive trade with China already existed, and the American whale 
 fisheries in Asiatic waters gave employment to ten thousand men 
 and represented an investment of seventeen million dollars. The 
 march of commercial progress demanded that the veil of mystery 
 and exclusiveness so long drawn over the Japanese islands be re- 
 moved and the coasts of that country be opened and free to the 
 world's shipping. The only port in Japan where foreigners were 
 allowed to touch was Nagasaki in the southern part of the empire, 
 where a Dutch trading station was permitted to exist under almost 
 penal conditions, allowing annual visits from a single ship, bringing 
 goods for exchange. To this place, any sailors who might be ship- 
 wrecked on the Japanese coast, and they were numerous, were 
 conveyed and kept in close confinement until the time arrived for 
 sending them out of the country by the Dutch merchantman. 
 
 In 1849, Commander James Glynn, U. S. Navy, in the brig 
 Preble visited Nagasaki to demand the release of some American 
 sailors known to be imprisoned there, and succeeded in his mission 
 although not without much difficulty, as the authorities were very 
 
 — Longfellow. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 127 
 
 loth to have anything to do with a foreigner, other than the lonely 
 dutch trader. While there, Glynn made a careful study of Japanese 
 affairs and when he returned to the United States early in "1851 he 
 represented to the Navy Department that the time was ripe for 
 either forcing or flattering Japan into the brotherhood of nations, 
 urging furthermore that he be sent on a diplomatic mission with 
 that object in view. The idea was well received, but when steps 
 were taken to organize a squadron sufficiently large to lend force 
 and dignity to the expedition, Glynn found himself speedily out- 
 ranked, and had to step aside for his seniors who commanded larger 
 ships; to him, however, belongs the credit for beginning the move- 
 ment which ended in the great triumph of Matthew C. Perry. In 
 June, 1851, Commodore Aulick, commissioned by Secretary of 
 State, Daniel Webster to negotiate a treaty with Japan, sailed for 
 the East India station in the new side-wheel steamer Smquelumna, 
 some of the details of this first voyage having been related in a former 
 chapter. 
 
 Soon after arriving on the station; late in the year, Commodore 
 Aulick was abruptly recalled, being temporarily relieved by Com- 
 mander Franklin Buchanan of the flagship and later by Commodore 
 M. C. Perry. The direct cause for Auliek's detachment was 
 alleged violation of naval orders in having taken his son to sea with 
 him as a passenger, and for having stated that he had been obliged 
 to defray the expense of carrying the Brazilian minister, Macedo, 
 from the United States to his own country. Commodore Auliek's 
 friends asserted that Perry had deliberately undermined him, and 
 the subject became one of those factional controversies which have 
 from time to time become notorious in our naval annals. The fact 
 that Perry had for some time been making a study of matters relat- 
 ing to Japan and its people, gave strength to the charge that he had 
 sacrificed a brother captain to his own ambition, but it is also a 
 matter of official record that he was at the same time an applicant 
 for the command of the Mediterranean squadron and felt himself 
 aggrieved when ordered to the Far East. His biographer publishes 
 a long letter addressed to the Secretary of the Navy, dated Decem- 
 ber 3, 1851, in which Perry speaks of the command of the Medit- 
 erranean squadron as his fondest ambition, and objects to the pro- 
 posed detail to Japan on the ground that it would be a degradation 
 
128 
 
 THE STEAM NATY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 in rank for him to relieve Aulick who had served under him in a 
 squadron some years before. This seems to clear Commodore 
 Ferry of any charge of double-dealing in the matter; at any rate the 
 quarrel has no place in this book, and would not be referred to 
 were it not necessary for the sake of thoroughness, to outline the 
 steps leading up to, what may be fairly considered, the proudest 
 achievement of the American navy. 
 
 On the 24th of January, 1852, Perry received orders to assume 
 command of the East India squadron, and he at once began vigor- 
 ously to make all necessary preparations for impressing the Japan- 
 ese with the power and resources of the nation whose friendship they 
 were asked to accept. His steam favorite the Mississippi was 
 given for his flagship, and in compliance with his urgent request 
 that he have more steamers, the Princeton and Alleghany, both 
 then under extensive repairs, were promised. The mishaps to these 
 vessels and their eventual failure to become part of the expedition 
 are matters that have already been told. Perry had coal and ships' 
 stores sent out in sailing vessels and by appealing to the mechanical 
 industries of the country he made a vast collection of the imple- 
 ments of civilization with which to demonstrate to the Japanese 
 
 the benefits they would derive from intercourse with foreign nations. 
 Among other things he had a small locomotive and car, with rails 
 to lay a circular track upon which to operate; agricultural machin- 
 ery, telegraphic instruments, arms, sewing machines, printing 
 presses, metal- working machinery, tools of various kinds, and all 
 sorts of labor saving appliances. In a word, Perry drew upon the 
 field of the engineer for his most potent arguments, and by that 
 sign he conquered a peace that never could have been achieved by 
 mere show of force or use of arms. 
 
 Wearied of delays, Perry finally sailed from Norfolk with only 
 the Mississippi on the 24th of November, 1852, and proceeded to 
 his station by way of Madeira and the Cape of Good Hope, arriving 
 at Hong Kong on the 6th of April, 1853, and at Shanghai on May 
 4th. His flag was transferred to the Susquehanna on May 17, that 
 vessel being the designated flagship of the squadron. Before going 
 to the principal Japanese islands a visit was made to the Kiu Kiu 
 (also spelled Lew Chew and Loo Choo) and the Bonin islands. At 
 Napa in Eiu Kiu the telegraphic, photographic, and other appliances 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 129 
 
 were tested to make sure that no failures would occur later. The 
 artist, Mr. Brown, who had charge of the daguerrotype outfit, not 
 being a specialist in that particular art, had some trouble in his pre- 
 liminary wort and called to his aid Third Assistant Engineer 
 Edward D. Eobie of the Mississippi, who from a love for scientific 
 matters had made himself an expert in this art. He succeeded at 
 his first attempt with the apparatus, and took what is supposed to 
 be the first daguerrotype ever made in the far east ; it being a 
 picture of Commodore Perry standing at the gateway of a native 
 temple. Perry was delighted with Robie's work and remarked to 
 him, "I believe that you engineers can do anything." 
 
 Finally the squadron, then consisting of the steamers Missis- 
 sippi and Susquehanna and the sailing sloops of war Saratoga and 
 Plymouth, proceeded northward and on the 7th of July entered 
 Yeddo Bay and came to anchor off the village of TJraga. Foreign 
 ships were no curiosity in those waters even then. Seven years 
 before, Commodore Biddle with the ship-of -the -line Columbus and 
 sloop-of-war Vmcennes had visited the same spot, in the hope of 
 securing permission for his countrymen to trade, but was turned 
 away with a positive refusal. Many whalers and merchant vessels 
 had been there, sometimes seeking in vain for commercial inter- 
 course with the people; sometimes driven in by stress of weather to 
 be refused a harbor of refuge, and sometimes on errands of mercy 
 bringing home Japanese waifs picked up adrift at sea in their junks. 
 In 184:8 foreign shipping in the seas about Japan had so increased 
 that the fact was noted as a remarkable phenomenon by the native 
 chroniclers, and in 1850 it had been made a matter of grave report 
 to the great officials of the empire that no less than eighty-six of the 
 4 4 black ships of the i-jin" had been counted passing Matsuma6 
 within the space of a single year. 
 
 If foreign ships were familiar objects, steamers were not, 
 for Perry's two steam frigates were the first craft of the kind to be 
 seen in Japanese waters and their appearance excited the utmost 
 consternation among the intelligent; for the Japanese are of an 
 investigating and mechanical turn of mind, and all who were above 
 ascribing the movements of the mysterious ships without sails to the 
 spirits of evil, immediately reasoned that they must have some 
 motive power, to themselves unknown, but about which, it would 
 
130 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 be good to learn. The ignorant peasants supposed that the foreign 
 barbarians had succeeded in imprisoning volcanoes in their ships, 
 or, refusing to believe the evidence of their own eyes, comforted 
 each other with the assurance that the uncanny spectacle was sirapl j 
 a mirage created by the breath of clams and would soon pas3 away. 
 
 Commodore Perry had thoroughly informed himself of the 
 ceremonial customs of Japan, and used his knowledge of the extrav- 
 agant etiquette observed by the people of that country to good and 
 successful purpose. He secluded himself in his cabin and played 
 Mikado and Sho-gun to perfection, first to the provocation, and 
 finally to the amazement and awe, of the local officials of constantly 
 increasing rank who visited the flagship, only to be snubbed by 
 refusals to see the chief barbarian. Even the governor of the dis- 
 trict learned to his mortification and dismay that he was not a per- 
 sonage important enough to be allowed to meet the mysterious 
 power hidden behind the cabin doors. Qrders to depart were met 
 only by a movement of the ships further up the bay towards Yedo; 
 offers to supply food and water in the hope that the unwelcome vis- 
 itors would then leave were politely declined, and the natives were 
 forced into accepting the proposal offered; namely, of designating 
 an official of proper rank to meet the barbarian and listen to what 
 he had to say. On the 14th of July, all arrangements having Been 
 completed, Perry first showed himself and went on shore with a 
 large suite of officers and four hundred marines and sailors to meet 
 the two commissioners appointed to deal with him. The whole 
 affair was conducted studiously for theatrical effect to impress the 
 natives with the grandeur and importance of the event, no detail of 
 dress or ceremony likely to appeal to the sensibilities of the Japan- 
 ese being omitted. A letter from the President of the United 
 States to the "Emperor of Japan" asking that friendly rela- 
 tions between the two* nations be established was delivered to the 
 commissioners with all pomp and solemnity, but with few words, 
 and the visitors withdrew, Perry saying that he would allow ample 
 time for consideration and would return the following spring for an 
 answer. 
 
 The vessels proceeded southward to Hong Kong, where the 
 Powhatan, which had left the United States in March to join the 
 squadron in place of the discarded Princeton, and some of the sail- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 131 
 
 ing vessels belonging to the station were met. Headquarters for 
 the Japanese expedition were established at Macao, where a house 
 was rented and facilities furnished the members of the expedition 
 for developing their sketches and writing reports of their observa- 
 tions. A number of specialists were attached to the different ships 
 with appointments as master's mates in order that they would be 
 subject to naval discipline, thereby avoiding the friction always 
 resulting from joint naval and civil enterprises afloat. Principal 
 among these were Messrs. Heine and Brown, the water- color artists 
 whose beautiful pictures so embellish Commodore Perry's report, 
 and Mr. Bayard Taylor, the " landscape painter in words. " Be- 
 sides the specialists a number of officers belonging regularly to the 
 navy contributed much valuable material for the report of the exped- 
 ition, notable among these being Surgeon Daniel S. Green and 
 Chaplain George Jones. A number of the most accurate drawings 
 relating to Japanese boat building and marine affairs published in 
 the report, were made by Third Assistant Engineer Mortimer Kel- 
 logg of the Powhatan. 
 
 In January 1854 the squadron again moved northward, con- 
 sisting of the steamers Powhatan, Susquehanna and Mississippi, and 
 the sloops-of-war Macedonian, Vandalia, Plymouth aud Saratoga; 
 the store-ships Supply, Lexington and Southwnpton, with coal and 
 provisions for the ships, and presents for the Japanese government, 
 were also in company. On the 11th of February the greater part of 
 this force had assembled off Tedo Bay, anchoring on the 13th off 
 Yokosuke, where the great navy yard of New J apan is now located. 
 The mystery play began again by Perry retiring from public view 
 and holding the visiting officials at a respectful and chilly distance. 
 While the Japanese were exhausting their efforts to induce the for- 
 eigners to go away and leave them in peace, boats were kept busy 
 sounding and surveying the adjacent waters and giving intelligible 
 names to the prominent features of the region; one name thus be- 
 stowed, Mississippi Bay, so well known to all visitors to Japan, will 
 serve for all time to perpetuate in a far country the name of the 
 historical old steamer whose keel was the first of foreign build to 
 disturb its waters. 
 
 The following is a list of the officers of the engineer corps 
 serving in this squadron on the expedition which is the principal 
 subject of this chapter: 
 
132 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 OFFICE. 
 
 Chief Engineer 
 
 First Assistant Engineer... 
 
 it a *t 
 
 tt a a 
 
 i. a a 
 
 a tt tt 
 
 Second Assistant Engineer 
 
 tt it tt 
 
 tt tt ti 
 
 tt tt tt 
 
 a a tt 
 
 tt tt a 
 
 a tt ti 
 
 tt tt tt 
 
 a a tt 
 
 Third Assistant Engineer.. 
 
 a a a. 
 
 a tt it 
 
 a a a 
 
 tt tt ii 
 
 a a tt 
 
 n it tt 
 
 a a a 
 
 NAME. 
 
 Jesse Gay 
 
 Samuel Archbold 
 
 George Sswell 
 
 John P. Whipple 
 
 Robert Banby 
 
 William Holland.. 
 
 George F. Hebard. 
 
 Henry H. Stewart 
 
 John Faron 
 
 George T. W. Logan.. 
 
 George Gideon, Jr 
 
 Edward Fithian 
 
 Eli Crosby 
 
 William Henry King.. 
 
 J. C. E. Lawrence 
 
 Wm. H. Rutherford... 
 George W. Alexander. 
 
 Thomas A Shock 
 
 William S. Stain m 
 
 Stephen D. Hibbert,... 
 
 Mortimer Kellogg 
 
 Henry Fauth 
 
 Edward D. Robie 
 
 LeRoy Arnold..... 
 
 John D. Mercer 
 
 SHIP. 
 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Susquehanna. 
 
 Powhatan. 
 
 Powhatan. 
 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Susquehanna. 
 
 Susquehanna. 
 
 Powhatan. 
 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Powhatan. 
 
 Susquehanna. 
 
 Susquehanna. 
 
 Powhatan. 
 
 Susquehanna. 
 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Susquehanna. 
 
 Powhatan. 
 
 Susquehanna. 
 
 Powhatan. 
 
 Powhatan. 
 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Powhatan. 
 
 Mississippi. 
 
 On the 24th of February, Perry, to convince the Japanese that 
 he was in earnest and would not be put off, moved six of the 
 ships up the Bay to within hearing of the temple bells of Yeddoand 
 anchored not far above Kanagawa. This move had the desired ef- 
 fect, for the Sho-gun's government sent word in post haste, u If 
 the American ships come to Teddo it will be a national disgrace. 
 Stop them, and make the treaty at Kanagawa. " Yokohama, a small 
 
 fishing village across an arm of the bay from Kanagawa, was finally 
 
 fixed upon as the place for the negotiations and there the Japanese 
 
 erected the necessary buildings for the ceremony, the enclosure about 
 
 them embracing the present location of the Custom House and 
 
 British Consulate in the cosmopolitan city that Yokohama has now 
 become. 
 
 On the 8th of March Perry landed with five hundred armed 
 men, and a glittering staff of officers in full uniform, the same cer- 
 monial display and scrupulous etiquette being observed which had 
 so impressed the natives on the occasion of his former visit. The 
 first formalities haying been performed with becoming splendor an& 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 133 
 
 dignity, the discussion of what was wanted was conducted more at 
 leisure, the remainder of that month being thus consumed before a 
 treaty was finally agreed to and signed. This treaty, which was 
 signed on March 31st, conceded little to the Americans, but served 
 as the thin end of the wedge for great possibilities thereafter. By 
 its terms the Japanese agreed to treat kindly shipwrecked mariners; 
 gave permission for ships to buy fuel, water, provisions, and other 
 needed stores, and specified the ports of Simoda and Hakodate as 
 places where foreign ships might anchor for repairs or to find ref- 
 uge from storms. Trade in other than necessary ship supplies and 
 permission to reside in the country were refused. These privileges, 
 together with many others, and the opening of several treaty ports, 
 followed in due time through the efforts of other diplomats. 
 
 While negotiations were going on at Yokohama the great collec- 
 tion of presents brought for the 44 Emperor," but by error given to 
 the Sho-gun, was landed and displayed to the officials and people. 
 The railway track, 369 feet in circumference, was laid by Chief 
 Engineer Gay of the Mississippi and on it the little locomotive and 
 car were daily operated, under the superintendence of Engineer 
 Robert Danby of the same steamer, to the great interest and de- 
 light of the people. The telegraph line, a mile long, was another 
 source of wonder and shrewd investigation on the part of the inquis- 
 itive and intelligent Japanese. This was in charge of two telegra- 
 phers named Draper and Williams, rated as master's mates, but 
 was operated part of the time by engineers Alexander and Robie, 
 whom Commodore Perry had sent ashore in New York in 1852 for 
 a month, for the express purpose of learning telegraphy. A wealth 
 of other useful articles — stoves, clocks, maps, books, and machinery 
 of all kinds — were displayed, and their uses explained, this exhibi- 
 tion of mechanical appliances did more to win the people over to 
 the fact that it would be beneficial to them to become neighbourly 
 with other nations than all the arguments and bluster in the world. 
 From the Japanese accounts of this most important event in their 
 national history, it appears that the determining factors in Perry's 
 success were his steamships and the machinery he brought with him. 
 With a decided bent for the mechanic arts themselves, the Japanese 
 were quick to see that the foreigners were far ahead of them in that 
 respect, and they were willing to lay aside their ideas of exclusive- 
 
134 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ness for the opportunity of learning what the strangers had to teach. 
 
 The world at large knows of the wonderful results which 
 sprung from the modest beginning above outlined, for the story of 
 Japan is the most marvelous in all the histories of the nations. As 
 Perry saw Japan, the people of that country were engulfed in the 
 darkness and ignorance of a despotism fixed upon them by an un- 
 changing and pitiless feudal domination of twenty centuries duration, 
 a condition beside which the state of society existing along the banks 
 of the Ehine in the middle of the Dark Ages would appear enlight- 
 ened by contrast. From such a forbidding prospect the mind is 
 dazed as it turns to look at New Japan with its railways, telegraph, 
 post offices, factories, school-houses, and church-steeples, all as fa- 
 miliar objects to the people as they are to the dwellers in either 
 Old or New England. The feudal system abolished; a parliamen- 
 tary form of government established; the hundreds of thousands of 
 idle and predatory knights deprived of their tyrannical prerogatives 
 and transformed into industrious men, and the yoke of serfdom re- 
 moved from the necks of four-fifths of the population of the empire 
 are examples of the miracles that have been wrought in that wonder- 
 ful land within the memory of men but little past middle age. 
 
 Having placed herself in the foremost rank of the civilized na- 
 tions by making full use of the heritage of the ages conferred upon 
 her, Japan has made herself the champion of modern enlightenment 
 and assumed the task of breaking down Chinese conservatism and 
 of introducing the methods of Western civilization by force into the 
 greatest and most obstinate country that has ever been a barrier to 
 the world's progress. By availing themselves of Western discip- 
 line, tactics and humane methods of warfare the brave little Japa- 
 nese have been able to prevail against great numerical odds and by 
 a series of victories, each more brilliant than its predecessor, have 
 proceeded uninterruptedly on their mission of carrying enlightment 
 and civilization into the Dark East. Great as may be the victory 
 to Japan as a nation, its moral and far-reaching effects will be much 
 greater for the well-being of the world. When New Japan has 
 celebrated her victories and duly honored her great captains who 
 achieved them, she cannot pay a more appropriate tribute to the first 
 cause that made her modern power possible, than by erecting on the 
 strand at Yokohama a statue of Matthew C. Perry, looking outward 
 upon the water over which his steamers brought Western methods 
 
THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 135 
 
 into Japanese history. And on the pedestal of that statue should be 
 carved an image of a steamship, or some other symbol of the me- 
 chanic arts, as the true sign of the beginning of the greatness of 
 New Japan; the sign by which she was conquered and by which she 
 in turn has conquered. 
 
 Following the completion of negotiations in Japan, Perry's 
 squadron began to disband, the Commodore himself proceeding home 
 by way of Europe in a Peninsular and Oriental mail steamer — the 
 Hindustan. The Missisblppi left Hong Kong on the 12th of Sep- 
 tember and after touching at Simoda in Japan began the long voy- 
 age homeward by way of Honolulu and Eio de Janeiro. She ar- 
 rived at New York the 23d of April, 1855, having circumnavigated 
 the globe during her absence and placed herself on record as the 
 second steam vessel of the United States navy to do so. The Bus- 
 quehanna also returned home by way of the Pacific and South Amer- 
 ica, her arrival in Philadelphia on the 10th of March giving her the 
 honor of being the first American naval steamer to make a cruise 
 around the world. 
 
 The home-coming ships brought with them many presents, now 
 in the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, illustrative of the skill 
 of artists and artisans of Japan, consisting of bronze, ivory, porcelain, 
 and other work. More appropriate even were the blocks of carved 
 and inscribed stone from different parts of Japan given for the 
 Washington monument and which may now be seen in the walls of 
 that structure. From Napa in Riu Kiu came as a gift the large bronze 
 bell which for so many years has hung in its little temple in the 
 grounds of the Naval Academy. The date of founding inscribed on 
 this bell corresponds to the year 1456, A. D., and part of the in- 
 scription on it, as translated by Giro Kunitomo, a Japanese student 
 at the academy, reads as follows: 
 
 "This beautiful bell has been founded, and hung in the tower 
 of the temple. It will awaken dreams of superstition. If one will 
 bear in mind to act rightly and truly, and the Lords and the Minis- 
 ters will do justice in a body, the barbarians will never come to in- 
 vade. The sound of the bell will convey the virtue of Fushi, and 
 will echo like the song of Tsuirai: and the benevolence of the Lords 
 will continue forever like those echoes. ' ' 
 
 Eegardless of the prediction thus written in brass, the barbarians 
 not only came but carried the bell away with them. 
 
136 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The Tai-ping rebellion being in progress in China at the time 
 now being dealt with, the United States vessels remaining in that 
 region were kept actively employed in protecting the lives and prop- 
 erty of American citizens. Piracy became rampant along the coasts 
 and compelled much dangerous service in seeking out the piratical 
 junks and capturing them in hand-to-hand conflicts, a chartered 
 steamer of light draft, named the Queen, being especially active in 
 this work. Referring to this disagreeable service, the Secretary of 
 the Navy wrote in his annual report for 1855: " In these several en- 
 counters, the officers and men have conducted themselves gallantly, 
 and honorable mention is made of Lieutenants Pegram, Preble, Ro- 
 lando, E. T. McCauley, and Sproston; Assistant Engineers Stamm 
 and Kellogg; Acting Masters' Mates J. P. Williams and S. E. Craig; 
 and Private Benjamin Adamson, of the Marine Corps, who was 
 dangerously wounded. I deem this a proper occasion to suggest the 
 purchase or building of one or two steamers of light draught, to be 
 used in the Chinese rivers, as indispensable for the protection of the 
 immense property belonging to citizens of the United States in 
 China. J 9 
 
 In July, 1855, while entering the harbor of Hong Kong, the 
 Powhatan by accident had the starboard air-pump machinery so 
 completely wrecked that the ship was seemingly disabled for an in- 
 definite time. An international complication with Spain at the time 
 made it probable that the next mail would bring news of a state of 
 war, and the presence of a Spanish war vessel in Hong Kong har- 
 bor rendered the helpless condition of the Powhatan a source of most 
 serious apprehension. In this emergency Mr. George Sewell, her 
 chief engineer, rigged up a connection between the two engines, so 
 that the port engine did the condensing of steam for the disabled 
 starboard engine, the work being completed within forty-eight hours 
 after the breakdown and the Powhatan made ready for any service, 
 including battle if necessary. Officers of the British war-steamer 
 Rattler, who attended a trial trip to test the success of Mr. Sewell's 
 emergency makeshift, remarked that a chief engineer in their navy 
 would be knighted for rendering service of such value in a similar 
 emergency. An idea of the extent of the difficulty overcome by 
 this ingenious engineer may be gained from the fact that ten weeks 
 were consumed in permanently repairing the damages. 
 
CHAPTEE X. 
 
 44 Our tall ships have souls, and plow with Reason up the deeps." 
 
 Ogilby, Tra7islation of the Odyssey, 
 
 End of the Experimental, and Beginning of the Creative Period of the Amer- 
 ican Steam Navy — The Feanklin— The Mbrbimac class of Screw Frigates 
 — The Niagara — Services of Chief Engineer Everett in connection with 
 the Atlantic Cable Laid by the Niagara— The Hartford class of Large 
 Screw Sloops — Mr. Archbold succeeds Mr. Martin as Engineer-in-Chief — 
 The Mohican class — The Pawnke — The Paraguay Expedition — Small 
 Steamers Purchased for the Navy — Project to Convert Old Line-of-Battle 
 Ships into Steam Frigates. 
 
 ALL the vessels of the early steam period of our navy have now 
 been described with the exception of the John Hancock, a 
 small screw-steamer of 208 tons, built at the Boston Navy Yard in 
 1850, intended to serve the double purpose of a steam tug and 
 water-boat for that station. Her length was 113 feet; breadth of 
 beam, 22 feet; mean draft, 8 feet. The machinery was designed 
 by Mr. Charles W. Oopeland and built at the Washington Navy 
 Yard by Mr. William M. Ellis, the civilian chief engineer of the 
 yard. There were two oscillating non-condensing cylinders, 20 
 inches in diameter and 21 inches stroke, suspended over the shaft, 
 and one iron return-flue boiler 22 feet long, containing 28 square 
 feet of grate surface and 755 square feet of heating surface. The 
 cost of the vessel was $20,550.72, of which sum $5,622.59 was 
 charged to the engine and propeller, and $2,428.13 to the boiler 
 and fittings. In 1851 the Hancock was used as a practice steamer 
 for midshipmen at the Naval Academy, and later in the same year 
 made a short cruise to the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 In 1852 she was hauled into a ship-house at the Boston Navy 
 Yard and remodeled, being cut in two and lengthened 38 feet, the 
 change resulting in a trim bark-rigged steamer rated as of 382 ton$ 
 burden. The engines were altered to low-pressure, with JPirsson's 
 condenser, the stroke of pistons increased three inches, and the 
 boiler replaced by two of tho Martin vertical water-tube type, 
 aggregating 70 square feet of grate surface and 2,280 square feet of 
 
138 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 heating surface. The alterations in machinery were made by Har- 
 rison Loring, Boston, from plans supplied by Chief Engineer D. 
 B. Martin, U. S. Navy. When completed, the new steamer pro- 
 ceeded to the Pacific Ocean and was employed for about three years 
 on surveying duty in the North Pacific, Bering and China seas, 
 under the command of Lieutenant John Rodgers, Messrs. Elbridge 
 Lawton and David B. Macomb being the senior engineers. After 
 making a survey of Bering Sea the John Hancock was put out of 
 commission at San Francisco and remained there as a receiving 
 ship or in ordinary until 1865, when she was sold. 
 
 Reference has already been made to the fact that advocates 
 of steam power for naval purposes were compelled to face a most 
 discouraging argument based upon the unprotected condition of 
 machinery in paddle-wheel steamers. Ericsson had proved with 
 the Princeton that a ship could be driven by a submerged propel- 
 ler, but his application of power was new, at least to the navy, and 
 it was many years before the lesson of the Princeton was accepted 
 by naval officers as conclusive. The Secretary of the Navy, Mr. 
 Dobbin, had become thoroughly impressed with the necessity for 
 building up a steam navy, and in his annual report for 1853 made 
 an urgent appeal to Congress for authority to begin the immediate 
 construction of six u first-class steam frigate propellers," using the 
 following argument in support of his request : 
 
 " Steam is unquestionably the great agent to be used on the 
 ocean, as well for purposes of war as of commerce. The improved 
 system of screw-propellers, instead of side- wheels, is one of the 
 grand desiderata to render the use of steam effective in naval war- 
 fare — the one being exposed to the shot of the enemy, the other 
 submerged and comparatively secure. When the bayonet was 
 added to the musket the invention was applauded, for placing in 
 the hands of the soldier, at one time, two engines of destruction; 
 and the introduction of the screw-propeller has been similarly appre- 
 ciated, as combining, without confusion, two elements of progress — 
 the sail and the steam-engine. Side-wheel steamers are much im- 
 paired in their capacity for sailing, and consume too much coal for 
 distant cruises. Those now on hand can be made to answer well 
 for short cruises and for despatch vessels. The screw-propeller, 
 being upon a principle not so much interfering with the sailing 
 
U. S. S. FRANKLIN. 
 
 Two telescopic smokepipes lowered below rail. 
 
THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 141 
 
 capacity, with the improved models of the present day, can be so 
 constructed as to sail as well as the best clipper ships, and reserve 
 the use of steam for emergencies when the greatest speed is re- 
 quired, or when, in a calm, a desirable position can be more 
 promptly and surely taken. The great necessary expense incident 
 to the expedition to Japan could have been materially, indeed, one- 
 half curtailed, had it been in the power of the department to have 
 supplied the squadron with screw-propellers instead of the side- 
 wheel steamers, now costing so much from the consumption of 
 coal." 
 
 In the same year, 1853, Mr. Dobbin had already begun one 
 screw frigate by using his authority to repair old vessels, the one 
 selected being the old ship-of-the-line Franklin, lying at the Kit- 
 tery Navy Yard. Orders were issued to repair this ship and make 
 such changes in her model as would fit her for a first-class steam 
 frigate. The old ship Franklin was built in 1815 at Philadelphia, 
 and was 188 feet long and 50 feet beam. The new Franklin, as 
 finished, was 265 feet long on the load water-line, and 53 feet 8 
 inches beam, dimensions so entirely different from those of the 
 original ship that the process of repairing evidently amounted in 
 reality to building an entirely new hull out of the old material. As 
 the amount of money available each year for repairs was small, 
 work on the FranJclin progressed slowly, and it was ten years be- 
 fore the condition of the hull warranted a contract for machinery, 
 which will be described later in proper chronological order. 
 
 The recommendation of the department regarding steam frig- 
 ates was favorably received by Congress, and a few months later 
 an act, approved April 6, 1854, authorized the Secretary of the 
 Navy to have constructed " six first-class steam frigates to be pro- 
 vided with screw propellers. " These ships were all built by the 
 Government at navy yards as follows : The Merrimao at Boston; 
 the Wabash at Philadelphia; the Minnesota at Washington; the 
 JRoanohe and Colorado at Norfolk, and the Niagara at New York. 
 The three first named were launched in 1855 and the three others 
 early in 1856, they being, when completed, the superiors of any 
 war vessels then possessed by any nation in the world. When the 
 first of them went abroad they became objects of admiration and 
 envy to the naval architects of Europe, and their type was quickly 
 
142 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 copied into other navies, notably that of England, which imitated 
 their construction in the Orlando, Mersey, and others of that class. 
 
 Just at that period the American ship-building industry had 
 reached its highest development; our architects had attained a skill 
 in their profession which made their work famous throughout the 
 world, and lent to the word American, when applied to ships, a 
 peculiar significance, always an accepted guarantee of excellence. 
 Some of the most eminent of the American ship- builders were 
 members of the naval construction corps, which then included such 
 men as Mr. Lenthal, the chief constructor of the navy; the two 
 Delanos; Messrs. Pook and Hanscom, and several others, all 
 famous in their line. To these gentlemen the navy was indebted 
 for the designs which made our new ships the admiration of the 
 world, and so elevated the standard and reputation of the American 
 navy that every officer and man felt an accession of pride at being 
 part of such an organization. 
 
 The first five of the ships named were frigate-built, with steam 
 power that was merely auxiliary. They were full ship- rigged, the 
 area of the ten principal sails being about thirty-two times the im- 
 mersed midship section, which ratio is only slightly less than that 
 observed in the practice of rigging sailing frigates. They were built 
 of seasoned live-oak frames in stock in the navy yards and originally 
 intended for use in old style sailing ships, an adaptation of material 
 that exercised a controlling influence on the lines of the new ships 
 from the necessity of so shaping them that the supply of frame tim- 
 bers could be worked up without waste. The results, however, were 
 entirely satisfactory as the ships proved to be fast and handy under 
 sail alone, and their steam power was sufficient for the purpose in- 
 tended — to steam in and out of port or across calm belts, and to lend 
 additional maneuvering qualities in storms and battle. 1 
 
 Speaking of the building of these ships, the late Rear Admiral Edward Simp- 
 son, in an article published in Harper's Magazine, June, 1886, says: u There were 
 those at that time who, wise beyond their generation, recognized the full meaning of 
 the advent of steam, and saw that it must supplant sails altogether as a motive 
 power for ships. These advocated that new constructions should be provided with 
 full steam-power, with sails as an auxiliary; but the old pride in the sailing ship, 
 with her taut and graceful spars, could not be made to yield at once to the innovation; 
 old traditions pointing to the necessity of full sail-power could not be dispelled; it was 
 considered a sufficient concession to admit steam on any terms, and thus the conser- 
 vative and temporizing course was adopted of retaining^full sail-power, and utilizing 
 steam as an auxiliary." 
 
U. S. S. MKRRIMAO, 18")(), 
 
 From a Lithograph made in London on the occasion of the visit of the Mcrrlmdc to Southampton. Loaned by Mr. Charles Schroeder, 
 of Portsmouth, Virginia, who was a third assistant engineer on the Merrimac during her European cruise in 1856. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 145 
 
 Of these yessels the Merrimack (or Merrimac, as the name is 
 usually spelled), was the type, the others being only slight modifi- 
 cations of the original. The Wabash and Minnesota differed only 
 from the Merrimac in having a few feet more length inserted amid- 
 ships to give additional space for machinery and fuel, while the 
 Jioatioke and Colorado, exact duplicates of each other, differed from 
 the others mainly in having about one foot more beam. The follow- 
 ing table shows the principal dimensions of these frigates as origi- 
 nally built, from which the points of difference may be readily traced: 
 
 
 MERRIMAC. 
 
 WABASH. 
 
 MINNESOTA. 
 
 ROANOKE. 
 
 COLORADO. 
 
 Length on load water line, feet 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 256.9 
 
 262.4 
 
 264.8} 
 
 263.8} 
 
 263.8} 
 
 
 51.4 
 
 51.4 
 
 51.4 
 
 52.6 
 
 52.6 
 
 Area of immersed midship sec- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Displacement at load water line, 
 
 868.1 
 
 868.1 
 
 868.1 
 
 902.9 
 
 902.9 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4,635.6 
 
 4,774.3 
 
 4,833.4 
 
 4,772.2 
 
 4,772.2 
 
 * 
 
 3,200 
 
 3,200 
 
 3,200 
 
 3,400 
 
 3,400 
 
 The Merrimac had two horizontal back-acting engines, the cyl- 
 inders being on opposite sides of the ship and located at diagonally 
 opposite corners of a rectangle circumscribing the engines, the jet 
 condenser, air pump and hot-well of one cylinder being by the side 
 of the other cylinder, the two piston rods of each cylinder striding 
 the crank shaft. The cylinders were 72 inches in diameter by 3 feet 
 stroke of piston and were designed to make about 45 double strokes 
 per minute. A three-ported slide valve placed horizontally on top 
 of the cylinder and actuated by a rock- shaft was used, expansion 
 being obtained by the use of an independent cut-off valve of the 
 gridiron type. There were four 4-furnace Martin's vertical water- 
 tube boilers of iron, except the tubes which were brass; the grate 
 surface of all boilers was 333.5 square feet and total heating surf ace 
 12,537 square feet. The single smoke-pipe was 8 feet in diameter, 
 telescopic to avoid spoiling the appearance of the ship while in port, 
 and stood 65 feet above the grate bars. Each boiler had a system 
 of brass tubes underneath for a feed-water heater, the feed water be- 
 ing pumped through the tubes which were kept hot by the supersalted 
 
146 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 water being constantly blown off to keep down the saturation, ac- 
 cording to the practice of those days. The propeller was a two- 
 bladed Griffith's screw of bronze with spherical hub and blades, ad- 
 justable to different pitches, the mean pitch being 25 feet, and di- 
 ameter of the screw 17 feet 4 inches. This machinery was designed 
 by the contractor, Mr. Eobert P. Parrot and built at his works at 
 Cold Springs, New York, under the inspection of Chief Engineer 
 Wm, H. Shock, TL S. Navy, who subsequently superintended its 
 erection on board the vessel at Boston. 
 
 The maximum performance of the Men % imac in smooth water 
 under steam alone is shown by the following figures: 
 
 Speed in knots per hour 8.87 
 
 Revolutions of screw per minute 4:6.7 
 
 Steam cut off in fraction of stroke 0.3 
 
 Steam pressure in boilers in pounds above atmos- 
 phere > 13.5 
 
 Vacuum (mean) in inches of mercury 24. 5 
 
 Total horse-power developed by engines 1,294.4 
 
 Pounds of coal per hour by square foot of grate.. 12.74 
 
 Pounds of coal per hour per horse-power 3.28 
 
 An abstract of the log of the Merrimac when under steam 
 alone and in all conditions of wind and weather shows an average 
 speed of 5.25 knots; 36.5 revolutions per minute; 12.8 average 
 steam pressure; 20.4 average vacuum, and a consumption of 3,400 
 pounds of anthracite coal per hour. A similar set of averages under 
 steam and sail combined shows 7.67 knots; 39.3 revolutions; 12.5 
 steam pressure; 21 inches of vacuum, and 3,392 pounds of coal per 
 hour. 
 
 The Merrimac was put in commission in December, 1855, 
 tinder the command of Captain F. H. Gregory, Mr. Shock being the 
 
 chief engineer, and for a few months was on special duty on the 
 home coast, going later to Europe where she visited Southampton, 
 Brest, Lisbon, Toulon, and other naval stations, exciting every- 
 where the admiration of naval experts, for she is said to have been 
 the most beautiful of all the ships of her class. In 1857 she went 
 to the Pacific as the flagship and remained on that station until 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 147 
 
 1860, her chief engineer being first Mr. K. H. Long and afterward 
 Mr. Alban C. Stimers. In 1860 she returned home and was laid 
 up at the Norfolk navy yard for extensive repairs to her machinery, 
 which was very unsatisfactory. Mr. Charles H. Loring, engineer- 
 in- chief of the navy a few years since, who was the first assistant 
 engineer of the Merrimae during the whole period of her service, has 
 written the author regarding her machinery, that the steam log books 
 of the cruise, u contained a record of efforts to overcome inherent 
 defects of design, and of experimental work in different directions, 
 that would be interesting even now, despite its being very ancient 
 history." The arrival of this ship at Norfolk concluded her active 
 career in the United States navy; later chapters dealing with the 
 Civil War will relate the circumstances of her loss to the govern- 
 ment, and her career in the hands of her captors. 
 
 The Wahash had two horizontal condensing cylinders 72 inches 
 in diameter by 3 feet stroke, motion being communicated from the 
 piston rods to the crank by means of a yoke or harp, the once pop- 
 ular steeple-engine form of connection; the piston rods were secur- 
 ed to the large end of the harp, from the opposite, or small end of 
 which the connecting rod reached backward, the crank revolving 
 inside the larger part of the harp, the bottom of the large end of 
 the harp was fitted with a shoe which rode back and forth on a 
 guide-plate. A jet condenser was employed. The steam valves, 
 operated by a Stevenson link from a rock shaft, were flat slide 
 valves with independent cut-off valves on the back of each; these 
 latter were operated by separate eccentrics and consisted in each 
 case of two blocks or plates adjustable by right and left hand screws, 
 being in short, the well-known Meyer expansion valve, which from 
 this application of it came to be generally known in our navy as the 
 " "Wabash valve." The boilers were the same in number and type 
 as those of the Merrimae, differing slightly in outside dimensions 
 but containing five furnaces instead of four, the grate area of each 
 furnace being proportionately smaller and the total grate area 
 practically the same. The same type of feed- water heater was used. 
 The propeller was a two-bladed true screw of brass, 17 feet 4 inches 
 in diameter and 23 feet pitch, made to disconnect and hoist up in a 
 well in the stern. This machinery was built by Merrick & Sons, 
 Philadelphia, from their own designs and was superintended while 
 under construction by Chief Engineer James W King, U. S. Navy. 
 
 10 
 
148 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The Wabash was first commissioned in August, 1856, and 
 served as the flagship of Commodore Hiram Paulding on the home 
 station for about two years, then going to the Mediterranean with 
 the flag of Commodore Lavallette, Mr. King being the first chief 
 engineer and Benjamin F. Garvin the second. She returned home 
 in 1859 and remained in ordinary until the outbreak of the Civil 
 War, when she was put in commission and saw much active service, 
 as outlined in the appendix. 
 
 The Minnesota's engines were built at the Washington Navy 
 Yard from designs prepared by Engineer-in-Chief D. B. Martin, 
 and furnish a third example of the engine practice of that day. 
 There were two horizontal cylinders of the Penn trunk type, 79|- 
 inches in diameter and 3 feet stroke, the trunks being 33 inches in 
 diameter. Unlike the usual Penn design, these engines had a sep- 
 arate slide valve for the cut-off valve, placed in advance of the 
 main steam valve and working upon a fixed seat of its own. The 
 steam valves were ordinary double-ported slides operated by link 
 motion and located on the sides of the cylinders with faces vertical, 
 while the cut-off valves were above them and horizontal, thus en- 
 tailing the disadvantage of leaving a considerable space filled with 
 steam after the cut-offs had closed. The boilers were in all respects 
 duplicates of the Martin boilers described in the case of the Merri- 
 mac, and the propeller was exactly the same as that of the Wabash. 
 The first service of the Minnesota was on the East India station in 
 1857-58 and '59 under the command of Captain S. DuPont, the 
 Mississippi being the flagship of that squadron at the time. 
 
 The engines, boilers and screws of the Roanoke and Colorado 
 were in all respects the precise duplicates of those of the Minnesota, 
 the machinery complete for both ships being built by Anderson, 
 Dulany & Co., (Tredegar Iron Works), Richmond, Virginia, under 
 the superintendence of Chief Engineer W. W. W. Wood, U. S. 
 Navy. The Colorado was prepared for sea when completed in 
 1857, but did very little service besides steaming to Boston, where 
 she was laid up, before the beginning of the war. The Roanoke 
 was flagship of the home squadron in 1858, 1859, and the first 
 months of 1860, then being put out of commission and laid up until 
 the war made her services again necessary. A dearth of enlisted 
 men, and the increased cost of maintaining the steam frigates in 
 
U. S. S. NIAGARA, 1857. 
 
 From a water-color by Clary Ray, Washington, D. C. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 151 
 
 comparison with the cost of keeping sailing frigates in commission, 
 were the reasons for the non- employment of these fine ships. 
 
 The Niagara is generally spoken of as a frigate, having been 
 associated in building with the Merrimac class, but was in fact an 
 exceedingly large sloop-of-war and not a frigate at all. The idea 
 of speed was entertained in her case, and Mr. George Steers, an 
 eminent ship-builder of New York, who had acquired fame as a de- 
 signer of swift clipper- ships and yachts 1 was called upon for pro- 
 fessional aid. Mr. Steers was given a temporary appointment as 
 naval constructor, and during the two years he held that office he 
 designed the Niagara and superintended her construction in 4he 
 New York Navy Yard. The hull was designed with very sharp 
 lines for speed, and her constructor was not restricted by any at- 
 tempt to accommodate her model to the shape of frame timbers on 
 hand; speed under sail was the primary quality sought, but speed 
 under steam was not neglected, about fifty per cent, more power 
 being provided than in the case of frigates. The dimensions of the 
 vessel were unusually large for the time, length on the load water- 
 line being 328 feet 10^ inches; breadth at same, 55 feet; displace- 
 ment, 5,540 tons, and registered tonnage (old measurement), 4,580. 
 
 The Niagara's engines consisted of three horizontal direct- 
 acting cylinders 72 inches in diameter and 3 feet stroke, fitted with 
 independent gridiron slide cut-off valves and jet condensers. The 
 boilers were of the Martin type, the same as used in the five frig- 
 ates, but were considerably larger, having six furnaces each and 
 about fifty per cent, more grate and heating surface. No heating 
 apparatus for feed-water was supplied. There were two telescopic 
 smoke-pipes, and the propeller was of the same hoisting type used 
 on the frigates. The machinery was designed and built by Pease 
 & Murphy (Fulton Iron Works), New York, its construction being 
 under the direction of Chief Engineer William H. Everett, who also 
 had charge of the work of installing it in the vessel. The maximum 
 speed in smooth water under steam alone was found to be 10.9 
 knots, and the average sea speed under steam and sail with varying 
 conditions of weather, was 8.5 knots. 
 
 1 Mr. Steers designed and built the famous yacht America, which won the 
 Queen's cup in the regatta at Cowes, England, in 1851. 
 
152 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 The Niagara was put in commission in the spring of 1857 
 under command of Captain Hudson, Mr. Everett being her chief 
 engineer, and proceeded to England in April to undertake the work 
 of laying the first Atlantic cable. One-half the cable (about 1,250 
 miles) was put in the hold of the Niagara and the other half in H. 
 M. S. Agamemnon, the two ships leaving Valencia, Ireland, Aug- 
 ust 7th, 1857, the Niagara paying out her part of the cable. The 
 U. S. S. Susquehanna accompanied the expedition to lend assistance 
 if needed. Four days after leaving Ireland the cable broke through 
 defects in the paying-out machinery and the enterprise was aban- 
 doned for that year, the Niagara returning home. Chief Engineer 
 Everett had detected the faults in the cable machinery and submitted 
 plans to remedy them which were considered so excellent that at the 
 request of the cable company he was detached from the Niagara 
 and granted leave of absence with permission to go to England to 
 direct the construction of the mechanism proposed by him. In 
 March, 1858, the Niagara returned to England and with the 
 Agamemnon proceeded to the middle of the ocean, from whence 
 each vessel started homeward, each paying out her section of the 
 cable, Mr. Everett in his capacity of superintendent for the 
 cable company directing the work from the Niagara. After a 
 delay of about a month occasioned by a break in the Agamemnon's 
 section three days after the work was begun, the ships had no 
 further trouble and landed their ends of the cable successfully, the 
 Niagara at Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, and the Agamemnon at 
 Valencia, Ireland. 
 
 The engineers of the Niagara on this noteworthy voyage were, 
 Joshua Follansbee, chief; John Faron and Wm. S. Stamm, first 
 assistants; George E. Johnson and Mortimer Kellogg, second as- 
 sistants, and Jackson McElmell, George F. Kutz, and Wm. G. 
 Buehler, third assistants. They all received gold medals from the 
 Chamber of Commerce of the city of New York in commemoration 
 of the event. Chief Engineer Wm. H. Everett, whose genius made 
 the undertaking successful, is said to have received $25,000 from 
 the cable company for his services. After operating for two weeks 
 and transmitting about four hundred messages, the cable ceased 
 working on account of defective insulation, and was not replaced 
 until 1866 when a much larger and better made cable was laid by 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 . — ^ , 
 
 153 
 
 the Great Eastern^ that vessel having failed in an attempt the year 
 before. After laying the cable in 1858 the Niagara spent the re- 
 mainder of that year in a task which was neither agreeable or 
 glorious. To meet a demand of public sentiment she was freighted 
 with nearly three hundred destitute and savage negroes, who had 
 been taken from a slaver named the Echo off the coast of Cuba, 
 and transported them to Liberia on the west coast of Africa, Many 
 of the negroes died on the voyage and the whole experience with 
 them was intensely distasteful, and disagreeable. 
 
 In 1860 the Niagara conveyed to Japan by way of the Cape of 
 <a-ood Hope the embassy which had been sent to the United States 
 by the Sho-gun of that country. The Civil War brought her home 
 the next year and after undergoing extensive repairs she was sent on 
 special service to Europe, her great size rendering her unfit for 
 hostile operations along the insurgent coasts. The capture of the 
 Confederate privateer Georgia in August, 1864, and refusing battle 
 with the iron-clad ram Stonewall off the port of Coruna in April, 
 1865, were the chief incidents of this cruise, which was the Niaga- 
 ra's last. At the close of the war she was laid up in Boston 
 
 and remained there until condemned and sold in 1885. In 1871-'72 
 the work of remodeling and repairing her was prosecuted for a time, 
 but eventually abandoned. 
 
 A resolution of Congress, approved February 3, 1855, author- 
 ized the Secretary of the Navy ' ' to provide and despatch a suitable 
 naval or other steamer, and, if necessary, a tender, to the Arctic 
 seas for the purpose of rescuing or affording relief to Passed Assist- 
 ant Surgeon E. K. Kane, of the United States Navy, and the officers 
 and men under his command." This resolution added one small 
 vessel to the steam navy, the Arctic^ purchased in 1855 and which 
 rendered most efficient service and made the relief expedition suc- 
 cessful through her ability as a steamer to u bore " through the ice- 
 pack of Baffin's Bay. Lieutenant BL J. Hartstene in the bark Re- 
 lease commanded the expedition and succeeded after many trials and 
 hardships in finding Dr. Kane and brought him and his party safely 
 home. The officers volunteered for this service from the navy 
 
 that being a requirement imposed by the congressional resolution, 
 the only one now believed to be living, being Rear Admiral Joseph 
 Fyffe, 1 who was a passed midshipman in the Release. First Assist- 
 
 ■■ Ni ■! n — — —wp wiiii i 'i i ! M . a i .. i » . « . » M —ii i .i . . l . .1 — — — , , ■ ' ■ — ,. i n > i n . i ni w i w>i.'n i i i » i i - ii wi i i i ^mmmmimm w— — «w» 
 
 1 Since deceased. 
 
154 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY W THE WNITKD STATES. 
 
 ant. Engineer Harman NeweM and Acting Third Assistant Engineer 
 Wm. Johnson went in the A¥etic. In 1859 the Aretitfs machinery 
 was removed and the hull transferred to the light house board for 
 a light-ship* 
 
 In the year 1855 also a somewhat larger screw steamer, the 
 Despatch was purchased and sent to the Fensacola navy yard as a 
 tender for that station^ her tonnage being 558 and cost $ 139, ©88. 17. 
 In 1859 she was rebuilt at the Norfolk navy yard and enlarged to 
 694 tons, the name being at that time changed to Pomhmtm, under 
 which she performed much valuable service during the rebellion. 
 
 By an act of Congress approved March 3, 1857, authority was 
 given for the immediate construction of five large screw sioops-of- 
 war, the general siase or class of the vessels being specified by the 
 act. Four of them were at once placed under construction as fol- 
 lows: The Pmmcola at Fensacola; the Lamemter at Philadelphia; 
 the Hartford at Boston ; and the Richmond at Norfolk. In order to 
 incite a healthful rivalry between the naval constructors and civilian 
 ship-builders it was decided to commit the building of the fifth sloop 
 wholly to private enterprise, and advertisements were accordingly 
 issued for competitive plans and specifications. Thirteen proposals 
 were received in response, from which a board of officers selected 
 the one submitted by Mr. Jacob Westervelt of New York, to whom 
 a contract was awarded. The vessel thus brought into existence 
 was the Brooklyn, the hull of which was built by Mr. Westervelt 
 under the superintendeilce of Naval Constructor S. EL Pook, and 
 the machinery by sub-contract by the Fulton Iron Works, superin- 
 tended by Chief Engineer I). B. Martin, U. S. Navy. 
 
 Mr. Martin was the engineer- in-chief of the navy for a full term 
 of four years beginning October 18, 1853, and was known as a 
 thoroughly capable and painstaking engineer, familiar with the 
 many branches of his calling so far as they were developed in his 
 time. He was the inventor of the vertical water-tube boiler which 
 for many years was the type of excellence in marine boiler work 
 and was an improvement over the flue boilers that immed- 
 iately preceded it. After being succeeded at the expiration of his 
 term of office as engineer-in-chief by Chief Engineer Samuel Arch- 
 bold, Mr. Martin performed duty as inspector of machinery for the 
 Brooklyn, and as .general inspector for some smaller sloops built. 
 
CHIEF ENGINEER DANIEL B. MARTIN, U. S. NAVY; 
 
 Engineer-in-Chief of the Navy from October 18, 1853, to October 17, 1857. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 157 
 
 later, as well as serving on boards for the selection of types of new 
 vessels authorized. He resigned from the service in 1859 and, like 
 many other men who have occupied important public offices, ex- 
 pressed his weariness with the thankless world's work by returning 
 to his native place and taking up the peaceful occupation of farmer. 
 
 The Brooklyn was 233 feet long on the load water line; 43 
 feet beam; 2,686 tons displacement, and of 2,070 tons burden. Her 
 machinery consisted of two horizontal direct- acting cylinders 61 
 inches in diameter by 33 inches stroke. The steam valve was a 
 three-ported slide fitted with the Meyer cut-off blocks on its back. 
 A jet condenser was used. There were two Martin boilers with 
 seven furnaces each, aggregating 250 square feet of grate surface 
 and 7,788 square feet of heating surface, fitted with one telescopic 
 smoke-pipe 7 feet in diameter and 50 feet high above the grate bars. 
 The propeller was a two-bladed hoisting screw, 14J feet in diameter 
 and 24.7 feet mean pitch. The total weight of machinery was 240 
 tons and of water in boilers, 64 tons. The vessel was completed in 
 little more than a year after the date of contract and exhibited a 
 speed of 9.2 knots under steam alone in smooth water, with 51 rev- 
 olutions of the screw, 18 pounds steam pressure, 27 inches of 
 vacuum, 878 developed horse-power, and 3.2 pounds of anthracite 
 coal consumed per hour, per horse power. Her first service was in 
 the home squadron in 1859-'60,'61. 
 
 The Hartford, built at the Boston Navy Yard, was slightly 
 smaller than the Brooklyn, her principal factors being length, 225 
 feet; beam, 44 feet; tonnage (old) 1,900, and displacement, 2,550. 
 Her machinery was built by Loring & Coney, Boston, under the 
 supervision of Chief Engineer Jesse Gay, U. S. Navy, and con- 
 sisted of a direct-acting two-cylinder jet condensing engine with 
 cylinders 62 inches in diameter by 34 inches stroke, and two Mar- 
 tin boilers with 253 square feet of grate surface and 7,600 square 
 feet of heating surface. The screw was of bronze, two-bladed, 14 
 feet diameter and 25 feet pitch. This was replaced in 1880 by a 
 more efficient four-bladed screw and the original one diverted to a 
 lasting and appropriate use by being melted and cast into the statue 
 of Admiral Farragut, which stands in Farragut Square, Washington, 
 D. C. The Hwtford was launched early in 1859 and commissioned 
 for sea the following summer, going to the East India station to re- 
 
158 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 lieve the Mississippi as flagship. Her maximum speed under steam 
 alone in smooth water was found to be 9.5 knots, an average sea 
 performance with sail and steam, 7.3 knots. In 1880 the Hartford 
 was fitted with new machinery, the engines put in being a pair of 
 the 6Q"x36" Isherwood engines built by Harrison Loring during the 
 war for a sloop that was never finished — the Kewaydin. 
 
 The Lancaster was the largest of the ships of her class, being 
 235 feet 8 inches long, 46 feet beam, 3,290 tons displacement, and 
 2,362 registered tonnage. Her machinery was built by Reanie & 
 Neafie, Philadelphia, under the inspection of Chief Engineer W. 
 W. W. Wood, the engines and attachments being exactly like those 
 for the Brooklyn. The boilers were of the same type, but about 
 twelve per cent, larger in grate and heating surface than those of 
 the Brooklyn. The contract price for the Lancaster^ machinery 
 complete, was $137,500. Like the Hartford, she was eventually 
 fitted with a pairof the 60 // x36 // Isherwood engines, built during the 
 war. In 1879-80 the hull was thoroughly overhauled and remod- 
 eled with a ram-bow, making her a formidable appearing craft for 
 our navy at that time. The Lancaster was launched in 1858 and 
 went the following year to the Pacific station, where she remained 
 as flagship until 1867, thus being deprived of an active part in the 
 Civil War, in which her sister ships achieved so much glory. 
 
 The Richmond was built at the Norfolk Navy Yard and her ma- 
 chinery at the Washington Navy Yard, the latter being designed by 
 Mr. Archbold, the engineer-in-chief, The principal dimensions of 
 the vessel were: Length, 225 feet; beam, 42 feet; displacement, 
 2,604 tons, and registered tonnage 1,929. The machinery con- 
 sisted of a two- cylinder direct- acting engine with cylinders 58 inches 
 in diameter and 36 inches stroke of piston, fitted with single poppet 
 valves and Sickles' cut-offs. The use of the poppet valves was 
 forced upon the department by the political influence of two civilians 
 who at that time had a contract for directing the construction of 
 machinery for the Pensacola, and was found to be decidedly harm- 
 ful to the efficiency of the ship. Much of the lighter engine work, 
 pipe fittings, attachments, etc., was done at the Norfolk Navy Yard, 
 but all the heavy work was done at Washington. In 1866, as soon 
 as she could be spared from active service, the Bichmond was fitted 
 with a pair of the 6 0^x3 6 u Isherwood engines built expressly for her 
 
U. 8. S. RICHMOND. 
 
 (Brooklyn, Hartford, Lancaster, Pensacola.) 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 161 
 
 at the Washington Navy Yard during the three preceding years. 
 The Richmond was not launched until 1860, and in the latter part 
 of that year went to the Mediterranean as flagship of the station; 
 recalled by the outbreak of the rebellion the next year, she joined 
 the West Gulf blockading squadron, and was a conspicuous factor 
 in the varied operations which made Farragut famous. 
 
 The last of these five ships, the Pensacola, brought into the 
 field of naval contention a new and unique character in the person 
 of Mr. Edward N. Dickerson, who made the engineering life of the 
 Navy Department exceedingly interesting for a number of years and 
 enriched the annals of scientific experiment not a little, by injecting 
 an element of novelty and humor into otherwise dry and technical 
 matters. The Pensacola was built at the navy yard, Pensacola, 
 Florida, and was 230 feet 8 inches in length; 44 feet 6 inches beam; 
 3,000 tons displacement, and 2,158 measured tonnage. Her greater 
 displacement than the other ships of practically the same dimensions 
 was due to the fact, that the machinery as originally installed 
 weighed 540 tons, while that of the Hartford weighed only 200 
 tons, and of the larger Lancaster 246-| tons. This machinery was 
 built at the Washington Navy Yard by the Government from the 
 designs, and under the supervision of two civilians, Messrs. Sickles 
 and Dickerson. 
 
 Mr. Frederick E. Sickles was an inventor and engineer of 
 ability and experience; he was the inventor of a cut-off mechanism 
 for poppet valves, and at this time was engaged in fitting his patent 
 to the engines of the Richmond, as previously mentioned. Mr. 
 Dickerson was a New York lawyer who had become acquainted 
 with Sickles through patent suits and from gaining a smattering of 
 mechanical matters had become an enthusiast on the subject, enter- 
 ing into the study of engineering with all the zeal and blindness of 
 a new convert. He appears to have become enamored of Mariotte's 
 law regarding the relationship of volumes, pressures, and tempera- 
 tures of gases, and from his faith in the infallibility of that law 
 under all conditions came to the conclusion that his mission upon 
 earth was to reform the engineering practices of the time, in which, 
 as now, owing to material difficulties, the law of Mariotte when 
 applied to the steam engine did not display its theoretical perfec- 
 tion. Mr. Dickerson is described as a man of graceful manners 
 
162 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 and appearance, and a m@st eloquent and persuasive speaker, capa- 
 ble of convincing almost anyone of the soundness of his theories. 1 
 
 Having entered into partnership with Sickels, the new firm 
 proposed to the Navy Department to design machinery for one of 
 the new ships which would { ' produce the highest possible effect 
 from a given amount of fuel, and with the least possible weight." 
 The plans suggested were regarded by all engineers as very faulty 
 and Mr. Toucey, the Secretary of the Navy himself, saw their im- 
 practicability. Engineer-in-Chief Martin and his successor, Mr. 
 Archbold, both strenuously opposed the proposition, as did also en- 
 gineers generally in the Navy and in civil life. Mr. Dickerson, 
 however, was intimately connected socially and politically with Mr. 
 Mallory of Florida, , then Chairman of the Senate Committee on na- 
 val affairs, and with Senator Yulee of the same state and a promi- 
 nent member of the same Committee, through whose political influ- 
 ence, exerted with great energy, Mr. Dickerson eventually obtained 
 the sought for contract. The opposition of the Secretary was over- 
 borne and he most unwillingly signed it. The date of this contract 
 was April 3, 1858; by its terms Sickels and Dickerson agreed to de- 
 sign and superintend the building of the Pensacolcfs machinery and 
 allow the Government to use their patents. 
 
 The drawings furnished by them are still on file in the Bureau 
 of Steam Engineering, Navy Department, and exhibit by their bril- 
 liant coloring and crudeness of execution their amateur origin. Mr. 
 Sickels apparently had allowed his good engineering sense to lie 
 dormant and permitted his enthusiastic partner to revel unchecked 
 in mechanical movements and designs. Cams, ratchets, bell-cranks, 
 combination levers, etc., appear in profusion for the performance 
 of the simplest functions, seemingly introduced for the purpose of 
 indicating knowledge of mechanical motions rather than from any 
 necessity of using them. The peculiarities of the machinery thus 
 designed may be generally stated as follows: 
 
 1 As a patent lawyer Mr. Dickerson enjoyed a national reputation. In 1855 
 he was counsel for McCormick before the Supreme Court of the United States in the 
 great suit involving the question of infringement of patents on harvesting machin- 
 ery. Associated with him in this famous case were William H. Seward and Reverdy 
 Johnson, while the opposing counsel were Abraham Lincoln, Edwin M. Stanton and 
 George Harding. 
 
THE S3TEAM HAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 168 
 
 1. The use of large cylinders to work steam with a large meas- 
 ure of expan si on. 
 
 2* The use of a peculiar condensing apparatus. 
 
 3. The use of an air tight fire-room* 
 
 4. The use of small boilers in proportion to the cylinders. 
 
 j Four steam cylinders 58 inches in diameter and 3 feet stroke of 
 : piston were arranged in pairs on opposite sides of the ship, the cyl- 
 inders being jacketed with steam belts 4rJ inches in depth. The 
 cylinders were directly opposite each other, but instead of two 
 cranks, as was possible by the arrangement, the designer complica- 
 ted matters by having sixain order to effect which, two of the con- 
 necting rods were made with forked ends to stride the crank of the 
 opposite cylinder, each arm of the fork grasping a crank of its own. 
 The intoxicating effect of this thing when in motion may be easily 
 imagined. The four cylinders with their connections and gear made 
 the engine plant of the Penmcola practically double in weight that 
 of the other sloops, a fact that did not require an engineer to detect, 
 and was fatal to the claim of the designers of minimizing weights. 
 Two surface condensers with very small circulating pumps were sup- 
 plied, the main dependence for effecting the circulation of water be- 
 ing scoops projecting from the ship's bottom, on the theory that the 
 remarkable speed of the ship would drive water through the condensers, 
 as is now done in practice on swift torpedo boats. The idea of the 
 air-tight fire-room was not bad, but as the blowers were originally 
 connected it was shown by experiment with a lamp that the air 
 pressure obtained was actually negative, the flame of the lamp draw- 
 ing inward from an open air-lock instead of being blown outward 
 by the pressure within. Under this state of affairs the heat of the 
 fire-room was so intolerable that men could not remain in it for any 
 length of time. Two small 5-furnace horizontal fire-tube boilers 
 and two 1-furnace auxiliary boilers of the same type were supplied 5 
 the total grate surface being 234: square feet and heating surface 
 about 7000. Sickels' cut-off gear was of course used, the valves be- 
 ing set to cut off very early in the stroke, leaving Mariotte's law to 
 do the rest. With this valve gear applied to steam and exhaust 
 valves at each end of each cylinder, there was an array of lifting rods 
 and dash-pots, decidedly bewildering. 
 
 The requirements of the department called for a 2-bladed hoist- 
 
164 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ing screw of the type tlien in favor, and the designers projected such 
 a screw with very fine pitch based upon a calculated engine speed of 
 eighty revolutions per minute, but as the work progressed they lost 
 faith in their calculations for speed and altered the screw by increas- 
 ing its pitch to conform to forty revolutions per minute. This con- 
 fronted them with a new and unexpected problem, for a correspond- 
 ing increase in the surface of the screw followed as a necessity, to 
 effect which the diameter was increased about four feet and four 
 blades substituted for two. This destroyed the hoisting feature of 
 the screw and necessitated throwing away all the costly brass cast- 
 ings for the hoisting apparatus, as well as the two-bladed screw al- 
 ready made. The hull had to be docked to alter the stern and deep- 
 en the keel to accomodate the new screw, and the ship's draft ac- 
 cordingly increased. This one blunder cost about $20,000, and is 
 only one example of many, illustrative of what may be called 
 the piece-meal manner in which the designing and fitting together 
 
 of the different parts of the machinery was conducted. The result 
 was, that when the machinery was at last pronounced ready for trial 
 
 it had cost $308,460, or more than twice as much as that of any 
 
 other ship of the JPensacola class. 
 
 Progressing in this tentative manner the work was necessarily 
 slow and sometimes came to a complete standstill for lackof knowl- 
 edge as to what to do next. The other ships of the class were com- 
 pleted and in service, the Civil War began, and still the Pensacola 
 was unfinished ; so slow and uncertain did the work progress that the 
 designers were finally suspected of disloyalty and Mr. Sickels, who 
 had charge of installing the machinery, was actually put under guard 
 and not allowed to leave the vessel or his work. Finally Mr. Ed- 
 ward Faron, who had once been an engineer in the navy, was em- 
 ployed and put in charge of the work, his energy resulting in its 
 completion and a trial trip on the Potomac the 3d of January, 1862. 
 On this trial a maximum speed of 8.8 geographical miles per hour 
 was developed, this costing five pounds of coal per horse power, or 
 about 25 per cent, more than the Hwrtford or Lancaster, while the 
 speed was 0.7 miles less. 
 
 The Pensacola was sent at once to join Farragut's fleet off the 
 mouth of the Mississippi and arrived there in the course of time, af- 
 ter having been ashore for ten days on one of the Florida Keys ? her 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 165 
 
 machinery, and engineers as well, being in a condition of semi-col- 
 lapse when she got in. She participated in the brilliant battle of 
 the forts below New Orleans and the capture of that city in April, 
 but was so uncertain under steam that she was thereafter used more 
 as a floating battery than as a reliable cruising ship. In 1865 her en- 
 tire machinery plant was taken out and replaced with new boilers 
 and engines, the latter being a pair of the 60-inch Isherwood type 
 built by Hazelhurst & Co., Baltimore, for a large sloop-of-war pro- 
 jected but never built, the name of which was Wanalosett, 
 
 Secession deprived Mr. Dickerson of his powerful Florida 
 friends, but his persuasive eloquence about Washington had won 
 him many more, with the support of whom he made himself a veri- 
 table thorn in the side of Engineer-in- Chief Isherwood, as well as a 
 source of much trouble for the Secretary of the Navy. In spite of 
 the object lesson furnished by the costly failure of the Pensacola, 
 Mr. Dickerson was able to get other opportunities to experiment with 
 his theories at public expense until his engineering career terminated 
 with the complete failure of one of the finest ships ever built in this 
 or any other country — the Idaho. The opportunity to make a griev- 
 ance out of the Pensacola affair was not neglected by Dickerson, 
 who had sufficient influence to have the matter made a subject for 
 congressional investigation, the record of which (Report No. 8, 38th 
 Congress, second session) is highly creditable to the engineering 
 branch of the navy, and totally lacking in elements vindicating its 
 instigator. 
 
 In 1864 Mr. Dickerson, as attorney in the case of Mattingly vs. 
 the Washington and Alexandria Steamboat Company, had an oppor- 
 tunity to address a jury in the supreme court of the District of Col- 
 umbia, on which occasion he launched forth upon a decidedly 
 scholarly speech which he entitled "The Navy of the United States. 
 An Exposure of its condition, and the Causes of its Failure." As 
 an example of eloquent invective this speech is worthy of classifica- 
 tion with the famous oration of Catiline, and its author was so proud 
 of it, and so confident of its destroying the reputation of his arch- 
 enemy, Isherwood, that he caused it to be published in pamphlet 
 form and distributed broadcast. It turned out however to be a case 
 of one's enemy writing a book and getting the worst of it. Mr. 
 Isherwood was altogether too busy with a multitude of official cares 
 
166 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 to give any heed to this furious attack upon him, and, indeed, it dis- 
 turbed him very little, for he had been too long and too prominent 
 in public life to be super-sensitive to criticism. There were other 
 members of his corps who had more leisure and who were capable 
 of detecting; in the Mattingly speech an opportunity for amusement 
 at the expense of the author, and there soon appeared an illustrated 
 booklet entitled " Uncle Sam's Whistle, and What it Costs," deal- 
 ing with Dickerson, the trial trip of the Pensacola, and the famous 
 speech, in a most entertaining and amusing manner. In it Dicker- 
 son and his theories were ridiculed so perfectly that instead of ap- 
 pearing before the public as the purifier and reformer of the Navy 
 Department, he found himself suddenly transformed into a laugh- 
 ing-stock for the entire engineering and naval element of the 
 country. The authorship of the book referred to, is somewhat in 
 doubt; the caricatures and sketches were made by Second Assistant 
 Engineer Robert Weir, and the text is generally credited to him, as 
 he was equally handy with pen and pencil. At any rate, the little 
 book was the most exquisite satire ever produced within the navy, 
 and was entirely successful in its purpose of turning the tables upon 
 the assailant of the head of the engineering branch of the service. 1 
 
 In the annual report for 1857 the Secretary of the Navy re- 
 ported progress on the five ships of the Richmond class and took 
 occasion to say that they were too large for the performance of 
 much of the service required of the navy on our own coasts, and 
 especially in China. Ten steamers of " light draft, great speed and 
 heavy guns" were recommended to meet the deficiency, to which 
 Congress responded by an act approved June 12, 1858, authorizing 
 the coustruction of seven screw- sloops and one side- wheel war 
 steamer, the result of this legislation being the acquisition of a class 
 of vessels whose names were familiar in the navy list for many 
 years. 
 
 The side-wheel steamer, of only 453 tons, was built at the new- 
 ly established navy yard at Mare Island near San Francisco and was 
 named Saginaw. The machinery was designed and built by the 
 Union Iron Works of San Francisco under the supervision of Chief 
 Engineer George Sewell, and consisted of a 2-cylinder oscillating 
 
 1 See Appendix 0. 
 
u. s. s. ihoquots, 1859. 
 (Dacotah, Mohican, Wyoming). 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 169 
 
 engine with cylinders 39 inches in diameter by 48 inches stroke, and 
 two 3-furnace Martin boilers aggregating 81 square feet of grate and 
 2000 square feet of heating surface. The water wheels were 20 
 feet in diameter with floats 6 feet in length. The Saginaw was com- 
 pleted in about a year, and in the latter part of 1859 went to the 
 China Station for her first service, remaining on that station until 
 1862 when she returned to San Francisco. Thereafter she was con- 
 stantly in commission attached to the Pacific squadron until October, 
 1870, when she was wrecked on Ocean island. 
 
 Of the seven screw sloops, four were specified to be of 13 feet 
 draft when ready for service, and the other three of 10 feet draft. 
 The following table exhibits the size, etc. , of the four larger sloops, 
 as well as the navy yard where each was built: 
 
 Name. 
 
 Displace- 
 ment. 
 
 Tonnage. 
 
 Length. 
 
 Beam. 
 
 Immersed 
 midship 
 section. 
 
 Where built. 
 
 1 ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ - - 
 
 Iroquois 
 
 Wyoming... . 
 
 1,461 
 1,488 
 1,457 
 1,369 
 
 994 
 1,016 
 997 
 996 
 
 198'- 9" 
 198'-11" 
 198'- 5" 
 198'- 5" 
 
 33/ 
 
 33'-10" 
 33'- 2" 
 32'. 9" 
 
 363 sq. ft. 
 380 " 11 
 366 " " 
 365 " u 
 
 Kittery, Maine. 
 New York. 
 Philadelphia. 
 Norfolk, Ya. 
 
 The Mohican } s machinery was built by "Woodruff and Beach, 
 Hartford, Conn., under the supervision of Chief Engineer D. B. 
 Martin, and consisted of a 2-cylinder back-acting engine with 
 cylinders 54 inches in diameter by 30 inches stroke, supplied with a 
 Pirsson's condenser, and two Martin boilers. Pease & Murphy of 
 New York built the machinery for the Iroquois, which was of the 
 same type as that of the Mohican, the boilers being slightly smaller 
 and the stroke of pistons 28 instead of 30 inches. The machinery 
 for the Wyoming was by Merrick & Sons, Philadelphia, inspected 
 by Chief Engineer Edward Whipple. The engines were direct- 
 acting with two cylinders 50 inches in diameter by 30 inches stroke,, 
 and had a close surface condenser of Mr. Merrick's design. The 
 boilers were of the same type but considerably smaller than those 
 of either the Mohican or Iroquois. Murray & Hazlehurst of Balti- 
 more built the machinery of the Dacotah, which was radically diff- 
 erent from that of the other sloops. Two large direct- acting en- 
 
170 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 gines, 63 inches diameter by 36 inches stroke, drove a huge wooden- 
 toothed gear wheel, which in turn drove* a pinion keyed to the pro- 
 peller shaft, the speed ratio being as 9 to 4. The engines were 
 designed for a speed of 36 revolutions per minute, or 81 of the 
 screw, which was about the same as the direct speed of the other 
 vessels. The boilers of the Dacotah, two in number, were of the 
 horizontal return fire-tube variety, instead of the Martin type then 
 so generally used. Chief Engineer H. H. Stewart was the superin- 
 tendent of construction of this machinery. The four vessels were 
 all completed and in service by the end of 1859, the Mohican being 
 on the coast of Africa, the Iroquois in the Mediterranean, the Wy- 
 oming in the Pacific, and the Daootah on her way to join the Asiatic 
 squadron. All of them showed a speed under steam alone in smooth 
 water of about 11.5 knots per hour, and averaged 8 knots for gen- 
 eral performance at sea. 
 
 The three smaller sloops were the Narragansett, Seminole, and 
 Pawnee, all good and appropriate American names, like most of the 
 names bestowed upon our war vessels in those days. The Narra- 
 gansett was of 1,235 tons displacement and was built at the Boston 
 navy yard, the machinery being built by the Boston Locomotive 
 Works. She had a pair of direct- acting engines with cylinders 48 
 inches in diameter by 28 inches stroke of piston, driving a 4- 
 bladed screw 12 feet in diameter. Pirsson's double- vacuum con- 
 denser was used. The boilers, two in number, were of the usual 
 Martin type, containing 200 square feet of grate surface and about 
 6,150 square feet of heating surface. The Narragansett was com- 
 pleted and in commission by the end of 1859, sailing shortly there- 
 after for the Pacific station. 
 
 The Seminole, built at the navy yard, Pensacola, Florida, was 
 a sister- ship of the Narragansett and similar to her in all principal 
 dimensions. Her machinery was built by the Morgan Iron Works, 
 New York, and consisted of a pair of back-acting horizontal engines 
 with cylinders 50 inches diameter by 30 inches stroke, and two 
 Martin boilers slightly smaller than those of the Narragansett. The 
 Seminole went to the Brazil station in 1860 and was recalled in 
 1861 in time to take an active part in the battle of Port Royal in 
 November of that year. Later she served in Farragut's West Gulf 
 squadron and participated in the battle of Mobile Bay, going into 
 action lashed alongside the Lackawanna. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 173 
 
 The third of these sloops, the Pawnee, differed much from the 
 other two in the form of her hull and in the feature of having twin 
 screws. She was built by the government at the Philadelphia 
 navy yard, but from the designs and under the supervision of a 
 civilian ship-builder, Mr. John W. Griffiths of New York, who held 
 a temporary appointment as a naval constructor while directing this 
 work. It had been determined to arm the Pawnee with four XI- 
 inch Dahlgren guns, and it was to demonstrate that this could be 
 done without exceeding the specified draft of ten feet that Mr. 
 Griffiths was employed. The resulting vessel was considerably 
 longer and broader than the others of her class and of somewhat 
 less than ten feet draft when armed and equipped for service, a fact 
 that made her of great use with her heavy battery in the shallow 
 rivers of the southern coast during the war. Besides having to 
 carry the unusually large battery, the engines to drive the two screws 
 
 ELEVATION, LOOKING- AFT, OF TWIN-SCBEW GEARED ENGINES, U. S. 8. PAWNEE. 
 
 a, cylinder, b, condenser, c, master- wheel, d-d, screw-shaft pinions. 
 
 were considerably heavier than in other vessels of the class, and 
 this necessitated further calculation on the part of the constructor, 
 who so modified the form of the hull that when the vessel was com- 
 pleted her bottom was actually concave. 
 
 The Pawnee was 221 feet 6 inches long; 47 feet beam; 1,533 
 tons displacement and rated at 1,289 tons burden. Chief engineers 
 Wm. W. W. Wood and E. H. Long superintended the building of 
 the machinery at the works of Reanie & Neafie, Philadelphia, 
 there being two horizontal direct- acting cylinders 65 inches in 
 
 ii 
 
174 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 diameter by 36 inches stroke, driving a large -gear wheel 7 feet 3 
 inches in diameter, this driving two smaller wheels keyed to the 
 two shafts, the small wheels or pinions being 2 feet 11 inches dia- 
 meter of pitch circle. The master wheel was somewhat to port of 
 the center line of the ship, as shown by the outline sketch of this 
 unusual type of engine. There were two 7-furnace horizontal re- 
 turn fire-tubular boilers containing 133 square feet of grate surface 
 each. The propellers were four-bladed, nine feet in diameter, and 
 instead of being supported by struts under the counters, the shafts 
 were prolonged to the stern post where they were upheld by a cross- 
 bar, the screws being at the ends of the shafts. 
 
 This vessel was launched in 1859 but was not completed for 
 sea until the spring of 1861 when she at once became actively en- 
 gaged in warlike operations along the Atlantic coast, her first im- 
 portant service being at the destruction of the Norfolk navy yard 
 in April. During the same year she took part in the attack on 
 Hatteras Inlet in August and in the battle of Port Eoyal in Novem- 
 ber. During the following years of the war she was attached to 
 the South Atlantic blockading squadron and did much important 
 service on the coast of Florida and elsewhere. After the war she 
 made one cruise to the Brazil station and then became a hospital and 
 store-ship at home, being finally sold out of the service at Port 
 Koyal in 1884. 
 
 In February, 1855, the Water Witch, which for years had 
 been engaged in exploring La Plata River and its tributaries, was 
 forcibly prevented from further prosecuting that work by being 
 fired upon by a Paraguayan fort commanding the river, the man on 
 duty at the wheel at the time being killed. Attempts to gain re- 
 dress by diplomatic methods having been steadily repulsed by 
 Lopez, the autocratic president of Paraguay, our government was 
 finally forced to resort to a show of power, and late in the year 1858 
 a squadron of nineteen naval vessels carrying two hundred guns and 
 twenty- five hundred men was assembled in the river under command 
 of Flag Officer W. B. Shubrick. Nine of these vessels were sailing 
 frigates, sloops-of-war and brigs, the other ten being small steamers 
 capable of ascending the river. Two of the steamers, the Fulton 
 and Water Witch belonged to the regular naval establishment; an- 
 other was the revenue cutter Harriet Lane, named for the neice of 
 
THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 175 
 
 President Buchanan, and the others were merchant steamers char- 
 tered and armed for the occasion. Six of them were screw steam- 
 ers varying from 220 to 550 tons burden and were named Memphis, 
 Atlanta, Caledonia, Southern Star, Western/port, and M. W. 
 Chopin, the seventh, the Metacomet, being a side-wheel steamer of 
 395 tons. Thirty-eight officers of the engineer corps were attached 
 to these vessels. 
 
 All the steamers and such of the sailing vessels as were per- 
 mitted by their draft of water were moved up the river to a point 
 above Rosario, ready to act against Paraguay if necessary, and in 
 January 1859 the Flag Officer and Mr. .Bowl in, the special commiss- 
 ioner of the United States, proceeded in the Fulton and Water Witch 
 to Assuncion, the capital of Paraguay. No difficulty was then ex- 
 perienced in gaining a respectful hearing and the object of the mis- 
 sion was fully and peacefully accomplished. A satisfactory apol- 
 ogy was extended for firing on the Water Witch] an indemnity was 
 paid on the spot for the benefit of the family of the seaman who 
 had been killed, and the special envoy negotiated a new and ad- 
 vantageous commercial treaty with the Paraguayan government. 
 Without the steamers the successful termination of this expedition 
 would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, Paraguay 
 lying so far inland that natural obstacles would have prevented an 
 approach by troops on land or by sailing vessels on the river except 
 at an enormous outlay of life and money. 
 
 When the squadron returned to the United States the chartered 
 steamers were purchased and added to the naval establishment, 
 about one-half of their cost price being money already paid or due 
 the owners for their charters. After purchase, the names were 
 changed as follows: Metacomet to Pulaski; Memphis to Mystic, 
 Westernport to Wyandotte; Caledonia to Mohawk; Atlanta to Sum- 
 ter; Southern Star to Crusader; M. W. Chapin to Anacostia. The 
 side-wheel vessel, the Pulaski, was kept on the Brazil station doing 
 exploring and other river service until 1863, when she was sold at 
 Montevideo. The smallest of the screw steamers, the Anacosti, 
 became a navy yard tender and coastwise transport attached to the 
 Washington navy yard, and the five other screw steamers were put 
 on active cruising duty on the coasts of Cuba and Africa, in the 
 suppression of the slave trade. All did good service during the 
 
1.76 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Civil War, and all were sold at its close with the exception of the 
 Sumter, which had been sunk in 1863 by an accidental collision 
 with the army transport General Meigs. 
 
 In the naval appropriation act approved June 22nd, 1860, a 
 clause directed the Secretary of the Navy to have all the sailing 
 vessels of the navy surveyed with a view to converting them into 
 steamers. This duty was performed by a board composed of Cap- 
 tains George W. Storer and S. H. Stringham; Engineer-in- Chief 
 Archbold and Chief Engineer Isherwood; Chief Constructor John 
 Lenthal, and Naval Constructor B. F. Delano, the vessels which 
 were abroad and therefore not accessible, were reported upon from 
 their records and drawings in the department. The report of the 
 board was, that it was not expedient to introduce steam into the 
 brigs, sloops and frigates, but that it was desirable in the case of 
 the ships of the line, which class was recommended to be razeed 
 and converted into first-class steam frigates. The Secretary of the 
 Na^y transmitted this report to Congress with his annual report at 
 the end of that year, and urged that the recommendation be carried 
 out, on the ground that, "in the event of war no one of these line- 
 of-battle ships, in the present state of steam navigation, could go 
 to sea with a reasonable degree of safety." The work would un- 
 doubtedly have been authorized by Congress that winter had not 
 events of startling magnitude intervened to split both Congress and 
 the navy in twain, and made the problem of strengthening the 
 steam navy one that could not be met by the make-shift of patch- 
 ing up old sailing ships. 
 
CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 "Ev'n now we hear with inward strife 
 
 A motion toiling in the gloom — 
 
 The spirit of the years to come 
 
 learning to mix himself with life." 
 
 Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 The Engineer Corps from 1850 to the Beginning of the Civil War— Congress Peti- 
 tioned to Increase the Corps — Pay Increased by United Efforts of All Offi- 
 cers — Kank of Engineers Defined — Issue of New Regulations Governing 
 Appointment and Promotion — Opinions of Chief Engineer Gay in Relation to 
 Sails and Steam. 
 
 The membership of the engineer corps provided by the act of 
 Congress of 1842 was based upon the number of steamers in the 
 navy at the time, and made no provision for the performance of 
 shore duty, except by the engineer-in-chief, thus compelling him 
 to obtain technical assistance either from civilian engineers 
 employed as clerks or draftsmen, or naval engineers who 
 might be unemployed because of a steam war vessel having been 
 put out of commission. The inspection work required of the 
 engineer corps by the building of the Powhatan and other steamers 
 at the same time, had with great difficulty been provided for; but 
 had imposed upon the engineer-in- chief a vast amount of care and 
 professional labor, greater in fact than one man could perform. In 
 this dilemma the engineers petitioned Congress for relief, this me- 
 morial having been preserved in official form as Senate Miscellane- 
 ous Document No. 45, 32d Congress, 1st session, is herewith pre- 
 sented. 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 OF 
 
 Engineers of the Navy. 
 
 PRAYING 
 
 A REORGANIZATION OF THE CORPS TO WHICH THEY BELONG. 
 
 February 24, 1852. 
 Eef erred to the Committee on Naval Affairs 
 February 25, 1852. 
 Ordered to be Printed. 
 
178 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of 
 America in Congress assembled : 
 
 The undersigned respectfully represent to your honorable bodies 
 the utter inadequacy of the present organization of the engineer 
 corps of the United States navy, and most earnestly solicit your at- 
 tention to the following brief statement of facts in proof of this 
 assertion, and in support of the propositions herewith submitted. 
 
 The law of Congress authorizing the present organization of the 
 engineer corps was established in the very infancy of our steam ma- 
 rine — at the time of constructing our first steam ship as an experiment. 
 At that date neither a rapid increase of steamers nor an enlarged 
 sphere of duties for the naval engineers, such as has since taken 
 place, was contemplated; and the organization was accordingly made 
 on a basis to meet the limited duties, both in extent and kind, 
 which were intended to be performed by the corps. 
 
 Those limited duties were to be entirely performed afloat on the 
 Atlantic coast of the United States, and their sphere of action was 
 to be confined to the management of the machinery of a few second 
 class vessels, for home service exclusively, to which it was proposed 
 to restrict our steam marine. It is scarcely necessary here to state 
 that these expectations were never, even from the first, realized, and 
 the engineers of the naval corps at once entered upon a wide and 
 very responsible range of duties combining all of theory and prac- 
 tice known in the extensively ramified arts and sciences; making up a 
 thorough knowledge of the principles and practice of marine steam 
 engineering and steam navigation — a knowledge which it is believed 
 will not be contested by any qualified to judge, to demand quite as 
 much natural ability, united with as deep study and long practice, as 
 are required for any other profession; certainly for any of those com- 
 posing the various corps in the government service. 
 
 Some of the duties of the engineer corps are briefly stated as 
 follows: they decide upon and design the various complex machinery 
 of the government war steamers; furnishing, first, the working 
 drawings in the most complete detail, then superintending its manu- 
 facture at the various establishments where it is contracted to be 
 built, and afterwards its erection on board the vessels; finally they 
 operate this machinery at sea. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 179 
 
 The machinery so designed and constructed is of the largest, 
 most complicated and costly description, frequently amounting in a 
 first-class steam-ship to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is 
 manufactured by contract at the various works where the Navy de- 
 partment may direct, and naval engineers are the sole guardians of 
 the public interest, where the expenditures constitute a formidable 
 fraction of the naval appropriations. They furnish the only barrier 
 to peculation on the government, and the fraudulent performance of 
 contracts, if such were attempted. 
 
 The amounts and kinds of labor done are determined by and 
 paid for wholly on the certificates of the superintending engineer 
 and the engineer-in-chief. 
 
 Having thus shown, as we trust, to the satisfaction of your 
 honorable bodies, the importance of having at all times in the coun- 
 try, on shore duty, a sufficient number of engineers of the higher 
 grades to discharge the above mentioned responsibilities, we proceed 
 to show that in this very particular the present organization is de- 
 fective. The act of 1842 only provides for the appointment of a 
 sufficient number of engineers of all grades to supply our war steam- 
 ers, leaving no margin for sickness or other disability, and making 
 no provision whatever either for the supply of the many steamers 
 attached to the coast survey, or for the designing and superintending 
 the construction of such new machinery as the continually increasing 
 wants of the service may require. It therefore follows, as the nec- 
 essary consequence, either that the duty afloat must be performed 
 by an insufficient number of engineers — and those, too, taken from 
 the lower grades, not possessing the requisite experience and knowl- 
 edge for its proper performance — or the more important, and indeed 
 paramount, shore duties must be neglected. 
 
 The Department has therefore preferred the former, rather than 
 incur the loss and inconvenience of the latter. From the very 
 commencement of the steam navy there has scarcely ever been a 
 steamship in commission with the full complement of engineers. 
 Those Engineers, therefore, who are ordered on duty afloat — a duty 
 which tasks arduously their physical qualities — have thrown upon 
 them a much greater amount than can fairly be performed with jus- 
 tice, either to themselves or the government. And if the latter 
 alternative were preferred, and the service afloat filled with the pre- 
 
180 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 scribed number of Engineers, it would keep the whole corps at sea, 
 continually absent from their families, and without the rotation of 
 shore duty enjoyed by other officers of the navy. 
 
 The present organization allows one chief engineer, (commis- 
 sioned by the President), two first assistant, two second assistant, 
 and three third assistant engineers, for each steamer-of-war. All 
 the assistant engineers hold their appointments by warrant of the 
 Honorable Secretary of the Navy. 
 
 The present number of steamers- of -war actually in commission 
 is ten, and in the course of four months five more will probably be 
 added — making fifteen, in all, in commission by the first of June 
 next. 
 
 The present organization authorizes the appointment of fifteen 
 chief, thirty first assistant, thirty second assistant, and forty-five 
 third assistant engineers. Now, by the first of June, next, twelve 
 chief, twenty-seven first assistant, twenty-seven second assistant, 
 and thirty-nine third assistant engineers will be required for service 
 afloat* in naval steamers, leaving but three chief and twelve assist- 
 ant engineers to perform the various shore duties, and engineer the 
 six coast survey steamers. From this it will be seen how insufficient 
 the present organization is, to provide for even a reasonable approx- 
 imation of the requisite number. 
 
 Further : the original organization contemplating only a provis- 
 ion for the management of the machinery of the steam ships, provides 
 merely for a chief engineer afloat as the highest grade ; but, as has 
 been before shown, the construction of this machinery has been also 
 superintended by the engineers of the navy. Now, it is well known 
 that designing and constructing machinery requires a much higher 
 order of ability than its after management ; and when the two du- 
 ties are to be performed by the same Corps, those distinct offices 
 should be performed by distinct grades — those of the highest talent 
 being taken from the one to form the other. 
 
 The organization of 1842 is, therefore, insufficient, in not hav- 
 ing this provision, and we suggest to your honorable bodies the 
 propriety of adding another grade, formed from the present grade 
 of chief engineers, {without increase of pay), to be called 44 Inspect- 
 ors of Machinery Ashore and Afloat." In the British Navy, the 
 necessities of their largest steam marine have already compelled the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 181 
 
 organization here recommended, and from them the title of u In- 
 spectors of Machinery " is borrowed. 
 
 Another reason for enlarging the engineer corps is furnished by 
 the fact that a considerable extension of our steam marine must soon 
 be made, and it is impossible to create good naval engineers as fast 
 as it is possible to build steamships. 
 
 All other corps are sufficiently numerous to anticipate a consid- 
 erable increase of the navy, while the engineers are too few even 
 for the present service. Were a sudden enlargement of the steam 
 marine now to be made, the Engineer Corps will have to be filled 
 with such talent as could be immediately commanded — not such as 
 would be desired — and the public interests would inevitably suffer 
 as a consequence. 
 
 We would urge upon your honorable bodies the strong proba- 
 bility, which will scarcely be contested by any who have bestowed 
 the proper reflection upon the subject, that in 20 years there will be 
 no naval vessels unpropelled in whole or in part by steam. The 
 introduction of steam for all marine war purposes will be compelled 
 by necessity and the pressure of circumstances. 
 
 In conclusion, we, your memorialists, would state, that in our 
 opinion the following additions to the present organization are neces- 
 sary to render the engineer corps equal to the performance of the 
 services required of it, viz : 
 
 The addition of the higher grade of Inspector of machinery 
 ashore and afloat. An inspector of machinery ashore to be allowed for 
 each of the principal navy yards, and a chief engineer for each of 
 the other navy yards ; also, an assistant engineer of each grade for 
 each navy-yard. An inspector of machinery afloat to be allowed 
 for each squadron containing two or more steamers. 
 
 The inspector of machinery for the Washington Navy Yard 
 to be attached to the office of engineer-in-chief of the Navy and 
 to perform such duties as the engineer-in- chief may require of 
 him. 
 
 The inspectors of machinery to receive the same pay and be 
 entitled to the same privileges and immunities in all respects as 
 chief engineers, and to be commissioned in the same manner as 
 Chief Engineers. 
 
 The inspectors of machinery now required to be selected by the 
 
182 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Hon. Secretary of the Navy from the present grade of Chief En- 
 gineers, but that thereafter all promotions to that grade to be made 
 by examination by a Board of Inspectors of machinery. 
 
 Believing the above facts to be truthfully stated and relying on 
 the wisdom and justice of your honorable bodies, we respectfully 
 solicit for them a favorable consideration. 
 
 Charles B. Stuart, 
 Engineer-in-Chief, U. S. N. Navy. 
 
 B. F. Ishbrwood, 
 Chief Engineer U. S. N. for the 
 grade of Chief Engineer. 
 
 J. W. Kino, 
 First Assistant Engineer U. S. N. 
 For the grade of Asst. Engineer. 
 
 A bill providing for more engineers on the lines of the petition 
 was favorably reported by the naval committees of Congress, but 
 like the great majority of naval bills, failed to reach a vote through 
 lack of interest in Congress and external opposition. Soon after- 
 ward work was begun on the iarge screw frigates described in the 
 preceding chapter, and this provided the opportunity of appointing 
 engineers for them before they were completed, nearly fifty new 
 members being added to the corps in the next three years and thirty 
 more in the year 1857. 
 
 In 1856 the engineers joined with all other branches of the 
 service in an organized effort to obtain an increase of pay from 
 Congress ; this effort is noteworthy from the fact, that probably it is 
 the only instance on record where all the corps of the navy laying 
 aside their rivalries and jealousies honestly worked together for a 
 common purpose, also for the more especial and important reason 
 that their united effort was successful. 
 
 The writer has been fortunate enough to have been given a copy 
 of a circular letter prepared by the officers' committee in Washing- 
 ton and sent to all officers of the service, directing the manner to be 
 observed in farthering their endeavor, which letter is here repro- 
 duced as an instructive example of the method of going about the 
 difficult task of securing legislation for the navy. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 183 
 
 4 4 Washington, December, 8, 1856. 
 
 "Sir: At a meeting of Naval Officers, held in this city on 
 the 6th instant, with the view of concert of action in advocating 
 the necessity of a general increase of pay for the Navy, the follow- 
 ing officers were unanimously appointed a committee, charged with 
 the management of the memorial to which your signature is ap- 
 pended, viz : 
 
 W. W. Hunter, Commander. 
 
 Charles Steedman, " 
 
 Thomas B. Neille, Purser. 
 
 Maxwell Woodhull, Lieutenant. 
 
 Eoger N. Stembel, " 
 
 Henrv A. Wise, " 
 
 Joel S. Kennard, " 
 
 William Gr. Temple, " 
 
 John M. Brooke, " 
 
 A. W. Johnson, " 
 
 Kobert Woodworth, Surgeon. 
 
 Mordecai Yarnall, Professor of Mathematics. 
 
 William Chauvenet, u " " 
 
 Joseph S. Hubbard, " " " 
 
 Montgomery Fletcher, First Assistant Engineer. 
 
 James C. Warner, " " " 
 
 u On the evening following, a sub-commiitee was appointed 
 from this Body, under instructions to wait on the Hon. Secretary 
 of the Navy, present the Memorial officially, make known the views 
 of the memorialists, the action which had been already taken, and 
 to consult with him as to the course most promissory of success. 
 
 c c The Secretary suggested the presentation of the Memorial 
 to Congress through the Chairman of the Naval Committees, and 
 that if any suggestions as to the mode of increase were elicited from 
 the Committee, the most simple should be offered ; he has no objec- 
 tion to the exercise of whatever personal influence officers may pos- 
 sess with Members of Congress in furtherance of our object, but 
 he will not approve indiscriminate approach to these gentlemen ; 
 indeed such action would not comport with the dignity of our posi- 
 tion as members of the Naval profession. 
 
184 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 " The Secretary, although sensible of the necessity and propri- 
 ety of our application for an increase of pay, and willing to heartily 
 second our efforts in that direction, is not disposed to favor per cent- 
 age on sea-service ; he is of opinion that such a mode of increase 
 would not be strictly just in its operation on the higher grades of 
 the service. 
 
 " At a subsequent meeting of the General Committee it was 
 unanimously resolved : ' That, if our suggestions upon the subject 
 were solicited by the Naval Committees, we should simply state, 
 that, in our opinion, an addition of thirty per cent, to our present 
 pay, all around, and in each grade, would not be taxing too much 
 the liberality of Congress. ' 
 
 "Asa matter of course, the Naval Committees, should they 
 require information upon this subject, will direct its enquiries to the 
 Head of the Navy Department. So far as individual action of the 
 officers is concerned, judicious management and unanimity oi 
 opinion is certainly necessary. It is with this view, and to prevent 
 embarrassment, which might result in a defeat of the object con- 
 templated, that we address to you this circular. This Committee, 
 acting in the spirit of fairness and justice, would claim your confi- 
 dence and earnest support. 
 
 < ' It is a well-known fact, that the expression of adverse views 
 upon Naval matters before Congress tends to obstruct the action of 
 that body, and we beg that in the exercise of whatever personal 
 force you may be able to bring to the advancement and success of this 
 measure, you will support the recommendation of your committee." 
 
 A bill entitled "A bill to increase and regulate the 
 pay of the navy," was introduced and experienced the various 
 vicissitudes of bills for two congresses, finally becoming a law on 
 the 1st of June, 1860. By the terms of the act an increase of pay 
 of about twenty-five per cent, in every grade and corps was pro- 
 vided for, and a longevity scale adopted, the majority of the grades 
 being provided with four rates of pay increasing with length of ser- 
 vice. The following rates were fixed for the engineer corps: 
 
 Chief Engineers, (on duty). 
 
 For first five years after date of commission % 1,800 
 
 For second five years after date of commission 2,200 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 185 
 
 For third five years after date of commission $2,450 
 
 After fifteen years from date of commission 2,600 
 
 On leave, or waiting orders. 
 
 For first five years after date of commission. .........$1,200 
 
 For second five years after date of commission...... 1,300 
 
 For third five years after date of commission. 1,400 
 
 After fifteen years from date of commission 1,500 
 
 First Assistant Engineers. 
 
 On duty $1,250 
 
 On leave, or waiting orders 900 
 
 Second Assistant Engineers. 
 
 On duty ........$1,000 
 
 On leave, or waiting orders 750 
 
 Third Assistant Engineers. 
 
 On duty ..................$ 750 
 
 On leave, or waiting orders 600 
 
 In January 1859 Mr. Toucey, the Secretary of the Navy, 
 issued the following general order conferring naval rank upon the 
 officers of the engineer corps: 
 
 " Chief engineers of more than twelve years will rank with 
 commanders. 
 
 c Chief engineers of less than twelve years with lieutenants. 
 ' First assistant engineers next after lieutenants. 
 'Second assistant engineers next after masters. 
 c Third assistant engineers with midshipmen. 
 'This order confers no authority to exercise military command, 
 except in the discharge of their duties, and no additional right to 
 quarters." 
 
 This order was affirmed by Congress March 3, 1859, with the 
 words "except in the discharge of their duties" stricken out, 
 which omission merely served to emphasize the embarrassment of 
 
186 
 
 THE STEAM NAY Y OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the engineers in controlling their own men aboard ship, where their 
 authority was necessarily military, or e]se no authority at all. 
 
 Orders defining the rank of surgeons and paymasters, similar 
 to the above, had been in existence for some time and the status 
 thus conferred was generally satisfactory to the staff officers. That 
 it was not satisfactory to others is shown by the fact that the de- 
 partment had to re-affirm the staff officers' rank by the following 
 order, issued February 25, 1861: 
 
 ' 4 Surgeons of the fleet, surgeons, paymasters, and chief en- 
 gineers of more than twelve years, rank with commanders. Sur- 
 geons, paymasters, and' chief engineers of less than twelve years, 
 rank with lieutenants. Passed assistant surgeons and first assistant 
 engineers rank next after lieutenants. Assistant surgeons and 
 second assistant engineers next after masters, and third assistant 
 engineers with midshipmen. 
 
 u This rank is now established by law, and neither the depart- 
 ment nor any officer in command has authority to withhold it, or the 
 honors which belong to it. 
 
 u Commanding and executive officers of whatever grade, while 
 on duty, take precedence of surgeons, paymasters and engineers, 
 and the effect of this precedence is to elevate the former, but not to 
 depress the latter, or to detract from the rank or the honors of the 
 rank already secured to them. Commanders, while on duty as 
 commanding officers, will have a corporal's guard. Lieutenants, 
 while on duty as executive officers, will wear on the cuffs a gold 
 embroidered star, one inch and a quarter in diameter, to be placed 
 one half of an inch above the stripe of gold lace, and these will 
 indicate the precedence to which they are by law entitled." 
 
 An entirely new schedule of requirements for admission and 
 promotion of officers in tne engineer corps was issued in 1859, the 
 regulations in full are as follows: 
 
 Regulations for Admission and Promotion in the Engineer Corps. 
 
 Before persons can be appointed assistant engineers in the navy, 
 they must have passed a satisfactory examination before a board of 
 at least three engineers, designated at such times as the wants of 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 187 
 
 the service require. Application for permission to appear be- 
 fore such board must be made in writing to the Secretary of the 
 Navy, accompanied by satisfactory testimonials as to good moral 
 character, correct habits, and sound constitution. The application 
 will be registered, and when a board next meets, permission will be 
 sent to the applicant, stating the time and place of the meeting of 
 the Board. 
 
 In the examination for a third assistant engineer, the candidate 
 must be able to describe all the different parts of ordinary condens- 
 ing and non-condensing engines, and explain their uses and their 
 mechanical operation; to explain the manner of putting engines in 
 operation, how to regulate and modify their action, and the manner 
 of guarding against danger from the boilers, by the means usually 
 applied to them for that purpose. He will be expected to write a 
 fair, legible hand, and to be well acquainted with arithmetic and the 
 mensuration of surfaces and solids of the regular forms; to have 
 worked not less than one year in a marine engine manufactory, and 
 present testimonials of his mechanical ability from the director of 
 the establishment in which he may have served. He must not be less 
 than twenty nor more than twenty-six years of age. 
 
 Candidates for promotion to the rank of second assistant engineer 
 must have served at least two years as third assistants in the manage- 
 ment of steam engines in the navy in actual service, must produce 
 testimonials of good conduct from the commanders and senior engi- 
 neers of the vessels in which they may have served, and must pass 
 a satisfactory examination upon the subjects, and to the extent pre- 
 scribed for third assistants; they must likewise be able to explain 
 the peculiarities of the different kinds of valves, the construction of 
 expansion valves, the manner of their operation, the remedies which 
 are usually resorted to, to check foaming in boilers; must possess a 
 knowledge of the usual causes of derangement in the operation of 
 air pumps, force pumps, and feed pipes, the proper preventives and 
 remedies, and the mode of cleaning boilers when required. They 
 must have a general knowledge of the mensuration of surfaces and 
 solids. 
 
 Before promotion to the rank of first assistant engineer candi- 
 dates must have been employed at least three years as second assis- 
 tant engineers in the management of steam engines in actual service, 
 
188 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 and produce testimonials of character and good conduct from their 
 former commanders and superior engineers ; must pass a satisfactory 
 examination upon the subjects prescribed for third and second assis- 
 tants, the mechanical powers, the different kinds of deposits and in- 
 crustations to which boilers are exposed, and be able to furnish a 
 working sketch or drawing of different parts of engines and boilers; 
 to superintend their construction, and determine upon their accuracy 
 
 and fitness for use. 
 
 Promotions to the grade of chief engineer are to be made after 
 
 the candidate has served for two years as first assistant engineer in 
 the management of steam engines in the navy in sea service, and 
 has been examined upon any of the subjects specified for assistant, 
 which the board may deem expedient, and after they shall have sat- 
 isfied the board of their previous good conduct and character, of 
 their sufficient knowledge of mechanics and natural philosophy, of 
 the forms, arrangements, and principles of different kinds of steam 
 engines, boilers, propellers, and their various dependencies, which 
 have been successfully applied to steam vessels, and their alleged 
 relative advantages, for sea or river service, and shall have attained 
 26 years of age. 
 
 Candidates for promotion who may fail to pass a satisfactory 
 examination may be examined once again, and if they fail to pass 
 at the second examination they shall be dropped from the list of en- 
 gineers. 
 
 Candidates for admission or promotion will be required to fur- 
 nish the board of examiners with evidence of their abilities in the ex- 
 ecution of mechanical drawings, and their proficiency in penmanship. 
 
 The examining board will report the relative qualifications of 
 the persons examined, and number them, giving the best qualified 
 the lowest number. 
 
 When, in the opinion of the department, the wants of the ser- 
 vice require the admission of engineers of any grade above that of 
 third assistant, the same qualifications and restrictions as to times of 
 service will be exacted as by the regulations required for promotion 
 to the grade in question: Provided, that all appointments to the 
 grade of second assistant shall be made between the ages of 21 and 
 28; and to that of first assistant, between 25 and 32; and to that of 
 Chief engineer, between 28 and 35. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 189 
 
 The assistants must employ all favorable opportunities for ac- 
 quiring a practical knowledge of the fabrication of the different parts 
 of steam engines and their dependencies, that they may be able to 
 repair or replace such parts as the space and means for making and 
 repairing can be furnished in steam vessels. When other qualifica- 
 tions are equal, candidates whose skill and abilities in these particu- 
 lars are superior, will have precedence over others for admission or 
 promotion, who may be considered equal in other particulars. 
 
 Isaac Touoey, 
 
 Secretary of the Navy. 
 
 JSTavy Department, May 7, 1859. 
 
 During this decade immediately preceding the Civil War the 
 supremacy of steam power over sails as a means of marine locomo- 
 tion came to be very generally admitted in the naval service, even 
 by the most conservative, and the work of creating an efficient steam 
 fleet was begun in earnest. Of the many opinions and reports origi- 
 nating in the navy about this time and dealing with the subject of 
 steam versus sails, one of the most interesting and valuable that has 
 been preserved is a letter by Chief Engineer Jesse Gay of the Miss- 
 issippi which exhibits so much good practical sense in looking at the 
 question, that it is here copied for the benefit of a younger genera- 
 tion of naval officers, some of Mr. Gay's views even yet being 
 pertinent to naval economy. 
 
 U. S. Steamer Mississippi, 
 
 At Sea, November 8, 1851. 
 
 Sir: After long experience on board of this ship, a careful obser- 
 vation of the defects, with a wish to render her more efficient, I take 
 the liberty to make the following observations, and suggest improve- 
 ments, which, if adopted, will render the Mississippi more useful, 
 efficient and safe. 
 
 The objects to be attained in a War Steamer are, first, weight 
 of battery. Second, speed by steam, with an economical expendi- 
 ture of coals. Third, to combine her steam and sails, so that one 
 shall not be transported at the expense of the other. A ship of war, 
 without guns, would be perfectly defenseless; a war steamer, with 
 encumbrance on her steam power, is equally so. The sails of the 
 
 12 
 
190 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Mississippi are auxiliary to her steam; with her sails unaided by the 
 engines, she is helpless ; on the other hand her engines are sufficient 
 to handle her without the assistance of sails. The conclusion is, 
 therefore, that the less the engines are encumbered with the spars 
 and sails, which are useless, the better for efficiency and safety. 
 Again, if a ship is overburdened with sails, spars, steam engines, 
 boilers, besides any useless weight, it deducts the same number of 
 pounds from her battery, or immerses her to a dangerous depth in 
 the water, obstructs her speed, and occasions a useless expenditure 
 of coal, for which a small compensation is obtained. 
 
 The spars and sails of the Mississippi are too large; if they were 
 reduced to the proper size, her speed would be augmented more than 
 one knot per hour, allowing her to draw the same water. The en- 
 gines not only have her vast hull to propel, but the great surface of 
 spars, which are a great obstruction to the speed. It is supposed 
 the larger the sails the more assistance they are capable of rendering. 
 This is a mistaken idea, as experience abundantly has shown; a pro- 
 per area of sails is unquestionably advantageous, but this area must 
 not exceed a limit at which they would be an obstruction to speed 
 by steam. When the winds are fair, a six knot breeze is required 
 before the sails are of any use in propelling the ship conjointly with 
 steam power; if the winds are strong a large spread of canvas is 
 dangerous. In a storm, only a sufficient quantity is necessary to 
 steady the ship, and this will of course be, fore and aft sails. With 
 light fair winds, the power of the engines will bring light airs ahead; 
 thus, a steamer will most of the time have light airs ahead, or occa- 
 sionally aft, but not in sufficient force to make her sails effective; 
 hencQ, it is clear that her great spars are an encumbrance to her 
 speed under most of these circumstances; the mainsail cannot be 
 carried — the main topsail has seldom been used — studding sails have 
 been useless — fore topsail useful — top-gallant sails seldom — fore- 
 topmast stay-sail and jib useful. The useful sails are fore and main 
 trysails, fore topmast stay sail and jib, and occasionally the spanker 
 with effect. With moderate or fresh breezes ahead, the top gallant 
 sails are necessarily sent down; in strong head winds, lower yards 
 and top masts are also sent down. In fine weather all these spars 
 are again sent up to improve the appearance of the ship. All this 
 has to be done at the expense of labor of the crew, while the very 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 191 
 
 spars which are so often sent tip and down are seldom of any use in 
 propelling the ship. The ship may be propelled by the aid of her 
 sails, but in a very awkard manner; the first difficulty, the crew is 
 far too small to handle her immense sails with sufficient promptitude; 
 in the second place, the mainmast is so far abaft the centre of mo- 
 tion that all the sails upon it, (except with a wind directly aft), are 
 of but little or no use; the foremast is also too far forward. All 
 these difficulties it is impossible to obviate; with sails alone she is a 
 clumsy ship, hardly capable of handling herself; she never can be 
 an auxiliary steamer with her masts in their present position, the 
 most important of which cannot be moved (the main). But these 
 are not all the difficulties; the great length of spars produce another 
 difficulty of equal damage to her efficiency, which must exist with 
 her great spars, viz: spare sails, spars and rigging must be put into 
 the ship to the amount of many tons; this weight only adds to her im- 
 mersion and reduces her speed; or, in other words, it requires a 
 portion of her steam power to transport this useless weight, which 
 does nothing to efficiency, speed or safety. As I before remarked, 
 all the unnecessary weight put into a War Steamer, deducts the 
 same from her general efficiency and safety. On two occasions she 
 has been fitted for a cruise with all the spare material on board, 
 which rendered her dangerously deep and almost unfit for sea, and 
 1 believe a very small proportion of these sails and spare spars have 
 ever been used, for the purpose for which they were put on board. 
 
 To remedy the difficulties I have enumerated, I suggest that 
 the spars, including lower masts, be reduced to a proper dimension, 
 which would not exceed in weight more than one half the present 
 ones; this would be a reduction of many tons, beside the reduction 
 of weight of spare spars, sails and rigging, the saving to convert to 
 more useful purposes room which it now occupies, and with this re- 
 duction the sails, rigging, etc., would be useful, where now it is so 
 unwieldly as not to be used at all. Again, if this reduction was 
 made, the sails and spars would be proportioned to her crews, and 
 could then be worked with ease, where now they cannot. 
 
 Besides the reduction of spars, she requires a reduction in the 
 weight of her anchors (she now carries four, which weigh 63 cwt. 
 each; she only requires two, or if four, of much less weight than the 
 present) this would also reduce the weight of chain. At no time du- 
 
192 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ring this cruise has she required more than two anchors; late in the 
 cruise a much smaller one was substituted for one of the above 
 weight; this has been found sufficient and much less labor to work it. 
 
 I am of the opinion that a steamer is more secure with two 
 anchors (and not extremely heavy ones) than a sailing ship is with 
 four. The engines themselves are a greater security than two an- 
 chors; hence, a steamer does not require so great weight of anchor. 
 
 If the forgoing suggestions were followed out the Mississippi 
 could then carry two or four more guns, and draw less water than she 
 now does; her speed. would be augmented with the same expenditure 
 of coal. She would have more room to berth her crew, which she 
 much needs; her expenses would be reduced, and she would be more 
 formidable; but if her present spars are retained, all of these quali- 
 ties, which are so important in a war steamer, will be lost. 
 
 In submitting these views, which I have gathered from experi- 
 ence on board the Mississippi, I have felt some delicacy, knowing 
 that I have ventured opinions which do not accord with theory. 
 What I have submitted is based upon practical observations alone, 
 for the correctness and verity of which, I appeal to every experienc- 
 ed officer who has sailed in her any length of time. I have also had 
 opportunity of seeing many foreign war steamers, particularly those 
 of England and France, the difference between them and the Missi- 
 issippi is, they carry less spars and more guns. 1 have not seen a 
 war steamer of any nation carrying so heavy spars as the Mississippi, 
 but I have frequently met with those of much less tonnage and 
 power, carrying a much greater weight of battery. 
 
 I am very respectfully, 
 
 Tour obedient servant, 
 
 Jesse Gay, 
 
 Oapt. John C. Long, Chief Engineer. 
 
 Com. U. S. Steamer Mississippi. 
 
CHAPTEE XII 
 
 " There's a demon, and he dwelleth in the drum ; 
 See the volunteers as down the street they come. 
 Proudly the procession marches, 
 Under bunting, under arches, 
 To the rattle, rattle, rattle, 
 Like a volley belched in battle, 
 And he saith : 
 
 I am Cain come again ; on my forehead is the stain. 
 Gome, 
 Come, 
 
 Come, come, come — 
 
 Unto Death." — Francis Z. Stone. 
 
 THE CIVIL WAR. 
 
 IN Captain Collum's excellent history of the United States Marine 
 Corps he prefaces his account of the services of the marines 
 during the war of the rebellion with an extract from Lossing's 
 "Civil War in America," which outlines most eloquently the ser- 
 vices rendered by the navy to the nation during that gigantic 
 struggle for life. So correctly is the arduous and baffling character 
 of the naval operations indicated, and so gracefully is the praise due 
 the navy accorded, that the author feels he cannot do better than 
 introduce the same extract as a prelude to what he will have to say 
 regarding the achievements of the naval engineers during that same 
 trying period. 
 
 44 In the spring of the year 1861 a civil war was kindled in the 
 United States of America which has neither a pattern in character 
 nor a precedent in causes recorded in the history of mankind. It 
 appears in the annals of the race as a mighty phenomenon, but not 
 an inexplicable one. Gazers upon it at this moment, when its 
 awfully grand and mysterious proportions rather fill the mind with 
 wonder than excite the reason, look for the half -hid den springs of 
 its existence in different directions among the absurdities of theory. 
 There is a general agreement, however, that the terrible war was 
 clearly the fruit of a conspiracy against the nationality of the 
 republic, and an attempt, in defiance of the laws of divine equity, to 
 
194 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 establish an empire upon a basis of injustice and a denial of the 
 
 dearest rights of man It was the rebellion of an 
 
 oligarchy against the people, with whom the sovereign power is 
 rightfully lodged. 
 
 4 4 The services of the national Navy during the war, on account 
 of their peculiarity, attracted less attention than those of the army, 
 and were not appreciated by the people. They have an equal claim 
 to the gratitude of the nation, so freely accorded to the other 
 branch of the service. The Confederates having no navy, in a 
 proper sense, and only flotillas here and there, and with some pow- 
 erful 4 rams' on rivers and in harbors, and not a ship on the ocean, 
 excepting roving pirate vessels, — built, armed, furnished, and 
 manned chiefly by the British, and cruising alone, — there were few 
 occasions for purely naval battles. The whole force of the Navy 
 Department was employed in the services of blockade, in assisting 
 the attacks of the armies on fortifications along the rivers and on the 
 borders of the Gulf and the ocean, or in chasing the pirates, In 
 these fields of great usefulness the national vessels performed labors 
 of incalculable value, and officers and men exhibited skill, valor, 
 and fortitude unsurpassed. 
 
 "Never in the history of the world were there occasions for 
 such exhausting labors and highest courage in service afloat as the 
 American Navy was subjected to in its operations among the rivers 
 and bayous of the southwestern regions of the Republic. Many a 
 victory over which the people have shouted themselves hoarse in 
 giving plaudits to the gallant army might never have been achieved 
 but for the co-operation of the Navy. To the common observer it, 
 in many instances, seemed to be only an auxiliary, or wholly a 
 secondary force, when, in truth, it was an equal, if not the chief, 
 power in gaining a victory. Without it, what might have been the 
 result of military operations at Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh 
 and all along the Mississippi Eiver, especially at Vicksburg, Port 
 Hudson, and New Orleans ; what at Mobile, Pensacola, Key West, 
 along the Florida seaboard, the sea-coast islands, Charleston and 
 the borders of North Carolina, and even in holding Fortress Monroe 
 and Norfolk ? 
 
 4 4 Notwithstanding the weak condition of the naval service, the 
 decree went forth, in the spring of 1861, that all the ports of the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 195 
 
 States wherein rebellion existed must be closed against commerce 
 by a strict blockade. Foreign nations protested and menaced, hut 
 the work was done. There were no dock-yards or workmen adequate 
 to construct the vessels needed for the service, yet such was the 
 energy of the Department that an unrelaxing blockade was main- 
 tained for four years, from the Capes of the Chesapeake to the Kio 
 Grande, while a flotilla of gunboats, protecting and aiding the army 
 in its movements, penetrated and patrolled our rivers, through an 
 internal navigation almost continental, from the Potomac to the 
 Mississippi. Ingenuity and mechanical skill developed amazing in- 
 ventions. That marine monster, the Monitor, was created and 
 began a new era in naval warfare ; and the world was suddenly en- 
 riched by new discoveries in naval service. Vessels of the merchant 
 service were purchased and converted into strong warriors ; and men 
 from that service were invited to man them. Schools were estab- 
 lished for nautical instruction ; dock-yards were enlarged and filled 
 with workmen ; and very soon a large number of vessels were 
 afloat, watching the harbors under the ban. No less than two hun- 
 dred and eight war vessels were constructed, and most of them 
 fitted out during the four years ; and four hundred and eighteen 
 vessels were purchased and converted into war ships. 
 
 ' 4 The blockading service was performed with great vigor and 
 efficiency under the triple stimulus of patriotism, duty, and personal 
 emolument. The British government professed to be neutral, but 
 British merchants and adventurers were allowed to send swarms of 
 swift- winged steamers, laden with arms, ammunition, clothing, and 
 everything needed by the insurgents, to run the blockade. The 
 profits of such operations were enormous, but the risks were equally 
 so ; and it is believed that a true balance-sheet would show no 
 profits left, in the aggregate, with the foreign violators of the law. 
 The number of such vessels captured and destroyed during the re- 
 bellion by the national Navy was fifteen hundred and four. The 
 gross proceeds of property captured and condemned as lawful prize 
 before the first of November following the close of the war amounted 
 to nearly twenty-two millions of dollars, which sum was subse- 
 quently enlarged by new decisions. The value of the vessels cap- 
 tured and destroyed (eleven hundred and forty-nine captured and 
 three hundred and fifty- five destroyed) was not less than seven mil- 
 
196 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 lion of dollars, making a total loss, chiefly to British owners, of at 
 least thirty million of dollars." 
 
 It is not believed that the distinguished historian from whose 
 work the above is quoted has in the least overstated the value of 
 the services rendered the nation by the navy during the Civil War. 
 As the length of time increases since the conclusion of that struggle, 
 we are getting to study its events more carefully and to be more 
 critical in analyzing the exact relationship between causes and 
 effects. An analysis that was quite impracticable in the years 
 immediately succeeding the close of the war because at that time 
 men's minds were filled with the magnitude and brilliancy of the 
 achievements of an army numerically so enormous as to eclipse en- 
 tirely the naval force, and in which a personal interest was com- 
 pelled from the very circumstance of its greatness, which necessit- 
 ated representation in its ranks of every family within the borders 
 of the nation. The blockade of the sea coast alone, of the revolted 
 territory, cannot appear now in any other light than a deciding 
 factor in the ultimate conquest of the Confederacy. Had the 
 Southern states been free to ship their cotton to Europe and ex- 
 change it for provisions and munitions of war, who is wise enough to 
 say when the end would have come ? Could the invasion of the 
 South been possible had not the naval force, hovering over the 
 coasts with ceaseless vigilance for more than three years, practic- 
 ally disarmed the Confederacy and starved its people into submis- 
 sion by depriving them of the benefits of commerce ? 
 
 In telling the story of the maintenance of the blockade it is 
 impossible to give too much credit for results to the naval engineers 
 serving in the blockading squadrons. A great object in view was 
 to keep the vessels in condition to remain on their stations, for the 
 removal of even one steamer at a time meant the weakening of the 
 line of watchers and might involve a breaking of the blockade, and 
 this duty to a great extent fell upon the engineers, for without 
 steam power — always ready — the ships were worthless. In hastily 
 constructed gunboats, or commercial vessels as hastily equipped for 
 war purposes, without an adequate supply of engineering stores and 
 without proper tools or facilities for effecting repairs, the duties of 
 the engineers were the most difficult and fretting that can be 
 imagined; notwith standing which, they, as a rule were found equal 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 197 
 
 to the emergencies that confronted them and succeeded in keeping 
 their ships and the blockade efficient, and this in spite of the fact 
 that the engineering talent of every sea-port of Great Britain was 
 arrayed against them in the effort to produce marine machinery 
 that could over-endure that of the Federal vessels. 
 
 The author has been favored with a large number of letters 
 from men who as regular or volunteer engineers performed their 
 share in the labor of making a rigorous blockade possible, and from 
 the recital of trials and hardships thus presented he cannot but mar- 
 vel at the faithfulness, loyalty, and thoroughness of the services 
 rendered. The engineers shared with other officers the dangers of 
 battle, pestilence, and storm, as well as the hardships due to im- 
 proper food and insufficient clothing, and in addition, they had to 
 struggle constantly with the discouraging task of keeping old and 
 worn-out, or new and badly adjusted, machinery in working order; 
 a task that permitted no rest for either body or mind. A record of 
 the make-shifts, alterations, inventions and substitutes to which 
 these devoted men were compelled to resort from sheer lack of 
 proper mechanical appliances to aid them in their labors, would 
 prove a most interesting chapter in the history of man's ingenuity, 
 and would be valuable to the engineers of to-day, even though our 
 smallest gun- vessels now carry excellently equipped repair shops, 
 and are supplied with a veritable mine of tools, fittings and spare 
 parts. 
 
 Had the service been less arduous and afforded some oppor- 
 tunities for rest, the possibility of securing it was often wanting. 
 Although absolutely essential to the well-being of the ship, in a 
 degree scarcely approximated by any other class of officers, the en- 
 gineer was too often precluded by the nebulous nature of his relat- 
 ive rank from occupying any, but the merest leavings of the quarters 
 in which he was supposed to have a share. One former member 
 of the corps writes of an instance where an engineer attached to 
 a small armed steamer was completely left out in the distribution 
 of living space and for upwards of two years had no home on board 
 whatever, except a piece of canvas in form of a tent under which 
 he was allowed to sleep, summer and winter, on top of the deck 
 house. Numerous other instances have been related to the writer 
 of engineers unprovided with quarters being obliged to sleep in the 
 
198 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 hot drum-rooms over the boilers, or who constructed for themselves 
 rough bunks in the engine rooms or shaft alleys. These cases of 
 individual neglect and hardship fortunately do not stand as repre- 
 sentative of the experience of all, for in many vessels there was 
 room even for the engineers, but they serve to show what discour- 
 agements were encountered by a considerable number of an invalu- 
 able class of officers who inherited an official position vastly inferior 
 to the value of their services or their real merits. 
 
 Under such circumstances it is remarkable that the engineers 
 maintained their patriotism and devotion to duty as well as they did, 
 the records of the war showing, however, that instances of defection 
 or faint-heartedness among them were rare indeed. Soon after the 
 war closed, Kear Admiral David D. Porter, writing to Chief En- 
 gineer W.W. W. Wood, thus referred to his experience with the 
 naval engineers: u I have had more than two thousand engineers 
 under my command during the Rebellion and I have never known 
 them to shrink from any service." There were of course occasional 
 instances of discouragement after prolonged and arduous duty 
 where the engineer gave up in despair and declared his inability 
 to keep his department longer in service, and there were also a very 
 few cases where the engineer allowed a wearied and disgusted com- 
 manding officer tq influence him into making such a report against 
 his judgment. In either case the effort to get off the blockade and 
 enjoy a respite from its toils at some Northern navy yard generally 
 came to naught. 
 
 After the capture of Port Royal, early in the war, a naval sup- 
 ply and repairing station was maintained at that place, and there the 
 broken-down ships from the blockade were usually sent for examin- 
 ation before being allowed to proceed North. The mechanical de- 
 partment of this station was presided over by veteran chief engin- 
 eers of the old navy, who had long before lost all the nonsense of 
 youth and were incapable of sympathy for their juniors who had 
 tales to tell of what they could not do. To their minds, an engineer 
 in charge of a steamer in the presence of the enemy ought to be able 
 to do anything, and be resourceful enough to meet any emergency. 
 If, upon examination, they decided that the reported defects in a 
 vessel could have been repaired at sea the offending engineer whose 
 report had taken the vessel off her station received very little 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 199 
 
 mercy. A report to the commander-in-chief of the squadron meant 
 a court-martial, and that in turn meant reduction in grade or sum- 
 mary dismissal from the service. This may seem harsh and unchar- 
 itable treatment of those whose duties at best were trying, but indi- 
 viduals have little right to consideration in great national operations, 
 and their chief engineers, whose reports would have appeared cruel 
 and savored of persecution in time of peace, were merely perform- 
 ing their proper part in the prosecution of the war. The service 
 rendered by them in this manner, and in directing repairs to dis- 
 abled ships, was of incalculable benefit to commanders of squadrons 
 in carrying out the operations entrusted to them, a fact appreciated 
 and very properly referred to by Rear Admiral Dahlgren, who wrote 
 to the Department on the occasion of relinquishing command of the 
 South Atlantic Blockading Squadron at the close of the war: " Fleet 
 Engineer Danby has been for the last two years in charge of the 
 mechanical steam department at Bay Point, where his industry and 
 thorough knowledge of his business has alone enabled me to keep in 
 active operation so many steamers; the first time, perhaps, that this 
 power has been submitted to such a test." 
 
 To those who study the social and industrial conditions existing 
 within the United States prior to the Civil War, conditions which 
 contributed fully as much to the causes which made that war pos- 
 sible, as did the political questions generally supposed to have been 
 its provocation, the fact that the mechanical element of the North, 
 represented by the engineers of the navy, had such an important 
 part in accomplishing the conquest of the Confederacy must appear 
 as a most appropriate manifestation of retributive justice. An arti- 
 ficial state of society at the South, founded upon the institution of 
 human slavery, had inculcated a genuine contempt for labor and 
 the industrial arts, and resulted in the utter neglect of the vast min- 
 eral resources of that region, now one of its most important sources 
 of wealth, simply because no one was so low in the social scale as to 
 burden his mind with a knowledge of metallurgy, which involved 
 practical experience. Had the South possessed the educated 
 scientists, the skilled mechanics, and the innumerab 1 3 mills and 
 workshops that a higher order of progress has now given her, there 
 is no telling when, or how the war might have ended. 
 
 As it was, when the war broke out there was but one establish- 
 
200 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ment — the Tredegar Iron Works, of Richmond — within the limits 
 of the Confederacy capable of making the very modest armor plates 
 used on the Merrimac and Albemarle, while the total number of 
 skilled artisans was probably exceeded by the number employed 
 in any one of a score or more of Northern workshops busily en- 
 gaged in making ships, engines and guns for the national navy. 
 When the first supply of arms and tools had been exhausted, the 
 South was unable to make others, nor could she receive them from 
 abroad on account of the vigilance of the blockading ships, kept up 
 to their work by the skill of the Northern engineers. As tersely 
 expressed by Engineer-in-Chief Isherwood, in one of his official re- 
 ports regarding the conduct of the war, "our antagonists had 
 neither engineering skill nor resources in themselves, nor could 
 they, owing to the efficiency of our navy, obtain them from others, 
 and the want was fatal ; they had despised the mechanical arts and 
 sciences, and by those arts and sciences they fell." 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 u Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; 
 He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; 
 He hath loosed the fateful lightnings of his terrible swift sword; 
 
 His truth is marching on. 
 Julia Ward Howe — Battle-Hymn of the Republic. 
 
 1861. The Civil War, continued — Engineers and Steam Vessels in the Navy at the 
 Outbreak of Hostilities — Resignation and Dismissal of Officers — B. F. Isher- 
 wood Appointed Engineer-in-Chief of the Navy — Increase of the Engineer 
 Corps— Qualifications of the Volunteer Engineers — Kemarkable Career of Don 
 Carlos Hasseltino — Vessels Added to the Fleet during the Year — The Keab. 
 sargke and Canandakhja Class of Steam Sloops — The Ninety Day Gunboats 
 —The First Double-Enders. 
 
 A T the beginning of the eventful year 1861 the engineer corps of 
 
 ii the navy consisted of twenty-eight chief engineers, forty-three 
 first assistant engineers, twenty-nine second assistant engineers, and 
 ninety-two third assistants, a total of one hundred and ninety-two. 
 This number was established by adhering as closely as practicable to 
 the provisions of the act of Congress of 1842, which authorized the 
 appointment of one chief engineer, two first assistants, two second 
 assistants, and three third assistants for each steam-vessel of war. 
 The steam navy at the beginning of 1861 consisted of six great ships, 
 of which the Niagara and Colorado were types, and which in their 
 size, battery and beauty were the marvels of the maritime world at 
 that day; six first-class screw sloops, everyone of which was destned 
 to become famous in the annals of the navy, and one of which — the 
 Hartford — was to become a name synonymous with naval glory; 
 four large side- wheel steamers, one of which was the Powhatan / 
 eight second-class steam-sloops, represented in the modern navy by 
 the Iroquois / five purchased screw steamers of about five hundred 
 tons each, and five small side wheel gunboats, the Michigan of this 
 class being still with us. 
 
 Twenty- seven of the members of the engineer corps were Vir- 
 ginians, and seven others belonged to the Carolinas, Alabama, and 
 Florida, but the majority came from the New England and Middle 
 States, Maryland and the District of Columbia being especially well 
 
202 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 represented. The Northwestern States, which now furnish so many 
 naval engineers through the medium of the Naval Academy, then 
 had but five representatives — two each from Ohio and Wisconsin 
 and one from Illinois. Mr. Samuel Archbold was the engineer-in- 
 chief of the navy at the beginning of the year, but in March he 
 resigned that position and his commission as a chief engineer in the 
 navy as well, going out of the service without any suspicion of dis- 
 loyalty, as his motives for resigning were personal and not con- 
 nected in any way with the political unrest of the times. He was 
 succeeded by Mr. Benjamin F. Isherwood, who was selected by the 
 President and appointed engineer-in-chief on the 26th day of 
 March, 1861. Mr. Isherwood 5 s name was the fifth in order on the 
 list of chief engineers at the time, and he was recognized as the 
 foremost man of his corps in professional ability and zeal, while 
 his indefatigable energy and intense patriotism brought to the head of 
 one of the most important executive branches of the Navy Depart- 
 ment a man well fitted for the Herculean task that the next few 
 years had in store. 
 
 In the spring of this year the political storm that had been 
 gathering for so many years finally burst, and the officers and men 
 of the navy were confronted with the desperate issue of choosing 
 between two flags. Of the engineers from the Southern States five 
 resigned and had their resignations accepted by the Department, but 
 by that time resignations of officers of the army and navy had become 
 epidemic, and President Lincoln directed that all such in the future 
 be treated as proof of disloyalty sufficient to warrant summary dis- 
 missal from the service of the United States, which treatment was 
 administered to seventeen of the naval engineers who sent in their 
 resignations after it was too late. One of these, William P. William- 
 son, whose name had stood at the head of the list of chief engineers, 
 became the engineer-in-chief of the Confederate navy; a few others 
 continued their profession in the same service, while others went 
 into the insurgent army, where some achieved considerable military 
 distinction, and others were killed or crippled fighting against the 
 flag under which they had acquired their first military ideas, and to 
 which they would have remained loyal had they been inspired by 
 that thoughtful good judgment supposed to be an attribute of all en- 
 gineers by the virtue of philosophic nature of their calling. 
 
CHIEF ENGINEER SAMUEL ARCH BOLD, U. S. N. 
 
 En^ineer-in-Chief of the Navy from October 16, 1857, to March 25, 1861. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 205 
 
 In July, 1861, Congress provided for a temporary increase of 
 the navy " for and during the present insurrection," which act au- 
 thorized the Secretary of the Navy to hire, purchase, or contract for 
 such vessels as might be found necessary, to arm and equip them, 
 and to appoint acting or volunteer officers for them. Under the 
 operation of this law the navy grew rapidly both in ships and in per- 
 sonnel: such vessels as were bought outright or built on the order of the 
 Navy Department became, of course, government war-vessels, and 
 as such served to authorize a great increase in the regular engineer 
 corps, a considerable increase being effected during the first year of 
 the war, but not at all in proportion to the increase in the number of 
 war steamers, as the officials of the Navy Department were wise 
 enough to know that the rebellion would eventually be put down, 
 and it was only a question of time before the navy would have to be 
 re-established on a peace basis. Accordingly the majority of the 
 new engineers held only acting appointments. At the end of the 
 year 1861 the regular engineer establishment had increased to four 
 hundred and four, of whom forty-eight were chief engineers; at the 
 same time there were three hundred and sixty-four acting engineers 
 distributed through the grades of first, second and third assistants. 
 The increase in numbers went steadly on until, in January, 1865, 
 there were four hundred and seventy-four regulars and eighteen 
 hundred and three volunteers, of which numbers fifty-nine regulars 
 and fifty- five volunteers were chief engineers. 
 
 In spite of all the hurry, excitement, and anxiety incident to the 
 existence of a state of war, it is greatly to the credit of the officials 
 at the head of the engineer corps that the careful system of examina- 
 tions for admission to the regular service was rigidly adhered to 
 throughout the war, thus preventing the acquisition to the permanent 
 corps of any who were not professionally and morally fit for the ser- 
 vice. In the case of acting appointments in the volunteer service 
 little or no examination was required, the need for engineers being 
 so great that almost any one who could show a letter of recommenda- 
 tion from a commander or chief engineer of a war-vessel, or from a 
 civilian of prominence, could get an acting appointment. The ma- 
 jority of the acting engineers were men who were really engineers, 
 many of them being of recognized ability and reputation in their 
 line, who entered the service from motives of patriotism, and natur- 
 
206 
 
 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ally chose the engineering branch of the navy in preference to wad- 
 ing through the mud, either with or without a sword, in the army. 
 
 Numbers of the volunteer engineers were men who belonged to 
 the profession of civil engineering and were attracted to the en- 
 gineer corps of the navy by the similarity of names, when they 
 made up their minds to enter the military service of the govern- 
 ment. These gentlemen, with possibly a few exceptions, began 
 with no practical knowledge of marine machinery, but with their ex- 
 cellent training in matters relating to civil engineering they were 
 quick to learn and in a short time became among the best acting 
 engineers. Several of them entered the regular service by taking 
 the prescribed examinations and, both during the war and since, 
 have been professionally prominent in the corps. As was often the 
 case in the army, many men of education and ability served in sub- 
 ordinate positions in the navy solely because they wished to serve 
 their country in its day of need, and such men were generally ap- 
 preciated and promoted to official positions after short periods of 
 faithful service as subordinates. A case in point is that of Mr. P. 
 J. McMahon, a civil engineer employed on the Boston and Worces- 
 ter Railway, who was a personal friend of the chief engineer of the 
 San Jacinto, and was very desirous of going to sea with him as an 
 acting engineer. The plan was prevented by the San Jacinto hur- 
 riedly going to sea at a time when her complement was filled, with 
 the exception of one coal heaver, but Mr. McMahon was determined 
 to go, and accordingly took the vacant billet. He cheerfully did 
 duty as a fireman, oiler and yeoman until, in about a year, he re- 
 ceived the coveted warrant as an acting third assistant engineer; 
 promotion to second assistant came not long afterward, and the 
 close of the war found him a first assistant in charge of the machin- 
 ery of the Mahaska. 
 
 Mr. McMahon' s predecessor as engineer in charge of the 
 Mahaska furnishes a curious example of motive, in seeking service 
 in the volunteer engineer corps. The Atlantic Works of Boston did 
 a tremendous business from the very beginning of the war in build- 
 ing ships and machinery for the navy, and when the owners found 
 themselves getting rich by staying at home they came to the very 
 proper conclusion that some one having a proprietary interest in the 
 business must repre-ent the patriotism of the firm by going to the 
 
U. 3. S. TUSCARORA. 
 
 Length, 198' 0"; beam, 33' 2"; disp., 1,457 tons. (Kearsarge, Oneida and Wachusett same class.) 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 209 
 
 war. Accordingly, the proprietors cast lots and Mr. Philander S. 
 Brown was elected to go to the front. He chose the engineer corps 
 of the navy for his field of usefulness, asked for, and received a 
 warrant as acting first assistant engineer, and served as chief 
 engineer of the Mahaska until the war was over, when he resigned 
 and returned to his home and business interests. 
 
 As might be expected, and as often occcurred in the other 
 branches of the navy, some acting appointments were given to men 
 who were unqualified for the duties they were expected to perform 
 on board a war steamer. Adventurers who saw in the seven hun- 
 dred and fifty dollars per annum of the "Acting Third" in the navy 
 more attraction than was offered by thirteen dollars per month and 
 found in the ranks of the Army of the Potomac ; firemen recom- 
 mended by their captains for some gallant or meritorious act ; sons 
 or friends of prominent military and civil officials; subalterns 
 disgusted with the Ohickahominy swamps, and many other classes 
 too numerous to mention, all had their representatives in the volun- 
 teer engineer corps. As there were from four to ten engineers on 
 each war steamer in those days, the presence of one of these inex- 
 perienced persons was not dangerous, as he was always under the 
 eye of some one who was able to prevent disaster by interfering in 
 case of necessity. When a number of them happened to get 
 shuffled together, as sometimes occurred, and thus obliged to try to do 
 something without being told how to do it, they generally came to 
 grief, as is attested by innumerable tales in the service. 
 
 One of these stories relates to the wearing away of the valve 
 faces and seats of the engine of one of the new sloops-of-war on 
 one of her first sea trips. The acting engineer in charge of the 
 machinery had been in the regular service and was a competent en- 
 gineer, but, unfortunately for the vessel, he was confined to his 
 room by illness on the voyage referred to. Of the four acting as- 
 sistant engineers, one only had any experience with machinery 
 and that was limited to fire-room work, he having been a fireman 
 promoted as a reward for some act of bravery in an emergency ; his 
 scholastic attainments were extremely limited and stopped short at 
 the problem of subtracting the hourly records of the engine-room 
 counter and dividing the remainder by sixty to find the average 
 revolutions of the engines per minute, a problem that he never 
 
210 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 mastered, and which finally drove him back into the fire-room, where 
 he found more familiar tools to handle than pencils and paper. 
 This case had numerous parallels in the line as well as in the en- 
 gineer corps during the war, and is a good illustration of the folly 
 of making officers of enlisted men simply as a reward for gallantry 
 in battle, without any regard for the fitness of the person to perform 
 the duties of the office to which he is advanced. 
 
 Another of the acting engineers was a village schoolmaster 
 from the up-country of New Hampshire, whose knowledge of 
 marine engines had been obtained from a picture of a condensing 
 engine in Olmsiead's "Principles of Natural Philosophy," at that 
 time a favorite text book in the country schools of New England. 
 The third one was a youth of about seventeen, who had been the 
 schoolmaster's favorite pupil in the New Hampshire village, and 
 who had joined him in the enterprise of suppressing the rebellion 
 through the medium of the naval engineer corps. The fourth acting 
 engineer had gained such engineering knowledge as he possessed 
 by having been the captain of a tug boat. Although well meaning 
 and inspired with a desire to do their best, these amateur engineers 
 in some way managed to overlook in turn the necessity of having 
 the steam chests oiled, and, as a result, the valves and seats at the 
 end of the trip were found to be reduced to little more than a heap 
 of iron filings, and the ship was kept from active service many 
 weeks in consequence while damages were being repaired. 
 
 Another incident which occurred about the same time was not 
 the source of any great amount of delight to the acting engineers 
 directly concerned. A war steamer left New York for the seat of 
 war one fine day, the commander and all hands indulging in. high 
 hopes of glory and prize money. After a few hours at sea the 
 engine suddenly stopped, and then began running backward at a 
 furious rate; do what they would, the engineers could not coerce 
 the engine into going ahead again, and finally the captain had to 
 ignominiously abandon his cruise and take his ship, tail first, back 
 to New York, an object of surprise and derision to the watermen of 
 that busy seaport. The navy yard was reached in the course of 
 time, where a few vigorous remarks from the chief engineer of the 
 yard and about two minutes work put everything to rights. The 
 eccentric had slipped. 
 
U. S. S. OSSIPEE. 
 
 Length, 205' ; beam, 38' ; disp., 1 ,934 tons (Adirondack, Housatonic and Juniata in same class.) 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 2m 
 
 The volunteer engineer who was not an engineer did not always 
 get into trouble, as is shown by the successful experience of one 
 Don Carlos Hasseltino, whose remarkable naval career is worthy of 
 a little space in the history of the naval engineering of the rebellion. 
 This gentleman was a native of the West Indies, but had graduated 
 at a college in Ohio, and at the time of the outbreak of the war was 
 reading law in Hamilton, Ohio. His sympathies being with the 
 South, he went to Montgomery, Alabama, and entered the Confed- 
 erate army, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in about two 
 years, when he fell into the hands of the enemy in the vicinity of 
 Fort Donelson. Pretending to be a civilian and a foreigner, which 
 he could easily do by his ability to speak French, he succeeded in 
 getting a pass from the Union officer in command at Memphis, and 
 went to St. Louis, not knowing just why he was going there or what 
 he would do next. 
 
 In the streets of St. Louis he chanced to meet a former college 
 mate who was an assistant engineer on one of the gunboats in the 
 Mississippi Eiver. This friend urged him to give up the Confeder- 
 ate cause and enter the navy as an engineer, to which proposal he 
 demurred, as he said he u did not know a steam engine from a horse 
 power," but his friend assured him that did not make any dif- 
 ference. Accordingly, and knowing that he would probably be 
 hi nged as a spy if his connection with the South were discovered, he 
 studied some of the assistant engineer's books for a few weeks and 
 then presented himself to the authorities as a candidate for the en- 
 gineer corps. He made such a good impression that he was given 
 an acting appointment as a first assistant engineer, and was ordered 
 to duty on board the Essex, then the flag-ship of Rear-Admiral 
 D. D. Porter. 
 
 According to Mr. Hasseltino's account of himself,his great fear 
 at this time was that the Essex would be ordered to get under way 
 to go somewhere, and he would consequently be called upon to do 
 something with the machinery, which he knew he could not do, his 
 mechanical knowledge being yet so imperfect that he thought the 
 feed-pump was a contrivance for making the vessel go sidewise. 
 But luck was on his side, for he had opportunities to talk with Ad- 
 miral Porter, and so impressed that distinguished officer with his 
 professional worth that he was put upon the Admiral's staff and as- 
 
214 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 signed to important special duty in connection with the building and 
 inspection of ironclads at various points on the Mississippi River. 
 A report made by him to the admiral respecting the value of certain 
 types of ironclads for river service was considered so meritorious 
 that the admiral embodied it in his report to the Secretary of the 
 Navy, and that official in turn transmitted it to Congress in his an- 
 nual report. 
 
 In May, 1864, after less than a year's service, Mr. Hasseltino 
 was made an acting chief engineer, in which capacity he continued 
 on duty with the Mississippi flotilla; two years later, in May, 1866, 
 he was honorably mustered out of the service. Subsequently he 
 acquired the title of general and considerable wealth by engagiug 
 in various wars in Chile, Peru, and Cuba, but with this we need not 
 deal here. Acting Assistant Surgeon J. M. Batten has written an 
 interesting little volume of reminiscences of his service in the navy 
 during the war, in which book occurs the following account of the 
 person whose versatile career has just been described: 
 
 "Don Carlos Hasseltino was chief engineer of the United 
 States monitor Catawba, but spent most of his time on board the 
 United States monitor Oneota,&nd was one of the messmates of that 
 vessel. I associated with him constantly from October 6, 1865, to 
 January 16, 1866. He was a jolly, kind, sympathetic and intelli- 
 gent associate. In height he was about six feet, and had a large, 
 wiry frame. His hair and eyes were black; he wore a black mus- 
 tache. He never gave offense to any one, but would not suffer 
 himself to be insulted. He carried two Derringers in leather 
 pockets buttoned to his pantaloons above the hips. He was very 
 polite and chivalrous; woe to the person that gave offense or offered 
 insult. " 
 
 The progress made in increasing the fleet during the year 1861 
 was phenomenal. Mr. George D. Morgan of New York was ap- 
 pointed a special agent of the Navy Department with orders to buy 
 every American merchant vessel found at all suitable for war purpo- 
 ses, in the selection of which he was aided by a board of officers of 
 the navy — a constructor, a chief engineer, and an ordnance officer. 
 This board had a small steamer in New York harbor and made a 
 business of boarding and examining every American vessel within 
 
U. S. S. CANANDAIGUA. 
 
 Length, 225'; beam, 38' 4"; disp., 2,030 tons. (Lackawanna, Monongahela, Sacramento, Shenandoah and Tlconderoga in same class.) 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 217 
 
 reach, a favorable report on any vessel making it obligatory on Mr. 
 Morgan's part to buy the vessel at the best bargain he could make 
 with the owners. As Mr. Morgan received a commission of two and 
 one-half per ceut. on his purchases this obligation to buy, was for 
 him, a decidedly good thing. From the middle of July until the first 
 of December there were purchased in this manner thirty-six side- 
 wheel steamers aggregating 26,680 tons and costing $2,418,103; 
 forty-three screw steamers aggregating 20,403 tons and costing $2,- 
 215,037, and one hundred and eighteen sailing vessels — ships, barks 
 and schooners — at a cost of $1,071,898. Sixty of these latter were 
 loaded with stone and sunk for the purpose of closing some of the 
 southern ports; the others, and all of the steamers, were converted 
 into war vessels and put into active service. 
 
 At the same time that merchant vessels were being pressed into 
 service, the navy yards and private ship and engine building estab- 
 lishments were worked to their utmost capacity in building war ves- 
 sels. By the end of the year, fifty-two such vessels were entirely 
 completed and in service or were well along in construction. None 
 of the navy yards were then equipped for the building of engines on 
 a large scale, which work therefore had to be let out by contract to 
 marine engine builders, the machinery specifications in the majority 
 of cases being furnished by the Navy Department from designs of 
 Engineer-in-Chief Isherwood. Excellent plants for building wooden 
 ships existed at the navy yards and many of the hulls of these rapid- 
 ly constructed vessels were built by the Government at the different 
 yards while their machinery was under construction at neighboring 
 machine shops. 
 
 The ship and engine building work of the Navy Department 
 now assumes such magnitude that space forbids the practice previously 
 observed in these pages of giving detailed information as to the de- 
 signers and builders of the various vessels, their machinery, arma- 
 ment, cost, and subsequent naval careers, although it is hoped that 
 the value of this work will be enhanced by its appendix, in which 
 much of the information referred to is given in tabular form. Hence- 
 forth it will be necessary to refer to new vessels in general terms 
 only, except in certain special cases where peculiarities of design or 
 remarkable engine performance occasion so much interest from an 
 engineering point of view that a more detailed history of their origin 
 is desirable. 
 
218 
 
 THE STEAM NAY Y OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 In February, 1861, Congress authorized the construction of 
 seven sloops-of-war, and the Navy Department, to take advantage 
 of the plans already in its possession of the sloops built in 1858, 
 duplicated the Iroquois in the Oneida, the Wyoming in the Tusca- 
 rora, the Mohican in the Kearsa/rge, and the engines of the Seminole 
 in the Wachusett. These vessels were of about 1,560 tons displace- 
 ment. By subsequent action of Congress, at the special session, 
 authority was granted to build other sloops of war, similar to those 
 previously ordered, making fourteen in all, and work on them was 
 begun in the early fall of the year. These sloops-of-war, besides 
 those already named, were the Juniata, Ossipee, Adirondack^ Sous- 
 atonic, Sacramento, Oanandaigua, Lackawanna, Ticonderoga, Shen- 
 andoah, and Monongahela. The first four named were of 1,934 
 tons displacement, and the other six, differing somewhat in size 
 from each other, were of about 2,200 tons. The hulis of all four- 
 teen were built by the Government at the navy yards, three each at 
 Portsmouth, N. EL, and Boston, and four each at New York and 
 Philadelphia, the machinery being built by contract at various 
 places in New England, New York and Philadelphia. 
 
 These fourteen steam sloops were large, handsome vessels and 
 did much excellent service during the war and afterward. The only 
 one still remaining in the service is the Monongahela, which, with 
 her machinery removed, is used as a training ship in which naval 
 cadets and apprentice boys acquire those arboreal habits supposed to 
 be essential in the training of modern men-of-war's men. With the 
 disappearance of this class of vessels we have suffered what the 
 author regards as a most serious loss in the removal from the navy 
 list of those sonorous and distinctively American names, like Oan- 
 andaigua, Oneida, Lackavmnna, Tuscarora, Shenandoah, and the 
 like, which were sufficient in themselves to proclaim the nationality 
 of the vessel bearing them, and at the same time precluded by their 
 derivation from adoption by foreign navies, except inappropriately. 
 Our Ajax, Dolphin, Petrel, Vesuvms. and others, always have their 
 namesakes in other navies, and imply a poverty of resource on our 
 part wholly undeserved in view of the great multitude of beautiful 
 and euphonious words that have become part of our American lan- 
 guage in the names the vanished tribes of aborigines gave to their 
 hills and forests, rivers and lakes. 
 
U. S. S. KATAHDTN, 1861. 
 
 Type of the Ninety-Day Gunboats. Length, 158' 4"; beam, 28'; disp., 091 tons. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 221 
 
 Before work on the fourteen sloops heretofore named had been 
 undertaken, the Navy Department, acting on its own responsibility 
 in the emergency, without waiting for the sanction of Congress, 
 issued proposals and entered into contracts with different builders 
 for the construction of twenty-three small, heavily-armed screw gun- 
 boats, of about 500 tons burden, which, from the rapidity of their 
 construction came to be known in the service as " ninety- day gun- 
 boats." The contracts were nearly all made during the first two 
 weeks in July, and work was pushed to such an extent that four of 
 them were in the battle of Port Royal on the seventh of November, 
 and seventeen of them were in active service before the end of the 
 year. Their names were: Huron, Sagamore, Itasca, Sciota, Ken- 
 nebec, Kineo, Aroostook, Chippewa, Cayuga. Chocura, Kanawha, 
 Katahdin, Marblehead, Ottawa, Owasco, Pembina, Penobscot, Pin- 
 ola, Seneca, Tahoma, Unadilla, Wissahickon, and Winona. 
 
 The machinery of the first four named was constructed by the 
 Novelty Iron Works, New York, which establishment duplicated in 
 them the machinery it had previously put into two gunboats 
 built for the Russian government. The machinery for the other 
 nineteen was built by various contractors from designs and specifi- 
 cations furnished by Engineer-in- Chief Isherwood, and was some- 
 what similar to that of the first four, but with about sixty per cent, 
 more boiler power. The hulls of all these gunboats were built by 
 contract. 
 
 For service in shallow and narrow rivers a new and peculiar 
 type of gunboat was developed in the " double-enders, " twelve of 
 which were begun during the summer and fall of 1861. These were 
 pointed at both ends and had a rudder at each end, being thus 
 freed from the necessity of turning around by being able to steam 
 at equal advantage in either direction. Paddle wheels had become 
 practically obsolete for war vessels, but the imperative demand for 
 very light draft in these gunboats made it necessary to adopt side 
 wheels for their propulsion. They were the Maratanza, Mahaska, 
 Sebago, Octorora, Sonoma, Conemaugh, Tioga, Genessee, Miami, 
 Paul Jones, Port Royal, and Cimmerone. They were of 850 tons 
 burden. The engines were built by contract from Mr. Isherwood 's 
 plans, and were of the direct-acting inclined type. All had BartoPs 
 vertical water tube boilers, except the Paul Jones, which had Mar- 
 
This Cut shows Air-duct and Arrangement for Ash-pan Forced-draft as Fitted to Boilers of^the Ninety-day Gunboats, Many 
 
 of the Double-enders, and Other YesselslBuiltp)uring the War. 
 
THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 229 
 
 tin's boilers. All had blowers for forcing the draft. The hulls of 
 the last three-named were built by contract, and the other nine in 
 the navy yards. 
 
 Besides the forty-nine steamers already referred to, three iron- 
 clad war vessels were undertaken during this same busy year. 
 These, being a new departure in naval construction and marking a 
 development in that direction exactly in line with the naval engin- 
 eer's profession, will be described in a separate chapter. To quote 
 from the report of the Secretary of the Navy regarding the war-ship 
 building of the year, u No sailing vessels ha^e been ordered to be 
 built, for steam as well as heavy ordnance, has become an indispens- 
 able element of the most efficient naval power." 
 
OHAPTEK XIV. 
 
 " I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; 
 They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps ; 
 I have read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps ; 
 
 His day is marching on." 
 Julia Ward Howe — Battle-Hymn of the Republic. 
 
 1861. The Civil War, Continued— The Norfolk Navy Yard—Attempt to Save the 
 Frigate Mersimac— Endeavors of Engineer-in-Chief Isherwood— Destruction 
 of the Yard — Attack on Hatteras Inlet— Destruction of the Privateer Judah 
 at Pensacola. 
 
 WITH the exception of two events in the career of the frigate 
 Chesapeake early in the present century, there are few inci- 
 dents in our naval history more humiliating than the loss of several 
 of our national vessels at the Norfolk navy yard at the beginning 
 of the rebellion. So utterly lacking is this affair in redeeming fea- 
 tures that it would be gladly passed over without comment were it 
 not for the fact that the principal efforts to save the nation's honor 
 and property on that occasion were the outcome of the zeal and pa- 
 triotism of two naval engineers, and for that reason the story must 
 be told as a necessary part of this history. 
 
 The navy yard at Norfolk, Virginia, at the beginning of 1861 
 was the largest and most important of the government navy yards. 
 It was one of the oldest in date of establishment and the most com- 
 pletely equipped with wharves, docks, ship-houses, workshops, and 
 store-houses. Great quantities of naval material and stores had been 
 assembled there prior to the outbreak of the rebellion, among other 
 war material there being about twelve hundred cannon of various 
 types, mostly serviceable, although some of the guns were of very 
 ancient patterns; fifty-two, according to the inventory made by the 
 Confederates immediately after they took possession of the yard, 
 were new nine-inch Dahlgren guns, at that time formidable pieces 
 of ordnance. 
 
 At the beginning of April, 1861, the following named vessels 
 
 were lying at the Norfolk Yard: the new steam frigate Merrimac, of 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 231 
 
 forty guns; the sloops-of-war Germ an town an d Plymouth, of twenty- 
 two guns each; the brig Dolphin, of four guns; the old ships-of-the. 
 line Pennsylvania, Delaware and Columbus ; the frigates United States , 
 Raritan and Columbia-, and the sloop-of-war Cumberland. An un- 
 finished ship-of-the-line named the New York was on the stocks in 
 one of the ship houses. The Merrimao was one of those large and 
 beautiful steam frigates of which the Navy was then so justly proud. 
 She had made one cruise, as flagship of the Pacific Station, and had 
 been laid up in the Norfolk yard for an extensive overhauling of her 
 machinery. The sloops Cermantown and Plymouth were completely 
 equipped for sea, but had no crews on board, and the Dolphin could 
 have been made ready for sea in a few hours. The frigate United 
 States was the same vessel, rebuilt, that had defeated and captured 
 the British frigate Macedonian in 1812. The Pennsylvania was in 
 commission as the receiving ship and was famous as being the largest 
 ship-of-the-line ever built for our navy, mounting one hundred and 
 twenty guns and being rated as of 3,241 tons, old measurement, which 
 is little more than one-half the present rating by tons displacement. 
 The other large battle ships of that time — the North Carolina, Ver- 
 mont and others — carried eighty-four guns and were of about 2,600 
 tons. The Cumberland was the flagship of the home squadron and 
 had just arrived at the yard after the usual winter cruise in Southern 
 waters. She was saved from the destruction that followed, but less 
 than a year later was destroyed by the Merrimac, which vessel by 
 all rights should have been the one to have towed her and the other 
 sailing vessels to a place of safety. 
 
 The navy yard was commanded by Captain Charles S. McCau- 
 ley, a native of Pennsylvania, who, according to the custom then 
 prevailing, was addressed as Commodore. The twelve other line 
 officers associated with him were natives of southern states, seven of 
 them being Yirginians; three of the four medical officers were Vir- 
 gin ians, and a majority of the other staff and warrant officers was 
 likewise of southern nativity. These officers had been assigned to 
 this station by the previous administration and the fact that the pre- 
 ponderance of southerners among them was so great makes it reas- 
 onably certain that there was more method than chance in their 
 selection. The Chief Engineer of the yard, Mr. Robert Danby, was a 
 native of Delaware and could be depended upon to stand by his 
 
232 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 
 colors, for the inhabitants of that little State have been distinguished 
 for loyalty and patriotism ever since the "Blue Hen's Chickens," 
 as the Delaware Regiment was called, made such an enviable record 
 in the Continental Army. 
 
 One of the first acts of the new engineer-in-chief was to call 
 the attention of the Secretary of the Navy to the possibility of get- 
 ting the Merrimac away from Norfolk, and it is certain that had it 
 not been for him no effort to that end would have been made. The 
 Secretary's mind was engrossed with too many other important 
 matters to give any thought to this particular subject unless it had 
 been urged upon him and, indeed, it is more than probable, as he 
 had been in office less than one month, and that month a most haras- 
 sing one, that he did not even know that the Merrimac was at Nor- 
 folk. Mr. Isherwood was familiar with the Norfolk yard and as 
 the work on the Merrimac' s machinery was an important detail of 
 his office, the subject of saving the ship naturally suggested itself 
 to his mind. By corresponding with chief engineer Danby, Mr. 
 Isherwood had learned of the exact state of affairs, including the 
 information that the Confederates counted surely on having the 
 Merrimac as a nucleus for their future navy, which intention Mr. 
 Isherwood determined to defeat if possible. With this knowledge 
 he repeatedly urged Secretary Welles to order the removal of the 
 ship and finally, on the 11th of April, orders were issued looking 
 towards removing the Merrimac to Philadelphia, but about this 
 time discouraging news came from Norfolk in the form of an 
 official report saying that it would take a month to get her machin- 
 ery in condition to move. This estimate of time was so different 
 from the private information received from the chief of the yard 
 that misrepresentation was evident and Mr. Isherwood at his own 
 urgent request was ordered to go to Norfolk in person, take full 
 charge of the Merrimac, and get her ready as soon as possible, He 
 carried a peremptory order to Commodore McCauley to place the 
 ship entirely in his hands, which order contained among other 
 directions these words: 
 
 4 4 The Department desires to have the Merrimac removed from 
 the Norfolk to the Philadelphia Navy Yard with the utmost des- 
 patch. The Engineer-in-Chief, Mr. B. F. Isherwood, has been 
 Drdered to report to you for the purpose of expediting the duty, 
 
CHIEF ENGINEER ROBERT DANBY, TJ. S. NAVY. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 2S5 
 
 and you will have his suggestions for that end promptly carried 
 into effect. ' ' 
 
 Mr. Isherwood arrived at the yard on Sunday morning, April 
 14th, and immediately, in company with Mr. Danby, made a most 
 thorough examination of the Merimarfs condition; the machinery 
 was completely dismembered and many parts of it scattered about 
 the shops, but nothing of importance was in such bad condition as 
 to forbid its temporary use. The Navy yard employes had prev- 
 iously abandoned their places, but as many of the machinists and other 
 mechanics were known to Mr. Isherwood and as Mr. Danby had been 
 popular with them, those two officers succeeded that Sunday afternoon 
 and evening in inducing a considerable number of them to resume 
 work for a time. The force thus obtained began work Monday 
 morning and worked night and day, being divided into three eight- 
 hour gangs. Messrs. Isherwood and Danby relieving each other 
 every twelve hours and exercising the most minute supervision over 
 every detail, for they did not wish any mistakes to be made. On 
 Wednesday afternoon Mr. Isherwood had the satisfaction of report- 
 ing to the Commandant that he was ready to get up steam. Com- 
 modore McCauley was seemingly startled by the suddenness of the 
 preparation, after he had reported that a month's time would be 
 necessary for the work that now appeared to have been done in 
 three days, and when asked for authority to start fires hesitated and 
 finally said, that the next morning would be soon enough, which 
 order the engineers took the utmost advantage of by lighting the 
 fires the very moment that midnight had passed. The follow- 
 ing, from Boynton's history of the navy, gives an account of 
 what followed with as much detail as is presented in any of the 
 various historical accounts of this affair: 
 
 " About 9 o'clock on Thursday morning the report was made 
 to Commodore McCauley that the vessel was ready to proceed, 
 when he replied that he had not yet decided to send the steamer 
 out. It was in vain that he was reminded of the peremptory nature 
 of the order which Mr. Isherwood brought from the Secretary of 
 the Navy, «to get the Frigate out at the earliest possible moment and 
 send her to Philadelphia; he only replied that in the course of the 
 day he would let his decision be known. He seemed to fear that 
 
256 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 obstructions had been placed in the channel. He was told by those 
 who were well informed that the obstructions already there would 
 be easily passed by the Merri?nac, but that every night's delay 
 would increase the danger. All this produced no effect. Early in 
 the afternoon Mr. Isherwood again called upon Commodore Mc- 
 Cauley, who then said that he had decided to retain the frigate, and 
 ordered the fires to be drawn. He was again reminded of the per- 
 emptory nature of the orders from the Navy Department, but it 
 seemed to. produce no impression; he had determined to retain her, 
 and thus the noble frigate was lost. 5 ' 
 
 The writer has been at great pains to get at the real truth of 
 this event and with that object in view has made a careful study of 
 the various official reports and documents relating to the case, as 
 well as making use of numerous histories which treat of naval 
 operations during the Civil War. More recently he has been 
 favored with a thorough and most carefully written account of the 
 affair from the pen of the chief actor — Chief Engineer Isherwood— 
 which throws light upon some of the dark places found in the usual 
 accounts, and which will be made use of as this narrative progresses. 
 The principal officers concerned in the event were called upon to 
 testify before the Senate Committee which investigated the Conduct 
 of the War, and, while they told the truth so far as they went, they 
 told no more than was necessary, for at that time it would not have 
 been either patriotic or politic, to have made some of the details 
 public; and this restriction applies to a considerable extent even 
 yet. 
 
 Commodore McCauley's conduct appears highly inconsistent 
 with the theory that he was loyal to the Government and anxious to 
 defend his country's honor, notwithstanding which all the evidence 
 shows that he was both loyal and patriotic. At the time of this 
 trouble he had been fifty-two years in the Navy, having lived all 
 through that long and uneventful period following the war of 1812, 
 which may well be called the Dark Age of our naval history, during 
 which midshipmen grew to middle age before becoming lieutenants, 
 and then remained in that grade until old age was actually upon 
 them, before they rose to a position of individual responsibility. 
 He was surrounded by younger officers who, as we have already 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 237 
 
 seen, were southerners and who systematically deceived him by 
 false rumors and imaginary difficulties, but, upon whom the 
 Commodore depended entirely, never doubting their loyalty to him, 
 until they actually deserted their posts of duty. 
 
 In addition to the perplexities of the actual situation at the 
 navy yard, the Commodore was hampered with political instructions 
 from Washington which simply added to his bewilderment. There 
 was a false hope that Virginia would not secede, and President Lin- 
 coln was led to believe by arguments and influences that probably 
 no one but himself ever knew, that an attitude of confidence and 
 trust towards Yirginia, on the part of the Federal Government would 
 so concilitate the people that they would remain true to the Union. 
 This in spite of the fact that Norfolk was full of armed men openly 
 avowing their intention to seize upon the Navy yard, and that the 
 Virginia authorities had begun obstructing the channels and placing 
 guns to oppose the egress of any of the national vessels. So com- 
 modore McCauley was repeatedly cautioned not to do anything that 
 might appear hostile, or provoking to the Virginians, and at the 
 same time he was ordered to save the public property under his com- 
 mand by any means in his power. 
 
 All these contradictions and perplexities were too much for the 
 Commodore to unravel, having spent the greater part of his life in a 
 sphere where he only did what some one else told him to do, it is no 
 wonder therefore, that the poor old man was unable to rise to the oc- 
 casion. To his mind, long before narrowed to follow the one straight 
 line of naval customs and precedents,«the situation was most irregu- 
 lar and wholly inexplicable. His common sense told him that the 
 information that his subordinates gave him could not be true, and 
 yet he accepted it as truth because he himself had always been true 
 to his superiors, and naval laws explicitly required such loyalty. 
 Never before had he heard people talk of taking posession of a navy 
 yard, a place sacred by every tradition of the service to the imperi- 
 al sway of the commandant; never before had navy yard workmen 
 been known to leave their employment and refuse to return except 
 as hostiles; never before had the majesty of a navy yard been 
 outraged by officers walking out of the gates without leave, and with- 
 out written orders properly endorsed by the commandant as re- 
 quired by regulation. And then, as if to prove that all signs 
 
238 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UJSUTED STATES. 
 
 had failed, the infallible regulations themselves contained not a 
 word of instruction as to what to do in case of insurrection and 
 threatened seizure of a navy yard. The fault was not with Com- 
 modore McOauley, but with the system that had trained him. 
 
 Mr. Isherwood thus graphically describes the pitiful situation 
 of the Commodore at this trying time: 
 
 "The Commodore was in a state of complete prostration. He 
 sat in his office immovable, not knowing what to do. He was weak, 
 vacillating, hesitating, and overwhelmed by the responsibilities of 
 his position. He listened blandly, or seemed to listen, to what was 
 said to him, but could not be made to give any order or take any 
 action. I kept reporting to him what I was doing and what I in- 
 tended to do. He looked vaguely at me, nodded his head, but said 
 nothing. He behaved as though he were stupefied. He was a 
 very good man, personally brave and loyal, perplexed in the ex- 
 treme, deserted by his officers, and utterly unequal to the occasion. 
 As a subordinate he would have done well; as a principal he was a 
 wretched failure. I endeavored to advise him, to explain the 
 object of the Department, and to make him understand the necess- 
 ity of getting the Merrimac out at once, and I told him we could 
 tow out at the same time several other vessels. I knew the Navy 
 Yard would be in our possession but a few days longer, and wanted 
 to save all the public property I could, as well as to diminish the 
 force of the enemy by preventing it from falling into their hands. 
 All was in vain. I could not get him to do anything. He never 
 came near the vessel." 
 
 After getting up steam Thursday morning Mr. Isherwood kept 
 the engines running at the dock all day as a visible sign that the 
 Frigate was ready to go; he had got enough coal and stores on 
 board by his own exertions (for no official of the Yard except Mr. 
 Danby aided him by word or deed during all this time) to take the 
 vessel as far as Newport News where she would be safe. Knowing 
 that Commander Alden, who had been ordered to take command of 
 the vessel after her machinery had been put in working order, was 
 meeting with every obstacle that red-tapeism could suggest to pre- 
 vent his getting men, Mr. Isherwood had inquired among his 
 mechanics and found some who had been to sea, and these he de- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 23S 
 
 bailed as wheelmen to steer the vessel. By lavish promises of pay 
 lie secured a sufficient number of the others to act as firemen, 
 oilers, etc. and these men faithfully agreed to work the ship as far 
 as Newport News, which promise they undoubtedly would have 
 kept, as they needed the large sums offered them, and they were 
 under many obligations to Chief Engineer Danby for liberal treat- 
 ment when employed under him in the yard. Mr. Isherwood also 
 on his own authority had the chain cables that secured the ship to 
 the dock removed and replaced with rope hawsers and he had provided 
 axes and stationed men with them to cut the hawsers when the 
 word to go was given. Many other details of preparation were 
 attended to by him and throughout the day the vessel was entirely 
 ready to go out, which she could easily have done without a pilot 
 as she was so light without coal, guns, or stores that she would 
 easily have passed over the obstructions already in the channel. 
 But the commandant would not say the word which would have 
 authorized them to start. 
 
 It is pertinent to say just here, that the orders to Mr. Isherwood 
 gave him full and absolute authority over the ship until the engines 
 were in condition to drive her; then Commander Alden was by his 
 orders to assume command and take the ship to sea. Had this au- 
 thority been vested in Mr. Isherwood the Merrimac would have 
 been saved and the carnage that Hampton Roads saw the following 
 March would never have been heard of. As it was, Mr. Isherwood 
 had to resist a very strong temptation to take charge of the ship him- 
 self, but he had been in the service too many years not to understand 
 the full significance of the laws and regulations that declared staff 
 officers not eligible to exercise command, and he felt that no meritor- 
 ious result of such an assumption on his part, even if it were the 
 saving of one of the finest ships in the Navy, would serve to excu- 
 se his encroachment upon the prerogatives held as belonging only 
 to another class of officers. Mr. Isherwood himself writes as fol- 
 lows relative to this perplexing crisis: 
 
 " As I witnessed the gradual dying out of the revolutions of 
 the Merrimack engines at the dock I was greatly tempted to cut the 
 ropes that held her, and to bring her out on my own responsibility. 
 This would have been my destruction, for then, the disasters which 
 
240 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 followed her detention, and which are my justification for the desire 
 to take the matter into my own hands, would not have happened." 
 
 The last act in this miserable affair, when the commandant 
 finally refused to allow the ship to leave and directed her fires to be 
 hauled, is told by Chief Engineer Isherwood in a letter to the 
 writer, as follows: 
 
 " Although I could not get the Commodore to take any de- 
 cisive action I kept the engines working at the dock all day in hopes 
 that he might be persuaded to carry out the plain intentions of the 
 Department. Late in the afternoon, at our last interview, he told 
 me to draw the fires and stop the engines as he had decided to re- 
 tain the vessel and meant to defend the yard. I looked at him with 
 amazement, went over the case again, urged the orders and the 
 desire of the Department, told him the inevitable consequences of 
 his decision, tried to show him the utter absurdity of attempting to 
 defend an unfortified navy yard without men or any military means 
 at command, for by this time he was absolutely alone. But he was 
 brave, had a high sense of honor and duty and considered him- 
 self bound to struggle to the last. If he had had the smallest force 
 on which he could have depended he would have died gallantly, and 
 I believe gladly, at its head, sword in hand against any odds. 
 
 4 ' Finding that I could not move him and that he was growing 
 impatient at my reiterated appeals I drew from my pocket the 
 order of the Department to me, wrote upon it the usual indorse- 
 ment that having completed the duty assigned me to return to 
 Washington, and laid it before him. He understood the signifi- 
 cance of the act, but signed the indorsement without a word. With 
 great sorrow and chagrin I dismissed my men, waited until the en- 
 gines made their last revolution, when I left the navy yard, and 
 have never seen it since." 
 
 On Wednesday, the 17th of April, the State Convention of 
 Virginia had passed the Ordinance of Secession, so there was no 
 excuse whatever on Thursday, for maintaining a pacific attitude at 
 the yard for fear of provoking the disloyal sentiment among the 
 inhabitants into open rebellion; the rebellion was already declared 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 241 
 
 and the time for temporizing had passed. Why the Merrim^c^ with 
 her engines working and a sufficient number of men on board to 
 handle her, did not that day tow out to safety the other vessels is 
 one of those speculative questions that cannot be satisfactorily 
 answered. Like many other controversies over sins of omission in 
 the past, this question is important chiefly on account of the disas- 
 ters that followed in the footsteps of the first error, the knowledge 
 of which was of course hidden at the time that its possession would 
 have incited action on the part of those whose failure it is now easy 
 to criticise. 
 
 Mr. Isherwood's work on the Merrimac was known to all in 
 Norfolk, and naturally, was greatly resented by the populace, as it 
 was a menace to the prospects of possessing the ship. In fact, only 
 a week before, the Merrimac had been moved under the shears of 
 the ordnance wharf to have her guns placed on board, and this act had 
 raised such a howl of protest that the commandant had stopped the 
 work and moved her back, so we can readily understand the feeling 
 when it was known that her machinery was being fitted for use. A 
 plot to capture Mr. Isherwood and hold him as a prisoner of war 
 was hatched, and it was only by chance that he escaped falling into 
 the hands of his country's enemies. Fortunately for him, a civilian 
 in the town, who knew of the plot was his warm personal friend 
 and this gentleman warned him of his danger. The friend engaged 
 a room on the Baltimore steamer in the morning, in his own name, 
 and took possession of it with Mr. Isherwood's trunk, going later with 
 a closed carriage to the hotel and conveying the unwelcome guest to 
 the steamer, where he remained locked in the room until the boat 
 was well out in Chesapeake Bay. A party of Confederates waited 
 for hours on the wharf for him to arrive, and only knew by going 
 to the hotel after the steamer had left, that their enemy had out- 
 witted them and escaped. After his return to the Department Mr. 
 Isherwood made a short written report of his connection with the 
 Merrimac, and the Secretary and himself never exchanged a word 
 about it. It was tacitly understood that the subject was to be 
 ignored, as one not politic for the public to know in the existing 
 state of high feeling and excitement, and it was ignored. 
 
 Following closely upon the events before narrated, came the 
 order to abandon the navy yard. Captain Hiram Paulding, in the 
 
242 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 steam sloop-of-war, Pawnee with one hundred marines and a raw 
 regiment of Massachusetts volunteers went up to the yard on April 
 20 and found the Oermantown, Plymouth, and Dolphin scuttled 
 and rapidly sinking, which prevented him from carrying out his in- 
 tention to use those vessels to defend the channel. Feeling that the 
 yard was hopelessly lost, and not wishing to let anything of value 
 fall into the hands of the enemy, he ordered the destruction by fire 
 of everything inflammable, and the work-shops, ship-houses, many 
 of the ships, and numerous other buildings went up in smoke that 
 night. The guns were spiked and many of them permanently 
 ruined by knocking off the trunnions, but all efforts in this direction 
 failed with the Dahlgren guns and they afterward became dreaded 
 weapons in the hands of the enemy. The wild scene of destruction 
 was of unearthly awfulness and sublimity utterly indescribable. 
 The upper works of the Merrimac were burned away, but the sub- 
 merged portion of the hull remained intact and was subsequently 
 used with terrible effect. 
 
 As the morning of Sunday, the 21st, approached, the Pawnee 
 took the Cumberland in tow and departed, leaving behind no ves- 
 tage of the soverignty of the United States. The Confederates 
 rushed in as the Union forces left, extinguished the train that was 
 to blow up the granite dry dock, saved the officers' houses and 
 some other buildings, and thus provided themselves with the nucleus 
 for a great naval station. Thus was public property to the value of 
 ten millions of dollars destroyed or lost to the Government. One 
 of the vessels which escaped destruction that dreadful night was the 
 historical old frigate United States, but her respite was brief, for, 
 
 in May of the following year, when the Confederates in turn had to 
 abandon Norfolk, she, too, notwithstanding the glorious memories 
 that clustered about her, was burned to ashes. 
 
 In the latter part of August, 1861, an expedition planned by 
 the Navy Department, and commanded by Flag Officer Stringham, 
 proceeded from Hampton Roads to attack Hatteras Inlet, which 
 
 place had been fortified and armed with suns taken from the Nor- 
 folk navy yard. Two transport steamers, carrying about nine hun- 
 dred troops under the command of Major General Benjamin F. 
 Butler, accompanied this expedition as a part of the combined at- 
 tacking force. The naval vessels composing the squadron were the 
 
243 
 
 steamers Minnesota, Wabash, Smqvshanna, Monticello, Pa/wnee y 
 and Harriet Lane, and the sailing frigate Cumberland. About 
 thirty engineers of the navy were attached to these vessels and in 
 their appointed stations performed their duties thoroughly and well, 
 keeping the motive power of their vessels in a constant condition 
 of readiness and efficiency to meet any demand that the exigencies 
 of the expedition might require. 
 
 The squadron arrived off Hatteras on August 28, and imme- 
 diately landed the soldiers and marines to attack the fortifications 
 from the land, in conjunction with the bombardment from the ships } 
 which was maintained all the afternoon and resumed the morning of 
 the 29th, ceasing only with the surrender of the enemy about 11 
 a. m. that day. The most exciting event connected with this affair 
 was a bad quarter of an hour experienced by the Monticello, during 
 which she narrowly escaped destruction. This small steamer, after 
 assisting in landing the marines and soldiers, was supplied with a 
 local coast pilot by the flag-ship and ordered to go in through the 
 inlet to see what was going on inside. The pilot, either by design 
 or through ignorance, took her into the wrong channel and she 
 began to strike bottom when in dangerous proximity to the forts, 
 the shoalness of the water finally obliging her to abandon her under- 
 taking and to try to work out to sea again. Seeing the Monticello^ 
 in this distress the large fort of fifteen guns, which had not 
 molested her up to that time, opened on her with a furious cannon- 
 ade, which was returned with the fire of such guns as could be 
 brought to bear. By working the engines rapidly back and forth, 
 to take advantage of the swell and eddying currents, the ship was 
 finally turned around and worked out of her dangerous predicament, 
 not, however, until she had suffered seriously from the merciless 
 storm of shot and shell poured upon her. Her escape from destruc- 
 tion was due in large measure to the skill and ability of the engineers 
 under whose alert charge the machinery responded instantly to every 
 movement required. Commander John P. Gillis, who commanded 
 the Monticello at the time, in reporting this experience expressed 
 his indebtedness to the acting chief engineer of the Bhip — Mr. 
 George M. Waite — 44 for his care and promptness in the manage- 
 ment of the engine." The assistant engineers of the Monticello at 
 this time were Messrs. Jonathan Thomas and Columbus L. Griffin. 
 
244 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 On the night of September 13, the IL S. S. Colorado, lying 
 off Fort Pickens, Florida, sent out an expedition in four boats 
 against the navy yard at Pensacola then in possession of the Con- 
 federates, the objects of the expedition being the destruction of the 
 schooner Judah fitting out at one of the docks for a privateer, and 
 the spiking of a gun in battery at the southeast end of the yard. 
 The party consisted of exactly one hundred officers, seamen and 
 marines, the officers being Lieutenants Russell, Sproston, and Blake, 
 Captain Reynolds of the marine corps; Assistant Surgeon Kennedy, 
 Assistant Engineer George H. White, Gunner Boreton and Mid- 
 shipmen Steece, Forrest and Higginson. 
 
 The attack was made on the morning of the 14th at half past 
 three o'clock. Instead of surprising the enemy, the crew of the 
 Judah was found awake and ready to receive the expedition, doing 
 great damage with musketry fire as the boats approached, and not 
 giving up their vessel until after a most desperate hand-to-hand 
 combat on the deck. The schooner being captured and set on fire, 
 and the gun spiked, the naval expedition withdrew, for by that 
 time the yard was as busy as a hornet's nest and fully one thousand 
 Confederates were swarming for an attack. The Union party had 
 three men killed and twelve wounded, among the latter being Cap. 
 tain Reynolds of the marines and Midshipman F. J. Higginson, 
 who had the end of his thumb shot off. 
 
 Assistant Engineer White's part in the exploits of the night 
 is indicated by the following extracts from the official report of the 
 affair: 
 
 "In the meantime the vessel was set on fire in several places. 
 That which finally consumed her was lighted in the cabin by Assist- 
 ant Engineer White and a coal-heaver Patrick Driscoll, who went 
 as a volunteer." 
 
 "Assistant Engineer White brought down from the cross-trees 
 of the schooner a man who had been seen to fire upon the boats, 
 killing him instantly." 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 '* I have read a fiery gospei writ in burnished rows of steel ; 
 'As ye deal with my contemners so with you my grace shall deal'; 
 Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel ; 
 
 Since God is marching on.'* 
 Julia Ward Howe— Battle Hymn of the Republic* 
 
 1861. The Civil War, Continued.— Expedition of Flag Officer Du Pont to Port Royal. 
 — Loss of the Governor. — Naval Battle at Port Royal. — Killing of Assistant 
 Engineer Whittemore on the Mohican. — The Affair of the Trent. 
 
 IN dividing the coast for convenience in maintaining the blockade 
 proclaimed along the entire sea line of the insurgent states the 
 limits of the South Atlantic blockading squadron were fixed at the 
 boundary line between the Oarolinas on the north and Cape Florida 
 on the south. This region being far from any of the Union ports it 
 became necessary to establish somewhere within its limits a harbor 
 of refuge in heavy weather where a repair station and depot could 
 be maintained. In order to seize such a place and hold it with a 
 strong garrison a large combined army and naval expedition, com- 
 manded by Flag Officer Samuel F. DuPont and Brigadier General 
 T. W. Sherman (not Wm. T. Sherman), was fitted out and sailed 
 from Hampton Koads on the 29th of October. The frigate Wabash, 
 Commander C. E. P. Kodgers, was the flagship, and the fleet, 
 numbering forty-eight vessels including the troop ships, was the 
 largest ever before assembled under our flag. A. fleet of twenty- 
 five schooners laden with coal was despatched the previous day 
 under convoy of the sailing sloop of war Vandalia with orders to 
 rendezvous at sea off Savannah. 
 
 On November 1st the fleet was scattered by a furious gale from 
 the southeast, approaching a hurricane in violence, and some of the 
 vessels fared very badly, especially the transports which had been 
 hurriedly purchased or chartered and in some cases were actually 
 unseaworthy. The steamer Governor, in which was embarked the 
 fine battalion of marines, foundered, and the marines with seven 
 exceptions were rescued by the frigate Sabine and the steamer 
 
246 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Isaac Smith) the latter vessel having been obliged to throw over- 
 board her battery to save herself. The transport Peerless also went 
 down and her people were taken off in boats under the most peril- 
 ous circumstances by the crew of the Mohican. 
 
 The selection of the point to be captured was left entirely to 
 the judgment of Flag Officer DuPont, who decided that Port Eoyal, 
 South Carolina, was the best located and most suitable for a station 
 for the blockading squadron. Accordingly as the vessels began to 
 reassemble after the gale, the Wabash' led them to the vicinity of 
 that place and anchored off the bar during the day of November 4. 
 All buoys and other aids to navigation had been removed by the 
 enemy, which made it necessary to find, sound, and buoy the 
 channel before any of the vessels could venture, further, the bar 
 being several miles off shore. This work was done under the 
 direction of Mr. Boutelle the Assistant Chief of the Coast Survey, who 
 was very familiar with the coast in this region and who was fortunately 
 with the expedition in charge of a small steamer named the Vixen. 
 Late in the afternoon the transports drawing less than eighteen feet 
 of water and all the gun-vessels were sent to the anchorage in Port 
 Royal roadstead, the gunboats having a brush with two or three 
 Confederate steamers under command of Commodore Tatnall, of 
 " blood is thicker than water" fame, and drove them under the 
 shelter of the batteries on Bay Point and Hilton Head (Forts 
 Beauregard and Walker). 
 
 The next morning, November 5, the grave responsibility of 
 hazarding the noble frigate Wabash in crossing the bar was assumed 
 by DuPont and that vessel, thanks to the careful work of Mr. 
 Boutelle, was safely taken inside, followed by the side-wheel frig- 
 ate Susquehanna and the deep-draught transports. Immediate 
 preparation for action was made but various delays, among them 
 the grounding of the Wabash after getting into the roadstead, oc- 
 curred and night came on before the fleet was ready, while a south- 
 westerly gale the following day again postponed the assault. 
 
 On the morning of November 7 the fleet got under way to 
 attack the forts, the order of battle comprising a main squadron 
 ranged in line ahead, and a flanking squadron to engage the enemy's 
 vessels and prevent them from cutting off any of the vessels that 
 might be disabled and fall out of action. The main squadron was 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 2ffl 
 
 made up of the Wabash, Susquehanna, Mohican, Seminole, Pawnee^ 
 Unadilla, Ottawa, Pembina, and the sailing-sloop Vandalia towed 
 by the Isaac Smith; the flanking squadron was composed of the 
 Bienville, Seneca, Curlew, Penguin, and Augusta. The battle was 
 opened by a gun from Fort Walker at 9:26 a. m. and ended about 
 2 p. m. ; the enemy abandoning his works with great zeal and pre- 
 cipitation. Commander C. R. P. Eodgers with a force of marines 
 and blue jackets went ashore from the Wabash and took possession 
 of Fort Walker and by nightfall a brigade of troops was landed 
 and in possession. At sunrise the next morning Lieutenant com- 
 manding Daniel Ammen of the Seneca landed and hoisted the 
 American flag on Fort Beauregard. The forts were badly damaged 
 by the furious cannonading to which they had been subjected, the 
 terrific nature of which can be understood from the fact that the 
 Wabash alone fired nearly nine hundred shells, besides grape and 
 shrapnel. 
 
 The foregoing briefly outlines the circumstances attending the 
 taking possession of the forts by the Union forces, and is given in 
 the usual form in which the event is recorded in history. The 
 following extracts from Flag Officer DuPont's detailed report of 
 the engagement furnish the foundation for the bestowal upon the 
 distinguished Rodgers brothers of the honor of landing first and 
 personally taking possession of Fort Walker: 
 
 "I sent Commander John Rodgers on shore with a flag of 
 truce. The hasty flight of the enemy was visible, and was re- 
 ported from the tops. At twenty minutes after two Captain Rod- 
 gers hoisted the flag of the Union over the deserted post. At 
 forty -five minutes after two I anchored and sent Commander C. R. 
 P. Rodgers on shore with the marines and a party of seamen to 
 take possession, and prevent, if necessary, the destruction of public 
 property." 
 
 " Commander John Rodgers, a passenger in this ship, going 
 to take command of the steamer Plag, volunteered to act upon my 
 staff. It would be difficult for me to enumerate the duties he per- 
 formed, they were so numerous and various, and he brought to 
 them all an invincible energy and the highest order of professional 
 knowledge and merit. I was glad to show my appreciation of his 
 
248 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 great services by allowing him the honor to hoist the first American 
 flag on the rebellious soil of South Carolina." 
 
 In large operations of this nature it is customary, and perhaps 
 proper, to give credit for worthy deeds to the officer who commands, ) 
 the acts of his subordinates being assumed to be his own. The 
 actual details attending the landing at Fort Walker differ somewhat 
 from the usual historical accounts, and have been learned by the 
 author from some documents loaned him by Mr. Hillary Messimer, 
 Superintendent of Motive Power of the Calumet and Hecla Mining 
 Company, one of the most important papers being a letter written 
 in 1883 by Eear Admiral C. K. P. Eodgers, then on the retired list. 
 
 It appears from these records that Third Assistant Engineer 
 Hillary Messimer of the Wabash, hereafter referred to as having 
 excited the admiration of his superior officers by his coolness and 
 attention to duty during the action while stationed at the engine- 
 room signal on the bridge, was selected by Flag Officer DuPont 
 to take charge of an armed party of marines to land and spike the 
 guns in the fort should the enemy show any signs of returning. 
 Mr. Messimer's party took, besides the necessary tools, an American 
 flag with which he landed and was inside the works with men 
 stationed at the guns ready to spike them before Commander John 
 Rodgers set his foot on the shore. The latter officer shoved off 
 from the Wabash when Messimer 's boat was almost on shore and 
 his men about to jump overboard to land, in doing which a few 
 moments later Messimer took care to be first, although followed 
 closely by his men, and to him belongs the credit of being the first 
 person from the Union force to land in this stronghold of the enemy. 
 With his own hands, assisted by a marine corporal, Mr. Messimer 
 hauled down the Confederate flags from the general and regimental 
 headquarters, after which, leaving a sergeant in command of the 
 spiking party, he went down to the beach to meet Commander C, 
 R. P. Rodgers then landing with a force of men from the Wabash. 
 
 After receiving and approving Messimer 's report of what he 
 had done, Commander Rodgers ordered him to go off to the flag- 
 ship and deliver to Flag Officer DuPont the captured flags and five 
 Confederate prisoners whom he had taken, and then to return to 
 the fort with the chaplain of the ship to bury the dead ; all which 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 249 
 
 was done. A sword carried on board the Wabash with the Confed- 
 erate flags was afterward given to Mr. Messimer by Flag Officer Du- 
 Pont with the complimentary remark, " You have earned it." 
 
 This engagement furnishes one of the many striking instances 
 illustrative of the division of families over the issues which caused 
 the Civil War. The Confederate commander of the works at Port 
 Koyal was General Drayton brother of Commander Percival Dray- 
 ton of the Federal navy, whose vessel, the Pocahontas, was so dis- 
 abled in the gale on the voyage down that he did not arrive in time 
 to be assigned a position in the order of battle, but he succeeded in 
 reaching the scene of action about noon and rendered gallant serv- 
 ice by engaging the batteries on both sides in succession, and aided 
 materially in driving his brother and his men out of the works. 
 
 Several of the vessels engaged were badly cut up by the fire 
 from the forts and it was a matter of surprise, expressed at the 
 time in the official reports, that the casualties under the circum- 
 stances were not greater than they were. These amounted to eight 
 killed and twenty-three wounded, seven of the latter severely. The 
 only officer killed was Third Assistant Engineer John W. Whitte- 
 more, of the Mohican, who was stationed on deck at the engine 
 room telegraph where he was instantly killed by a solid shot com- 
 ing through the hammock rail and driving before it a piece of an 
 iron bolt or screw from the rigging which passed through his head. 
 Mr. Whittemore was the son of a celebrated TJniversalist minister 
 of Boston, and was a highly cultured and accomplished young gen- 
 tleman, whose New England spirit of patriotism had impelled him 
 to enter the naval service in a capacity where he felt he could serve 
 his country most usefully. He had been in the service less than 
 three months at the time of his death, but in that short time his 
 many admirable qualities had greatly endeared him to all who were 
 associated with him. 
 
 On the same vessel another assistant engineer, Mr. Mayland 
 Cuthbert, narrowly escaped being killed while at his post of duty in 
 the starboard gangway in charge of the fire division. A shot struck 
 the main yard and cut the jack stay into pieces, one of which took 
 an oblique direction downward, striking Cuthbert in the thigh and 
 inflicting a frightful wound, in which the femoral artery was laid 
 bare, but fortunately not cut. The vacancy on the Mohican caused 
 
250 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 by the killing of Whittemore was filled by transferring Assistant 
 Engineer Absalom Kirby from the Pocahontas, which fact is men- 
 tioned because, by a curious coincidence, Mr. Kirby had narrowly 
 escaped being killed in the action under the same circumstances 
 leading to the death of Mr. Whittemore. He, also, was stationed at 
 the engine-room bell, which on the Pocahontas was attached to the 
 main mast, and while standing at his station a solid shot passed 
 through the mast within a few inches of his head, showering him 
 with splinters but doing him no serious harm. 
 
 Attached to the various steamers of the assaulting squadron were 
 about seventy-five officers of the Engineer Corps, regulars and vol- 
 unteers, all of whom acquitted themselves with great credit and by 
 their skilful performance of duty, contributed very materially to the 
 success of the undertaking. The chief or senior engineers of the 
 different vessels engaged were the following: Wabash, J. W King; 
 Susquehanna, Geo. Sewell; Mohican, E. D. Robie, Seminole, R. L. 
 Harris; Pawnee, W. H. Rutherford; Vnadilla, Edw. Marsland; Ot- 
 tawa, W. W. Dungan; Pembina, Jefferson Young; Isaac Smith, J. 
 Tucker; Bienville, W. H. Wright; Seneca, J. W. de Krafft; Curlew, 
 George R. Emory \ Penguin, M. P. Randall; Augusta, George V. 
 Sloat Mr. J. M. Hobby, who at a later period in the war signal- 
 ly distinguished himself as chief engineer of the Sassacus in battle 
 with the ram Albemarle, was, on this occasion, the first assistant of 
 the Susquehanna. 
 
 That one at least of the vessels was kept in action by the ability 
 of her engineers is shown by the following extract from the report 
 of the commanding officer of the Curlew: 
 
 "Messrs Emory, Swasey, McConnell, and Loyds engineers of 
 the vessel, with great difficulties to contend against, in the general 
 unfitness of engine, boilers and condensing apparatus, for such rough 
 service, managed to carry us through the action, for which I was 
 thankful. 
 
 Commander C. R. P. Rodgers of the flag ship reported as fol- 
 lows regarding the work of the engineers of that vessel. 
 
 "The engine and steam, during the whole action, were managed 
 with consummate skill, which did great credit to Chief Engineer 
 King and his assistants. Third Assistant Engineer Messimer. who 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 251 
 
 stood upon the bridge by my side during the action, impressed me 
 very favorably by his cool intelligence and promptness." 
 
 Flag officer DuPont also mentioned Mr. Messimer's excellence 
 in his report of the battle, and in other reports of commanding offi- 
 cers occur references from which one concludes that the engineers 
 •were very necessary officials and a part of the combatant element of 
 the fleet. 
 
 The afiair of the Trent, on account of its international aspect, 
 attracted probably more attention and wide-spread interest than 
 any other single event connected with the operations of the Navy 
 during the Civil War, and, as two officers of the engineer corps were 
 prominently concerned, it is proper that a brief account be given 
 in this work. The TJ. S. Steamer, 8cm Jacinto, commanded by 
 Captain Charles Wilkes, was employed the latter part of this year 
 in cruising about the West Indies seeking for the Confederate pri- 
 vateer Sumter, which had committed numerous depredations in those 
 waters; the last day of October the San Jacinto went into the port 
 of Havana, where Wilkes learned that Messrs Mason and Slidell, 
 commissioners from the insurgent states to England and France, 
 were about to sail from that port for St. Thomas on their way to 
 Europe in the British mail steamer Trent. These gentlemen with 
 their families and secretaries had escaped from the blockade about 
 Charleston in a famous swift blockade-runner, the Theodora, which 
 had landed them at Cardenas in Cuba. Captain Wilkes was a grim, 
 taciturn seaman of the old school, which had for its chief article oi 
 faith the celebrated sentiment of Stephen Decatur — "Our country! 
 In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the 
 right; but our country, right or wrong," — so when he learned of the 
 proposed expedition of the Confederate emissaries to preach disrup- 
 tion of the Union abroad, there was, according to his lights, but one 
 course of action to pursue, and that was, to intercept them, " right 
 or wrong." 
 
 With this determination in his mind Captain Wilkes went to 
 sea on the 2nd of November, after having coaled ship in Havana, 
 and for a day or two cruised along the northern coast of Cuba look- 
 ing for the Sumter; then he went over to Key West hoping to find 
 the Powhatan to accompany him on his intended enterprise, but 
 that ship had gone to sea the day before, thus making it necessary 
 
252 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 for the San Jacinto to watch for the Trent alone. The Trent was 
 scheduled to sail from Havana on the 7th of November, and to 
 make sure of her, Wilkes went down the coast some two hundred 
 and forty miles to a place on the soa route to St. Thomas where the 
 old Bahama Channel narrows to a width of fifteen miles; here the 
 San Jacinto arrived on November 4 and laid in wait for her prey, 
 with all the patience of a red Mohawk lurking sleeplessly on the 
 trail over which his enemy might pass. About noon of November 
 8 the Trent ran into this fatal snare and was hove to by a shell 
 thrown across her bows, after a shot had been disregarded. 
 
 The interesting details of what happened when the Trent was 
 boarded are given hereafter in the copies of official reports of the 
 boarding officers. For the present it is sufficient to say that Messrs. 
 Mason and Slidell, after refusing to leave the mail steamer, were 
 man-handled and put into the boats of the San Jacinto^ taken 
 aboard that vessel as prisoners, and ultimately incarcerated in Fort 
 Warren, Boston Harbor. The Trent was allowed to resume her 
 voyage after the commissioners had been taken. After a few weeks 
 imprisonment Mason and Slidell were delivered to the British 
 government in response to a demand not over gracious made by 
 Earl Russel. Captain Wilkes made a mistake in allowing the Trent 
 to escape, for the weight of precedent, established by decisions of 
 the British admiralty courts, was largely on the side of the theory 
 that neutral vessels knowingly carrying officials or despatches of the 
 enemy were liable to capture and condemnation. No accepted 
 principle of international law justified the act of taking the commis- 
 sioners out of the vessel, and no nation but England had ever in- 
 sisted upon such a right; indeed, in 1812, the United States had 
 gone to war with the mother-country in opposition to the very 
 doctrine involved in Wilkes 5 act. 
 
 It is not probable, however, that Wilkes 5 technical breach of 
 international law in failing to take the Trent into port as a prize 
 had any real effect upon subsequent events in the case; such a pro- 
 cedure would have been entirely in accord with the established 
 rules of war, but the wave of popular indignation and rage which 
 swept over England when the passengers of the Irent came home 
 with their tale, is sufficient proof that considerations of abstract 
 right would not have a determining part in the action taken by the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 2»3 
 
 British Government. The United States, being fully employed in 
 the task of suppressing the most gigantic rebellion that ever threat- 
 ened a nation's life, could not engage in war with powerful neigh- 
 bors disposed to seek it, and the demands made had to be acceded 
 to whether agreeable or not. A few years later, when the rebellion 
 was crushed, and the United States had a million armed men, hard- 
 ened by years of campaigning both ready and willing for any ser- 
 vice, and our navy, with five hundred vessels in commission, pos- 
 sessed the heaviest iron-clads and the swiftest cruisers in the world, 
 another controversey between England and our country ended in 
 the former swallowing her pride, and accepting the decidedly hu- 
 miliating terms imposed by an arbitration commission. The two 
 events, considered singly or together, are an excellent illustration 
 of the truth of the principle, that might more frequently than right 
 determines the actions of nations as well as of men. 
 
 The officers of the San Jacinto who boarded the Trent, 
 although performing a duty in which they had no personal concern, 
 were treated with great contempt and indignity on board that vessel, 
 and exhibited in return a spirit of forbearance and dignity highly 
 creditable to them, and the service which they represented. The 
 details of their experience on board the Trent are usually eclipsed 
 by the more important complications growing out of the event; they 
 are, however, most interesting as showing what naval officers some- 
 times have to do in the line of their varied duties, and are here 
 presented in the form of the reports made by the boarding officers. 
 
 United States Steamer San Jacinto, 
 At Sea, November 12, 1861. 
 
 Sir: At 1:20 p. m., on the 8th instant, I repaired alongside of 
 the British mail packet in an armed cutter, accompanied by Mr. 
 Houston, second assistant engineer, and Mr. Grace, the boatswain. 
 
 1 went on board the Trent alone, leaving the two officers in the 
 boat with orders to await until it became necessary to show some 
 force. 
 
 I was shown up by the first officer to the quarter-deck, where I 
 met the Captain and informed him who I was, asking to see the pas- 
 senger list. He declined letting me see it. I then told him that I 
 had information of Mr. Mason, Mr. Slidell, Mr. Eustis, and Mr, 
 
264 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 MeFarland having taken their passage at Havana in the packet to 
 St. Thomas, and would satisfy myself whether they were on board 
 before allowing the steamer to proceed. Mr. Slidell, evidently hear- 
 ing his name mentioned, came up to me and asked if I wanted to 
 see him. Mr. Mason soon joined us, and then Mr. Eustis and Mr. 
 McFarland, when I made known the object of my visit. The cap- 
 tain of the Trent opposed anything like the search of his vessel, nor 
 would he consent to show papers or passenger list. The four gen- 
 tlemen above mentioned protested also against my arresting and 
 sending them to the United States steamer near by. There was con- 
 siderable noise among the passengers just about this time, and that 
 led Mr. Houston and Mr. Grace to repair on board with some six or 
 eight men, all armed. After several unsuccessful efforts to persuade 
 Mr. Mason and Mr. Slidell, to go with me peaceably, I called to 
 Mr. Houston and ordered him to return to the ship with the infor- 
 mation that the four gentlemen named in your order of the 8th in- 
 stant were on board, and force must be applied to take them out of 
 the packet. 
 
 About three minutes after there was still greater excitement on 
 the quarter deck, which brought Mr. Grace with his armed party. 
 I however deemed the presence of any armed men unnecessary, and 
 only calculated to alarm the ladies present, and directed Mr. Grace 
 to return to the lower deck, where he had been since first coming on 
 board. It must have been less than half an hour after I boarded the 
 Trent when the second armed cutter, under Lieutenant Greer, came 
 alongside, (only two armed boats being used). He brought in the 
 third cutter eight marines and four machinists,- in addition to a crew 
 of some twelve men. When the marines and some armed men had 
 been formed just out side of the main deck cabin, where these four 
 gentlemen had gone to pack up their baggage, I renewed my efforts 
 to induce them to accompany me on board — still refusing to accomp- 
 any me unless force was applied. I called in to my assistance four 
 or five officers, and first taking hold of Mr. Mason's shoulder, with 
 another officer on the opposite side, I went as far as the gangway of 
 the steamer, and delivered him over to Lieutenant Greer, to be 
 placed in the boat. I then returned for Mr. Slidell, who insisted 
 that I must apply considerable force to get him to go with me; calling 
 in at last three officers, he also was taken in charge and handed over 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 255 
 
 to Mr. Greer. Mr. McFarland and Mr. Eustis, after protesting, 
 went quietly into the boat. They had been permitted to collect 
 their baggage, but were sent in advance of it under charge of Lieu- 
 tenant Greer. I gave my personal attention to the luggage, saw it 
 put in a boat and sent in charge of an officer to the San Jacinto. 
 
 When Mr. Slidell was taken prisoner a great deal of noise was 
 made by some of the passengers, which caused Lieutenant Greer to 
 send the marines into the cabin, They were immediately ordered 
 to return to their former position outside. I carried out my purpose 
 without using any force beyond what appears in this report. The 
 mail agent, who is a retired commander in the British navy, seem- 
 ed to have a great deal to say as to the propriety of my course, but 
 I purposely avoided all official intercourse with him. When I finally 
 was leaving the steamer he made some apology for his rude conduct, 
 and expressed personally his approval of the manner in which I 
 had carried out my orders. We parted company from the Trent at 
 2:30 p. m. 
 
 Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 D. M. Fairfax, 
 
 Lieutenant and Executive Officer. 
 
 Captain Charles Wilkes, U. S. N., 
 Commanding San Jacinto. 
 
 United States Steamer San Jacinto, 
 At Sea, November 12, 1861. 
 
 Sir: In accordance with your instructions I submit the follow- 
 ing: On November 8th, between 1 and 2 p. m., I was ordered by 
 Lieutenant Breese, acting executive officer, to shove off with the 
 third cutter and go alongside the English mail steamer, which 
 was then lying-to under our guns. In the boat with me were Third 
 Assistant Engineer Hall, Paymaster's Clerk Simpson, Master's 
 Mate Dahlgren, one sergeant, one corporal, and six privates, of 
 marines; four machinists and the crew, consisting of thirteen men, 
 the whole party being well armed. When I arrived on the steamer, 
 I was met on the guard by Mr. Grace, with a message from Lieu- 
 tenant Fairfax (who had preceded me on board) to bring the marines 
 on board and station them outside of the cabin, which I did ; also to 
 
 15 
 
256 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OP THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 keep the spare men on the guard, and to have the boat's crew in 
 readiness to jump on board if needed. As soon as the marines were 
 stationed, I had the space outside and forward of the cabin kept clear 
 of passengers, and assumed a position where I could see Lieutenant 
 Fairfax, who was then engaged in conversation with persons in the 
 cabin. He shortly came out and told me to remain as I was. He then 
 went back into the cabin, and in a few minutes returned with Mr. 
 Mason. He had his hand on his shoulder, and I think Mr. Hall 
 had his on the other one. He transferred Mr. Mason to me, and I 
 had the third cutter hauled up, into which he got. Shortly after 
 Mr. McFarland came out and got into the boat; I think he was un- 
 accompanied by any of the officers. About this time I heard a good 
 deal of loud talking in the cabin, and above all I heard a woman's 
 voice. I could not hear what she said. Mr. Fairfax appeared to be 
 having an altercation with some one. There was much confusion 
 created by the passengers and ship's officers, who were making all 
 kinds of disagreeable and contemptuous noises and remarks. 
 
 Just then Mr. Houston came to me and said he thought there 
 would be trouble. I told him to ask Mr. Fairfax if I should bring 
 in the marines. He returned with an answer to bring them in. At 
 that time I heard some one call out ' ' shoot him. ' ' I ordered the 
 marines to come into the cabin, which they did at quick time. As 
 they advanced the passengers fell back. Mr. Fairfax then ordered 
 the marines to go out of the cabin, which they did, Mr. Slidell at 
 the same time jumping out of a window of a state-room into the 
 cabin, where he was arrested by Mr. 'Fairfax, and was then brought 
 by Mr. Hall and Mr. Grace to the boat, into which he got. Soon 
 after Mr. Eustis came to the boat, accompanied by Mr. Fairfax. I 
 then, by his order, took charge of the boat and conveyed the gen- 
 tlemen arrested, viz: Messrs. Slidell, Mason, McFarland, and 
 Eustis to the San Jacinto, where I delivered them over to Captain 
 Wilkes. This was about 2 o'clock. I then returned to the steamer; 
 when I reached her the baggage of the gentlemen was being 
 brought up and sent to the San Jacinto. Soon after Mr. Fairfax 
 told me to send the marines and spare hands on board, which I did. 
 He then left me in charge of our party and went on board the Son 
 Jacinto. About 3 o'clock she ran under the Trent's stern; I was 
 hailed and directed to come on board, which I did with all except- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 257 
 
 ing Mr. Grace, Mr. Dahlgren and Mr. Hall, who came in another 
 boat, 
 
 Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 James A. Greer, 
 
 Lieutenant. 
 
 Captain €. Wilkes, 
 
 Commanding San Jacinto. 
 
 P. S. I desire to add that it was about 1.35 p. m. when I 
 went alongside the Irent. There were but two armed boats used 
 during the day; a third boat, the crew of which were unarmed, went 
 alongside during the detention. When I first went on board with 
 the marines, and at intervals during my stay, the officers of the 
 steamer made a great many irritating remarks to each other and to 
 the passengers, which were evidently intended for our benefit. 
 Among other things said were: "Did you ever hear of such an out- 
 rage? 55 " Marines on board! Why, this looks devilish like 
 mutiny. 55 " These Yankees will have to pay well for this. 55 " This 
 is the best thing in the world for the South; England will open the 
 blockade. 55 " We will have a good chance at them now. 55 " Did 
 you ever hear of such a piratical act? 55 "Why, this is a perfect 
 Bull's Bun! 5 ' " They would not have dared to have done it if an 
 English man-of-war had been in sight. 55 The mail agent, (a man in 
 the uniform of a commander in the royal navy, I think) was very 
 indignant and talkative, and tried several times to get me into a dis- 
 cussion of the matter. I told him I was not there for that purpose. 
 He was very bitter; He told me that the English squadron would 
 raise the blockade in twenty days after his report of this outrage (I 
 think he said outrage) got home; that the Northerners might as well 
 give up now, etc., etc. 5 5 Most all the officers of the vessel showed 
 an undisguised hatred for the Northern people and a sympathy for 
 the Confederates. I will do the captain of the vessel the justice to 
 say that he acted differently from the rest, being, when I saw him, 
 very reserved and dignified. The officers and men of our party 
 took no apparent notice of the remarks that were made, and acted 
 with the greatest forbearance. 
 
 Respectfully, 
 
 Jas. A. Greer, 
 
258 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 United States Steamer San Jacinto, 
 At sea, November 13, 1861. 
 
 Sir: In obedience to your order of the 11th instant, 1 respect- 
 fully report: That upon going alongside of the English steamer 
 Trent, on the 8th of this month, Lieutenant Fairfax went on board, 
 ordering the boatswain and myself to remain in the boat. A few 
 minutes after this my attention was attracted by persons speaking in 
 a loud and excited manner upon the steamer's upper deck. While 
 considering its meaning the noise was repeated, which decided me 
 to join Lieutenant Fairfax immediately on board, and found him 
 surrounded by the officers of the ship and passengers, among whom 
 I recognized Messrs. Mason, Slidell,and Eustis. The confusion at 
 this time passes description. So soon, however, as he could be 
 heard, the mail agent (who was a retired lieutenant or commander 
 in the British navy) protested against the act of removing passen- 
 gers from an English steamer. Lieutenant Fairfax requested Mr. 
 Mason to go quietly to the San Jacinto, but that gentleman replied 
 that he would "yield only to force;" whereupon I was ordered to 
 our ship to report the presence of the above-named gentlemen, 
 together with Mr. McFarland, and ask that the remainder of our 
 force be sent to the Trent, after which I returned to her, and enter- 
 ing the cabin, saw Mr. Fairfax endeavoring to enter Mr. Slidell 's 
 room, which was then prevented in a measure by the excitement 
 which prevailed in and around that gentleman's quarters. The pas- 
 sengers (not including Mr. Mason, Slidell, Eustis or McFarland) 
 were disposed to give trouble; some of them went so far as to 
 threaten, and upon Lieutenant Greer being informed by me of this 
 fact, he ordered the marines to clear the passage-way of the cabin, 
 but as Mr. Slidell had now come out of his state room through the 
 window, where we could get to him, the order to the marines was 
 countermanded by Lieutenant Fairfax. Mr. Slidell was removed to 
 the boat by Mr. Grace and myself, and no more force was used 
 than would show what would be done in case of necessity. Mr. 
 Mason was taken in charge by Lieutenant Fairfax and Third Assist- 
 ant Engineer Hall. The two secretaries walked into the boat by 
 themselves. 
 
 While we were on board of the 2 rent many remarks were made 
 reflecting discreditably upon us and the government of the United 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 259 
 
 States. No one was more abusive than the mail agent, who took 
 pains at the same time to inform us that he was the only person on 
 board officially connected with her Brittanic majesty's government, 
 who he said would, in consequence of this act, break the blockade 
 of the southern United States ports. Another person, supposed to 
 be a passenger, was so violent that the captain ordered him to 
 be locked up. A short time before leaving the steamer I was in- 
 formed by one of her crew that the mail agent was advising the cap- 
 tain to arm the crew and passengers of his ship, which I immediately 
 communicated to Lieutenant Greer. About 3:30 p. m. we returned 
 to the San Jacinto. 
 
 I am, respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. B. Houston, 
 
 Second Assistant Engineer, 
 
 TJ. S. Steamer San Jacinto, 
 
 Captain Charles Wilkes, 
 
 Commanding. 
 
 United States Steamer San Jacinto, 
 At sea, November 13, 1861. 
 
 Sir: — In obedience to your order of the 11th instant, I respect- 
 fully make the following report of what came under my observation 
 on board the mail steamer Trent whilst hove-to under our guns on 
 the 8th instant: 
 
 I boarded the steamer in the third cutter, under the command 
 of Lieutenant Greer. Immediately on reaching the steamer's deck 
 I stationed four men (an oiler, assistant oiler and two firemen) who 
 accompanied me, in the port gang- way. I then went into the cabin, 
 where I saw Lieutenant Fairfax, surrounded by a large number of 
 passengers and the officers of the ship. He was conversing with Mr. 
 Mason, and endeavoring to get him to come peaceably on board this 
 ship. Mr. Mason refused to comply unless by force, and taking 
 hold of Mr. Mason's coat collar, gave an order, "Gentlemen, lay 
 hands on him. 5 5 I then laid hold of him by the coat collar, when 
 Mr. Mason said he would yield under protest. I accompanied him 
 as far as the boat, which was at the port gang- way. 
 
 Returning to the cabin, Lieutenant Fairfax was at Mr. Slidell's 
 room. After a short time Mr. Slidell came from his room through 
 
260 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 a side window. He also refused Lieutenant Fairfax's order to come 
 on board this ship, unless by force. I, with several of the officers, 
 then caught hold, and used sufficient power to remove him from the 
 cabin. He was accompanied to the boat by Second Assistant Engi- 
 neer Houston and Boatswain Grace. I then received an order from 
 both Lieutenants Fairfax and Greer to retain the boat until Messrs. 
 Eustis and McFarland were found. I remained in the gangway till 
 Messrs. Mason, Slidell, Eustis and McFarland shoved off, Lieuten- 
 ant Greer having charge of the gentlemen. 
 
 There was a great deal of excitement and talking during the 
 whole time, the officers of the steamer endeavoring particularly to 
 thwart Lieutenant Fairfax in carrying out his orders. They also 
 used very harsh expressions toward us, calling us pirates, piratical 
 expedition, etc. , and threatened to open our blockade in a few weeks. 
 At one time the officers and passengers made a demonstration, at the 
 moment the marine guard came hastily in the cabin, but were imme- 
 diately ordered back by Lieutenant Fairfax. 
 
 As far as I am able to judge, everything was conducted on our 
 part in a peaceable, quiet and gentlemanly manner, and most re- 
 markably so by Lieutenant Fairfax, who certainly had sufficient cause 
 to resort to arms. I remained aboard the Trent till after the bag- 
 gage belonging to the gentlemen had been sent, and finally returned 
 to this ship with Lieutenant Greer. 
 
 Most respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 Geo. W. Hall, 
 Third Assistant Engineer, U. S. N. 
 
 Captain Charles Wilkes, 
 
 Commanding U. S. Steamer San Jacinto. 
 
 Lieutenants Fairfax and Greer, who had such a conspicuous 
 part in this affair, have both since made enviable records for dis- 
 tinguished services in the navy, and have both risen to the rank of 
 rear admiral; the former was retired in 1881 and died in January, 
 1894. Rear Admiral Greer is also on the retired list now, having 
 had the distinguished honor of being the senior officer of the navy 
 for some months before his retirement. Second Assistant Engineer 
 Houston served his country faithfully throughout the war and resigned 
 from the naval service in July, 1865, to engage in business. He 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 261 
 
 has been eminently successful, having been a director, vice-presi- 
 dent and president of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company for a 
 long period of years, and only recently gave up active business to 
 enter into the quiet enjoyment of a fortune which his talents have 
 enabled him to amass during his busy life. Third Assistant Engi- 
 neer Hall served faithfully throughout the rebellion and resigned 
 from the service not long after the close of the war. 
 
 The chief engineer of the San Jacinto was Mr. John Faron,who 
 three years later was killed on board the Tecumseh with all five of 
 his assistant engineers in the battle of Mobile Bay. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 " The man who goes into action in a wooden vessel is a fool, and the man who 
 sends him there is a villain."— Admiral Sir John Hay. 
 
 1861. The Civil War, continued— The First American Iron Clads—The Stevens Battery 
 Condemned by a Board of Naval Officers — Authority to Build Armored Vessels 
 Conferred by Act of Congress — Keport of Board on Iron-Clad Vessels — The 
 Galena, New Ironsides, and Monitor — Armored Vessels in the Mississippi 
 River. 
 
 AT the outbreak of the Civil War the United States had no armored 
 i\ war vessels, although the example of the unfinished Stevens' 
 battery and the presentation of plans for an armored floating battery 
 by the Swedish- American inventor John Ericsson to the Emperor 
 Napoleon III. had resulted in the adoption of iron armor abroad to 
 a limited extent. Three iron- plated floating batteries had been used 
 by the French in the Crimean War, and at the beginning of the year 
 1861 that nation had La Gloire and three other large wooden steam 
 frigates in commission, all sheathed with light iron armor, and four- 
 teen others in process of construction. England also had entered 
 the field and had at sea the Warrior, Black Prince, Defense, Resis- 
 tance and Royal Oak, large armored steam-ships similar to La Gloire, 
 with sixteen other armor-clads in various stages of construction. 
 These British and French vessels were large full-rigged ships with 
 auxiliary steam power, dependent upon the wind fully as much as 
 upon steam for locomotion; their iron sides constituted the only fea- 
 ture wherein they resembled the Stevens' battery or the vessel sug- 
 gested by Ericsson to Napoleon in 1854. 
 
 A joint resolution of Congress approved June 24, 1861, directed 
 the Secretary of the Navy to appoint a board to examine the Stevens' 
 battery and ascertain the cost and time necessary for its completion, 
 and the expediency thereof. The board consisted of Commodores 
 Silas H. Stringham and William Inman, Captain T. A. Dornin, 
 Chief Engineer A. C. Stimers, and Joseph Henry, Esq., Secretary 
 of the Smithsonian Institution. The report of this board, not made 
 until the end of the year, was adverse to the completion of the iron 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OP THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 263 
 
 battery, and the project was then dropped, so far as the government 
 was concerned. 
 
 An extra session of Congress was assembled by presidential 
 proclamation July 4, 1861, to which, the Secretary of the Navy 
 made a report on the condition of the navy at that time. In this 
 report the Secretary referred to the attention given by England and 
 France to iron-clad war-steamers, and asked for authority to con- 
 struct such vessels if an investigation by a competent board should 
 show such construction to be advisable. Congress responded with 
 liberality and promptness by an act, approved August 3, 1861, en- 
 titled "An Act to provide for the construction of one or more 
 armored ships and floating batteries, and for other purposes, " it be- 
 ing brief and to the point, as follows: 
 
 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
 United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of 
 the Navy be, and is hereby authorized and directed to appoint a 
 board of three skilful naval officers to investigate the plans and spe- 
 cifications that may be submitted for the construction or completing 
 of iron or steel-clad steamships or steam batteries, and, on their re- 
 port, should it be favorable, the Secretary of the Navy will cause 
 one or more armored or iron or steel-clad steamships or floating steam 
 batteries to be built; and there is hereby appropriated, out of any 
 money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, the sum of one 
 million five hundred thousand dollars. 
 
 Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That in case of a vacancy in 
 the office of engineer-in-chief of the navy the appointment thereto 
 shall be made from the list of chief engineers. 
 
 August 7, the Navy Department issued an advertisement ask- 
 ing for bids from responsible persons for the construction of one or 
 more iron-clad steam-vessels of war, either of iron or of wood and 
 iron combined, for sea or river service, the advertisement giving in 
 general terms the principal requirements. These were, that vessels 
 proposed must be of not less than ten, nor more than sixteen feet 
 draft; must carry an armament of from eighty to one hundred and 
 twenty tons weight, with provisions and stores for from one hundred 
 and sixty-five to three hundred persons, according to armament, for 
 
264 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 sixty days, with coal for eight days; must have two masts, with wire 
 rope standing rigging for navigating the sea. The lighter draft of 
 water, compatible with other requisites, was preferred. General 
 descriptions and drawings of vessel, armor and machinery were re- 
 quired, as well as estimates of cost and time for completion of 
 the whole. Twenty-five days from date of advertisement were al- 
 lowed for the presentation of plans. 
 
 A naval board, composed of Commodore Joseph Smith, Com- 
 modore Hiram Paulding, and Commander Charles H. Davis, was 
 appointed on the eighth of August to examine carefully all plans 
 submitted and report upon the same. The report of this board, 
 dated September 16, 1861, is both interesting and ^instructive from 
 many points of view, showing as it does the opinions entertained by 
 the naval men of that period regarding armor, and its probable utility ; 
 it also unfolds some of the rare schemes of inventors and patriots, 
 who rushed to their country's succor. It follows in full: 
 
 REPORT ON IRON CLAD VESSELS. 
 
 Navy Depabtment, 
 Bureau of Yards and Docks, September 16, 1861. 
 
 Sir: The undersigned, constituting a board appointed by your 
 order of the 8th ultimo, proceeded to the duty assigned to them, in 
 accordance with the first section of an act of Congress, approved 3d 
 of August 1861, directing the Secretary of the Navy u to appoint a 
 board of three skilful naval officers to investigate the plans and speci- 
 fications that may be submitted for the construction or completing 
 of iron-clad steam-ships or steam batteries, and on their report, 
 should it be favorable, the Secretary of the Navy will cause one or 
 more armored or iron-clad or steel clad steamships or floating steam 
 batteries to be built; and there is hereby appropriated, out of any 
 money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, the sum of one 
 million five hundred thousand dollars. ? ? 
 
 Distrustful of our ability to discharge this duty, which the law 
 requires should be performed by three skilful naval officers, we ap- 
 proach the subject with diffidence, having no experience and but 
 scanty knowledge in this branch of naval architecture. 
 
 The plans submitted are so various, and in many respects so 
 entirely dissimilar, that without a more thorough knowledge of this 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 mode of construction and the resisting properties of iron than we 
 possess, it is very likely that some of our conclusions may prove 
 erroneous. 
 
 Application was made to the Department for a naval construe^ 
 tor, to be placed under our orders, with whom we might consult; 
 but it appears that they are all so employed on important service 
 that none could be assigned to this duty. 
 
 The construction of iron clad steamships of war is now zealously 
 claiming the attention of foreign naval powers. France led ; Eng- 
 land followed, and is now somewhat extensively engaged in the sys- 
 tem; and other powers seem to emulate their example, though on a 
 smaller scale. 
 
 Opinions differ amongst naval and scientific men as to the 
 policy of adopting the iron armature for ships-of-war. For coast 
 and harbor defence they are undoubtedly formidable adjuncts to 
 fortifications on land. As cruising vessels, however, we are skepti- 
 cal as to their advantage and ultimate adoption. But whilst other 
 nations are endeavoring to perfect them, we must not remain idle. 
 
 The enormous load of iron, as so much additional weight to the 
 vessel; the great breadth of beam necessary to give her stability; the 
 short supply of coal she will be able to stow in bunkers; the greater 
 power required to propel her; and the largely increased cost of con- 
 struction, are objections to this class of vessels as cruisers, which we 
 believe it is difficult successfully to overcome. For river and har- 
 bor service we consider iron-clad vessels of light draught, or floating 
 batteries thus shielded, as very important; and w6 feel at this mo- 
 ment the necessity of them on some of our rivers and inlets to en- 
 force obedience to the laws. We however do not hesitate to express 
 the opinion, notwithstanding all we have heard or seen written on 
 the subject, that no ship or floating battery, however heavily she 
 may be plated, can cope successfully with a properly constructed 
 fortification of masonry. The one is fixed and immovable and 
 though constructed of a material which may be shattered by shot, can 
 be covered if need be, by the same or much heavier armor than a 
 floating vessel can bear, whilst the other is subject to disturbances 
 by winds and waves, and to the powerful effects of tides and currents. 
 
 Armored ships or batteries may be employed advantageously 
 to pass fortifications on land for ulterior objects of attack, to run a 
 
266 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 blockade, or to reduce temporary batteries on the shores of rivers 
 and the approaches to our harbors. 
 
 From what we know of the comparative advantages and disad- 
 vantages of ships constructed of wood over those of iron, we are 
 clearly of opinion that no iron- clad vessel of equal displacement can 
 be made to obtain the same speed as one not thus encumbered, be- 
 cause her form would be better adapted to speed. Her form and 
 dimensions, the unyielding nature of the shield, detract materially 
 in a heavy sea from the life, buoyancy and spring which a ship built 
 of wood possesses. 
 
 Wooden ships may be said to be but coffins for their crews 
 when brought in conflict with iron-clad vessels; but the speed of the 
 former, we take for granted, being greater than that of the latter, 
 they can readily choose their position and keep out of harm's way 
 entirely. 
 
 Recent improvements in the form and preparations of projec- 
 tiles, and their increased capacity for destruction, have elicited a 
 large amount of ingenuity and skill to devise means for resisting 
 them in the construction of ships-of-war. As yet we know of noth- 
 ing superior to the large and heavy spherical shot in its destructive 
 effects on vessels, whether plated or not. 
 
 Rifled guns have greater range, but the conical shot does not 
 produce the crushing effect of spherical shot. 
 
 It is assumed that 4£ inch plates are the heaviest armor a sea 
 going vessel can safely carry. These plates should be of tough iron, 
 and rolled in large, long pieces. This thickness of armor, it is be- 
 lieved, will resist all projectiles now in use at a distance of 500 
 yards, especially if the ship's sides are angular. 
 
 Plates hammered in large masses are less fibrous and tough 
 than when rolled. The question whether wooden backing, or any 
 elastic substance behind the iron plating, will tend to relieve at all 
 the frame of the ships from the crushing effect of a heavy projectile, 
 is not yet decided. Major Barnard says: "to put an elastic material 
 behind the iron is to insure its destruction. " With all deference 
 to such creditable authority, we may suggest that it is possible a 
 backing of some elastic substance (soft wood, perhaps, is the best) 
 might relieve the frame of the ship somewhat from the terrible shock 
 of a heavy projectile, though the plate should not be fractured. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 267 
 
 With respect to a comparison between ships of iron and those 
 of wood, without plating, high authorities in England differ as to 
 which is the best. The tops of ships built of iron, we are told, wear 
 out three bottoms, whilst the bottoms of those built of wood will 
 outwear three tops. In deciding on the relative merits of iron and 
 wooden-framed vessels, for each of which we have offers, the board 
 is of opinion that it would be well to try a specimen of each, as both 
 have distinguished advocates. One strong objection to iron vessels, 
 which, so far as we know, has not yet been overcome, is the oxida- 
 tion or rust in salt water, and their liability of becoming foul under 
 water by the attachment of sea grass and animalcules to their bot- 
 toms. The best preventive we know of is a coating of pure zinc 
 paint, which so long as it lasts, is believed to be an antidote to this 
 cause of evil. 
 
 After these brief remarks on the subject generally, we proceed 
 to notice the plans and offers referred to us for the construction of 
 plated vessels and floating batteries. 
 
 It has been suggested that the most ready mode of obtaining an 
 iron-clad ship of war would be to contract with responsible parties 
 in England for its complete construction; and we are assured that 
 parties there are ready to engage in such an enterprise on terms 
 more reasonable, perhaps, than such vessels could be built in 
 this country, having much greater experience and facilities than we 
 possess. Indeed, we are informed there are no mills and machinery 
 in this country capable of rolling iron 4^ inches thick, though plates 
 might be hammered to that thickness in many of our work-shops. As 
 before observed, rolled iron is considered much the best, and the 
 difficulty of rolling it increases rapidly with the increase of thick- 
 ness. It has, however, occured to us that a difficulty might arise 
 with the British government in case we should undertake to con- 
 struct ships-of-war in that country, which might complicate their de- 
 livery; and, moreover, we are of opinion that every people or 
 nation who can maintain a navy should be capable of constructing it 
 themselves. 
 
 Our immediate demands seem to require, first, so far as practi- 
 cable, vessels invulnerable to shot, of light draught of water, to 
 penetrate our shoal harbors, rivers and bayous. We therefore favor 
 the construction of this class of vessels before going into a more 
 perfect system of large iron-clad sea-going vessels of war. We 
 
268 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 are here met with the difficulty of encumbering small vessels with 
 armor, which, from their size, they are unable to bear. We neverthe- 
 less recommend that contracts be made with responsible parties for 
 the construction of one or more iron- clad vessels or batteries of as light 
 a draught of water as practicable, consistent with their weight of armor. 
 Meanwhile, availing ourselves of the experience thus obtained, 
 and the improvements which we believe are yet to be made by other 
 naval powers in building iron- clad ships, we would advise the con- 
 struction, in our own navy yards, of one or more of these vessels, 
 upon a large and more perfect scale, when Congress shall see fit to 
 authorize it. The amount now appropriated is not sufficient to build 
 both classes of vessels to any great extent. 
 
 We have made a synopsis of the propositions and specifications 
 submitted, which we annex, and now proceed to state, in brief, the 
 result of our decisions upon the offers presented to us. 
 
 J. Ericsson, New York, page 19. — This plan of a floating bat- 
 tery is novel, but seems to be based upon a plan which will render 
 the battery shot and shell proof. We are somewhat apprehensive 
 that her properties for sea are not such as a sea-going vessel should 
 possess. But she may be moved from one place to another on the 
 coast in smooth water. We recommend that an experiment be made 
 with one battery of this description on the terms proposed, with a 
 guarantee and forfeiture in case of failure in any of the properties 
 and points of the vessel as proposed. 
 
 Price, $275,000; length of vessel, 172 feet; breadth of beam, 
 4:1 feet; depth of hold, 11^ feet; time, 100 days; draught of water 
 10 feet; displacement, 1,255 tons; speed per hour, 9 statute miles. 
 
 John W. Nystrom, Philadelphia, 1216 Chestnut St, page 1. — 
 The plan of (quadruple) guns is not known and cannot be consid- 
 ered. The dimensions would not float the vessel without the 
 guards, which we are not satisfied would repel shot. We do not 
 recommend the plan. 
 
 Price, about $175,000; length of vessel, 175 feet; breadth of 
 beam, 27 feet; depth of hold, 13 feet; time, four months; draught 
 of water, 10 feet; displacement, 875 tons; speed per hour, 12 
 knots. - 
 
 William Perine, New York, 2777 post office box, presents 
 three plans. The specifications and drawings are not full. The 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 269 
 
 last proposal (No. 3, page 2) for the heavy plating is the only one 
 we have considered ; but there is neither drawing nor model, and 
 the capacity of the vessel, we think, will not bear the armor and 
 armament proposed. 
 
 Price, 1621,000; length of vessel, 225 feet; breadth of beam, 
 45J feet; depth of hold, 15^ feet; time, 9 months; draught of water 
 13 feet; displacement, 2,454 tons; speed per hour, 10 knots. 
 
 John C. Le Ferre, Boston, page 9. — Description deficient. 
 Not recommended. Sent a model, but neither price, time, nor 
 dimensions stated, 
 
 E. S. Eenwiok, New York, 335 Broadway, presents drawings, 
 specifications and model of an iron-clad vessel of large capacity and 
 powerful engines, with great speed, capable of carrying a heavy 
 battery, and stated to be shot-proof and a good sea boat. The 
 form and manner of construction and proportions of the vessel are 
 novel, and will attract the attention of scientific and practical men. 
 She is of very light draft of water, and on the question whether she 
 will prove to be a safe and comfortable sea- boat we do not express 
 a decided opinion. Vessels of somewhat similar form, in the part 
 of the vessel which is emerged, of light draught of water on our 
 western lakes, have, we believe, proved entirely satisfactory in all 
 weathers. To counteract the effect of the waves, when disturbed 
 by the winds, by producing a jerk, or sudden rolling motion of flat 
 shoal vessels, it is proposed to carry a sufficient weight above the 
 center of gravity to counterpoise the heavy weight below, which is 
 done in this ship by the immense iron armor. If, after a full dis- 
 cussion and examination by experts on this plan, it should be de- 
 cided that she is a safe vessel for sea service, we would recommend 
 the construction upon it of one ship at one of our dock yards. 
 
 The estimate cost of this ship, $1,500,000, precludes action 
 upon the plan until further appropriations shall be made by Con- 
 gress for such objects. 
 
 Time not stated; length of vessel 400 feet; breadth of beam, 
 60 feet; depth of hold, 33 feet; draught of water, 16 feet; displace- 
 ment, 6,520 tons; speed per hour, at least 18 miles. 
 
 Whitney & Kowland, Brooklyn, Greenpoint, page 13; propose 
 an iron gunboat, armor of bars of iron and thin plate over it. No 
 price stated. Dimensions of vessel, we think, will not bear the 
 weight and possess stability. Time, 5 months. Not recommended. 
 
270 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Length of vessel, 140 feet; breadth of beam, 28 feet; depth of 
 hold, 13 J feet; draught of water, 8 feet. 
 
 Donald McKay, Boston, page 6. — Vessel, in general dimen- 
 sions and armor, approved. The speed estimated slow. The cost 
 precludes the consideration of construction by the board. 
 
 Price, 11,000,000; length of vessel, 227 feet; breadth of beam, 
 50 feet; depth of hold, 26 J feet; time, 9 to 10 months; draught of 
 water, 14 feet; displacement, 3,100 tons; speed per hour, 6 to 7 
 knots. 
 
 William K. Wood, Jersey City, N. J., page 14. — Dimen- 
 sions will not float the guns high enough; not recommended. 
 
 Price, $255,000; length of vessel, 160 feet; breadth of beam, 
 34 feet; depth of hold, 22 feet; time, 4 months; draught of water, 
 13 feet; displacement, 1,215 tons; speed, not stated. 
 
 Merrick & Sons, Philadelphia, pages 7 and 8— Vessel of 
 wood and iron combined. This proposition we consider the most 
 practical one for heavy armor. We recommend that a contract be 
 made with that party, under a guarantee, with forfeiture in case of 
 failure to comply with the specifications; and that the contract re- 
 quire the plates to be 15 feet long and 36 inches wide, with a reser- 
 vation of some modifications which may occur as the work pro- 
 gresses, not to affect the cost. 
 
 Price, $780,000; length of vessel, 220 feet; breadth of beam, 
 60 feet; depth of hold, 23 feet; time, 9 months; draught of water, 
 13 feet; displacement, 3,296 tons; speed per hour, 9-J knots. 
 
 Benjamin Kathburn, , page 20. — We do not recommend 
 
 the plan for adoption. 
 
 Price not stated; length of vessel not stated; breadth of beam, 
 80 feet; depth of hold, 74 feet; time not stated; draught of water, 
 25 feet; displacement, 15,000 tons; speed not stated; specifications 
 incomplete. 
 
 Henry K,. Dunham, New York, page 11. — Vessel too costly 
 for the appropriation; no drawings or specifications; not recom- 
 mended. 
 
 Price, $1,200,000; length of vessel, 325 feet; breadth of beam, 
 60 feet; depth of hold not stated; time, 15 to 18 months; draught 
 of water, 16 feet; displacement not stated; speed per hour, 12 
 miles. 
 
 C. S. Bushnell & Co., New Haven, Conn., page 121. — Pro- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 271 
 
 pose a vessel to be iron-clad, on the rail and plate principle, and to 
 obtain high speed. The objection to this vessel is the fear that she 
 will not float her armor and load sufficiently high, and have stabil- 
 ity enough for a sea vessel. With a guarantee thai she shall do 
 these, we recommend on that basis a contract* 
 
 Price, 1235,250; length of vessel, 180 feet; breadth of beam, 
 — feet; depth of hold, 12§ feet; time, 4 months; draught of water, 
 10 feet; displacement, — tons; speed per hour, 12 knots, 
 
 John Westwood, Cincinnati, Ohio, page 17. — Vessel of wood, 
 with iron armor; plan good enough, but the breadth not enough to 
 bear the armor. No detailed specification ; no price or time stated ; 
 only a general drawing. Not recommended. 
 
 Neafie & Levy, Philadelphia, page 5. — No plans or drawings, 
 therefore not considered. Neither price nor time stated. 
 
 Length of vessel, 200 feet; breadth of beam, 40 feet; depth of 
 hold, 15 feet; draught of water, 13 feet; displacement, 1,748 tons; 
 speed per hour, 10 knots. 
 
 Wm. Norris, New York, 26 Cedar street, page 6. — Iron boat 
 without armor — too small and not recommended. 
 
 Price, 132,000; length of vessel 83 feet; breadth of beam 25 
 feet; depth of hold 14 feet; time 60 to 75 days; draught of water, 3 
 feet; displacement 90 tons; speed not stated. 
 
 Wm. Kingsley, Washington, I). 0., page 10, proposes a rtihber - 
 clad vessel, which we cannot recommend. No price or dimensions 
 stated, 
 
 A. Beebe, New York, 82 Broadway, page 18. — Specification 
 and sketch defective. Plan not approved. 
 
 Price, |50,000; length of vessel, 120 feet; breadth of beam, 55 
 feet; depth not stated ; time 100 days; draught of water, 6 ft. dis- 
 placement, 1,000 tons; speed per hour, 8 knots. 
 
 These three propositions recommended, viz: Bushnell & Co., 
 New Haven, Connecticut ; Merrick & Sons, Philadelphia, and J. 
 Ericsson, New York, will absorb $1,290,050 of the appropriation 
 of 11,500,000, leaving $209,750 yet unexpended. 
 
 The board recommends that armor with heavy guns be placed 
 on one of our river craft, or, if none will bear it, to construct a 
 scow, which will answer, to plate and shield the guns, for the river 
 service on the Potomac, to be constructed or prepared by the gov- 
 ernment at the navy yard here for immediate use. 
 w 
 
272 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 We would further recommend that the Department ask of Con- 
 gress at the next session, an appropriation, for experimenting on 
 iron plates of different kinds, of $10,000. 
 
 All of which is respectfully submitted, 
 
 Joseph Smith, 
 H. Paulding, 
 0. H. Davis. 
 
 Hon. Gideon Welles, 
 
 Secretary of the Navy. 
 
 The first of the three plans accepted resulted in a contract 
 dated September 27, 1861, with C. S. Bushnell & Co., of New 
 Haven, Conn. , for the armored gunboat that was named Galena. 
 She was built at Mystic Bridge, Conn., from designs prepared by 
 Mr. S. H. Pook, afterward a constructor in the navy, for $235,250, 
 and was completed in April, 1862, being almost immediately there- 
 after in action and badly damaged at Drury's Bluff, on James' 
 river. In form the Galena was similar to an ordinary gun-vessel, 
 with the important difference that her sides tumbled home at an 
 angle of nearly forty -five degrees and were covered with iron bars 
 and plates, protecting a gun deck in which six large guns were 
 mounted. She was rated as of 738 tons burden, and was rigged as 
 a two-masted foretopsail schooner. There were two Ericsson vibrat- 
 ing lever engines, with horizontal cylinders forty-eight inches in 
 diameter and three feet stroke, driving a four-bladed screw pro- 
 peller, twelve feet in diameter and twenty feet pitch. Steam was 
 supplied by two horizontal tubular boilers with three furnaces in 
 each, two blower engines for fan blast being provided. The 
 Galena' ] s armor was about four inches in thickness and was so badly 
 shattered at Drury's Bluff that she was not considered a success as 
 an armor clad, although she continued in active service throughout 
 the war, and, lashed to the unfortunate Oneida, was in Farragut's 
 fleet in Mobile Bay. In the early '70's, under the guise of "repair- 
 ing" her, the Department built the 1,900 ton sloop of war Galena, 
 that was for many years a prominent figure in our wooden fleet. 
 
 The contract with Merrick & Sons of Philadelphia gave the United 
 States navy the New Ironsides, beyond question the finest and most 
 formidable example of a battle-ship in existence at the time she 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 273 
 
 first took the sea. The hull was built of white oak at Cramp's ship- 
 yard in Philadelphia, Merrick & Sons building the machinery at 
 their own works. The engines were of only about seven hundred 
 horse power and could drive the ship scarcely six knots an hour, 
 but that was regarded as fast enough for the service required of her, 
 as it was not apprehended that she would be obliged to run away 
 from anything then afloat. The contract price was $780,000. She 
 was of 4,120 tons displacement; 232 feet long; 57-J- feet beam, and 
 mounted a very heavy battery, consisting of sixteen Xl-inch Dahl- 
 gren guns, two 200-pounder Parrott rifles, ?<nd four 24-pounder 
 howitzers. 
 
 The New Ironsides was large and decidedly ship-shape in ap- 
 pearance, with a projecting ram bow, the sides for the length of the 
 main battery being sheathed with four inches of iron plate armor, 
 the bow and stern sections being unarmored. The main battery 
 was also protected with athwart-ship bulkheads, or walls, of the 
 same thickness of armor as the sides, so she was really a case-mated 
 ship. She was originally bark-rigged, but when sent to the seat of 
 war she was stripped for fighting, the masts being taken out at 
 Port Koyal and replaced with light clothes-poles, with which rig 
 her appearance was remarkably like that of a modern war- vessel. 
 In 1863 the masts were replaced previous to a trip north for repairs, 
 but were again removed, this time at Norfolk, before she again 
 went into action. 
 
 Completed late in 1862, she proceeded at once to the front and 
 was actively employed during the remainder of the rebellion, it 
 being said of her that she was in action more days than any other 
 vessel of our navy during the war. Mr. William S. Wells of New 
 Haven, Connecticut, recently the Rear Admiral of the National 
 Association of Naval Veterans, was attached to the New Ironsides 
 as an assistant engineer during her entire period of war service, be- 
 ginning with her first commission, and was the only officer who re- 
 mained in her that length of time. To him Admiral Porter wrote 
 long after the war that the New Ironsides had a record for having 
 been hammered more thoroughly than any vessel that ever floated, 
 and gave, with other interesting facts about the ship, the statement 
 that in a series of engagements from July 18 to September 8, 1863, 
 she had fired four thousand four hundred and thirty-nine eleven- 
 
274 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 inch projectiles. In one engagement with the batteries on Sulli- 
 van's Island she was struck seventy times within three hours, but 
 aside from some temporary damage to the port-shutters, which the 
 engineers quickly repaired, was in perfect fighting condition at the 
 end of the action. On another occasion she very narrowly escaped 
 being blown up by a torpedo. At the close of the war she was laid 
 up at the League Island navy yard, where, on the night of Decem- 
 ber 15-16, 1866, she was burned to the water's edge, having taken 
 fire in some unknown manner late at night and not discovered until 
 the flames were beyond control. 
 
 The picture of this famous ship which appears in the text is a 
 reproduction of a drawing made by Second Assistant Engineer Wil- 
 liam S. Wells, before referred to as having served in her through- 
 out her war career, and represents the New Ironsides exactly as she 
 looked in the battles in Charleston harbor in 1863. 
 
 The third proposal accepted resulted in the construction of 
 John Ericcson's Monitor, probably the most famous and epoch- 
 making craft that ever floated, unless we revert to very ancient his- 
 tory and except Noah's Ark. The contract for this novel iron-clad 
 was made October 4, 1861, between John Ericsson and his sureties 
 on one part, and Gideon Welles, as Secretary of the Navy, on the 
 other. It provided that the parties of the first part should construct 
 an iron-clad, shot-proof steam battery, of iron and wood combined, 
 on Ericsson's plan; the length to be 179 feet; extreme breadth, 41 
 feet, and depth 5 feet, or larger if found necessary, to carry the 
 required armament and stores. A sea speed of eight knots an hour, 
 maintained for twelve consecutive hours was stipulated. The con- 
 tract price was f 275, 000, to be paid in five instalments of $50,000 
 each and one of $25,000, payments to be made upon certificates of 
 the naval superintendent of construction when in his judgment work 
 had progressed sufficiently to warrant them. A reservation of 
 twenty -five per cent, was withheld from each payment to be re- 
 tained until after the completion and satisfactory trial of the vessel, 
 not to exceed ninety days after she was ready for sea. 
 
 A clause of the contract provided that in case the vessel did 
 not develop the stipulated speed or failed in other stated require- 
 ments, the contractors should refund to the United States the full 
 amount of money paid them. This clause is the basis of the oft- 
 
THE new ironsides; 1862. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 277 
 
 repeated statement that Ericsson and his sureties paid for the build- 
 ing of the vessel themselves; this was not the case, as all the pay- 
 ments, excepting the twenty-five per cent, reservation, were made 
 before the Monitor left New York, although the contract would 
 have required the contractors to pay for her had it not been for her 
 fortunate encounter with the Merrimac, as her speed and some 
 other qualities could not have been regarded as satisfactory. Her 
 performance in Hampton Roads was regarded as a satisfactory test 
 and the Navy Department paid the reservations within a week 
 thereafter without insisting upon the full letter of the contract being 
 carried out in minor particulars. A curious clause in the contract, 
 which Ericsson ignored and the Department did not insist upon, in- 
 dicates how reluctant the naval advisers of the Secretary were to 
 authorise an entire departure from the method of marine propulsion 
 which they had grown up to believe was the only reliable one. The 
 clause referred to required the contractors to ' 4 furnish masts, spars, 
 sails, and rigging of sufficient dimensions to drive the vessel at the 
 rate of six knots per hour in a fair breeze of wind. ' ' 
 
 The adoption of the plan proposed by Ericsson was due to a 
 train of accidental circumstances far more than to any percipience 
 on the part of the board to which it was submitted. After being 
 promised the contract for the Galena, Mr. C. S. Bushnell called 
 upon Ericsson in New York for professional advice regarding some 
 of the details of his plans, and during the interview Ericsson resur- 
 rected from a rubbish heap in the corner of his office the model that 
 he had made for the French naval officials in 1854, and exhibited 
 it as his idea of what an iron-clad should be. Bushnell instantly 
 perceived the possibilities of the design, but could not induce 
 Ericsson to submit it to the naval board, the inventor having 
 already had a surfeit of experiences with the Navy Department in 
 years gone by. He did succeed, however, in getting Ericsson's 
 permission to take the model and submit it himself. Knowing that 
 Secretary Welles, who was his personal friend, was then in Con- 
 necticut, Mr. Bushnell hastened thither and laid the plan before 
 him, the Secretary being so impressed with its merits that he urged 
 Bushnell to take it to Washington immediately, promising that he 
 would, if necessary, order the board to extend the limit of time 
 prescribed for the submission of plans. 
 
27$ 
 
 TfiE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STAGES. 
 
 Through influential friends Mr. Bushnell obtained a personal 
 interview with President Lincoln and so enlisted his support by ex- 
 hibiting the model and explaining the simplicity of operation of the 
 ship it represented that the President voluntarily offered to accom- 
 pany him to the Navy Department the next day. At the appointed 
 time Mr. Bushnell and the President called on Assistant Secretary 
 Fox and exhibited the model to him and a number of naval officers, 
 including members of the iron-clad board. All were surprised with 
 the simplicity and novelty of the plan, and some favored giving it 
 a trial; others ridiculed it. The following day Commodore Smith 
 convened his board and gave Mr. Bushnell an official hearing, that 
 gentleman quitting the session with a hope that he had successfully 
 presented his case; he was doomed to disappointment, however, for 
 the next morning he found the interest of the previous day entirely 
 gone, and the members of the board indifferent and skeptical. The two 
 commodores told him that they would vote for a trial of the design 
 if he could get Commander Davis to vote for it, Davis as the junior 
 member of the board being evidently used as the executioner to ad- 
 minister the coup de grace to suspected "cranks. 55 The latter 
 officer, when appealed to by Bushnell, grew merry over what he re- 
 garded as the absurdities of the project and told Bushnell that he 
 might ' ' take the little thing home and worship it, as it would not 
 be idolatry, because it was in the image of nothing in the heaven 
 above or on the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth." 1 
 
 Almost in despair, Mr. Bushnell resolved to play his last card 
 by calling in the eloquent voice of Ericsson to explain his own in- 
 vention, a difficult thing to do, for Ericsson had been so shamefully 
 treated by the Navy Department in regard to the Princeton that he 
 had often announced his determination never to set foot in Wash- 
 ington again. Bushnell proceeded to New York and by represent- 
 ing the state of affairs in much brighter colors than the actual 
 facts warranted, induced Ericsson to go to Washington and appear 
 before the board. Arriving there, he was coldly received and in- 
 formed that his plan had already been rejected; mortified and indig- 
 nant, he was about to leave, but a remark dropped by Commodore 
 
 ■i V . ■ - ' ■ ■ 1 ' " " -- —'--•» 
 
 1 Letter from Mr. Bushnell to Hon. Gideon Welles ; published in W. 0. 
 Church's Life of John Ericsson, Vol. I., page 250. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 279 
 
 Smith to the effect that the cause for rejection was lack of stability 
 excited his professional pride and he launched forth into a most 
 masterful and eloquent defense of his model, convincing the mem- 
 bers of the board in short order that he knew more of stability and 
 ships in general than had ever been dreamed of in their philosophy. 
 The impression he made gained him another audience with the 
 board, the Secretary of the Navy, who had fortunately returned to 
 Washington, being present on the second occasion; after Ericsson 
 had charmed everyone in the room with his glowing description of 
 what his vessel could do, Mr. Welles asked each member of the 
 board in turn if he approved of a contract being made with Ericsson, 
 and each in turn gently answered, u Yes, by all means." No more 
 time was lost; the Secretary told Ericsson that he would be awarded 
 a contract, and urged him to begin work at once without waiting for 
 formalities, which he did with such vim that in the few days that 
 elapsed before the contract was drawn up the keel plates of the 
 Monitor were put through the rolling mill. Thus by the precar- 
 ious train of happenings above related did Ericsson's model nar- 
 rowly escape remaining for an indefinite time in the dusty oblivion 
 of his workshop. 
 
 The name Monitor was given by Ericsson himself to his iron- 
 clad, his reasons for the selection being thus stated in a letter of 
 his to Assistant Secretary Fox, dated January 20, 1862: 
 
 " Sir: In accordance with your request, I now submit for your 
 approbation a name for the floating battery at Greenpoint. The 
 impregnable and aggressive character of this structure will admonish 
 the leaders of the Southern Rebellion that the batteries on the banks 
 of their rivers will no longer present barriers to the entrance of the 
 Union forces. The iron-clad intruder will thus prove a severe 
 monitor to those leaders. But there are other leaders who will also 
 be startled and admonished by the booming of the guns from the 
 impregnable iron turret. ' Downing Street' will hardly view with 
 indifference this last 'Yankee notion', this monitor. To the Lords 
 of the Admiralty the new craft will be a monitor, suggesting doubts 
 as to the propriety of completing those four steel-clad ships at three 
 and a half millions apiece. On these and many similar grounds, I 
 propose to name the new battery Monitor. ' ' 
 
280 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Every part of this wonderful vessel was designed by John 
 Ericsson, and she was purely and wholly an engineers 5 ship, entirely 
 free from the trappings and adjuncts pertaining to the seamanship 
 of the period in which she was built. Hall, machinery, turrets, 
 gun carriages, anchor hoists, everything, all were built from work- 
 ing drawings made by Ericsson's own hands. In order to hasten 
 the work it was given out by sub- contracts to different establish- 
 ments: the hull was built by Thomas F. Rowland at the Continental 
 Iron Works, Greenpoint; the propelling engines and all auxiliary 
 machinery by Delamater & Co. , and the turret, built up of eight 
 layers of one-inch iron plates bolted together, by the Novelty Iron 
 Works. Chief Engineer Alban C. Stimers, U. S. Navy, repre- 
 sented the Government as the inspector of construction of the whole 
 fabric. Within one hundred working days from the laying of the 
 keel the Monitor was practically completed and her engines had 
 been operated under steam. As built, her extreme length was 172 
 
 » | \ W 111 IP! • C 
 
 e 
 
 THE ORIGINAL ERICSSON MONITOR. 
 
 a. awning, b. pilot house of iron " logs." c. anchor well. d. wooden upper 
 body or raft, armored on sides and deck. e. iron hull or under-body. 
 
 feet; breadth, 41| feet; depth of hold, feet; draft of water, 10^ 
 feet; inside diameter of turret, 20 feet; height of turret, 9 feet. 
 The deck was plated with iron an inch thick, and the sides of the 
 upper body, or wooden cover of the iron hull as it may be called, 
 were protected with five inches of iron armor. Two Xl-inch Dahl- 
 gren guns were mounted in the turret. The engines were of Ericsson' s 
 vibrating-lever type, with cylinders three feet in diameter and twenty- 
 six inches stroke, driving a propeller nine feet in diameter. 
 
 While the Monitor was being built, the Navy Department and 
 Captain Ericsson were liberally ridiculed and abused by the public 
 press for what was regarded as a fatuitous waste of public money, 
 and Ericsson himself, in the midst of his overwhelming labors, had 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 281 
 
 constantly to calm the doubts of Commodore Smith, who appears 
 from his many letters full of foreboding to Ericsson, to have repented 
 of his approval of this revolutionary design in naval architecture. 
 In the midst of all this hostility and opposition, Mr. Secretary Welles, 
 Captain Ericsson, the three gentlemen who became his sureties 
 (Messrs. C. S. Bushnell, John A. Griswold, and John F. Winslow), 
 and Chief Engineer Stimers remained steadfast in their faith in the 
 new departure, and seem to have been about the only persons in- 
 terested who did not regard the scheme as a crazy dream, doomed 
 to utter failure. The performance of the Monitor in battle imme- 
 diately after her completion caused a sudden change in sentiment, 
 naval and civil, and many who had been loudest in jeering became 
 
 BOILER (2) OF THE MONITOR, 1861. 
 
 equally loud in praise, announcing their own prescience. Credit for 
 the creation of the Monitor belongs largely to Mr. Secretary Welles 
 for appreciating its possibilities and for his action in influencing the 
 armor-clad board to approve the original plans; after him, the credit 
 is probably fairly distributed in his own words as follows: 
 
 " To the distinguished inventor of this new-class vessel, to his 
 sureties, to the board of naval officers who reported in her favor, to 
 the vigilant and very able naval officer who superintended her con- 
 struction, the Secretary has, on repeated occasions, tendered his 
 obligations and his thanks for their patriotic services in coming to 
 the assistance of the department and the government in a great 
 emergency. Great praise and commendation are due to them re- 
 
282 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 spectively, but no one can be justified in attempting to arrogate to 
 himself undue merit at the expense of others. The Navy Depart- 
 ment, under great embarrassments, was compelled to enter upon a 
 new field in naval warfare, and in this experiment it had the services 
 and active and efficient co-operation of Captain John Ericsson, with 
 that of the wealthy and deserving gentlemen who aided in the de- 
 velopment of this new class of vessels, which have entered into the 
 navy of the United States, and been elsewhere incorporated into the 
 service of other governments." 1 
 
 The year 1861 also saw the appearance of iron-clad steamers in 
 the Mississippi River, built by the War Department for use in con- 
 nection with the army. Seven of these iron-clads were built by the 
 distinguished engineer of St. Louis, Mr. James B. Edes, under a 
 contract dated August 7, 1861, and were mostly completed by the 
 end of the year. They were 175 feet long, 50 feet beam, and were 
 propelled by a huge paddle-wheel amidships near the stern, work- 
 ing in an opening 18 feet wide and 60 feet long fore and aft, the two 
 parts of the after body of the vessel thus formed being joined abaft 
 the wheel by a flying deck, known in river parlance as the 6 4 fan- 
 tail. ' ' The wheel was 22 feet in diameter. Almost the entire deck was 
 covered with a casemate, or superstructure, with sides sloping inward 
 and upward at an angle of forty-five degrees, enclosing the battery, 
 machinery and paddle-wheel. The expectation being to fight bows 
 on as a rule, the front end of the casemate was plated with 2-| inches 
 of iron, backed with twenty inches of oak. The sides abreast the 
 engines and boilers had the same thickness of iron without any oak 
 backing, and the remainder of the surface was unprotected. The en- 
 gines were of the usual high-pressure river type, and, with the 
 boilers, were in constant danger from shot in action, the light draft 
 of the boats making it impossible for the machinery to be placed be- 
 low the water line. These Edes gun- boats were named Cairo, Car- 
 ondelet, Cincinnati, Louisville, Mound City, Pittsburgh, and St. 
 Louis, after towns in the Mississippi valley. They had two horizon- 
 tal high-pressure steam cylinders, 22 inches in diameter and 6 feet 
 stroke, and five cylindrical flue boileis, 3 feet in diameter and 24 
 feet long. 
 
 1 Senate Ex. Doc, No. 86; 40th Congress, 2d Session. 
 
U. S. S. CAIHO. 
 
 Type of "Western River Armored Gunboat. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 285 
 
 Two other steamers — the Essex and Benton — nearly twice as 
 large as the Edes' boats, were bought and converted into gunboats, the 
 armor both iron and wood backing, being heavier than that of 
 the seven contract vessels. A naval officer (Commander John 
 Kodgers first, and Captain A. H. Foote a few months later) had 
 general command of this flotilla under the army authorities, and of- 
 ficers of the regular navy were assigned to the command of the dif- 
 ferent steamers: the subordinate officers were volunteers, recruited 
 chiefly from the captains, engineers, mates and pilots of the river, 
 and the crews were decidedly mixed — soldiers, rivermen, men-of- 
 war's-men from the East, and sailors from the Great Lakes. The 
 naval commanders were of necessity junior by relative rank to the 
 numerous generals and colonels doing duty about them, and this 
 produced more or less friction, as the army officers had authority to 
 give orders to the gunboats, or ' ' interfere ' ' with them, as Captain 
 Foote expressed it. In July, 1862 this unpleasant state of affairs 
 was done away with by the transferring of the entire river flotilla to 
 the Navy Department. 
 
CHAPTEE XVII. 
 
 44 Then, like a kraken huge and black, 
 She crashed our ribs in her iron grasp ! 
 Down went the Cumberland all a wrack, 
 
 With a sudden shudder of death, 
 
 And the cannon's breath 
 For her dying gasp." — Longfellow. 
 
 1862. The Civil War, Continued. Capture of Roanoke Island and Elizabeth City. 
 The Me brim ac and her Raid. Destruction of the Congress and Cumber- 
 land. The Monitor Completed and Commissioned* Her Chief Engineer 
 Isaac Newton. Voyage of the Monitor from New York and her arrival in 
 Hampton Roads. 
 
 AT the beginning of 1862 a large combined military and naval 
 force under the command of Flag Officer L. M. Goldsborough 
 and Brigadier General A. E. Burnside was fitted out at Annapolis 
 for the purpose of entering the Sounds of North Carolina through 
 Hatteras Inlet, and capturing the fortified positions of the enemy on 
 Roanoke Island, the possession of which would give to the Union 
 forces the military command of those waters. This expedition has 
 passed into history as the 66 Burnside Expedition," but it might with 
 much propriety be designated by Goldsborough' s name, inas- 
 much as its character was essentially naval. Owing to the shoalness 
 of water on the bulkhead at Hatteras Inlet and at many places in 
 the Sounds, vessels of light draft were necessarily used, several of 
 them being armed ferry-boats, and others were purchased tugs, river 
 steamers, freight-boats, etc., not one of them having been built for 
 war purposes. It should be remarked in regard to the ferry-boats 
 that in spite of their uncouth appearance they were found remarkably 
 useful for coast and river service, combining light draft with handi- 
 ness in narrow places, being able to steam and steer equally well in 
 either direction, while the broad overhanging deck furnished an 
 excellent gun platform on which heavy batteries were habitually 
 mounted. 
 
 Proceeding down Chesapeake Bay, the flotilla assembled in 
 Hampton Roads and sailed thence the 11th of January, being then 
 
THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 287 
 
 composed of one hundred and twenty-five vessels, about twenty of 
 which belonged to the navy and the remainder were purchased or 
 chartered army transports, carrying some twelve thousand soldiers, 
 with horses, ammunition, provisions, and all the paraphernalia of 
 war. With much tooting of whistles, waving of flags, and cheering 
 of soldiers, the expedition moved out towards the Capes of the 
 Chesapeake, being probably the most motley and piebald aggregation 
 of craft ever afloat with warlike intent. The enthusiasm of the 
 soldiers speedily subsided when the Atlantic was reached and the 
 voyage down the coast was so devoid of pleasure that men who 
 subsequently became hardened veterans of the Army of the Potomac 
 now refer to that sea experience with more abhorrence than they 
 exhibit in recalling the dreadful scenes of Chancellorsville and 
 Gettysburg. 
 
 The fleet arrived off Hatteras January 13, and spent some 
 two weeks in the very difficult task of working over the shoals inside 
 the Sounds, the army transports not all getting inside until the 5th 
 of February. Three of the transports were wrecked and a con- 
 siderable number of horses, rifles, and ordnance stores were lost. 
 One of the naval steamers, the Whitehall, was so injured in trying to 
 get in that she had to return to Hampton Roads for repairs. As 
 finallv collected inside, the naval force consisted of nineteen vessels 
 arranged in three divisions, commanded respectively by Lieutenant 
 Reed "Werden in the Stars and Stripes, Lieutenant A. Murray in the 
 Louisiana, and Lieutenant H. K. Davenport in the Hetzel. A 
 number of the army vessels were armed with one or more guns and 
 were intended for fighting as well as transport purposes ; these, 
 bearing such names as Picket, Lancer, Huzzar,&c, were formed into 
 a division under the command of Commander S. F. Hazard, of the 
 navy. Mr. Chas. H. Haswell, who has figured so prominently in 
 the earlier chapters of this work, was attached to General Burnside's 
 staff as fleet engineer, and Lieutenant 13. W. Flagler, now brigadier 
 general and Chief of the Ordnance Department of the army, was 
 Bumside's chief ordnance officer. Flag Officer Goldsborough's 
 flagship, the Philadelphia, not being suited for safe handling over 
 the lumpy and uncertain bottom about Roanoke Island, did not 
 participate in the ensuing engagement, Goldsborough temporarily 
 transferring his flag and going, with his fleet captain, Commander 
 A. L. Case, into action in the armed ferry-boat Southfield. 
 
288 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 February 7th the fleet moved up and engaged the shore batteries 
 and a small squadron of gunboats of the enemy with such good effect 
 that by midnight Burnside had been able to land over ten thousand 
 troops. The next day the attack was begun at daybreak and con- 
 tinued until the middle of the afternoon, when a bold charge of the 
 military forces gained possession of the enemy's strongest positions 
 and compelled his surrender. About three thousand Confederates 
 were made prisoners, the remainder escaping in their gunboats to 
 Elizabeth City near the Albemarle end of the Dismal Swamp canal. 
 
 The casualties in the fleet were small considering the character 
 of the vessels and the severe bombardment they underwent, the total 
 loss amounting to seven killed and sixteen wounded. Two of the 
 killed were officers — Charles Harris, Master's Mate of the Hetzel, 
 and Acting Second Assistant Engineer Stephen Mealius, senior en- 
 gineer of the Seymour. Mr Mealius was struck in the hip by a 32- 
 pound shot and so injured that he died about a week later, the same 
 shot killing a coal-heaver at his side. These two were the only 
 casualties on the Seymour. The unsuitability of the vessels for war 
 service was shown by the fact that several of them were temporarily 
 disabled during the attack by injuries to their machinery. The cross- 
 head and one of the slides of the engine of the Hunchback were shot 
 away, and the Commodore Perry was partly crippled by a shot which 
 passed between the engine and boiler and destroyed the feed-water 
 tank. A shell struck the upper deck of the Ceres and glancing 
 downward from a beam in very curious flight passed through the 
 lower deck and rolled into one of the ash pits where it exploded, 
 hurling fire and grate- bars in all directions. 
 
 One episode of the fight brought Chief Engineer Haswell into 
 enviable prominence for gallantry, the affair being thus related in 
 Frank Leslie's Pictorial History of the War: "During her efforts 
 to get near the fort, the Ranger got aground, and for a few moments 
 was in great danger, being a stationary target for the rebel guns. 
 Mr. Charles Haswell, Engineer-in-chief of the fleet, who was in 
 command of the steamer Tempest, at this critical juncture went to 
 the rescue, and taking her hawser, towed the Ranger out of danger 
 into deep water again. The act was greatly applauded." 
 
 Immediately after the capture of Roanoke Island, Flag Officer 
 G-oldsborough despatched his second in command, Commander S, 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 289 
 
 0. Rowan, with fourteen of the steamers to Elizabeth City to attack 
 the Confederate gunboats, all of which had taken refuge there with 
 the exception of the Curlew which had been so badly damaged in the 
 fight of the 7th that she had been set on fire and destroyed. Feb- 
 ruary 10th Rowan's squadron attacked the enemy and destroyed all 
 his vessels except one, the Ellis, which was captured in good condi- 
 tion and converted into a Federal gunboat, performing good service 
 as such in the waters of the Sounds until her loss by stranding near 
 the end of the year. At the time of her loss she was under the 
 command of Lieutenant Win. B. Gushing, then rising into promi- 
 nence by virtue of a courage at once heroic and reckless. For 
 exceptional excellence in the action at Elizabeth City Mr. John 
 Cahill, second assistant engineer and acting chief of the Underwriter ', 
 was highly commended in the report of his commanding officer, 
 Lieutenant William 1ST. Jeffers, who praised Mr. CahilPs manage- 
 ment of the engineer department and also his services in working 
 the after gun during the fight. The same engagement furnished an 
 instance of remarkable courage and presence of mind on the part of 
 John Davis, gunner's mate of the Valley City, who, when the maga- 
 zine was set on fire by a shell, deliberately sat down in an open 
 barrel of powder and prevented its ignition until the fire division 
 came to the rescue. 
 
 After the affair at Elizabeth City an expedition consisting of 
 the Shawsheen, Lockwood, and two or three smaller vessels, all under 
 the command of Lieutenant Jeffers, was sent to drive the enemy 
 away from the mouth of the Chesapeake and Albemarle canal and 
 to block up that water-way. On February 13, after shelling the 
 position and driving the enemy back half a mile or more, a force of 
 sailors and engine-room men under Acting Master Graves and 
 Second Assistant Engineer John L. Lay, acting chief of the Louisiana, 
 was landed and destroyed the machinery of a large dredging machine, 
 afterward sinking it and some schooners in the canal, completely 
 obstructing it. Mr. Lay, who afterward became prominent in the 
 navy in connection with the torpedo service, was highly commended 
 in the commanding officer's report for the thorough manner in which 
 the work had been done. 
 
 The story of how the fine frigate Merrimac was lost to the Union 
 has been told in a former chapter. After gaining possession of the 
 
290 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 Norfolk navy yard the Confederates lost no time in making repairs 
 and reaping the benefit of their enormous prize. Their most valu- 
 able booty consisted of the great number of guns, mostly uninjured, 
 and the vast quantities of ordnance and equipment supplies that fell 
 into their hands, but they gave attention also to the ships that had 
 been scuttled. The Germanlown, Plymouth and Merrimac were 
 raised and the first two easily restored to a serviceable condition, 
 but were not equipped for sea. The failure to attempt to make use 
 of these two ships may be attributed to the fact that some of the 
 most able and progressive officers of the old navy had joined the 
 Confederacy and these gentlemen, from having studiously observed 
 the tendencies of war-ship development, were ready to accept the 
 inevitable and admit that the day of the sailing ship of war was over. 
 They had discerned the growing shadow of coming events and in 
 this regard were far ahead of their naval brethern at the Worth, who 
 did not awake from the spell of old beliefs until the Southerners gave 
 them a rude and terrible object lesson. 
 
 The upper works of the Merrimac had been burned as she sank 
 but all the lower hull, as well as the machinery, was found in as 
 good condition as could be expected after a month's submersion. A 
 board, consisting of Engineer-in- Chief William P, Williamson, Lieu- 
 tenant John M. Brooke, and Chief Constructor John L. Porter was 
 assembled early in June to determine upon a plan for converting the 
 Merrimac into an iron-clad battery, and a plan was adopted without 
 any great delay. Lieutenant Brooke was given credit at the time in 
 the newspaper and official reports for having originated the design 
 adopted, and the question has been a matter of dispute and contro- 
 versy ever since, Constructor Porter claimed the honor and he un- 
 doubtedly made the drawings from which the vessel was recon- 
 structed, as that was a duty pertaining to his office, but he might 
 have made them without originating them. In Scharf 's History of 
 the Confederate States 5 ISTavy the matter is gone over at length and 
 Mr. Porter's claim very fully supported. Chief Engineer Thorn 
 Williamson, U. 8. Navy, who is a son of the Confederate Engineer 
 in- Chief , has informed the author that years before the war, when in- 
 terest in the Stevens battery had directed the minds of naval men to 
 the possibilities of iron armor, his father had made drawings of an 
 iron-clad war vessel, and that the reconstructed Merrimac was in 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 291 
 
 general design an exact reproduction of those plans. Williamson 
 beyond doubt submitted Ms design and Porter developed it, the two 
 men as representative ship engineers of the South being jointly en- 
 titled to the credit of having created the vessel which became the 
 type and embodied the ideas of the engineers of the South of what an 
 armored war-ship should be. 
 
 The damaged hull of the Merrimac was rebuilt up to the level of 
 the berth deck and a huge cast iron spur was fitted on the bow about 
 two feet below the water-line and projecting eighteen inches beyond 
 the cutwater. When equipped for service, with coal and stores on 
 board, it was designed that the vessel should float with her deck 
 slightly submerged. On the central part of the deck extending one 
 hundred and seventy feet fore and aft and the full width of the 
 vessel athwartship was erected a citadel or casemate, with rounded 
 ends, the sides sloping at an angle of forty-five degrees and extend- 
 ing some two feet below the water line along the sides, or eaves , as 
 the lower edges have appropriately been called. This casemate was 
 seven feet high in the clear, its flat top being covered with a wooden 
 grating to let light and air inside, and forming the promenade or 
 spar deck of the ship. The structure was built of pine, twenty inches 
 in thickness, sheathed with four inches of oak planking and this in 
 turn with two layers of 2-inch iron bars or plates, these being eight 
 inches wide and about ten feet long. The first layer of these armor 
 bars was put on horizontally like a ship's planking, the other, or 
 outer course being up and down. Through-bolts, one and three- 
 eighths inches in diameter secured inside fastened the armor to the 
 wooden superstructure. The battery mounted in this floating strong- 
 hold consisted of a Vll-inch Brooke rifle pivoted in each of the 
 rounded ends and eight guns in broadside, four on each side, six of 
 the latter being IX-inch .Dahlgrens and two 32-pounder Brooke rifles. 
 
 The iron-clad approached completion early in March and was 
 christened Virginia , but the name she had borne in the old navy 
 stuck to her, probably on account of its alliterative affinity with 
 Monitor , and as the Merrimac she will ever be known. On the 8th 
 of March she got under way from the Norfolk navy yard and pro- 
 ceeded down the Elizabeth River accompanied by the gunboats 
 Beaufort and Raleigh^ mounting one gun each. Her crew of about 
 three hundred men was composed mostly of volunteers from the 
 
 17 
 
292 
 
 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 troops about Richmond, and because of the crowds of workmen on 
 board until the last minute had not been exercised at their stations. 
 The engines, which had been a nightmare to the engineers of the old 
 navy, had been thoroughly overhauled under the direction of Chief 
 Engineer Williamson, but, with a raw force to manage them, were an 
 object of apprehension rather than a reliable source of power. The 
 Union force in and about Hampton Roads consisted of the large 40- 
 gun firigates, Roanoke and Minnesota, sister ships of the original Mer- 
 rimac, some small armed tugs, the 50-gun sailing frigates Congress 
 and St. Lawrence, and the 24-gun sloop-of-war Cumberland. The 
 two steam frigates have been described in a former chapter, and 
 were regarded as the climax of all excellence in war- ship construc- 
 tion, " yet," as remarked by Professor Soley, "it required but the 
 experience of a single afternoon in Hampton Roads, in the month of 
 March, 1862, to show that they were antiquated, displaced, super- 
 seded, and that a new era had opened in naval warfare." 
 
 i c The Congress and Cumberland had been lying off Newport 
 News for several months. Their ostensible duty was to blockade 
 the James River; but it is not very clear how a sailing-vessel at 
 anchor could be of any use for this purpose. Most of the old sailing 
 vessels of the navy had by this time been relegated to their proper 
 place as school-ships, store-ships, and receiving-ships, or had been 
 sent to foreign stations where their only duty was to display the 
 flag. Nothing shows more clearly the persistence of old traditions 
 than the presence of these helpless vessels in so dangerous a neigh- 
 borhood. Although the ships themselves were of no value for mod- 
 ern warfare, their armament could ill be spared; and they carried be- 
 tween them over eight hundred officers and men, whose lives were 
 exposed to fruitless sacrifice. 5 ' 1 
 
 The Merrimac emerged from the river about 1 p. m and turned 
 down towards Newport News where the Congress and Cumberland 
 lay at anchor, already cleared for action. Three Confederate gun- 
 boats, the Jamestown, Teazer and Patrick Henry (or Yorktown), soon 
 afterwards came out of the James River past the Federal batteries 
 at Newport News and took part in the ensuing engagement, render- 
 ing much aid to the Merrimac. The story of what happened that 
 
 1 Professor J. K. Soley: The Blockade and the Cruisers, page 61, chapter iii. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 293 
 
 afternoon has been told so often that no detailed account of it will be 
 repeated here. As the ram approached the sailing vessels she was 
 furiously pounded by their broadside fire, but her sloping armor 
 glanced the shot off like peas; passing the Congress, she deliberately 
 rammed the Cumberland in the wake of the starboard forechains, 
 tearing a great hole in her side, in which the cast-iron beak re- 
 mained, it having been wrenched off in impact, Before reaching the 
 Cumberland a broadside from that vessel put one - or two shells into 
 the forward gun port of the Merrimac, killing two and wounding five 
 men, 1 but doing no serious damage to the ship itself. The first 
 lieutenant of the Cumberland, Lieutenant George Upham Morris, 
 who was in command in the absence of his captain, gallantly refused 
 to surrender and fought his ship with a heroism not excelled in naval 
 history, but in vain, for she sank in three-quarters of an hour, carry- 
 ing down the wounded and many of the crew. The Congress, next 
 assailed, was run on shore in hope of saving her, but the enemy got 
 into easy range astern and tore her through and through with shot 
 and shell, butchering her people without mercy. Unable to make 
 any resistance, she surrendered, but the army force on shore, not un- 
 derstanding the situation, fired on the Confederate gunboats that had 
 gone alongside to remove the prisoners, and drove them off. The 
 Merrimac then set her on fire with incendiary shot, the survivors of 
 the crew escaping to the shore in their boats or by swimming. The 
 Congress burned until far into the night, when she blew up. 
 
 Meanwhile the Minnesota had got under way from Hampton 
 Roads and approached the scene of action, but ran aground when 
 still more than a mile distant; she was fortunately in such a position 
 with regard to the deep-water channel that the Merrimac could not 
 get within effective range of her, but the gunboats Yorktown and 
 Teazer took comparatively safe positions off her bow and stern and 
 did her much damage, besides killing three and wounding sixteen of 
 her men. The Roanoke was unable to move under steam, having 
 broken her shaft some months previously, and consequently had no 
 more business in the presence of the enemy than had the sailing fri- 
 gates. However, her gallant captain, John Marsden, as well as 
 
 1 William Norris, a member of the Merrimac' s crew; in Southern Magazine 
 November, 1874. 
 
294 
 
 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Captain Purviance of the St. Lawrence, felt it to be duty to be in ac- 
 tion, even in a forlorn hope, and they made desperate efforts to move 
 their vessels from Hampton Roads with the aid of armed tugs, called 
 gunboats, to the scene of action. The approach of night and the falling 
 of the tide defeated the brave endeavors of these two captains, and 
 their ships consequently did not become a prey to the invulnerable 
 monster they hoped to destroy. 
 
 About 7 p. m. the Merrimac withdrew from action and anchored 
 off Sewall's Point, intending to complete her work of destruction in 
 the morning. Her captain, Franklin Buchanan, had been wounded 
 by a rifle ball from shore ; the muzzles of two of her guns had been 
 knocked off, and her steaming ability, bad at best, had been consider- 
 ably weakened by the loss of the smoke pipe above the casemate: 
 otherwise she was entirely fit for action. Her people were jubilant 
 over their success, and well they might be, for besides winning a sea- 
 fight against great numerical odds they had proved their vessel to be 
 absolutely in control of the situation with no apparent limit to the 
 range of her conquests. Her performance that afternoon had been 
 exactly what we have a right to believe would have resulted had the 
 Demologos, nearly fifty years before, been completed in time to en- 
 counter a fleet of British frigates. The sound of the Merrimac' s guns 
 had rung the curtain down forever upon the most picturesque and ro- 
 mantic mode of sea fighting that the world has ever known: thence- 
 forth the march of iron and the engineer would have to be recognized 
 as all-important in naval warfare, and the picturesque must yield be- 
 fore a homely materialism. 
 
 Besides the loss of the Congress and Cumberland, the Federal 
 navy suffered severely in men. The official reports show that the 
 Congress lost in killed, wounded and missing one hundred and thirty- 
 six men, or nearly one-third of her entire crew. Among her dead 
 was her gallant commanding officer, Lieutenant Joseph B. Smith. 
 The Cumberland lost one hundred and twenty-one, also about one- 
 third of her crew, which numbered three hundred and seventy-six of- 
 ficers and men when the action began. The Minnesota's casualties, 
 previously mentioned, were nineteen. On the gunboat Whitehall 
 Third Assistant Engineer Andrew Nesbitt was instantly killed by a 
 fragment of shell from the Merrimac, and another assistant engineer 
 was wounded in the face in the same manner. Two of her men were 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 295 
 
 killed. The Whitehall was a small New York ferryboat of 323 tons, 
 purchased and armed in 1861, and has been mentioned before in this 
 chapter as having been disabled in the Bnrnside Expedition. Her 
 career ended the following night, March 9, by destruction by fire 
 while lying at the wharf at Fortress Munroe, the chief loss involved 
 being the breeching, tackles, and other gun gear of the Minnesota, 
 together with a quantity of small arms and equipment, put on board 
 her for safe keeping the night of the 8th when the destruction of the 
 Minnesota seemed imminent. All the casualities due to the raid of 
 the MerrimaC) as above enumerated, amount to a total of two hundred 
 and eighty. The Confederate loss, including casualities on their gun- 
 boats, was not more than one tenth of this figure. 
 
 Ericsson's Monitor was launched January 30, 1862, and by the 
 middle of February was practically completed, going on a trial trip 
 the 19th of that month. On this occasion the main engines, the 
 steering gear, the turret turning mechanism, almost everything in 
 fact, went wrong or refused to work; natural results of the lack of 
 adjustment due to hasty construction, and needing only this trial to 
 show what remedies were required. The newspapers that had in- 
 dulged in endless jeremiads over " Ericsson's Folly " now redoubled 
 their attacks and added greatly to the public mistrust of the vessel, 
 but Ericsson himself and Chief Engineer Stimers maintained their 
 faith unmoved and, ignoring the opportunities for controversy, pa- 
 tiently set to work to remedy the defects. February 25, the Monitor 
 was put in commission under the command of Lieutenant John L. 
 Worden, II. S. Navy, and on the 4th of March a final and successful 
 trial trip was run, the guns being satisfactorily tried at this time and 
 a favorable report regarding the vessel was made by a board of naval 
 officers. On these trials and while adjusting the machinery Mr. Sti- 
 mers made it his business to operate personally every piece of mechan- 
 ism in the ship and to become thoroughly familiar with and master 
 of every detail of every department, thus gaining knowledge without 
 which the performance of the Monitor immediately thereafter would 
 have been impossible and the events of the Civil War materially 
 changed. 
 
 Escaping finally from the onslaughts of the press, the Monitor 
 faced a new foe by putting to sea on the 6th of March, being con- 
 voyed by the gunboats Sachem and Currituck and in tow of the steamer 
 
296 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Seth Low, although she used her own steam as well. Two hours after 
 her departure a telegraphic order arrived for her to proceed direct to 
 Washington and this order was repeated to Captain Marsden at Hamp- 
 ton Roads. The failure of Worden to receive this order before leav- 
 ing New York is referred to by naval historians as little less than 
 providential, and so it seems in view of the ensuing events; at any 
 rate the circumstance adds one more to the list of almost miraculous 
 chances that united in making the Monitor possible and in shaping 
 her career. The officers who went in her as volunteers for the more 
 than hazardous experiment of taking her to sea were, besides Worden 
 the commander, Lieutenant Samuel Dana Greene; Acting .Masters 
 John J. N. Webber and Louis N. Stodder; Acting Assistant Paymaster 
 W. F. Keeler; Acting Assistant Surgeon Daniel C. Logue; First As- 
 sistant Engineer Isaac Newton; Second Assistant Engineer Albert B. 
 Campbell, and Third Assistant Engineers R. W. Hands and JVL T. 
 Sundstrum. The commander, executive officer, and all the engineers 
 were of the regular service and the other officers volunteers. The 
 * crew consisted of forty- three men who had volunteered from the re- 
 ceiving-ship North Carolina and the sailing frigate Sabine. Chief 
 Engineer Stimers voluntarily went as a passenger to observe the work- 
 ing of the novel craft and to give her officers the benefit of his know- 
 ledge, he being, as stated by W. C. Church in his Life of John 
 Ericsson, 66 The only man on board who thoroughly understood the 
 characteristics of the vessel." 
 
 Mr. Isaac Newton, the acting chief engineer of the Monitor, was 
 a genius in his way who deserves more than passing mention. His 
 father, also named Isaac Newton, was a prominent North River 
 steamboat builder and owner, and young Newton, besides getting an 
 excellent education in the New York city schools, had grown up in 
 his father's steamers and shops, so that by the time he reached man- 
 hood he was a thorough steamboat captain, pilot, engineer, boat 
 builder, machinist, and all-around mechanic. In June, 1861, he 
 volunteered for the war and selected the engineer corps of the navy 
 for his place of best service, coming into the navy with letters of 
 commendation from a number of the most prominent men in New 
 York. His education enabled him to overstep the nominal require- 
 ments for the volunteer service, aud by passing the required exami- 
 nations he obtained an appointment as a first assistant engineer in the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 297 
 
 regular service. If his experience could have been augmented with 
 the four or five years of military training so essential to service in the 
 regular navy he would have been an ideal naval officer for a war- 
 steamer: as it was, he won a fine reputation for ability as an engineer 
 and for general usefulness. He resigned at the close of the war and 
 associated himself with John Ericsson in his disastrous Madawasha- 
 Wampanoag controversy with Engineer-in-Chief Isherwood; was later 
 General McClellan's associate in the work of rebuilding the Stevens 
 battery, and again, having embarked in politics, held the very im- 
 portant position of chief engineer of the Croton Aqueduct in the Pub- 
 lic Works Department of the City of New York. 
 
 The first twenty-four hours of the voyage of the Monitor from 
 Sandy Hook were uneventful, light winds and smooth water being 
 encountered. The wind and sea then rose and the vessel was soon 
 in great peril. Great quantities of water came in through the hawse 
 pipes, due to "gross carelessness in going to sea without stopping 
 them up," as claimed by Ericsson in a paper on the "Building of 
 the Monitor," in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. The turret 
 was designed to slide on a bronze ring let into the deck at its base, 
 this joint not being water tight nor intended to be, pumps being 
 provided to remove the small quantity of water that would come in 
 through this necessary crack. Before leaving New York, however, 
 some "expert" at the navy yard, accustomed to the manifold uses 
 of rope on shipboard, had caused the turret to be wedged up and 
 had driven into the wide opening thus formed a plaited hemp gas- 
 ket, the result being that when the sea began to break violently over 
 the deck this gasket was washed out and water poured in cascades 
 down the whole annular space sixty- three feet in circumference. The 
 smoke pipes and blower supply pipes, were simply temporary trunks 
 intended to be removed in action, projecting only about six feet 
 above the deck, over which the seas broke and interrupted the action 
 of the furnaces very seriously. 
 
 From getting wet, the belts of the blowers would not cling and 
 the engine and fire-rooms soon became charged with poisonous gases 
 to such an extent that life below became almost impossible. Messrs. 
 Newton and Stimers, with the help of their assistants, struggled 
 bravely to get the blowers in operation and kept at this task until 
 they succumbed to the gas and were carried to the top of the turret, 
 
298 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 where they revived, though they were thought dead when dragged 
 out of the engine room. Lieutenant Greene, the executive officer, a 
 few days latter gave an account of the Monitor' 1 s experience in a letter 
 written to his mother, which is regarded as the most graphic narra- 
 tive of the event in existence, and which has been twice published in 
 the United Service Magazine (In April, 1885 and October, 1893), 
 in which he speaks of this incident as follows : 6 ' Our engineers be- 
 haved like heroes, every one of them. They fought with the gas, 
 endeavoring to get the blowers to work, until they dropped appar- 
 ently dead. ' ' In the meantime the fires had become so low from water 
 and loss of air that the pumps stopped and loss by foundering became 
 imminent. The tug was directed to steer shoreward and after four 
 or five hours of constant peril smoother water was reached, the 
 machinery started again, water pumped out, and danger for the time 
 averted. It was then evening of the 7th, and for a time safe pro- 
 gress was made, but soon after midnight danger once more appeared 
 as thus described by Lieutenant Greene in the letter to his mother: 
 
 u We were just passing a shoal, and the sea suddenly became 
 rough and right ahead. It came up with tremendous force through our 
 anchor-well, and forced the air through our hawse-pipe where the 
 chain comes, and then the water would rush through in a perfect 
 stream, clear to our berth deck, over the wardroom table. The 
 noise resembled the death-groans of twenty men, and was the most 
 dismal, awful sound I have ever heard. Of course the captain and 
 myself were on our feet in a moment, and endeavored to stop the 
 hawse-pipe. We suceeded partially, but now the water began to 
 come down our blowers again, and we feared the same accident that 
 happened in the afternoon. We tried to hail the tug-boat, but the 
 wind being dead ahead they could not hear us, and we had no way 
 of signaling them, as the steam-whistle which father had recommended 
 had not been put on. 
 
 u We began then to think the ' Monitor 5 would never see day- 
 light. We watched carefully every drop of water that went down 
 the blowers, and sent continually to ask the fireman how they were 
 going. His only answer was 6 Slowly, ? but could not be kept going 
 much longer unless the water could be kept from coming down. 
 The sea was washing completely over the decks, and it was danger- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 299 
 
 ous for a man to go on them, so we could do nothing to the blowers. 
 In the midst of all this onr wheel-ropes jumped off the steering 
 wheel (owing to the pitching of the ship), and became jammed. She 
 now began to sheer about at an awful rate, and we thought our haw- 
 ser would certainly part. Fortunately it was new, and held on well. 
 In the course of half an hour we freed our wheel-ropes, and now the 
 blowers were the only difficulty. About three o'clock Saturday A. 
 M. the sea became a little smoother, though still rough, and going 
 down our blowers somewhat." 
 
 By 8 o'clock the next morning smooth water was again found 
 and the Monitor slowly and wearily pursued her voyage, entering the 
 Capes of the Chesapeake about 4 p. m. Here they heard the sound 
 of shotted guns, for the Merrimac was at that moment in the midst 
 of her carnival of destruction, and the worn-out crew infused with 
 new life cleared their novel and untried craft for action. A pilot- 
 boat coming out told them of what was going on at Newport News 
 but the tale of big frigates being helpless in the presence of any 
 known form of enemy was so improbable that it was not believed 
 until night came on and the pitiful spectacle of the doomed Congress 
 loomed up in lines of fire against the dark sky. About 9 p. m. the 
 Monitor anchored in Hampton Roads and Worden reported in person 
 to Captain Marsden on the lioanohe. 
 
 In view of the events of the day it was decided without hesita- 
 tion to disregard the order of the Department to send the Monitor 
 direct to Washington, the occasion for which she was built being 
 nearer at hand. The programme of the enemy for the morning so 
 obviously would begin with an attack upon the grounded Minnesota 
 that Worden was ordered to go up to Newport News to protect that 
 vessel if he could, so the Monitor got under way again and about 2 
 a. m. came to anchor near the distressed frigate, her wearied crew 
 spending the rest of the night in repairing damages wrought by the 
 sea and in making ready for the struggle that they knew would come 
 with the morning. 
 
 The stage settings were now complete; the curtain had fallen 
 just before upon the last of a long series of glorious deeds performed 
 under a slowly-fading system of seamanship that had many years be- 
 fore reached its culmination, and a new order of seamanship with a 
 new type of sea warrior was about to appear upon the stage. The 
 
300 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 engineer's machine of John Ericsson was to face the fabric that rep- 
 resented the engineering ingenuity of the South, and the telegraphic 
 tidings of their encounter would inflict an inconsolable fright upon 
 the old romance of the sea, and in an hour reduce the masted navies 
 of the world to mere collections of picturesque and useless relics. 
 
CHAPTEE XVIII. 
 
 * 4 The old must fall, and time itself must change, 
 And thus new life shall blossom from the ruins." 
 
 Schiller. 
 
 1862— The Civil War, Continued— First Fight of Iron-C lads— Effects of the 
 Battle— Extraordinary Services Kendered by Chief Engineer Stimers — 
 Attack on Drury's Bluff— The Galena Badly Injured— Gallantry of As- 
 sistant Engineer J. W. Thomson. 
 
 THE morning of Sunday, March 9, dawned upon a peaceful scene 
 in Hampton Eoads. The Roanoke and St. Lawrence were lying 
 at anchor near Fortress Monroe; the Minnesota, still aground off New- 
 port News, overshadowed with her great hull the Monitor lying beside 
 her, and off Sewall's Point, black and ominously still, was the Mer- 
 rimac. The topmasts of the Cumberland sticking out of the water and 
 blackened wreckage about the spot where the Congress burned were 
 the only signs that anything unusual had happened or was likely 
 to happen. Soon after daylight, volumes of black smoke appeared 
 over the Merrimac, rising and spreading in the quiet morning air into 
 a cloud that must have seemed a veritable embodiment of the Shadow 
 of Death to the men in the Federal ships. 
 
 About 8 a. m. the Merrimac got under way and proceeded slowly 
 up towards the Eip Kaps in order to swing into the channel whence 
 she could assail the Minnesota. Captain Buchanan's wound of the day 
 before had proved so serious that he had been obliged to give up his 
 command to the first lieutenant, Catesby Ap E. Jones, who was now 
 taking the ship into action. Lieutenant Jones, upon whom the re- 
 sponsibility for the day's work rested, was about forty years of age 
 and was a thoroughly trained naval officer, having seen twenty-five 
 years' service in the old navy in the grades from midshipman to lieu- 
 tenant. One cannot resist the temptation to pause a moment and 
 speculate upon the possibilities that must have arisen before the men- 
 tal vision of this young and ambitious officer as he moved his destroy- 
 ing machine slowly up to the place for action. The events of the day 
 before left no doubt as to the outcome of the combat he was about to 
 
302 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 precipitate, and looking beyond his actual surroundings his mind's 
 eye saw the cities of the North laid under ransom by his guns; the 
 national capitol abandoned; the sovereignty of the South acknowl- 
 edged; the war ended, and himself its central naval figure: he would 
 be the admiral of the Southern navy; perhaps the president of the new 
 nation of the South. It was indeed an hour of vast possibilities for 
 him. 
 
 Turning leisurely down the main ship-channel the Merrimac 
 headed for the Minnesota and opened fire when still a mile distant, 
 the first shot striking the counter near the water line but doing no se- 
 rious damage. Whatever dreams of conquest Lieutenant Jones may 
 have indulged in earlier in the morning he was now giving all his at- 
 tention to the material scene about him, and as he looked away to 
 where the Minnesota lay stranded to see the effect of his shot, his eye 
 fell on an unfamiliar object. The Monitor had moved out from be- 
 hind the big frigate and was coming unflinchingly across the stretch 
 of water to meet him. This movement of the Monitor excited the ad- 
 miration of Captain Van Brunt of the Minnesota, who said in his offi- 
 cial report that she ran 6 6 right within range of the Merrimac com- 
 pletely covering my ship as far as was possible with her diminutive 
 dimensions, and much to my astonishment laid herself right along- 
 side of the Merrimac, and the contrast was that of a pigmy to a giant. 5 ' 
 On board the Monitor every preparation for battle had been 
 made, but the officers and men were kept up by nervous excitement 
 rather than by physical strength; almost without exception they had 
 been without sleep for more than forty-eight hours, and on account of 
 lack of facilities for cooking had had no proper food to sustain them. 
 Worden had left a sick bed to go on board at New York and had suf- 
 fered much on the voyage down. Newton, who had been at the point 
 of death when dragged out of the engine-room on the occasion of the 
 stoppage of the blowers, was confined to his bed and reported as be- 
 ing unable to do duty for at least a week; when the call to arms sounded, 
 however, he got up and performed his part in the fight courageously 
 and well. There was scarcely a man in the ship who would not have 
 been in a condition of physical prostration had it not been for the ex- 
 citement due to the presence of the enemy. 
 
 Worden took his station in the pilot house, Greene with sixteen men 
 in charge of the guns in the turret, Stodder at the turret turning gear 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 305 
 
 and Webber had the small powder division on the berth deck. Stodder 
 was disabled early in the action by the concussion of a shot striking the 
 turret when he was touching it and S timers took his place, he having 
 volunteered at the beginning of the fight to go in the turret and show 
 the people how to operate it. The pilot house, built log cabin fashion of 
 iron beams or billets, 9 inches by 12 inches, with the corners dovetailed 
 and bolted together, was far forward on deck with no means of com- 
 municating with the turret except by a speaking tube; this became 
 disconnected soon after the fight began and communication between 
 Word en and Greene then had to be maintained by passing the word 
 along the berth deck, Paymaster Keeler and the captain's clerk doing 
 this important service. The great error of separating the captain 
 from the battery was remedied in the later monitors by simply plac- 
 ing the pilot-house on top of the turret, engineer Isaac Newton hav- 
 ing suggested this arrangement immediately after the fight. As an 
 offset to the wearied condition of the Monitor' 's men, the Merrimac 
 was far from being in perfect fighting trim. Two of her guns were 
 disabled by the loss of their muzzles, her ram had been wrenched off, 
 and the upper part of the smoke-pipe was shot away. This last was 
 her greatest injury for it so impaired the furnace draft that steam 
 could not be maintained at anything like a proper working pressure, 
 and her motions were consequently extremely sluggish. Speed is a 
 word hardly applicable to either the Monitor or Merrimac , but by rea- 
 son of the damage to the latter the great advantage of quicker move- 
 ment rested with the Monitor. 
 
 The first shot fired at the Monitor missed her and the Confeder- 
 ates realized that they no longer had the big hull of a frigate for a 
 target. Further enlightenment regarding the altered status of their 
 antagonists came quickly in the furious impact of the heavy Xl-inch 
 solid shot of the Monitor against their casemate, knocking men down 
 and leaving them dazed and bleeding at the nose, ears and mouth. 
 It will be needless to repeat the circumstantial account of the com- 
 bat, which has been told so carefully by so many writers. Neithe r 
 vessel could penetrate the armor of the other, which prevented the 
 question of their supremacy being definitely settled and left it open 
 to dispute ever since. Each at different stages of the fight tried ram- 
 ming, the Monitor with the most success as she struck her enemy 
 fairly enough near the stern, having aimed to injure the propeller, 
 
306 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 but on account of the smoke and other obstacles to exact steering 
 missed the vital spot by about three feet only. The Merrimack s at- 
 tempt resulted in a harmless glancing blow, the superior speed of the 
 Monitor making it an easy matter to elude her antagonist. 
 
 After about an hour of fighting, the Merrimac tried to give the Monitor 
 up as a bad task and turned her attention again to the Minnesota, the 
 first shell fired at the frigate passing u through the chief engineer's 
 state-room, through the engineers' mess-room, amidships, and burst 
 in the boatswain's room, tearing four rooms into one in its passage, 
 and exploding two charges of powder, which set the ship on fire." 1 
 The second shell exploded the boiler of tug-boat Dragon lying along- 
 side the Minnesota, and by the time the third shell was thrown the 
 Monitor, not disposed to be ignored, had again interposed between 
 the Minnesota and her assailant and thereafter she engrossed the en- 
 tire attention of the enemy. Shortly after this diversion the ammu- 
 nition in the Monitor's turret became exhausted and she had to go out 
 of action to replenish it, the scuttle by which it was passed being im- 
 possible to use except when the turret was stationary and in a certain 
 position. This circumstance greatly encouraged the Confederates 
 who believed their opponent to be disabled from their fire, but in a 
 quarter of an hour their hopes were dispelled by the Monitor resum- 
 ing the fight more vigorously than ever. 
 
 Soon after 11 a. m. Lieutenant Worden, while looking through 
 a sight-hole in the pilot-house, was disabled by a shell striking and 
 exploding immediately in front of his eyes, he being temporarily 
 blinded and his face terribly burned and cut by the flying grains of 
 powder and bits of iron. The steersman was stunned for a few 
 minutes by the concussion also and in that short space of time the 
 Monitor without anyone in control of her ran off aimlessly towards 
 shoal water away from the fight, for no one had signalled the 
 engine-room to stop. This gave such an appearance of defeat that 
 on the Minnesota all hope was abandoned and every preparation 
 made for setting the ship on fire and abandoning her. In a short 
 time, however, Lieutenant Greene learned of the casualty in the 
 pilot-house and, leaving Stimers in charge of the guns, took com- 
 mand of the ship and turned upon his foe again. Then to the 
 
 * Official report of Captain Van Brunt of the Minnesota, 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 307 
 
 amazement of all the Merrimao suddenly gaye up the fight and 
 steamed away toward Norfolk. Catesby Jones reported afterward 
 as a reason for withdrawing at this time that he believed the Monitor 
 disabled and he was very desirous of crossing the Elizabeth Kiver 
 bar before ebb tide. There was no reason for believing the Monitor 
 out of action and every reason for believing the contrary, for when 
 she returned under the command of Greene, Stimers fired two or 
 three shots against the Merrimac, which were the last guns of the 
 encounter. Had the Confederates believed in their success to the 
 extent of demanding the surrender of the Monitor, Greene could 
 and very probably would have replied in the words used long before 
 by John Paul Jones under similar circumstances — "We have not 
 yet begun to fight." 
 
 Lieutenant Greene did not follow the retreating enemy, the 
 orders under which the Monitor fought limiting her action to a de- 
 fense of the Federal ships, the Minnesota especially. Greene was 
 very young at the time and inexperienced in judging of the amount 
 of discretion allowed a commanding officer in obeying orders in 
 battle, so it was with many misgivings that he allowed the Merri- 
 mac to go unmolested while he returned to the side of the Minne- 
 sota, but the superior officers of both army and navy present 
 sustained his action and assured him that he had done exactly the 
 right thing. Curious as it appears, many able writers have in- 
 dulged in much argument to prove which of the two iron-clads won 
 the fight. The Merrimac won a most decided victory in her attack 
 upon the wooden sailing vessels the first day of her appearance, 
 but when all argument regarding the second day's fight is ex- 
 hausted a few very pertinent facts remain undisturbed. When the 
 Merrimac got up steam in the morning it was obviously for no other 
 purpose than to destroy the Federal vessels in Hampton Koads, and 
 she did not destroy anything. When the day was done she was 
 not even in Hampton Eoads herself. The Monitor was ordered to 
 protect the wooden ships, and she protected them. When night 
 came she was still on guard over them, grim, ugly, and ready to 
 fight. 
 
 The Monitor was struck twenty- one times in the action and 
 fired forty-one Xl-inch solid shot. The most damaging blow she 
 received was from the shell which disabled Worden, this having 
 
308 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 cracked one of the heavy iron logs of the pilot-house entirely 
 through and forced the fractured ends inboard an inch and a half, 
 besides knocking the loose cover of the pilot-house half off. The 
 deepest indentation in her turret was two inches and the deepest 
 score on her deck was only one-half inch. Two people in the 
 turret were disabled by concussion and Chief Engineer Stimers was 
 hurt in the same way, but his injuries were slight and he pluckily 
 continued in the fight to the end. The Merrimac was struck ninety- 
 seven times in the two days' fight, twenty of her shot marks being 
 from the guns of the Monitor. Six plates of her outer layer of 
 iron were penetrated but the inner layer was not broken. The XI- 
 inch guns of the Monitor were new and large for their time and the 
 Bureau of Ordnance was suspicious of them, having issued orders 
 not to use more than fifteen pounds of powder for their charge; 
 otherwise their shot would probably have broken into the casemate 
 of the Merrimac. At a later period greater confidence regarding 
 these guns was entertained and thirty, and even fifty pounds of 
 powder were safely used in charging them. Engineer Isaac New- 
 ton, who was very level-headed about such matters, testified before 
 the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War that he 
 believed the failure of the Monitor to destroy her antagonist was 
 due entirely to the low powder charges prescribed. He also test- 
 ified to his belief that, "But for the injury received by Lieutenant 
 Worden, that vigorous officer would very likely have badgered the 
 Merriynac to a surrender." The Merrimac having been hastily 
 equipped and not expecting to meet any but wooden ships had 
 nothing but shell on board; had she been provided with solid shot 
 the effect upon the Monitor might have been different. 
 
 The success of the Monitor completely changed the aspect of 
 the opening military operations of the year and raised the North 
 from a depth of apprehension to a pinnacle of hope and jubilation. 
 No single event of the Civil War so thoroughly aroused the enthus- 
 iastic admiration of the loyal North as did this Sunday duel in 
 Hampton Roads, and the Monitor and her crew became the great 
 and almost only subject for public discussion and applause. The 
 world is prone to sing the praises of the warrior who destroys, and 
 to neglect the honors due to him who makes the soldier's success 
 possible by providing him with his armor and his weapons, but in 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 309 
 
 this case the patient toiler reaped the greater glory, and the name 
 and fame of John Ericsson went to the uttermost parts of the earth. 
 Worden, Greene, Stimers and Newton were all heroes in the public 
 estimation and saw their pictures and the story of their deeds in the 
 public prints for many a day, but all the applause showered upon 
 them was little compared to the perfect avalanche of honors heaped 
 upon Ericsson the Engineer. The reason for this unusual sentiment 
 is easily found. Ericsson had been for several months held up to 
 ridicule and abuse to such an extent by the press that he and his 
 work were known to all men, and when his hour of triumph came, 
 that innate sense of sympathy for the ' ' under dog " in a fight mani- 
 fested itself joyously at seeing him suddenly and unexpectedly come 
 uppermost. Ericsson's enemies had so overdone the matter of per- 
 secution that in the end he owed much of his fame to their acts. 
 
 Abroad, the news of the battle created a profound sensation and 
 more than one naval power whose commercial interests or thirst for 
 foreign conquest had led to the point of seriously preparing to assail 
 the American Republic in the day of its distress, now paused to 
 take a sober second thought and ultimately concluded to check their 
 designs. u Probably no naval conflict in the history of the world 
 ever attracted as much attention as did the battle in Hampton 
 Eoads, between the Monitor and the Merrimac. It revolutionized 
 the navies of the world, and showed that the wooden ships, which 
 had long held control of the ocean, were of no further use for fight- 
 ing purposes. Commenting upon the news of that event, the Lon- 
 don Times said: ' Whereas we had available for immediate pur- 
 poses one hundred and forty-nine first-class war-ships, we have now 
 two, these two being the Warrior and her sister Ironside. There 
 is not now a ship in the English navy, apart from these two, that it 
 would not be madness to trust to an engagement with that little 
 Monitor. ' England and all other maritime powers immediately pro- 
 ceeded to reconstruct their navies, and the old fashioned three and 
 four-decker line-of-battle ships were condemned as useless. Not 
 only in ships, but in their armament, there was rapid progress, and 
 so great has been the advance in marine artillery that the Monitors 
 of 1862, and the subsequent years of the American war, would be 
 unable to resist the shot from the guns of 1880-'87. ?J1 
 
 1 Thomas W. Knox; — Decisive Battles since Waterloo. 
 
 38 
 
310 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 On March 28, by joint resolution, Congress passed a vote of 
 thanks to Ericsson for his "enterprise, skill, energy, and forecast " 
 in the design and construction of the Monitor, and he was the re- 
 cipient of similar honors from the Legislature of the State of New 
 York and from innumerable civil organizations and societies. 
 Lieutenant Worden was tendered the thanks of Congress by a resolu- 
 tion approved July 11, 1862, and in the following February was 
 given more substantial recognition for his great service by a second 
 resolution authorizing his advancement one grade, that is, to the 
 rank of captain, he having been promoted to commander in the 
 meantime. Ericsson steadily maintained that Stimers and not 
 Worden was the real hero of the Monitor, because he alone of all 
 on board knew how to operate the various mechanisms of the 
 vessel, without which knowledge she would have been utterly 
 useless in the face of the enemy. At a banquet given him by the 
 New York Chamber of Commerce Ericsson made a point of assert- 
 ing in his speech that he regarded the success of the Monitor as 
 "entirely owing to the presence of a master-mind (Mr. Stimers)," 
 a belief which he defended at length and with an indisputable array 
 of facts. 
 
 This public laudation of Stimers, not confined by any means to 
 Ericsson, greatly disturbed Lieutenant Worden and his friends, and 
 Worden, as late as two years after the fight, waited upon Mr. 
 Griswold, a Member of Congress and a friend of Ericsson, having 
 been one of his sureties in the enterprise of building the Mon- 
 itor, to complain of the fancied injustice done him by Ericsson. 
 Of this interview Mr. Griswold wrote to Ericsson: U I have 
 just had a call from Captain Worden. He thinks you did him 
 injustice in your Chamber of Commerce remarks for the sake of 
 complimenting Stimers, and says the ' master-spirit 5 had nothing at 
 all to do with the affairs of the Merrimao, was not consulted, and 
 was in no special way tributary to the result of that combat." 1 In 
 spite of this assertion, the great weight of testimony goes to show 
 that Stimers was consulted and was in a special way "tributary " 
 to the result of the action. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Fox, 
 who saw the fight, telegraphed the Navy Department as soon as he 
 
 i W. C. Church;— Life of John Ericsson, Vol. I, p. 298. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 313 
 
 could learn particulars that "Lieutenant Worden, who com- 
 manded the Monitor, handled her with great skill, and was assisted 
 by Chief Engineer Stimers." He could have had no other object 
 in mentioning Stimers' name, to the exclusion of the other 
 officers, in this message except the wish to have the Department 
 understand who, next to Worden, deserved credit for the victory of 
 the Monitor, 
 
 Lieutenant Greene in the letter to his mother before quoted 
 from in these pages, and which for obvious reasons is more apt to 
 reveal unvarnished facts than a formal official report that would 
 become a public document, says in regard to the officers' stations 
 for battle : " Acting Master Stodder was at the wheel which turns 
 the tower, hut as he could not manage it, he was relieved by 
 Stimers." The italics are the author's. 
 
 Mr. W. 0. Church, who cannot be accused of partiality for 
 Mr. Stimers, says in his Life of John Ericsson: "During the pass- 
 age from New York, the working gear of the turret was permitted 
 to rust for want of proper cleaning and oiling, and it worked with 
 so much difficulty during the engagement with the Merrimac that, 
 but for the energy and determination of Engineer Stimers, it might 
 not have revolved at all. ' 5 
 
 Proofs like the above may be multiplied, but these are suffi- 
 cient for every logical purpose. The writer has no desire to 
 magnify the services of Mr. Stimers, especially as it will become a 
 duty as this history progresses to narrate certain mistakes of that 
 officer whereby the naval engineer corps suffered the most serious 
 reflection upon its professional competence that it has ever experi- 
 enced, but from an impartial review of all the facts connected with 
 the .'Monitor- Merrimac battle the conclusion is plain that Chief 
 Engineer Alban 0. Stimers was the one person on board the Mon- 
 itor who thoroughly knew how to use that vessel and her weapons, 
 and but for his presence the result of the combat would in all 
 probability have been very different, and most disastrous to the 
 Monitor, to the reputation of Lieutenant Worden, and to the cause 
 of the Union. 
 
 The day after the fight of the iron-clads, the Minnesota was 
 floated and soon restored to serviceable condition. Immediately 
 thereafter the Union fleet in Hampton Roads began receiving addi- 
 
314 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 tions almost daily, for the naval occupation of this position was an 
 important element in the grand campaign against Richmond then in 
 movement by the Army of the Potomac. The Merrimac retired 
 to Norfolk where she was docked by Constructor Porter, her plating 
 repaired and strengthened, and a new spur fitted to her bow. The 
 rough-and-ready old commodore, Josiah Tatnall, was placed in com- 
 mand and great things were expected. On two occasions — April 
 11 and May 8 — she went into Hampton Roads and looked at the 
 Monitor and the Federal fleet, but no fight occurred at either time. 
 From the reports of the Federal commander-in-chief, Groldsborough, 
 and of Tatnall it appears that each party earnestly desired a conflict 
 and that the other was afraid, or at least avoided hostilities. 
 
 Military operations compelled the surrender of Norfolk to the 
 Union forces on the 10th of May, and Tatnall endeavored to save 
 the Merrimac by taking her up the James river, but finding her to 
 draw several feet too much water for the river he reluctantly set her 
 on fire and abandoned her. Early on the morning of May 11 the 
 fire reached her magazine and she blew up. This event occasioned 
 such a wild outburst of public grief in Richmond that for a time it 
 was feared the governmental departments of the Confederacy would 
 be attacked by a mob. The Merrimao had been proudly called the 
 c 4 iron diadem of the South," and had been so confidently relied 
 upon for the defense of the James River that after her destruction 
 serious thoughts of surrendering Richmond were entertained. The 
 men of the Merrimac were utilized to man a battery up the river at 
 Drury's Bluff, where a few days later they again encountered their 
 old foes of the Monitor. 
 
 Immediately after the destruction of the Merrimac, Flag Officer 
 Goldsborough took possession of the lower part of James River 
 with his flagship, the Susquehanna, and a number of smaller vessels, 
 sending Commander John Rodgers with the Galena, Monitor, Aroos- 
 took and Port Royal on an expedition up the river. The Galena 
 had just come from the builders' works at Mystic, Conn., and will 
 be recalled as the iron-clad gunboat built in accordance with the re- 
 port of the board on armored vessels of the previous year. The 
 Monitor was now commanded by Lieutenant William N. Jeffers. 
 The Aroostook was one of the ninety-day gunboats and the Port 
 Royal was one of the first lot of double-enders. Accompanying 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 315 
 
 them was the vessel fitted out by the Stevens brothers to demon- 
 strate the excellence of their system of protective armor, this vessel 
 being referred to indiscriminately in the official reports as the Nau- 
 gatuck and the " U. S. revenue steamer E. A. Stevens-" she was 
 commanded by a revenue marine lieutenant named D. C. Con- 
 stable. 
 
 The morning of May 15 this squadron came up to Ward's, or 
 Drury's Bluff, eight miles below Richmond, where the river was 
 found obstructed with piles and sunken vessels and defended by a 
 heavy battery mounted about two hundred feet above the water. 
 The Galena and Monitor anchored about six hundred yards from the 
 battery and the unarmored vessels about twice that distance, all 
 opening fire upon the enemy's works. The Monitor soon had to re- 
 move to a greater distance on account of being unable to elevate her 
 guns sufficiently. She was struck only three times during the attack 
 and had? no casualities. The 100-pounder Parrott gun of the Nau- 
 gatuch burst early in the action and disabled that vessel as it was the 
 only gun she had, the accident resulting eventually in the discour- 
 agement of the efforts of the Stevens brothers to induce the govern- 
 ment to accept their unfinished battery. 
 
 The Galena, at anchor and with her broadside sprung towards the 
 enemy's battery, proved a fine target and was very roughly used by 
 the plunging shot from the bluff, which struck her sloping side 
 armor almost at right angles. In the plain words of her commander, 
 John Rodgers, "We demonstrated that she is not shot proof." 
 Thirteen shot penetrated the side armor, several coming clear through 
 and doing great damage to the crew by scattering splinters and frag- 
 ments of the iron plating, while others stuck in the wooden backing 
 after passing through the plating. One shell made a clean passage 
 through the side and exploded in the steerage, setting the ship on 
 fire. The spar deck was badly splintered and broken through in 
 some places. All along the port side, which was the one exposed, 
 knees, planks, bulkheads, and beams were splintered and started 
 out of place. Although exposed to this terrible riddling, Commander 
 Rodgers kept his ship in action for more than three hours and only 
 withdrew when his ammunition was nearly expended. The Galena 
 had thirteen men killed and eleven wounded; the NaugatucJc, two 
 wounded, and the Port Royal had her commander, George Morris, 
 wounded. 
 
316 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OE THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The following extracts from the official report of Commander 
 Rodgers of the Galena refer to meritorious services performed by 
 members of the engineer department of that vessel: 
 
 " Mr. J. W. Thomson, first assistant engineer, coolly repaired 
 some of the valve gear which broke down, under fire, and under his 
 direction a fire in the steerage, caused by an exploding shell, was 
 extinguished before the regular firemen reached the place." 
 
 "Mr. T. T. Millholland, third assistant engineer, in charge of 
 the steam fire department, was active and efficient; as a sharp- 
 shooter he did good service. ' ' 
 
 u Charles Kenyon, fireman, was conspicuous for persistent cour- 
 age in extracting a priming wire, which had become bent and fixed 
 in the bow gun, and in returning to work the piece after *his hand, 
 severely burnt, had been roughly dressed by himself with cotton 
 waste and oil." 
 
 The Wachusett being at City Point in the James River the 19th 
 of May, it was represented to her captain that there were no physi- 
 cians in the town and that some of the people, mostly women and 
 children, were in great need of medical attendance. The enemy's 
 lines were believed to be about eight miles from the town, so there 
 was apparently no danger in answering this appeal. Assistant Sur- 
 geon G. D. Slocum volunteered to go on shore and minister to the 
 distressed people if some of his shipmates would go with him, he not 
 caring to be entirely alone in an enemy's town, and Assistant Pay- 
 master L. S. Stockwell, Chief Engineer Charles H. Baker, and Lieu- 
 tenant DeFord of the army signal corps agreed to accompany him. 
 On shore, while visiting the sick, a detachment of Confederate cav- 
 alry suddenly appeared and made prisoners of the officers and two of 
 the boat's crew with them, carrying them off to Petersburg. At 
 that place the commander of the district, General Huger, apologized 
 to them for the stupidity of his men and said he would have them 
 released, as they had been captured while rendering humane aid to 
 citizens of Virginia, and, furthermore, were unarmed with the excep- 
 tion of side arms when taken. 
 
 The Richmond authorities refused to release the prisoners on 
 General Huger 's recommendation and they were accordingly taken 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 317 
 
 to a military prison at Salisbury, North Carolina, and confined in 
 that place. The peculiar action of the Richmond government in 
 this case was due to the fact that there was talk at the North of treat- 
 ing some Confederate officers captured on privateers as pirates, and 
 the Southerners wished to hold some Federal naval officers as hos- 
 tages to insure their own officers being treated as prisoners of war. 
 After a detention of twelve weeks in Salisbury, Mr. Baker and some 
 of the others were transferred to Libby prison in Richmond, and 
 about a week later were allowed to enter the Union lines on parole. 
 On the 24th of September Chief Engineer Baker was exchanged for 
 a Confederate army captain and resumed duty under his own flag. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 u He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat ; 
 He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgement-seat ; 
 Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him ; be jubilant, my feet ; 
 
 Our God is marching on." 
 Julia Ward Howe — Battle-Hymn of the Republic. 
 
 1862 — The Civil War, Continued — Naval Operations in the Mississippi River 
 — Battles Below New Orleans — Catastrophe to the Mound City — Attack 
 on Vicksburg — Warfare on the Atlantic Coast — Wreck of the Adiron- 
 dack — Loss of the Monitor-— Peril of the Passaic— Heroism of Assistant 
 Engineer H. W. Robie. 
 
 AS soon as a sufficient number of iron-clad steamers in the Missis- 
 Jr\ sippi were completed, Commodore Foote hastened to make use 
 of them, the first hostile movement being an attack upon Fort Henry, 
 which was captured Februry 6th after a closely contested action of 
 little more than one hour. The attacking force consisted of the iron- 
 clads Benton, (Foote 's flagship); Essex, Carondelet, and$(. Louis, and 
 the wooden gunboats Gonestoga, Tyler, and Lexington. The attack 
 was planned as a joint army and navy enterprise by General TJ. S c 
 Grant and Commodore Foote, but owing to the wretched condition 
 of the roads the army was delayed and consequently did not share 
 in the honor of the capture, the fort having surrendered to the naval 
 force. From Fort Henry, Foote moved with his flotilla to Fort 
 Donelson, which place he attacked February 14th. Here he met 
 with much more vigorous opposition than had been experienced at 
 Fort Henry, and in the course of an hour and a half two of his ves- 
 sels were temporarily disabled, and the attack was discontinued for 
 the night. The next morning, upon resuming the bombardment, 
 the enemy was found considerably demoralized and after a feeble 
 resistance surrendered. 
 
 A naval movement on a far greater scale was already on foot, 
 having for its object the opening of the Mississippi Kiver from its 
 mouth. Captain David G. Farragut was selected for the command 
 of this expedition and in his flagship, the Hartford, arrived on the 
 20th of February off the mouth of the great river where he was to 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 319 
 
 make his name famous. The vessels ordered to this station assem- 
 bled one by one at the Southwest Pass and the entire month of 
 March was consumed in the task of getting the heavier ships into 
 the deep water of the river inside, which labor was finally accom- 
 plished with the exception of the Colorado, which vessel could not be 
 lightened enough to make her entrance possible. Her commander 
 and a large number of her officers and men went as volunteers in 
 other ships of the fleet. As finally assembled in the river at Pilot 
 Town the fleet proper consisted of seventeen vessels of the classes 
 and armament exhibited in the table following. The Varuna was a 
 merchant steamer purchased in 1861 for $135,000, but all the others 
 will be recognized as being regularly built war- vessels and all, with 
 the exception of the Mississippi, of a type then modern. 
 
 NAME. 
 
 TONS. 
 
 GUNS. 
 
 COMMANDING OFFICER. 
 
 Screw Sloops 
 
 
 
 
 Hartford 
 
 1990 
 
 24 
 
 Capt. D. G. Farragut. 1 
 
 
 
 
 Capt. H. H. Bell. 2 
 
 
 2158 
 
 23 
 
 Capt. H. W. Morris. 3 
 
 Brooklyn 
 
 2070 
 
 22 
 
 Capt. T. T. Craven. 
 
 Kichmond.... 
 
 1929 
 
 24 
 
 Com. James Alden. 
 
 
 1032 
 
 9 
 
 Com. S. P. Lee. 
 
 Varuna 
 
 1300 
 
 10 
 
 Com. Chas. S. Boggs. 
 
 
 1016 
 
 7 
 
 Com. John DeCamp. 
 
 Side Wheel. 
 
 
 
 
 Mississippi .. 
 
 1692 
 
 17 
 
 Com. M. Smith. 
 
 Ninety-day 
 
 
 
 
 gunboats 
 
 
 
 
 
 507 
 
 2 
 
 Lieut. N. B. Harrison. 
 
 Itaska 
 
 507 
 
 2 
 
 Lieut. C. H. B. Caldwell. 
 
 Katahdin. ... 
 
 507 
 
 2 
 
 Lieut. Geo. H. Preble. 
 
 Kennebec 
 
 507 
 
 2 
 
 Lieut. J. H. Russell. 
 
 
 507 
 
 2 
 
 Lieut. G. M. Ransom. 
 
 
 507 
 
 2 
 
 Lieut. Pierce Crosby. 
 
 
 507 
 
 2 
 
 Lieut. E. Donaldson. 
 
 
 507 
 
 2 
 
 Lieut. E. T. Nichols, 
 
 Wissahickon 
 
 507 
 
 2 
 
 Lieut. A. N. Smith. 
 
 CHIEF ENGINEER. 
 
 Chief Engr. J. B. Kimball. 
 
 Chief Eng. S. D. Hibbert. 
 Chief Eng. Wm. B. Brooks. 
 Chief Eng. John W. Moore. 
 Chief Eng. F. C. Dade. 
 Act. 1st. A. Eng. R. Henry. 
 1st Asst. Eng. John H. Long. 
 
 Chief Eng. E. Lawton. 
 
 2d. Asst. Eng. G. W. Rodgers. 
 2d. Asst. Eng. J. H. Morrison. 
 2d. As. Eng. T. M. Dukehart. 
 2d. As. Eng. Henry W. Fitch. 
 2d. As. Eng. S. W. Cragg. 
 1st As. Eng. John Johnson. 
 2d. A. Eng. Chas. E. Devalin. 
 2d. A. Eng, Jas. P. Sprague. 
 2d. A. Eng. T. S. Cunningham. 
 
 1 Flag Officer, commanding fleet. 
 
 2 Fleet-Captain. Commander Richard Wainwright actually commanded the 
 Hartford during the ensuing operations. 
 
 3 Owing to Captain Morris' defective eyesight, the executive officer, Lieutenant 
 F. A. Roe, was in practical charge of this ship. 
 
320 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 In addition to this force there was also a flotilla of twenty 
 schooners under the command of Commander David D, Porter, each 
 schooner mounting one XHI-inch mortar. These vessels were mostly 
 commanded by their former captains, who had entered the naval ser- 
 vice as acting masters and were excellent examples of that large and 
 courageous class of practical seamen who contributed so largely to 
 the success of the naval arms during the rebellion. Their character 
 and services were well understood by Porter, who thus refers to 
 them in a report written by him in July, 1862: 
 
 4 'Again, sir, I have to mention favorably the divisional officers, 
 and the acting masters commanding mortar vessels. Anchored at 
 all times in a position selected by myself, more with regard to the 
 object to be accomplished than to any one's comfort or safety; 
 knowing that they will have to stay there without a chance of get- 
 ting away till I think proper to remove them, (no matter how thick 
 the shot and shell may fly) there has always existed a rivalry as to 
 who shall have the post of honor (the leading vessel) almost certain 
 to be struck, if not destroyed. 
 
 "They know no weariness, and they really seem to take de- 
 light in mortar firing, which is painful even to those accustomed to 
 it. It requires more than ordinary zeal to stand the ordeal. 
 Though I may have at times been exacting and fault-finding with 
 them for not conforming with the rules of the service (which re- 
 quires the education of a life-time to learn) yet I cannot withhold 
 my applause when I see these men working with such earnest and 
 untiring devotion to their duties while under fire." 
 
 Six steamers accompanied the mortar fleet to move the 
 
 schooners about and to protect them in a measure from attacks 
 
 that their peculiar armament could not oppose, these steamers being 
 
 the Owaseo, Miami, Harriet Lane, Westfield, Clifton, and J. P. 
 Jackson. The Owasco was a ninety- day gunboat; the Miami one 
 
 of the first lot of double-enders; the Harriet Lane a side-wheel rev- 
 enue cutter transferred from the Treasury Department, and the 
 other three were large and heavily-armed side-wheel ferry-boats. 
 
 After the fleet had stripped for action and left at Pilot Town 
 all spars, sails, rigging and unnecessary boats, it moved up to the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 321 
 
 desperate undertaking of attacking and passing the two forts, 
 Jackson and St. Phillip, most advantageously located at a bend on 
 opposite banks of the river. A short distance below the forts the 
 river was barred with a combination of large log rafts and schoon- 
 ers at anchor, supporting heavy chains reaching from bank to bank. 
 Auxiliary to the forts and above them in the river was a flotilla of 
 Confederate vessels, consisting of four naval steamers, six gunboats 
 of the local Kiver Defense Fleet, and two armed steamers belong- 
 ing to the State of Louisiana. The most formidable of the Confed- 
 erate naval vessels was the ram Manassas, which the previous 
 October had been in action with the Richmond in the Southwest 
 Pass and had somewhat damaged that vessel. She was originally 
 a large sea- going tug-boat named Enoch Train and had been con- 
 verted into a ram by being arched over with timber and plated with 
 old-fashioned railroad strap iron, about an inch thick. She had 
 twin screws and carried one 32-pounder gun pointing right ahead. 
 Another of the naval vessels was the Louisiana, a large armored 
 river steamer similar to the Federal iron-clad Benton described in a 
 previous chapter; she had sixteen heavy guns, nine of them being 
 VI and Vll-inch rifles, and would have been a formidable antago- 
 nist had it not been for the fact that Farragut made his attack before 
 her machinery was quite finished. The other naval vessels and the 
 River Defense boats were river steamers mounting from two to 
 seven guns each, lightly armored forward, and the two State vessels 
 were small sea-going steamers, also armored on their bows, and 
 mounting two guns each. 
 
 The mortar flotilla was moved up to within about three thousand 
 yards of Fort Jackson and rendered almost indistinguishable by 
 dressing the masts with bushes and foliage, the vessels lying close 
 to the bank with a background of trees. On the 18th of April they 
 opened fire upon Jackson and for nearly six days maintained an 
 almost uninterrupted bombardment, doing the enemy's works much 
 damage and receiving some in return, one of the schooners being 
 sunk at her anchors by a shell dropping completely through her. 
 To divert the fire of the forts from the mortar fleet, a sloop of war 
 and two or three gunboats were each day advanced into the zone of 
 fire and effected the object satisfactorily by moving about near the 
 head of the line of schooners and firing on the forts at the same 
 
322 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 time. The Oneida, just out of the shipyard where she was built, 
 was the first of the sloops to go into this fire and she demonstrated 
 that in spite of her pretty name of the beautiful lake of the Iro- 
 quois she was to be ruled by an evil star, for her baptism of fire 
 cost her many ugly hits and nine men badly wounded. Thence- 
 forth her career was one of misfortune, until finally in a far-distant 
 sea she went to the bottom with the greater part of her crew. 
 
 "While the mortars were thus furiously engaged, Farragut was 
 making all ready for the attempt to run past the forts. One inter- 
 esting expedient adopted by him was the shifting of weights on 
 board all the vessels so that they were down by the head about one 
 foot, the object being to prevent the swift current from swinging 
 them head down stream in case of taking the bottom, as would 
 have resulted had they grounded with the usual trim of the greatest 
 draft aft. All unnecessary top-hamper had been previously dis- 
 pensed with, and now five of the gunboats removed even their 
 lower masts. Chain cables were stopped up and down the ships 5 
 sides to protect the machinery, and the vessels were rendered 
 difficult to see on the muddy water by daubing them over with the 
 yellow mud of the river. These last two expedients were due to 
 the ingenuity of engineers on board the Richmond. The use of 
 chain cable for armor is said by several officers who were attached 
 to the Richmond at the time to have been suggested by First Assist- 
 ant Engineer Eben Hoyt of that vessel and was proposed to the 
 commanding officer by the chief engineer, Mr. John W. Moore. 
 From Farragut 5 s detailed report of the battles below New Orleans 
 the following relating to this point is quoted: 
 
 6 1 Every vessel was as well prepared as the ingenuity of her 
 commander and officers could suggest, both for the preservation of 
 life and of the vessel, and, perhaps, there is not on record such a 
 display of ingenuity as has been evinced in this little squadron o 
 The first was by the engineer of the Kichmond, Mr. Moore, by 
 suggesting that the sheet cables be stopped up and down on the 
 sides in the line of the engines, which was immediately adopted by 
 all the vessels. 55 
 
 Under the date of October 16, 1862, Chief Engineer Moore, 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 323 
 
 writing from the Richmond, then at Pensacola, addressed the Navy 
 Department in regard to a change which had been made to his 
 disadvantage in the arrangement of the list of chief engineers. On 
 the original of this letter, now on file in the Department, in Admiral 
 Farragut's own handwriting is the following endorsement: 
 
 4 4 Eespectf ully forwarded. Mr. Moore is the gentleman whom 
 I mentioned in my official letter as the originator of cladding the 
 ships with their chain cables and has always been spoken of by his 
 Commander as a man of great merit both in and out of his pro- 
 fession. 
 
 4 4 Yery respectfully, 
 
 D. GL Farragut. " 
 
 The commanding officer of the Richmond in forwarding Mr. 
 Moore's protest took occasion to write the following letter, which 
 certainly is conclusive as to whether or not the expedients referred 
 to originated with members of the engineer corps: 
 
 44 Sir: — I have the honor to enclose herewith a remonstrance 
 of Chief Engineer Moore of this vessel against the action of a Board 
 of Examiners which has evidently done him great injustice. Being 
 more or less interested in the welfare of all those serving under my 
 command and feeling it a duty to come to their aid when they re- 
 quire it, I trust that I shall be excused for thus trespassing on your 
 valuable time and will proceed at once to the point. Imprimis 
 then, Mr. Moore's professional standing has been fixed at the high- 
 est point by the several Boards before which he has appeared, and 
 to my mind he is justly entitled to that distinction; but I wish now 
 to show the Department that he has besides that other claims to 
 consideration. They are as follows: About this time last year I 
 arrived at the Southwest Pass in the South Carolina pretty nearly 
 broken down in machinery. Our main shaft was all adrift and 
 neither the Niagara and Colorado could do anything for us. Mr. 
 Moore, who was on board this ship at the time at the head of the 
 passes, hearing of our trouble came down and very soon decided 
 that he could make us all right again, and in less than three days 
 we were, by his individual exertions, fully and efficiently repaired 
 
324 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 and ofi for our station. Again, the idea of mailing our vessels' 
 sides, which was adopted by all the ships of the squadron, with 
 chain cables, is his. We know that it saved this ship's as well as 
 the Hartford? s machinery from serious injury and consequently the 
 vessels from destruction, the armor on both having been struck by 
 solid shot in that vital locality. After the passage of the forts 
 two-thirds of a 32-pounder shot, which had broken its way through 
 parts of the chain, was found embedded in our side. The Captain 
 of the Brooklyn says in his official report, in speaking of the ram 
 Manassas: " His efforts to damage me were completely frustrated, 
 our chain armor proving a perfect protection to our sides." Sub- 
 sequent examination showed, however, that the ship had received 
 serious damage and that nothing hut the armor saved her from 
 destruction. 
 
 "The idea of painting the ships with the mud of the Missis 
 sippi on that memorable occasion so as to screen them as much as 
 possible from observation, a color now adopted by the Department 
 as national, is also Mr. Moore's. 
 
 ; ' Regretting my inability to state this case properly in fewer 
 words, I am, Respectfully, Your obedient servant, 
 
 u James Alden, Commander. 
 "Hon. Gideon Welles, Secretary IT. S. Navy, Washington, D. C. " 
 
 The night of the 20th of April, Lieutenant Caldwell in the 
 Itaska most gallantly boarded one of the schooners supporting the 
 barrier chain and, finding its ends bitted on board, slipped them 
 and thus created a gap in the line of obstructions. The night of the 
 23rd Farragut made all final preparations for passing through the 
 gap and running the batteries of the forts. A detailed account of the 
 event that followed would fill a book the size of this if properly 
 dealt with, and is, moreover, a story of our navy to which sufficient 
 justice has never yet been done by historians, it being one of the 
 greatest and most desperate engagements in our naval annals. 
 Briefly, at 2 a. m. the 24th, the signal — two blood-red lights at the 
 peak of the Hartford — was made for the movement to begin and 
 the leading division, after some delay on account of difficulty in 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 325 
 
 managing the anchors in the strong current, moved up through the 
 opening and into furious action with the forts. This division was 
 led by Captain Theodoras Bailey in the gunboat Cayuga, followed 
 by the Pensacola, Mississippi, Oneida, Varuna, Katahdin, Kineo, 
 and WissaMckon, in the order named, and was under orders to pro- 
 ceed along the left, or east, bank of the river, engaging Fort St. 
 Phillip with the starboard batteries. Captain Bailey belonged to 
 the Colorado and had hoisted his division flag on the Cayuga through 
 the kindness of Lieutenant Napoleon B. Harrison commanding that 
 vessel, the commander of the Oneida having previously objected to 
 being overshadowed by the presence of a divisional officer on board 
 his vessel, which objection cost him the honor of having his ship 
 lead the first column. 
 
 Behind Bailey's division came Farragut with the Hartford, 
 Brooklyn and Richmond, forming what was called the center divi- 
 sion, and this was followed by Fleet Captain Bell, leading the third 
 division of six vessels, in the gunboat Sciota. The second and 
 third divisions were to follow up the western bank and engage Fort 
 Jackson with the port batteries. 1 The steamers attached to the 
 mortar flotilla moved up near the forts as the fleet got under way 
 and in conjunction with the mortar schooners opened a terrific can- 
 nonading against the works, greatly augmented by the firing from 
 the passing ships. In the heavy smoke that soon settled over the 
 river it became impossible for signals to be read and much con- 
 fusion resulted, each vessel being obliged to fight out its own des- 
 tiny. With the air filled with bursting shells and obscured by 
 smoke, the roar of heavy guns, the shouts of command, the screams 
 of mangled men, and the river covered with fire rafts and burning 
 wreckage, the scene was most awful and unearthly, and justified 
 the brief comment made by Farragut in his official report: " Such a 
 fire, I imagine, the world has rarely seen." 
 
 The vessels suffered severely from damages and casualties, but 
 within an hour and a quarter after the Cayuga had passed the gap 
 in the barrier the fleet with the exception of three gunboats of the last 
 
 1 The order of battle herein described is derived from the supplemental report 
 published in the annual report of the Secretary of the Navy for 1869, which was in- 
 tended as an official correction of numerous inaccuracies that had appeared in several 
 naval histories. 
 
326 
 
 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 division— the Kennebec, Itasca and Winona— had passed above the forts 
 and appeared in the Confederate flotilla, ' 'like dogs among a flock of 
 sheep," as Captain Mahan expresses it in his account of the battle 
 in "The Gulf and Inland Waters." The three last gunboats had 
 to bear the brunt of the fire from the forts after the other vessels 
 had passed out of range and were very roughly used; the Itasca was 
 wholly disabled by a shot through her boiler, two firemen being 
 severely scalded as a result, and the other gunboats suffered so 
 severely that the attempt to run the batteries appeared not only 
 foolhardy but impossible. They rejoined the fleet a few days 
 later. 
 
 The first vessels to break into the enemy's fleet were the 
 Cayuga and Varuna, both of which fared badly until more 
 vessels came up. The Varuna was rammed by two of the Confed- 
 erate boats and so damaged that her commander ran her ashore, 
 where she sank, the crew escaping previous to the disaster with the 
 exception of three men killed and nine wounded. The Cayuga was 
 badly cut up, being struck forty-two times, but she remained in 
 action and individually received the surrender of three of the 
 enemy's vessels. The ram Manassas struck the Richmond on the 
 starboard side and so crushed in her planking that she must have 
 been destroyed had the blow been slightly heavier; as it was, the 
 chain armor saved her. The Manassas also rammed the old side- 
 wheel frigate Mississippi and nearly stove in her side, but the blow 
 being a glancing one the break did not extend entirely through the 
 side. These acts of the Manassas were committed while the vessels 
 were in action with the forts. When the Federal fleet had passed 
 up, the Mannassas was seen quietly following, and Captain Melanc- 
 thon Smith of the Mississippi — a good fighter and a good Christian 
 —asked and obtained permission by signal to go back and attack 
 her. The ram seemed unwilling to try conclusions with the heavy 
 old ship coming straight down upon her with the swift current, and 
 just before the imp6nding collision she shied high up into the river 
 bank, where her crew made hurried preparations for her destruction 
 and abandonment, and then took to the shore. As soon as possible 
 a boat was sent from the Mississippi to see what could be done 
 with her late antagonist, First Assistant Engineer William JEL Hunt 
 being in the boarding party to take charge of the machinery. The 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 327 
 
 boat soon returned, reporting that it was impracticable to save the 
 Manassas, which had been set on fire and disabled, and Mr. Hunt 
 on his part reported that the piping through the hull. had been cut, 
 the water run out of sight in the boiler, the fires kept raging in 
 the furnaces, the safety valves shored down, and the steam 
 guage showing 136 pounds (a frightful pressure in those days), 
 — "with a tendency hellward." The Mississippi therefore re- 
 turned up the river to rejoin the fleet. Later, the water coming in 
 through the cut pipes, depressed the stern of the Manassas, floated 
 her bow off the bank, and the current carried her down to Porter's 
 mortar fleet, where her appearance created considerable consterna- 
 tion, but she soon faintly exploded and sank. 
 
 According to Flag Officer Farragut's report eleven of the 
 enemy's steamers were destroyed during this morning fight, which 
 practically annihilated their fleet. The Federal fleet remained at 
 anchor one day to rest the men and repair damages and on the 
 morning of the 25th, Captain Bailey in the Cayuga still leading, 
 proceeded up the river, had a sharp skirmish with the Chalmette 
 batteries, and at noon anchored off the City of New Orleans. The 
 city was taken possession of and held by the naval force under 
 very strained and trying circumstances until May 1, when General 
 B. F. Butler arrived with a large force and assumed military con- 
 trol of the place, the fleet soon after proceeding on its mission of 
 conquest up the river. Commander Porter continued the bombard- 
 ment of the lower forts with his flotilla until the 28th of April, when 
 they surrendered to him. The casualties in the fleet during the 
 battle of the 24th, as reported by the fleet surgeon, amounted to 
 thirty-seven killed and one hundred and forty-seven wounded, a 
 record that makes this one of the bloodiest naval battles of the re- 
 bellion. Two officers, both midshipmen, were killed and eleven 
 were wounded ; three of the latter — Second Assistant Engineer S. 
 Wilkins Cragg, acting chief of the Kineo\ Third Assistant J. C. 
 Hartley of the Pensacola, and Acting Third Assistant Frank K. 
 Hain of the Colorado, serving as a volunteer on the Iroquois — were 
 of the engineer corps, all injured by gunshot wounds. 
 
 The reports of many of the commanding officers of vessels en- 
 gaged in this battle referred in terms of praise to the zeal and abil- 
 ity displayed by the engineers and their men in keeping the machin- 
 
 19 
 
328 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ery in efficient operation under trying conditions. Captain Bailey, 
 in describing the battle afterward, on the occasion of a banquet 
 given him at the Astor House in New York, is credited with having 
 made the modest statement that, u the engineers ran the ships and 
 all we had to do was to blaze away when we got up to the forts." 
 Assistant Engineer Hartley of the Pensacola was most highly re- 
 ferred to in the official reports for the courage he exhibited; he was 
 stationed at the engine-room bell and was wounded in the head by 
 a piece of shell, and, although urged to go below for treatment, 
 refused to leave his station, remaining there all through the action. 
 
 On the 28th of May Chief Engineer James B. Kimball of the 
 Hartford, while ashore in Baton Kouge with a boat's crew on duty 
 was suddenly fired upon by the enemy and himself and two of the 
 men badly wounded. Mr. Kimball was struck in the head, face 
 and neck with slugs and most painfully hurt, although he re- 
 covered. 
 
 A frightful disaster befell a squadron of the Mississippi flotill a 
 in June of this year. The gunboats Mound City, St. Louis, Lex- 
 ington, and Gonestoga, under Commander Augustus H. Kilty of the 
 Mound City, were sent into White River to convoy some troop 
 transports and assist in an attack upon some Confederate bat- 
 teries at St. Charles, Arkansas. The attack was made June 17 and 
 resulted in the capture of the enemy's fortifications, but during its pro- 
 gress a shot penetrated the casemate of the Mound City just above a 
 gun port, killed three men in its flight, awd exploded her steam drum. 
 The immediate result was horrible; nearly eighty men were scalded 
 to death by the steam which filled the casemate, and forty-three 
 others were drowned or shot by the enemy after leaping over- 
 board. Of one hundred and seventy-five officers and men only 
 twenty-five escaped uninjured, the number killed or who subse- 
 quently died being one hundred and thirty -five. Commander Kilty 
 was so scalded that his left hand had to be amputated. Among 
 the killed were Chief Engineer John Cox; Second Assistant Engi- 
 neer John C. McAfee, and Third Assistant G-. W. Hollings- 
 worth. 
 
 Early in the morning of June 28th, Admiral Farragut with the 
 
 Hartford, Richmond, Iroquois, Oneida, Wissahickon, Sciota, 
 Winona, and Pinola ran the batteries at Vicksburg, assisted by 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 329 
 
 Commander Porter with his mortar flotilla. The military impor- 
 tance of this move is not apparent, as the batteries were not de- 
 stroyed, and in the nature of things could not be materially harmed 
 by ships, located as they were on bluffs high above the water 
 From Farragut's report it seems that the move was largely experi- 
 mental, for he says: 
 
 "In obedience to the orders of the department and the com- 
 mand of the President, I proceeded back to Vicksburg with the 
 Brooklyn, Richmond, and Hartford, with the determination to 
 carry out my instructions to the best of my ability." 
 
 And again: 
 
 "The department will perceive from this (my) report that the 
 forts can be passed, and we have done it, and can do it again as 
 often as may be required of us. It will not, however, be an easy 
 matter for us to do more than silence the batteries for a time, as 
 long as the enemy has a large force behind the hills to prevent our 
 landing and holding the place." 
 
 One of Porter's steamers, the Clifton, was disabled in this 
 affair by a shot through her boiler which killed six men by scalding. 
 The total casualties of the morning were fifteen men killed and 
 ' thirty wounded, about one-third of the number being on the flag- 
 ship. Farragut himself and Captain Broome of the Marine corps 
 appear on the surgeon's report of casualties as having suffered from 
 contusions on the Hartford. The report of Commander S. P. Lee 
 of the Oneida says: u One 6-inch rifle shell came through the star- 
 board after pivot port, killing S. H. Randall, a seaman, at the after 
 pivot gun, severely wounding Richard Hodgson, third assistant en- 
 gineer, at the engine bell, and, passing through the coamings of 
 the engine-room hatch, picked up three loaded muskets, (each lying 
 flat on the deck, on the port side of that hatch) and burst into the 
 bulwarks, over the first cutter, which was lowered to near the 
 water's edge, drove the muskets through the open port there, and 
 severely wounded William Cowell, seaman, who was in the boat 
 sounding, and slightly wounding Henry Clark, chief boatswain's 
 mate . .... A second 8 -inch compound solid shot carried 
 
330 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 away, amidships, the keel of the launch, (which was partly lowered) 
 and, entering on the starboard side, struck the steam drum, and, 
 glancing, fell into the fire-room." 
 
 On the 5th of July when the iron-clad Lexington was pro- 
 ceeding along the White Eiver, Arkansas, her chief engineer, Mr. 
 Joseph Huber, was shot dead by guerillas lurking along the 
 banks. 
 
 On the Atlantic coast after the remarkable fight of the iron- 
 clads in Hampton Eoads there were no very important naval en- 
 gagements during the year. The unromantic and wearying work of 
 maintaining the blockade along that coast employed the greater 
 number of the sea-going vessels and kept them extremely active, 
 while in the rivers, bays and sounds the smaller steamers were en- 
 gaged in a ceaseless border warfare with the armed vessels and 
 shore batteries of the enemy. This latter employment furnished a 
 fine field for adventure and, although on a small scale, gave oppor- 
 tunity for the development of a class of intrepid and self-reliant 
 young officers, of which class Lieutenant-commander 0. W. Flusser 
 and Lieutenant Win. B. Gushing were brilliant examples. Two or 
 three incidents will suffice to indicate the dangerous nature of this 
 litteral warfare. 
 
 On the 14th of August Lieutenant George B. Balch in the Po- 
 cahontas proceeded up Black River, South Carolina, some twenty- 
 five miles looking for a Confederate steamer said to be in hiding 
 there. Meeting with more resistance than expected from the enemy 
 along the banks he finally turned back and as the neighborhood had 
 become aroused the Pocahontas had to run the gauntlet for over 
 twenty miles of riflemen concealed in the thickets on both banks, 
 she replying all the distance with grape and cannister and smallarm 
 fire. By keeping the men behind breastworks of hammocks and 
 lumber she escaped with only one casualty, that being reported by 
 Lieutenant Balch as follows: " At 3:40 p. m., whilst under a very 
 sharp fire of the enemy, Acting Third Assistant Engineer John A. 
 Hill was wounded by a Minie ball, and I regret to report that his 
 wound is very dangerous; as yet, however, I am rejoiced to state 
 that his symptoms are all favorable ; it is a penetrating wound of the 
 abdomen, the ball having passed entirely through his body. I 
 need not say that he is receiving the most assiduous care of Dr. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 331 
 
 Rhoades, and he has been removed to the open deck under the 
 poop, that he may have the benefit of the cooler atmosphere; and I 
 am satisfied that if skill and attention can avail his life will be 
 saved." 
 
 Mr. Hill furnished an example of remarkable recovery, for he 
 survived his wound, served faithfully throughout the war and, as a 
 first assistant engineer, was honorably mustered out in December, 
 1865. 
 
 September 9th, the Shawsheen had a similar experience, she 
 being ambushed off Cross' Landing in the Chowan River, North 
 Carolina, and escaped with one casualty, also an assistant engineer; 
 this officer, John Wall by name, was shot in the thigh and wrist and 
 dangerously wounded, but ultimately recovered. 
 
 The morning of October 3d, Lieutenant Commander Flusser 
 with the Commodore Perry, Hunchback, and Wliitehead went up 
 the Blackwater River to co-operate with Major General Dix in an 
 attack on Franklin, Virginia. When near the town the vessels 
 were suddenly attacked by a large force lying in ambush in the 
 woods and on high bluffs, and suffered severely, not being able to 
 use their ordnance to advantage in reply. After fighting for three 
 hours under these conditions and getting no support from the army, 
 which did not appear, the steamers returned down the river, being 
 obliged to force their way with a heavy head of steam through ob- 
 structions made by the enemy felling trees into the narrow stream. 
 The affair cost four men killed and fifteen wounded, twelve of the 
 casualties being on Flusser's steamer, the Commodore Perry. One 
 of the killed was an officer— Master's Mate John Lynch. The 
 following instances of gallantry are mentioned in Flusser's report: 
 
 U I desire to mention as worthy of praise for great gallantry, 
 Lieutenant William B. Cushing, who ran the field-piece out amid 
 a storm of bullets, took a sure and deliberate aim at the rebels, and 
 sent a charge of cannister among them, that completely silenced 
 their fire at that point. Mr. Lynch assisted Mr. Cushing, and here 
 met his death like a brave fellow, as he was. 
 
 4 4 Mr. Richards, third assistant engineer, who had charge of 
 the powder division, also assisted with the howitzer, and showed 
 
332 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 great courage. Mr. Anderson, the paymaster, was of great assist- 
 ance in bringing in the wounded from under the fire." 
 
 Upon the receipt of this report Acting Eear Admiral Lee, com- 
 manding the squadron, directed that Acting Third Assistant Engin- 
 eer George W. Kichards be examined for promotion on account of 
 his conduct in the fight, and he was shortly afterward advanced to 
 the grade of acting second assistant engineer. 
 
 The fine screw-sloop Adirondack, fresh from the New York navy 
 yard where she was built, while proceeding to the Gulf of Mexico 
 struck on a reef near Little Abaco Island the morning of August 
 23rd, and became a total wreck, the engineer of the watch stating 
 that when she struck he saw the jagged points of the reef sticking 
 up through her bottom into the fire-room. At daylight the com- 
 manding officer, Captain Guert Gansevoort, ordered all hands to go 
 to the island, about five miles distant, and said that he would re- 
 main on board. The boatswain, Mr. William Green, and Second 
 Assistant Engineer Henry W. Eobie elected to stay with him and 
 soon had to defend the ship with hatchets and revolvers against a 
 boat load of villainous-looking black wreckers who came off to 
 board her, but were successfully driven off. The two officers named 
 finally prevailed upon the almost distracted captain to abandon the 
 ship, her salvage being hopeless, and with him went ashore to join 
 the rest of the crew. All hands lost everything they owned except 
 the clothing they had on at the time of stranding, as the ship filled 
 with water immediately and settled down on the reef until her spar 
 deck was almost awash. The shipwrecked men remained on Little 
 Abaco about two weeks, when they were taken off by the U. S. S. 
 Oanandaigua. The members of the corps who shared in this mis- 
 fortune were Chief Engineer Alexander Henderson, First Assistant 
 Engineer George J. Barry, Second Assistants Louis J. Allen and 
 Henry W. Eobie, and Third Assistants T. M. Mitchell, J. G. 
 Greene and Thomas Crummey. 
 
 Mr. Eobie was a brother of Chief Engineer E. D. Eobie, a 
 prominent member of the corps until his recent retirement, and 
 from his unfortunate adventure in the Adirondack went to the new 
 monitor Passaic, where a more dangerous experience was in store 
 for him. . The Passaic and the Monitor left Hampton Eoads the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 333 
 
 afternoon of December 29th, 1862, to join the blockading fleet off 
 Charleston, the former being towed by the State of Georgia and the 
 latter by the Rhode Island, but both using their own steam as well. 
 Captain Percival Drayton commanded the Passaic and Commander 
 J. P. Bankhead the Monitor, the senior engineers of the vessels 
 respectively being First Assistant Engineer George Bright and Sec- 
 ond Assistant Joseph Watters. The evening of December 30 the 
 sea became rough, and the Monitor began making heavy weather 
 of it, taking in quantities of water through the hawse pipes and 
 under the turret, and generally renewing the experience of her first 
 voyage from New York. The water gained steadily and soon im- 
 paired the fires by rising into the ash pits and swashing against the 
 grate bars, until the falling steam pressure showed too plainly that 
 the engines and pumps must soon stop. At 10:30 p. m. signals of 
 distress were made to the Rhode Island and that vessel undertook 
 the extremely dangerous and difficult task of removing th.Q Monitors 
 people in the heavy sea by means of boats, but before the work was 
 completed the Monitor sank. This happened shortly after mid- 
 night of the morning of December 31, about twenty miles S. S.-W. 
 of Cape Hatteras. With her perished acting ensigns Norman 
 Atwater and George Frederickson; third assistant engineers K. W. 
 Hands and Samuel A. Lewis, and twelve enlisted men. In Com- 
 mander Bankhead's report of the disaster he asserted his convic- 
 tion that a serious leak had been sprung by the pounding of the 
 sea separating the iron hull from the wooden upper body, and this 
 seems very probable. 
 
 In the meantime the Passaic was having a similar experience, 
 water gaining in her bilges steadily on account of lack of strainers 
 on the suction pipes of the pumps which resulted in the pump valves 
 soon choking with dirt and ashes. This absence of a very essential 
 fitting was caused by the vessel having been hurried away from the 
 contractors' works by the naval authorities before the engine-room 
 details were completed. About midnight the last pump gave out 
 and as the water threatened to reach the fires and extinguish them, 
 the fire-room was abandoned and the crew assembled on top of the 
 turret. The chief engineer was confined to his room by illness 
 before the vessel left Hampton Koads, leaving Mr. Kobie in charge, 
 and he now proved himself equal to the emergency. With a second 
 
334 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 class fireman named Richards, who volunteered to stay below with 
 him, he put on the bilge injection and for two or three hours stood 
 over it, almost submerged in water, keeping the mouth of the pipe 
 clear and opening or closing the valves as required, while the fire- 
 man attended to the fires. Captain Drayton waded into the fire- 
 room during this time and gave the not very cheering information 
 that the Monitor had just gone down. Eventually the pump gained 
 on the water and confidence was restored. The story of Mr. Robie's 
 heroism is more fully set forth in the following affidavit made by 
 the surgeon of the vessel: 
 
 " Newark, N. J., May 1st., 1890. 
 
 u To whom in. the interest of patriotism and justice it may con- 
 cern, be it known that I, Edgar Holden, formerly Surgeon of the 
 monitor Passaic^ actuated by a desire to see atonement made by a 
 great government for the unmerited neglect of a brave fellow-officer, 
 to whose heroism and fortitude were due the safety of the monitor 
 Passaic^ and through this the consummation of the plan for placing 
 the monitor ironclads in southern waters during the late war, do 
 certify to the following facts; said facts being not matters of memory 
 but drawn from notes made at the time in my private journal and 
 in large part published in the year 1863 in Harpers Monthly Mag- 
 azine, October, 1863. 
 
 u To- wit: That when in that awful night in which the original 
 Monitor was lost, officers and men had toiled for hours at the seem- 
 ingly hopeless task of throwing overboard shot and shell and bailing 
 the sinking ironclad with buckets passed from hand to hand, and 
 when from exhaustion and despair we fell at times to rise again 
 to the futile task, and when from the engine-room came 
 the report that one after another the pumps had given out, and that 
 the water was knee deep in the fire -room, swashing against the fire 
 bars with every lurch of the ship, and when finally the report came 
 'the last pump has failed' and we threw down our buckets to die, 
 that Assistant Engineer H.W.Robie stood alone at his post and suc- 
 ceeded in starting the pumps known as the bilge injections, and 
 frequently submerged to the neck in water, worked the valves with 
 his hands, his head held by myself or his fireman, while the task 
 seemed puerile to the despairing men on deck. That he stood for 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 335 
 
 hours under the platform around the engines to prevent the entrance 
 of chips and floating debris from entering and clogging the valves 
 which were without the usual strainers. That these pumps were the 
 only ones that could be so cleared, the others having suction pipes 
 passing in some way that I have forgotten through an iron bulkhead 
 and making it impossible to free them. That Mr. Kobie thus stood 
 at his post after all but one fireman had left the engine rooms. That 
 further it was my conviction, as well as that of all who knew at the 
 time of his heroism, that to his fidelity alone was due the safety of 
 the Passaic. 
 
 ' 'And I would further certify that only of late have I been 
 made aware that this unsurpassed devotion to duty has never been 
 acknowledged by the Navy Department or the Government, and 
 that the facts were not made known at the time, probably through a 
 patriotic desire to conceal the bad sea-going qualities of the monitors, 
 and were certainly omitted from my published journal solely on this 
 account. 
 
 " I would further state that this gallant officer is, as I am cred- 
 ibly informed, ill and in straitened circumstances, and that any ac- 
 tion tending to show a just appreciation of his invaluable services 
 should be taken promptly. 
 
 (Signed,) 
 
 "Edgar Holden, M. D., Ph. D. 
 
 ' 'Medical Director Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Co., Fellow 
 and Vice President American Laryngological Society, 
 Member American Medical Association, etc., etc.; for- 
 merly Assistant Surgeon U. S. N." 
 
 " Personally appeared before me this 2d day of May, 1890, 
 Dr. Eclgar Holden, of the city of Newark and county of Essex, 
 known to me to be a physician and surgeon in good standing, for 
 merly an officer of the United States Navy, who certifies that the 
 above statements are just and true. 
 
 (Signed,) 
 
 "F. K. Howell, Notary Public, N. J." 
 
 Heroism and devotion to duty of the order described have won 
 promotion and reward in innumerable instances where the degree 
 was less than in this case, but there is no record of Mr. Eobie hav- 
 
336 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ing received either for his signal services. One considerable recog- 
 nition which he did receive, and which he said well repaid him for 
 his experience, occurred shortly before the battle in Mobile Bay, 
 when Captain Drayton introduced him to Admiral Farragut with 
 the remark, " Mr. Robie saved the Passaic the night the Monitor 
 was lost." 
 
CHAPTEE XX 
 
 " When the temple at Jerusalem was completed, King Solomon gave a feast to 
 the artificers employed in its construction. On unveiling the throne it was found that 
 a blacksmith had usurped the seat of honor on the right of the king's place, not yet 
 awarded. Whereupon the people clamored and the guard rushed to cut him down. 
 6 Let him speak ! ' commanded Solomon. 'Thou hast, O King, invited all craftsmen 
 but me, yet how could these builders have raised the temple without the tools I fash- 
 ioned ? ' 'True,' decreed Solomon, ' the seat is his of right. All honor to the iron- 
 worker.' " — Jewish Legend. 
 
 1862— The Civil War, Continued— Increase of the Navy— Steamers Purchased 
 Mississippi Flotilla Transferred to the Navy Department— Steam Ves- 
 sels of War Placed Under Construction— The Passaic Class of Monitors 
 — The Dictator and Puritan— The Miantonomoh Class— Other Moni- 
 tors—The Keokuk— The Dunderberg— Legislation Eegarding the Navy 
 — Ketired^List Established— Creation of the Bureau of Steam Engineer- 
 ing — Pensions. 
 
 DUBINGr 1862 the naval force both in ships and men waslargly 
 increased. About fifty steamers from the merchant service were 
 bought during the year and converted into armed vessels, and a sim- 
 ilar number of vessels was added to the naval establishment by the 
 transfer of the Mississippi flotilla in July from the army and by the 
 transfer of some revenue cutters from the Treasury Department. Sev- 
 eral vessels captured from the enemy in action, or while attemptiug 
 to run the blockade, were found suitable for use as war steamers, 
 prominent among these being the powerful iron- clad ram lennessee 
 captured at New Orleans while still unfinished, and the steamer East- 
 port taken by Lieutenant Phelps in the Tennessee Kiver. 
 
 This year witnessed a remarkable awakening of public interest 
 in naval ship construction; an interest that took the form of practic- 
 ally dictating to the Navy Department the types of war ships the 
 country needed, and was so powerful that it entirely overcame 
 and consigned to the background the practices and prejudices which 
 had long been fundamental in the naval service relative to the same 
 subject. As a result all the old theories based upon the supposed 
 unreliability of steam, the alleged necessity for sail-power on war- 
 
338 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 vessels, and the doubted utility of iron as a material for ship construc- 
 tion, were cast aside, and with the prestige resulting from the per- 
 formance of the Monitor and the failure of the old type of ships in 
 Hampton Roads the engineer was allowed free scope to develop his 
 ideas and build ships embodying them. It was, in fact, one of those 
 occasions which recur from time to time when society is forced by 
 unusual circumstances to admit its dependence upon the iron- worker, 
 and in its distress to fall before him humbly begging for succor. 
 The result of all this was that the greater part of the constructive 
 activity of the year was devoted to the building of engineers' war- 
 ships, — mastless vessels dependent entirely upon steam and mailed 
 with iron. 
 
 If public opinion sustained and demanded this revolution in 
 naval architecture, the same cannot be said of naval opinion. 
 With the exception of engineers, who saw in the change a develop- 
 ment of their own specialty, the general sentiment of the navy, as 
 exhibited by a multitude of letters, reports and opinions, all items 
 of public knowledge through the medium of Navy Department 
 and Congressional publications, appears to have been one of mis- 
 trust, if not positive opposition to the new development. Thus it 
 was that the engineer corps, with a few prominent exceptions in 
 other branches of the service, had to bear the brunt of incessant 
 attacks upon the probable utility of the new class of vessels; a 
 strife that was well maintained against great odds at first and 
 finally terminated in an historical controversy between a prom- 
 inent representative of each naval faction, from which controversy 
 the engineer and the principles championed by him emerged sig~ 
 nally victorious. 
 
 It is unnecessary to introduce any of the opinions of the old 
 school naval officers, breathing hostility to the engineers', ships, 
 for a proper respect for the intelligence and patriotism of the 
 officers of our navy as a class is sufficient warrant that such of 
 those opinions as have been preserved are not indicative of the be- 
 lief of the whole service. That belief, however, while not actually 
 hostile, was far from being favorable, and cannot be more truthfully 
 presented than by quoting from an opinion respecting iron-clads sub- 
 mitted to the Navy Department in February, 1864, by Rear Admiral L. 
 M. Groldsborough, an officer of more than fifty years service, of great 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 339 
 
 prominence and recognized professional ability, and as progressive 
 and liberal-minded a representative of this class as could well be 
 found. 
 
 " Their absolute worth, however, in these particulars, (offensive 
 and defensive properties), I cannot regard as entitled to the extrav- 
 agant merit claimed for it, induced, I apprehend, in a great measure 
 by conclusions drawn from the encounters of the first Monitor and 
 Weehawken with the Merrimack and Atlanta, without a sufficient 
 knowledge of the facts attending them, and without any (or more 
 than an unwilling) reference to the cases of opposite results, as, for 
 instance, the Ogeechee,and the repeated displays before Charleston. 
 That the charm of novelty in construction, or quaintness in appear- 
 ance, had anything to do with the matter, I will not undertake to 
 assert, although I may, perhaps, be allowed to indulge suspicion as 
 to probable effect. Popular opinion is not always right on such sub- 
 jects, nor do I know that it is apt to be when it runs counter to pop- 
 ular naval opinion. At any rate, I do know that the latter is not 
 likely to be very wrong in relation to professional matters of the 
 kind." 
 
 Before the original Monitor was launched, Secretary Welles 
 had become convinced of the extraordinary merits of that type of 
 fighting ship, and in his annual report, in December, 1861, he rec- 
 ommended the immediate construction of twenty iron-clad steamers. 
 The House of Representatives acted quickly on this recommendation 
 and passed a bill authorizing the Secretary of the Navy to cause to 
 be constructed not exceeding twenty-one iron-clad steam gunboats. 
 The Senate, more conservative, delayed action on the bill until Feb- 
 ruary, when the Secretary of the Navy, forseeing that the country 
 would suffer from longer inaction, addressed the chairman of the 
 Senate naval committee on the subject, with the result that the bill 
 was soon passed. In its final form it authorized the Navy Depart- 
 ment to expend $10,000,000 for armored vessels, and this appro- 
 priation was greatly augmented by subsequent legislation. 
 
 Under date of March 31, the Department entered into contract 
 with John Ericsson for the construction, hull and machinery com- 
 plete, of six single-turreted monitors, slightly larger than his first 
 vessel and possessing improvements that experience had shown to 
 
340 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 be desirable. Chief among the changes was the locating of the 
 pilot house on top of the turret, and the installation of a permanent 
 smoke-pipe. Chief Engineer Alban C. Stimers was detailed as gen- 
 eral superintendent of the building of these vessels. Encouraged by 
 his happy selection of the name of the Monitor, Ericsson proceeded 
 to name these six, Impenetrable, Penetrator, Paradox, Gauntlet, Palla- 
 dium, and Agitator, but the Department very properly disapproved 
 of these polysyllables and gave the vessels good American names — 
 Passaic, Montauk, Catshill, Patapsco, Lehigh, and Sangamon, — under 
 which they did the state good service and with which four of them 
 are still on the navy list, and a fifth, the Sangamon with her name 
 changed to Jason, also remains with us. The Patapsco was 
 lost in January, 1865. Besides these six, there were four others of 
 the Passaic class, built by other contractors from Ericsson's general 
 designs, these being the Nantucket, built by the Atlantic Works, Bos- 
 ton; the Nahant, by Harrison Loring, Boston; the Weehawken, byZ. 
 and F. Secor, New York, and the Gamanche. The contract for this 
 last vessel was given to Donahue, Ryan & Secor of San Francisco, 
 Cal. and the actual work of building the ship was done at the ship 
 yard of the Secor brothers in Jersey City: when the different parts 
 were all completed a sailing ship, the Aquila, was freighted with them 
 and proceeded to San Francisco by way of Cape Horn, having the 
 misfortune to sink at the dock soon after arriving at her destination. 
 After these delays, the Gamanche did not appear as a completed 
 monitor until 1865. There is perhaps no more eloquent tribute to 
 the genius of John Ericsson than the fact that of the thirteen single 
 turreted monitors that remain in our navy as the survivors of the 
 many vessels of that type built during the war, eight are members 
 of the original ten of the Passaic class. 
 
 On the 28th of July a contract was made with Ericsson for two large 
 and high-powered monitors, which he named Puritan and Protector, 
 the first name being accepted by the Department and the second 
 changed to Dictator. The following table exhibits the main features 
 of the Ericsson monitors of 1862 compared with the original Monitor, 
 the data given being with reference to the vessels as actually built 
 and not according to their dimensions as altered by subsequent re- 
 building or repairs. The table is from Church's Life of John 
 Ericsson. 
 
U. S. MONITOR, XAXTirOKET, 1862. 
 
 Typical of the Passaic class; length, 200 feet; beam, 46 feet; displacement, 1,875 tons. 
 The flying-bridge, with hammock-boxes, etc. Shown abaft the turret is a peace-time convenience that 
 
 was not built upon the monitors (hiring the war. 
 
THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 343 
 
 Contract price, each 
 
 Extreme length, feet 
 
 Extreme breadth, feet 
 
 Depth of hold, feet 
 
 Draft of water, feet 
 
 Diaim of turret, inside, feet.... 
 
 Thickness of armor, inches 
 
 Diameter of propellers, feet.... 
 Diam. steam cylinders, inches 
 
 Length of stroke, inches 
 
 Side armor, inches , 
 
 Weight of guns, pounds 
 
 Coal capacity, tons * 
 
 Displacement, tons 
 
 Tonnage 
 
 Midship section, square feet... 
 
 Monitor. 
 
 "PooQCnr* Jtr, 
 X doBt*lVj VO 
 
 XJiKjVCLVKjL OiiXVX 
 
 x u.i l uctli. > 
 
 $275,000 
 172 
 
 $400,000 
 
 $1,150,000 
 
 200 
 
 312 and 340 
 
 41 K 
 
 46 
 
 50 
 
 11* 
 
 
 21X 
 
 10K 
 
 ibx 
 
 20 
 
 20 
 
 21 
 
 24 
 
 8 
 
 10K 
 
 15 
 
 9 
 
 12 
 
 21k 
 
 36 
 
 40 
 
 100 
 
 24 
 
 22 
 
 48 
 
 4K 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 44,000 
 
 84,000 
 
 84,000 and 
 220,000 
 
 100 
 
 150 
 
 300 and 1,000 
 
 987 
 
 1,335 
 
 4,438 and 
 4,912 
 
 776 
 
 844 
 
 3,033 and 
 3,265 
 
 321 
 
 392 
 
 777 
 
 The story of the troubles and delays experienced in the building 
 of the two large monitors is too long to go into. Ericsson was 
 much hampered and annoyed by the numerous changes in his de- 
 signs forced upon him by the Department acting on the advice of 
 naval officers with and without experience in monitors. One con- 
 siderable modification in the Dictator was in dispensing with the 
 forward overhang of the upper hull, which Ericsson regarded as an 
 essential as it afforded a perfect protection to the anchors when under 
 fire. Officers in command of the smaller monitors while the Dicta- 
 tor was building generally condemned that feature and believed it 
 had been the cause of the loss of the Monitor, their opinions ultim- 
 ately leading to the modification referred to. When the Dictator 
 went into service at the end of 1864 her commander, Captain John 
 Rodgers, complained of the absence of the forward overhang, which 
 complaint angered Ericsson on account of the source of the influence 
 that had forced him to make the change. Writing to the Secretary 
 of the Navy regarding the criticisms to which the monitors were 
 subjected by the commander of one of them, he said: "I 
 trust that neither he nor the officers of the turret vessels, 
 all of whom are admitted to be as skilful in their profession as 
 they are brave, will take offense at my remarks. I have only the 
 single object in view — the triumph of the service which their skill 
 
344 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 and valor has raised so high in the public estimation. I beg, ear- 
 nestly, however, to call their attention to the fact that they have 
 entered on a new era, and that they are handling not ships, but 
 floating machines, and that, however eminent their seamanship, 
 they cannot afford to disregard the advice of the engineer." 
 
 With all his engineering ability, Ericsson made some mistakes 
 himself right in the line of his own profession, and as he was so 
 stubborn by nature and so confident of his own powers his errors 
 were seldom corrected until too late, for he would take advice of no 
 man. Chief Engineer E. D. Eobie, U. S. Navy, was the naval 
 superintendent of the construction of the Dtctator, and, without 
 claiming to be a genius or a remarkable inventor, he was a better 
 marine engineer than Ericsson, for he had the invaluable knowledge 
 gained by long experience with engines at sea which Ericsson 
 lacked, and without which no engineer, no matter how accom- 
 plished, can intelligently design marine engines. Several faults in 
 design were pointed out by Mr. Kobie, who knew to a certainty 
 that they would result in trouble at sea, but Ericsson would listen 
 to nothing, his favorite reply to these suggestions, which was both 
 egotistical and incorrect, being that he had built successful engines 
 
 before Eobie was born. 
 
 One fault alone which Ericsson scorned to recognize resulted 
 in defeating the hopes of the Department regarding the first opera- 
 tions of the Dictator. Her main shaft was nineteen inches in dia- 
 meter, an enormous size even for this day, and the main bearings 
 as designed were disproportionately short for the size of the shaft 
 they were to support. This was strenuously objected to by Eobie, 
 but without avail, and the result was that when the Dictator started 
 to join the fleet for the first assault on Fort Fisher, her first employ 
 ment, the bearings wore down three-eighths of an inch in going 
 twenty miles and the shaft became so loose as to endanger the ship. 
 Upon Chief Engineer Eobie's report, she was turned back to port, 
 and for many weeks she had to lie idle under Eobie's charge while 
 he had longer brasses made and brackets fitted to support them. 
 This was a most lamentable failure when the Department was ex- 
 pecting so much of the ship, and Ericsson afterward admitted in 
 conversation with Mr. Eobie that for once he had made a mistake 
 in not listening to the opinions of another engineer. 
 
u. s. s. miantonomoh; 
 
 Photographed in Europe in 1866. Length, 257 feet; beam, 52 feet 10 inches; disp., 3,401 tons. 
 ( Agamenticus, Monadnock, Tonawanda, in class. ) 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 347 
 
 Against Ericsson's wishes the Puritan was provided with twin 
 screws, and it was also directed that she be fitted with two turrets ; 
 to this latter modification of his plan Ericsson vehemently objected, 
 and finally arranged a compromise of one huge turret to mount two 
 twenty-inch guns, but these changes and counter changes amounted 
 to nothing, for the end of the war found the Puritan still unfinished. 
 The Virginius excitement in 1874: induced the Navy Department 
 to take steps towards her completion, but she cannot be said to be 
 finished yet, for now (1896) the work of converting her into a coast 
 defense battle-ship is still going forward. Very little of Ericsson's 
 ship remains in the new Puritan. The Dictator was put in service 
 and sent to Key West at the time of the Virginius affair and proved 
 to be an excellent sea boat, but very expensive to operate. In 1883 
 she was sold to A. Purves & Son of Philadelphia for $40,250, the 
 government having expended up to that time about $260,000 for 
 her preservation and repair, in addition to her original cost. 
 
 Besides the twelve Ericsson monitors already referred to, 
 twenty-eight other armored vessels, the majority of which were of the 
 monitor type, were placed under construction during the year. Four 
 of these were large double-turreted vessels designed to carry four 
 XV-inch guns each and were undertaken by the government at the 
 navy yards as follows: Miantonoriwh at New York; Tonawanda 
 (afterward Amphitrite) at Philadelphia; Monadnoeh at Boston, and 
 Agamenticus (Terror) at Kittery, Maine. Machinery for these vessels 
 was contracted for with various builders in New York and Philadel- 
 phia, that for the first two named being designed by Engineer-in- 
 Chief Xsherwood and that for the other two by John Ericsson. The 
 turrets, side armor, deck plating, stringers, etc. were obtained by 
 contract with different iron manufacturers. The Onondaga^ also 
 two-turreted, was contracted for, hull and machinery complete, with 
 George Quintard of New York and was built for him by T. F. Row- 
 land at the Continental Iron Works, Greenpoint. Four other two- 
 turreted monitors were placed under construction in the Mississippi 
 Yalley, the contracts for them, dated May 27th, being with the 
 following builders: Thomas G. Gaylord, Cincinnati, Ohio, for the 
 Chickasaw \ G. B. Allen & Co., St. Louis, for the ISckapoo; James 
 B. Edes, St. Louis, for the Milwaukee and Winnebago. These west- 
 ern craft were modifications of Ericsson's monitor, their d_ecks in- 
 
348 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 stead of being flat were so much crowned that they were known as 
 " turtle-backs," and the guns were mounted in turrets built from 
 Edes' designs on the disappearing principle. 
 
 In September, nine single-turret monitors, somewhat larger than 
 
 the Passaic class, were contracted for as follows: With Harrison 
 Loring, Boston, for the Canonicus; Swift, Evans & Co., Cincinnati, 
 for the Catawba and Oneota; Z. & F. Secor, New York, for the 
 Mahopac, Manhattan and Tecumseh; Albert G. Mann, Pittsburgh, for 
 the Manayunk; Harlan & Hollings worth, Wilmington, Delaware, for 
 the SauguSj and Miles Greenwood, Cincinnati, for the Tippecanoe. 
 two very small single-turret vessels, the Marietta and Sandusky, were 
 contracted for May 16th with Hartupee & Co., Pittsburgh, and 
 during the same months contracts were signed with James B. Edes, 
 St. Louis, for the Neosho and Osage, having one turret and recessed 
 stern wheels, and with George C. Bestor, Peoria, 111., for a similar 
 vessel, the Ozarh Joseph Brown of St. Louis by contracts signed 
 May 30th, built three small iron-plated casemate vessels named 
 In September, nine single-turret monitors, somewhat larger than 
 Chilicothe, Tuscumbia and Indianola. These vessels had side wheels 
 far aft working independently to facilitate turning in close quarters, 
 and had also twin screw prodellers. 
 
 One or two novel plans for armored war-vessels were accepted 
 during the year as the aftermath of the crop of designs submitted to 
 the iron-clad board of 1861. One remarkable vessel originating in 
 this manner was the Keokuk, built according to the terms of the con- 
 tract made with Charles W. Whitney of New York on the 25th of 
 March. This contract called for an iron-plated, shot-proof steam 
 battery, 159 feet long, 36 feet beam, 13 feet 6 inches depth of hold, 
 to carry two Xl-inch guns mounted in towers. Low-pressure con- 
 densing engines capable of driving the vessel ten knots per hour for 
 twelve consecutive hours were specified. The contract price was 
 $220,000. The peculiar feature of the Keokuk was in the disposi- 
 tion of armor, the sides being built of alternate horizontal strata of 
 
 wooden timbers and iron bars, each layer being; about five inches 
 wide. Like the Galena, this conception came to grief when sub- 
 jected to the fire of the enemy, and in worse degree, for she sank 
 from the effects of the puncturing she received, as will be related in 
 a subsequent chapter regarding naval operations off Charleston. 
 
 Another iron-clad of quite different type was the Dunderberg^ 
 
stimer's patent differential fire-tubular boiler used in canonicus class. 
 Six surfaces in each boiler; 117 square feet grate surface in each boiler, 
 
350 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 contracted for with W. H. Webb of New York city, July 3rd, 1862. 
 This vessel, described as an " ocean-going iron-clad frigate ram," 
 was a remarkable step in advance of the war-ship construction of the 
 time, but was not put to the test of battle as her great size and huge 
 pieces of iron work to be made so delayed her building that she was 
 not launched until July 22, 1865. The tendency in armored ship 
 construction after the affair of the Monitor and Merrimac was to 
 accept Ericsson's circular turret as the proper protection for guns, 
 and this plan, modified and improved by changing conditions and 
 better appliances for perfecting mechanical work, still remains and 
 may be seen in one form or another in almost every armored vessel 
 of the present day. The Dunderberg^ however, departed most 
 radically from the favorite practice of her year, and instead of the 
 features of the Monitor her construction presented an almost faithful 
 reproduction, in a greatly improved form, of the general character- 
 istics of the Merrimac. That is, she consisted essentially of a low 
 hull surmounted with a sloping-sided armored casemate protecting a 
 very heavy battery. Great engine power, calculated to give a sea 
 speed of fifteen knots an hour, and an enormous ram fifty feet long 
 were important factors in her war-like make up. The hull, of un- 
 usually heavy timbers, was built in Mr. Webb's shipyard, foot of 
 Sixth Street, East River, and the machinery was built by John Roach 
 & Son at the Etna Iron Works near by. Chief Engineer Wm. W. 
 W. Wood, IT. S. Navy, was the general Superintendent of construc- 
 tion and Second Assistant Engineer Wilson K. Purse was the resident 
 inspector at the Etna Iron Works. The contract price for the vessel 
 complete was $1,250,000. 
 
 The following table exhibits the general dimensions of the ship 
 and machinery, and shows her to have been an unusually huge craft 
 for her day. 
 
 Extreme length 380 feet 4 inches. 
 
 Extreme beam * - 72 10 " 
 
 Depth of main hold 22 « 7 " 
 
 Height of casemate 7 « 9 " 
 
 Length of ram - 50 " 
 
 Draft when fully equipped for sea - 21 " 
 
 Displacement........... — »» .7,000 tons. 
 
 TOHHSlg©. ..••»••«>•< ■,.,.« rrr* = « = ,....,...»»• ........a— r — .. — . ■>»»•> 9 J 090 
 
 eight of iron arinor J -.=.>.".»o...^>»«.op»t.P'..«..-^--»»..»"'°«'»°»""»^"f""? c "» "»»»»»-«»o«»?«»"»«S;^O0Q 
 
U. S. S. DUNDKRBEKG. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 353 
 
 M .^ t >-^-^— . - ■ ■■ i ■ ■> — .. i - i i. ■ ■ i— ii ii — i. n — ■ ■ — .«-~— 
 
 Diameter of steam cylinders (two) ..............100 Inches. 
 
 Stroke of pistons 45 " 
 
 Boilers — Six main and two auxiliary. 
 
 Depth of boilers 13 feet. 
 
 Height of boilers 17 feet 6 inches. 
 
 Front width of boilers, each ...21 " 5 " 
 
 Weight of boilers , 450 tons. 
 
 Total heating surface 30,000 square feet. 
 
 Grate surface 1,200 " " 
 
 Cooling surface in condensers 12,000 " " 
 
 Diameter of screw propeller 21 feet. 
 
 Pitch of propeller 27 to 30 " 
 
 Weight of propeller , 34,580 pounds. 
 
 Capacity of coal bunkers 1,000 tons. 
 
 Horse-power of main engines ... ...5,000 
 
 This "Thundering Mountain" of the navy, as her size and 
 armament as well as the translation of her name caused her to be 
 called, embraced a number of features in construction now regarded 
 as essential but which in 1862-3 were thought unimportant or were 
 almost unheard of. She had a double bottom, collision 
 bulkheads, and a system of transverse longitudinal and 
 water-tight bulkheads extending up to the spar deck. The 
 engine and boiler spaces were entirely enclosed with water- 
 tight bulkheads. Her air and circulating pumps were 
 independent of the main engines and she had also a pair of 
 independent wrecking pumps. The smoke-pipe, thirteen feet in 
 diameter, had armor gratings fitted inside it, as is now universally 
 practiced, to prevent injury to the boilers by grenades or heavy 
 debris. The engines were horizontal back-acting in arrangement, 
 designed to run at an ordinary speed of sixty revolutions per minute, 
 with intention to work up to eighty revolutions for full power. The 
 main shaft was 118 feet long and 18 inches in diameter, and was sup- 
 ported by bearings 40 inches long cored for water circulation The 
 air and circulating pumps each had two steam cylinders 36 u x36 N \ 
 which in themselves were engines nearly as large as the propelling 
 engines of the C<mandmgua class of sloops of war. 
 
 Not being completed until after the Civil War was over, the 
 naval authorities had no desire to receive this splendid specimen of 
 war- ship into the service, the policy then being to get rid of as 
 many vessels as possible instead of adding to the number. At Mr. 
 
354 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Webb's request the vessel was released to him under the terms of 
 a special act of Congress approved March 2, 1867, he refunding to 
 the government the sum of $1,092,887.73, which had been paid to 
 him on account. He immediately sold her to the French govern- 
 ment, and under the name of JRochambeau she was for many years 
 regarded as one of the most formidable vessels in the navy of that 
 country. The effect of the presence in the French navy of the Dun- 
 derherg is still visible in the exaggerated ram bows and home-sloping 
 top sides so generally designed by French naval architects. Mr. 
 Edward Marsland, who had been a first assistant engineer in the 
 navy during the war, went across the Atlantic in the Dunderherg as 
 her chief engineer and found the sea-behaviour of both ship and 
 machinery admirable. The same day that Congress authorized the 
 release of the Dunderherg to Mr. Webb another private act was 
 passed releasing the Onondaga to Mr. Quintard, who refunded the 
 money he had been paid and received the vessel, although she had 
 
 i 
 
 Longitudinal section of the Dunderherg showing backing of ram, arrangement 
 
 of machinery, disposition of armor, etc. 
 
 been completed and in active service the last eighteen months of the 
 war. She also was sold to the French and still appears on the 
 navy list of that country as an armored coast-defense turret 
 ship. 
 
 From the lesson of Hampton Eoads the Navy Department at- 
 tempted one modification of a war vessel that was not especially 
 successful. In 1862 work was begun on the frigate Roanoke of cut- 
 ting her down as the Merrimac had been, and on the low deck re- 
 sulting three Ericsson turrets were fitted by the Novelty Iron Works, 
 New York. Although employed about a year in the North Atlantic 
 squadron, the modified Roanoke was not found satisfactory. The 
 
u. s. s. iosco, 1862. 
 
 Type of the Sassacus class; length, 240 feet; beam, 35 feet; disp., 1,173 tons, 
 general appearance, without regard to dimensions, this vessel well represents the Octorwa class of 1861 and the 
 Mnhongo class of 1863, as well as its own class of donble-enders. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 357 
 
 great weight of the three turrets made her rolling dangerous and the 
 hull was not found to be strong enough to properly carry them, the 
 thrust of the turret spindles on the keel when the turrets were being 
 keyed up for action always threatening to force out the bottom. 
 
 The twelve double-ended gunboats begun in 1861 proved so 
 useful that in the autumn of 1862 contracts were made for twenty- 
 seven others, considerably larger than the first lot. From the name 
 of one of these that became especially famous they came to be known 
 as the Sassacus class, their names being as follows: Agawam, Ascut- 
 ney, Chenango, Chicopee, Eutaw, Iosco, Lenapee, Mackinaw, Massa- 
 soit, Mattabessett, Mendota, Metacomet, IVlingoe, Osceola, Otsego, JPaw- 
 foixet, Peoria, Pontiac, Pontoosice, Sassacus, /Shamrock, Tacony, 
 Tallahoma, Tallapoosa, Wateree, Winooski, and Wyalusing. All 
 were built of wood with the exception of the Wateree, which was of 
 iron. They were all rated as of 974 tons burden. One other wooden 
 vessel of this class — the Algonquin — was delayed on account of con- 
 troversy as to the machinery to be fitted in her and was not put 
 under construction until March, 1863. A few of the hulls were built 
 at navy yards, but the majority of them and the machinery for all 
 were built by contract, the engineer-in-chief furnishing the machin- 
 ery designs except for the Algonquin. The Sassacus was built at the 
 navy yard, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, by Naval Constructor 
 Isaiah Hanseom, and her machinery by the Atlantic Works, Boston. 
 
 ------ . «- n - - - .. 
 
 Near the close of the year a class of small screw sloops, about 100 
 tons larger than the ninety-day gunboats, was begun at navy yards 
 and contracts let for their machinery. These were the Kcmsas, 
 Maumee, Nipsia, Nyack, Pequot, Saco, Shawmut, and Yantic, With 
 the exception of the Kansas all were under construction by the 1st 
 of January, 1863. 
 
 Important changes in naval organization and administration 
 were brought about by Congressional action during the early part of 
 of the Civil War. During the special session of the 37th Congress 
 in the summer of 1861, to go a little back of the year with which 
 this chapter is dealing, an act, approved August 3, 1861, created a 
 naval retired list by providing that any officer of the navy who had 
 been forty years in the service of the United States might be retired 
 upon his own application; the same act provided that officers of the 
 navy found incapacitated for active service by reason of wounds or 
 
Inclined single-cylinder direct-acting engine of the Agawam and class. The same arrangement obtained in the other classes of double- 
 
 enders and in numerous other vessels that have been described in this book. 
 
U. S. S. SHAWMUT, 1803. 
 
 Type of the Kansas class; length, 179 feet 6 inches; beam 30 feet; disp., 836 tons. 
 
THE STEAM NATY OF THE UNITED STATES. 361 
 
 "-* -■ ■ ... . - — — - ... . . ,— — — — 
 
 other disability incurred in the line of duty should be placed on the 
 retired list, and the officer next in rank promoted to the place of the 
 retired officer according to the established rules of the service. 
 Early in the first regular session of the same Congress, an act, ap- 
 proved December 21, 1861, made the retirement of naval officers 
 compulsory after forty-five years' service, or upon arriving at the 
 age of sixty-two. A number of old officers of the line and medical 
 corps were immediately retired in accordance with this legislation, 
 and it was due only to the presence on the active list of these 
 superannuated officers, unable to perform their duties in time of war, 
 and at the same time deserving of all consideration for past services, 
 that the navy received the inestimable, though deserved, gift of the 
 retired list. 
 
 An act to reorganize the Navy Department was approved July 
 5th, 1862, which created the Bureau of Steam Engineering as a sep- 
 arate executive branch of the department and provided that the chief 
 of that bureau should be a skillful engineer selected from the list of 
 chief engineers of the navy. The same act created the present bureaus 
 of Navigation, Equipment, and Construction, the two last named 
 and the bureau of steam engineering being obtained by dividing up 
 the old bureau of Construction, Equipment and Repair, the business 
 of which under the demands of war having grown to the extent of 
 making its division a business necessity. 
 
 The present schedule of pensions for disability incurred in the 
 naval service was established by an act of Congress approved July 
 16th, 1862. Other acts approved the same day directed the trans- 
 fer of the western gunboat fleet built by the War Department to the 
 Navy Department, and reorgnized the grades of line officers of the 
 navy; the last act referred to added the grades of commodore and 
 rear admiral to the line establishment and created within it the ad- 
 ditional grades of lieutenant- commander and ensign. A new pay 
 table was also established. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 u When sorrows come, they come not single spies, 
 But in battalions." 
 
 —Hamlet; Act IV. sc. 5. 
 
 1863— The Civil War Continued — Disasters at Galveston — Loss of the Columbia — 
 Raid of Rebel Rams off Charleston — Loss of the Isaac Smith — The Florida, 
 and Her Pursuit by the Sonoma — Investment of Washington, North Carolina 
 — Assembling oi Ironclads off Charleston — Remarkable Breakdown and Repairs 
 to the Machinery of the Weehawken— -Attack on Fort McAllister — First Attack 
 on Fort Sumter — Destruction of the Keokuk — The Atlanta- Weehawken Duel 
 — Protracted Investment of the Charleston Forts by the Monitors — Sinking of 
 the Weehawken. 
 
 NAVAL operations during the year 1863 were conducted on a 
 greater scale than before and were in the main successful, 
 the enemy's coasts being more rigorously invested and the lines of 
 the blockade made more and more impassable. A number of mis- 
 fortunes to vessels engaged in more or less important undertak- 
 ings which occurred with considerable regularity from month to 
 month served, however, in connection with the first unfortunate 
 demonstration of the ironclads at Charleston, to distract public 
 attention from the real service being done by the navy and to 
 give the general impression that the operations of that arm for 
 the year were largely unsuccessful. 
 
 The series of disasters to the navy began the first day of the 
 new year with an extremely humiliating affair at Galveston, Texas. 
 That place was in partial possession of the Union forces and was 
 occupied by 260 men of the 42d regiment, Massachusetts volun- 
 teer infantry, camped on a wharf, a blockade of the approaches to 
 the harbor being maintained to seaward by the steamers Westjield, 
 Clifton, Harriet Lane, Owaseo, and Sachem, and the schooner 
 Corypheus. About 3 a. m. the morning of January first a large 
 force of Confederates appeared in the town and made an attack 
 upon the soldiers on the wharf, the latter being supported by 
 the fire from some of the vessels lying nearest to them. At dawn 
 two large river steamers crowded with troops and w^ll protected by 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 363 
 
 barricades of cotton bales attacked the Harriet Lame, or rather 
 were attacked by her, she being under way at the time and moving 
 up into range of the fight going on ashore, and effected her capture 
 by boarding in overwhelming numbers. Her captain, Commander 
 J. M. Wainwright, and Lieutenant Commander Edward Lee, were 
 both killed, as were also three enlisted men, and fifteen people were 
 wounded, the survivors of the ship's company, amounting to about 
 one hundred, being made prisoners of war. The officers of the en- 
 gineer corps who fell into the hands of the enemy on this occasion 
 were M. H. Plunkett, second assistant engineer; C. H. Stone, sec- 
 ond assistant engineer; and John E. Cooper, K. JSL Ellis and 
 A. T. E. Mullen, third assistant engineers. 
 
 An interesting incident illustrative of considerate forethought 
 under trying conditions is related of Assistant Engineer Mullen on 
 this occasion. After Commander Wainwright had been killed and 
 the loss of the ship appeared inevitable, Mr. Mullen threw away his 
 own sword and put on that of the captain with the hope of preserving 
 it for Wainwright 's relatives; a most generous undertaking which is 
 said to have been successful, as it was a custom on both sides to re- 
 turn side-arms to captured officers after their surrender was com- 
 plete. 
 
 The gunboat Owasco went to the relief of the Harriet Lane 
 but was driven off by an incessant musketry fire to which she could 
 make scarcely any reply, the narrowness of the channel preventing 
 her from getting into a position to use her guns. She had fifteen 
 men killed and wounded. Her experience deterred the Clifton from 
 making the same attempt and that vessel's fire was accordingly 
 directed against the shore batteries. The Westfield, lying a consider- 
 able distance out, had ( got underway and gone hard and fast aground 
 early in the morning when the first movement of the enemy's steam- 
 ers had been observed. About 7:30 a. m. a Confederate officer 
 bearing a flag of truce boarded the Clifton and informed her com- 
 mander that the Massachusetts troops and the Harriet Lane had sur- 
 rendered and that the steamers, three more of which had appeared, 
 were about to move upon and overwhelm the Federal vessels in 
 detail. As an alternative he proposed the surrender of all the Federal 
 vessels but one, which would be allowed to leave the harbor with the 
 crews of all. 
 
364 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNItED STATES. 
 
 Lieutenant Commander Law of the OHfton did not favor this 
 proposal, but agreed to carry it to Commander Kenshaw of the West- 
 field, the senior officer present, it being promised that the flags of 
 truce should fly for three hours to give him time to go and return. 
 Commander Kenshaw of course refused to accept the terms and or- 
 dered Law back to his ship with instructions to get the vessels under 
 way and take them out of the harbor at all hazards, saying also 
 that as the Westfield could not be floated he would blow her up and 
 escape with her crew in the army transport Saxon lying near him. 
 Finding upon his return to the Clifton, that the enemy had made 
 many changes to their advantage in the position of their steamers 
 and batteries, Law felt under no obligation to observe the truce and 
 immediately got under way with all the vessels and went out of the 
 harbor under a heavy fire, abandoning the blockade for the time 
 being by going to New Orleans. Two barks laden with coal for the 
 steamers were left behind and fell into the enemy's possession with 
 the Harriet Lane. 
 
 Through some terrible blunder in firing the Westfield her maga- 
 zine blew up before the people were out of her with the result that 
 fourteen persons were killed and sixteen wounded, among the killed 
 being commander William B. Kenshaw; Lieutenant 0. W. Zimmer- 
 man, and Acting Second Assistant Engineer William K. Greene, the 
 senior engineer of the ship. Mr. Greene had acquired an, excellent 
 reputation for professional and personal worth and his untimely 
 taking off was a source of much regret in the corps. In July of the 
 previous year when the Westfield was employed in the operations 
 about Vicksburg, Commander Kenshaw had reported to the Depart- 
 ment in the following highly favorable terms regarding him: "The 
 engineer in charge, Mr. William K. Greene, with his assistants, 
 Messrs. George S. Baker and Charles Smith, have been untiring in 
 their exertions to keep the engine in repair, and have exercised so 
 much judgment and care that since leaving the United States there 
 has never been a day that the machinery has not been in perfect 
 working order." 
 
 The Confederates recovered the large main shaft of the West- 
 field from the wreck and manufactured from it a 60-pounder rifled 
 gun. This in due course of time found its way to the Annapolis 
 Naval Academy and has rested in the grass of the gun-park there 
 for many years as a trophy of war. 
 
THE HARRIET I.ANE. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 367 
 
 Immediately after the arrival of the Clifton at New Orleans 
 with the news of the disaster at Galveston, Admiral Farragut sent 
 Commodore Bell with the Brooklyn and six gunboats to re-estab- 
 lish the blockade off that port. The afternoon of January 11th a 
 strange sail was seen off Galveston and the iron steamer ffatteras. 
 Lieutenant Commander H. C. Blake, was sent in pursuit. After 
 running from the Uatteras until dark, the stranger ceased steaming 
 and allowed her pursuer to approach close alongside, replying to 
 the hail that she was " Her Britannic Majesty's shvpVixen." The 
 Hatieras lowered a boat to board her, when she suddenly fired a 
 broadside at point blank range, accompanying it with the announce- 
 ment that she was the Confederate steamer Alabama. The Uat- 
 teras returned the fire at once and for several minutes a sharp fight 
 ensued, in which the Federal vessel was speedily disabled. She 
 was a commercial steamer originally named St. Mary, purchased 
 in Philadelphia in 1861 for $110,000, and was wholly unfit for a 
 contest with a regularly built vessel of war. Her overhead walking 
 beam was shot away immediately and another shot struck and de- 
 stroyed the main engine cylinder, either of which blows was suffi- 
 cient to deprive the ship of her motive power and prevented her 
 commander from carrying out his intention of closing with the Ala- 
 bama and boarding her. Shells striking the Uatteras near the water 
 line tore off whole sheets of iron and caused her to fill as rapidly as 
 a perforated tin pan. In this fatal predicament she surrendered 
 and her crew was taken off by the victors, who had barely time to 
 save them before the Uatteras sank. The boat's crew that had 
 been called away to board the stranger escaped and carried the news 
 of the disaster to Galveston. 
 
 In this engagement the Uatteras had two men, both firemen, 
 killed and five wounded. The prisoners were taken to Kingston ? 
 Jamaica, all except the officers being kept in irons on the voyage of 
 nine days to that place. At Kingston they were put on the beach 
 in a most pitiable condition without money or adequate clothing, 
 having lost everything they owned in the Uatteras. In spite of 
 their unfortunate condition the treatment accorded them by the 
 British residents of Kingston was such as to cause the following 
 comment to appear in the report of Lieutenant Commander Blake: 
 landed on an unfriendly shore, m $> state of abject destittjtio&j 
 
368 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 that should have commanded the sympathy of avowed enemies, we 
 felt keenly the unkind criticisms of those who profess to have no 
 dislike for our government or its people." The engineers of the 
 
 Hatteras who shared in the resulting hardships were Acting First 
 Assistant A. M. Covert, and acting third assistants Jos. 0. Cree, 
 Jacob Oolp and Benjamin 0. Bourne. 
 
 On the evening of the 14th of January, the steamer Columbia i 
 a purchased vessel attached to the North Atlantic Blockading 
 Squadron, while on duty off Marlboro Inlet, North Carolina, got 
 ashore on an unknown bar. The gunboat Penobscot went to her aid 
 the following day and succeeded in taking off about thirty of her 
 crew by means of a surf-line, but night coming on and the sea in- 
 creasing compelled the abandonment of the effort at rescue. The 
 second day the enemy mounted some guns on the shore and opened 
 a heavy fire on the distressed vessel, then practically a wreck, 
 which forced her to surrender; the commander, Acting Lieutenant 
 J. P. Couthouy, with his remaining officers and men going on shore 
 and delivering themselves up as prisoners of war after having 
 spiked and thrown overboard the battery. The wreck was burned 
 by the captors. The officers all belonged to the volunteer service 
 and included George M. Bennett, first assistant engineer ; W. W. 
 Shipman and Samuel Lemon, second assistants, and J. H. Pelton 
 and W. H. Crawford, third assistants. They were confined first at 
 Salisbury, North Carolina, and later in Libby prison until May 5th, 
 when they were sent north for exchange. The surgeon, by some 
 curious mental operation on the part of the Confederates, was de- 
 clared a u non-combatant " and was released on parole, but it did 
 not occur to anyoue that the paymaster and eugineers were entitled 
 to like consideration. Perhaps in an actual state of war there was 
 no doubt about their military status. 
 
 Early in the morning of January 29th, the British steamer 
 Princess Royal, from Halifax by way of Bermuda, attempted to run 
 the blockade off Charleston and nearly succeeded, being headed off 
 at the last moment by the gunboat 'Unadilla, whose shots forced the 
 captain of the blockade runner to run his ship ashore. Acting 
 Master Van Sice and Third assistant Engineer E. EL Thurston with 
 two armed boat-crews took possession of the prize and labored all 
 day of the 29th in lightening her preparatory to hauling her off 5 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 369 
 
 which was accomplished about dark by the combined efforts of her 
 own engines and those of the light-draft vessels of the squadron. 
 When afloat, the prize was anchored close to the Housatonic, acting 
 as flagship in the absence of the Powhatcm and Canandaigua gone to 
 Port Royal for coal, and preparations were carried forward for send- 
 ing her north with a prize crew. The Princess Royal had a very 
 valuable cargo of rifled guns and marine engines for some Confed- 
 erate rams building at Charleston; a great quantity of shoes for the 
 army, small arms, armor plates, medicines, canned provisions, hos- 
 pital stores, etc. , all worth many times their money value to the 
 Confederacy. When adjudicated in the prize court at Philadel- 
 phia the sum of 1342,005.31 was declared available for distribution, 
 shares of which made some of the officers of the Unadilla almost 
 wealthy. The vessel had powerful engines with two cylinders 49 
 inches diameter and 39 inches stroke, geared to the screw shaft in 
 the ratio of five to two. She was converted into a gun vessel and 
 performed excellent duty on the blockade during the remainder of 
 the war. 
 
 While the people of the Unadilla and the fleet were exerting 
 themselves to get the Princess Royal afloat, the Confederates were 
 making equally strenuous efforts to prevent it, horses and men in 
 large numbers being engaged throughout the day in dragging siege 
 guns from Fort Moultrie through the sands of Sullivan's Island into 
 a position to fire upon the stranded steamer, but about the time their 
 battery opened fire she was floated and taken out of range. Baffled 
 in this attempt, they made on the morning of the 31st, the Princess 
 Royal still lying by the Housatonic, a most desperate effort to wrest 
 her from her captors. At 4 a, m. two rams — the Chicora and Pal- 
 metto State — came down from Charleston and about daylight assailed 
 the blockading squadron, superior to them in numbers in about the 
 proportion of four to one. Without any desire to detract from the 
 gallantry of this attack, it should be stated that with the exception 
 of the Housatonic and Unadilla the blockaders in the vicinity were 
 all purchased merchant vessels wholly unfit for fighting at close 
 quarters, their unsuitability being fully demonstrated by the e^ent. 
 
 The Federal vessels were lying at wide intervals* apart, a cir- 
 cumstance that further reduced the seeming disparity in force, and 
 owing to the morning mist that lay over the water did not discover 
 
S70 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the approach of the enemy until he was close aboard. The first ves- 
 sel attacked was the Mercedita, a purchased screw-steamer of about 
 800 tons that had cost $ 100,000 in 1861. She was struck a glanc- 
 ing blow on the starboard quarter by one of the rams and at the 
 same time was disabled by a heavy rifle shell which passed diagonally 
 through her, penetrating the steam drum of the port boiler in Its 
 passage and filling the ship with hot steam. The ram lay so low in 
 the water that the guns of the Mercedita could not be depressed to 
 bear upon her and the latter vessel, being thus both helpless and de- 
 fenseless, accepted the summons to surrender, the executive officer 
 going on board the ram and pledging his word of honor for the pa- 
 role of the crew. Nothing was said regarding the vessel and as she 
 was not taken possession of by the enemy she was retained in the 
 squadron after the fight was over. Her gunner, who was in his room 
 
 at the time, was killed by the shell, and she had three men killed 
 and three wounded by scalding; with the exception of one ordinary 
 
 seaman slightly scalded at the engine-room hatch these unfortunate 
 men all belonged to the watch on duty in the engine-room. 
 
 Leaving the Mercedita to her fate, to sink or not, the ram next 
 joined her consort in an attack upon the Keystone State, a large side- 
 wheel merchant steamer of nearly 1,400 tons that had cost $125,000 
 in 1861, and did her great damage with shells, one of which set her 
 on fire in the fore-hold and another exploded the steam chimneys 
 or drums of both boilers. About one-fourth of her crew was in- 
 stantly prostrated by the escaping steam, among them Assistant 
 Surgeon Gotwold who was scalded to death while in the act of render- 
 ing aid to the wounded; several men had been killed or wounded by 
 the shells and of the latter a number met death from the steam. 
 The total number of casualties was forty, of which twenty- six were 
 due to scalding. In this critical condition of the Keystone State her 
 captain, Commander (afterward Rear Admiral) William E. LeRoy, 
 ordered her flag hauled down in response to a summons to surrender, 
 resistance or flight being apparently impossible. The chief engineer, 
 Acting First Assistant Archibald K. Eddowes, did not stop the 
 engines at this juncture but hastened on deck and informed Com- 
 mander LeKoy that th^y would run for fifteen or twenty minutes on 
 their vacuum and that that time should suffice to get out of the 
 enemy's reach or obtain assistance from other vessels already be- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 371 
 
 ginning to engage the rams. Upon this representation (he captain 
 ordered the colors hoisted and the ship moved away from her assail- 
 ants, being soon taken in tow by the Memphis and in that manner 
 was saved to the United States government through the fidelity and 
 knowledge of her chief engineer. 
 
 Mr. Eddowes was subsequently promoted to be an acting chief 
 engineer and had the honor of serving for a time as chief engineer of 
 the big frigate Minnesota. Being in the volunteer service, he was 
 honorably discharged at the close of the war and disappeared from 
 naval cognizance for many years. In the summer of 1894 the hard 
 times compelled him to write to the Navy Department asking to be 
 admitted to the Naval Home in Philadelphia, his letter stating that 
 he was old, broken, in health, out of employment, and homeless. 
 Although not eligible for admission to the institution mentioned 
 under a strict interpretation of the law, it is a gratifying fact that his 
 case was considered in a liberal manner and his prayer was granted. 
 Although now cared for in that manner, there remains in the story 
 an undercurrent painfully suggestive of the concluding lines of Mr. 
 Kipling's reproachful verses concerning the survivors of the charge 
 of the Light Brigade: 
 
 ' * O thirty million English that babble of England's might, 
 Behold, there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night; 
 Our children's children are lisping 4 to honor the charge they made,' 
 And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade." 
 
 Besides the two vessels so badly used by the rams, the QualcT 
 City was considerably damaged by a shell exploding in her engine- 
 room, which fortunately did not kill anyone, and the Augusta also 
 received a shell through her side without loss of life. While the 
 fight was in progress Mr. Thurston on the Princess Royal by almost 
 superhuman exertions got up steam from cold water and the vessel 
 was taken out seaward for safety. About 7.30 a. m. the Housatonic 
 and other vessels having reached the scene and attacked the rams, 
 they gave up the fight and retreated up the channel to the vicinity 
 of Fort Moultrie; late in the afternoon they got under way and re- 
 turned to Charleston. 
 
 It was this incident which led to the famous dispute in which 
 it was asserted by General Beauregard and Commodore Ingraham, 
 
372 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 on the one side, that the blockade had been broken, and that, under 
 the accepted interpretation of international law, it could not be re- 
 established until after three months' notice, that time at least being 
 thus permitted to free trade, by foreign nations, with the Southern 
 Confederacy; while, on the other hand, it was unanimously certi- 
 fied, by the officers of the National fleet, that, on the contrary, the 
 blockade had not been broken, the fleet had not been driven off, 
 and that it had only been the more closely drawn in around the 
 harbor of Charleston by the action with the iron-clads. This, which 
 was the finally accepted version of the affair, was certainly correct, 
 as those of us who were in the action well know. The whole affair 
 was over before breakfast, and at 9:30 a. m., our prize was on her 
 way to report to Admiral DuFont, at Port Royal, convoyed by the 
 injured vessels, which were sent there for repair." 1 
 
 On January 30th the purchased screw steamer Isaac Smith was 
 sent up the Stono River, South Carolina, to make a reconnois- 
 sance. When near Legareville she was suddenly attacked by three 
 batteries of heavy guns concealed on the banks, and was soon com- 
 pelled to surrender, having been entirely disabled by getting a shot 
 through her steam drum. Before surrendering she had nine people 
 killed and sixteen wounded, the only officer killed being Acting 
 Second Assistant Engineer James S. Turner, who was struck in the 
 breast and thigh by pieces of shell. Acting Third Assistant En- 
 gineer Erastus Barry was wounded, as was also Acting Lieuten- 
 ant Conover, who was in command, and the paymaster, Mr. 
 F. C. Hills, the latter being in command of the powder divi- 
 sion. The survivors, including First Assistant Engineer Jacob 
 Tucker and Third Assistant William Ross, became prisoners of 
 war. 
 
 On the 15th of January the commerce-destroyer Florida ran 
 out from Mobile through the blockading fleet and entered upon a 
 devastating career in the waters of the West Indies, adding to the 
 terror already inspired by the known presence of the Alabama in 
 those waters. In September of the preceding year the Florida had 
 run into the port of Mobile past the blockade under circumstances 
 that made the exploit one of the most daring of any performed 
 
 *Dr. R. H. Thurston, in Cornell Magazine, March, 1890. 
 
THE STEAM NAY Y OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 afloat during the war. Built in Liverpool as a copy of a class of 
 gun-vessels in the British navy designed for swift despatch boats, 
 this vessel had proceded out to the West Indies late in the spring 
 of 1862 and had spent the summer of that year with a small and 
 disheartened crew wandering about from place to place trying to 
 procure men and equipments sufficient to allow her to enter upon 
 her intended mission of destruction against American commerce. 
 Eventually her commander, Maffitt, with only about twenty men on 
 board fit for duty on account of the ravages of yellow fever, was 
 driven to the extremity of seeking a port in the Confederacy where 
 he could procure a crew and also acquire nationality for his vessel. 
 
 The Florida being exactly like some of the British gun-boats 
 cruising about the Gulf coast, Maffitt resolved to put on a bold 
 front and take the chances of a deliberate rush into the line of block- 
 aders in broad daylight, which desperate resolve was carried out the 
 afternoon of September 4th. The blockading squadron off Mobile 
 consisted of the Susquehanna, Oneida and about half a dozen gun- 
 boats, but it happened by mere chance that on the day of the 
 Florida's appearance all the steamers but the Oneida and Winona 
 were away from the immediate vicinity, having gone for coal or on 
 other errands in the neighborhood. The approach of the Florida 
 was not regarded with much suspicion, as her appearance and the 
 white English ensign she displayed made it reasonably certain that 
 she was a British gun-vessel that would stop and communicate ac- 
 cording to custom before proceeding through the lines. As she came 
 on with no slacking of speed, however, the Oneida already cleared 
 for action as required by regulation under the circumstances fired 
 three shots across her bow in rapid succession, and as these produced 
 no sign of her stopping a broadside was fired into her, followed by 
 a general cannonading from the Oneida and from the Winona and 
 gun-schooner Rachel Seamen some distance away. But the ruse 
 was successful ; the Florida had advanced so far and was running 
 at such speed that she passed on and was soon under the protection 
 of the guns of Fort Morgan, having received a u frightful mauling," 
 to use Maffitt 's own words, and lost twelve men in killed and 
 wounded. When thoroughly repaired, manned and equipped, she 
 came out in January, 1868 ; ran the blockade successfully, and 
 began her career as before mentioned. 
 
374 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 A flying squadron commanded by Captain Wilkes of San 
 Jacinto fame was kept busy scouring the West Indies in search of 
 the commerce-destroyers. On the first day of February the double- 
 ender Sonoma of this squadron, while near the southern end of that 
 body of water lying between Andros Island and Nassau known to 
 sailors as the Tongue of the Ocean, discovered a strange sail about 
 six miles to the northward and gave chase, the stranger being identified 
 when examined with the marine glasses as the much-sought-for 
 Florida. The pursuit was kept up with varying prospects of success 
 for thirty-four hours, during which time no one on the Sonoma slept 
 nor ate a regular meal ; after traversing the length of the Tongue of 
 the Ocean and the Providence Channel the pursued vessel stood out 
 on a northeast course into the open sea, where her superior sea 
 qualities enabled her to draw away from the Sonoma and escape. 
 The episode is not especially important except for an engineering 
 question involved, which is the reason for its introduction. 
 
 The chief engineer of the Sonoma was Acting First Assistant 
 Engineer Henry E. Ehoades who demonstrated his capability and 
 zeal as an. engineer by remaining on duty continuously during the 
 chase and urging the boilers to their utmost capacity under forced 
 draft, even going to the extent of burning hams and bacon to add 
 to the fierceness of the fires. That he was able to keep a vessel like 
 the Sonoma for more than thirty hours close astern of the FloHda, 
 built with special reference to speed, is sufficient proof of his ability as 
 an engineer, although in doing it he well knew that he was inflicting 
 fatal injury upon his own machinery. The commanding officer of 
 the Sonoma, Commander T. H. Stevens, published in the Cosmopo- 
 litan Magazine for December, 1890, a very interesting account of 
 this chase, from which narrative the following extracts are made: 
 " Orders were at once given to the engineer to make all possible 
 steam, the sails were cast loose, and the Sonoma sprung ahead in 
 pursuit." . . . "Kenewed orders were given to the engineer to 
 crowd all steam and use every possible effort to increase the steam 
 by the use of blowers or through any other means." ... " Two 
 or three times the engineer reported that the extreme pressure upon 
 the boilers if kept up would cause an explosion, to which reply was 
 finally made, 6 Tour duty is to obey orders, mine to capture or de- 
 stroy the Florida at any risk. ' 5 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 375 
 
 This latter sentiment is an eminently proper one from a mili- 
 tary standpoint, for more than one commander or final judge of ex- 
 pedients in a camp or on board an armed vessel can only result in 
 confusion and failure through crossing of authority, but the principle 
 should in all cases be double-acting to the extent of holding the 
 determining authority alone responsible for the results of his judg- 
 ment, both in success and failure. The last reference to the Sonoma 
 in the magazine article from which quotations have been made 
 says : 66 Shortly afterward, upon receiving orders to take the Sonoma 
 to New York, we proceeded thither and immediately after our arrival 
 there the vessel was put out of commission. The long chase of the 
 Florida made extensive repairs essential." The vessel arrived at 
 New York about the middle of June and a survey showed that her 
 cylinder had been damaged by overwork and that her boiler tubes 
 were so nearly burned out that they would have to be entirely 
 renewed. The story is concluded by the following letter sent to Mr. 
 Bhoades under date of July 25th : " Sir : A report of the examina- 
 tion of the machinery of the gunboat Sonowa shows that it has been 
 seriously injured in consequence of your neglect of duty. You are 
 therefore dismissed the service, and will, from this date, cease to be 
 regarded as an Acting First Assistant Engineer in the navy. 
 
 Very respectfully, 
 Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy. " 
 
 The town of Washington some distance up the Pamlico River 
 from Pamlico Sound had been taken and occupied by the Federal 
 naval force in the North Carolina Sounds since early in 1862. Dur- 
 ing the first two weeks of April, 1863, the enemy cut off water com- 
 munication by occupying some works below the town and made a 
 determined though unsuccessful attempt to recapture it, the two or 
 three naval vessels thus cut off being forced to severe and prolonged 
 exertions to retain possession of the place and preserve themselves. 
 The following extracts from official reports regarding the investment 
 refer to valuable services performed by members of the engineer 
 corps. 
 
 From the report of Acting Rear Admiral S. P. Lee : 
 
 "The Louisiana, Commodore Hull, and an armed transport 
 
376 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 called the Eagle, under charge of Second Assistant Engineer Lay and 
 Paymaster W. W. Williams, of the Louisiana, as volunteers, were 
 almost constantly engaged with the enemy's batteries opposite Wash- 
 ington." 
 
 " . . . Acting Second Assistant Engineer EL Rafferty, Acting 
 Third Assistant Engineer John E. Harper, . . . are recommended 
 to especial notice for their good conduct and bravery in battle." 
 
 From the report of Commander R. T. Renshaw of the Louisiana: 
 
 " Second Assistant Engineer John L. Lay and Assistant Fay- 
 master W. W. Williams volunteering to take charge of the guns on 
 board transport Eagle, I directed them to do so; they have done good 
 service, and acted to my entire satisfaction." 
 
 " Acting Third Assistant Engineer Thomas Mallahan, of the 
 Ceres, while attempting to land in one of her boats, was killed by a 
 musket ball." 
 
 From the report of Acting Lieutenant Graves of the Ijoclewood: 
 
 " Late in the afternoon my boiler commenced leaking to such 
 an extent as to put out the fires. I ordered the engineers to blow 
 out the water and repair it temporarily with all possible despatch, 
 and my thanks are due to Acting Second Assistant Engineer J. T. 
 Newton and and Acting Third -Assistant John I. Miller for the 
 energy and promptness they displayed in complying with my orders. 
 At 9 p. m. had steam again." 
 
 As early as May, 1862, the Navy Department had informed 
 Flag Officer DuPont confidentially of its intention to attempt the 
 capture of Charleston, and in January, 1863, orders were sent to 
 him to carry the plan into execution, the iron-clacis as fast as com- 
 pleted being ordered to report to him for the undertaking. One of 
 the first to arrive, the Montauk, Captain John L. Worden, distin- 
 guished herself the 28th of February by going under the guns 
 of Fort McAllister in the Ogeechee River and destroying with her 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 377 
 
 shells the Confederate steamer Nashville which had been discovered 
 
 aground about 1,200 yards up the river, the Montauh receiving a 
 
 severe fire from the fort without material damage while shelling the 
 
 Nashville. On the third of March, DuPont, to test the mechanical 
 
 appliances of the monitors and give the men practice in firing the 
 
 guns, sent the Passaic, Patapsco and iVa7icm£ to attack Fort McAllister. 
 
 The monitors stood the test well and received no serious damage 
 
 beyond dents in the turrets and side armor, while the few defects in 
 
 turret turning mechanism, gun mounts and machinery that existed 
 
 were discovered and remedied. The Weehawken while on her way 
 
 to join the fleet broke down February 7th off Port Royal and was 
 
 completely disabled. The trunk of one of her engines broke short 
 off at the piston, canting the latter to the extent of cracking the 
 
 cylinder beyond repair. It happened that the cylinders of the 
 
 Comanche were completed in Jersey City and were made from the 
 
 same patterns and in the same shop where the Weehawken was built ? 
 
 so by use of the telegraph and the chartering of a vessel the cylinders 
 
 of the latter with all their attachments were hastened to Port Royal 
 
 and installed in the disabled vessel in a remarkably short space of 
 
 time. 
 
 On the 7 th of April DuPont made an unsuccessful attack upon 
 Fort Sumter with the New Ironsides, Montauh, Weehawken, Cats- 
 hill* Passaic ^ Nahant* Pata/psco, Nantucket and Keohuh. The iron- 
 clads were in action less than two hours and were then withdrawn 
 
 by signal from the flagship. A quartermaster was killed in the pilot 
 house of the Nahant by a flying piece of bolt from the armor and 
 Commander Downes and five others were injured in the same manner 
 on that vessel. The Keohuh with her curious striped armor fared 
 badly, being struck ninety times in thirty minutes and pierced through 
 at and about the water-line nineteen times, while her turret was 
 penetrated and the ship generally riddled. Fifteen of her crew were 
 wounded, some of them seriously. She was kept afloat during the 
 ensuing night, but when the water became rough in the morning she 
 sank, her people being taken off just in time to save their lives. 
 Rear Admiral DuPont made a discouraging report to the Navy 
 Department respecting the monitors, and Chief Engineer Stimers, 
 who had been sent down from New York with a company of 
 machinists and ship-smiths to repair injuries to the iron -clad s, 
 
578 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OE THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 reported very favorably regarding them, the two reports being the 
 beginning of a famous controversy that will be dealt with in a 
 separate chaptei. 
 
 The iron-clads did not again engage the Charleston forts while 
 under DuPont's command, but in June an event took place that did 
 much to redeem the reputation of the monitors. In November, 
 186.1, an English iron steamer named Fingal ran the blockade into 
 Savannah and after discharging her cargo was sold to the Confederate 
 government and converted into an armored vessel of war by altera- 
 tions practically the same as those adopted in the case of the 
 Merrimae, with the addition of a heavy armor belt of timber about 
 
 the water-line and a torpedo spar fitted on the bow. She was armed 
 with two 6-^ inch and two 7 inch Brooke rifles, the latter pivoted 
 
 for bow and stern as well as broadside fire, and had a crew of one 
 hundred and forty-five officers and men. These preparations con- 
 sumed much time and it was not until 1863 that she was ready for 
 service, the blockaders in the meanwhile having maintained a vigilant 
 watch over all channels whereby she might get to sea. In June it 
 became definitely known that the Atlanta, as the Fingal had been 
 re-named, had crossed over into Wassaw Sound south of Savannah 
 and might be expected to make a raid on the blockaders thereabouts. 
 The double-en der Oimmerone being the only vessel just then off 
 Wassaw Sound, Admiral DuPont immediately despatched thither the 
 monitors Weehawken and Nahant, the senior officer being sturdy 
 John Rodgers in the Weehawken. 
 
 Early in the morning of June 17th, the anniversary of Bunker 
 Hill, the Atlanta came down to give battle to the monitors, being 
 
 accompanied by two steamers said to have been filled with excursion- 
 ists expecting to witness an easy victory. Owing to the narrowness of 
 the channel the Nahant, having no pilot, had to follow the Weehawken 
 and was unable to fire a gun in the action which ensued. At 4.55 a. 
 m. the Atlanta opened fire without effect, which was not returned 
 until twenty minutes later when liodgers with deliberate precision 
 began using the Weehawken's guns, one of which was a Xl-inch like 
 those of the original Monitor, and the other a XV-inch. In fifteen 
 minutes the Atlanta, then aground and badly damaged, hauled down 
 her colors and surrendered. Four of the five shots fired from the 
 Weehawken had struck her, one of the XV-inch, the first fired, having 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 379 
 
 broken through the armor and wood backing, strewed the gun-deck 
 with splinters and prostrated forty men by the concussion, one of 
 whom died : the other XV-inch shot knocked off the top of the 
 pilot- house and disabled both pilots and the man at the wheel, which 
 accounts for the vessel going aground. One of the Xl-inch shots 
 did no damage beyond breaking a plate or two at the knuckle, but 
 the other one carried away a port-shutter and scattered its fragments 
 about the gun-deck. Lieutenant Commander D. B. Harmony of the 
 Nahant was put in charge with a prize crew, Acting First Assistant 
 Engineer J. G. Young of the Weehawken taking charge of the en- 
 gines. The prize was found fully equipped w T ith ammunition and 
 stores for a cruise and was appraised as follows by a board of naval 
 officers: 
 
 Hull $250,000.00 
 
 Machinery. .. .-. 80,000.00 
 
 Ordnance, ordnance stores &c 14,022.91 
 
 Medical stores 20.00 
 
 Provisions, clothing and small stores 1,012. b5 
 
 Equipments and stores in the master's, boatswain's, sailmaker's, and car- 
 penter's departments 5, 773. 50 
 
 Total valuation $350,829.26 
 
 The above amount, less $789.30 costs of trial, was subsequently 
 declared by the prize court as available for distribution. 
 
 Three hours after the surrender the engine of the Atlanta was 
 reversed by engineer Young and the vessel backed off into deep 
 water, proceeding later under her own steam without convoy to Port 
 Koyal where she was repaired and enrolled in the naval service of 
 the United States. Captain Eodgers' report of the engagement con- 
 tains the following: " The engine, under the direction of First 
 Assistant Engineer James G. Young, always in beautiful order, was 
 well worked. Mr. Young has, I hope, by his participation in this 
 action, won the promotion for which, on account of his skill and 
 valuable services, I have already recommended him." On the 5th 
 of July Mr. Young received his promotion to the grade of acting 
 chief engineer. 
 
 The outline sketches of the Atlanta here following are repro- 
 duced from drawings made at the time of her capture by Second 
 
380 
 
 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Assistant Engineer P. E. Voorhees of the Wabash, and were for- 
 warded as part of the official report of the capture. In a general 
 way they serve to illustrate the type of armored vessels which lack of 
 iron building material forced the constructors and engineers of the 
 
 ■•south to resort to. 
 
 Confederate Iron-Clad Atlanta, captured by the Weehawlten. 
 Enlarged section on A-B showing framing, wooden armor, etc. 
 
 Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren relieved Eear Admiral Du- 
 Pont on the 6th of July and immediately began a determined and 
 prolonged struggle, in conjunction with the army, for the possession 
 of Charleston Harbor, partial success being achieved by the capture 
 o£ Morris Island and its formidable fort, Wagner, on the 6th of 
 September. Fort Sumter was steadily assailed for months and by 
 the end of the year was little more than a heap of ruins, though the 
 enemy retained possession of it. A noteworthy casualty of the siege 
 
THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 381 
 
 occurred on the Catsldll while engaged with Fort Wagner on the 
 17th of August. A shot from the fort struck the top of the pilot- 
 house and shattered the inner lining of it, pieces of which killed 
 Commander George W. Rodgers and Assistant Paymaster J. G. 
 Woodbury, and wounded a pilot and a master's mate, all of whom 
 were in the pilot-house. It is claimed by the friends of the monitor 
 type of ships that these two unfortunate officers and the quarter- 
 master killed on the Nahant were the only persons who were killed 
 on the monitors by cannon fire during the whole course of the war. 
 The constant employment of the monitors during these months of 
 siege entailed much hard work and suffering upon the engine-room 
 force, the reports of commanding officers containing frequent 
 reference to a prostration of engineers and firemen from the 
 intense heat of their stations. 
 
 Immediately after the evacuation of Morris Island by the enemy 
 an unsuccessful attempt was made to take Sumter by assault, a land- 
 ing party of about four hundred men from the fleet being sent on 
 shore the night of September 8th for that purpose. While landing 
 from the boats a number of casualties occured from the enemy's fire 
 and the party was driven off after a sharp fight with the loss of about 
 one hundred and twenty officers and men made prisoners, Third 
 Assistant Engineer J. H. Harmony of the Housatonic being one of 
 the latter. The night of October 5th a most daring attempt to blow up 
 the New Ironsides was made by Lieutenant Glassell, Assistant 
 Engineer Toombs, and a pilot, who went out to her in a small and 
 almost submerged cigar-shaped craft and exploded a torpedo close 
 alongside the big iron-clad. The explosion started some beams and 
 knees in the side of the iron-clad but did no serious injury. A mass 
 of water fell upon the deck and also extinguished the fires of her 
 assailant. Lieutenant Glassell took to the water and was captured; 
 the engineer and pilot stuck to their disabled boat and afterward got 
 up steam and returned to Charleston the same night. For this Mr. 
 Toombs was made a chief engineer. 
 
 In the operations of this protracted seige the resisting and 
 aggressive qualities of the monitors were well tested and demon- 
 strated. An idea of the hard knocks they gave and took during the 
 summer may be gained from the following tabular statement of their 
 services, as reported to the department by Admiral Dahlgren: 
 
S82 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 HITS AT 
 FT. MCALLISTER. 
 
 46 
 "9 
 "l 
 
 56 
 
 The limited operations of the Lehigh were due to the fact that 
 she did not arrive at Charleston until August 30, and consequently 
 was engaged only about a week of the period dealt with. 
 
 About the middle of the afternoon of Sunday, December 6, the 
 Weehatvken sank at her anchorage off Morris Island. The cause of 
 this disaster as determined by a court of inquiry appears to have 
 been altering her trim by stowing an unusual quantity of shot and 
 shell in the bow compartments and leaving the forward hatch open 
 when water was breaking on board. Ordinarily all water ran aft 
 and was thrown out by the pumps in the engine-room, but with the 
 changed trim this did not occur until a large quantity of water had 
 accumulated forward, bringing her more and more down by the 
 head, and rapidly increasing through new leaks started by the 
 unusually heavy load forward. This condition was not discovered 
 until ten or fifteen minutes before she sank, and the desperate 
 attempts then made to relieve her were unavailing; her limit of 
 buoyancy, which was only 125 tons, was reached before the pumps 
 began gaining on the water, and she went down. Four officers and 
 twenty- six men perished in her, the entire watch on duty in the 
 engine and fire-rooms being lost. The four officers drowned were 
 all third assistant engineers — Messrs. Henry W. Merian; Augustus 
 Mitchell ; v George W. McGowan, and Charles Spangberg. Two of 
 these were on duty and the other two heroically went to the engine- 
 room fo try to render assistance instead of saving themselves, as 
 
 
 NUMBER SHOTS 
 
 
 
 FIRED 
 
 
 
 JULY 10 
 
 -SEPT 7, 
 
 HITS. 
 
 
 1863. 
 
 
 xv in. 
 
 xi in. 
 
 
 Catskill 
 
 138 
 
 425 
 
 86 
 
 
 301 
 
 478 
 
 154 
 
 
 41 
 
 28 
 
 36 
 
 I 119 
 
 107 
 
 90 
 
 
 ! 170 
 
 276 
 
 69 
 
 
 ! 178 
 
 :^30 
 
 96 
 
 
 ' 264 
 
 633 
 
 134 
 
 
 44 
 
 155 
 
 53 
 
 
 
 
 4,439 
 
 164 
 
 
 1,255 
 
 6,771 
 
 882 
 
 HITS, APRIL 7; 
 FIRST ATTACK 
 ON 
 SUMTER, 
 
 20 
 14 
 
 35 
 36 
 47 
 53 
 51 
 
 256 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 38'> 
 
 they might have done. The engineer in eharge, Mr. J. B. A, 
 Allen, acting second assistant, whose duties obliged him to go on 
 deck at intervals to report to the executive officer, was saved. 
 
CHAPTER XXIL 
 
 " For Southern prisons will sometimes yawn, 
 And yield their dead unto life again; 
 And the day that comes with a cloudy dawn 
 In golden glory at last may wane." 
 
 Kate Putnam Osgood. 
 
 1863 — The Civil War, Continued — The War on the Western Waters — Passage 
 of Port Hudson — Destruction of the Frigate Mississippi — Minor Opera- 
 tions in the West — New Vessels Placed Under Construction— The Light- 
 Draft Monitors — Iron Double-Enders — Large Wooden Frigates and Sloops- 
 of- War— The First Swift Cruisers — The Kalamazoo Class of Monitors — 
 Assimilated Rank of Staff Officers Raised — New Regulations Governing 
 Promotion in the Engineer Corps Issued. 
 
 r | ^HE naval force in 1863 on the western rivers was engaged in a 
 
 1 ceaseless and baffling warfare under conditions that were very 
 difficult and often disheartning. Great annoyance was experienced 
 from the development by the Confederates of the torpedo, and another 
 danger, equally unassailable, existed in the guerrillas or " bush- 
 whackers 5 5 who infested the swamps and forests along the river 
 banks in such unseen numbers that no man's life was safe on a pass- 
 ing steamer. David D. Porter, still a commander, but holding an 
 acting appointment as rear admiral, was now in general command of 
 the Mississippi fleet, which had been increased by a number of regu- 
 larly built war vessels in addition to the mortar boats and make-shifts 
 previously spoken of. On the 4th of July Porter was commissioned 
 a rear admiral in recognition of his services before Yicksburg, which 
 place succumbed to the combined army and naval forces on that 
 date. Besides Porter's fleet, vessels of Farragut's West Gulf block- 
 ading squadron also operated in the river, the most noteworthy battle 
 of the year in this region being fought by a division of that 
 squadron. 
 
 The night of March 14-15 Farragut attempted to run past the 
 formidable batteries at Port Hudson, Louisiana, his object in wish- 
 ing to get above them being to cut off the enemy's supplies from 
 the Eed River region and also to recover if possible the iron-clad 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 385 
 
 casemated gunboat Indianola, which had been captured by four 
 Confederate steamers on February 24th. Farragut's fleet consisted 
 of his flagship Hartford, three large ships and three gunboats. To 
 provide for keeping the large vessels going ahead in case of injury 
 to their machinery they were each ordered to lash a gunboat along- 
 side on their port sides, that being away from Port Hudson which 
 is located on the east side of the river. The Mississippi had no 
 consort; not from any sentiment that the old sea-veteran could 
 fight her battles better alone, but because there was no gunboat for 
 her and her overhanging paddle-boxes would have made the arrange- 
 ment difficult if not impossible had there been another gunboat 
 available. The iron-clad Essex and some mortar boats of Porter's 
 fleet were also present and did good service bombarding the forts, 
 as they had done before at the forts below New Orleans. 
 
 Shortly before midnight the squadron moved up the river and 
 received a terrible fire from the batteries on shore, the ships being 
 brought into bold relief by the light of burning buildings and bon- 
 fires on the banks. Farragut in the Hartford, with the Albatross 
 lashed alongside, succeeded in running the batteries and gained a 
 position in the river above, but all the other vessels failed in the 
 attempt. The Monongaliela grounded on a spit in front of the 
 principal battery and for half an hour was a stationary target for a 
 most severe fire which killed six and wounded twenty-one of her 
 crew, Captain MeKinstry being among the wounded. Her escape 
 from this almost fatal predicament was due largely to the exertions 
 and courage of her chief engineer, Mr. George F. Kutz, and his 
 assistants, the senior one of whom was Mr. Joseph Trilley, now a 
 chief engineer in the navy. To work the engines to their utmost 
 in the endeavor to back off, these officers took the desperate risk of 
 doubling the steam pressure in the boilers and with the added 
 power thus obtained and the assistance of the consort Kineo the 
 ship was finally floated. This extraordinary power worked through 
 the engines resulted in heating the forward crank pin, the brasses 
 of which were slacked off during a momentary stop, and the engines 
 thereafter kept running at full speed by playing a stream of water 
 from the fire hose on the hot pin until the ship was off the bottom. 
 By that time the pin was so burned and cut that the engines were 
 disabled and the Monongahela and Kineo had to drop down the 
 
386 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 river out of action. While the engineers were struggling with the 
 crank-pin adjustment an 80 -pounder rifle shot came into the engine- 
 room and broke into pieces by striking the end of the reversing shaft. 
 The reports made by the commanding and executive officers 
 
 ascribed the failure of the Monongahela to get past the batteries to 
 the failure of the engines, but Chief Engineer Kutz was able to 
 
 prove to the satisfaction of Admiral Farragut that the casualty to 
 
 the engines occurred while unusual exertions were being made to 
 
 back off the spit, and not after the vessel was again afloat, as had 
 
 been charged. 
 
 The Mississippi following astern of the Monongahela also went 
 aground and for thirty-five minutes made heroic endeavors to get 
 off and escape from the galling cross fire of three batteries concen- 
 trated upon her. The chief engineer, Mr. Wm. H. Ruiherford, 
 increased the steam pressure from thirteen to twenty-five pounds 
 and backed the engines with all their power without avail. The 
 fire of the enemy finally became so accurate and deadly that Cap- 
 tain Melancthon Smith deemed it "most judicious and humane," 
 as he expressed it in his report, to abandon the vessel., and then 
 followed a task that must have been most repugnant to those who 
 loved the old ship and respected her historical associations. Her 
 battery was spiked; the small arms thrown overboard; the engineers 
 and their men broke and destroyed the vital parts of the machinery; 
 fires were kindled in several places between decks, and after the 
 sick and wounded were brought up the ship was left to her fate. 
 Sixty-four of her crew were reported killed and missing and two 
 hundred and thirty-three as saved, a number of the latter being 
 wounded from the enemy's fire, among them Mr. J. E. Fallon, 
 third assistant engineer. In this disaster and its sequence Third 
 Assistant Engineer Jefferson Brown was the subject of one of those 
 incidents of resurrection from supposed death which occurred a 
 number of times during the Civil War and turned mourning into 
 rejoicing for a number of families both North and South. Mr. 
 Brown was reported drowned when the Mississippi was lost, and in 
 collecting material for this book the writer found his name still in- 
 scribed in the list of the dead in the casualty-book of the rebellion 
 kept by the bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Navy Department. 
 Some months after the disaster, when an exchange of prisoners was 
 
THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 387 
 
 effected, Mr. Brown appeared among the captives given up, and has 
 lived to be at present a chief engineer on the retired list of the 
 navy. 
 
 The following spirited description of the final scene in the 
 career of the Mississippi is taken from a paper read before the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal 
 Legion by Chief Engineer Harrie Webster, U. S. Navy, who as an 
 assistant engineer on board the Genesee witnessed the tragedy. 
 
 "As the smoke slowly drifted to leeward we caught sight of the 
 old frigate Mississippi, hard and fast aground, apparently aban- 
 doned, and on fire. 
 
 ' ' When we first discovered her the fire was already crawling up 
 the rigging. 
 
 "From every hatch the flames were surging heavenward, and 
 it seemed but a question of minutes when the good old ship must 
 blow up. 
 
 "Every mast, spar, and rope was outlined against the dark 
 background of forest and sky, and it was a sad, and at the same 
 time, a beautiful spectacle. 
 
 "While all hands were speculating on the causes of the 
 disaster the staunch old craft, which had braved the gales of every 
 clime, slowly floated free from the bank, and, turned by an eddy in 
 the current, swept out into the river and headed for the fleet as 
 though under helmsman's control. 
 
 4 'As the burning ship neared the ships at anchor in her path, 
 her guns, heated by the flames, opened fire, one after another in 
 orderly sequence, and as their breechings had been burned away 
 the recoil carried them amidships, where, crashing through the 
 weakened deck, they fell into the fiery depths, showers of sparks 
 and fresh flames following the plunge. 
 
 "Fortunately for us, her guns had been trained on the bluffs, 
 so her shots flew wide of the fleet and sped crashing into the forest 
 below the batteries of Port Hudson. 
 
 "Majestically, as though inspired with victory, the ship, which 
 by this time was a mass of fire from stem to stern, from truck to 
 water-line, floated past the fleet, down past Profit's Island, down 
 into the darkness of the night. 
 
388 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 "Suddenly, as if by magic, her masts shot into the air all 
 ablaze, a tremendous tongue of flame pierced the sky for an instant, 
 and amid the muffled thunder of her exploded magazine the 
 Mississippi disappeared in the stream whose name she had borne so 
 bravely and so long." 
 
 The Richmond, with the Genesee alongside, was the second in 
 line following the flagship, and was disabled at the turning point in 
 the river opposite the batteries by a shot carrying away both her 
 safety valves and letting off the steam, which obliged her to drop 
 down stream, the Genesee being unable to carry her up against the 
 strong current. She had three men killed and twelve wounded, the 
 majority of the casualties occurring among the marines, a gun's 
 crew of whom were nearly all swept away by a single shot. Com- 
 mander James Alden of the Richmond in his report of the battle 
 said, "To Mr. Moore, our chief engineer, great credit is due for his 
 management throughout the fight, and particularly after the accident 
 to the safety-valve chest." The Genesee was considerably damaged 
 by shot and had three wounded; her commander reported, U I 
 
 also bring to special notice the effleient manner in which Mr. John 
 Cahill, senior engineer, and the assistant engineers, Charles H. 
 Harreb, Michael McLaughlin, Christopher Milton and Harrie 
 Webster, with the firemen and coal heavers attached to this depart- 
 ment, worked the engine and supplied the furnaces during the 
 action. " 
 
 The state of affairs in the engine department of the Richmond 
 was most critical after the destruction of the safety valves, the 
 engine and fire-rooms being filled with steam, which obliged the 
 most heroic devotion to duty in order to save the boilers by hauling 
 the fires. Mr. Eben Hoyt, the first assistant engineer, was con- 
 spicuous in this work, as described by the following from the 
 official report of Chief Engineer John W. Moore : 
 
 " I consider it my duty to bring to your notice the valuable 
 assistance rendered me by First Assistant Engineer E. Hoyt, who, 
 during the whole engagement, was actively employed wherever 
 most required, until after having penetrated the steam several times, 
 while superintending the hauling of the fires, trying to ascertain the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 389 
 
 extent of injury, &c., he was finally led away completely exhausted 
 and fainting.' J 
 
 In forwarding this report to the Secretary of the Navy, Com- 
 mander Alden sent the following letter: 
 
 64 Sir: I have the honor to enclose herewith the report of the 
 chief engineer of this vessel setting forth the injuries done to our 
 machinery on the night of the 14th instant. It would have 
 been sent with the others, but Mr. Moore's attention has been 
 so entirely engrossed in the personal superintendence of the repairs 
 that it was found impracticable. 
 
 " In my general report of our proceedings, at the time re- 
 ferred to, I had occasion to speak of Mr. Moore's services, and 
 would again call the attention of the department to his merits as an 
 officer. All that he says of his assistants I can endorse most fully, 
 and would beg leave to mention here what I regret was from some 
 oversight omitted in my first report, namely, that Third Assistant 
 Engineer Weir, who was stationed at the bell-pull on the bridge, 
 was of the greatest assistance to me in pointing out the location of 
 the different batteries, and although knocked down and injured by 
 splinters, recovered himself immediately and continued unflinch- 
 ingly at his post. ' ' 
 
 In order to communicate with the admiral above Port Hudson, 
 Commander Alden directed the commander of the Genesee to fit out 
 an expedition from his vessel for that purpose. As the undertaking 
 was one of great peril, volunteers were called for from among the 
 officers, and three or four respopded: from these Commander 
 Macomb selected Acting Third Assistant Engineer Harrie Webster, 
 although he was the only staff officer who had volunteered; put him 
 in command of a boat's crew, and started him off on his dangerous 
 mission. Mr< Webster successfully took his boat through the six 
 or eight miles of intervening swamps and lagoons, delivered his 
 despatches to Admiral Farragut, received others from him to Com- 
 mander Alden, and returned to the Genesee the same night. On 
 the way back he landed and examined a signal station of the enemy, 
 and, finding about it the fresh trail of a horseman, he took his party 
 
390 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 in pursuit, eventually overhauling and capturing at the point of his 
 revolver a Confederate lieutenant with his horse, accoutrements, and 
 important despatches. The exploit was one of remarkable nerve 
 and daring, performed as it was in the gloomy fastnesses of the 
 enemy's country. 
 
 On the 22nd of March while Kear Admiral Porter with some 
 mortar-boats and small steamers was trying to work through the 
 thickets of Steele's Bayou and thus get into the Yazoo Kiver, he 
 was attacked by a large force of the enemy concealed in the woods; 
 two of his men were severely wounded and Acting Third Assistant 
 Engineer Henry Sullivan of the Dahlia was struck by a rifle ball 
 and killed. 
 
 On March 28th the purchased gun- vessel Diana, Acting Master 
 T. L. Peterson commanding, was sent into Grand Lake from the 
 Atchafalaya Kiver to make a reconnoissance. When on her return 
 she was attacked near Berwick Bay from shore by field pieces and 
 sharp-shooters, and was forced to surrender after a fiercely fought 
 contest lasting nearly three hours. The commanding officer and 
 two master's mates next to him in rank were killed before the sur- 
 render, and Acting Assistant Engineer James McNally was also 
 killed, the latter's death being instantaneous from a Minie ball in 
 the head. 
 
 About the middle of July while a detachment of vessels of the 
 Mississippi flotilla was up the Yazoo River destroying Confederate 
 steamers that had taken refuge there, the armored gunboat Baron 
 de Kalb ran upon two torpedoes and was sunk in twenty feet of 
 water. Her hull was so damaged that no effort was made to raise 
 her, but her guns, stores, and parts of the machinery were removed, 
 and her armor plates were taken off to prevent them from becoming 
 of use to the enemy. The Baron de Kalb was originally the St. 
 Louis, the name having been changed about the time she was trans- 
 ferred to the Navy Department, and she was the third of the seven 
 original Edes iron-clads to be destroyed by the enemy. The Cairo 
 was sunk by a torpedo in the Yazoo River in December, 1862, and 
 the Cincinnati was sunk by the Vicksburg batteries, May 27th, 
 1863. These disasters were unattended with loss of life except in 
 the case of the Cincinnati, which had nineteen people killed or 
 drowned and fourteen wounded, First Engineer Simon Shultice 
 being one of the latter. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 391 
 
 An unfortunate and unsuccessful attack was made September 
 8th. by a combined army and navy force upon a fortified position at 
 Sabine Pass, Texas. The force consisted of 1,200 troops in trans- 
 ports, conyoyed by the naval steamers Granite City, Arizona, Sachem, 
 and Clifton, all purchased vessels of inferior resisting powers. In 
 the engagement the two last named were both disabled by shots ex- 
 ploding their boilers, and were compelled to surrender. The Sachem 
 had two engineers and seven men killed and a considerable number 
 wounded, the two unfortunate engineers being John Frazer, acting 
 second assistant engineer, and John Munroe, acting third assistant. 
 The executive officer, Acting Master Ehoades, and seven men of the 
 Clifton were killed and a number, mostly soldiers, wounded; her chief 
 engineer, Mr. Bradley, was wounded and was afterward reported by 
 the Confederate captors of the survivors as having died of his injuries. 
 
 In October the commander of the ironclad Osage, of the Missis- 
 sippi squadron,having received information that a Confederate steamer 
 was tied up to the bank in the Eed Eiver, sent out an expedition 
 under command of Acting Chief Engineer Thomas Doughty, with 
 Assistant Engineer Hobbs as his lieutenant, which expedition captured 
 and destroyed the steamer and another one, took a number of pris- 
 oners, and returned without loss to the Osage. Mr. Doughty's re- 
 port of the affair, dated October 7, 1863, follows: 
 
 " Sir: In obedience to your order, I, with a party of twenty 
 men, with the assistance of Mr. Hobbs, started for Eed Eiver this 
 morning. Arriving at Eed Eiver, I could see no signs of a steam- 
 boat. I divided the party, sending eight men down the river to look 
 into the bend below, and with twelve started up the river. When 
 * we had traveled about half a mile I saw the chimneys of a steamer. 
 The woods were found so dense that we could not penetrate them, 
 and the only alternative was to advance in sight. The steamer was 
 on the opposite side of the river, and I feared those on board might 
 see us in time to escape before we were near enough to use our rifles. 
 No one saw us, and I chose a spit opposite her, where we could see 
 any one who attempted to escape. I hailed her; two men were seen 
 to run forward and disappear; I directed three files on the right to 
 fire. The fire brought the men out, and at my command they brought 
 to my side of the river two skiffs which belonged to the boat. I was 
 
392 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 about to embark a party to burn her, when I heard a steamboat de- 
 scending the river. I ordered the men out of sight behind a large 
 log and some bushes, and in two minutes I saw a steamer round the 
 point above. I waited until she was within four hundred yards, and 
 showed myself, and ordered her to stop. She did so, and I found 
 myself in possession of nine prisoners and two steamboats. I knew 
 I could not get them out of the river, and I ordered the destruction 
 of the first one captured, the Argus, and embarked on board the sec- 
 ond, the Robert Fulton, and steamed down to the landing where I 
 first struck the river, where I ordered her to be set on fire, and in a 
 few minutes she was one mass of flame. She was the better vessel 
 of the two, and was valued by her owner at seventy-five thousand 
 dollars. Neither of them had any cargo on board. I captured all 
 the officers of the boats, one first lieutenant in the Confederate army, 
 and three negroes. 55 
 
 Admiral Porter in reporting this affair to the Department said, 
 " This is a great loss to the rebels at this moment, as it cuts off their 
 means of operating across that part of Atchafalaya where they lately 
 came over to attack Morganzia. This capture will deter others from 
 coming down Eed Eiver. The affair was well managed, and the officers 
 and men composing the expedition deserve great credit for the share 
 they took in it. 55 
 
 During 1863 the navy was increased by about one hundred and 
 thirty vessels of all kinds acquired by purchase or capture, and lost 
 thirty-two in battle or by accidental destruction. Fifty-eight 
 vessels of war were placed under construction during the same 
 period. The first of these were twenty light-draft single-turreted 
 monitors, contracts for the construction of which were distributed 
 among a dozen different cities from Portland, Maine, to St. Louis, 
 Missouri, during the spring months of the year. The general plans 
 for these monitors were furnished by J ohn Ericsson and the entire 
 control and supervision of their building was entrusted to Chief 
 Engineer A. C, Stimers. They were designed to draw six feet of 
 water and were intended to operate in shallow rivers and other 
 inland waters where guerrillas had made the service of other types 
 of light-draft boats extremely perilous and of doubtful success. For 
 causes that will be referred to later, these monitors failed to fulfill 
 
U. S. STEAM FRIGATE GUERHIERE. 
 
 Length, 312 feet 6 inches; beam, 46 feet; disp., 3,953 tons. 
 (From a photograph taken in Kio do Janeiro, loaned by Chief Engineer John L. Hannum, U. S. Navy.) 
 
THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 395 
 
 their mission and never rendered any service of value to the govern- 
 ment. Their names were, Casco, Chimo, Cohoes, Etlah, Klamath, 
 KoTca, Modoc, Napa, Naubuc, JYausett, /Shawnee, Shiloh, Squando- 
 SuncooJc, Tunxis, TJmjpqua, Wassuc, Waxsaw, Yazoo, and Yuma. 
 
 In June and July contracts were made with various ship- builders 
 for seven iron double-enders, somewhat larger than those of the 
 two classes previously built; each had a single inclined low-pressure 
 engine from designs furnished by the engineer-in- chief. They were 
 of 1,370 tons displacement and were named Ashuelot, Mohongo, 
 Monocacy, Muscoota, ShamoTcen, Suwanee, and Winnvpec. 
 
 In order to provide for a fleet that would be useful for general 
 cruising purposes when peace should be restored, the Department 
 had plans prepared by the Bureau of Construction during the 
 summer for a number of large wooden frigates and sloops-of-war, 
 and began the construction of a number of them at the different 
 navy yards. Unfortunately the supply of seasoned timber had been 
 so drawn upon by the unusual amount of ship-building of the pre- 
 ceding years that much green material had to be used in these 
 vessels and as a consequence those that were eventually finished 
 were very short-lived. Being long and narrow, they were strength- 
 ened with diagonal iron bracing amounting almost to an enormous 
 iron basket woven over the hull, and this held them together long 
 after the decay of the timbers and would have caused them to fall 
 in pieces. 
 
 Eight of these ships were gun-deck frigates of 4,000 tons dis- 
 placement and full ship-rigged. They were about 310 feet long 
 i between perpendiculars and forty-six feet extreme beam. Their 
 names were, Antietam, Qtierriere, Illinois, Java, Kewaydin, 
 Minnetonka, Ontario, and Piscataqua. Two other gun-deck frig- 
 ates, the Rassalo and Wautaga, somewhat larger than these eight, 
 were projected at the same time, but their hulls were never built. 
 In addition to the frigates, ten large sloops-of-war of what was 
 known as the Contoocooh class were ordered. They were of about 
 3,050 tons displacement and were named Arapahoe, Contoocooh, 
 Keosauqua, Manitou, Mondamin, Mosholu, Pushmataha, Tahgayuta, 
 Wanalosett, and Willamette. Of these only four — the Contoocooh, 
 Manitou, 'Mosholu and Pushmataha — were ever built, and they, 
 with the new names of Albany, Worcester, Severn, and Congress 
 
396 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 respectively, fell into decay after not many years' service. All 
 twenty of the ships above named were to have two-cylinder back- 
 acting engines of the Isherwood type, the cylinders being sixty 
 inches in diameter and three feet stroke of piston; boilers for each 
 vessel were specified to have not less than 546 square feet of grate 
 service. Late in the fall Mr. Isherwood, acting for the Depart- 
 ment, entered into contracts with eleven different machinery firms 
 for the engines and boilers of these ships, the contract price for 
 machinery for each ship being $400,000, except the Ontario which 
 contract was awarded to John Eoach of the Etna Iron Works for 
 % 385, 000. Owing to the non- completion of the hulls of many of 
 the ships, the matter of making settlements and compromises with 
 the machinery contractors became a vexed problem for the bureau 
 of steam engineering to struggle with after the war. 
 
 The swift cruiser came into existence this year also by the be- 
 ginning of work on seven vessels in which speed was to be the most 
 important element. The Secretary of the Navy in explaining the 
 need of having such vessels said in his annual report for that year, 
 " Besides the turreted vessels for coast defense and large armored 
 ships for naval conflict we need and should have steamers of high 
 speed constructed of wood, with which to sweep the ocean, and 
 chase and hunt down the vessels of an enemy. 5 5 One of these 
 cruisers, the Idaho, was the child of Mr. E. N. Dickerson, who had 
 secured sufficient influence to obtain this opportunity of experiment- 
 ing on a large scale with his theory of perfect expansion of gases 
 when applied to the steam engine. With the Idaho the Bureau of 
 Steam Engineering had nothing to do, the contract for hull and 
 machinery complete being made by the Bureau of Construction in 
 May, 1863, with Paul L. Forbes and E. N. Dickerson, the contract 
 price being $600,000. The hull was built by the famous ship- 
 builder, Steers, of New York, and the machinery by the Morgan 
 Iron Works from designs prepared by Mr. Dickerson; there were 
 two pairs of engines driving twin screws, the cylinders having the 
 very remarkable dimensions for marine engines of eight feet stroke 
 and thirty inches diameter. The Idaho was 298 feet long, 44-J feet 
 beam, and of 3, 240 tons displacement. 
 
 John Ericsson also availed himself of this opportunity to try 
 engineering conclusions with Engineer-in- Chief Isherwood. It was 
 
XT. S. S. WORCESTER, ORIGINALLY MAN1TOU. 
 
 Typical of the Contnoltook class of screw sloops. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 399 
 
 arranged that two ships exactly alike should be built, one to be 
 fitted with Isherwood's engines and the other with Ericsson's. The 
 ships were the Madawaslca and Wampanoag, built side by side in 
 the Brooklyn navy yard by that master-builder, Naval Constructor 
 B. F. Delano; they were 335 feet long, 45.2 feet beam, 4,200 tons 
 displacement, and rated at 3,281 tons burden. Their boilers and 
 all auxiliaries were the same. Isherwood's engines consisted of a 
 pair of cylinders 100 inches in diameter and four feet stroke, 
 arranged by means of huge wood-toothed gear wheels to make one 
 double stroke of the piston for every 2.04 revolutions of the pro- 
 peller shaft. Ericsson's cylinders were the same in number and 
 dimensions as Isherwood's, but their arrangement was according to 
 his patented vibrating lever type, connecting directly with the shaft. 
 Ericsson's engines for the Madawaslca were built at the Allaire Iron 
 Works, New York, and Isherwood's for the Wanipanoag at the 
 Novelty Iron Works in the same city, the contract price in each 
 case being $700,000. 
 
 Still another ship entered into this competition for speed was the 
 Chattanooga by the Cramp & Sons Ship Building Co. of Philadel- 
 phia, which firm built the hull at their own yard and obtained the 
 machinery by sub-contract from Merrick & Sons. The Chattanooga 
 had a pair of back-acting engines, 84 inches diameter by 42 inch 
 stroke, and 980 square feet of grate surface; her length was 315 feet; 
 breadth 46 feet, and displacement 3,040 tons. The contract price 
 for the vessel complete was $600,000. The three other cruisers not 
 yet mentioned were the Pomponoosuc, Ammonoosuc, and Neshaminy, 
 all of which had Isherwood engines precisely like those of the Warn- 
 panoag, and which cost $700,000 for each of the first two named and 
 $680,000 for the Neshaminy. The machinery for the Pomponoosuc 
 was built by the Corliss Steam Engine Co. of Providence, Rhode Is- 
 land; that for the Ammonoosuc by George Quintard at the Morgan 
 Iron Works, New York, and that for the Neshaminy by John Koach, 
 New York. The Ammonoosuc was built at the Boston Navy Yard 
 and the Neshaminy at the Philadelphia navy yard, these two being 
 sister ships, and of about 4,000 tons displacement each. The Pom- 
 ponoosuc was somewhat larger than, the other two, but was never 
 completed: under the name of Connecticut she stood in frame on the 
 stocks at the Boston navy yard for many years and was finally broken 
 
400 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 up. The completion and speed trials of these cruisers did not occur 
 until some time after the close of the war; the trials of some of them 
 demonstrated a new possibility in war-ship building and were the 
 occasion for one of the most remarkable professional triumphs ever 
 achieved by an engineer, for which reasons the subject will be taken 
 up in detail hereafter. 
 
 Towards the end of the year it was decided to build four double- 
 turreted monitors to be heavily armed and armored and adapted to 
 ocean cruising; battle-ships, in fact. These were big vessels (5,660 
 tons displacement) with big names — Quinsigamond, Passaconawaj, 
 Kalamazoo, and Shackamaxon. The hulls were put under construc- 
 tion at four different navy yards, wood being used, and all deck- 
 plating, side armor, turrets, etc., obtained by contract with iron 
 masters. In December the Bureau of Steam Engineering made con- 
 tracts for theii machinery, the contract price for that for the Quinsi- 
 gamond and Kalamazoo being $580,000 each, and $590,000 each for 
 the other two. The contracts called for twin screws, each screw shaft 
 to be actuated by a pair of direct-acting horizontal engines with cyl- 
 inders 4:6^ inches in diameter and 50 inches stroke; horizontal tubu- 
 lar boilers of not less than 900 square feet of grate surface for each 
 vessel were specified. Designs for this machinery were furnished 
 the contractors by Mr. John Baird, engineer, of New York city # 
 None of the hulls were ever completed, but under changed names 
 they stood on the stocks for a number of years and were eventually 
 broken up. The following table shows the place of building of the 
 ships and machinery: 
 
 OLD AND NEW NAME. 
 
 WHERE BUILT. 
 
 HULL. 
 
 MACHINERY. 
 
 Quinsigamond, ( Oregon ) . . 
 
 Kalamazoo, ( Colossus ) 
 
 Shackamaxon, (Nebraska) 
 
 Boston Navy Yard. 
 Kittery Navy Yard. 
 New York Navy Yard. 
 Philadelphia Navy Yard. 
 
 Atlantic Works, Boston, 
 Delamater Iron Works, N. Y 
 
 a 4t a « 
 
 Pusey, Jones & Co.Wil'nDel. 
 
 In November of this year Mr. Isherwood entered into a con- 
 tract with the Atlantic Works of Boston for a complete outfit of 
 machinery for the big frigate Franklin, still unfinished at the 
 Kittery navy yard. The contract called for a pair of back-acting 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 401 
 
 engines with cylinders 68 inches in diameter and 42 inches stroke; 
 four vertical water-tube boilers; two superheating boilers; a Sewell's 
 surface condenser, and a detachable hoisting screw. The contract 
 price was $440,000. 
 
 Under the old naval organization the ranks of line officers as 
 established by law were, midshipman, master, lieutenant, com- 
 mander, and captain. Staff officers held assimilated rank with these 
 up to the rank of commander, as directed by Secretary Toucey's 
 order of January 13, 1859. In 1862, as has been noted, the line 
 ranks were increased by adding commodore and rear admiral at the 
 top and inserting the intermediate ranks of ensign and lieutenant- 
 commander, no change in the assimilated rank of the staff being 
 made at that time. To remedy the practical reduction in rank of 
 the staff thus occasioned the Secretary of the Navy issued an order, 
 dated March 13, 1863, re-grading the relative rank of the staff 
 corps, that part of the order especially interesting to engineers read- 
 ing as follows: 
 
 "Third Assistant Engineers to rank with Midshipmen. 
 
 " Second Assistant Engineers to rank with Ensigns. 
 
 " First Assistant Engineers to rank with Masters. 
 
 " Chief Engineers to rank with Lieutenant Commanders for the 
 first five years after promotion; after the first five years, with Com- 
 manders; and after fifteen years date of commission, to rank with 
 Captains. 
 
 u Fleet Engineer to rank with the Captain. 
 
 "The Fleet Captain to be called the 'Chief of Staff, 5 and to 
 take precedence of the Staff Officers of every grade. 
 
 "Chiefs of Bureaux of the Staff Corps to rank with Commo- 
 dores, and to take precedence of each other according to their dates 
 of commission as Surgeons, Paymasters, Naval Constructors, and 
 Engineers, and not according to the date of appointment as Fleet 
 Officer, or Chief of Bureau. 
 
 "Fleet Staff O fleers to take precedence of Executive Officers." 
 
 August 11th, 1863, the Navy Department issued a circular 
 directing that thereafter no more appointments of engineers for act- 
 ing or volunteer service should be made until the applicant had 
 passed satisfactory examinations before the chief engineer and 
 
402 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OE THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 surgeon of the navy yard where application for appointment was 
 made. 
 
 The following is an extract from a general order issued by the 
 department under date of September 16, 1863: 
 
 "Engineers will hereafter understand that the condition of the 
 machinery under their charge on the arrival of the vessel from a 
 cruise will be considered as a test of their efficiency and fidelity in 
 the discharge of their duties; and that the result of the examination 
 then made will determine whether they have discharged their duties 
 in such manner as to deserve commendation, or have been so grossly 
 negligent or incompetent as to render their expulsion from the 
 service an act of justice to the public." 
 
 On the 22nd of December a new schedule of examinations for 
 promotion of engineers in the regular service was promulgated by 
 circular order, the standard being raised considerably above the 
 requirements of the regulation on the subject issued in 1859. This 
 order was specified to apply temporarily only, during the war, and 
 to the examination of engineers in the squadions. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 " Beware 
 
 Of entrance to a quarrel ; but being in, 
 Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee." 
 
 Hamlet: Act 1, Sc. 3. 
 
 1863— -The Civil War, Continued — Controversy as to the Efficiency of Iron-Clads — 
 Rear Admiral DuPont Beports Adversely to Them— Chief Engineer Stimers 
 Reports in Their Favor — Rear Admiral DuPont Prefers Charges Against Chief 
 Engineer Stimers — The Case Investigated by a Court of Inquiry. — Vindication 
 of Mr. Stimers. 
 
 '""PHIS history of the steam ships and engineers of the American 
 
 1 navy would be incomplete without some reference to an 
 internal strife in the service in the year 1863, growing out of the 
 introduction of mastless war- vessels; a controversy that produced 
 much ill feeling at the time, and one that would gladly be passed 
 over in silence were it not for the fact that it was a matter of 
 national interest and importance while it lasted and reduced itself to 
 a clean-cut issue between the old and the new. It was in fact a 
 struggle for existence almost on the part of the engineers and their 
 machinery, opposed by the older, more picturesque, and more con. 
 servative sentiments that had formed the traditions and institutions 
 of the old navy and sought to preserve them unchanged, regardless 
 of the progress in all other things being effected through the agency 
 of the steam engine. 
 
 The attack made upon Fort Sumter April 7th by Rear Admiral 
 DuPont with a squadron of iron-clads has been described in a 
 former chapter, and the fact that the Navy Department expected 
 unqualified success from these vessels has been mentioned. Great, 
 therefore, was the disappointment in Washington when DuPont's 
 report of the engagement arrived with his announcement that he 
 had determined not to renew the attack, as in his judgment it would 
 convert a failure into a disaster. In a later report he enlarged upon 
 what he considered the bad qualities of the monitors and said they 
 could not be depended upon for protection against the armored 
 
404. 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 vessels the Confederates were known to be fitting out at Charleston. 
 It is possible that an element of distrust entered into the disappoint- 
 ment felt in Washington, for immediately after the receipt of the 
 news from Charleston President Lincoln telegraphed DuPont to hold 
 his position inside the bar near Charleston, or to return to it if he 
 had left it and hold it until further orders. Beginning in this way 
 a correspondence was opened between Hear Admiral DuPont and the 
 Navy Department, gradually increasing in acerbity, and terminat- 
 ing in the admiral being relieved of his command and deprived of 
 any further participation in the war. 
 
 The whole story of this affair was given to the public more than 
 thirty years ago by the publication in book form, by virtue of a 
 joint resolution of Congress, of five thousand copies of the docu- 
 ments in the case together with other interesting letters and reports 
 relating to armored vessels. In the present chapter the author will 
 confine himself almost entirely to the records as preserved in 
 the public form referred to, not being deposed to enter upon 
 any expression of his own views as to the motives and interests 
 involved. 
 
 Chief Engineer Alban C. Stimers, as the general inspector of 
 all iron-clad vessels of the Ericsson type built or building for the 
 government, made frequent visits to the fleet off Charleston for pur- 
 poses of examination and to direct repairs in case of damage. He 
 was present at the first attack on Fort Sumter and made a visit of 
 inspection to each of the monitors immediately after they came out 
 of action, Returning to his office in New York a few days later 
 
 he made, on the 14th of April, a detailed and critical report to the 
 Secretary of the Navy of the result of his observations, his views 
 as to the offensive and defensive properties of the monitors being 
 very favorable to them and quite at variance with the opinions 
 expressed in Bear Admiral DuPont's despatches. For this he was 
 thereafter involved in the growing controversy and appeared in it to 
 excellent advantage as the defender of the new type of war ship. 
 Besides exercising an oversight upon the iron-clads, he had 
 attempted while at Charleston on this occasion to induce the authori- 
 ties to use an "obstruction remover" invented by Ericsson and with 
 which Stimers had made some satisfactory experiments in the still 
 waters of New York harbor. This was a huge raft, called by the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 405 
 
 sailors a "boot-jack" on the account of its form, intended to be 
 pushed by a monitor and carrying an enormous elongated shell or 
 torpedo at its forward edge designed to destroy by explosion any 
 piling or other obstacles that might be encountered. Mr. Stimers 
 referred with much regret in his report to the lack of success he had 
 had in trying to convince the naval captains of the utility of this 
 invention. It received a fair enough trial from Captain John 
 Kodgers of the Weehawken soon afterward and was found so unman- 
 ageable in the rough water in which it had to operate that it may 
 be put down as one of Ericsson's inventions that was more success- 
 ful on a sheet of drawing paper than it was in actual practice afloat. 
 Chief Engineer E. D. Robie, one of the most ingenious and capable 
 engineers of the war period, was diverted from his regular duty as 
 resident inspector of the building of the Dictator to go to Charles- 
 ton to try to make this torpedo raft a success, and his failure to do 
 so is good proof that it was impracticable. 
 
 On the 22nd of April Eear Admiral DuPont sent a long letter 
 to the Navy Department complaining most bitterly of an account 
 of the battle of April 7th which had been published in a Baltimore 
 newspaper and in which it was stated that the weapons at DuPont' s 
 disposal were not used to advantage through disinclination induced 
 by a dislike to Ericsson and his naval innovations. The complaint 
 closed with the statement that the newspaper mentioned "seems to 
 have had its own hostile proclivities heightened by an association 
 with an officer of the service whose name appears frequently and 
 prominently in its report in connexion with the repairs upon the 
 iron-clads and in relation to the torpedoes and the rafts; I mean 
 Mr. A. C. Stimers, a chief engineer in the naval service of the 
 United States. ' ' The reply of Secretary Welles to this letter re- 
 minded the rear admiral that the press of the country had been 
 generally lenient and indulgent toward him, and the censures, under 
 a great disappointment, had been comparatively few. It told him 
 that his suspicions regarding Mr. Stimers did that officer much in- 
 justice, and concluded with the comment : 
 
 "It has not appeared to me necessary to your justification that 
 the powers of assault or resistance of our iron-clad vessels should be 
 deprecated, and I regret that there should have been any labored 
 effort for that purpose." 
 
406 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Eear Admiral DuPont replied at much length to this letter, 
 making an especial point of objecting to the use of the word "len- 
 ient' ' as applicable to the opinions entertained by the public toward 
 him; and so the matter went on; every letter written by each of 
 the distinguished gentlemen tending more and more to estrange 
 them. On the 22nd of May the Department sent the rear admiral 
 an item cut from a Charleston newspaper in which it was stated that 
 the guns of the Keokuk had been removed by the Confederates and 
 taken to Charleston, and requested information regarding it. 
 DuPont replied curtly that he knew nothing of it other than the 
 statement of the newspaper; that he had little doubt of its truth; 
 that the work must have been done in the night, and that he had 
 offered Chief Engineer Eobie every facility to blow up the Keokuk, 
 with Mr. Ericsson's raft, but that officer found it too dangerous to 
 use. This called forth an equally curt retort from Secretary Welles, 
 who wrote, u The duty of destroying the Keokuk, and preventing 
 her guns from falling into the hands of the rebels, devolved upon 
 the commander-in-chief rather than on Engineer Eobie. I do not 
 understand that the operations were necessarily limited to Mr. 
 Ericsson's raft, of which such apprehensions appear to have been 
 entertained. The wreck and its important armament ought not to 
 have been abandoned to the rebels, whose sleepless labors appear to 
 have secured them a valuable prize." 
 
 In the latter part of June Eear Admiral Andrew H. Foote, 
 who had achieved such success while commanding the Mississippi 
 flotilla, was ordered to relieve DuPont, but being seized with a 
 fatal illness the orders were transferred to Eear Admiral John A. 
 Dahlgren, who took over the command of the South Atlantic block- 
 ading squadron on the 6th of July from DuPont, who was placed 
 on waiting orders. The protracted siege of the Charleston forts at 
 once inaugurated by Dahlgren has already been described. 
 
 Previous to this, on the 12th of May, Eear Admiral DuPont 
 had requested the Navy Department to arrest Chief Engineer 
 Stimers and send him to Charleston to be tried on the following 
 charges : 
 
 Charges and Specifications of Charges Preferred hy Rear Admiral 
 Samuel ~b\ DuPont, Commanding South Atlantic Blockading 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 407 
 
 Squadron, against Chief Engineer Alhan C. Stimers^ United 
 /States Wavy. 
 
 Charge First : Falsehood. 
 
 " Specification. — In this: that between the eleventh and fif- 
 teenth days of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-three, the said 
 Alban 0. Stimers, a chief engineer in the United States navy, being 
 then on board the steamship Arago, by the authority and direction 
 of Rear Admiral Samuel F. DuPont, commanding the South Atlan- 
 tic blockading squadron — the said Arago being on her passage from 
 Port Royal, South Carolina, to New York City, via Charleston bar — 
 did, at the table of said steamer, in the presence of officers of said 
 steamer and other persons, a number of whom were correspondents 
 of the public press, and at divers other times during the passage of 
 said steamer, falsely assert, knowing the same to be untrue, that he 
 was told by one or more of the commanders of the iron-clad vessels 
 engaged in the attack upon the forts and batteries in Charleston 
 harbor, on the seventh day of April, eighteen hundred and sixty- 
 three, that the attack of that day ought to have been renewed ; and 
 that they did further state to him that the said iron- clad vessels 
 were in fit condition to renew it; and the said Alban C. Stimers did 
 further falsely assert, knowing the same to be untrue, that several 
 of the commanders of the said iron-clad vessels had said to him in 
 his presence and hearing that they, the said commanders, were, 
 after the attack aforesaid, 6 hot for renewing the engagement,' or 
 words to that effect. 
 
 " Charge Second: Conduct unbecoming an officer of the navy. 
 
 " Specification. — In this: that between the eleventh and fif- 
 teenth days of April eighteen hundred and sixty-three, the said 
 Alban C. Stimers, a chief engineer in the United States navy, being 
 then on board the steamship Arago, by the authority and direction 
 of Rear Admiral S. F. DuPont, commanding South Atlantic block- 
 ading squadron — the said Arago being on her passage from Port 
 Royal, South Carolina, to New York City via Charleston bar — did, 
 at the table of said steamer, in the presence of officers of the said 
 steamer and other persons, a number of whom were correspondents 
 
408 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 of the public press, and at divers other times during the passage of 
 the said steamer, with the intent to disparage and injure the pro- 
 fessional reputation of his superior officer, Rear Admiral S. F. 
 DuFont, criticise and condemn, in terms unbecoming the circum- 
 stances and his position as an officer of the navy, the professional 
 conduct of his superior officer, Rear Admiral S. F. DuPont, in the 
 attack upon the forts and batteries in Charleston harbor on the sev- 
 enth day of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-three, and did, with 
 the like intent, knowingly make false statements, using, among 
 other improper and unfounded expressions, words in substance as 
 follows: 4 That the monitors were in as good condition on Wednes- 
 day, the eighth day of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-three, 
 after they had undergone some slight repairs, to renew the at- 
 tack, as they had been to commence it the day before; that they 
 could go into Charleston in spite of guns, torpedoes, and obstruc- 
 tions, and that Rear Admiral DuFont was too much prejudiced 
 against the monitors to give them a fair trial. ' 
 
 Instead of sending the accused officer to DuPont for trial by 
 court-martial the department convened a court of inquiry at the 
 Brooklyn navy yard to investigate the truth of the charges and re- 
 port regarding them. This court was composed of Rear Admiral 
 Francis H. Gregory, Rear Admiral Silas H. Stringham, and Com- 
 modore William C. Nicholson, all old and distinguished officers, 
 but by training and professional associations more apt to lean to- 
 wards DuPont 's side of the issue than to feel any sympathy for 
 Stimers and the mechanical innovations represented by him. Mr. 
 Edwin M. Stoughton was named as judge advocate, but that gen- 
 tleman refused to act, and appeared in the case as counsel for 
 Stimers. Judge Edward Pierrepont of New York was next ap- 
 pointed judge advocate, and he too refused to accept the office, 
 which was then conferred upon Mr. Hiram L. Sleeper. The 
 list of witnesses named by the prosecution included the officers and 
 a number of passengers of the Arago and the commanders and 
 some other officers of the rron-clads off Charleston. 
 
 The court met at the Marine Barracks, Brooklyn, June 5th, 
 and continued in session for more than four months, with some 
 lengthy adjournments to allow of the taking of testimony of wit- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 409 
 
 nesses on duty with the fleet at Charleston, which was done by 
 means of written interrogatories and cross-interrogatories according 
 to the terms of a formal stipulation between the judge advocate and 
 the counsel for the accused which was spread on the pages of the 
 record. The testimony presented by the prosecution was generally 
 favorable to Mr. Stimers and failed to substantiate the charges and 
 specifications made against him. As printed in the public document 
 before referred to as the source of information for the facts pre- 
 sented in this chapter it is too long to admit of an analytical review 
 in this place, which review is therefore omitted in favor of the care- 
 ful one made by Chief Engineer Stimers in his written defense ; a 
 most manly and straightforward argument which was submitted to 
 the court on the 19th of October and is here reproduced in full : 
 
 ii May it please this honorable court: ^^<v:^-^~, • 
 
 " The testimony introduced by*the Judge Advocate to sustain the 
 charges made against me by Hear Admiral DuPont is now closed. 
 Acting in view of the proof thus placed before the court I deem it 
 wholly unnecessary to offer evidence in reply. The very foundation 
 on which these charges must rest is wanting, and hardly an attempt 
 has been made to supply it. They were carelessly, if not recklessly, 
 made by a high officer of the Government, willing to give them the 
 sanction of his name, apparently without inquiring whether they 
 were capable of proof, or founded upon worthless rumor. Much 
 time has been uselessly spent in apparent efforts to prove them; 
 but anyone attentively ^reading the evidence discovers that the 
 real purpose has been not to establish the charges in question, but 
 to justify their author in failing effectively to use the formidable 
 means for destroying the defences of Charleston, which our Govern- 
 ment in its confidence and hope had lavished upon him. That I 
 am not unjust or uncharitable in making this suggestion will be 
 manifest from an examination of the charges and proof which I will 
 now proceed to make." 
 
 "1st. The first specification charges me with having, whilst on 
 board the steamer Arago, on her voyage from Charleston to New 
 York, at table, in presence of her officers and other persons, a 
 
410 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 number of whom were correspondents of the public press, falsely 
 asserted, knowing the same to be untrue, that I was told by one or 
 or more of the commanders of the iron-clads engaged in the attack 
 on Charleston that it ought to have been renewed; that the vessels 
 were in a fit condition to renew it; and that several of the com- 
 manders had said to me that they were hot for renewing the 
 engagement. 
 
 u A person observant of Christian precepts, considerate of his 
 duty towards a fellow man, or actuated by self respect, would, 
 before deliberately framing a charge calculated to consign a brother 
 officer to disgrace and infamy, have inquired carefully into its truth, 
 and the means of establishing it. Indeed, he would hardly have 
 been content to make it before conversing personally with those 
 capable of proving it; and then a just man would have withheld the 
 accusation, so painful for a gentleman to bear, until satisfied that 
 his witnesses were entitled to full credit. The course which my 
 accuser has seen fit to pursue presents a wide departure from the 
 path thus indicated. The names of persons who were on board the 
 Arago during the voyage were appended as witnesses to the charges 
 made, and most of them have been examined. It appears that I 
 sat at the public table of the steamer in the immediate neighborhood 
 of several other persons, all no doubt accessible to my accuser, or 
 to those seeking to support the charges. If, therefore, I, during 
 the voyage, used the language imputed to me, it was susceptible to 
 easy proof. Not a particle of testimony to that effect has, however, 
 been furnished. No one pretends I ever said that any commander 
 of the iron-clads had stated to me either that the attack on Charles- 
 ton ought to have been renewed, or that the iron-clads were in a fit 
 condition to do so, or that their commanders were hot for renewing 
 the engagement. No language bearing the least resemblance to that 
 charged is proven to have been uttered by me at any time; and I am 
 bound to assume that neither of the witnesses named ever stated 
 otherwise than they have sworn here. If not, then upon what in- 
 formation could the charges in question have been framed ? Was it 
 believed that they could be proven ? And if not, were they want- 
 only made, so that upon pretense of sustaining them, the naval 
 inactivity, painful to a whole nation, might be iustified by proof 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 411 
 
 quite irrelevant to the charges being tried, and therefore quite likely 
 to pass uncontradicted by me ? 
 
 " 2d. The second charge made against me is for conduct unbe- 
 coming an officer of the navy, and specifies, in substance, that at 
 the table of said steamei, and elsewhere on board of her, during the 
 passage, I criticised and condemned, in terms unbecoming the cir- 
 cumstances, the professional conduct of Rear Admiral DuPont, by 
 stating that the monitors were in as good condition on the 8th day 
 of April, 1863, after they had undergone some slight repairs, to 
 renew the attack, as they had been to commence it the day before. 
 That they could go into Charleston in spite of guns, torpedoes 
 and obstructions; but that Admiral DuPont was too much pre- 
 judiced against the monitors to give them a fair trial. 
 
 4 ' Now if, under the circumstances, I had stated all that is 
 charged, it would, in my judgment, have been no more than I was 
 authorized to say. I had been charged by the government with the 
 important duty of inspecting the construction and armament of the 
 vessels whilst they were being made. They were new in the history 
 of the world; but in the contest between the Monitor and Merrimac 
 although the latter on the day previous had defied a fleet of our 
 largest frigates, carrying an armament fifty times greater than the 
 Monitor, destroying some and threatening all with the same fate, 
 yet the Monitor, working her two eleven inch guns behind an invul- 
 nerable shield, tested her powers, offensive and defensive, by so 
 terrible an ordeal that intelligent and unprejudiced men here and in 
 Europe from that hour saw that naval supremacy must be main- 
 tained, if at all, by abandoning wooden ships and adopting those 
 which the genius, engineering skill, and ripe, practical knowledge 
 of their author had taught the world how to construct. My know- 
 ledge of this class of war vessels had been acquired not only by 
 watching and inspecting their construction step by step, but under 
 the orders of the government I had enjoyed the good fortune of 
 participating in the contest to which I have referred, and which had 
 developed the capacity of the Monitor system to sustain unharmed 
 the fire of heavy guns at short range, and at the same time to in- 
 flict deadly injuries upon an adversary's ship of great power heavily 
 
412 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 sheathed in iron. With an experience thus gained I might, as I 
 think, have justly claimed the right to express an opinion as to the 
 value and capacities of the monitors, even had this differed from the 
 views entertained by Rear Admiral DuPont, whose knowledge con- 
 cerning them was probably derived from casual inspection and the 
 reports of others. Moreover, I was charged by the Government 
 with the duty of proceeding to Charleston to watch and report the 
 performance of these vessels in action, to assist in maintaining them 
 in readiness for battle, and afford to the officers having them in 
 charge such information as might be needful. 
 
 "In addition to all this it may here be proper to say that at a 
 great expense shells had been devised by Captain Ericsson, the 
 author of the Monitor system, which, in connexion with rafts to be 
 attached to the bows of vessels, were to be used for removing by 
 means of explosive force, obstructions within the harbor, and by 
 firing torpedoes supposed to be sunk by the enemy in the track of 
 our advancing fleet. The effectiveness of these shells had been so 
 tested by me, before they were sent to Admiral DuPont, as to make 
 it clear to my mind and to that of the government that they would 
 be practically safe and capable of clearing the track of battle. I 
 strongly urged Admiral DuPont to use these shells, and requested 
 permission to participate in the action of the 7th, on board a moni- 
 tor which should be thus armed. The privilege was denied to me, 
 and although in view of supposed obstructions, I had expressed to 
 Admiral DuPont and to his officers the opinion that the monitors 
 could successfully pass them, my confidence in expressing it was 
 greatly strengthened by, and somewhat founded upon, the assump- 
 tion that these shells were to be employed, and this the Admiral 
 knew. He nevertheless declined to order their employment and 
 thus was lost to the government and nation a powerful means of 
 penetrating to the cradle of this great rebellion. 
 
 u Under these circumstances, and well aware that the govern- 
 ment had expected much from the attack upon Charleston with the 
 a-bundant means furnished to the rear admiral commanding, I was 
 greatly disappointed that the important instruments I have mentioned 
 were not used by him, especially as I believed (an as an earnest of 
 my conviction had offered to hazard my life and limb) that with 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 413 
 
 shells attached to the monitors they could pass all obstructions and 
 hold the city of Charleston at their mercy. 
 
 " All this was certainly calculated to awaken in my mind criti- 
 cism upon the conduct of Rear Admiral Dupont, which, as the evidence 
 shows, I refrained from expressing, maintaining a reserve, not merely 
 respectful to him, but calculated to defend him from the censures 
 freely and openly cast upon him for failing to renew the attack of 
 the 7th of April. 
 
 ' 4 1 will now briefly examine the proof introduced to maintain 
 the second charge, the mere reading of which will show that even if 
 I had said all that is charged against me, it was but the statement 
 of views which, if honest, I had a right in common with all other 
 persons to express. Entertaining the opinion, and officially report- 
 ing it as I did to Rear Admiral DuPont, that the monitors were on 
 the 8th substantially, for practical purposes, as fit to renew the attack 
 as they had been to make it on the day previous. 1 was bound 
 neither by courtesy nor by any rule of the service with which I am 
 acquainted, to withhold or conceal it; and believing, as I certainly 
 did, that the monitors, with the rafts and shells attached, could have 
 gone into Charleston in spite of guns, torpedoes and obstructions, I 
 was equally entitled to state, in respectful language, that opinion 
 also; and, moreover, I think the disrespect, if there be any, in im- 
 puting to Rear Admiral DuPont prejudice against the monitors, was 
 so slight that his self-respect can hardly have been increased by 
 noticing it. Indeed, whilst there is no proof in the case that I ever 
 charged him with entertaining this prejudice, and whilst by assert- 
 ing that I did, he, by implication at least, denies the existence of 
 the prejudice so imputed, the evidence introduced on his behalf very 
 clearly established that he was prepossessed against them, for Cap- 
 tain Drayton in substance declares he donH think Admiral DuPont 
 had a high opinion of the monitors, and that he could not have had 
 after reading his (Drayton's) reports concerning them, made before the 
 fight. 
 
 " What these reports were does not appear, but that the witness 
 believed he had succeeded in instilling into the admiral's mind his 
 own unfavorable opinion is quite clear. 
 
 "The proof, however, fails to show that I made the statement 
 charged against me. The evidence on this subject consists of the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 testimony of Captain Gadsden, of the Arago, and of several other 
 persons who were on board of that steamer during her voyage from 
 Charleston to New York. He says in substance that I stated that 
 the monitors had received no serious injury; that they could be re- 
 paired in a few hours; that the trial ought not to condemn them; that 
 they had not had a fair trial; that with the shells attached to them 
 they could go in. He further swore that I said the officers of the 
 navy were prejudiced against the monitors, but that I mentioned no 
 one in particular, and did not reflect upon Admiral DuPont. 
 
 " The purser of the Arago testified that I said the officers of the 
 navy were rather prejudiced against them, but that I spoke of Ad- 
 miral DuPont personally in the highest terms. Mr. Colwell swore 
 that those on board the Arago were much excited about the fight at 
 Charleston, and condemned the admiral for his failure; but he did not 
 intimate that I took part in such conversation, stating only that I 
 said the monitors were very little injured, and were repaired in about 
 five hours; that I was respectful in my remarks concerning Admiral 
 
 DuPont; and although this witness said he at one time was under 
 the impression that I had said the admiral was prejudiced against 
 
 the monitors, he afterwards stated that I might not have said so, but 
 that as the passengers generally united in condemning him, the wit- 
 ness may have confounded their statements with mine. 
 
 "Mr. Fulton, in his testimony, states that my conversations 
 with him on the subject of the attack were private, and in an under- 
 tone, and that I said I had sometimes retired to my stateroom to 
 avoid being questioned; that I said the attack was not an earnest 
 one, and expressed disappointment that the shells were not employed, 
 but did not say the monitors could have entered the harbor without 
 them ? nor that the admiral was prejudiced against the monitors, but 
 that I did say he would have renewed the attack but for the influ- 
 ence of some of those who were. 
 
 " Mr. Mars, a passenger, testified that I appeared not to wish 
 to speak on the subject of the attack, and that although he sat op- 
 posite to me at the table, he did not hear me say that the admiral 
 was prejudiced. 
 
 6 < Having thus failed to prove that I had uttered any of the 
 language as charged, and it appearing upon the evidence that I had 
 spoken of Kear Admiral DuPont in high terms, studiously refraining 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 415 
 
 from talking upon the subject of the attack, it appeared to me 
 remarkable that the prosecution, instead of acknowledging the in- 
 justice of these charges, should persist in calling witnesses to prove 
 that the monitors were seriously injured in their attack upon the 
 forts, and could not have renewed it without probable disaster. 
 
 "Whikt this attempt has signally failad, it has nevertheless 
 disclosed the real purpose of this prosecution to have been, not an 
 inquiry into any language or conduct of mine, but, under that pre- 
 text, an effort to justify the failure by Bear Admiral DuPont, which 
 had attracted the observation of the world, by condemning as inade- 
 quate the instruments which a liberal government had placed in his 
 hands. 
 
 " His desire to justify himself was natural, but that he should 
 have been willing to achieve even his own vindication by making 
 and persisting in prosecuting unfounded charges against a brother 
 officer, is extraordinary. How utterly he has failed to accomplish 
 this a brief examination of the proofs will show. 
 
 6 ' It appears from these that before the attack was made it was 
 supposed by Admiral DuPont that torpedoes had been placed in the 
 channel along which his fleet must pass. That network had been 
 suspended from buoys designed to entangle the propellers and thus 
 prevent their action, and that for some purpose piles had been placed 
 across the middle ground to obstruct the entrance of monitors from 
 that direction. It moreover appears, especially from a careful read- 
 ing of the deposition of Commander 0. R. P. Rodgers, the admiral's 
 fleet captain, that no additional information upon either of these sub- 
 jects was obtained by means of the attack. After that was over, the 
 existence of torpedoes, of network and the purpose of the piles were 
 shrouded in the same mystery as before. It was ascertained, how- 
 ever, that if torpedoes lurked in the channel, they were probably 
 harmless, for none had been exploded; and that they were incapable 
 of being fired is shown by the letter referred to by this witness, 
 written by a rebel officer in Fort Sumter, stating that the effort to 
 explode a torpedo whilst directly under the hull of the Ironsides had 
 failed. 
 
 "We must therefore accept it as established, that as no infor- 
 mation was obtained during the conflict which could be used to 
 strengthen the surmises before existing as to the character of these 
 
416 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 obstructions, their supposed existence could not have afforded ground 
 for declining to renew the engagement which was not equally good 
 as an objection against having made it at all; and this being so, we 
 must look for some other reason for the failure of the admiral to offer 
 battle on the 8th, in pursuance of his declared intention, when he 
 gave the signal for the monitors to haul off on the previous day. 
 
 < 4 It is true that some of this testimony conveys the impression 
 that the fear of encountering these supposed obstructions was a con- 
 trolling element in the admiral's mind in forming the determination 
 not to renew the attack; but in this there is evident mistake, for a 
 brave and intelligent commander would hardly be so fearful of ob- 
 structions which might or might not be real, as to abandon a great 
 enterprise without practical effort to learn whether obstacles to its 
 achievement existed or not. Against such a suspicion I feel disposed 
 to defend Admiral DuPont, and hence am constrained to look else- 
 where for some reason why he failed to renew an attack which, if 
 persisted in, might have succeeded. His witnesses on this subject 
 next point to the injuries sustained by the monitors, and to their 
 alleged inability to withstand a repetition of the terrible fire to which 
 they were subjected on the 7th. A glance at the testimony will show 
 how utterly unfounded is this effort at an excuse, whilst it will also 
 establish to the satisfaction of intelligent and unprejudiced men that 
 the capacity of the monitors to resist unharmed the most terrible fire 
 from guns and rifles of the heaviest calibre, has never been overstated. 
 It appears from the testimony of the fleet captain that the fire to 
 which they were exposed was by far more terrific than that which he 
 or anyone connected with the fleet had ever before seen. From fifty 
 to one hundred rebel guns, of heavier calibre than were ever before 
 employed against ships-of-war, were brought to bear upon the moni- 
 tors at the same time, and probably many more. The Patapsco was 
 struck by fifty-one shots, twenty-one of which hit the turret, and fif- 
 teen or more of these — all heavy ball — struck it within the period of 
 five minutes, and yet at 8:30 o'clock on the evening of the 7th s)-e 
 was in a fit condition to renew the engagement. 
 
 The Nantucket was struck fifty-three times ; and although the 
 mechanism which worked her XV-inch gun was disordered, this was 
 repaired on the 8th. Captain Drayton states that the top of the 
 pilot hou&e of the Passaic was raised up by a shot, but it is quite evi- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 417 
 
 dent, from his account of it, that this in no manner disabled the ves- 
 sel, whilst it hardly increased the chances of danger to those within. 
 It sufficiently appears that the Weehawken was fit to have renewed 
 the engagement on the following day, although she was struck sev- 
 eral times on her side armor in nearly the same place. 
 
 " Without following this subject further in detail, it is sufficient 
 to state, what appears from the proof, that each and all of the moni- 
 tors were in fighting condition within twenty-four hours after they 
 came out of battle, whilst the injuries received by them were so tri- 
 fling, when the terrible means employed for inflicting them were con- 
 sidered, that they may be pronounced substantially invulnerable to 
 the strongest artillery. But one life was lost on board of them dur- 
 ing the conflict ; and whilst one or two of the turrets were by the im- 
 pact of shot partially prevented from turning until repaired, it should 
 be remembered that, turning by their rudders, each could at all times 
 present her guns to the enemy at pleasure. Indeed, it was partly by 
 this means that the guns of the Monitor were brought to bear on the 
 Merrimac in that first engagement of ironclads to which I have be- 
 fore referred. One of the witnesses has suggested that if other shots 
 had struck in the same place as previous ones, the armor might have 
 been endangered. Entertaining, as I do, the opposite opinion, I 
 would suggest that even if the witness was correct, he anticipates a 
 hazard too remote to be much apprehended : for it is well known that 
 the chances that one shot will strike exactly where a previous one 
 had hit, are very slight. 
 
 " The Keokuk, an ironclad vessel, but not built upon the plan 
 of the monitors, was almost immediately disabled, having fired but 
 three guns at the enemy; and the Ironsides, a much stronger and 
 better armed ship, although she escaped serious injury, no doubt 
 owed this to the temporary means employed to strengthen her before 
 going into action, and to the care exercised in keeping her at a great 
 distance from the enemy's guns. 
 
 "That this distance was maintained is apparent from the testi- 
 mony of the fleet captain, who stated in substance, that when the 
 order was signalled for the monitors to retire from the conflict they 
 all passed the Ironsides m rnoving out. This shows that . they were 
 inside of her and much closer to the enemy's batteries ; and how 
 much nearer may be inferred from his cross-examination, in which he 
 
418 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 states that twenty minutes may have elapsed before the last of the 
 monitors passed by. They engaged the batteries within six hundred 
 yards, and it need hardly be suggested, that no ship not constructed 
 upon their plan could have lived under the heavy fire to which, at 
 that distance, they were subjected. 
 
 I here close what I have thought it well to say concerning this 
 attempt by Rear. Admiral DuPont to justify his inaction and failure 
 by attacking that system of war vessels which has already, in my 
 opinion, given us a more effective fleet than is possessed by any 
 other nation. A judicious use of these vessels might have transmit- 
 ted his name with honor far into the future. An assault upon the 
 system can but recoil upon the assailant. From me it needs no de- 
 fense. Time and battle will but confirm the opinions I have ex- 
 pressed concerning it, whilst its adoption by the nations of the world 
 will bear unfailing testimony to the great skill and foresight of its 
 contriver. 
 
 " With these remarks I submit my case to the just consideration, 
 
 of this honorable Court. 
 
 6 6 Very respectfully, 
 
 (Signed) " Alb an C. StimerSj 
 
 " Chief Engineer, United States Navy. 
 "Naval Lyceum, New York, October 19, 1863." 
 
 The next day, October 20, the court met for its last session and 
 added the following finding to its record : 
 
 " The court having diligently and fully inquired into the mat- 
 ters embraced in the specifications of charges in this case, hereby re- 
 port that, in their opinion, there is no necessity or propriety for fur- 
 ther proceedings in the case." 
 
 Rear Admiral DuPont was an eminent and capable naval officer 
 of the old school, but of too long service and of too fixed ideas to 
 yield before a development that entirely upset all the naval methods 
 of his lifetime, and by standing in the way of the march of progress, 
 instead of gracefully stepping aside and admitting the competence 
 of a mechanical generation, he was run over and humiliated by a 
 power more potent than he had imagined. In a time of peace when 
 the public is indifferent to the navy and its advancement the con- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 419 
 
 servative opinions of its veteran officers usually prevail and prevent 
 changes in methods or material that involve any great departure 
 from what has existed so long as to become custom, but in time of 
 war sentiment and dogma must yield to practical utility, and the 
 irresistible power of public opinion will always force this submission. 
 Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Fox, was from his own training 
 probably the most competent official connected with the Navy De- 
 partment during the war to judge of the characteristics of the 
 officers of the navy. In a letter written by him to John Ericsson 
 in 1864 he summed up in the following manner the actual attitude 
 of Eear Admiral DuPont towards the new iron -clad war- vessels : 
 
 4 4 He is of a wooden age, eminent in that, but in an engineer- 
 ing age behind the time. You were always opposed to attacking 
 forts, but DuPont despised the vessels and the brain that conceived 
 them." 
 
 The u old school " of navalism means a great deal unknown to 
 the officers of the present generation if all the testimony of the past 
 may be depended upon. A very curious condition of affairs was 
 allowed to grow up in our navy during that long period of compara- 
 tive inactivity, interrupted only by the Mexican War, which inter- 
 vened between the end of the last war with Great Britain and the 
 outbreak of the rebellion. " The commodore of the period was an 
 august personage who went to sea in a great flag-ship, surrounded 
 by a conventional grandeur which was calculated to inspire a becom- 
 ing respect and awe. As the years of peace rolled on, this figure 
 became more and more august, more and more conventional. The 
 fatal defects of the system were not noticed until 1861, when the 
 crisis came, and the service was unprepared to meet it. 551 Sur- 
 rounded thus with much of the pomp and dignity of a court and in- 
 vested with what some of the admirers of that old regime have been 
 pleased to call "kingly power," it is no wonder that the average 
 commodore lost sight of his true relation to the civil head of the 
 navy and, unconsciously perhaps, came to regard him as merely a 
 secretary, in fact as well as in title, interposed somewhat unneces- 
 
 1 Professor J. R. Soley, in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War: Vol. I, p. 628. 
 
420 
 
 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 sarily between himself and the chief executive. Instances are not 
 lacking of commanders-in-chief of squadrons abroad ignoring or 
 mis-interpreting orders sent them<from the department, and there is 
 at least one case on record of a commodore issuing an order, upon 
 taking command of a squadron in a remote part of the world, abol- 
 ishing all regulations of the Navy Department except such as had 
 been approved by the President. 
 
 Under these influences and surroundings Samuel F. DuPont had 
 acquired step by step his naval education and beliefs through all the 
 monotonous years from a midshipman in 1815 to within two num- 
 bers of being the senior rear admiral in 1863. The sentiments ex- 
 pressed by him in his correspondence with the Secretary of the Navy 
 are therefore not surprising, although they would be actually start- 
 ling if attempted at the present day. When the court of inquiry had 
 finally disposed of the Stimers case, DuPont, under date of October 
 22nd, broke the silence that he had observed since being detached 
 from his command and sent a letter to the department that is one of 
 the most instructive documents ever made public, its expressions pro- 
 viding us with a perfect mirror of the mind of the old navy. A few 
 of them are repeated as illustrative examples. 
 
 " It is with profound regret that I perceive in your despatch of 
 the 26th of June a reiteration of the charges and reproaches of previous 
 despatches and in your silence since, during a period of three months, 
 a resolution not to recall them. My last hope of justice at the hands 
 of the department is therefore extinguished. 
 
 66 If I have failed in my duty I am liable to trial, but insulting 
 imputations in official despatches are grave wrongs, perpetrated on 
 the public records to my permanent injury. 
 
 " The remedy which the law would afford me against a superior 
 officer indulging in the language of your despatches does not exist 
 against the civil head of the department. 
 
 6 ' I was aware of the visit of the Assistant Secretary to 
 Charleston, but I learn with surprise from your despatch that, 
 without a commission in the navy, he commanded the expedition 
 which witnessed the bombardment of Sumter without relieving it. 
 
 " I have no desire to question the power of the department to 
 relieve me at its discretion, but its order of the 3d of June assigns 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 421 
 
 causes which do not exist, and ascribed to me opinions which I had 
 neither expressed nor entertained." 
 
 Secretary Welles, after a delay of about two weeks, replied to 
 this letter without resentment, reviewing the whole subject at great 
 length and giving reasons in justification of the course pursued by 
 the department that were considerate, even if not necessary. The 
 general tone of the communication impresses one as conveying 
 fatherly sorrow rather than the expression of offended authority, the 
 only passage in it that may fairly be considered harsh being the 
 following review of DuPont's operations at Charleston : 
 
 u You disapproved of the occupancy of the harbor, yet I am 
 not aware that you ever caused or attempted to have a reconnois- 
 sance of the obstructions or any examination of the harbor made 
 before the attack, nor am I aware that you have ever offered an 
 excuse for this omission. After the attack was made you were dis- 
 satisfied with the Ironsides — dissatisfied with the monitors — 
 dissatisfied with Chief Engineer S timers, against whom you pre- 
 pared charges and desired that he might be arrested and sent to you 
 for trial, he having expressed his surprise that. you should abandon 
 the assault on so brief an effort — dissatisfied with Surgeon Kershner, 
 whom you court-martialed for a similar offense — dissatisfied with 
 Mr. Fulton, the special agent of the Post Office Department, for 
 his criticisms on your movements and acts — dissatisfied with the 
 President for his telegram, and dissatisfied with the department for 
 not more promptly and formally acknowledging and publishing 
 your reports. 
 
 "If these complaints and reports, wherein the admiral of the 
 squadron devoted so large a portion of his time to his personal 
 matters and so little towards marshalling his force for the occupa- 
 tion of the harbor of Charleston and the capture of the city, were 
 not received with the patience to which they were entitled, it was my 
 misfortune. I do not deny that it would have been more accept- 
 able to the department to have witnessed the zeal manifested in 
 hunting down newspaper editors, engineers, and surgeons, directed 
 against rebel enemies and to the destruction of their works. 55 
 
 This correspondence terminated the controversy and also con- 
 
422 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 eluded Bear Admiral DuPont's active participation in the executive 
 administration of the operations of the Navy Department, for he 
 remained unemployed, on waiting orders, until his death, which 
 occured in June, 1865, soon after the close of the war. It was the 
 fault of the system under whose influence his life had been passed 
 rather than from any personal short-coming of his own that the last 
 years of his life were embittered. "There was no more accom- 
 plished officer in our naval service than Admiral DuPont, no man 
 of nobler personality, but he was the very incarnation of naval 
 exclusiveness and prejudice against innovation, and the inlroductioxi 
 of the monitors into our navy gave a shock to his sensibilities from 
 which they never recovered. It may be that he was expected to 
 accomplish with them more than was possible in his attack upon 
 Charleston, but he was disposed to exaggerate their deficiencies and 
 to criticise them in a spirit of unfriendliness that arrayed against 
 him the active hostility of their champions." 1 
 
 *W. 0. Church, Life of John Ericsson; Yol. II., p. 64-65. 
 
CHAPTEE XXIV. 
 
 ' ' In the beauties of the lilies Christ was born beyond the sea, 
 With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me ; 
 As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free ; 
 
 While God is marching on." 
 Julia Ward Howe; Battle-hymn of the Republic. 
 
 1864.-— The Civil War, Continued— Confederate Successes in the Use of Torpedoes 
 — Blowing up of the Sloop-of-War Housatonic — Minor Naval Operations — 
 Boiler Explosion on the Chenango — The Kearsaege-Alabama Fight — The 
 Great Battle in Mobile Bay— Loss of the TECUMSEH-Capture of the Privateer 
 Florida by the Wachusett — The Gunboat Otsego sunk by a Torpedo— 
 First Att ack on Fort Fisher. 
 
 NAVAL operations during 1864 were marked by a number of 
 minor disasters and by several decisive victories, the general 
 results of the year being most favorable to the reputation of the ser- 
 vice. The first mishap of the year occurred to the small side-wheel 
 steamer Underwriter, prominently identified with the service of 
 holding possession of the North Carolina Sounds during the two 
 preceding years. About 2 a. m. February 2nd this vessel, while 
 lying at anchor in the Neuse River near ITewburn, was boarded in 
 the dark by a force of over one hundred men in boats and over- 
 powered after a resistance of fifteen minutes in which her com- 
 mander, Acting Master Westervelt, was killed, and the crew, num- 
 bering only forty people all told, became prisoners of war. After 
 taking off the prisoners and plundering the vessel she was set on 
 fire and destroyed. Acting Third Assistant Engineer George E. 
 Allen and twenty-two of the men escaped in a peculiar manner due 
 to the haste of the enemy and the courage and presence of mind of 
 Mr. Allen. They were all driven into one boat, the last to shove 
 off from the Underwriter, and were soon surprised to hear the 
 guard in charge of it hailing the boat ahead for assistance, it appear- 
 ing that in their hurry to get away from the ship the Confederates 
 had all embarked in the first boats, leaving only two to go in the 
 last one, in which were over twenty prisoners. Quickly realizing 
 
 24 
 
424 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the situation, Mr. Allen snatched the cutlass from the belt of the 
 guard near him and thus made himself master of the boat, the other 
 guard jumping overboard and swiming for another boat which had 
 turned back. By hard pulling on the part of the men, Mr. Allen 
 safely conducted his captured boat to the Federal fortifications at 
 Newbern and at daylight reported with his party on board the Lock- 
 wood, lying at that place. The other officers and the remainder of 
 the crew became prisoners of war. 
 
 About 9 o'clock the evening of February 17th a Confederate 
 u david," as the nearly immersed cigar-shaped torpedo boats of the 
 enemy came to be called from the name of one of the first of them, 
 just as monitor became a generic term, approached the sloop-of-war 
 
 Confederate " david, " or torpedo boat. From a drawing by Second Assistant 
 Engineer W. S. Smith for a report of Bear Admiral Dahlgren. 
 
 Housatonic, lying on the outer blockade off Charleston, and was not 
 discovered until so close as to explode a torpedo under the Housa- 
 tonic, sinking her. Ensign Hazeltine, Captain's Clerk Muzzy, and 
 three men were drowned, all others of the ship's company saving 
 themselves by taking to the rigging, which remained above water, 
 the boats of the Canandaigua rescuing them soon afterward. The 
 torpedo boat itself also went to the bottom. This disaster was due 
 to the excellence in the use of torpedoes which had been arrived at 
 by the Confederates, they, in the absence of ships to carry on naval 
 operations, being forced to wage war with these weapons then novel 
 and unusual. The use of torpedoes was by no means a new thing, 
 but it was a practice rather abhorrent to the minds of trained fight- 
 ing men, and owed its development by the naval officers of the 
 South to necessity rather than desire. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 425 
 
 One of the first successful uses of the torpedo in the Civil War 
 was the blowing up of the iron-clad gun- boat Cairo in the Missis- 
 sippi Eiver in 1862, by a Confederate naval officer who had been 
 taught less furtive methods of warfare in the old navy, and who 
 was so doubtful of the propriety of the mode of attack directed by 
 him that he described his feelings, when he saw that the Cairo was 
 actually going to sink, as much the same as those of a schoolboy at 
 seeing serious results follow from something begun in sport. The 
 sentiment in the navy regarding torpedoes at that time is well shown 
 by some comments of Rear Admiral Farragut, who, reporting to 
 the department in May, 1864, that he intended to make use of them 
 to be on an equality with his enemy, felt it necessary to excuse 
 himself by explaining: 
 
 66 Torpedoes are not so agreeable when used on both sides; there- 
 fore I have reluctantly brought myself to it. 
 
 u I have always deemed it unworthy of a chivalrous nation, but 
 it does not do to give your enemy such a decided superiority over 
 you. 5 5 
 
 In the hands of the Confederates torpedo warfare was consider- 
 ably advanced and torpedoes became the most formidable weapon 
 against which our naval vessels had to contend, as well as the cause of 
 the greater part of the disasters suffered by the Federal navy during the 
 rebellion. The present high development of torpedoes as a weapon 
 for naval warfare may be directly traced to the impetus gained by its 
 successes during the Civil War, which not only illustrated its great 
 possibilities but also overcame any chivalric objections to its use 
 which may have been formerly entertained by naval officers. 
 
 The evening of April 18th another u david" passed through the 
 iron-clad blockade line off Charleston and made for the big frigate 
 Wabash lying in the outer line. In this case, however, it was dis- 
 covered in time for the Wabash to get under way and man the bat- 
 tery, her fire either destroying or driving off the small but much- 
 feared adversary. On the sixth of May the ferry gunboat Commo- 
 dore Jones while near Four Mile Creek in the James River ran upon 
 a moored torpedo and met with utter destruction, about one-half of 
 her crew being either killed or wounded. The next day the gunboat 
 
426 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Shawsheen while searching for torpedoes near Turkey Bend in the 
 same locality fell a victim to exposed machinery and was destroyed 
 by a battery suddenly unmasked in the woods, the first shots from 
 which disabled her by exploding the steam drum and breaking the 
 walking-beam of the engine. The officers and crew became prisoners 
 and the vessel was burned by her captors. 
 
 A daring expedition, although on a small scale, was conducted 
 in March by Acting Master Champion of the Pawnee, who, with the 
 tug gunboat Columbine commanded by Acting Ensign Sanborn, and 
 a party of volunteers from the Pawnee, proceeded up the St. Johns 
 River in Florida, captured two steamers, a large quantity of cotton, 
 provisions, and army supplies, and returned safely to the ship after 
 having been for two weeks in the enemy's country and penetrated 
 the river over two hundred miles. The volunteer party from the 
 Pawnee consisted of Second Assistant Engineer Alfred Adamson, 
 Third Assistant Engineer Arthur Price, an acting master's mate, and 
 twelve men, all embarked at first in a launch towed by the Columbine, 
 but transferred the second day to a steamer, the General Sumter, they 
 had captured in Great Lake George. Two days later the Sumter en- 
 countered and captured the steamer Hattie in Deep Creek and con- 
 verted her into a transport for carrying cotton, machinery, and other 
 contraband of war seized at the river stations visited. When taken, 
 the Hattie was found disabled by the Confederates, who in abandon- 
 ing her had carried off all the valves of the feed and other pumps 
 about the engines and boilers, but the ingenuity of Messrs. Adamson 
 and Price overcame this defect and soon restored the steamer to a 
 useful condition. Without any means of doing better, they hastily 
 made valves of wood which were found to answer the purpose and 
 
 enabled the vessel to do service until time permitted more permanent 
 repairs. 
 
 Two months' later in the same river the Columbine met the fate 
 that had overtaken so many of the purchased steamers with exposed 
 machinery and fell into the hands of the enemy. She was attacked 
 by a battery hidden in the underbrush along the bank and almost at 
 the first fire rendered helpless by a shot cutting the main steam pipe, 
 her surrender following as the natural result of her inability to move 
 into a position to use her guns or get out of the range of fire. Her 
 people were taken prisoners and the enemy burned their prize with- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 427 
 
 out taking time to remove anything of value. The senior engineer 
 of the Columbine was referred to in the following complimentary 
 manner in the commanding officer's report of the disaster: " I take 
 great pleasure in recommending to your favorable notice the conduct 
 of Acting Third Assistant Engineer Henry J. Johnson, who coolly 
 performed his duty until the engine became disabled, when he ren- 
 dered me the most valuable assistance on deck. ' ' Mr. Johnson and 
 his assistant, Mr. George Whitney, acting third assistant engineer, 
 had a most miserable time for several months after capture, being 
 moved about to various prison pens, jails and workhouses, and 
 forced to mix with felons imprisoned for all sorts of crimes. 
 
 A frightful disaster occurred on board the new double-ender 
 Chenango when she first sailed from the city where she was built. 
 This vessel, on the 15th of April, left New York, under the com- 
 mand of Lieutenant Commander T. S. Fillebrown, bound for Hamp- 
 ton Roads; while passing between Forts Hamilton and Lafayette her 
 port boiler suddenly exploded blowing up the deck, killing twenty- 
 five of the crew and wounding ten others, all four of her engineers 
 being among the killed. A court of inquiry held at the Brooklyn 
 navy yard found that the disaster was caused by a defective vein in 
 the iron in the boiler, and that no blame or want of vigilance could 
 be ascribed to any officer of the vessel. The chief engineer, Mr. 
 Joseph N. Cahill, first assistant engineer, IT. S. Navy, was particu- 
 larly exonerated, he being known as one of the most careful and 
 cautious officers in the service. The Shenango belonged to the Sas- 
 sacus class of double-enders and was built by J. Simonson, Green- 
 point, Long Island, the engines and boilers being supplied by the 
 Morgan Iron Works, New York. The boilers were of the Martin 
 vertical water-tube type and may have been defective in bracing as 
 well as material, as another of them had exploded with fatal results 
 on the Lenapee of the same class when steam was raised in it at the 
 contractor's works. 
 
 Besides the naval court of inquiry as to the accident, it was also 
 investigated by a coroner's jury which found the cause to be defective 
 material and fixed the blame upon the person or persons responsible 
 for the construction of the boilers. The responsibility narrowed 
 down to Second Assistant Engineer S. Wilkins Cragg, who as an 
 assistant to a general engineer superintendent had been stationed at 
 
428 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the Morgan Works in special charge of the Chenango's machinery, 
 and he was dismissed the service by the Secretary of the Navy, who 
 cited the finding of the coroner's jury as the reason for his action. 
 Owing to the haste with which vessels were built in those days and 
 the constant pressure always bearing upon the contractors to hurry 
 their work along, Mr. Cragg proved that he was unable to control 
 the nature of the work under his inspection and that his dismissal 
 was unjust. About two years later he was restored to the navy, and 
 a few years afterward resigned. In after years he was a prominent 
 figure in Paris in connection with the street improvements of that 
 city. 
 
 On the morning of June 2nd the U. S. Steamer Victoria chased 
 ashore, captured and set on fire a large British steamer named 
 Georgianna McCaw trying to run the blockade into Wilmington, on 
 which occasion an engineer officer of the Victoria greatly distingu- 
 ished himself, as shown by the following extracts from the report of 
 the commanding officer: 
 
 U I immediately ordered the first and second cutters to board 
 and fire her — the former under command of Acting Master's Mate 
 William Moody, the latter under charge of Acting Third Assistant 
 Engineer Thomas W. Hineline. 
 
 66 On their arrival on board they found that two boats with their 
 crews had escaped to the shore. They, however, succeeded in cap- 
 turing twenty-nine of the crew, including the captain and most of the 
 officers, together with three passengers. They fired her in several 
 places, and she continued to burn until 10 a. m., when she was 
 boarded from the shore. 
 
 u At daylight Fort Caswell and the adjacent batteries opened 
 fire upon our boats with shot and shell, which compelled them to re- 
 turn without accomplishing her destruction. 
 
 66 I would add, sir, that too much credit cannot be awarded to 
 Acting Master's Mate William Moody and Acting Third Assistant 
 Engineer Thomas W. Hineline for their perseverance and energy 
 displayed, and their cool and gallant conduct while under fire of the 
 enemy. ' ' 
 
 For this exploit the acting master's mate was made an acting 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 429 
 
 ensign, and Mr. Hineline advanced to the grade of second assistant 
 engineer, the following letter being sent him by the department on 
 the 22nd of July, 1864: 
 
 " Sir: For your cool and gallant conduct under fire of the 
 enemy as mentioned by Acting Master Everson commanding U. S. S. 
 Victoria in his report of the attempt to destroy the blockade-runner 
 Georgianna McCaw, you are hereby promoted to the grade of acting 
 Second Assistant Engineer in the navy of the United States, on tem- 
 porary service. 
 
 u Very respectfully, 
 
 " Gideon Welles." 
 
 The capture of the Water Witch in Ossabaw Sound on the 3rd 
 of June, 1864, has been referred to in an earlier chapter, but is 
 worthy of further comment on account of a peculiar question regard- 
 ing the conduct of her chief engineer in the affair. The Water Witch 
 was boarded while lying at anchor by a large force of the enemy, 
 who, in the extreme darkness of the night, got close aboard before 
 being discovered and gained the deck before the crew could be assem- 
 bled to repel them. The commander of the vessel, Lieutenant Com- 
 mander Austin Pendergrast, reported afterward that his crew showed 
 no disposition to defend the ship and gave as a reason for this very 
 remarkable behavior that the men were dissatisfied because the most 
 of them were kept on board after their time of enlistment had ex- 
 pired. Such defense as was made was against great numerical odds 
 by a few of the men and some of the officers, the hero of the occa- 
 sion and most formidable combatant being Acting Assistant Pay- 
 master Luther Billings, who was subsequently recognized by pro- 
 motion for his gallantry. 
 
 With the hope of swamping the enemy's barges alongside, the 
 ship's engines (side-wheels) were started, but soon stopped at the 
 demand of a Confederate officer who enforced his order with a re- 
 volver. Lieutenant Commander Pendergrast referred to this in his 
 report as an exhibition of cowardice on the part of the engineers 
 and charged the loss of the ship against them in the following 
 words : 4 ' Had they obeyed my orders to work the engine, the 
 enemy would have been unable to board us ; but, so far from fight- 
 
430 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ing the rebels, they surrendered at the first summons, and thereby 
 lost the ship. ' ' The engineers on their part called attention to the 
 fact that they were unarmed and claimed that the appearance of the 
 enemy in the engine-room led them to believe that the deck had 
 been already carried. Just how an unarmed man, engineer or not, 
 is to resist an order given by an armed enemy in battle is not at all 
 apparent. Instead of charging the disaster to the cowardice of the 
 engineers it seems that a more liberal and logical view of the matter 
 would place the blame upon an organization that compelled them to 
 go into action unarmed, when the nature of their duties were such 
 that they might at any moment be called upon to fight and when 
 their inability to do so might result in the loss of the ship, as the 
 commanding officer reported was the case in this instance. 
 
 Besides the misbehavior charged against him at the time of the 
 capture, the senior engineer of the Water Witch, Samuel Genther, 
 acting first assistant engineer, was reported by his commanding offi- 
 cer for "disgraceful conduct" while held as a prisoner of war, in 
 that he asked to be released from confinement oii the ground that 
 he did not fight and as a non-combatant should not be made to suffer 
 the consequences of war. Mr. Genther was a volunteer officer of 
 less than two years' service, the greater part of which had been 
 passed on the Water Witch, and it may be that he had been led to 
 believe that he, as a staff officer, was simply a civil employe and a 
 non-combatant, and he may have been sincere in asserting his claim 
 to release from captivity. It was unfortunate for him, however, 
 that he could not have had a time of peace in which to pronounce 
 himself a non-combatant, for it availed him nothing under the living 
 conditions of war : the enemy refused to liberate him, and the Navy 
 Department, as soon as he was exchanged, summarily dismissed 
 him from the service for his part in the surrender of the Water Witch 
 and for u un-officer-like conduct" while held as a prisoner of war. 
 
 The duel between the U. S. sloop-of-war Kearsarge and the 
 Confederate war-steamer Alabama on Sunday the 19th of June^ 
 1864, was one of the most gratifying events of the Civil War, not 
 alone from the fact that it resulted in removing from the surface of 
 the ocean the scourge and terror of American commerce, but 
 because circumstances made it practically a competitive test to 
 destruction of the systems of ship, engine and gun building and 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 431 
 
 management in the American and British navies. The two ships 
 were as evenly matched in size, armament and crew as could pos- 
 sibly be expected of vessels built and armed in different countries, 
 their relative proportions being as follows: 
 
 ALABAMA. KEARSAKGE. 
 
 Length over all 220 feet 214 feet 3 inches. 
 
 Length on water-line, 210 " 198 " 6 " 
 
 Beam 32 " 33 " 10 " 
 
 Depth, of hold 17 " 16 " 
 
 Tonnage 1,150 1,031 
 
 The Alabama was full bark-rigged with very lofty spars, her 
 main especially being so tall that it had come to be recognized as a 
 sign of danger to American skippers in all seas, and this gave her 
 the appearance of being a much larger vessel than the Kearsarge, 
 which at that time was fitted with disproportionately low and small 
 masts and carried no spars above the topsail yards. The armament 
 of the Alabama consisted of one Vll-inch Blakely rifle; one VIII- 
 inch shell-gun, and six long 32-pounders; all British guns. That 
 of the Kearsarge was two Xl-inch smooth-bore guns; one 30- 
 pounder rifle, and four short 32-pounders; all American guns. The 
 Alabama went into action with 149 officers and men in her crew, a 
 majority of her men being British subjects, and the Kearsarge had 
 163 all told. With the exception of eleven persons of inferior 
 ratings this ship's company was composed of native-born citizens of 
 the United States, the most of them being seamen and mechanics 
 from the coast and workshops of JSTew England. 
 
 The magnificent discipline and courage displayed by the 
 Kearsarge ] s men; the question of the chain armor; the conduct of 
 the British yacht Deer hound; the wild firing of the Alabama and 
 the deadly precision of that of the Kearsarge, with other familiar and 
 often-told incidents of the fight need not be gone over here, but 
 instead a few comments will be made upon some other features of 
 the combat not usually brought into prominence in the historical 
 accounts. One of these points is the assumed superiority of the 
 gunners of the Alabama, her commander, Semmes, being quoted in 
 the London Times a few days after the fight as saying that he ex- 
 pected his trained British gun- captains to make short work of the 
 volunteers of the Kearsarge. It is true that the gun's-crews of the 
 
432 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Federal ship, divisional officers as well as men, were volunteers^ 
 but they were anything but recruits as the term usually signifies. 
 The Kearsarge had been in commission for more than two years 
 under a well organized and liberally administered system of naval 
 discipline, that length of time being more than sufficient to convert 
 almost any class of recruits into thorough men-of-war's-men. The 
 material in this case happened to be of intelligence to start 
 with, and after thirty months of constant training aboard ship had 
 arrived at a state of competence and familiarity with their duties 
 that left absolutely nothing to dread from the products of British or 
 any other system of naval training. Just such volunteers as tjiese 
 manned our ships in the war of 1812, and will man them in the 
 next naval war. 
 
 The circling tactics observed by the two ships during the fight 
 were forced by Captain Winslow of the Kearsarge to prevent his 
 antagonist from approaching the neutral three-mile limit off shore. 
 His ability to thus determine the order of battle was due to the 
 superiority of his engineer's department, and to that alone, for had 
 the Alabama possessed the greater speed she could have compelled 
 the fight to be maintained on parallel courses leading shoreward, as 
 pointed out in Winslow 5 s report of the battle. The Alabama was 
 built with special reference to speed both as a steamer and as a 
 sailer and was supposed to be much the superior of the Kearsarge 
 in both capacities, Captain Semmes, again, being authority for the 
 statement that he expected to have a decided advantage in the 
 matter of speed when he went into action. With the weaker motive 
 power, the Kearsarge owed her superior performance to her engine- 
 room force which was made up of intelligent and capable young 
 American mechanics, who had been trusted to carry out the details 
 of their duties without captious interference, and who consequently 
 had arrived at a point so near perfection that when the hour of battle 
 came the performance of the machinery exceeded all previous 
 records and made the Kearsarge the better ship. 
 
 The Kearsarge' s machinery was built by the well-known firm of 
 Woodruff & Beach, Hartford, Connecticut, the contract price for it 
 being $104,000. The ship itself was built at the navy yard, Kit- 
 tery, Maine. The machinery was well made and excellent for its 
 kind, although not designed with any special reference to speed, 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 433 
 
 and its fine condition after thirty months of service is the best pos- 
 sible proof of the zeal and capability of the engineers who had 
 charge of it. An Englishman, Mr. Frederick Milnes Edge, who 
 published a pamphlet account of the battle soon after it occurred, 
 was so impressed with the evident care exhibited by the condition 
 of the machinery of the Kearsarge that he wrote: 
 
 u I have not seen engines more compact in form, nor appar- 
 ently in finer condition — looking in every part as though they were 
 fresh from the workshop, instead of being, as they are, half through 
 the third year of the cruise." 
 
 Mr. Cushman, the chief engineer of the ship, was a veteran of 
 the old navy well qualified to train the new hands which the war 
 had brought into the service; thesfour assistant engineers belonged to 
 the regular service but had entered on account of the existence of 
 war and consequently had no more naval experience than the volun- 
 teer deck officers of their ship, but that, as the event showed, was 
 quite sufficent for both classes. The Kearsarge went into action 
 with her fires raked perfectly clean and bright, the furnace draft 
 forced by artificial means, and the safety valves lashed down, under 
 which conditions she fought at her utmost speed throughout the en- 
 gagement, her decks trembling under the feet of the crew from the 
 vibration of the engines and the roar of the fires. The senior 
 assistant engineer, Mr. Badlam, was stationed in charge of the 
 engines; Mr. Miller, the next engineer in rank, had charge of the 
 boilers; Third Assistant Engineer Sidney L. Smith was on the spar 
 deck with the fire-hose company, and the junior, Mr. McConnel], 
 was stationed at the engine-room signal-bell. In the report of the 
 chief engineer the conduct of these four officers and of the men of the 
 engine-room force was especially referred to as being cool, self- 
 possessed and efficient. The same was true of the whole ship's 
 company, for the action was fought with the same deliberation and 
 lack of excitement that had characterized the daily drills. 
 
 The detailed report of the conduct of officers and men contains 
 the following relative to the engineer's department : 
 
 "The engineer's division was admirably and efficiently con 
 
434 
 
 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 ducted, under the command of Chief Engineer W. H. Cushman. 
 Sidney L. Smith and Henry McConnell, third assistant engineers? 
 were stationed on deck, and their conduct came immediately under 
 my observation. It was distinguished by coolness and vigilance. 
 The other assistants, Mr. W. H. Badlam and Mr. F. Miller, 
 were on duty in the engine and fire-rooms, and, judging from the 
 prompt manner in which the orders from the deck were executed, I 
 know that their duties were creditably performed.' 5 
 
 The Alabama fired about three hundred and seventy times but 
 only twenty-eight of her shots struck the Kearsarge, and they did 
 her no serious harm ; only three of her men were wounded, one of 
 whom, William Gowin, subsequently died. The Kearsarge fired one 
 hundred and seventy-three times, the most of her projectiles finding 
 the mark : about forty men were killed and wounded on the Ala- 
 5ama, and the ship was dreadfully cut to pieces before she sank. 
 Her engines were disabled by a shell which exploded in a coal 
 bunker, completely blocking the engine-room with coal and wreck- 
 age and wounding two assistant engineers. Another shell alone was 
 reported by prisoners to have killed and wounded eighteen men and 
 disabled a gun. Ten of the shots fired from the Kearsarge were from 
 a 12-pounder howitzer and performed no part in the sinking of the 
 Alabama. 
 
 4 'Two quartermasters were put in charge of this gun with 
 instructions to fire when they were ordered ; but the old salts, little 
 relishing having nothing to do when their shipmates were all so busy 
 commenced peppering away with their pea-shooter of a piece, alter- 
 nating its discharges with vituperation of each other. This low- 
 comedy by-play amused the ship's company, and the officer of the 
 division good-hum or edly allowed the farce to continue until the 
 single box of ammunition was exhausted." 1 
 
 One other incident of the fight cannot be told too often to cor- 
 rect a popular error regarding the supposed narrow escape the Kear- 
 
 1 From a popular account of the battle by Mr. Henry McConnell, cashier of the 
 Kensington National Bank of Philadelphia ; Mr. McConnell was the assistant en- 
 gineer of the Kearsarge stationed at the engine-room signal hell. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 435 
 
 sarge had from destruction. A 100-pounder shell was found lodged 
 in her stern-post after the battle and has been exhibited at one of 
 the navy yards ever since with a section of the stern-post, where it 
 has been regarded with awe by a whole generation of visitors. At 
 the World's Columbian Exposition this same piece of the stern-post 
 with the shell still lodged in it was one of the most attractive ex- 
 hibits on the model battle-ship and was seen by upwards of three 
 million people. It is currently believed that if this shell had ex- 
 ploded, the Kearsarge and not the Alabama would have gone to the 
 bottom of the English Channel, and people, according to their de- 
 gree of piety, ascribe the miraculous escape to luck, Providence, or 
 the direct intervention of the Almighty. The truth is, however, 
 that this shell struck the counter of the Kearsarge at least twenty feet 
 from the stern-post and would have exploded then, where the dam- 
 age would have been slight, had it possessed any explosive power, 
 for it was a percussion shell. After striking, it glanced, scoring the 
 planking for about ten feet, then passed through the air some ten 
 feet more and finally embedded itself in the stern-post, its final 
 impact doing some damage by starting the transom frame and 
 binding the rudder so that four men were required thereafter to 
 work the wheel. 
 
 The most sanguinary and important naval battle of the Civil 
 War was the battle in Mobile Bay the morning of August 5, 1864. 
 The fleet under command of Rear Admiral Farragut stripped for 
 action much the same as was done more than two years before pre- 
 paratory to passing the forts below New Orleans. Superfluous 
 boats, spars, etc., were taken out of the ships and anchored off 
 shore or left at Pensacola, some of the ships thus disposing even of 
 their lower yards and topmasts. The plan of lashing a small vessel 
 to the unexposed side of a larger one to carry her past the fort in 
 case of serious damage was again adopted, and at daylight the morn- 
 ing of the 5th the vessels designated for the attack moved up the 
 bay to their work, the pairing and order of advance, together with 
 the names of commanding officers and chief engineers being as 
 follows : 
 
 ' Brooklyn, Captain James Alden ; Chief Engineer Mortimer 
 ^ Kellogg. 
 
 * Odorora, Lieutenant Commander C. H. Greene ; Acting First 
 Assistant Engineer W. W. Shipman. 
 
436 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 'Hartford (flag), Captain Percival Drayton ; Chief Engineer 
 Thomas Williamson. 
 
 I Metacomet, Lieutenant Commander Jas. E. Jouett ; First Assist- 
 ant Engineer James Atkins. 
 
 r Richmond, Captain Thornton A. Jenkins ; Chief Engineer 
 Jackson McElmell. 
 "I Port Royal, Lieutenant Commander B. Gherardi ; First Assist- 
 ant Engineer Fletcher A. Wilson. 
 
 ' Lackrwanna, Captain J. B. Marchand ; First Assistant Engineer 
 Jas. W. Whittaker. 
 ^ Seminole, Commander Edward Donaldson ; Acting First Assist- 
 ant Engineer Claude Babcock. 
 
 r Monongahela, Commander J. H. Strong ; Chief Engineer George 
 F. Kutz. 
 
 ' Kennebec, Lieutenant Commander Wm. P. McCann ; Second 
 Assistant Engineer L. W. Robinson. 
 
 ' Ossipee, Commander Wm. E. LeRoy ; Acting Chief Engineer 
 
 James M. Adams. 
 | Itaska, Lieutenant Commander George Brown ; Second Assistant 
 
 Engineer John L. D. Borthwick. 
 
 r Oneida, Commander J. R. M. Mullany ; Chief Engineer William 
 H. Hunt. 
 
 * Galena, Lieutenant Commander Clark H. Wells ; First Assistant 
 Engineer William G. Buehler. 
 
 Four monitors, two of the Ericsson type and two of the Edes 
 Mississippi "turtle-back" type, were already inside the bar and 
 near Fort Morgan with orders to move along with the head of the 
 column between the leading ships and the fort, in the following 
 order : 
 
 Tecumseh, Commander T. A. M. Craven ; Chief Engineer John 
 Faron. 
 
 Manhattan, Commander J. W. A. Nicholson ; Acting Chief Engi- 
 neer C. L. Carty. 
 
 Winnebago, Commander T. H. Stevens ; Acting Chief Engineer 
 Simon Shuitice. 
 
 Chickasaw, Lieutenant Commander Geo. H. Perkins ; Acting Chief 
 Engineer Wm. Rodgers. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 437 
 
 Six small gunboats, the Pembina, Pinola, Sebago, Tennessee, 
 Bienville, and Genesee, were advanced into the shoal water off 
 Mobile Point somewhat to the rear of Fort Morgan for the purpose 
 of disconcerting by their fire the batteries of that fortification, but 
 owing to some confusion of orders or misunderstanding they an- 
 chored so far away that their fire was ineffective and they are not 
 usually credited with having participated in the battle. 
 
 About 6.30 a. m. the line was well up towards the fort, the 
 four monitors being close into the shore, and the formation for 
 battle was being perfected, the first shots at the fort being fired at 
 that time by the Tecumseh. A few minutes past seven the fort 
 opened on the leading ship, the Brooklyn, and immediately there- 
 after the action became general between the fort, the leading ships 
 and the monitors. In this firing the Tecumseh did not take part, for 
 after having fired the first two shots to scale her guns she had 
 loaded with steel bolts and the heaviest charges of powder allowed, 
 to be in readiness to engage the iron- clad ram Tennessee then emerg- 
 ing from behind Fort Morgan. At 7. 30 a. m. the Tecumseh was the 
 foremost vessel in the line, being off the starboard bow of the 
 Brooklyn, and was steadily advancing, intent only upon getting 
 into action with the Tennessee, when her destruction came with 
 awful suddenness by the explosion of a torpedo underneath her, 
 from the effects of which she went to the bottom with her gallant 
 commander and the greater part of her crew within less than half a 
 minute. The swiftness of her destruction may be comprehended 
 from the following extract from a lecture by an eye-witness, Chief 
 Engineer Harrie Webster, U. S. Navy who as an assistant engineer 
 was in the turret of the Manhattan in charge of its turning gear, 
 only two hundred yards distant from the Tecumseh. 
 
 "A tiny white comber of froth curled around her bow, a tre- 
 mendous shock ran through our ship as though we had struck a 
 rock, and as rapidly as these words flow from my lips the Tecum- 
 seh reeled a little to starboard, her bows settled beneath the surface, 
 and while we looked, her stern lifted high in the air with the pro- 
 peller still revolving, and the ship pitched out of sight, like an 
 arrow twanged from her bow." 
 
 The Tecumseh went into action with seven line officers, includ- 
 
438 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ing the commander, six engineers, one surgeon, one paymaster, a 
 pilot, and ninety -eight enlisted men. Of these, three line officers, 
 the pilot, and seventeen men were saved, all others losing their 
 lives by drowning or concussion. With the exception of one coal- 
 heaver the entire engine-room force of six officers and thirty- seven 
 men was annihilated, the majority probably by shock, as the sur- 
 vivors reported that the torpedo exploded under the middle of the 
 ship and blew the bottom about the machinery spaces to pieces. 
 The chief engineer, Mr. John Faron, had left a sick bed in the hos- 
 pital at Pensacola at his own urgent request to go on board his 
 vessel to take part in the battle. He had been in the regular navy 
 since 184:8 and was a popular and capable officer whose death, re- 
 sulting from his own devotion to duty, was greatly deplored. The 
 engineers who perished with him were F. S. Barlow, Elisha Harsen, 
 and H. S. Leonard, all second assistants in the regular service, and 
 Thomas Ustick and Henry Bitter, acting third assistants. 
 
 The tragedy of the Tecumse/i occasioned, some confusion in the 
 fleet, during which the Brooklyn faltered and Farragut went ahead 
 of her with the Hartford and led the fleet successfully past the fort, 
 but not without great loss, the fire from the fort and from the Con- 
 federate gunboats lying above doing great injury to several of the 
 ships. The broadside fire of the larger vessels was so terrific that it 
 eventually practically silenced the fort and the column was able to pass 
 almost unmolested after the first vessels had gone by. Last in the line 
 came the evil-starred Oneida, and by the time she arrived abreast 
 of Morgan the gunners had returned to their batteries and opened 
 upon her with great fury. Able naval critics say it was a mis- 
 take to put a small vessel last in line, for had one of the large 
 broadside ships like the Richmond or Brooklyn brought up the 
 rear she could have successfully protected herself by her own fire 
 and forced the enemy to again abandon his guns. As it was, the 
 Oneida was roughly handled. 
 
 ' 6 A rifled shell passed through her chain armor, and entering 
 the starboard boiler exploded in it, causing sad havoc among the 
 firemen and coal-heavers of the watch below, all of whom were 
 either killed outright or fearfully scalded by the escaping steam. 
 Another shell, exploding in the cabin, cut both wheel-ropes, while 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 439 
 
 a third set fire to the deck above the forward magazine ; yet, en- 
 couraged by the chivalric bearing of their commander, and the fine 
 example set them by the executive officer and the chief engineer of 
 the ship, the crew of the Oneida behaved splendidly. The relieving 
 tackles were instantly manned, the fire put out, and connection be- 
 tween the starboard and port boiler cut off; and the Oneida, assisted 
 by the Galena, went on as if nothing unusual had happened on 
 board of her, her guns never for a moment ceasing to respond to the 
 really terrific fire of the enemy." 1 
 
 The chief engineer of the Oneida, Mr. Wm. H. Hunt, was 
 badly scalded in both arms but remained at his post and succeeded 
 in restoring order from the frightful scene following the explosion 
 of the shell in the boiler, his gallantry being so conspicuous that it 
 was made a subject of special reference in the report of the com- 
 manding officer. Mr. Fitch, the senior assistant engineer of the 
 ship, was severely scalded and likewise distinguished himself by his 
 gallant behavior, the chief engineer reporting of him in the follow- 
 ing terms: "Too much praise cannot be accorded to First Assistant 
 Engineer K. A. Fitch, who, at the time of the injury to the boiler, 
 displayed the utmost courage and coolness, remaining at his station 
 in the execution of his duties until he was so badly scalded by the 
 escaping steam as to be rendered almost helpless. 3 ' Acting Third 
 Assistant Engineer Nicholas Dillon was also commended in the 
 official reports for extraordinary services, he having undertaken the 
 duties of Mr. Fitch when that officer succumbed to his injuries. 
 
 After getting past the fort with the assistance of the Galena, 
 the Oneida came up to the scene of a fierce combat between the 
 Monongahela and some of the other Union vessels and the Tennessee 
 just in time to be assailed by the latter, which, by chance rather 
 than design, got under the Oneida's stern and raked her fore and aft 
 with a broadside, destroying boats and rigging, dismounting a gun, 
 crippling the mainmast, and injuring some of her people, among 
 them Commander Mullany, who lost an arm. At this stage of the 
 
 1 Commodore Foxhall A. Parker, U. S. Navy— The Battle of Mobile Bay; 
 page 31, 
 
 25 
 
440 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 fight the Confederate gunboats had become so annoying that Farra- 
 gut signaled his own small vessels to cast loose from their consorts 
 and attack them ; to which order the Metacomet, Port Royal, Kenne- 
 bec and Itaska at once responded. The first named, under Lieuten- 
 ant Commander (now Rear Admiral) James A. Jouett, got off first 
 and captured the Selma which she singled out and pursued. One of 
 the enemy's gunboats, the Morgan, escaped to Mobile; the other, 
 the Gaines, was run on shore in a sinking condition near the fort, 
 set on fire by her own people and abandoned. The Tennessee with- 
 drew from the fight and anchored under the guns of the fort, still 
 practically uninjured and without a man in her crew disabled. The 
 Federal vessels proceeded about four miles up the bay and anchored, 
 piping to breakfast after hastily clearing away the wreckage and 
 other more dreadful evidences of the conflict. 
 
 Scarcely had the men gathered about their mess-cloths when the 
 Tennessee was observed to be under way, standing up the bay for 
 another fight. The struggle that ensued between her and the whole 
 Federal fleet was a desperate one and lasted more than an hour before 
 the Tennessee was literally worried into a surrender. She was pelted 
 with the broadsides of the large ships, which, however, did her little 
 damage, and was rammed in succession by . the Monongahela, Lacka- 
 wanna and Hartford. The three monitors, especially the Chickasaw, 
 hung close aboard her and with their heavy projectiles succeeded in 
 crushing her casemate armor, jamming her port- shutters, and finally 
 reduced her to the necessity of surrendering. Her admiral, Frank- 
 lin Buchanan,lost a leg; two of her men were killed ; two assistant engi- 
 neers, the pilot, and five men were wounded. The Selma inher fight 
 with the Metacomet had eight men killed and seven wounded before 
 she surrendered. The Confederate loss in Fort Morgan was not 
 known. 
 
 The last shot fired by the Tennessee entered the berth deck of the 
 Hartford, exploded and killed five men and wounded eight, one of the 
 latter being Third Assistant Engineer William G-. McEwan, stationed 
 there in charge of the fire-hose company, who lost his right arm. 
 The sword which he wore was torn from him and hurled across the 
 deck, the sword-belt being driven under a mess-chest where it was 
 found several days later. Mr. McEwan was a volunteer officer, and 
 as he had distinguished himself in the earlier part of the engagement, 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 441 
 
 Admiral Farragut made a special report of his case, recommending 
 that he be rewarded by transfer to the regular service, which was 
 done and a comfortable pension assured him for life by his being 
 placed on the retired list. 
 
 The Tennessee was the largest and most formidable war vessel 
 built within the limits of the Confederacy during the war, her 
 length being 209 feet ; extreme beam 48 feet, and average draft of 
 water 14 feet : her general design was like the Atlanta, of which a 
 sketch has appeared in a former chapter, except that her hull was 
 built whollv of wood. The casemate was of the same form but 
 heavier, the wooden backing of yellow pine and oak being 22-J 
 inches thick, sheathed with 5 inches of iron plating on the sides and 
 after end and 6 inches forward. This iron plating, it is worthy of 
 remark, was made from the ore at the iron furnaces in Atlanta, the 
 Southerners having begun when too late to pay attention to the 
 mechanic arts so necessary for prosperity in peace and absolutely 
 vital in war. The Tennessee was built at Selma, Alabama, from 
 timber that was standing at the time the work was begun in 1863, 
 and was gotten down the Alabama river and into Mobile bay only 
 by overcoming many difficulties. Her battery of six Brooke rifles 
 was also of southern manufacture. Her weak point was the ma- 
 chinery, which was not built for her and was wholly unfit for a war 
 vessel : it was taken out of a river steamer named Alonzo Child, and 
 consisted of two high-pressure engines with cylinders 24 inches in 
 diameter by 7 feet stroke placed fore and aft in the vessel and driving 
 an idler shaft by means of spur gearing ; this shaft in turn driving 
 the screw-shaft through the medium of cast iron bevel-gears. 
 Steam was supplied by four horizontal return-flue boilers 24 feet 
 long, placed side by side with one furnace under the whole of them. 
 The vessel was found by a board of survey immediately after cap- 
 ture to be fit for service, and was taken into the navy at the ap- 
 praised value of $595,000. Admiral Farragut's original report of 
 his prize was accompanied with some excellent drawings and 
 sketches of her, made by second assistant engineers Isaac DeGraff 
 of the Hartford and Robert Weir of the Richmond, from whose 
 sketches and the accompanying description the data of this para- 
 graph have been obtained. 
 
 Fort Morgan surrendered to the combined army and naval 
 
442 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 forces about two weeks after the battle, the other fortifications in 
 Mobile Bay having surrendered or been abandoned within a day or 
 two after the Federal fleet forced its way in. 
 
 The casualties in the fleet during the morning battle were as 
 follows: 
 
 KILLED. WOUNDED. 
 
 Hartford 25 28 
 
 Brooklyn 11 43 
 
 Lackawanna 4 35 
 
 Oneida 8 30 
 
 Monongahela 0 6 
 
 Metacomet, , 1 2 
 
 Ossipee 1 7 
 
 Richmond 0 2 
 
 Galena 0 1 
 
 Octorora 1 10 
 
 Kennebec , 1 6 
 
 Tecumseh 92 0 
 
 Total 144 170 
 
 The above list of casualties does not include two men killed 
 and two wounded immediately after the battle on the small armed 
 steamer Phillippi which rashly attempted to follow the fleet in and 
 was destroyed by the guns of the fort. 
 
 The loss in the British fleet at the battle of Copenhagen, some- 
 what similar in character to that of Mobile, was 253 killed and 688 
 wounded. 
 
 Early in October the U. S. sloop-of-war Wachusett, Com- 
 mander Napoleon Collins, was in the harbor of Bahia, Brazil, in 
 company with the Confederate privateer Florida, which vessel the 
 Wachusett was seeking. Determined to seize or destroy her, even 
 if the neutrality of the port had to be violated, Collins assembled 
 some of his officers and announced he was going to get under way 
 with the apparent intention of going to sea and when near the 
 Florida to suddenly change the course, run into and sink her, or 
 carry her by boarding. To this plan the chief engineer objected on 
 the ground that the shock of the collision might start the boilers 
 from their seatings and create ruin by rupturing the steam pipes and 
 boiler connections; an objection that appeared so reasonable in the 
 absence of anyone with experience in ramming that the intention 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 443 
 
 would probably have been abandoned had not one of the assistant 
 engineers announced that he would voluntarily take charge of the 
 machinery, allow everyone else to leave the engine and fire-rooms 
 just before the collision and remain there alone himself to take the 
 consequences of an accident and to reverse the engines if required 
 after the shock. The Florida was run down according to the plan 
 of the commander but owing to some error in handling the Wachu- 
 sett the blow struck was a glancing one and did no great damage to 
 the privateer beyond carrying away her mizzen mast and main 
 yard; a few volleys of small arms were exchanged, and upon the 
 discharge of two of the Waehusetfs broadside guns the Florida 
 surrendered and was towed out of the harbor by her captor, the 
 Brazilian forts firing upon the Wachusett as she went out. A seri- 
 ous complication grew out of the affair, ending in an apology made 
 by our government to Brazil and an agreement to return the Florida 
 to the port where she had been captured. While preparing at 
 Hampton Roads for the voyage to Brazil the Florida sank, appa- 
 rently by accident, and the return was never made. 
 
 The assistant engineer who courageously volunteered to risk 
 his life in the engine-room of the Wachusett when ramming was 
 first proposed was George Wallace Melville, who was destined to 
 make his name famous at a later period by the exhibition of heroism 
 and fortitude of such superior quality as to extend far beyond his 
 own individuality and reflect world-wide honor upon the naval ser- 
 vice and the nation to which he belonged. Previous to the capture 
 of the Florida, Mr. Melville, knowing that his commander was 
 desirous of gaining information as to the battery of the enemy's 
 ship, attempted to get on board of her in civilian's clothing in the 
 guise of a visitor, but was suspected and driven off when he went 
 alongside; this act in itself was far from commonplace, for the pen- 
 alty for being in the enemy's country or on board an enemy's ship 
 in plain clothes in time of war was well known by him. 
 
 The evening of December 9th the double-ender Otsego, of the 
 Sassacus class, ran upon two torpedoes near Jamesville in the Roan- 
 oke river and was sunk, no lives being lost, she being at the time a 
 member of a flotilla sent up the river to attack a battery at Rainbow 
 Bluff. Lieutenant Commander H. N. T. Arnold, the commanding 
 officer, in his report of the disaster expressed his indebtedness to 
 
444 
 
 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the senior engineer, Mr. Samuel C. Midlam, who had advised and 
 rigged a torpedo net over the bow which had saved the Otsego on 
 two occasions by picking up torpedoes, but was unavailing against 
 those that finally destroyed the vessel, they being struck when she 
 had rounded to preparatory to anchoring and were not under the 
 bow. 
 
 Towards the close of the year a great fleet was assembled under 
 commander Rear Admiral Porter to co-operate with General B. F. 
 Butler in an attack upon the immense fortification known as Fort 
 Fisher on Federal Point at the mouth of Cape Fear Eiver, .North 
 Carolina. An unusual method of making war was attempted on 
 this occasion, the result of which exposed both Porter and Butler to 
 considerable ridicule, although General Butler is said to have been 
 the instigator of the plan. An accidental explosion of a powder 
 magazine in England not long before had done so much damage 
 to the neighborhood that the idea was conceived of adopting the same 
 means to "paralyze " the enemy or destroy his works by concus- 
 sion. Accordingly the purchased screw gun-vessel Louisiana, 
 which had cost only $35,000 in 1861 and which was pretty well 
 worn out by constant service in the North Carolina Sounds, was 
 converted into a torpedo on a huge scale by being loaded with an 
 enormous quantity of powder arranged in cells to facilitate its sim- 
 ultaneous explosion. The crew of this dangerous floating mine 
 consisted of Commander A. C. Ehind, Lieutenant S. W. Preston, 
 Second Assistant Engineer Anthony T. E. Mullen, Master's Mate 
 Paul Boyton, and eleven enlisted men, all volunteers from Rhind's 
 vessel — the Agawam. Admiral Porter referred to the mission in 
 his report of the attack as " the most perilous adventure that was, 
 perhaps, ever undertaken," and recommended that the officers be 
 promoted, adding that no one in the squadron expected them to 
 survive their expedition. 
 
 The night of December 23rd the powder vessel was towed by 
 the Wilderness to a position close to Fort Fisher where she was 
 cast off, and, though literally a powder-magazine from stem to 
 stern, proceeded under her own steam to within three hundred yards 
 of the beach under the walls of the fort, trusting to her disguise as 
 a blockade runner to escape being fired into. Having anchored un- 
 molested, the fuzes and fires for causing the explosion were lighted, 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 445 
 
 these having been arranged, as stated in Commander Rhind's 
 report, by Engineer Mullen. The crew then left her by boat and 
 boarded the Wilderness, that vessel going at full speed to join the 
 fleet lying twelve miles off shore to be beyond reach of the catas- 
 trophe that was supposed would occur. The explosion took place 
 about 1.30 a. m. and resulted in nothing; »the men in Fort Fisher 
 were disturbed in their sleep, but no one was paralyzed and no 
 earthworks were jarred down, while the sound was scarcely heard 
 by the people in the fleet intently listening for it. The reward 
 extended to Mr. Mullen for his share in this perilous enterprise was 
 very considerable, he receiving a week later the following letter 
 from the Secretary of the Navy: 
 
 " Sir: As a recognition of your gallant conduct while attached 
 to the Louisiana you have permission to present yourself to Chief 
 Engineer Newell, at the navy yard, Philadelphia, for examination 
 for promotion." 
 
 Mr. Mullen at the time was number ninety-two on the list of 
 second assistant engineers and his advancement to the foot of the 
 list of first assistants, which occurred immediately after his examin- 
 tion, is belived to be the most substantial reward for distinguished 
 service conferred upon any staff officer during the war. 
 
 On the 24th of December Admiral Porter gave the fort a ter- 
 rific battering and silenced its fire for the time being, but no im- 
 portant results followed, as General Butler with the troop-ships was 
 not present to follow up the advantage. Porter's attacking force 
 consisted of thirty-seven war- vessels, ranging in size from the New 
 Ironsides, Wabash, Colorado and Powhatan down to the double- 
 enders Sassacus and Mackinaw and the ninety-day gunboats Una- 
 dilla and Chippewa, lying in semi-circular formation about one mile 
 distant from the fort. The monitors Monadnock, Mahopac, Saugus 
 and Canonicus were in this line of battle and did great execution 
 with their heavy guns, they and the New Ironsides lying a consid- 
 erable distance inside the one-mile circle. Besides the fighting 
 line, a reserve division of nineteen vessels, all purchased merchant 
 steamers, laid further out and did not take part in the attack. 
 
 The army transports came the next day (Christmas) and the 
 
446 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 attack was renewed, General Butler landing some of his troops 
 under cover and with the assistance of about twenty of the gun- 
 vessels. He, however, gave up the plan of attack and began re- 
 embarking his men after a few thousands had landed, an act that 
 was the beginning of a bitter controversy between him and Admiral 
 Porter, prosecuted by both as long as they lived. During the two 
 days the vessels suffered slightly from the fire of the fort, their 
 chief losses resulting from the bursting of their own guns, about 
 forty-five officers and men being killed or wounded by the bursting 
 of 100-pounder Parrott rifles. On the Juniata Lieutenant Wemple 
 and four men were killed and Paymaster Caspar Schenck and seven 
 men wounded in this manner; the Ticonderoga had eight killed and 
 eleven wounded in the same way, and similar casualties, but with 
 less loss of life, occurred to the MacMnaw, Yantic and Quaker 
 City. An idea of the magnitude of the bombardment may be 
 gained from the fact that the Colorado alone fired 1,569 heavy shot 
 and shell the first day, and 1,226 the second day. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 "And in this faith all went to their posts, prepared to obey the regulations and 
 'fight courageously' ; for in a fleet where a single shell, exploding in the boiler of a 
 vessel, might subject the engineers and firemen to the fate of Marsyas, or a tor- 
 pedo or infernal, exploding under her bottom, send all hands journeying ad astra>no 
 one could properly be considered a non-combatant. 
 
 1864. The Civil War, Continued — Naval Operations in the North Carolina Sounds — 
 The Earn Albemaele— Sinking of the Southfield and defeat of the MiAMi — 
 The Naval Battle of May Fifth — Disaster to the Sassacus and Heroism of Her 
 Chief Engineer — Daring Attempt of Enlisted Men to Destroy the Kam— Her 
 Destruction by Lieutenant Wm. B. Cushing — Battle and Capture of Plymouth 
 — Prize Money Distributed on Account of the Albemarle. 
 
 J\ /I ENTION has been made in former chapters of the capture of 
 
 i V 1 the fortified posts of the enemy on the large sounds lying 
 along the coast of North Carolina, and of the constant warfare waged 
 thereafter by the national war- vessels to keep possession of what 
 had been gained. This region, remote as it was from the battle- 
 grounds of the war, was not of direct importance to the Federals as 
 its occupation could have little influence upon the strategical com- 
 binations being attempted by the armies in distant fields, but from 
 the Confederate point of view the situation was very different : to 
 them possession of these waters and ports meant a source of supply 
 from Europe, through the medium of blockade-runners, of clothing, 
 medicines, arms, and other war supplies, and an almost perfect facil- 
 ity for the distribution of such articles by the many rivers and 
 water-ways flowing into the sounds. Thus it was that Federal pol- 
 icy required the seizure and retention of the entire region, while 
 Confederate necessity dictated a ceaseless struggle for the recovery 
 ' of what had been lost early in the war. 
 
 The theatre of operations for the naval force assigned to this 
 region was geographically small compared with the vast extent of 
 coasts and rivers on which the navy had to operate, but it was large 
 enough to afford very active employment, and to require the most 
 
 u Commodore Foxhall A. Parker — Battle of Mobile Bay. 
 
448 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 untiring vigilance on the part of the small force there charged with 
 the task of maintaining Federal supremacy. The vessels sent into 
 these waters were called gunboats by courtesy, but as a rule they 
 were a sorry lot, being generally purchased steamers, tugs, or ferry- 
 boats, armed and protected as well as the nature of their construc- 
 tion would allow ; owing to the shallowness of the waters in which 
 they had to operate they were necessarily small, until the naval 
 authorities had had time to build light-draft gunboats, when some 
 side-wheel vessels of considerable size, built expressly for war pur- 
 poses, found their way into the Sounds. The officers and men 
 aboard these vessels were a fair average of the naval personnel of the 
 period ; mostly volunteers, with a sufficient sprinkling of the u old 
 navy" both before and abaft the mast to keep alive the traditions 
 and maintain the rigid rules of the service. Volunteer officers 
 commanded some of the smaller vessels, and the subordinate officers, 
 almost without exception, were of this class ; the larger vessels were 
 generally commanded by regular officers, usually lieutenants and 
 lieutenant-commanders. Chief among these C. W. Flusser and 
 W. B. Cushing, whose exploits read like romance as well as his- 
 tory. They were young : Flusser, who at times was the ranking 
 officer in the Sounds, was about thirty, while Cushing was barely of 
 age, yet these young men accepted responsibilities and dealt with 
 questions of policy, the gravity of which in these days would be re- 
 garded great enough to warrant consideration by a board of 
 admirals. 
 
 The conditions of service were vastly different from the ideal 
 naval life of the period; the lofty frigate shortening sail and clearing 
 for action under the blue sky far out in the open sea was then the 
 symbol of naval glory, but no such spectacle cheered the eyes and 
 exalted the patriotism of the seamen in the Carolina Sounds. The 
 vessels were small and smoky, redolent of engine oil and innocent 
 of snowy canvass and glistening spars; instead of the bright blue sea 
 of nautical romance, one saw the muddy, shallow flood of the far- 
 reaching inland waters, stained and poisoned by the ooze and vege- 
 table decay swept down by numberless rivers and creeks from the 
 surrounding swamps. The great peninsula between Pamlico and 
 Albemarle Sounds was a vast miasmatic swamp; stretching north- 
 ward from Albemarle Sound lay the deadly and forbidding morass 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 449 
 
 known as the Dismal Swamp, the character of which was the type of 
 all the region lying adjacent to the Sounds. Thomas Moore, who 
 visited this country early in the present century, described the physi- 
 cal characteristics of more than one locality in verse that will live as 
 long as our language lasts, and in his beautiful ballad called u The 
 Lake of the Dismal Swamp, 5 ' narrating the legend of the youth who 
 sought the firefly lamp and white canoe of his dead sweetheart in the 
 depths of the Dismal Swamp, occurs the two following verses 
 that describe the nature of the region far better than can any prose 
 description: 
 
 • c Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds,—- 
 
 His path was rugged and sore; 
 Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds, 
 Through many a fen where the serpent feeds, 
 
 And man never trod before! 
 
 il And when on earth he sank to sleep, 
 
 If slumber his eyelids knew, 
 He Jay where the deadly vine doth weep 
 Its venomous tear, and nightly steep 
 
 The flesh with blistering dew! " 
 
 Such, then, were the surroundings of the Federal naval force 
 and the material with which it had to operate; both doubtless very 
 different from what the officers would have wished. But the country 
 was at war, and whatever came to each man's hand that was he ex- 
 pected to do with all his might; so these gentlemen abandoned the 
 dreams of romantic adventures at sea acquired by reading Cooper 
 and the " Naval Monument," took off their white gloves, folded 
 away their finely starched linen, and went to work. 
 
 Frequent attempts by the Confederate land forces to recapture 
 the sea-ports of the Sounds came to naught, principally on account 
 of the persistent presence of the little gunboats and their wicked 
 habit of throwing large quantities of shells into the woods where the 
 attacking forces were making their approaches; while boat attacks 
 and guerilla warfare from the shore directed at the gunboats simply 
 served to provoke Flusser and the other commanders to more vigor- 
 ous hostility, and to teach the enemy that the gunboats would have 
 to be assailed with some more powerful weapon than had yet been 
 
450 
 
 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 used against them if they were to« be defeated. The fruit of this les- 
 son was the Albemarle. She was built in the woods at Edward's 
 Ferry on the Roanoke River, some forty miles above Plymouth, by 
 Mr. Gilbert Elliot, from designs prepared by John L. Porter, who 
 was the chief constructer of the Confederate navy, and who had been 
 a naval constructer in the United States navy before the war. The 
 hull was shallow, or " flat, "built of eight-inch by ten-inch frame 
 timbers sheathed with four-inch planking; near the water-line the 
 sides were protected by a belt of several courses of squared logs 
 bolted on longitudinally, and corresponding in some degree to the 
 armor belt worn by modern battle-ships; the bow was developed for- 
 ward into a solid oaken beak plated with two-inch iron and tapered 
 to an edge. On the water-line the craft was one hundred and twenty- 
 two feet long (which is sixteen feet less than the length of our mod- 
 ern torpedo boat Gushing), and the breadth of beam was forty-five 
 feet. On the central part of the deck the full width of the boat and 
 sixty feet in length fore and aft stood the superstructure or case- 
 mate; this was of heavy squared timbers inclined at an angle of almost 
 sixty degrees to the vertical, sheathed with heavy planking and two 
 layers of two-inch iron plates; the timbers at the forward part of the 
 casemate were carried up above the flat top high enough to form the 
 framing of a conning-tower of truncated pyramidal form. The corners 
 of the main central structure were cut off, making its deck plan an 
 oblong octagon. Inside the casemate at each end was mounted a 
 100-pounder rifled gun, one a Brooke, the other a Whitworth; each 
 gun was pivoted to fire out of its end port and out of a port 
 on each broadside. The vessel had twin-screws, each screw driven 
 by an engine of only two hundred horse-power. The draft of water 
 when ready for service was eight feet. From this description the 
 Albemarle will be recognized as a typical Confederate war-vessel, 
 differing from the Merrimac, Atlanta or Tennessee in no important 
 particular except that of size. 
 
 In the spring of 1864 the Albemarle was ready for service, and 
 on April 18 she dropped down the Roanoke River to within about 
 three miles of Plymouth ; her engine-power was so feeble and her 
 steering qualities so bad that it was found impossible to keep her in 
 the channel when going ahead with the current, so she came down 
 the river backward dragging chains from her bows. The command- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 451 
 
 ing officer was Captain J. W. Cooke, of the Confederate navy, whose 
 name stood at the head of the list of lieutenants of the old navy 
 when the war broke out in 1861. After anchoring, a lieutenant was 
 sent out to explore the river in the vicinity of Plymouth, he return- 
 ing in about two hours with the report that the river was so ob- 
 structed with piles, sunken vessels, and torpedoes that it would be 
 impossible to pass down. Fires were then banked and port 
 watches set. Mr. Elliott, the builder of the vessel, was on board 
 as a volunteer aide to the captain, and he seems to have been more 
 anxious to see his fabric get into a fight than was anyone else con- 
 nected with her ; he took the pilot, two seamen, and a small boat 
 and proceeded to examine the obstructions with a long pole, finding 
 to his great delight that there was a place near the middle of the 
 river, wide enough for the ram to pass through, where there was 
 ten feet of water ; this was due to a remarkable freshet, the water 
 being higher in the river that night than it had been known to be 
 for many years. He returned to the Albemarle about one o ? clock in 
 the morning and reported his discovery to the captain, who imme- 
 diately resolved to go out. All hands were quietly called, fires 
 spread, and when all was ready she proceeded slowly down the 
 river, being fired on in the darkness by the Union batteries about 
 Plymouth as she passed. 
 
 Meantime, Flusser, in command of the Miami, with the South- 
 field, Geres, and Whitehead in company, had been in action all day 
 of April 18, aiding the garrison of Plymouth in resisting the attack 
 of a large body of Confederates. The Miami was a paddle-wheel 
 gunboat of about seven hundred and thirty tons, carrying six IX- 
 inch guns, one 100-poimder Parrott rifle, and one 24-pounder how- 
 itzer; the Southfield was a ferry-boat, but had a very respectable 
 battery (five IX-inch guns, one 100- pounder rifle, and one 12- 
 pounder howitzer); the Ceres and Whitehead were merely armed tug- 
 boats of less than one hundred and fifty tons each. The Miami 
 and Southfield anchored for the night below Plymouth, the two 
 smaller vessels lying higher up to watch for the ram, which was 
 known to be abroad. In reporting the result of the day's fight- 
 ing, Flusser wrote that night that he expected the ram down at 
 any moment, and that he thought he could whip her. This was his 
 last letter : he had already come within the range of vision of the 
 
452 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 Fates, and she of the open shears was about to close them and sever 
 the thread of his life. 
 
 With the dawn came the Albemarle. During the night the 
 Miami and Southfield had been lashed together, and with the first 
 warning of the coming of the foe, which was given by the Ceres at 
 3:45 a. m., they got under way and steamed up the river at full 
 speed with the intention of ramming. The advantage of this com- 
 bination is not manifest, although the majority of naval writers who 
 have described this affair pass over it without comment, apparently 
 accepting it as a proper arrangement. Admiral Ammen, in his 
 book regarding the naval operations on the Atlantic coast, says that 
 he is at a loss to understand the rationale of lashing two vessels 
 together and using them as a ram. The Albemarle avoided the at- 
 tack by running close in to the southern shore, and then, turning 
 towards mid- stream, taking advantage of the swift current, and 
 using all the steam power she had, she rushed at her antagonists, 
 striking the Miami a glancing blow on the port bow and crushing 
 into the starboard side of the Southfield so far that her beak ap- 
 peared in the fire-room. The Southfield immediately sank, drag- 
 ging the bow of the Albemarle which was tangled in her side, down 
 so far that the forward deck of the ram was deeply submerged, and 
 water poured in torrents through the port-holes in the forward part 
 of the casement. When the Southfield touched bottom she rolled 
 over away from the ram, and this disentangled the vessels and al- 
 lowed the latter to resume an even keel. While this was taking 
 place the Albemarle, being partially between the two Union vessels, 
 was fiercely assailed by the great gun and small-arm fire of both, 
 but she did no firing herself except with small arms. The projec- 
 tiles fired at point-blank range struck fire on the sloping sides of the 
 Albemarle, and flew harmlessly off high up into the air, or were 
 broken in pieces to fly back on the decks of the vessels whence they 
 came. From the engagement of the previous day the guns of the 
 Miami were loaded with shell, and this circumstance proved fatal 
 to her commanding officer. With his usual zeal and courage this 
 officer had personally taken charge of his battery and fired the guns 
 himself, being instantly killed and badly mangled by pieces of the 
 third shell he fired, it having rebounded from the enemy's side and 
 exploded. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 453 
 
 The pressure of the ram between the two Federal vessels had 
 parted the forward lashings, and as the Southfield was sinking the 
 after lashings were cut or cast adrift, leaving the Miami unencum- 
 bered. After getting clear of the wreck of the Southfield the Albe- 
 marle backed off preparatory to striking the Miami, which vessel, 
 at the same time, having swung around to starboard, began back- 
 ing her engines to straighten herself in the current and keep off the 
 bank. 
 
 Acting Volunteer Lieutenant C. A. French, who had been in 
 command of the Southfield, and who with six officers and about 
 thirty men had come aboard the Miami over the stern as his own 
 vessel sank, had now assumed command of the Miami, and know- 
 ing that it would be folly to further resist the ram when the fire of 
 his guns had no effect upon her armor, and where there was not 
 room to avoid her terrible beak, he withdrew to the open water at 
 the mouth of the river, the Albemarle doggedly following for some 
 distance and receiving the fire of the Miami with unconcern. 
 
 Besides the people of the Southfield who got on board the 
 Miami, a few others escaped by boat and were picked up by the 
 Ceres and Whitehead; the remainder got ashore, where some fell 
 into the hands of the enemy, and some ultimately escaped by 
 hiding in the swamps. Flusser was the only person killed on the 
 Miami; but that vessel had one ensign, two assistant engineers, and 
 nine enlisted men wounded, mostly by pieces of her own shells. In 
 the engagements of the two previous days the Ceres had one fireman 
 killed and three assistant engineers, one master's mate, and four 
 men wounded. 
 
 The Albemarle having thus obtained command of the river, 
 preparations were at once made by General Hoke for assaulting the 
 Federal fortifications about Plymouth, which assault was success- 
 fully made the next day (April 20), but not without severe loss, 
 Ransom's brigade alone leaving five hundred killed and wounded 
 men on the field in front of the breastworks east of the town. All 
 day long the Albemarle held the river front and poured shell into 
 the Federal intrenchments. Thus far the Albemarle was a success. 
 She had accomplished the first act of her mission to wrest the waters 
 of North Carolina from the invader, and within the limits of her in- 
 tended field of operations she was the symbol of what men call the 
 
464 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 dominion of the seas. Of the places remaining liable to her attack, 
 Newbern was by far the most important, as the Union forces had 
 recently been making it an important depot and supply station, and 
 even as early as the time with which we are dealing stores were be- 
 ing assembled there in anticipation of the last stages of the grand 
 movement of Sherman's army through Georgia, and then northward 
 through the Oarolinas. So the capture of Newbern was a move of 
 vast importance to the Confederacy, and one to be prevented by the 
 Federals at any cost. 
 
 News of the disaster at Plymouth traveled quickly, and the 
 Navy Department made all haste to get a sufficient force into the 
 Sounds to resist the progress of the Albemarle towards Newbern. 
 One of the vessels hurriedly ordered to the scene of hostilities was 
 the Sassacus, whose movements we will now follow. Lieutenant- 
 Commander (now Rear Admiral) F. A. Roe was in command. The 
 Sassacus left Hampton Roads just before midnight of Friday, April 
 22, and anchored at Hatteras Inlet at 6 the following evening ; on 
 Monday, the 25th, she crossed Hatteras bar, and soon after went 
 aground on a sand-bar a mile inside known as the u Bulkhead, " 
 where she was delayed about twelve hours, and was disabled for a 
 time by the condenser being filled with sand. Once inside the 
 Sounds, she first visited Newbern, then the post on Roanoke Island, 
 and finally, on May 3, went with other vessels up to the vicinity of 
 Plymouth in the western end of Albemarle Sound. 
 
 Captain Melancthon Smith had been selected by the Navy De- 
 partment to assume command of the naval forces in the Sounds, with 
 special orders to devote his energies to the destruction of the Albe- 
 marle. The force he now had with him in Albemarle Sound con- 
 sisted of the double-enders Mattabessett, Commander Febiger; Sassa- 
 cus , Lieutenant- Commander Roe ; Wy aiming. Lieutenant- Com- 
 mander Queen, and Miami, Acting Volunteer Lieutenant French ; 
 the armed ferry-boat Commodore Hull, Acting Master Josselyn, and 
 the little gunboats Ceres and Whitehead, commanded by Acting Mas- 
 ter Foster and Acting Ensign Barrett respectively. The Mattabessetl 
 was the flag-ship. In Captain Smith's order of battle, issued on 
 May 2, the Mattabessett, Sassacus, Wy aiming, and Whitehead, in the 
 order named, were constituted the first or right line of steamers, the 
 Miami being the leader of the second column. A council had been 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 455 
 
 held on board the flag-ship when the vessels were in the vicinity of 
 Roanoke Island and the methods of attacking the ram discussed ; 
 the Department and Rear- Admiral S. P. Lee, who was in command 
 of the North Atlantic blockading squadron, seem to have favored 
 ramming, but Captain Smith was doubtful of this mode of attack, 
 chiefly because of the peculiar construction of the u double-enders, " 
 they having an enclosed rudder in the bow as well as one at the 
 stern. Captain Smith was hopeful of disabling the ram by paying 
 out seines about her, to be caught and wound up in her propellers. 
 In the order of battle it was directed that the vessels should pass 
 alongside the ram as close as possible and pound her with their 
 broadsides, then round to for a second discharge. The Miami, 
 which had a torpedo fitted to her bow, was to seek every oppor- 
 tunity to use it. All vessels were to be ready to throw powder and 
 shell down the ram's smoke -pipe, and also to have the fire-hose 
 ready for throwing water into the smoke-pipe should it be found so 
 capped as to prevent the introduction of powder and shell. Ram- 
 ming was doubtfully referred to, and was left to the discretion of the 
 commanding officers. Rear- Admiral Roe told the writer recently 
 that he took the Sassacus into the action that ensued with the firm 
 intention of ramming, saying that under the circumstances he be- 
 lieved it would be a good trade if he could disable the enemy by 
 u expending his vessel, his crew, and himself." 
 
 At " turn to " after the men's dinner hour on May 5 the Miami, 
 Commodore Hull, Ceres, and army transport Trumpeter got under way 
 from their station in Edenton Bay, and steamed across the end of the 
 Sound with the intention of planting torpedoes in the mouth of 
 Roanoke River. When within a short distance of the buoy at the 
 mouth of the river the Albemarle was discovered coming down, ac- 
 companied by the steamer Cotton Plant laden with troops, and the 
 captured army gunboat Bombshell with coal and stores. The Trum- 
 peter was dispatched as a herald in haste to give warning to the 
 squadron lying about ten miles down the Sound, and the Miami and 
 consorts, in accordance with previous instructions, slowly retired be- 
 fore the foe to take their places in the plan of battle as the second 
 line as before described. 
 
 It was a beautiful day, clear and still, and as the Albemarle 
 emerged from the river and moved slowly down the bay she pre- 
 
 26 
 
456 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 seated a spectacle of concentrated, deliberate power that was viewed 
 by the anxious watchers in the fleet with anxiety and and misgiving, 
 but not with fear. Her iron plates had been covered with grease, 
 and shone and glistened in the sun like the scales of a dragon. For- 
 midable as the Albemarle seemed, it appears that the Boombshell was 
 at first regarded with even more apprehension. She was a steam 
 canal-boat, long and flat, formerly in use on the Dismal Swamp 
 Canal, but had been converted into a river gunboat by the army 
 authorities, and had fallen into the hands of the Confederates at the 
 time they captured Plymouth. Her sides were notched or indented 
 for the reception of a large number of small field pieces, and in the 
 refraction caused by the slanting rays of the hot afternoon sun on the 
 shimmering water this novel craft appeared magnified, distorted, and 
 unreal to the Union naval officers, few of whom had ever seen her 
 before. 
 
 As soon as the ram appeared in the Sound the vessels of the 
 squadron began getting under way to form order of battle to meet 
 her, and in this a delay of about half an hour occurred on account 
 of the unreadiness of the flagship. The chief engineers of all ves- 
 sels in the squadron had received orders to keep their fires in readi- 
 ness for steaming at a moment's notice, which order had been sup- 
 plemented later by another enjoining economy in the use of coal, 
 schooners with a supply of the latter having failed to appear when 
 due. The two orders were successfully reconciled by all the chief 
 engineers, upon whom their execution devolved, except in the case 
 of the Mattabessett, on which vessel an allowance of coal had been 
 fixed by authority superior to the engineer and, as it proved, so 
 small as to prevent the maintenance of the fires in a condition for 
 use. The result was that when the enemy did appear, the Matta- 
 bessett was found wanting, and was indebted only to the slow speed 
 of the enemy for being able to get into her position at the head of 
 the first column before the ram was upon them. After the engage- 
 ment the chief engineer of the MattabesseM, Mr. John T. Hawkins, 
 was suspended from duty for the delay that had occurred, but as he 
 had written a letter to his commanding officer informing him of the 
 insufficiency of the coal allowance, he had reason to believe him- 
 self unjustly treated, and his view was supported by a court of 
 inquiry which acquitted him of all blame in the matter. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 457 
 
 At 4. 40 p. m, the Albemarle opened the battle by firing a 
 Brooke shell, which tore the launch of the Mattabessett into splinters 
 and wounded several men, following it quickly by a second, which 
 did considerable damage to the rigging. The Albemarle being 
 headed directly for the Mattabessett with the intention of ramming, 
 that vessel starboarded her helm and circled around the ram to port, 
 giving her a broadside at very close range as she passed, afterward 
 putting her helm to port to come on around the enemy's stern. As 
 she crossed the wake of the Albemarle she came close up to the 
 Bombshell, fired into that vessel and received her surrender, accord- 
 ing to the official reports. Failing to strike the Mattabessett, the ram 
 turned on the Sassacus, and that vessel narrowly escaped being 
 rammed as she followed the lead of the flag- ship, she pouring in her 
 fire against the iron sides of the enemy as she passed; then, with a 
 port helm, she rounded the stern of the Albemmle, and fired a broad- 
 side into the Bombshell still lying there, which vessel in answer to a 
 hail said she surrendered, at the same time hauling down the Con- 
 federate flag. The Wyahtsing coming on next in line made a move 
 to ram the Bombshell, learning only just in time to avoid striking 
 that luckless craft that she had surrendered. 
 
 There was a controversy afterward as to whether the Bombshell 
 had surrendered to the Mattabessett or the Sassacus, but the weight 
 of evidence from the official reports, viewed at this distance by one 
 who has no interest in the dispute beyond a desire to get at the facts, 
 points to the conclusion that the Sassacus was the captor. When 
 the battle was over, the crew of the Bombshell was on board the 
 Sassacus. The engine-room log-book of the Sassacus records the 
 fact that in the eight to twelve watch that evening an assisant 
 engineer and some engine-room men went on board the prize to take 
 charge of the machinery. Lieutenant Hudgins, who had commanded 
 the Bombshell, when asked about the matter and not knowing that 
 there was any dispute about it, replied readily that he had surren- 
 dered to the second in line, which was the Sassacus. 
 
 As the first column of vessels passed around the starboard side 
 of the Albemarle that vessel kept turning towards them with her 
 helm aport until by the time the Mattabessett and Sassacus had gotten 
 well across her wake she had turned almost around and was headed 
 in the opposite direction, that is, towards the mouth of the river 
 
458 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 whence she came. This turn brought the Mattabessett, which vessel 
 had continued on in her circling course, constantly firing, almost 
 astern, while the Sassacus, thrown considerably out of line by her 
 affair with the Bombshell, was almost abeam of the ram, and at a 
 distance given at from three hundred to five hundred yards in the 
 various reports. Koe saw the chance for which he hoped, and 
 shouted to his navigator, " Can you strike her ?" ' 'Yes," answered 
 Boutelle. "Then go for her!" As before stated, Commander 
 Roe intended to ram if he got a chance, and this intention he had 
 communicated to his officers. Mr. Boutelle, as the navigator or 
 sailing-master, had entered into an understanding with Mr. Hobby, 
 the chief engineer, to inform him should the attempt be made. 
 Accordingly, after ringing the signal for full speed and laying the 
 course for the enemy, he went to the engine-room skylight and 
 shouted down to Hobby that the time had come. 
 
 There was then a pressure of thirty pounds in the boilers, which 
 was ten pounds, or about fifty per cent., more than usually carried ; 
 the steam valves were set to cut off at about half stroke. In order 
 to utilize the full force of the steam, the chief engineer resorted to 
 an expedient known as " gagging " the engine, the hand working- 
 gear being called into play to hold the steam valves open after their 
 automatic closing had been effected by the toes on the rock-shaft. 
 This was a task requiring a quick eye, good judgment and a high 
 order of courage and self-reliance, for an error in working the valves 
 of a fraction of a second at either end of the stroke would have de- 
 feated the object and destroyed the power of the engine by opposing 
 pressure on both sides of the piston, while the danger of disaster in 
 thus driving a heavy engine at an abnormal pressure was great. 
 Mr. Hobby, however, had sufficient self-confidence and nerve to 
 assume all risks involved, and imposed upon himself this dangerous 
 post in order to get the greatest power from his machine and conse- 
 quently the greatest speed from the ship. He thus became the 
 active agent in driving the ship onward, just as an oarsman urges 
 forward a racing boat, except that in his case the power of eight 
 hundred horses followed up each motion of the lever that he con- 
 trolled, and instead of moving a small boat he was giving momentum 
 to a projectile weighing nearly twelve hundred tons with which to 
 strike the enemy. 
 
ACTION BETWEEN THE SASSACUS AND ALBEMARLE. 
 
 May 5th, 1864. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 461 
 
 The Sassacus struck the Albemarle squarely abaft her starboard 
 beam, and in line with the after end of the casemate, with a speed 
 of nine or ten knots, the engines making twenty-two revolutions 
 with thirty pounds of steam. The force of the blow drove the 
 bronze stem of the Sassacus several feet into the timber belt of her 
 antagonist and in all probability started her to leaking. The ram 
 heeled considerably over towards the side on which she had been 
 struck, so much so in fact that a quantity of large stones lying on 
 her after- deck, probably to weigh her down to bring her knuckle 
 into the water, fell overboard, making a great racket as they tumbled 
 and slid across the deck. Hoping to ride her enemy down, the 
 Sassacus kept her engines running ahead at full speed while in con- 
 tact (about thirteen minutes), a furious fire of small-arms being 
 maintained during that period. The constant pressure against the 
 ram considerably abaft her centre of gravity tended to swing her 
 around, which tendency was overcome to some extent by her own 
 motion in going ahead, but eventually the resultant of these two 
 forces so changed the angle between the ships that the starboard 
 battery of each could be used, which advantage was quickly availed 
 of by both; as soon as the Sassacus came under the range of the 
 Albemarle's guns the after one was fired, its shot passing diagonally 
 through the berth- deck, but doing no material damage; this shot 
 was immediately followed by a similar one from the forward gun, 
 which shot, entering the Sassacus abreast of the foremast four feet 
 above the water on the starboard side, crushed obliquely through 
 the side, cutting throught the back of a hanging-knee and leaving 
 the inside of the ceiling about seven and one-half feet abaft where 
 it first struck on the outside. From thence it passed through the 
 throat of the next hanging-knee, through the dispensary and bulk- 
 head, starboard coal- bunker, passing on through the starboard 
 boiler, and, keeping on through the engine-room, cut in two a 
 three-inch stanchion, thence through steerage and wardroom bulk- 
 heads, smashing doors and sideboard, cutting through magazine- 
 screen, when, striking an oak stanchion, — which it splintered, — it 
 glanced at right angles and lodged in one of the starboard state- 
 rooms. 
 
 The havoc wrought in the engine-room by this shot is best 
 told by the engine-room log for the first dog-watch of that eventful 
 day: 
 
462 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 4 'About 6 p. m. she succeeded in getting clear of us and fired a 
 solid shot, which passed through the berth- deck and forward coal- 
 bunker, then entering forward end of starboard boiler seven feet 
 from front and fourteen inches from top, passing out the after end 
 three feet from front and fourteen inches from top, cutting away in 
 its passage stays, T-irons, and dry-pipe and steam and exhaust-pipes 
 for Woodward pump; then passed the length of engine-room between 
 cylinder and condenser, cutting away a three-inch stanchion and dis- 
 charge-water thermometer, and badly bending exhaust unhooking 
 gear; thence through after bulkhead. The rush of steam was in- 
 stantaneous, driving all hands out of the engine and fire-room, kill- 
 ing Thomas Johnson, coal-heaver, instantly and severely scalding 
 First Assistant Engineer J. M. Hobby and the following men." 
 Then follow the names of fourteen firemen and coal-heavers, and 
 some other information, including the statement that the engines 
 continued to run on a vacuum until 6.35 p. m. 
 
 Pandemonium then reigned. The howl of the escaping steam 
 from the overcharged boilers completely drowned all other sounds, 
 even the discharge of the guns, while the steam gathered in a dense 
 cloud over the ship, shutting off her vision so completely that the 
 enemy close alongside could not be seen. The men on deck were 
 bewildered by the sudden calamity and demoralized at the horrible 
 spectacle of their scalded comrades rushing up from below frantic 
 and screaming in agony. Order was finally restored by the officers 
 leading the men to repel boarders on the starboard bow, although 
 there is no record that any attempt was made by the enemy to board . 
 The men being thus reorganized were returned to their guns, and 
 began firing again as soon as the ram could be seen, the first proof 
 to the on-lookers in the surrounding ships that the Sossacus was not 
 destroyed being the bright flash of her guns bursting out of the cloud 
 that hung over her. The annals of naval warfare contain few in- 
 stances of persistence and dauntless courage in adversity that can 
 match this exhibition made by the Sassacus. The interval during 
 which the engines continued to run was availed of to get the ship 
 clear of the enemy and out of the way of the other gunboats so they 
 would be free to attack: in getting clear the starboard paddle-wheel 
 rode over the stern guard of the Albemarle and was " tangled up 
 
APPEARANCE OF BOW OF "SASSACUS" AFTER THE BATTLE. 
 
 EXIT OF SHOT FROM BOILER. ENTRANCE OF SHOT IN BOILER. 
 
464 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 like a cobweb, 5 ? as Admiral Koe expressed it to the writer. The 
 false stem of the Sassaeus was so bent out of line that she steered 
 very badly, and on her subsequent voyage to Hampton Roads she 
 was obliged to steam backward in consequence. 
 
 In the midst of all the horrors before described, the chief en- 
 gineer, although badly scalded, stood with heroism at his post ; nor 
 did he leave it until after the action was over, when he was brought 
 up helpless to the deck. For some reason, which is not clearly 
 stated in any of the reports, it was impossible to cut off the connec- 
 tion between the two boilers, so that steam from the port boiler, 
 rapidly generated by the fierce fires in its furnaces, continued to 
 pour out of the holes in the other boiler, thus maintaining the cloud 
 that hung over the ship and embarrassing her movements ; in this 
 emergency Mr. Hobby saw that the fires must be hauled, not only 
 to stop the out-rush of steam, but also to prevent the complete dis- 
 abling of the ship by burning the sound boiler, not to mention the 
 danger from its possible explosion. By his voice and example, in- 
 jured as he was, he rallied some of his men and led them into the 
 fire-room, where the necessary work was done, he doing a good 
 part of it personally with his scalded hands. So modest was this 
 brave man that in his official report of the engagement he dismisses 
 this incident with the following words : ( 6 The steam so filled the 
 engine and fire-rooms that it was with the greatest exertions on the 
 part of the engineers that the fires were hauled." In those days of 
 war, when all on board a ship were equally exposed to danger, and 
 when all contributed to the fighting qualities of the ship as a unit, it 
 was customary to accord credit for duty well done to all deserving 
 it, irrespective of corps : accordingly we find in the reports of the 
 commander of the Sassaeus that praise for the conduct of Mr. Hobby 
 which is always accorded by one brave man to another who has 
 shared the danger and assisted to his utmost in an endeavor common 
 to both. In the hurried report made at midnight after the battle 
 occurs the following: "The chief engineer, Mr. Hobby, is badly 
 scalded, but most nobly and heroically remained at his post, and 
 saved us from a worse disaster, of explosion to the other boiler 
 and of being helpless." 
 
 In the fuller and more complete report made by Lieutenant- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 465 
 
 Commander Roe the following day, he speaks highly of all his offi- 
 cers, and of the chief engineer in the following terms : 
 
 " To the heroism and devotion of First Assistant Engineer 
 J. M. Hobby the government is probably indebted for the preserva- 
 tion of the Sassacus from a worse disaster. While every one who 
 could was forced to seek safety by flight from the scalding clouds of 
 steam, Mr. Hobby stood at his post by the machinery, and though 
 fearfully scalded himself, he [ cared for his machinery until the 
 engine finally stopped. If it were possible to promote this officer, 
 I earnestly and devoutly beg it may be done, for I consider that it 
 has been amply and professionally won. ?? 
 
 The medical journal of the Sassacus shows that Mr. Hobby was 
 on the sick list for his injuries about three weeks, and that four of 
 the scalded firemen subsequently died. The surgeon attributes the 
 comparatively quick recovery of Mr. Hobby from injuries that were 
 almost as serious as those of any of the men to the rare presence of 
 mind shown by him in covering his burns with oil the moment he 
 received them. A very simple remedy, and one that is well worth 
 remembering. 
 
 As soon as the Sassacus was well clear of her antagonist the en- 
 gagement again became general, and the ram was furiously assailed, 
 especially after the order of battle had been restored and the vessels 
 thus enabled to operate without danger of injuring each other. Shot 
 and shell were poured upon the slooping sides of the enemy; seines 
 were paid out almost encompassing him, but without success, and 
 the Miami tried in vain to use her torpedo, being thwarted in this 
 endeavor by her own slow speed and bad steering qualities. Finally, 
 as twilight approached, the Albemarle headed up the Sound and pro- 
 ceeded slowly to the mouth of the Roanoke Eiver, which she entered 
 never again to emerge from. The extent of her damages has never 
 been satisfactorily known, but it is certain that she was so much in- 
 jured as to be glad to withdraw from the fight, and unwilling to 
 renew it on another day. That the blow from the Sassacus did her 
 considerable damage cannot be doubted; the muzzle of one of her 
 guns was knocked off, although she pluckily continued to use it; 
 several shot and shell were believed to have entered her ports, and 
 
466 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 her plaiting was observed to be much injured. An idea of the ter- 
 rible pounding she received can be gained from the fact that over 
 four hundred and sixty shot and shell were hurled against her at 
 close range, this number not including the expenditures of the 
 Sassaeus, which are not given in the official reports. 
 
 The casualties on the Albemarle, if any, have never been known. 
 Those of the Federals were confined to the three largest double- 
 enders, and were: Mattabessett, two killed, six wounded; Sassaeus, 
 one killed, nineteen wounded; Wyalusing, one killed. Included in 
 the number of wounded here given are the four firemen of the Sas- 
 saeus and one man of the Mattabessett who subsequently died of their 
 injuries. 
 
 The Albemarle returned unmolested to her fastness in the river 
 at Plymouth, and, although she was not conquered, the result of 
 the engagement may be regarded as a Federal victory, inasmuch as 
 the object of the Albemarle was defeated: she had failed to win the 
 supremacy of the Sounds, and Newbern remained safe from her 
 attack. That all of the vessels in Captain Smith's command that 
 were in the engagement performed their share in effecting this re- 
 sult is evident from the official reports; but as the details of this 
 struggle become dim with the lapse of years since the roar of hostile 
 cannon has been heard in Albemarle Sound, there is one point that 
 rises above all others and becomes more and more prominent, and 
 that is that the Sassaeus was the ship that issued boldly forth from 
 the line of battle and threw down the gage of single combat to her 
 powerful antagonist. If praise is due to one ship more than to 
 another we cannot help awarding it to the brave little Sassaeus. 
 
 As soon as possible after the Sassaeus had dropped out of the 
 fight her engineers set to work to repair damages as far as circum- 
 stances would permit. Her engine-room log-book shows that the 
 necessary alterations in the steam connections were completed, 
 water run up in the port boiler, and fires started again in that boiler 
 at 10.45 the same evening, and that at 3.30 the next morning, only 
 about nine hours after the shot had passed through her boiler, the 
 engines were reported ready for service. With the repairs effected 
 by her engineers' force the ship remained in the Sounds on active 
 service for more than a month, always steaming with one boiler, and 
 finally steamed north and went on duty in James River without 
 any more extensive repairs. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 467 
 
 When the reports of this engagement had been received and 
 considered in Washington, many of the officers of the Sassacus were 
 commended by the Navy Department and promoted for gallantry 
 in battle. Acting Masters Muldaur and Boutelle were appointed act- 
 ing lieutenants; Acting Ensign Mayer, who had personally fought 
 the forward pivot rifle, and whose shot was supposed to have been 
 the one that knocked the muzzle off one of the enemy's guns, was 
 made an acting master, and Acting Assistant Paymaster Barton, who 
 had served as signal-officer and aid to the commander during the 
 engagement, was appointed an assistant paymaster in the regular 
 service. Lieutenant-Commander Roe was advanced five numbers in 
 his grade. After reading of the advancement of a number of offi- 
 cers of a whole grade, one naturally wonders that their commanding 
 officer who had led them in the fight, and whose bravery had made 
 their promotion possible, received no greater reward than this; but 
 on this matter the records contain nothing beyond the mere state- 
 ment of fact. 
 
 The chief engineer, who had been freely voted the hero of the 
 occasion by his associates, was overlooked in the distribution of 
 awards and it was not until a year and a half after the battle, the 
 war then being many months ended, that he received the recogni- 
 tion that was his due and was advanced in his grade in accordance 
 with the following notification sent him by the Secretary of the 
 Navy : 
 
 u Sir : By and with the advice and consent of the Senate you 
 are hereby advanced thirty numbers in your grade, to take rank 
 next after First Assistant Engineer Finney, for distinguished con- 
 duct in battle, and extraordinary heroism as mentioned in the report 
 of Lieutenant Commander Francis A. Roe, commanding the IT. S. 
 steamer Sassacus in her action with the rebel ram Albemarle on the 
 5th of May, 1864. I have the pleasure to transmit herewith your 
 warrant, the receipt of which you will acknowledge to the depart- 
 ment. 
 
 6 1 Very respectfully, 
 
 " Gideon Welles, 
 
 ' 'Secretary of the Navy. ? ■ 
 
 The Albemarle remained at Plymouth, inactive but a constant 
 
468 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 menace to the Federals and making necessary the maintenance of a 
 large naval force in Albemarle Sound in anticipation of her again 
 attempting to dispute the supremacy of those waters. A daring 
 attempt to destroy her was made the night of May 25th by 
 some of the enlisted men of the Wyalusing, who conceived an 
 excellent plan of attacking her with torpedoes, and were allowed 
 to try the experiment without any official oversight or direction. 
 The plan, briefly stated, was to get in the river above the ram and 
 float down upon her two large torpedoes joined by a line or 
 bridle, these after getting across her bows — one on either side — 
 to be exploded by means of a hauling line in the hands of a 
 man hidden on shore. The torpedoes, containing 100 pounds of 
 powder each, were carried by the men on a stretcher through the 
 swamps until a proper position was reached, when they were con- 
 nected and one of the men, Charles Baldwin, coal-heaver, as- 
 sumed the really heroic task of swimming down the river with them 
 to guide them upon the Albemarle. The programme was accident- 
 ally interrupted by fouling a schooner, and when Baldwin finally got 
 within a few yards of the ram he was discovered and fired upon, this 
 thwarting the attempt and obliging the men to hide in the depths of 
 the neighboring swamps to avoid capture. Three of them got off to 
 their ships the second day and the other two, -two days later, all hav- 
 ing suffered much from exposure and hunger. The names of these 
 gallant men were John W. Lloyd, coxswain ; Allen Crawford and 
 John Laverty, firemen, and Charles Baldwin and Benjamin Lloyd, 
 coal-heavers. All received the medal of honor prescribed by Con- 
 gress for bravery. 
 
 Late in October Lieutenant William B. Gushing arrived in 
 Albemarle Sound with a large steam launch fitted with a spar tor- 
 pedo, he having some time before been selected on account of his 
 reputation for intrepidity for the perilous undertaking of assailing the 
 ram with this instrument of destruction. The launch with the tor- 
 pedo and all attached gear had been carefully fitted out at the New 
 York navy yard by Chief Engineer William W. W. Wood and First 
 Assistant Engineer John L. Lay, the torpedo being known in the 
 service by the name of the latter, although it is well known that the 
 perfection of its details was the work of Mr. Wood. The crew of the 
 picket launch, besides Lieutenant Gushing, consisted of W. L. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 469 
 
 Howarth, acting master's mate; William Stotesbury, acting third 
 assistant engineer; Samuel Higgins, first class fireman, and Lorenzo 
 Dening, Henry Wilkes and Kobert H. King, landsmen. When 
 ready for the attack this crew was increased by volunteers from the 
 ships of the squadron as follows: Francis H. Swan, acting assistant 
 paymaster; Charles L. Steever, acting third assistant engineer, and 
 Thomas S. Gray, acting master's mate, from the Otsego; William 
 Smith, Bernard Hartley and E. J. Houghton, ordinary seamen, from 
 the Chicopee; Richard Hamilton, coal-heaver, from the Shamrock; and 
 John Woodman, acting master's mate, from the Commodore Hull. 
 With these additions the crew numbered fifteen all told. 
 
 The night of October 27th Gushing set out on. his mission, 
 having the second cutter of the Shamrock with a crew of eleven men 
 and two officers in tow, this boat being taken along with the am- 
 bitious design of capturing the ram by boarding and bringing her 
 out of the river uninjured. When near the ram this part of the pro- 
 gramme was frustrated by discovery and the cutter was cast off and 
 sent back, her crew boarding the wreck of the Southfield on the way 
 down the river and taking as prisoners therefrom four Confederate 
 pickets whose neglect of duty had permitted the boats to pass up 
 close by them without discovery. Without answering the repeated 
 hails from the Albemarle and ignoring the fire of musketry opened 
 upon him and by which Paymaster Swan was wounded, Gushing 
 steamed up the river past the ram, swept around in a circle, and 
 rushed at her bows on, the impact being sufficient to breast in a 
 boom of logs about the vessel and reach near enough to use the 
 torpedo, which was trained into position and the firing line pulled 
 by Gushing, standing on the bow of his boat, just as one of the 
 Albemarleh guns directly overhead was depressed and fired. A 
 large hole was blown in the side of the ram and she sank at her 
 moorings in a short time. 
 
 Refusing the summons to surrender, Cushing told his men to 
 look out for themselves and with them took to the water as their 
 launch swamped from the effects of the explosion. Acting Master's 
 Mate Woodman and Fireman Higgins were drowned; Cushing and 
 Houghton, after much suffering and hardship, regained the squad- 
 ron, and the others were made prisoners. In Lieutenant Gushing's 
 report he made special reference to the coolness and gallantry of 
 
470 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Master's Mate Howarth and Engineer Stotesbury. This daring 
 achievement led to the capture of Plymouth a few days later, 
 removed all apprehension as to the safety of government supplies at 
 Newbern, and released for service elsewhere the large squadron of 
 vessels that had been kept so long in Albemarle Sound to guard 
 against another raid of the ram. Gushing himself received the 
 thanks of Congress and was promoted to be a lieutenant commander, 
 he being at that time only twenty-one years of age, and all the 
 officers who shared the expedition with him were advanced one 
 grade for conspicuous gallantry; the enlisted men were advanced 
 in ratings and all received the medal of honor for distinguished 
 service and bravery. 
 
 Immediately after Gushing 's return with the tidings of the sink- 
 ing of the Albemarle , Commander Macomb, in command of the 
 squadron known as the Naval Division of the Sounds of North Car- 
 olina, moved against Plymouth, but because of sunken vessels in the 
 Roanoke River could not approach close enough to deliver the attack 
 successfully. He then took his vessels by way of a branch outlet 
 into the river above Plymouth and on the 31st of October descended 
 upon that place and captured the enemy's batteries after a severe 
 and well-fought engagement. Besides Macomb's vessel, the Sham- 
 rock, the attacking force consisted of the Otsego, Lieutenant Com- 
 mander Arnold; Wy aiming, Lieutenant Commander Earl English; 
 Taeony, Lieutenant Commander W. T. Truxton, all double-enders, 
 and the armed ferry-boat Commodore Hull, Acting Master Josselyn. 
 The tugs Whitehead, Bazley, and Belle were lashed to the unen- 
 gaged sides of the three first named double-enders in accordance 
 with the tactics established by Farragut at Port Hudson and Mobile. 
 To guard against the distressing casualties and disablement of ships 
 that had occurred in other engagements from boilers being struck 
 by shot, steam was blown off the boilers on the engaged sides of the 
 double-enders and fires in those boilers kept low banked to keep the 
 water warm so that steam could be quickly raised when wanted. 
 All these vessels, and others generally throughout the navy, were 
 fitted by their engineers with appliances for closing the boiler stop- 
 valves from deck, the affair of the Sassacus having demonstrated the 
 necessity for such precaution. 
 
 The battle at Plymouth took place early in the morning of 
 
THE STEAM NAY Y OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 471 
 
 October 31st, and, as before stated, resulted in the capture of the 
 enemy's batteries, the town of Plymouth, and the partly submerged 
 ram Albemarle. The latter was eventually raised and taken to 
 Norfolk, where the material of which the vessel was built was sold 
 for the benefit of the Navy Department. In this battle Commander 
 Macomb's squadron suffered a loss of six men killed and nine 
 wounded, the senior engineer of the Shamrock, Mr. W. H. 
 Harrison, being one of the latter. The control of the ships while 
 under way and in action in the narrow and intricate river put a 
 difficult and responsible duty upon the engineers, which was per- 
 formed with credit, as shown by the following complimentary 
 references in the reports of commanding officers: 
 
 Shamrock: " The engineers' department, under Second As- 
 sistant Engineer W. H. Harrison, was very efficient." 
 
 Otsego: "The precaution taken by Acting First Assistant En- 
 gineer Samuel 0. Midlam (in charge of this vessel's engines) to 
 meet any mishap that might have occurred to her boilers or engine 
 merits my approbation, and the prompt manner in which the whole 
 engine corps performed its duty during the engagement was most 
 satisfactory and creditable to it." 
 
 Wyalusing: " In conclusion, I cannot refrain from mentioning 
 the handsome manner in which the engine was worked, under the 
 supervision of Chief Engineer H. H. Stewart, through the whole 
 engagement, and likewise on the day previous, while passing the 
 narrow bends in Middle river." 
 
 Tacony: " The engineer's department, under its very efficient 
 chief, First Assistant Engineer Thomas M. Dukehart, performed 
 its duties in the most satisfactory manner." 
 
 The reward received by Cushing and his crew in the form of 
 prize money was very considerable, as the prize law directed that 
 when the captured vessel was of superior force to the one making 
 the capture, as was the case in this instance, the whole of the prize 
 money should be distributed among the captors. In 1865 the Navy 
 
472 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Department fixed the value of the Albemarle at a little less than 
 $ 80,000, probably very near her true value, which amount was dis- 
 tributed to the crew of the picket boat or their heirs, but it after- 
 ward transpiring that property, acquired as a result of Gushing' s 
 exploit, of the net value of $282,856.80 had been applied to public 
 use, the case was re-opened by direction of a special act of Con- 
 gress and by virtue of the reappraisal Congress appropriated 
 $202,912.80, the difference between the former award and the new 
 appraisal, which was distributed in 1873. 
 
 The case became very much involved, Cushing being paid on 
 the basis of his salary instead of being awarded one-tenth of the 
 whole as commander of the capturing vessel, and he and some of the 
 other officers had their shares computed upon the rates of pay of the 
 higher grades into which they were promoted after the event, while 
 others received only the share to which their rate of pay entitled 
 them, this latter being the proper apportionment as provided by law. 
 As a result of the illegal method followed, some of the beneficiaries 
 were very much overpaid, while others suffered in consequence and 
 received less than their true shares. The matter finally got before 
 Congress in the form of a bill which was favorably reported by the 
 Naval committee, but never became a law, and as the original 
 appropriation had been distributed those who were wronged got no 
 redress. An interesting item connected with the last Congressional 
 investigation of the matter was the testimony of Admiral Porter 
 before the naval committee, he stating that the Albemarle had cost 
 the Confederates $1,500,000, and could not have been built and 
 equipped as she was, in Northern shipyards, for less than $800,000, 
 which opinion shows that a man may become eminent in a profes- 
 sion without being familiar with the practical business details upon 
 which it is founded. The following table, taken from the report of 
 the naval committee (Report No. 97; 4:5th Congress, 2d Session) 
 exhibits the actual distribution of this prize money, with the amount 
 received by each officer and man, or their heirs, and the amount 
 that each was over or underpaid. 
 
Bate of Pay 
 Adopted. 
 
 True Rate. 
 
 1865 
 
 $1,875 
 2,342 
 
 1,200 
 1,500 
 1,200 
 
 Admiral Porter 
 
 Commander Breese 
 
 Commander Macomb 
 
 Lieutenant Gushing 
 
 Same afterwards as Com- 
 mander 
 
 Master's Mate Ho wart li 
 
 Same afterwards as Master 
 
 Master's Mate Gay 
 
 Paymaster Swan 
 
 3rd Asst. Engr. Stotesbury 
 
 " " " Steever 
 
 Master's Mate Woodman- 
 Fireman Higgins 
 
 Coal-heaver Hamilton 
 
 Ordinary seam'n Houghton 
 
 " " Harley 
 
 " Smith 
 
 Landsman King 
 
 Wilkes 
 
 Deming 
 
 Amount for distribution 
 
 Difference ... 
 
 $3,864.93 
 772.98 
 
 15,112.50 
 
 2,840.08 
 9,194.66 
 2,298.67 
 3,868.81 
 10,477.97 
 8,060.00 
 8,060.00 
 3,868.81 
 2,901.50 
 1,934.41 
 1,547.53 
 1,547.53 
 L 547. 53 
 1,354.09 
 1,354.09 
 1,354.09 
 
 81,960.18 
 77,298.70 
 
 4,661.48 
 
 RIBUTION MADE. 
 
 1873 
 
 Total. 
 
 True Shares. 
 
 Overpaid. 
 
 Underpaid. 
 
 ffl 
 
 a 
 
 > 
 
 o 
 
 M 
 
 d 
 
 B 
 
 H 
 
 ft 
 
 GO 
 
 09,791.82 
 1,958.37 
 5,462,70 
 
 38,103.69 
 
 24,394.17 
 
 24,841.19 
 20,624.53 
 15.865.00 
 15,865.00 
 7,615.19 
 5. 711. 51 
 3,807.60 
 3,046.07 
 3,046.07 
 3,046.07 
 2,665.31 
 2,665.31 
 2,665.31 
 
 191,174.91 
 195,836.39 
 
 $13,656.75 
 * 2,731.35 
 5,462.70 
 
 56,056.27 
 
 35,887.50 
 
 28,710.00 
 31,102 50 
 23,925.00 
 23,925.00 
 11,484.00 
 8,613.01 
 5,742.01 
 4,593.60 
 4,593.60 
 4,593.60 
 4,019.40 
 4,019.40 
 4,019.40 
 
 273,135.09 
 
 $13,656.75 
 2,731.35 
 5,462.70 
 
 27,313.51 
 
 16,745.48 
 
 16,745.48 
 45,352.32 
 34,886.40 
 34.886.40 
 16,745.48 
 12,559.10 
 8.372.73 
 6,698.20 
 6,698.20 
 6,698.20 
 5,860.93 
 5,860.93 
 5,860.93 
 
 273,135.09 
 
 $28,742.76 
 
 19,142.02 
 11,964.52 
 
 59,849,30 
 
 $14,249.82 
 10,961.40 
 10,961.40 
 5,261.48 
 3,946.09 
 2,630.72 
 2,104.60 
 2,104.60 
 2,104.60 
 1,841.53 
 1,841.53 
 1,841.53 
 
 59,849.30 
 
 CO 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 " An examination of facts is the foundation of science* 3 ' 
 
 Ohas. H. Haswell. 
 
 1864. The Civil War, Continued — New Ships and Machinery Begun— The Serapis 
 Class — The Re sac a Class — Competitive Machinery of the Quinzstebatjg and 
 Swatara — The Stromboli, or Spuyten Dtjyvil — The Light-Draft Monitors 
 — Petition of the Engineer Corps Addressed to Congress and its Results. 
 
 THE work of building a great steam navy, so vigorously prose- 
 cuted during the three preceding years, went forward in 1864, but 
 with a less number of new vessels projected, and of these still fewer 
 ever reached completion. One more of the large swift cruisers of 
 the Wampanoag class was ordered and the machinery at once begun 
 at the Washington navy yard, the keel of this vessel, which was 
 given the name of Bon Homme Richard, was never laid, and the 
 ship, therefore, never existed except on paper ; but the engines, of 
 the 100-inch geared type, like those of the Wampanoag, were car- 
 ried to completion in the course of about four years, and remained 
 in store at the Washington yard for many years, being finally broken 
 up and the material used for various purposes. 
 
 Eight screw-sloops of 2,400 tons displacement, slightly larger 
 than the Shenandoah class, were projected in 1864, and named 
 Algoma, Confiance, Detroit, Meredosia, Peacock, Serapis, Taghkanic, 
 and Talledaga. Of these only one, the Algoma, built at the Kittery 
 navy yard, was ever constructed, she being launched in 1868, and 
 continued in the service, the name being changed in 1869 to Benicia, 
 until 1884, when she was sold at Mare Island for $1T,000. The 
 Bureau of Steam Engineering, carrying out its instructions, under- 
 took the work of building engines for these ships at the navy yards, 
 several of the yards being by this time supplied with suitable tools, 
 and four sets of the engines required were commenced at each of the 
 yards at Boston and New York. They were of the usual Isherwood 
 back-acting type, the cylinders being 50 inches diameter by 42 
 inches stroke. One pair of these was erected in the Benicia, and 
 three pairs went into some vessels built in 1868- — the Alaska, 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 477 
 
 Omaha and Plymouth (originally named Kenosha) ; the other four 
 sets were converted into compound engines for vessels built or re- 
 engined in 1872-1880. 
 
 Six smaller screw-sloops, of what was known as the Resaca 
 class, were also projected this year, and four of them were launched 
 eventually at navy yards as follows: The Swatara at Philadelphia, 
 May, 1865; the Besaca at Kittery, November, 1865; the Quinne- 
 baug at New York, March, 1866; and the Nantasket at Boston, 
 August, 1867. The other two, named Alert and Epermer, were never 
 built. The four completed were each 216 feet long and about 12 
 feet mean draft, the Nantasket and Besaca being 31 feet beam and 
 1,129 tons displacement, and the other two 30 feet beam and 1,113 
 tons displacement. The engines of the Swatara, Besaca and Nan- 
 tasket were of the Isherwood design, with cylinders 36 VN x36 NV , and 
 were built at navy yards, the two former at Washington and the 
 latter at Kittery. By direction of Assistant Secretary Fox the 
 engines for the Quinnebaug were contracted for in England, with 
 Jackson & Watkins, of London, the object of this unusual proceeding 
 being to subject the machinery designed by the Bureau of Steam En- 
 gineering to a competitive test with that produced by the best English 
 practice. The Quinnebaug' ] s model was altered for the reception of 
 twin screws to suit the English machinery, which consisted of two 
 pairs of two-cylinder engines with cylinders 38 inches in diameter 
 by 21 inches stroke of piston. The grate surface of the boilers was 
 114 square feet, while that of the other sloops of the class was 210 
 each. The English engines were designed on the high expansion 
 principle, the valves cutting off at one-fourth stroke, while Isher- 
 wood's engines cut off at six-tenths of the stroke. 
 
 The machinery for the Swatara, the sister- ship of the Quinnebaug 
 was nearly completed when the contract for the machinery of the 
 latter was made, and the contractors were informed of the exact 
 dimensions and arrangement of the machinery against which they 
 were to compete. They believed, however, that with twin screws 
 and the high rate of expansion adopted, their area of grate surface 
 would give better results in speed and economy than the Bureau's 
 design. The result was greatly to the disadvantage of the English 
 engines. The Swatara on her steam trial near Hampton Roads 
 made twelve geographical miles per hour, while the Quinnebaug- h 
 
478 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 best effort in New York harbor was seven geographical miles, both 
 vessels burning the same kind of coal and having the same condi- 
 tions of trial as nearly as possible. The Quinnebaug made one 
 cruise of about three years' duration on the Brazil station and was 
 then laid up; she subsequently was rebuilt and received a pair of the 
 50 7/ x42 u Isherwood engines, converted into compound engines. 
 
 The Alert and Ejpermer were never built, but the Bureau of 
 Steam Engineering carried out the Department's order and con- 
 structed machinery for them, that for the Alert, built at Kittery, 
 being exactly like the machinery of Bureau design put into the other 
 ships of the class. The JSpervier's engines were of the same back- 
 acting type but the proportional dimensions of the cylinders were 
 changed, they being 36 inches in diameter and 48 inches stroke; 
 they were built at the Washington navy yard and were of remarkably 
 excellent workmanship and quality, the forged parts of them being 
 of steel, which was the first use of that material for such purpose in 
 our navy or in the engine practice of the country. In 1870 these 
 engines were prepared for erection in the Quinnebaug in place of the 
 defective English engines, but before the work of altering the vessel 
 to receive them was completed it was determined to fit her with com- 
 pound engines, and the jEpervier^s engines were soon after shipped 
 to the Norfolk navy yard for stowage. In 1876 they were exhibited 
 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia as an example of ex- 
 cellence in navy yard work, and were thereafter stowed at the Nor- 
 folk yard until as late as 1894, when an order was reluctantly given 
 by the engineer-in-chief to break them up and make use of the mate- 
 rial, the changes in marine engine practice having precluded the 
 possibility of their ever being made use of. 
 
 At the time Mr. Fox ordered a contract made for the engines of 
 the Quinnebaug in England, a pair of 36 u x36" Isherwood engines 
 for that vessel were practically completed at the Washington navy 
 yard; there being thus no ship for this pair of engines they were 
 sent to the Naval Academy in 1866 and erected in the new depart- 
 ment of steam engineering at that institution, where they have re- 
 mained ever since, a valuable object lesson originally to the cadet 
 engineers of much that was excellent in marine engineering, but 
 eventually transformed by the changing years into relics of what has 
 been and is no more* 
 
U. S. S HESACA, 1865. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 481 
 
 Contracts were made this same year for the Pinta class of large 
 iron sea-going tugs, designed to carry two guns and to be of general 
 usefulness in the operations of war. The class embraced nine ves- 
 sels in all, six being built by James Tetlow, Boston; two by Eeany 
 & Archbold, Chester, Pa., and one, the Triana, by Win. Perrine, 
 New York. Their cost complete varied from $84,640 to $128,000 
 each. The principal dimensions were, length, 137 feet; beam, 26 
 feet; displacement, 420 tons, and registered tonnage 350. Three of 
 these steamers — the Fortune, Mayflower, and>Standish — in after years 
 became familiar and not especially beloved objects to the youth of 
 the engineer corps as practice vessels for summer cruising from the 
 Naval Academy. Two smaller tugs, the Pilgrim and Maria, of 
 170 tons each, were also built in 1864 by contract, and several other 
 smaller ones were undertaken at navy yards, the events of the war 
 having shown the value of such vessels in carrying on warlike 
 operations. 
 
 Continued Confederate successes with torpedoes finally forced 
 the Navy Department to give attention to that weapon, on the prin- 
 cipal of fighting the devil with fire, and proposals were issued 
 inviting inventors to submit plans for boats and torpedoes to use 
 with them. Many designs were submitted, from which those of 
 Chief Engineer W. W. W. Wood and First Assistant John L. Lay 
 were accepted and the work of constructing the boats and torpedoes 
 begun under the direction of these engineers in the spring of 1864. 
 Wood and Lay's plans embraced two projects; one of fitting large 
 steam launches with a torpedo on a spar, and the other of building 
 a regular armored torpedo boat like a small monitor and equipping 
 it with a torpedo on the end of a long bar operated by steam, both 
 of which plans were accepted. A number of steam launches were 
 fitted out and supplied with torpedoes by Wood and Lay during the 
 the summer of 1864 and one of these was the boat placed at the 
 disposal of Lieutenant Gushing and with which he sank the 
 Albemarle. 
 
 The spar was carried in suitable supports or crutches alongside 
 the boat and could be run forward and the end submerged to the 
 desired depth by attached ropes. The torpedo consisted of a 
 cylindrical copper case held in a scoop at the end of the spar and so 
 overlooped by a line that it conld be thrown out of the scoop when 
 
482 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OP THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 desired. It was only partly filled with powder, the remainder of the 
 case being an air chamber separated from the powder by a partition, 
 the two parts being so proportioned that the specific gravity of the 
 whole was slightly less than that of water. Running down from 
 the air-chamber end was a tube with a fulminate cap in its lower 
 end near the bottom of the powder space and provided with a grape- 
 shot held in the upper end by a pin working through a stuffing box, 
 and to which a hauling line was attached. When used, the spar 
 and torpedo were lowered under or near the object to be attacked 
 and the torpedo thrown forward from the scoop by means of the 
 first line. Its construction then caused it to float with the air end 
 uppermost and with a tendency to rise to the surface or against the 
 bottom of the attacked vessel. By pulling the second line the pin 
 could then be withdrawn, causing the grapeshot to fall upon the cap 
 and explode the charge of powder. Besides the torpedo these 
 picket boats were armed with one 12-pounder boat howitzer mounted 
 on the bow. 
 
 The other plan resulted in the building of a torpedo boat by 
 contract with Samuel JEL. Pook of JSTew Haven, Conn., which was 
 first named Stromboli but soon afterward changed to Spuyten Duyvil. 
 To this vessel Lieutenant Commander Barnes, writing a treatise on 
 submarine warfare, in 1868, referred to as 6 ' the most formidable 
 engine of destruction for naval warfare now afloat of which the 
 public have any knowledge." The contract for this boat, dated 
 June 1, 1864, required that " for the consideration hereinafter men- 
 tioned, he will construct upon the plan of Mr. Win. W. W. Wood, 
 Chief Engineer, U. S. Navy, a torpedo vessel in accordance with 
 specifications herewith attached, of the following dimensions, viz : 
 length of keel, 75 feet ; breadth of hull, 19J feet ; depth of hold 
 9 feet more or less." As actually built the boat was 84 feet 2 
 inches long ; 20 feet 8 inches extra beam ; 7 feet 5 inches draft ? 
 and of 207 tons displacement. The total cost was $45,036.29. 
 
 When going into action the draft was increased to about nine 
 feet by admitting water into sinking tanks, thereby lessening the 
 exposure above water. The deck was covered with three inches of 
 iron ; the sides with five inches, and the pilot-house with five inches. 
 The torpedo was the same in principle as the one fitted to the picket 
 boats, but was so much larger that it was worked by machinery 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 483 
 
 which ran the torpedo-bar out through a water-tight box and gate- 
 valve in the bow, the detachment and firing of the torpedo being 
 automatic when the extreme reach of the bar was attained, and at 
 the same time the return motion of the bar was begun. When the 
 bar had returned to its inboard position the gate-valve was closed, the 
 water-box pumped out, which could be done in a few seconds, and 
 everything was then ready for attaching another torpedo. The 
 weight of the torpedo handling machinery was ten tons while that of 
 the motive engine was only two and one-half tons. 
 
 The Spuyten Duyvil was in service in the James River dur- 
 ing the last months of the war and had the honor of taking President 
 Lincoln to Richmond when he visited that city after its abandonment 
 by the enemy. She subsequently made extensive use of her torpe- 
 does by blowing up the obstructions that had been placed in the 
 river by both Union and Confederate combatants. After the war 
 she remained for many years at the New York navy yard and was 
 subjected to many improvements by her inventors, as well as serving 
 for a series of experiments in torpedo warfare upon which much of 
 our modern torpedo practice and knowledge is founded. 
 
 The twenty light-draft monitors undertaken in 1863 began 
 arriving at completion in 1864 and immediately revealed defects so 
 serious as to destroy their usefulness. The history of these vessels 
 is as unfortunate a chapter of errors as the annals of our navy during 
 the war afford, involving as it does an account of much public money 
 expended for which the nation received no benefit. So little atten- 
 tion had been given to the displacement of the vessels that it was 
 found they would float with only three inches of freeboard instead 
 of fifteen, as intended, a difference that practically ruined their effi- 
 ciency. Various causes contributed to this result and none of the 
 officials connected with their construction was entirely blameless, but 
 the principal responsibility fell upon Chief Engineer A. C. Stimers, 
 the general inspector of iron-clads, who had been given free scope 
 by the Department to have the monitors built according to his own 
 ideas. 
 
 The matter was so serious that it became the subject of an in- 
 vestigation by a committee of the House of Representatives and also 
 by the joint Congressional Commission on the Conduct of the War: 
 the latter investigation occupies 124 pages in volume 111 of the 1865 
 
484 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 series of that committee's report, and is a useful document to the 
 historian and biographer, because by judiciously selecting extracts 
 from it, as some writers have already done, it is easy to prove credit 
 or culpability indifferently in the case of any individual concerned. 
 As the object of this book is to call spades by their right names 
 within the bounds of propriety and to tell the truth so far as it can 
 be ascertained, the following outline of this unhappy story is given 
 as the most probable version deducible from the mass of conflicting 
 and in some cases decidedly spiteful testimony. In arriving at con- 
 clusions the author has given especial weight to the testimony of 
 Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus V. Fox, who was an official 
 superior to the contractors and officers connected with the building of 
 the vessels, was less apt to have any personal grudges or rivalries 
 to ventilate. 
 
 The need for light-draft armored vessels, especially for service 
 on the Mississippi River and its tributaries, impressed itself upon the 
 Navy Department during the summer of 1862. Mr. John Ericsson 
 was appealed to for designs and he decided that the proposed draft 
 of water (four feet) was incompatible with impregnability. He after- 
 ward furnished the Department with general plans for monitors of 
 the required type, but of six feet draft, which he pronounced the 
 least possible for vessels of the desired size, armor and battery. 
 Ericsson being engrossed with the Puritan and Dictator and the Pas- 
 saic class, as well as with the Canonicus class then being built from 
 his designs, had little time for new work and his plans were 
 turned over to Chief Engineer Stimers to be developed. Mr. Stimers 
 was directed to establish an office in New York adjacent to that of 
 Ericsson for convenience in consultation, and was given practically 
 unlimited power in the matter of designs, inspection, authority to 
 make changes, etc., the Secretary of the Navy ordering him verbally 
 not to trouble the Department with letters on technical matters but 
 to judge aild act for himself. 
 
 Mr. Stimers proceeded on the line of his instructions so liter- 
 ally as to lose the benefit of advice from the heads of the two 
 mechanical bureaus of the Department — construction and steam 
 engineering — neither of whom he consulted except informally when 
 visiting Washington at intervals, and both of whom naturally felt 
 aggrieved that a subordinate officer should be permitted to direct 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 485 
 
 extensive work pertaining to them without being in any way under 
 their control. Stimers in fact ruled a combined construction and 
 engineering bureau of his own with a staff of assistants, draftsmen 
 and clerks that was, as testified before the Congressional committee, 
 almost as numerous as the total office force of all the bureaus of the 
 Navy Department, and he was subject to no authority less than that 
 of the Department. Kear Admiral F. H. Gregory, who was on the 
 retired list, was on duty in New York as general superintendent of 
 all ship and engine work being done by contract along the Atlantic 
 coast for the navy and all correspondence had to be forwarded 
 through his office, but as his naval service dated from 1809 it is not 
 probable that he exercised any technical direction over steam vessels 
 or steam engines. In fact, when the contracts for the light-draft 
 monitors were made Admiral Gregory received an order from the 
 Department informing him u very laconically," to quote from his 
 testimony, that Mr. Stimers would have entire charge of all vessels 
 building on the Ericsson plan. The admiral succeeded after a num- 
 ber of months in getting this order so modified that Stimers had to 
 forward all communicatioDs through him and obtain his approval, 
 but, to depend upon the admiral's testimony again, Stimers went 
 right on ordering changes and writing letters over his head. Mr. 
 Stimers probably thought that in busy times action was more im- 
 portant than red tape, and there is no doubt whatever that he had the 
 tacit consent of the Department to hasten matters along by com- 
 municating directly with the contractors in all technical matters. 
 
 To add to the difficulty arising from Stimers' relations with the 
 construction and engineering bureaus he fell out with his friend 
 Ericsson about this time and this so nearly concluded their inter- 
 course that Ericsson's opinions were thereafter seldom sought and 
 never volunteered. The occasion of the estrangement was the un- 
 sympathetic manner in which Stimers had tested Ericsson's friction 
 gear on the Canonims; a trifling matter for middle-aged men to 
 quarrel about, but sufficient to cause Ericsson, proud, stubborn, and 
 imperious as he was, to avoid his former friend and prot6g6 and 
 leave him to his own resources. 
 
 Many changes were made in Ericsson's original plans and many 
 of these changes were of a nature to increase the weight and draft 
 of the vessels. Instead of the boilers proposed by Ericsson a dif- 
 
486 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 ferent type with differential tubes, designed by Stimers himself, 1 
 were adopted, and these, in the opinion of Ericsson, were twice as 
 large and heavy as the size of the engines required, although Stimers 
 claimed that they were designed to furnish steam for all the main 
 and auxiliary machinery in the ship should the unlikely occasion of 
 using it all at the same time arise. The engines were considerably 
 reduced in size, being finally made with cylinders 22 inches in 
 diameter and 30 inches stroke of piston, one engine being placed on 
 each side of the ship, inclined upwards, and driving a screw-shaft 
 on the opposite side, the vessels all having twin-screws. After the 
 first fight of the iron-clads with Fort Sumter it was decided to fit all 
 the monitors then building with heavy base rings around the turrets, 
 and this, in the case of the light-drafts, increased their weight about 
 eighteen tons each, and also added much to the cost,- the most of 
 them being under contract before the change was ordered. The 
 pilot-houses were also made thicker and heavier as a result of the 
 experience gained in the Fort Sumter fight. 
 
 The most important change was in fitting large tanks along the 
 sides inside the vessels for carrying water to increase the draft pur- 
 posely; this was ordered by the Department on the urgent recom- 
 mendation of Rear Admiral Joseph Smith, chief of the Bureau of 
 Yards and Docks, the idea being that when the vessel grounded in 
 shallow and little-known rivers, as would necessarily occur some- 
 times, she could be quickly floated by pumping out these tanks. 
 The intention was excellent, but the application of the idea to vessels 
 of only 15 inches freeboard was of doubtful propriety as it involved 
 much extra weight for the tanks, piping, valves, and pumping 
 engines, not to mention the weight of water to be carried. 
 
 A serious mistake involving additional weight was made in 
 Stimers 5 office in calculating the weight of the oak deck and side 
 timbers, of which latter especially there was an enormous mass. It 
 appears from the testimony that the weight of seasoned white oak 
 timber formed the basis for the estimates, no allowance being made 
 
 1 These boilers had the same differential sizing of tubes as those of the Canon- 
 icus class illustrated in a former chapter, but the structural design was different, To 
 make the boilers low enough to go into the shallow hulls, the tube boxes were placed 
 between the furnaces, two of the latter being at each end of the boiler* 
 
C. S. S. MAYFLOWER. 
 
 Fitted as a Practice Steamer for Cadet Engineers. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 489 
 
 for the fact, then well enough known, that green timber would have 
 to be used on account of the supply of seasoned oak ship timbers at 
 the North being completely exhausted. The result of all the 
 changes and errors was that when the first of the light -draft monitors 
 — the Chimo — was launched she was found to draw about a foot 
 more water than was intended, leaving her deck almost awash. The 
 certainty that others of the class would possess the same fatal defect 
 was a startling discovery to the Department and a cause of chagrin 
 to Mr. Fox who had selected Chief Engineer Stimers for their super- 
 intendence and who was chiefly responsible for the conferring upon 
 him of power superior to the bureaus under whose cognizance their 
 building properly belonged. The crying need for light-draft 
 armored vessels in the Western rivers and the great things that had 
 been promised from these monitors were well known to the public, 
 and this made the failure more notorious and disappointing. 
 
 Mr. Fox went immediately to New York and held a consulta- 
 tion with Mr. Ericsson and Chief Engineers King and Wood as to 
 what should be done, his desire being to remedy the defects if pos- 
 sible and get monitors with which to make war, rather than to waste 
 time in speculating as how the mistake had been made or who was 
 to blame for it. It was decided that the only remedy was to build 
 the vessels up about twenty-two inches, thereby still further increas- 
 ing their draft with the added weight and lessening their usefulness 
 for service in shallow waters, but which would give the country 
 monitors that could be made of some use. This was done with 
 fifteen of them at an additional cost of from $55,000 to $115,000 
 each, varying with the degree of completion when the change was 
 ordered. The water-tanks with their pipes and pumps were taken, 
 out of nearly all of them. This work of raising the sides of the 
 vessels so delayed their completion that they were not finished in 
 time to be of any service before the war came to an end, and their 
 cost was therefore practically thrown away. 
 
 The officer in command of the North Atlantic blockading squad- 
 ron having asked for light-draft armored vessels to be used as tor- 
 pedo boats in the North Carolina Sounds and James Eiver, it was 
 decided to equip five of these monitors for that purpose without their 
 turrets and without building their decks up, which was done with 
 those nearest completion when the fault in displacement was dis- 
 
LIGHT DRAFT MONITOR. SECTION THROUGH ENGINE ROOM. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 491 
 
 covered, they being fitted with spar-torpedo gear of the Wood-Lay 
 invention. They had a gun mounted on deck forward without any 
 protection for the men who would work it, a serious objection for 
 service in narrow rivers within easy gunshot of the banks, and their 
 speed was barely five miles an hour, which made their use as tor- 
 pedo boats almost ludicrous. These five were in active service for 
 several months before the end of the war, but their employment was 
 of little use to the government. The others after being built up 
 became reasonably good monitors for coast service and were sea- 
 worthy, as appears from a report made by Acting Lieutenant Com- 
 mander H. A. Grorringe, an excellent sea-officer, relative to a 
 voyage of the Waxsaw from Hampton Koads to Philadelphia in 
 January, 1866, although it was asserted by the opponents of Mr. 
 Stimers that they would be worthless even after modification. 
 
 Mr. Gorringe says: " We experienced during the whole passage 
 fresh northerly winds, and a heavy swell from the southeast, which 
 gave us an opportunity of testing the sea- worthiness of this class of 
 monitor. I beg leave to add that the behavior of this vessel during 
 the passage has increased the confidence I already had in the 
 ability of this class of monitor to ride out safely a gale of wind. ' ' 
 
 The responsibility dor this deplorable failure and waste of 
 public money rests largely upon Chief Engineer Stimers, though 
 not by any means so completely as » the enemies of that officer 
 charged. The added weights due to the heavy base-rings around 
 the turrets, the water-ballast equipment, and increased armor on the 
 pilot-houses, were not by his direction. The testimony before the 
 joint Committee on the Conduct of the War developed the fact that 
 the error in computing the weight of timber was committed by a 
 draftsman in Stimers' office and that Stimers had not personally 
 verified the calculations. In this he was of course to blame as the 
 responsible official, in precisely the same manner that the commander 
 of a ship is responsible for disasters due to the mistakes of the navi- 
 gator or other subordinate officer. Although officially culpable, 
 there is no evidence to show that the blunder resulted from personal 
 incompetence on the part of Mr. Stimers, and there is much to 
 prove that physical impossibility and not negligence was the cause 
 of his failure to critically examine the work of his subordinates. 
 
492 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Besides the twenty light-draft monitors, Mr. Stimers had under 
 his general direction the building of a number of other iron vessels, 
 the Canonicus class especially, and he was required to be absent 
 from his office in New York much of the time visiting ship and 
 engine works in many cities where these vessels were under con- 
 struction. In the spring of 1863, just at the time when the plans 
 for the light- drafts were being completed and the contracts being 
 awarded, he was sent as superintending engineer to the iron-clad 
 fleet off Charleston and was absent on that duty for two months. 
 For four months during the summer of 1863 when his whole time 
 should have been given to the new monitors his attention was largely 
 occupied with the court of inquiry investigating the charges pre- 
 ferred against him by Rear Admiral DuPont, which in itself was 
 sufficient to distract his mind from his legitimate duties, as his 
 reputation and commission in the navy were at stake. The report 
 made by Senator Wade, the chairman of the Committee on the 
 Conduct of the War, states the difficulties under which Mr. Stimers 
 labored, and that report does not specifically fix the responsibility 
 for the failure upon him. 
 
 The Department detached Mr. Stimers from his duty as gen- 
 eral inspector and put the work of completing the monitors in other 
 hands; but beyond this nothing was done to punish him for his part 
 in the affair. Assistant Secretary Fox wrote: "I cannot be too 
 hard upon Stimers, who helped us in the first Monitor with so much 
 zeal and courage." The shortcomings of Mr. Stimers in connec- 
 tion with these vessels may property be charged to an excess of am- 
 bition. His connection with the Monitor had made his name well 
 known throughout the country, and his subsequent responsible con- 
 nection with the building of armored vessels had still further ex- 
 tended his fame and associated his name with that of Ericsson as an 
 exponent and champion of the new order of war ships. When, 
 therefore, he was trusted by the Department with almost absolute 
 power in the construction of the light-drafts, from which so much 
 was expected that the whole country knew of them, he sought to 
 achieve all the honor for their success by refusing advice from older 
 and wiser men than himself, and in attempting too much came to 
 disaster. His professional reputation was so well established, how- 
 ever, that it was not overthrown by this failure, and at the close of 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 493 
 
 the war he received such inducements as to resign his commission 
 and enter upon practice as a consulting engineer in New York under 
 the most favorable and prosperous circumstances. Not long there- 
 after he fell a victim to an epidemic of small-pox and lost his life. 
 
 As John Ericsson stood before the country as the inventor and 
 sponsor of the monitor type of war- ship , and as his name was 
 linked with the light-drafts and all other monitors, he received 
 much public censure for their failure; a censure that was almost 
 entirely undeserved. When asked by the joint committee in 
 what relation he stood to the twenty light-draft monitors, he re- 
 plied: u I have nothing whatever to do with those twenty monitors, 
 directly or indirectly. " He did, however, furnish the original plans 
 and some of his details were carried out; in his own testimony 
 further on he said that the turrets were arranged very nearly accord- 
 ing to his principle and instructions, and from his testimony and 
 that of others it is proved that although he ceased intercourse with 
 Stimers the draftsmen from the latter' s office frequently con- 
 sulted him as to different details. It is true that he disapproved of 
 almost everything shown him, but the fact admitted by himself that 
 he was consulted is proof enough that he had some connection with 
 the work, for no one who has any conception of his devotion to 
 work and intolerance of interruption can believe that he would have 
 given a moment of his time to anything that did not concern him. 
 There is no doubt whatever that he knew that Stimers was sup- 
 posed to be working under his direction, and the fact that a quarrel 
 between them should have prevented the one from seeking advice 
 and the other from insisting upon giving it, is not at all creditable to 
 either. 
 
 Although busily employed with the duties compelled by war, 
 the naval engineers found time at the beginning of 1864 to prepare 
 and submit to Congress a memorial asking for legislation in their 
 interests in certain directions. This document was neatly gotten up 
 in pamphlet form with a decorative cover embellished with engrav- 
 ings of the Monitor and Wampanoag and a wreath made up of 
 weapons of war and engineer's instruments — the arms and the tools 
 symbolical of the naval and military engineer's calling. The me- 
 morial asked for an increase of pay commensurate with that re- 
 ceived by other officers of the navy and dwelt at length upon the 
 
494 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 desirability of establishing some regular system of education and 
 training for the future engineers of the navy. Both objects were 
 attained. Congress passed a bill, which received Presidential ap- 
 proval July 4, 1864, establishing the course of instruction for cadet 
 engineers at the Naval Academy and fixing a new rate of pay for 
 engineer officers, amounting to an increase for all grades of about 
 twenty-two per cent. , the new rate being shown by the following 
 extract from the act: 
 
 u Sec. 6. And be it further enacted, That the number of chief 
 engineers shall not exceed one for each first and second rate vessel 
 in the navy, with such first, second, and third assistant engineers, or 
 those acting as such, as the wants of the service actually require. 
 And that from and after the passage of this act the annual pay of 
 the engineer officers of the navy, on the active list, shall be as fol- 
 lows: Every chief engineer on duty, for the first five years after 
 the date of his commission, two thousand two hundred dollars. For 
 the second five years after the date of his commission, two thousand 
 five hundred dollars. For the third five years after the date of his 
 commission, two thousand eight hundred dollars. After fifteen 
 years after the date of his commission, three thousand dollars. 
 Every chief engineer on leave or waiting orders, for the first five 
 years after the date of his commission, one thousand five hundred 
 dollars. For the second five years after the date of his commission, 
 one thousand six hundred dollars. For the third five years after the 
 date of his commission, one thousand seven hundred dollars. 
 After fifteen years after the date of his commission, one thousand 
 eight hundred dollars. Every first assistant engineer on duty, 
 one thousand five hundred dollars. While on leave or wait- 
 ing orders, one thousand one hundred dollars. Every second 
 assistant engineer on duty, one thousand two hundred dollars. 
 While on leave or waiting orders, nine hundred dollars. Every 
 third assistant engineer on duty, one thousand dollars. While on 
 leave or waiting orders, eight hundred dollars." 
 
CHAPTEK XXTII. 
 
 "And the long mountains ended in a coast of ever-shifting sand, 
 
 And far away the phantom circle of a moaning sea. 
 
 There the pursuer could pursue no more, 
 
 And he that fled no further fly the king ; 
 
 And there, that day when the great light of heaven 
 
 Burn'd at his lowest in the rolling year, 
 
 On the waste sand by the waste sea they closed." 
 
 1865. The Civil War, Concluded— Loss of the San Jacinto— Second Attack on 
 Fort Fisher — The Patapsco Destroyed by a Torpedo— Charleston Aban- 
 doned by the Confederates — The Monitors Milwaukee and Osage Sunk — 
 Loss of the Sciota and Ada — Eestoration of Peace — Some Naval Lessons of 
 the War — Armed Merchant Vessels Unsuited for Operations of War — Casu- 
 alties of the Engineer Corps During the Eebellion. 
 
 nPHE last year of the great war began with a naval disaster, 
 
 1 though one not due to the action of the enemy. The old and 
 troublesome screw-steamer San Jacinto, under command of Captain 
 B. W. Meade, father of the present rear admiral of the same name, at 
 1.30 a. m. January 1st, struck on a reef between Green Turtle and. 
 No Name Keys and became a wreck, her guns and a considerable 
 quantity of stores and equipment being saved by the crew, who 
 camped on No Name Keys until taken north by the Tallapoosa. 
 The San Jacinto had been attached to the East Gulf blockading 
 squadron during the greater part of the war and had not had an 
 occasion to achieve any particular distinction after the Trent affair 
 in 1861. In 1863, while under repairs at New York, she had been 
 made valuable use of by being turned over to a board of naval engi- 
 neers for a competitive test of boilers, she having one each of the 
 two types then standard — vertical water-tube and horizontal fire- 
 tube. Similar experiments had been conducted with her boilers in 
 1858, and the knowledge gained on the two occasions was of quite 
 as much benefit to the country as any achievement in war by a vessel 
 of her class could have been. 
 
 On the 13th, 14th, and 15th of January, Bear Admiral Porter, 
 
 Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 28 
 
498 
 
 THE STEAM NAYY OE THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 acting in conjunction with. Major General Terry and 10,000 troops, 
 made a second and successful attack upon Fort Fisher, the adjacent 
 fortifications on the river and Wilmington itself falling not long 
 afterward as results of the victory. The naval force under Porter's 
 command was the largest that has ever been in action under the 
 American flag, as well as the most powerful fleet in men and guns 
 that has been assembled for a hostile purpose in modern times. 
 The main force consisted of forty -four war steamers, including 
 almost all the largest vessels of war built for the TJ. S. Navy from 
 the Powhatan and Susquehanna period down to that of the New Iron- 
 sides and Monadnock, they being ranged in a line about a mile dis- 
 tant from and parallel to the fortified shore line, upon which a 
 continuous fire from hundreds of the heaviest guns then known was 
 concentrated. Outside the line of battle lay a reserve division of 
 fourteen smaller steamers not engaged in the bombardment but made 
 use of in assisting and covering the landing of troops and in carry- 
 ing despatches. The New Ironsides and the four monitors named in 
 a previous chapter as participating in the first attack upon this fort 
 were stationed within about half a mile of the shore, from which 
 position they used their heavy guns with terrible effect. The near- 
 ness of their station made them targets for small arm as well as 
 great-gun fire, but they suffered no damage except of a temporary 
 nature to their light upper works and had very few casualties. On 
 the Ganonieus two men were wounded during the bombardment and 
 Second Assistant Engineer John W. Saville was shot through both 
 thighs by a grape-shot that had passed over the heads of the assault- 
 ing party on shore and came aboard the vessel. On the Saugus one 
 man only was injured, and he by the bursting of a XV-inch gun ; 
 another XV-inch gun burst on the Mahopae but without injuring 
 anyone. 
 
 On the 15th, fourteen hundred sailors and marines were 
 landed from the fleet to assault the sea face of Fort Fisher while 
 the troops attacked from the land side, the combined assault result- 
 ing in the capture of the enemy's works about ten o'clock that 
 night. The naval brigade was obliged to land on a sand beach with 
 no shelter or protection whatever and suffered severely without 
 being able to gain the objective point, although its attack diverted 
 the enemy from resisting in force the assault of the troops. The 
 
THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 497 
 
 total loss of the navy was 309 — 74 killed; 213 wounded; 22 miss- 
 ing, or nearly as many as at the battle of Mobile Bay. About one- 
 third of these casualties occurred the morning of the 16th, after the 
 fort had been taken possession of, by the accidental explosion of a 
 powder magazine, the paymaster and an ensign of the Gettysburg 
 being killed at this time. Assistant Surgeon William Longshaw, 
 who had on a previous occasion greatly distinguished himself by 
 gallantry in the monitor fleet off Charleston, was killed in the assault 
 of the 15th, he being shot while in the act of ministering to a 
 wounded marine. Altogether seven officers were killed and about 
 fifteen wounded in the Fort Fisher battle. 
 
 The few following extracts from reports of commanding officers 
 are selected from many of like tenor and will be sufficient to show 
 that the engineer corps bore its full share in the battle both afloat 
 and ashore . 
 
 From the report of Commodore S. W. Godon of the Susquehanna : 
 
 ' ' Chief Engineer Johnson, with his entire department, are also 
 entitled to my thanks; they not only performed their duties with 
 proper spirit, but, in the absence of the portion of my crew forming 
 the landing party, assisted at the guns as far as lay in their power." 
 
 From the report of Commander E. G. Parrott of the Monadnock : 
 
 u Acting Chief Engineer J. Q. A. Zeigler, by faithfully watch- 
 ing for symptoms of failing of the turret and other gear, and the 
 application of timely and rapid repairs, enabled us to come out of 
 the action in perfect order. 5 ' 
 
 From the report of Lieutenant Commander T. G. Harris of the Yantic : 
 u At 10.30 sent a landing party on shore, composed of forty- 
 two (42) men, in command of Acting Ensigns J. C. Lord and S. T. 
 Dedener, and Acting Third Assistant Engineer George Holton, with 
 orders to report to Lieutenant Commander K. E. Breese, (fleet cap- 
 tain). 
 
 "Acting Third Assistant Engineer Holton was also 
 a volunteer, and had charge of the entrenching party. I have 
 learned that he was always in the advance, cheering the men on, 
 and exposing himself in the most gallant manner. I think that he 
 may be made a Third Assistant Engineer in the regular service." 
 
498 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 From the report of Lieutenant Oomander D. L Braine of the Pequot : 
 u To Second Assistant Engineer (in charge) A. H. Fisher I am 
 much indebted, for without his skill and perseverance the ship would 
 not have been in a condition to enter action without being towed." 
 
 News of the victory of Fort Fisher was carried by a despatch 
 vessel to Hampton Roads and thence telegraphed to Washington 
 and the country. The senior officer at Hampton Roads, Commander 
 E. T. Nichols, selected Second Assistant Engineer David P. Jones 
 (now chief engineer, retired) to carry the information to General 
 Grant at City Point, the dangerous journey up the James River, 
 both banks of which were infested with outlying parties of the 
 enemy, being performed at night and the despatches delivered in 
 person by Mr. Jones to General Grant. For this important and 
 extremely hazardous service Mr. Jones was highly complimented in 
 personal and official letters by his commanding officer, and he might 
 have received promotion for it had not his youthful modesty and 
 ignorance of the methods of naval administration prevented him 
 from following up his advantage with a claim for recognition. 
 
 The night of January 15, the same day that the naval brigade 
 was assaulting Fort Fisher, the monitor Patapsco was destroyed by 
 a torpedo with great loss of life in the harbor of Charleston. That 
 night the Patapsco was on duty as picket vessel in advance of the 
 investing line of iron-clads and was engaged, as was the practice, 
 in drifting with the tide up to a point abreast of Fort Sumter, then 
 steaming back to station to again drift up. She had torpedo nettings 
 rigged out and was preceded by picket boats dragging for torpedoes, 
 but when arrived at her station after the third excursion a torpedo 
 exploded under her about thirty feet from the bow, from the effects 
 of which she sank in about thirty seconds. Five officers and thirty- 
 eight men, the most of whom were on duty and therefore awake, 
 were saved by boats from the Lehigh and in one of their own; the 
 remainder of the crew, numbering sixty-two officers and men, went 
 down with their ship. The engineer of the watch, Mr. DeWitt 0. 
 Davis, was lost, the official report of the captain, Lieutenant Com- 
 mander S. P. Quackenbush, saying that, " Third Assistant Engineer 
 D. C. Davis remained nobly at his post when the ship went down. 55 
 The officers saved were the captain, the executive officer and the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 499 
 
 officer of the deck, all whom were on duty on deck, and two en- 
 gineers who happened to be on deck at the time of the disaster; 
 those lost were three volunteer line officers, three engineers, the 
 surgeon, and the paymaster, two of the engineers and the surgeon 
 being of the regular service. The executive officer, Lieutenant W. 
 T. Sampson, is now a captain and at present chief of the Bureau of 
 Ordnance, Navy Department. 
 
 First Assistant Engineer Reynolds Driver, senior engineer of 
 the ship, distinguished himself by unusual heroism in the disaster, 
 he, after persistently jeopardizing his life by remaining on the sink- 
 ing ship trying to open the hatches to allow those below to escape, 
 no less than twice while in the chilly water gave up pieces of wreck- 
 age on which he was afloat to men more exhausted than himself, and 
 was finally picked up under the walls of Sumter, after having pre- 
 viously refrained from making an outcry when relief was near at 
 hand lest the drowning should be neglected while he was yet able 
 to swim. Afterward, when he appeared on the deck of the rescuing 
 vessel, his conduct being known, he was greeted with cheers from 
 the men and expressions of admiration from the officers, and there- 
 after was treated with marked deference and respect by all with 
 whom he was associated. He died at his home in New Castle, Dela- 
 ware, the year following the war* 
 
 On the 18th of February the enemy abandoned Charleston as a 
 military post, Rear Admiral Dahlgren taking possession of the city 
 which he had besieged so long, and began at once directing from 
 thence naval operations against the neighboring positions of the 
 enemy. With the fall of Charleston and Wilmington the downfall 
 of the Confederacy was assured, and it became only a question of 
 short time before the end would come. 
 
 Although in the last ditch, the rebellion showed itself danger- 
 ous to the end against the navy by the successful use of torpedoes. 
 The river- built monitors Milwaukee and Osage were sunk in Blakely 
 River, flowing into Mobile Bay, on the 28th and 29th of March by 
 these weapons, the former without loss of life but the latter with the 
 loss of three men killed and eight wounded. On the 1st of April 
 the "tin clad " Rudolph met with destuction in the same river and 
 by the same means, four of her men being killed and ten seriously 
 wounded by the explosion. The ninety-day gunboat Scioto was sunk 
 
500 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 in Mobile Bay in the same way on the 13th of April with a loss of 
 ten men killed and wounded. She was subsequently raised, repaired, 
 and sold out of the service. The tug gunboat Ida was blown up 
 the same day in Mobile Bay by a torpedo which exploded her boiler, 
 killed the senior engineer, Mr. Sanford Ourran, and two firemen, 
 and wounded two others. This list of disasters was due to the ex- 
 traordinary activity of the enemy in making use of this mode of 
 warfare, the waters about Mobile Bay being literally full of these 
 infernal machines, and to the slowness of the Federals in appreci- 
 ating the need of guarding against them. 
 
 Richmond was abandoned the 4th of April and was immedi- 
 ately occupied by the military and naval rforces, the surrender of 
 General Lee's army soon afterward putting a practical end to the 
 war. Although not a matter of historical importance, it is a fact 
 that the first representative of the navy to enter Richmond after its 
 surrender was a member of the engineer corps. Mr. Clark Thurston, 
 now Vice President of the American Screw Company of Providence 
 Rhode Island, was at that time a third assistant engineer attached 
 to the James River torpedo service under charge of Chief Engineer 
 Alexander Henderson, and being fired by a youthful love of ad- 
 venture left his post of duty at Dutch Gap when he heard of the fall 
 of Richmond and proceeded alone in a skiff to the city, spending a 
 day there without knowing how to account for himself, before the 
 arrival of Admiral Porter with President Lincoln. Mr. Thurston 
 subsequently spent two weeks under arrest for being absent without 
 leave but that does not detract in the least from his distinction of 
 having been the first of the navy to enter the enemy's capital. 
 
 When peace was assured, the Navy Department at once set 
 about disbanding the great navy that had been called into existence; 
 all new ship and engine building work was stopped; volunteer 
 officers and men were discharged as fast as possible and returned to 
 the industries of peace, while immediate steps were taken to effect 
 the sale of all vessels purchased for naval purposes as well as many 
 that had been built expressly for the navy. All the better class of 
 purchased steamers readily found buyers, for with peace came a 
 revival of our shipping industry hastened in no small degree by the 
 return to civil pursuits of a large sea-faring element, it not being 
 unusual for the volunteer officer to take advantage of the bargains 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 501 
 
 offered to provide himself with a vessel with which to begin life 
 again. Of the steamers built expressly for war purposes the double- 
 enders, and especially the ninety- day gunboats, were found to be 
 well adapted to commercial purposes, they being of a size and 
 draft of water suitable for river and coastwise traffic, and the most of 
 them were readily sold. Although generally preserved as steamers, 
 some of the gunboats were converted into sailing vessels and em- 
 ployed in the ocean carrying trade; one famous little gunboat, the 
 Kennebec^ was altered into a bark and was lost on her first voyage. 
 
 Some of the naval lessons of the Civil War are quite as perti- 
 nent to-day as they were thirty years ago and will be valuable if 
 heeded when the next war comes. It is sometimes claimed that 
 war-ships and naval methods have so changed within the past gen- 
 eration that we cannot hope to again get officers and men from the 
 merchant marine who will as easily adapt themselves to naval con- 
 ditions or become as efficient as did the men of 1861, but this is an 
 imaginary rather than a real source of anxiety. The changes in 
 appliances and construction of war- vessels have had their counter- 
 part in commercial steamers and the two classes of vessels bear to- 
 day the same relation that existed between them thirty years ago, 
 while the officers and men of both services have developed in par- 
 allel lines to meet the altered conditions: to claim, therefore, that 
 the master, mate or seaman of the present time is incompetent to 
 learn the gunnery drill and routine of a modern man-of-war is 
 equivalent to charging our sea-faring citizens with intellectual 
 deterioration since the war, or is an attempt to obscure with difficulty 
 and mystery the administration of rather every -day and common- 
 place duties about which there can be no secrets. 
 
 If the man -of -war's -man has put away the marline-spike and 
 serving- mallet and taken up the monkey-wrench and coal- shovel in 
 their stead, as is admitted with regret or satisfaction according to 
 the point of view, by all attentive to naval matters, the very same 
 change has come over the merchant sailor, and by every common- 
 sense reason he is fully as fit for the duties of a man-of-war as was 
 his predecessor fit for the naval life of his time, and our war 
 showed that that fitness was sufficient. Furthermore, the changes 
 in appliances on board war-ships is such that a much broader field 
 is now open for the recruiting of a suitable enlisted personnel than 
 
502 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OP THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 formerly existed, when activity aloft and familiarity with ships' 
 rigging were the necessary attributes of a seaman. On the modern 
 war-vessel the machinist, the blacksmith, the boiler-maker, the 
 copper-smith, and craftsmen of many other mechanical trades, can 
 all find more to do and be infinitely more useful than the men 
 whose usefulness is based upon ability to furl sails and splice ropes. 
 Thus, instead of being limited to the merchant marine for a supply 
 of seamen, the navy now has the whole vast field of the mechanic 
 arts open and preferable for the purpose. 
 
 There is no mystery about the modern rifled gun, the torpedo, 
 or the rapid-firing machine-gun; all are purely and simply machines 
 constructed upon ordinary mechanical principles, a knowledge of 
 which can be more easily acquired by a man who is already a 
 mechanic than by one who is a sailor. Nor can it be claimed that 
 the use of these modern appliances is more difficult to learn than 
 was that of the older and ruder type of gun, for it is a matter of 
 common remark by naval officers that the gunnery drill of to-day is 
 in every respect more simple than it was twenty or even ten years 
 ago. An ideal fighting crew for a modern ship would be composed 
 of young mechanics from the machine shops and engine works of 
 the country, enlisted as soldiers or marines if the application of the 
 name of seaman to them is too violent an encroachment upon an- 
 cient traditions, drilled with the weapons they are to use until they 
 become familiar with them, and habituated to the sea life by going 
 to sea, just as other men get used to it, sea-sickness and all, for a 
 year or two. Such men would handle their machine weapons with 
 intelligence and precision, and would be able to repair and re- adjust 
 them in the days following a battle, instead of looking on while the 
 engineer's force does the work for them. 
 
 For officers in case of another great expansion of the navy in 
 sudden emergency we will have to turn as we did before to the 
 merchant marine, for however desirable the mechanic may be as an 
 operative of machine weapons, the men who are to handle ships and 
 control their propelling machinery must be found among those who 
 have had long experience in such work. The masters, mates and 
 engineers of our commercial steamers will be found in the next war 
 quite competent to carry on their vocations in the navy and doubt- 
 less as willing to do it as were their predecessors. The surroundings 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 503 
 
 on a man-of-war may be somewhat more formal and theatrical than 
 those to which they are accustomed on their own ships, but their 
 duties will not be so much more difficult as to be impossible. The 
 writer does not claim that such officers would be as perfect in all 
 things as those who haye been trained from youth for the naval ser- 
 vice, for training and experience in any calling tend toward perfec- 
 tion, but he submits as a belief derived from the record of the 
 volunteer element in the navy during the Civil War that they would 
 be found sufficiently capable both above and below decks to guaran- 
 tee an honorable and worthy guardianship of their country's flag. 
 
 Satisfactory as was the behavior of the officers and men drawn 
 into the navy from the merchant marine during the rebellion, the 
 same cannot be said of the vessels obtained from the same source. 
 Indeed, if any one point in naval warfare is sharply emphasized by 
 the events of that war, that point is that vessels built for commercial 
 purposes are unsafe and absolutely unfit for war operations. In the 
 foregoing chapters a few only of very many disasters to ships in 
 action have been mentioned ; the most casual reader must have 
 noticed, however, that the cause of disaster has been in almost all 
 cases the same — namely, unprotected machinery. One of the most 
 humiliating incidents of the war was the quick destruction of the 
 Hatteras by the Alabama, and that event is an excellent illustration 
 of this point. After confidently chasing an unknown vessel until 
 lured beyond the reach of help from her consorts the Hatteras was 
 suddenly turned upon and at once disabled by a shot striking her 
 walking-beam, poised in the air apparently as a target and a temp- 
 tation for attack by a weaker foe. With the ability to move taken 
 from her, she fell an easy prey to the enemy, and her fate is simply 
 one of many provoked by similar vulnerability. 
 
 With the change in building material, the increase in speed, 
 etc. , the commercial steamer has about kept pace with the develop- 
 ment of the gun, so that now, when no slow wooden steamers with 
 overhead beam engines would be thought of for use in war, the re- 
 lation between the ship and the gun is practically the same as it was 
 in 1861-65. We may therefore expect to see our merchant steam- 
 ers reasonably efficient as cruisers or blockaders when again called 
 into service, but almost certainly doomed to destruction when 
 obliged to fight with a properly built and armed vessel of war. 
 
504 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Our armored cruisers and protected cruisers of the present day do 
 not furnish a complete safeguard for their vitals against the fire of 
 modern guns, but in that respect they may be said to be quite as 
 safe, probably more so, than were the regularly built vessels of the 
 war period. Such casualties to machinery as occurred to the Rich- 
 mond, the Sassacus, and the Oneida were exceptions with naval ves- 
 sels, although the rule with commercial steamers when brought 
 within range of the enemy's guns, and in another war we may look 
 for such disasters occasionally to protected and armored cruisers in 
 spite of their protection. The curved protective deck over engines 
 and boilers as now supplied may be relied upon for protection 
 against the fire of any except heavy guns, but a shot or shell from 
 the latter must be expected to break through this shield, and then 
 we will experience a disaster like that of the Oneida at Mobile, and 
 in more frightful degree. In fact, a dread of the intensely horrible 
 makes one shrink from speculating as to what would happen in a 
 modern closed fire-room when a boiler or steam pipe is pierced. 
 
 Not long since public attention was quite generally drawn to a 
 discussion as to the relative merits in war of swift naval cruisers and 
 armed merchant steamers, a considerable party, including even 
 naval officers of experience, claiming that the latter were the most 
 desirable, being faster, and, as was claimed, capable of carrying 
 batteries sufficiently heavy to be able to fight the cruisers on equal 
 terms. An examination of the structural differences of the two 
 classes, considered in connection with the actual experience in war 
 of the prototypes of each, should be conclusively convincing of the 
 absolute superiority of the cruiser. Neither vessel is expected to 
 carry very heavy guns, but in this respect the cruiser will in all 
 probability have the advantage, being built in the first instance to 
 carry guns rather than passengers and freight. Admitting, how- 
 ever, that a typical vessel of each class will have the same battery, 
 the cruiser would still have a marked advantage in the structural 
 protection to her vitals, the machinery of her antagonist being not 
 only unprotected but, in the case of the engines at least, so much 
 higher as to be well above the water-line and a target which none 
 but a blind gunner could well miss. 
 
 This point cannot be better emphasized than by a few diagrams 
 in illustration. Figures 1 and 2 represent transverse sections of 
 
506 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the cruiser Columbia, an excellent modern instance of a swift naval 
 cruiser, showing the location of her engines and boilers with reference 
 to the water-line and the steel protective deck. Figure 3 shows the 
 same, minus the protective deck, for the English-built ocean "grey- 
 hound ' 5 Paris of the International Navigation Company, which 
 may be taken as typical of the arrangement common in a great 
 number of fast mail steamers of different lines. A different and 
 more recent arrangement is that of the latest steamers of the North 
 German Lloyd's, adopted also in the Campania and Lucania of 
 the Cunard line, which economizes fore-and-aft space by placing the 
 
 C40/A/S 
 
 ti.js.PLArrhr 
 
 Figure 8, 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 507 
 
 high-pressure cylinders over the low-pressure. The large Ounarders 
 named have five cylinders to each engine, the intermediate pressure 
 in the center and a tandem pair of high and low pressure cylinders 
 at each end; the height of these engines from bed-plate to top of high- 
 
 Fiotre 4. 
 
 pressure cylinders is forty-seven feet, and the foundation framing 
 under them is eight feet in depth. Therefore they stand, when the 
 ship is drawing thirty feet of water, to a height of twenty- five feet 
 above the water-line, making with their fore-and-aft extent a target 
 25x34 feet in any part of which a shot or shell would most surely 
 
 FlGUKE 5. 
 
 disaable one engine and probably both; this, furthermore, without 
 reckoning the danger to steam, exhaust and receiver pipes leading 
 to and from the cylinders. The same target in the case of the Paris 
 would be 38x16 feet, both graphically illustrated in figures 4 and 5. 
 The boilers of these steamers are below the water line, but without 
 any protection for themselves or their pipe connections against 
 glancing shot or bursting shells. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to match the Columbia against the typical 
 swift merchant steamer in this argument; a much smaller cruiser 
 with protected machinery — the Baltimore for example — might be 
 expected to disable her quite as easily if engaged ; and she probably 
 
508 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 would be engaged if sighted at all, for it would require a degree of 
 moral courage far greater than most men possess to run away from 
 her with a ship three or four times her size which happened to be 
 speedier. The Baltimore or other cruiser might be expected to 
 suffer severely in her upper works and personnel from the quick- 
 firing guns of the mail steamer, but the chance of her receiving a 
 disabling blow before giving one would be so remote as not to 
 deserve consideration. 
 
 Such protection to machinery as could be furnished by tempo- 
 rary expedients on board the merchant steamer cannot be relied upon 
 as any more useful against modern guns than were similar efforts 
 available against the guns of the Civil War period. The Keystone 
 State was a fine example of the better class of merchant vessels 
 armed for naval service in 1861, and for the better protection of her 
 steam drums barricades were built about them, in addition to which 
 it was customary to stow coils of hawsers, bales of cordage, and 
 other material abreast of the drum-rooms. In spite of all this pro- 
 tection it will be recalled that a single shot from a Confederate ram 
 penetrated the drums, scattering death and destruction in its wake 
 and so crippled the ship that she nearly surrendered, being saved 
 from that misfortune only by the zeal and professional knowledge 
 of her chief engineer. 
 
 The instances of invaluable professional and military services 
 rendered by the officers of the engineer corps, regular and volunteer? 
 during the Civil War that have been mentioned in the foregoing 
 chapters are a few only of the many on record in the official reports 
 in the Navy Department, but it is hoped that they are sufficient to 
 redeem from error every fair-minded person who may have been led 
 to believe from partisan arguments that the engineer officers of the 
 navy occupy a non-combatant status, or that the engineer corps is not 
 a necessary and essentially military arm of the naval service. The 
 truth of this must be known even to those who imagine it to be to 
 their interest to deny it ; it was freely admitted by scores of com- 
 manding officers who had experience in war and who did not 
 hesitate to do honor in their official reports to whom it was due irre- 
 spective of corps. Its frank admission now would relieve the engi. 
 neer corps from an aspersion under which its members have smarted 
 much too long, and would amount to nothing more than a generous 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 509 
 
 admission of a truth unquestioned by the great majority of the citi- 
 zens of this republic. 
 
 During the four years of the war one hundred and fifteen offi- 
 cers of the engineer corps are recorded as having died in the serv- 
 ice, the majority of them being killed in battle or died from wounds 
 or exposure incident to their duty. In proportion to the numbers 
 employed it is believed that no other corps suffered so severely. 
 The actual deaths and injuries of engineers inflicted by violent 
 means during the same period are given in the following table, 
 which has been compiled from the casualty book of the rebellion 
 kept in the office of the Surgeon General of the navy, and which is 
 generally very accurate, although the author's attention has been 
 called to a few casualties that are not recorded in the book re- 
 ferred to : 
 
Name. 
 
 John M. Whittemore 
 
 Mayland Cuthbert 
 
 Stephen Mealius 
 
 Samuel Brooks 
 
 Sidney Albert 
 
 Andrew Nesbitt 
 
 Walter Bradley 
 
 Frank R. Hain 
 
 S. Wilkins Cragg 
 
 John C. Huntley 
 
 Eugene J* Wade 
 
 J. D. Williamson 
 
 Jas. B. Kimball 
 
 Jackson McElmell 
 
 John Cox 
 
 John C. McAfee 
 
 G. W. Hollingsworth. 
 Richard M. Hodson .. 
 
 Joseph Huber 
 
 W. J. Reid 
 
 John A . Hill 
 
 John Wall 
 
 Francis C. Dade 
 
 Wm G. Smoot 
 
 Albert W. Morley 
 
 R. W. Hands.... 
 
 Samuel A. Lewis 
 
 Nicholas Meislang 
 
 A. B. Campbell 
 
 W. R. Green 
 
 Wilbur F. Fort 
 
 Erastus Barry 
 
 Jas. S. Turner 
 
 J. E. Fallon 
 
 Henry Sullivan 
 
 John Huff 
 
 Wm. Wright 
 
 James McNally . 
 
 Bobt. Laverty 
 
 Thos. Mallahan 
 
 John Healy 
 
 Simon Shultice 
 
 John Brooks.. 
 
 F. I. Bradley 
 
 John Frazer 
 
 John Munroe 
 
 Samuel T. Strude. 
 
 Chas. J. Morgan , 
 
 John B. Edwards..... 
 Wm. G. Pendleton..., 
 
 H. W. Merriman 
 
 Aug. Mitchell..-,...... 
 
 Geo. W. McGowan ... 
 Chas. Spangberg , 
 
 Grade. 
 
 3d Asst. -Engr. "Z 
 3d*Asst. Engr. 
 2d Asst. i Engr. 
 2d Asst. Engr. 
 2d Asst. Engr. '-; ;;f 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 2d Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 Chief Engr. 
 1st Asst. Engr. 
 Act. Chief Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. Chief Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Chief Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 2d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 1st Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr 
 1st Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 
 Vessel. 
 
 Mohican. 
 
 Mohican. 
 
 J. N. Seymour. 
 
 Carondelet. 
 
 Narragansett. 
 
 Whitehall. 
 
 Henry Andrews. 
 
 C dorado. 
 
 Kineo. 
 
 Pensacolo. 
 
 Daylight. 
 
 Delaware. 
 
 Hartford. 
 
 Octorora. 
 
 Mound City. 
 
 Mound City. 
 
 Mound City. 
 
 Oneida. 
 
 Lexington. 
 
 Katahdin. 
 
 Pocahontas. 
 
 Shawsheen. 
 
 Oneida. 
 
 Dragon. 
 
 Richmond. 
 
 Monitor. 
 
 Monitor. 
 
 Laurel. 
 
 Monitor. 
 
 Westfield. 
 
 Pocahontas. 
 
 Isaac Smith. 
 
 Isaac Smith. 
 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Dahlia. 
 
 Carondelet. 
 
 Peterhoff. 
 
 Diana. 
 
 Catskill. 
 
 Ceres. 
 
 MLt. Washington. 
 
 Cincinnati. 
 
 New London. 
 
 Clifton. 
 
 Sachem. 
 
 Sachem. 
 
 Nanseniond. 
 
 Queen. 
 
 Stettin. 
 
 Lehigh. 
 
 Wehawken. 
 
 Wehawken. 
 
 Wehawken. 
 
 Wehawken. 
 
 Date of Injury. 
 
 November 7, 1861. 
 November 7, 1861. 
 February 8, "862. 
 February 14, 1862. 
 February 16, 1862. 
 March 8, 1862. 
 March 22, 1862. 
 April 24, 1862. 
 April 24, 1862. 
 April 24, 1862. 
 April 25, 1862. 
 May 3, 1862. 
 May 28, 1862. 
 June 14, 1862. 
 June 17, 1862. 
 June 17, 1862. 
 June 17, 1862. 
 June 28, 1862. 
 July 5, 1862. 
 July 22, 1862. 
 August 15, 1862. 
 September 9. 1862. 
 September 17,1862. 
 November 15, 1862. 
 December 16, 1862. 
 December 31, 1862. 
 December 31,1862. 
 December 31, 1862. 
 4th quarter. 
 January 1, 1863. 
 January 14, 1863. 
 January 30, 1863. 
 January 30, 1863. 
 March 14, 1863. 
 March 22, 1863. 
 March 25, 1863. 
 March 19, 1863. 
 March 28, 1863. 
 April 7, 1863. 
 April 16, 1863. 
 April 20, 1863. 
 May 27, 1863. 
 July 10, 1863. 
 September 8, 1863. 
 September 8, 1863. 
 September 8, 1863. 
 October 15, 1863. 
 October 21, 1863. 
 November 14, 1863. 
 November 16, 1863. 
 December 6, 1863. 
 December 6, 1863. 
 December 6, 1863. 
 December 6, 1863. 
 
Nature 
 of Injury. 
 
 3rUDSh0t. 
 
 jrunshot. 
 Srunshot. 
 jrunshot. 
 fracture, 
 gunshot. 
 Gunshot, 
 jrunshot. 
 jrunshot. 
 jrunshot. 
 gunshot, 
 fracture, 
 jrunshot. 
 internal scald. 
 Scald. 
 Scald. 
 Scald, 
 jrunshot. 
 Gunshot, 
 jrunshot. 
 Srunshot. 
 jrunshot. 
 Laceration. 
 Spinal contusion. 
 Contusion. 
 Drowning. 
 Drowning. 
 Gunshot. 
 Contusion. 
 jVnpowd'r explos'n 
 Contusion. 
 Gunshot. 
 3runshot. 
 jrunshot. 
 jrunshot* 
 3unshot. 
 Contusion. 
 .Tunshot. 
 inn shot, 
 junshot. 
 Fracture, 
 jrunshot. 
 lunshot. 
 lunshot, 
 jrunshot. 
 Srunshot, 
 Drowning. 
 Hernia. 
 Hernia. 
 Grunshot. 
 Drowning. 
 Drowning. 
 Drowning. 
 Drowning. 
 
 Result 
 of Injury, 
 
 Death. 
 Recovery. 
 Death, Feb'y 20. 
 
 Recovery. 
 Death. 
 
 Recovery. 
 Recovery. 
 Recovery. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Death. 
 Recovery. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Amputation, 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Death. 
 Death. 
 Death. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Remarks. 
 
 C 0 « V • • 
 
 Killed instantly ; cannon shot. 
 Splinter from cannon shot. 
 Cannon shot ; fracture of thigh-bone. 
 In action ; Fort Donelson. 
 Arm broken ; on shore. 
 Killed instantly ; fragment of shell. 
 
 Shot in forehead ; boat expedition, Mosquito Lagoon, Fla. 
 
 On board Iroquois, in action Forts Phillip and Jackson. 
 
 Wound of face and lip, in action Forts Phillip and Jackson. 
 
 Fragment of shell in scalp, in action Forts Phillip and Jackson. 
 
 Fracture right arm, splinter; inaction, Fort Macon, Ga. 
 
 Both bones right leg, by falling. 
 
 Buckshot and slugs in head, face and shoulder. 
 
 Inhaled hot steam while examining boiler. 
 
 Boiler exploded by shell, in action, St. Charles, Ark. 
 
 Boiler exploded by shell, in action, St. Charles, Ark. 
 
 Boiler exploded by shell, in action, St. Charles, Ark. 
 
 Severe, of left leg ; in action, Vicksburg. 
 
 Shot by guerrillas from shore ; White River, Ark. 
 
 Fragments of shell in scalp and groin ; in action, Grand Gulf. 
 
 Musket shot in abdomen ; boat expedition, Black River, S.C. 
 
 Left thigh and wrist ; in action, Chowan River, N. C. 
 
 Right hand caught in machinery. 
 
 By fall on machinery. 
 
 Leg caught in machinery. 
 
 Perished in the vessel. 
 
 Perished in the vessel. 
 
 Compound fracture, right thigh, expedition Yazoo River. 
 Of knee. 
 
 Destruction of vessel in action, Galveston, Texas. 
 
 Three toes of right foot crushed ; on duty in engine-room. 
 
 Shot in thigh ; in action, Stono River, S. C. 
 
 Pieces of shell ; in action, Stono River, S. C. 
 
 In action, Port Hudson. 
 
 Killed by rifle bullet ; Yazoo River. 
 
 Thigh fractured ; expedition to Deer Creek, Miss. 
 
 Hand crushed in machinery. 
 
 Shot through head ; in action, Atchafalaya River, La, 
 Shot in leg ; in action, Charleston, S. C. 
 Killed by rifleman from shore ; Pamtico River. 
 Instantly killed ; head crushed by crank while on duty. 
 In action ; Vicksburg, 
 
 Wound of r. thigh and scald. ; in action, Donaldsonville, La. 
 
 In action ; Sabine Pass, Texas. 
 
 In action ; Sabine Pass, Texas. 
 
 In action ; Sabine Pass, Texas. 
 
 In line of duty ; breaking of boat davit. 
 
 Left inguinal. 
 
 While removing condenser. 
 
 Right arm ; in action with Fort Moultrie. 
 
 By sinking of vessel at anchor, Charleston. 
 
 By sinking of vessel at anchor, Charleston. 
 
 By sinking of vessel at anchor, Charleston. 
 
 By sinking of vessel at anchor, Charleston. 
 
 29 
 
Name. 
 
 E. R. Clemens 
 
 Cicero B. Curtis... 
 Fred'k E. Brown.. 
 
 Jos. A. Cahill 
 
 Albert Murray 
 
 Frank R. Root 
 
 John White 
 
 Geo. W. Dean 
 
 John A, Frank 
 
 Jos. R. Sherwood 
 
 D. Harrington 
 
 Wm. Moran 
 
 Jos. Griffin 
 
 Chas. P. Parks..... 
 
 D. A. Lock wood.... 
 JohnT. English.... 
 
 Jas. M. Hobby 
 
 Horace Whitworth. 
 
 T. McCarthy 
 
 J. R. McKenzie 
 
 Wm. Wilson 
 
 M. F. Fitzpatrick... 
 Wm. H. G. West.... 
 Samuel Lockwood 
 
 Wm. McEwan 
 
 R. H. Fitch 
 
 Wm. H. Hunt........ 
 
 John Faron 
 
 F. S. Barlow 
 
 Elisha Harsen. 
 
 H. S. Leonard 
 
 Thos. Ustick ......... 
 
 Henry Ritter 
 
 H. McMurtrie 
 
 Wm. H. Harrison... 
 
 Geo. W. Parks 
 
 John Gordon.. 
 
 Wm. S. Dobson 
 
 Wm. H. Crawford., 
 
 Thos. McNellis 
 
 Chas. F. Fowler 
 
 J. P. Phillips 
 
 P. J. Murphy 
 
 Geo. L. Palmer 
 
 DeW. G. Davis...... 
 
 B. R. Stevens 
 
 J. W. Saville 
 
 John Fulcher 
 
 W. S. Thompson.... 
 
 Sanford Curran 
 
 Alpheus Nichols.... 
 
 Grade. 
 
 Vessel. 
 
 Act. 1st Asst.Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 2d Asst. Engr. 
 1st Asst. Engr. 
 2d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 Temporary Engr. 
 Temporary Engr. 
 Temporary Engr. 
 Act. 1st Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 1st Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 2d Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 1st Asst. Engr. 
 Chief Engr. 
 Chief Engr. 
 2d Asst. Engr. 
 2d Asst. Engr. 
 2d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 2d Asst. Engr. 
 1st Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 2d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 2d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 3d Asst. Engr. 
 2d Asst. Engr. 
 Act, 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 1st Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 3d Asst. Engr. 
 Act. 2d Asst. Engr. 
 
 Mound City. 
 Galatea. 
 Niagara. 
 Chenango. 
 Chenango. 
 Chenango. 
 Chenango. 
 Ceres. 
 Ceres. 
 Ceres. 
 Miami. 
 Miami. 
 Prairie Bird. 
 Cricket. 
 
 Champion No. 3. 
 Champion No. 3. 
 Champion No. 3. 
 Saugus. 
 Covington. 
 Sassacus- 
 
 Commodore Jones. 
 
 Commodore Jones. 
 
 Commodore Jones. 
 
 Wave. 
 
 Wave. 
 
 Nahant. 
 
 Stockdale. 
 
 Hartford. 
 
 Oneida. 
 
 Oneida. 
 
 Tecumseh. 
 
 Tecumseh. 
 
 Tecumseh. 
 
 Tecumseh. 
 
 Tecumseh. 
 
 Tecumseh. 
 
 Juniata. 
 
 Shamrock 
 
 Tulip. 
 
 Tulip. 
 
 Bigonia. 
 
 Eutaw. 
 
 Banshee. 
 
 Atlanta. 
 
 Little Ada. 
 
 Little Ada. 
 
 Patapsco. 
 
 Patapsco. 
 
 Patapsco. 
 
 Canonicus. 
 
 Dai Ching. 
 
 Atlanta. 
 
 Ida. 
 
 Rose. 
 
 Date of Injury. 
 
 January 22, 1864. 
 February 12, 1864. 
 March 22, 1864. 
 April 15, 1864. 
 April 15, 1864. 
 April 15, 1864. 
 April 15, 1864. 
 April 17, 1864. 
 April 17, 1864. 
 April 17, 1864. 
 April 19, 1864. 
 April 19, 1864. 
 April 22, 1864. 
 April 26, 1864. 
 April 26, 1864. 
 April 26, 1864. 
 April 26, 1864. 
 April 27, 1864. 
 April 27, 1864. 
 May 5, 1864. 
 May 5, 1864. 
 May 5, 1864. 
 May 5, 1864. 
 May 6, 1864. 
 May 6,1864. 
 May 16, 1864. 
 May 24, 1864. 
 xAugust 5, 1864. 
 August 5, 1864, 
 August 5, 1864. 
 August 5, 1864. 
 August 5, 1864. 
 August 5, 1864. 
 August 5, 1864. 
 August 5, 1864. 
 August 5, 1864. 
 September 1, 1864. 
 October 31, 18 64. 
 November 11, 1864. 
 November 11, 1864. 
 November 15, 1864. 
 November 24, 1864. 
 November 25, 1864. 
 2d quarter. 
 4th quarter. 
 4th quarter. 
 January 15, 1865. 
 January 15, 1865. 
 January 15, 1865. 
 January 15, 1865. 
 January 26, 1865. 
 April 6, 1865. 
 April 13, 1865. 
 2d quarter. 
 
Nature 
 of Injury. 
 
 Result 
 of injury. 
 
 RlPM ATtTTCi 
 
 Hernia. 
 
 • •••••• • • ••••••• •••»•«■ 
 
 In line of duty, from fall. 
 
 Fracture. 
 
 Recovery* 
 
 Hand caught in machinery. 
 
 Subluxation. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Left ankle, by jumping from wharf into boat, on duty. 
 
 Scald. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Explosion of boiler ; New York harbor. 
 
 Scald. . 
 
 Death 
 
 Explosion of boiler ; New York harbor. 
 
 Scald. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Explosion of boiler ; New York harbor. 
 
 Scald. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Explosion of boiler ; New York harbor. 
 
 Gunshot. 
 
 
 Tn action off Plymouth "NT O 
 
 Gunshot. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 In action off Plymouth, N. C. 
 
 Gunshot. 
 
 Double internal hernia. 
 
 In action off Plymouth, N. C. 
 
 Gunshot. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 In action off Plymouth, N. C. 
 
 Gunshot. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 In action off Plymouth, N. 0. 
 
 Gunshot. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 From fragment of casemate, in action ; Yazoo River. 
 
 Gunshot. 
 
 Death. 
 
 In action near Alexandria, Red River, La. 
 
 Scald. 
 
 Death. 
 
 By shot piercing boiler in action, Red River, La. 
 
 Scald* 
 
 Death. 
 
 By shot piercing boiler, in action, Red River, La. 
 
 Scald. 
 
 Death 
 
 By shot piercing boiler, in action, Red River, La. 
 
 Hernia. 
 Gunshot. 
 
 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Of right arm. 
 
 Scald. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 By shot piercing boiler ; in action with ram Albemarle. 
 
 Contusions. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Blowing up of vessel by torpedo in James River. 
 
 Contusions. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Blowing up of vessel by torpedo in James River. 
 
 Contusions. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Blowing up of vessel by torpedo in James River. 
 
 Starvation. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Captured with vessel : died in prison pen, Camp Groce. 
 
 Starvation. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Captured with vessel ; died in prison pen, Camp Groce. 
 Back torn by splinters in action. 
 
 Gunshot. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Gunshot. 
 Gunshot. 
 
 
 Wounded in head and captured ; boat expedition, Fla. 
 Fore-arm shattered in action by shell ; Mobile Bay. 
 
 Amputation r. arm. 
 
 Scald. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Shell exploded in boiler in action, Mobile Bay. 
 
 Scald. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Shell exploded in boiler ; in action, Mobile Bay. 
 Vessel sunk by torpedo ; in action, Mobile Bay. 
 
 Drowning. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Drowning. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Vessel sunk by torpedo ; in action, Mobile Bay. 
 
 Drowning. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Vessel sunk by torpedo ; in action, Mobile Bay. 
 
 Drowning. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Vessel sunk by torpedo ; in action, Mobile Bay. 
 
 Drowning. 
 
 
 Vessel sunk by torpedo ; in action, Mobile Bay. 
 
 Drowning. 
 
 Death 
 
 Vessel sunk by torpedo ; in action, Mobile Bay, 
 
 Hernia. 
 
 Disabled. 
 
 By over-exertion on duty. 
 
 Gunshot. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Of neck and arm, in action ; Plymouth, N. C. 
 Explosion of boiler, Potomac River, 
 
 Scald. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Scald. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Explosion of boiler, Potomac River. 
 Not in line of duty. 
 
 Hernia. 
 
 Resigned. 
 
 Gunshot. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Not in line of duty. 
 
 Contusion. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Of back ; by fall while on duty. 
 
 Hernia. 
 
 Discharged, disabled. 
 
 Contusion. 
 
 Fracture. 
 
 Drowning. 
 
 To Norfolk hospital ; no details, 
 ut rigiit tnign-bone. 
 Destruction of vessel by torpedo. 
 
 
 Death. 
 
 Drowning. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Destruction of vessel by torpedo. 
 
 Drowning. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Destruction of vessel by torpedo. 
 
 Gunshot. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 By grape-shot ; in action, Fort Fisher. 
 In action, Combahee River, S. C. 
 
 Gunshot. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Gunshot. 
 
 Death. 
 
 By torpedo ; James River. 
 
 Gunshot. 
 
 Death, 
 
 Fracture of thigh-bone ; torpedo ; Mobile Bay. 
 
 Fracture. 
 
 Recovery. 
 
 Hand caught in machinery ; on duty. 
 
OHAPTEE XXVIIL 
 
 " Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it 
 off."— Old Testament. 
 
 Competitive Trials of Steam Machinery — The Nipsic and Kansas — Failure of the 
 Saco — The Famous Algonquin- Winooski Controversy — Performance of the 
 Idaho — Her Success as a Sailing Ship — Trial Trip of the Chattanooga— 
 Trial of the Madawaska — Comparative Table of Eesults of Trials of the 
 Idaho, Chattanooga, Madawaska and Wampanoag — Subsequent Career 
 of the Madawaska, or Tennessee. 
 
 r^REQUENT reference has been made in former chapters to 
 
 I vessels built during the rebellion, with machinery designed by 
 the contractors for the purpose of competing with the designs of the 
 Bureau of Steam Engineering, and in some cases with the avowed 
 intention of proving by practical test certain faults alleged to exist 
 in the practice of the Bureau. The record of these competitions is a 
 very interesting chapter in the history of naval engineering in the 
 United States and will now be taken up in some detail as one of the 
 engineering lessons of the war. 
 
 The first instances of competitive machinery in vessels built 
 after the beginning of the war occur in the small gun-boats of the 
 Nipsic class placed under construction about the end of 1862. The 
 machinery of three of these — the Nipsic, Shawmut, and Nyack—~w&& 
 designed by Mr. Isherwood and consisted in each ease of a two- 
 cylinder back-acting engine with cylinders 30 inches in diameter by 
 21 inches stroke of piston, fitted with ordinary slide valves and 
 Stephenson link motion. The boilers, two in number, were of the 
 Martin type aggregating in each vessel 198 square feet of grate sur- 
 face and 4,950 square feet of heating surface. The machinery of 
 the five other vessels in each case was of special design. The gun- 
 boats were all of wood, built by the government at different navy 
 yards, and were of the following general dimensions: Length, 179 
 feet 6 inches; beam, 30 feet; displacement, 836 tons; tonnage, 593. 
 
 In the cargo of the blockade-runner Princess Royal, captured off 
 Charleston in January, 1863, was found a complete marine engine 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 515 
 
 of English manufacture, intended for a Confederate ram, and this 
 engine was placed in the Kansas , one of the gun- vessels of the class 
 under description, then building at the Philadelphia navy yard. 
 The engine was direct-acting with two cylinders 42 inches in diam- 
 eter and 24 inches stroke, designed for working steam at a high rate 
 of expansion. Two straight- way boilers were supplied the Kansas, 
 their dimensions differing from those of the Isherwood gunboats to 
 suit the different type of engines. The screw propellers of the ves- 
 sels were precisely alike. The first opportunity of testing the Kansas 
 with one of the Bureau vessels occurred in January, 1866, when she 
 happened to meet with the Nipsic in the Brazil squadron and a 
 
 ! , 
 
 i 
 
 .$> bo 9 O0O W fS\ 
 
 o 
 
 I 
 
 t 
 
 0 
 
 % i 
 
 STRAIGHT- WAY BOILER, U. S. S. KANSAS, 1863. 
 
 Grate surface, 54 sq. ft. Heating surface, 1,539 sq. ft. 
 
 competitive trial was ordered by Rear Admiral Godon, who hit upon 
 an unusual but rather excellent basis for the test. Each vessel was 
 allowed the same amount of coal per hour (1,600 pounds) and 
 ordered to make the best speed possible for twelve hours with that 
 allowance: both throttles were kept wide open; the Isherwood engine 
 of the JSfipsie cut off at six-tenths of the stroke and the English 
 engine of the Kansas at one-fourth of the stroke. The result of the 
 competition was decidedly in favor of the American practice, the 
 Nvpsic averaging eleven knots an hour for the twelve hours, while 
 the Kansas averaged only eight. 
 
 The machinery of the Saco was built by the Corliss Steam En- 
 gine Co. of Providence, Rhode Island. The engine was of the 
 
516 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 vibrating lever type with two cylinders, of the same dimensions 
 as the cylinders of the Isherwood engines in the same class 
 of vessels ; the valve gear used was the well-known Cor- 
 liss type of automatic cut- off so successful in stationary engine 
 practice. The boilers were return fire- tubular, designed with the ob- 
 ject of stowing below the water line and thus being protected from 
 shot. This machinery failed when tried, the fault resting princi- 
 pally with the boilers, which were not designed to use salt water 
 and were quickly ruined by chemical action. The Sam was towed 
 to the Washington navy yard, the machinery removed at the expense 
 of the contractor, and new machinery of Bureau design substi- 
 tuted, the cost of the latter being charged against the Corliss Com- 
 pany and collected by deducting it from bills due on account of some 
 large engines that company was building by contract. 
 
 The three other vessels of this class with special engines were 
 fairly successful, but in no case were as fast or efficient as the Isher- 
 wood gunboats. The best one of them — the Maumee — had machin- 
 ery designed by John Ericsson and built by the Stover Machine 
 Company, of New York, the engine being of Ericsson's favorite 
 vibrating lever type. TheYantic had a direct- acting two-cylinder en- 
 gine designed and built by Merrick & Son, Philadelphia. The 
 Pequot had a remarkable variation from the usual marine engine prac- 
 tice, her engine being of the Wright segmental type, built by Wood- 
 ruff & Beach, Hartford, Connecticut. The cylinders, if they may 
 be so called, were segmental or bent, as shown in the outline sketch, 
 
 WRIGHT'S PATENT SEGMENTAL ENGINE. 
 
 the piston rods being in the form of rings as represented. The 
 Pequot did some service in the North Atlantic blockading squadron 
 but was never in commission after the war closed and was sold out 
 of the service in 1869 a 
 
THE STEAM NAYT OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 517 
 
 The most famous machinery competition in the annals of the 
 steam navy was that of the double-enders Algonquin and Winooski 
 of the Sassacus class. Mr. E. N. Dickerson, the devotee of Mari- 
 otte's law, had won the confidence of Mr. Paul S. Forbes, a respon- 
 sible business man of New York, and induced that gentleman to 
 take contracts for naval machinery. In this manner Dickerson be- 
 came the designer of the machinery of the Algonquin, which in- 
 cluded a type of boiler of his own patent, illustrated further along, 
 and one inclined engine with a cylinder 48 inches in diameter by 10 
 feet stroke, this machinery being built by sub-contract by the Provi- 
 dence Steam Engine Company, of Providence, Ehode Island. The 
 machinery of all other vessels of this class consisted of Martin 
 boilers and large inclined engines, the cylinder being 58 inches 
 diameter and 105 inches stroke. The Algonquin was built in the 
 Brooklyn navy yard and her machinery was installed in 1865, about 
 two years after the expiration of the contract time. When completed 
 and ready for trial, one of the steamers of the class was selected to 
 compete with the Algonquin, the one selected as being most available 
 being the Winooski, named after a river in Vermont. The hull of the 
 Winooski was built at the Boston navy yard and the machinery by 
 contract at the same shops where Dickerson 5 s machinery for the 
 Algonquin had been constructed. 
 
 So little engineering knowledge entered into the machinery 
 designs of the Algonquin that when it was all placed on board it 
 was found to make the vessel so lop-sided that a dead weight of 
 about sixty-nine tons had to be applied to keep her on an even keel. 
 By the time the vessels were ready for trial Dickerson's theories and 
 his assertion that the engineer-in- chief was violating all the rules of 
 good practice in his machinery designs had become so well adver- 
 tised that public attention was very generally drawn to the rivalry 
 between the two ships, much space being given to it by the news- 
 papers in England as well as in our own country. In this notorious 
 controversy it is a remarkable fact that the expression of public sen- 
 timent was almost wholly favorable to Mr. Dickerson and hostile to 
 Mr. Isherwood; this in spite of the facts that the former was not an 
 engineer and had no naval record to refer to except the fiasco of 
 the Pensacola, while the latter stood at the head of his corps and 
 had the engines of at least one hundred successful war- vessels to 
 point to as proofs of his skill. 
 
518 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Mr. Dickerson's eloquent tongue and facile pen were largely 
 contributory to the creation of this sentiment and Mr. Isherwood 
 himself aided indirectly in strengthening it. That officer had found 
 himself placed at the head of an executive branch of the Navy 
 Department formerly rather looked down upon as of slight impor- 
 tance but which had risen at one bound under the pressure of war to 
 a place of first rank, and upon him fell the task of governing the 
 gigantic system thus suddenly created. In doing this he entirely 
 absorbed his own interests in those of the government and proceeded 
 about his duty without fear or favor, insisting upon the exact letter 
 of the law from every politician, naval officer, or contractor with 
 whom he came into official contact. He thus made scores of enemies 
 simply because he did his duty, and few friends; of the latter, 
 indeed, he has written that he had none, and did not wish any. He 
 exercised official authority and power never before conferred upon a 
 member of his profession in this country, and with a full knowledge 
 of the elements that resented that authority and grudged him the 
 official power accorded him he felt himself capable of maintaining 
 himself against all opposition. 
 
 When the war closed and there was more time for personal 
 jealousy and dislike to assert themselves, all the disappointed con- 
 tractors, all the naval officers whose official toes had been trodden 
 upon, and all the politicians whose favorites had failed to retain 
 positions for which they were unfit, banded together and for two or 
 three years filled the pages of the newspapers with tales of the 
 incompetence of the engineer-in-chief and assertions as to the use- 
 lessness of his machinery. Through this prolonged storm of abuse 
 Mr. Isherwood passed unconcerned, neither depressed by slander 
 nor exhilarated by success; he had calculated upon both, and was 
 never disappointed. The attack centered upon the trial trips of the 
 vessels built to compete with those of Bureau design, for it was con. 
 fidently predicted that their results would be so to the disadvantage 
 of the Bureau practice that the chief of that Bureau would be over- 
 thrown and buried in the wreck. When these events had all passed 
 by and the competing ships had made records of failure, complete 
 in some cases, while Isherwood 's machinery had been wonderfully 
 successful, there was little left for the hostiles except surprise and 
 chagrin. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 519 
 
 The claim of the contractors for the Algonquin's machinery was 
 that it would propel a given hull at a certain speed, or a certain dis- 
 tance, more economically than could the Bureau engines; that is, 
 with a less expenditure of coal. With ^equal allowances of coal 
 they expected to develop more power and speed. In an open let- 
 ter to the Department written by Mr. Forbes, that gentleman ex- 
 pressed Dickerson's belief as follows: " The engineer on whose 
 skill I rely, is of opinion that, with equal amounts of coal supplied 
 to both vessels, the Algonquin can go as far and as fast as the 
 Winooski — both vessels running at economical rates of speed — and 
 then tow her home after her coal is exhausted ; and that, tied stern 
 to stern, the Algonquin can tow the Winooski backward across the 
 North River in twenty minutes as a measure of power." In order 
 that an impartial method of conducting the trial be prescribed the 
 Secretary of the Navy appointed a board of civilian experts, com- 
 posed of eight of the most prominent marine engineers in New 
 York city, and requested them to prepare the instructions to be fol- 
 lowed on the trial. This board agreed that a dock trial for power 
 would be the fairest possible test, directing that the paddle-wheels 
 of the two vessels be made of exactly the same width and immer- 
 sion that they might act as equal dynamometers : each vessel was 
 to burn as much coal as desired, taken from the same pile and 
 weighed on the same scales on the wharf between them, the amount 
 of coal consumed in the specified time (ninety -six hours) compared 
 with the number of revolutions of the engines to be the measure of 
 economy. 
 
 To this method of trial the contractors for the Algonquin ob- 
 jected, although it was more favorable for showing the truth of 
 their claims than a trial in free route would have been. One of 
 their objections was that the Algonquin had no circulating pump, a 
 scoop, or "mud shovel" as it was irreverently called, being de- 
 pended upon to throw water into the condenser by the motion of 
 the ship; another objection was that the smaller boilers could not 
 burn as much coal as those of the Winooski, the latter having 200 
 square feet of grate surface to 132 in the Algonquin, but this objec- 
 tion was inconsistent with the claim that they could produce a given 
 power with a much less expenditure of fuel. The press generally 
 sided with Dickerson and ridiculed the idea of a dock trial, one of 
 
520 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the leading illustrated papers of the country coming out with a 
 caricature representing Secretary Welles mounted on an ordinary- 
 looking donkey labeled u Winooski," the tail of which was hitched 
 to a post, while Mr. Dickerson in the garb of Uncle Sam pranced 
 near by astride of a fiery animal bearing the name " Algonquin" 
 on its collar. The legend underneath this picture ran as follows : 
 
 "All's Well, That Ends Well(es) ! 
 
 " Uncle Sam (Dickerson) — Now Grandaddy, my little donkey, 
 Algonquin, is ready to run agin yourn. 
 
 u Granny Welles — Well, I'm ready too — just tie your animal's 
 tail to the post, as mine is, and whose tail comes off first wins the 
 race. " 
 
 During the autumn months the competitive dock trial of the 
 rival engines was twice undertaken, and twice discontinued by Mr. 
 Dickerson, who personally supervised the running of the Algon- 
 quin's machinery. The first stop was occasioned by an alleged de- 
 fect in the steam pipe of the Algonquin, under the pretext of re- 
 pairing which a delay of six weeks resulted, and the second stop, 
 made after both engines had been run about seventy hours, was 
 without other cause than that Dickerson was dissatisfied with the 
 progress of the trial, in which his vessel was steadily losing ground. 
 The Winooski completed the specified ninety-six hours without stop- 
 page or hitch of any kind, her performance steadily improving and 
 giving better results the last twelve hours than at any time before. 
 The following extracts from the report of the board of chief engi- 
 neers which conducted the trial give the main conclusions: 
 
 "The trial was conducted in exact conformity with the in- 
 structions of the board of civilian experts, consisting of Messrs. 
 Everett, Copeland, Baird, Hibbard, Coryell, Bromley, and 
 Wright. 
 
 4 'At the time the Algonquin's engine was stopped it was fall- 
 ing rapidly behind the Winooski' s, the difference in the perform- 
 ance being nearly one revolution of the wheels per minute. 
 
 " The stoppage, in our opinion, was caused by this fact, and 
 was wholly unauthorized, unwarranted, and unjustifiable, and was 
 done in open defiance of our prohibition* 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 521 
 
 4 { With regard to the economical results, they are as follows, 
 according to the two methods of determining them: 
 
 "By the first method, taking the cubes of the number of revo- 
 lutions made per minute by the paddle-wheels for the measure of 
 power, we find the power with the Algonquin? s machinery to cost 
 about two and one-tenth per cent, more in fuel than the power with 
 the Winooski's machinery. 
 
 ' ' By the second method, taking the indicator results for the 
 measure of power, we find the power with the Algonquin's ma- 
 chinery to cost about ten and six-tenths per cent, more in fuel than 
 the power with the Winooski's machinery. 
 
 u By both methods, the economy of fuel is in favor of the 
 WmooskVs machinery, and the difference in the results given by 
 
 the two methods is probably due to the difference in the effects of 
 
 the tide on the paddle-wheels of the two vessels. 5 ' 
 
 The following is an abstract of a table of comparative data 
 which accompanied the report of the trial board : 
 
 Date of commencement, October 23d, p. m 
 
 Duration of experiment in hours and minutes 
 
 Totat number of revolutions 
 
 Average steam pressure in steam pipe 
 
 Average point of cutting off steam 
 
 Average vacuum in condenser in inches of mercury- 
 Average revolutions per minute 
 
 Average indicated pressure on piston 
 
 Average indicated horse power 
 
 Pounds of coal per hour per ind. horse-power 
 
 Temperature on deck 
 
 Temperature in fire room 
 
 Temperature in engine room 
 
 Winooski. 
 
 4:23 
 96. 
 
 85,884 
 19.64 
 0.619 
 
 27.80 
 
 14.91 
 
 26.276 
 545.485 
 2.905 
 
 53.6 
 
 98. 
 
 66.8 
 
 Algonquin. 
 
 4:22 
 69.8 
 62,407 
 71.63 
 0.132 
 20.54 
 15.045 
 31.60 
 517.317 
 3.113 
 53.6 
 108.9 
 70.1 
 
 After this trial, the Department ordered the contractors, 
 through Rear Admiral Gregory, to prepare the Algonquin for an- 
 other dock trial, to be a complete one as to time. To this order 
 Mr. Forbes refused, his letter to Admiral Gregory containing the 
 following comments : 
 
 ' 'Informer communications 1 have protested against a dock trial 
 
522 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 as unfair, and consequently improper. I now reiterate that protest. 
 My engine, I had, perhaps, ignorantly imagined, was built to navi- 
 gate the sea, and not to strain hawsers and pull docks. I conse- 
 quently decline to run it again at the dock ; but whenever the .Navy 
 Department or Mr. Isherwood is ready to run the vessels at cruis- 
 ing speed (say about eight knots), for comparative economy of fuel, 
 and afterward at full speed, for development of power, you will find 
 me ready and anxious. It was for this that the engine was built. 
 
 "The experts, who adhere with so much tenacity to the dock 
 trial, have failed to convince me or the scientific world that it is a 
 fair trial * * * . " 
 
 It is needless to follow out in detail the controversy that fol- 
 lowed. The Navy Department ultimately abandoned its determi- 
 nation to insist upon a complete dock trial and it was finally agreed 
 to make a last comparative test of the two vessels by racing them 
 eight times consecutively over a course from Execution Rock to and 
 around the light on Faulkner's Island and return, the total course 
 being something less than one thousand miles. The race began 
 about 3 p. m. February 13th, 1866, and terminated the night of the 
 14th on account of a severe storm, less than one-half of the course 
 at that time having been traversed by either vessel. 
 
 When the vessels first got under way the sky was clear, with a 
 light breeze from the north north-east, and as they proceeded up 
 Long Island Sound the Winooski quickly began to widen the distance 
 between the two, she being four and one-half miles ahead when 
 Stratford light-ship was reached, forty miles from the starting point. 
 She rounded Faulkner's Island about 8 p. m. and half an hour later 
 met the Algonquin going toward the island, she being then about 
 thirteen miles behind. At 1 a. m. next morning the Winooski 
 reached Execution Rock, having completed one- eighth of the whole 
 course, and having run one hundred and twenty miles in ten hours 
 and seven minutes. She was here retarded to some extent by fields 
 of floating ice, but suffered no damage and her machinery was in 
 excellent working order. At 5.48 that morning she again turned 
 Faulkner's Island and shortly after seven met the Algonquin steer- 
 ing for it and thirty miles behind. At 10.37 a. m. she once more 
 worked through the ice about Execution Rock and stood up the 
 Sound, forty miles ahead of her rival, meeting and saluting the lat- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 523 
 
 ter about noon. At five minutes past eight that evening the WinoosJd 
 completed her third round voyage and the race was given up on 
 account of the weather, she being then seventy miles ahead, which 
 was regarded as sufficient to establish the relative merits of the two 
 ships. 
 
 The official report of the trial board thus condemned the Algon- 
 quin: u In every point guaranteed by the contractor for the Algon- 
 quin's machinery he has failed, and we are of the opinion that it is 
 totally unfit for the naval service." By the terms of the contract 
 the contractors were required in case of failure to remove their 
 machinery from the Algonquin and replace it with machinery like 
 that of the competing vessel, and this the Department called upon 
 Forbes and Dickerson to do, at the same time withholding from 
 them the last payment on the contract and a final payment in the 
 shape of a percentage reservation. The contractors refused to carry 
 out this requirement of the contract, informing the Department that 
 they had appealed the matter to Congress, and so it rested for two 
 or three years : the contractors eventually received the withheld 
 payments and the Algonquin, after lying in ordinary at the New 
 York navy yard until 1869, was sold. Mr. Dickerson offered no 
 reason in defense of the failure of his expectations; in fact he is said 
 to have appeared quite unconcerned about the matter and less dis- 
 posed to discover any element of personal defeat in it than was any 
 one of a great number of newspaper editors who had been defend- 
 ing him. The hope of retrieval that follows failure is frequently 
 more comforting than success with its accompanying weariness, and 
 this was true in this case, for the Dickerson party turned with re- 
 newed hope and marvelous predictions to the Idaho, then approach- 
 ing readiness for her steam trials. 
 
 The principal dimensions of the Idaho, the names of her build- 
 ers and the unusual proportions of her steam cylinders have been 
 given in a former chapter. The contract required that she make an 
 average of fifteen knots per hour for twenty-four consecutive hours 
 under the usual conditions of sea weather with the wind not more 
 favorable than abeam. The extreme to which the expansive theory 
 of steam was carried by Dickerson in the designs for this machinery 
 is shown by the scanty provision for generating it, her boilers 
 aggregating only 396 square feet of grate surface, or less than one- 
 
524 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 half as much as the practice of that day demanded for vessels of her 
 size and proposed speed. These boilers were of Dickerson's own 
 patent and had inclined water tubes with a superheating chamber 
 in the top, as shown in the accompanying sectional view. The large 
 removable plates in the wake of the tube-boxes were of cast-iron al- 
 though compelled to withstand the full steam pressure of the boilers, 
 and this was one of many departures from sound practice which the 
 construction of the engines and boilers revealed. One of the offi- 
 cers assembled on board for the steam trial was Chief Engineer E. 
 D. Eobie, U. S. Navy, than whom no one had a better reputation 
 for nerve and professional acumen, or was freer from suspicion of 
 hysteria. After critically examining the machinery in all its details, 
 he, without taking counsel with anyone, quietly went on shore, in- 
 sured his life for a large sum for the benefit of his family, and then 
 returned ready to perform his duty and face any possible conse- 
 quence, an incident which illustrates the curiosities of design em- 
 bodied in the construction of the Idaho' 's machinery much better 
 than the same can be conveyed by any technical description. 
 
 r 
 
 A 
 
 'A 
 
 a o o o 
 
 o 
 
 f> 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 5)0(50 
 « 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 o 
 0 
 o 
 o 
 
 o o t> o 
 
 0 
 0 
 
 o 
 
 0 
 
 g O O 0 
 
 0O< 
 
 ooooo 
 
 dickerson's patent boiler. 
 
 On the 15th of May, 1866, the Idaho got under way from New 
 York harbor and proceeded seaward with the intention (on the part 
 of her designers) of breaking the record of speed at sea under steam 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 525 
 
 and of so completely vindicating the theory of extraordinary expan- 
 sion that the scoffing Isherwood would be forced to hide his ruined 
 reputation in the depths of professional oblivion. After getting to 
 sea the trial run was repeatedly interrupted by casualties to 
 machinery and it was not until the evening of May 20th that a consec- 
 utive steaming period of twenty-four hours without break-down had 
 been secured, the course run over being in smooth water up and 
 down the coast of New Jersey. The performance of the machinery 
 was the maximum that the contractors' engineers could coax from 
 it, but the result was forcibly suggestive of the Esopian tale of the 
 mountain and its offspring. Instead of the contract requirement of 
 fifteen knots, or the far greater speed predicted, the average for the 
 twenty-four hours was eight and twenty-seven one hundredths knots per 
 hour I 
 
 The story of this trial trip is appropriately concluded by quoting 
 the following endorsement put on the report of the trial board by 
 Rear Admiral Gregory, and by reproducing the report of a board 
 that surveyed the Idaho a few months later: 
 
 66 Sir: Respectfully transmitted herewith .are the reports of the 
 board of officers appointed to carry out the orders of the Bureau for 
 the sea trial of the steamer Idaho. These records show conclu- 
 sively that the Idaho has not in any particular been fitted and 
 equipped in accordance with the obligations of the contract, and that 
 her performances, particularly in speed, show that she is unfitted for 
 the service, and should be condemned and rejected as totally unfit 
 for service in the navy. 
 
 "I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 4 ' F. H. Gregory, 
 u Rear Admiral. 
 
 u John Lenthal, Esq., 
 
 " Chief Bureau Construction, Washington." 
 
 "New York Navy Yard, August 22, 1866. 
 
 66 Sir: Agreeable to your orders of the 9th instant we have 
 examined the Idaho, and have respectfully to report as follows: 
 
 66 The vessel is not in conformity with the contract, inasmuch 
 
526 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 as she is not an efficient vessel of war, with the proper conveniences 
 of capacity and stowage, and her machinery is worthless as a 
 motive-power; it also occupies much of the space in the vessel which 
 should have been appropriated to other purposes. 
 
 "The board does not consider the vessel a desirable one, or 
 proper to be retained in the service. 
 
 u The board is of the opinion, if sold at public auction (exclu- 
 sive of the sails, cables and anchors, and other property belonging 
 to the government) that the vessel should bring one hundred and 
 twenty-five thousand ($125,000) dollars. 
 
 u We are respectfully, &c, 
 
 U F. H. Gregory, Rear AdmiaL 
 u JohnL. Worden, Captain. 
 u B. F. Delano, Naval Constructor, 
 u J. W. King, Chief Engineer, 
 ' ' G. W. Ransom, Commander. 
 U H. H. Stewart, Chief Engineer. 
 "E. D. Robie, Chief Engineer. 
 
 u John Lenthal, Esq., 
 
 u Chief of Bxireau of Construction , Washington^ D. 6V 
 
 Mr. Dickerson took no part personally in the speed trials of the 
 Idaho. A bright and accomplished man in many respects, he ap- 
 pears to a student of his dealings with the Navy Department to have 
 been not a charlatan but a monomaniac on the subject of engineer- 
 ing; without much professional knowledge of that subject but able 
 to discourse upon it in such manner as to win a reputation as an 
 eminent engineer and to enlist for himself the enthusiastic support 
 of newspaper editors, politicians, and capitalists. With the failure 
 of the Idaho Mr. Dickerson's connection with the Navy Department 
 came to an end and he ceased from troubling with his visionary 
 theories and vexatious political influence. With the severance of 
 that connection this strange and fantastic figure passes beyond the 
 horizon of the present work and these pages will know him no 
 more. 
 
 Although condemned in the positive manner indicated by the 
 official reports copied above, fate decreed that the Idaho should oc- 
 cupy for a brief period a place in the American navy and become 
 
THE IDAHO AS A SAILING SHIP. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 529 
 
 the central figure in an ocean tragedy as unusual and thrilling as 
 as any in our naval history. When the Navy Department refused 
 to accept her, Mr. Forbes, who had much influence by virtue of his 
 prominence and high standing among men, appealed to Congress 
 for relief and obtained it almost immediately. A joint resolution, 
 approved February 18, 1867, forced the vessel upon the govern- 
 ment by directing the Secretary of the Navy to accept her at the 
 price of $550,000 already paid Mr. Forbes, this being $50,000 less 
 than the contract price. As the hull had been built by Mr. Steers, 
 the most eminent ship-builder of the day, and was considered fault- 
 less in model and construction, it was decided not to sell it at the 
 low figure necessarily commanded by condemned government prop- 
 erty. Accordingly, after the machinery had been removed, the 
 vessel was fitted up as a full-rigged sailing ship and ordered to pro- 
 ceed to the Asiatic station, the intention being to make use of her 
 as a store-ship at the naval depot established at Nagasaki by permis- 
 sion of the Japanese government. 
 
 The Idaho sailed from New York for Japan the first day of 
 November, 1867, under the command of Acting Volunteer Lieu- 
 tenant Commander Edward Hooker, her watch officers also being 
 from the volunteer service. From her unfortunate experience as a 
 steamer the ship had a bad name and those who embarked in her 
 did so with many misgivings, but when she got into the open sea 
 she most nobly did justice as a sailer to the genius that had shaped 
 her beautiful lines. With the wind well ahead and her yards braced 
 almost sharp up she logged hour after hour 14^ knots, and in one 
 watch of four hours made sixty-five knots; later in the voyage, when 
 in the Southern Indian Ocean, on one occasion with a fair wind she 
 ran all the log-line off the reel, marking 18-| knots, before the sand 
 had entirely run out of the glass, when the ship was probably mak- 
 ing 20 knots through the water. In spite of these fine perform- 
 ances, the Idaho, perhaps the fastest sailing ship in the world, made 
 one of the longest passages on record, being so baffled by head 
 winds and calms in the latter part of her voyage that when she 
 reached Nagasaki she was two hundred days out from New York. 
 
 The reports of her wonderful qualities as a sailing ship and the 
 remonstrances of her officers against laying up as a hulk such a 
 splendid example of naval architecture finally induced the Navy De 
 
 30 
 
530 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 partment to recall her and. she was ordered to Yokohama to prepare 
 for the voyage home. On this trip her speed was not remarkable, 
 the bottom being foul from having swung at anchor for fifteen 
 months in Nagasaki harbor, but she maintained her right to be con- 
 sidered the queen of sailing ships by weathering without the loss of 
 a spar a typhoon that wrecked many vessels in the harbor of Yoko- 
 hama and destroyed large buildings in that city. When all prepara- 
 tions were completed, the Idaho started for home by way of Hong 
 Kong, being ordered to sail from Yokohama the 20th of September, 
 1869, although a typhoon was then brewing and the delay of one 
 week would have assured her fair monsoon weather. The start was 
 propitious, with a favoring wind and good speed, but the next day, 
 the 21st, the weather became squally and the barometer fell steadily. 
 About sunset the full fury of the first semicircle of the most awful 
 circular storm that a ship has ever survived burst upon the devoted 
 Idaho and for several hours her crew had an experience the like of 
 which few other men have lived to tell of. The main yard, ninety- 
 eight feet long and seven feet in circumference, broke in three 
 pieces and fell on deck, following which disaster the sails, even 
 those snugly furled, were torn away, and one by one the yards and 
 masts came crashing down until the ship was merely a hulk held 
 down almost on her beam ends by the force of the hurricane. At 
 the climax of this hellish scene the barometer reached the almost 
 unprecedented reading of 27.62. 
 
 With a final wild, unearthly howl, the wind suddenly dropped 
 to a dead calm and those on board the Idaho who were familiar 
 with the laws of storms knew that they had passed into the vortex 
 or center of the cyclone, but this brought no release from danger, 
 for the sea, previously planed smooth by the terrific power of the 
 blast, now rose on all sides to mountainous heights, as though boil- 
 ing in a huge caldron, and great masses of water began toppling 
 into the hapless ship, while her rolling and plunging became inde- 
 scribably violent. On one occasion she shipped huge volumes of 
 water at the same moment over both bows, both quarters, and the 
 starboard waist, from which she nearly went down, but finally rose 
 slowly and wearily with four feet of water on her spar deck. Under 
 this ordeal, stanchions, beams and timbers broke and were carried 
 away, the decks opened, bolts drew out, and nothing but certain de- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 531 
 
 struction appeared to be the prospect for the unfortunate crew. And in 
 all this, it must be remembered, it was night, and a Cimmerian 
 darkness brooded over the deep, so intensely black and unnatural 
 that the world seemed shrouded in the shadow of the pinions of the 
 angel of death. 
 
 When the other side of the revolving storm came on with all 
 its terrific fury it found nothing to destroy but a battered unman- 
 ageable wreck, in which the helpless crew crouched miserably 
 together waiting for the death that seemed unavoidable. By one of 
 those strange fatalities in which a quality of mercy on the part of 
 natural elements, even of the sea, seem manifested, the Idaho re- 
 mained afloat when the storm had passed on. Jury masts were 
 rigged and the vessel and crew, thus miraculously preserved, 
 worked slowly back to Yokohama, making the distance in eight 
 days that had been covered on the way out in one. A curious matted 
 mass of sail, cordage and lightning rod, so compactly woven together 
 that men were unable to undo it, was preserved as a memento of 
 this struggle for life and as an illustration of the power and capric- 
 iousness of the Storm King. 1 
 
 The ruined hull of the Idaho remained in Yokohama harbor 
 until 1874, when it was sold to the highest bidder for almost 
 nothing. 
 
 In August, 1866, three months after the trial trip of the Idaho , 
 the Chattanooga, built by the Cramp Company for the swift cruiser 
 competition, was reported ready for her speed trials. There was 
 nothing novel or fantastical about this ship's machinery, engines 
 and boilers being of types well known and in general use, and were 
 designed and built by Merrick & Sons, an engineering firm of long 
 experience and excellent reputation. The Chattanooga began her 
 trial trip at 9 a. m., August 17th, and was kept up to full power for 
 twenty-four hours without difficulty, the course, in dead smooth 
 water, being nine times back and forth between the lights on Cape 
 
 1 This brief account of the tragedy of the Idaho is based upon an article 
 entitled Ci A Mght in a Typhoon,' 7 written by a survivor, Medical Director A. S. 
 Gihon, U. S. Navy, which in the humble opinion of the author is the most thrill- 
 ing and graphically-told tale of the sea that has ever appeared in print. It was 
 published originally in the Atlantic Monthly for March, 1870, and was reprinted 
 in the United Service Magazine for April, 1884. 
 
532 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Henlopen and the Brandywine shoals, and then out to sea for 
 fifteen hours. The average speed for the twenty-four hours was a 
 little short of 13^ knots per hour, this being a knot and a half less 
 than required: the report of the engineer trial board was decidedly 
 favorable to the machinery, with the exception of the circulating 
 pump driven by independent oscillating engines, which was pro- 
 nounced unreliable, and the failure of the ship to meet the speed 
 requirements was charged against the agent of the contractors, who 
 had entire control of the machinery, and who was accused in the 
 report of entirely ignoring the stipulations of the contract. 
 
 A subsequent examination showed that the brasses, bearings, 
 and some other parts of the engines had suffered to some extent 
 from the severe trial to which they had been subjected, but no seri- 
 ous damage was discovered. The engines were not able to work 
 off all the steam the boilers could produce, for which reason the 
 trial board recommended the replacing of the screw with a larger 
 one of coarser pitch. Some minor defects were recommended to be 
 made good and after considerable correspondence between the 
 Cramp Company and the Department the Chattanooga was accepted, 
 the engineer-in-chief and other competent engineers being satisfied 
 that she could make the required speed, if properly handled, after 
 these alterations had been effected. The desired modifications were 
 not all made, but the vessel was accepted and performed some 
 service in the North Atlantic squadron and on the Fishing Banks. 
 She was then laid up in ordinary at the League Island navy yard, 
 where she remained until December, 1871, when she sank at the 
 dock from having her side cut through by running ice. The wreck 
 was sold a month later for $£5,700. Her total cost, including 
 original contract, charges for alterations, cost of trial trips, repairs, 
 etc. , amounted to $950,159.31. 
 
 John Ericsson's machinery in the Madawashi received its sea 
 test in January, 1867, and to the great surprise of the admirers of 
 that distinguished engineer, failed by over two knots to drive the 
 vessel at the required speed of fifteen knots per hour. She went to 
 sea the 14th of January from New York, under command of Com- 
 mander F. A. Roe, and remained out for one week, during which 
 she steamed about one thousand miles, finally returning when her 
 supply of coal was exhausted. Stormy weather was experienced, and 
 
V. S. S. CHATTANOOGA, 1865. 
 
 From an india ink drawing loaned by Mr. Charles H. Cramp. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 535 
 
 for fifty hours during the latter part of the week a hurricane with 
 the force of the wind as high as eleven at times continued. A trial 
 performance of forty-one hours was obtained by aggregating three 
 periods of best performance under fair conditions, the longest 
 period thus selected being sixteen hours; the data derived from this 
 trial is given in tabular form hereafter. 
 
 With all his knowledge and mechanical ability there is no doubt 
 that Captain Ericsson made a very serious mistake in putting direct- 
 acting engines of the size and type he selected into a vessel of the 
 class represented by the Madawaska. He had, it will be remem- 
 bered, many years before when the science of marine engineering 
 was young, overthrown the fallacy that gearing was necessary for 
 driving screw shafting in vessels, but the genius that had seen the 
 falsity of the logic of the earlier engineers seems to have failed to 
 realize that the very conditions formerly feared and which he knew 
 did not exist had at last come to pass as a reality in the effort to 
 concentrate power in an abnormally slender hull. Engineer-in- 
 Chief Isherwood, on the other hand, observed the danger which 
 Ericsson in his self-confidence overlooked, and* by providing his swift 
 cruisers with geared engines guarded against the risk of racking the 
 hull and the equally dangerous reflex action of a yielding foundation 
 upon the operation of the engines. 
 
 It must not be understood that Ericsson's engines in the Mada- 
 waska were wholly bad, for they were excellent of their kind and 
 with no radical fault except the one, unfortunately fatal, of being 
 unsuited to the surroundings in which they were placed. In one of 
 the staunchly-built armor-clads, or in the rigid steel fabrics of the 
 present day they would have given satisfaction and undoubtedly 
 have driven the vessel at the speed on which Ericsson counted. 
 Although the average speed attained by the Madawaska during the 
 trial was less than thirteen knots, it is due in the interest of history 
 to say that for a short time the required speed was reached, and at 
 one heaving of the log was exceeded by one knot. Commander 
 Roe states in his report of the trial trip that from 10:30 p. m. to 
 midnight of January 16th the ship logged 15^ knots per hour, and 
 in the mid watch immediately following attained a speed of 16 knots 
 and made 60^ knots for the four hours. This report of the com- 
 manding officer closes with the following complimentary reference 
 
536 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY Of THE UNITED STATES 
 
 to the machinery : "Her machinery is as perfect as it need be. It 
 has undergone the severest test and not once been found wanting. 
 She is the fastest ship I have ever seen. " The report of the board 
 of engineers also spoke highly of the strength and workmanship of 
 the machinery. Its great fault seems to be that it was put into the 
 wrong ship. 
 
 Owing to the practical cessation of all government work at the 
 close of the war it was not until early in 1868, a year after the trial 
 of the last of the competing contract cruisers, that the first of the 
 Isherwood cruisers was ready for a sea trial, the Wampanoag running 
 her trial trip in February of that year and the Ammonoosue in June. 
 Both these ships so far exceeded the sea speed of anything then 
 afloat that their trial trips, especially that of the first — the Wampa- 
 noag — may fairly be regarded as a most important event in the his- 
 tory of marine engineering, and constituted such a glorious triumph 
 for the American naval engineers that the story will be fully told 
 in a separate chapter. The Wampanoag was the pioneer of the 
 class of swift ocean steamers that in our own day has completely 
 changed the tactics of naval warfare, and so promoted the possibili- 
 ties of maritime commerce that the interests of all great nations are 
 now so closely woven together that great wars between them are 
 almost impossible. It was the fate of the Wampanoag to live too soon, 
 before the world was ready for the era which her creation heralded, 
 and for that reason she has been almost forgotten ; it is therefore 
 due to her and to the genius that made her possible that her story 
 be told for the benefit of the present generation. For convenience 
 of comparison the data yielded by the sea trial of the Wampanoag 
 is printed with that derived from the trials of the Idaho, Chatta- 
 nooga and Madawaska here inserted in this chapter : 
 
Eric&ong Vibrating Lever Engines 
 If. tS. S. Jkf citZtz u>*zs&'to. 
 
DATA AND RESULTS OF THE SEA TRIALS AT MAXIMUM SPEED OF THE COMPETITIVE STEAMERS u IDAHO, 55 
 " CHATTANOOGA, 5 5 " MADAWASKA, " AND " WAMPANOAG, ? ' UNDER STEAM ALONE. 
 
 Date of commencing' the trial c 
 
 Duration of the trial in consecutive hours 
 
 Length of the vessel on load water line from forward edge of rabbet of stem to after side of 
 
 sternpost, in feet and. inches 
 
 Extreme breadth of the vessel on load water line, in feet and inches 
 
 Mean draught of the vessel during the trial, in feet and inches 
 
 Greatest immersed transverse section of vessel at her mean draught during the trial, in square 
 
 feet. 
 
 Displacement of the vessel at her mean draught during the trial, in tons 
 
 Ratio of the length to the breadth 
 
 Ratio of the displacement to its circumscribing parallelopipedon 
 
 Number of square feet of grate surface in the boilers 
 
 State of the sea.... • - 
 
 Kind of wind 
 
 Angle from ahead made by the wind with the vessel's keel, in degrees ............. 
 
 Number of pounds of coal consumed per hour 
 
 Number of pounds of coal consumed per hour per square foot of grate surface 
 
 Temperature of the feed-water in degrees of Fahrenheit 
 
 Number of double strokes of engines pistons made per minute 
 
 Steam pressure in the boilers, in pounds per square inch above the atmosphere 
 
 Proportion of throttle valve open 
 
 Fraction of stroke of piston completed when the steam was cut off 
 
 Vacuum in condenser in inches of mercury 
 
 Steam pressure, per indicator, per square inch of piston 
 
 Indicated horse-nower developed by the engines 
 
 Horse-power developed by the auxiliary engines supplying the condensing water, (estimated). 
 
 Total indicated horse-power developed 
 
 Pounds of coal consumed per hour per indicated horse-power ,....«.. 
 
 Speed of the vessel per hour in geographical miles 
 
 Idaho. 
 
 May 19, 1866 
 24. 
 
 298. 
 44.6 
 17.1 
 
 606.44 
 3,240.58 
 6.697 
 .509 
 396. 
 Smooth. 
 Light breeze. 
 90. 
 4,905. 
 12.386 
 101. 
 35.93 
 37.90 
 1. 
 
 .13 
 26. 
 13.4 
 645.415 
 
 645.415 
 7.600 
 
 8.27 
 
 Chattanooga. 
 
 Aug. 17, 1866 
 24. 
 
 315. 
 46. 
 
 14.11 V2 
 
 535. 
 3,043. 
 6.848 
 .537 
 980. 
 Smooth. 
 Light breeze 
 90. 
 10,700. 
 10.918 
 92. 
 50.45 
 27.52 
 .18 
 .52 
 19.34 
 14.4 
 1,696.131 
 40.823 
 1,736.954 
 6.160 
 13.375 
 
 Madawaska. 
 
 Jan. 14, 1867 
 41. 
 
 335. 
 45.2 
 
 18.2 
 
 725.47 
 4105.17 
 ' 7.417 
 .566 
 1,128. 
 Rough. 
 Moderate. 
 
 90. 
 Il,042i683 
 9.790 
 128. 
 46.234 
 29.84 
 .224 
 .600 
 24.33 
 11.92 
 2,085.188 
 57.532 
 2,142.72 
 5.170 
 12.732 
 
 Wampanoag 
 
 Feb. 11, 1868 
 38. 
 
 335. 
 45.2 
 18.6 
 
 740.52 
 4,215.54 
 7.417 
 .566 
 1.128 
 Rough. 
 Strong breeze 
 132 
 12,670.606 
 11.232 
 138. 
 31.265 
 32.43 
 1. 
 .66 
 24. 
 34.2 
 4,048.84 
 
 ""4,048.84 
 3.129 
 16.758 
 
544 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 The Madawaska was accepted by the Navy Department after her 
 trial trip and was promptly laid up in ordinary. In 1869 her name 
 was changed to Tennessee at the same time that many other names 
 peculiar to the Civil War period were changed to other § that in most 
 cases were certainly not more appropriate. The history of the 
 Tennessee in the navy is interesting and peculiar; to quote from the 
 report of the Secretary of the Navy for 1887, "She had a short 
 life, but, as a consumer of money, a brilliant one." Her total 
 original cost for hull, engines, and equipment was 11,856,075.81, 
 and between 1869 and 1871 she was repaired at a cost of $576, 
 799.61, only $73,000 of which was spent on the machinery. One- 
 half of her boilers were removed at this time, and a deck was built, 
 converting her into a gun-deck frigate. She then made a special 
 cruise of three months conveying United States commissioners to 
 the island of San Domingo, and soon after her return home was 
 turned over to Mr. John Roach to be fitted with new machinery 
 and receive general repairs. This work was done during the three 
 following years at a cost of $801,713.60 in addition to the value of 
 the Ericsson machinery which was given to Mr. Roach; of this 
 enormous sum the records of the Bureau of Steam Engineer- 
 ing show that about $350,000 was charged to the new engines and 
 boilers. 
 
 The contract for this new machinery was dated October 3d, 
 1871, and names $300,000 as the price of engines, boilers, and 
 fittings complete. This contract is especially interesting from the 
 fact that it marks the first appearance in our steam navy of the 
 compound engine. The engineer-in-chief, Mr. J. W. King, was at 
 that time absent in Europe on special duty investigating the ques- 
 tion of compound engines, which shad recently appeared in the 
 engineering practice of some of the European navies, but the con- 
 tract with Mr. Roach was made by order of the Secretary of the 
 Navy, Mr. Robeson, upon Mr. Roach's own representations before 
 any reports from Mr. King had been received. The new machinery 
 of the Tennessee consisted of two horizontal back-acting compound 
 engines placed side by side with the cylinders arranged tandem, the 
 high-pressure cylinders outboard. The contract required the high- 
 pressure cylinders to be 40 inches in diameter, the low-pressures to 
 be 76 inches in diameter, and the stroke 42 inches, but when it was 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 545 
 
 found that the length of the engines cramped the passage-way out- 
 board of the high-pressure cylinders the stroke was reduced to 40 
 inches and the diameter of the low-pressure cylinders increased to 
 78 inches, with which dimensions the engines were built. There 
 were ten return-tubular cylindrical boilers, six >of them being in 
 one fore and aft fire-room forward of the engines and the others 
 in a similar fire-room abaft the engines. The vessel was ship- 
 rigged. 
 
 This overhauling of the Tennessee is one of the most remarkable 
 transactions in the history of the Navy Department, and one about 
 which there has always been more or less mystery; no direct legal 
 authority for incurring the great cost of the changes appears to have 
 existed and it is a fact that the Ericsson machinery of the ship, 
 which had originally cost $700,000, had never been condemned by 
 a board of officers, nor had its value ever been fixed by a govern- 
 ment board; yet it was turned over to Mr. Koach in barter as old 
 iron at a stated value of $65,000. At the time the contract for the 
 new machinery was made with Mr. Eoach there was stored at the 
 Washington navy yard a complete and entirely new set of 100-inch 
 geared engines built for the Bon Homme Richard and exactly like the 
 engines that had driven the Wampanoag, the sistership of the Ten- 
 nessee, seventeen knots an hour, yet it was deemed proper to contract 
 for a complete new outfit of machinery, and that of an experimental 
 nature, for, as has been observed, the compound engine was then 
 an unknown thing in our naval practice. In 1872 a Congres- 
 sional committee, of which Hon. Austin P. Blair was chairman, 
 was appointed to investigate certain charges against the Navy De- 
 partment and took 420 printed pages of testimony 1 about the 
 Tennessee transaction and some other matters, but failed to make any 
 definite discoveries ; in view of which failure the writer will not 
 undertake the hopeless task of seeking to unravel the mystery. 
 
 After the Tennessee had received her new machinery and had 
 failed by about four knots to make the speed promised for her she 
 was sent, in 1875, to the Asiatic station as flagship. In 1879, 
 having returned home the previous year and been again repaired^ 
 she was commissioned as flagship of the North Atlantic squadron 
 
 1 Miscellaneous Document No. 201 ; 42d Congress, 2d Session, 
 
546 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OP THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 and continued as such until 1887 when she was condemned by the 
 Statutory Board as unseaworthy and was sold that same year by 
 public auction for $34,527. Including nearly $600,000 spent on 
 her for repairs between 1875 and 1887 her total cost to the govern- 
 ment had been in round numbers $3,800,000. 
 
 During the first two years of this vessel's service on the North 
 Atlantic station the writer, then fresh from the Naval Academy, 
 gained on her decks and in her engine-room his first practical ideas 
 of the naval customs and practices of his country. The Tennessee 
 was then the largest vessel in commission in the American navy and 
 the era of mastless steel cruisers was yet so far away that she was 
 not suspected, by the youngsters at least, of being obsolete and 
 stood as the type of all that was excellent and majestic in ship con- 
 struction. And the routine and discipline observed in the daily life 
 of the ship was in perfect accord with the era her type represented, 
 which period is commonly designated as that pertaining to the old 
 navy. The admiral lived in stately splendor in spacious apartments 
 far aft on the gun deck, into which few but his orderlies and servants 
 ever ventured to intrude, and his appearance abroad in the world of 
 the ship's life always produced the bustle and commotion incident 
 to a great and unusual event. The captain, an officer of magnifi- 
 cent physique, whose fame from the Civil War clothed him in the 
 eyes of his subordinates with all the attributes of heroism, was like- 
 wise surrounded with all the ceremonials of a court, and, like the 
 admiral, did not walk forth into his kingdom except at times when 
 something was going to happen. Even the ward-room was a semi- 
 sacred and exclusive precinct; it was separated from the junior 
 officers' space by only a thin pine partition, but that to all intents 
 and purposes was more impassable and impervious than the heavy 
 steel water-tight bulkheads of the present day. 
 
 All the punctillious etiquette of the old regime was religiously 
 followed: the direction of the wind determined which side of the 
 spar deck and which side of the gun deck might properly be used as 
 a thoroughfare; the junior, or u steerage, " officers knew only the 
 port gangway and had their own liberty boats, two boats being 
 necessary to take officers on shore even though there would be but 
 one from the ward-room and one from the steerage to go; no en- 
 listed man ever risked his freedom by venturing to windward of an 
 
U. S. STEAM FRIGATE TENNESSEE, ORIGINALLY THE CRUISER MAD AW A SKI. 
 
 Length on 1. w. ]., 335 feet ; beam, 45.2 feet: displacement, 4,840 tons. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 549 
 
 officer. The arrival of eight bells in the morning and of sunset in 
 the evening marked the unfailing and unvarying performance of 
 certain rites with boats, masts and spars. No steam capstan gave 
 warning with its rapid rattle of the coming of a power more potent 
 and trustworthy than the brawn of men, and in consequence the 
 function of getting under way approached the sublime in its gravity ; 
 when the grizzled old boatswain and his troop of weather-beaten 
 mates gathered about the main hatch and made the ship echo with 
 their shrill calls and hoarse shout in unison, "All hands up anchor!" 
 it meant all hands; none could look on. The great cable came in 
 link by link laboriously keeping time to the measured tramp of more 
 than four hundred men walking around on the capstan bars and 
 urged meanwhile to more rapid exertion by the rollicking strains of 
 u Kory O'More " and u Lannigan's Ball " from the band. In all 
 the memories of that long-vanished cruise nothing lingers with more 
 vividness than the echo of the voices of those boatswain's mates 
 and the rhythmic tremble of the decks beneath the tread of the men 
 tramping round and round about the capstans; and it is good to have 
 had an experience of such things, for they were picturesque and 
 typical of a system that most excellently served its purpose in its 
 own time, and has now passed away. 
 
 The ship was huge and roomy, affording ample space for all 
 except the junior officers, who were herded into two narrow and 
 noisome dens on the berth deck, hot in summer, cold in winter, un- 
 lighted save by candles or dim, smoky lamps, and unventilated 
 except by two or three very small bull's eyes so nearly awash that 
 they could not be opened except in dead smooth water or in a dry- 
 dock. Those were the days of an unlimited number of midshipmen, 
 cadet midshipmen and cadet engineers, not to mention a bountiful 
 supply of ensigns and staff officers of that grade, so these steerages 
 were always densely populated; more so than those of other ships 
 probably from the circumstance of the Tennessee being on the home 
 station and easily reached without any great outlay for mileage on 
 account of officers ordered to join her. 
 
 The average number of young officers crowded into those dark- 
 some dens was about twenty-five, and there they stowed their 
 clothes, performed their ablutions, wrote their letters and note- 
 books, ate, and as many as possible slept. Had an equal or a con- 
 
550 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 siderably smaller number of Chinese attempted to live in a cellar in 
 any American City under precisely similar sanitary conditions they 
 would have been promptly jailed; still, the young gentlemen survived 
 their surroundings and without any cares worth worrying about 
 managed to have a reasonably good time. The writer, for one, is 
 rather glad at this distance of having had the experience and the 
 opportunity, then almost the last one, of learning by actual contact 
 just what the life and habits of the old navy were. Nevertheless, 
 he thinks that the youth of the new navy are to be congratulated 
 on the practical impossibility of such a condition of naval affairs 
 ever returning. 
 
U. S. S. AV AMP A NO AG , 1868. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 " I consider the ' Wampanoag,' as a ship, to be faultless in her model, and, 
 2LS a steamship, the fastest in the world." 
 
 Captain J. W. A. Nicholson, official report. 
 
 The Trial Trip of the Wampanoag— Remarkable Speed Developed— Official Re- 
 ports of Commanding Officer and Board of Chief Engineers— Attempt of 
 the Press to Discredit Her Performance — Her Success Verified by the Trial 
 of the Ammonoosuc— The Real Reasons for Building Swift Cruisers During 
 the Civil War — The Wampanoag Condemed by a Board of Naval Officers 
 •—Her Subsequent Career. 
 
 THE delay after the war in completing the government-built 
 cruisers was made great use of by the anti-Isherwood party, 
 and the press of the country teemed with charges that the ships 
 were held back to permit time for radical changes or even renewal of 
 their machinery ; that Isherwood was afraid to trust them in com- 
 petition with the record made by the Madawasha^ or even the 
 Idaho / etc., etc. One example will be sufficient to show the in- 
 tensity of this feeling, which is presented by the following extract 
 from an editorial which appeared in a prominent service newspaper 
 only two weeks before the sea trial of the Wampanoag : 
 
 "We speak . . . very severely of Mr. Isherwood 's prac- 
 tice. But we have done so from mature, profound and complete 
 conviction that he is ruining the navy by his untenable steam delu- 
 sions. If we have utterly condemned his theories, we have done so 
 only upon a basis of irrefragable facts — facts which we have set 
 forth in array before that gentleman and before our readers in 
 an elaborate series of articles, and to which, despite their bold 
 challenge of refutation, never has there been even attempted a 
 reply. We are free to say that there is no such monument of me- 
 chanical incapacity as the steam machinery of the Wam/pwioag 
 class to be found in the annals of marine engineering. 
 
 " . . . We find, as a result of this short-sighted restric- 
 tion, a man presiding over the Engineering Bureau who would not 
 be allowed to plan, on the principles he employs for our whole new 
 
554 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 screw fleet, a hundred dollars' worth of machinery in any private 
 establishment in the country. 5 ' 
 
 Early in 1868 the Wampanoag was pronounced completed and 
 with a full complement of officers and men and her battery and 
 stores on board was ordered to proceed to sea for her steam trials. 
 She went out from New York the 7th of February and was first ex- 
 perimented with under sail, the propeller being uncoupled, and then 
 ran under steam for twenty-five hours at a speed of as near eleven 
 knots as could be approximated, for the purpose of ascertaining the 
 amount of coal necessary for that speed. Heavy weather and 
 damage to her rigging then drove her to seek shelter inside of 
 Sandy Hook, where she remained one day, standing out to sea 
 again at sunset on February 11th. At 9 p. m. that same night she 
 began her full power steam trial, starting from a point north by east 
 of Barnegat light and heading to the southward in the dark and 
 wintry sea. Her great engines performed beautifully and at mid- 
 night the ship had worked up to a speed of seventeen knots, then 
 unprecedented in steam navigation, and a source of surprise to all 
 on board. Throughout the night and all the following day this 
 high speed was closely adhered to, and when night again fell upon 
 the stormy waters the people on the Wampanoag realized that they 
 were participating in a remarkable event and experiencing a new 
 sensation. The ' 'monument of mechanical incapacity 55 was the 
 master-piece of the age and the sovereign of the seas. The engi- 
 neers were delighted, despite fatigue and nerve-tension incident to 
 vigilant watching about the ponderous engines, and went about their 
 second night's duties with the zeal and elation of victory, for this 
 was an engineer's ship and the record she was rolling up was one to 
 make every engineer proud of his calling and ambitious for the 
 future of steam at sea which that record would make possible. All 
 that long winter night the Wampanoag drove ahead, rolling deeply 
 in a heavy irregular sea and keeping well up to her first established 
 speed, the light of morning finding her still rushing through the 
 tall seas like some huge sea-creature instinct with furious life. 
 
 At 11 a. m. that day, thirty-eight hours after the beginning of 
 the trial, the engines were stopped to permit an adjustment to be 
 made, although this was reported by the trial board as not absolutely 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 555 
 
 necessary, and the full speed was not again resumed on account of 
 the increasing heavy weather, the exhaustion of the fire-room force, 
 and the satisfaction of all in authority with the performance of the 
 ship and her machinery. When the record-breaking run was term- 
 inated the Wampanoag was off Savannah, Georgia, having run in 
 the thirty-eight hours from Barnegat the distance of 630 knots, or 
 728 statute miles, 467 statute miles having been passed over during 
 the first twenty- four hours of the run. This achievement was so far 
 ahead of any record made by any sea-going commercial vessel or 
 war steamer as to make comparisons almost impossible and render 
 the Wampanoag peerless as a swift ocean cruiser. 
 
 The full details of this famous steam trial appear in the official 
 reports of the commanding officer and board of chief engineers, 
 which reports are here reproduced in the form in which they were 
 originally published shortly after the trial. 
 
 REPORTS OF THE TRIAL TRIP 
 
 OF THE 
 
 United States Steamer Wampanoag 
 
 At sea, (armed and equipped,) February 7 to 
 
 February 17, 1868. 
 
 HULL. — Constructed at the New York navy yard, from designs of Naval Con- 
 structor B. F. Delano. Dimensions. — Extreme length of spar deck, 342 feet 8 
 inches; extreme breadth, 45 feet 2 inches; depth of hold, 23 feet 6 inches : draught of 
 water, 19 feet; tonnage (old measurement), 3,281 tons. 
 
 MACHINERY. — Constructed at the Novelty Works, New York, from designs 
 by Chief Engineer B. F. Isherwood, Chief of Bureau of Steam Engineering. Two 
 geared direct-acting engines, with one surface condenser to both engines ; two 
 cylinders 100 inches in diameter, with four-feet stroke of piston ; propeller nine- 
 teen feet diameter ; eight vertical tubular boilers for main engine, with four 
 super- heating boilers ; aggregate grate surface of all the boilers 1,128 square feet ; 
 aggregate of the water-heating surface 30,578 square feet. 
 
656 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 EEPORT OF THE COMMANDING OFFICER. 
 
 Unitep States Steamer Wampanoag, (1st Kate,) 
 
 Hampton Roads, Va. , February 18 1868. 
 
 Sir: I have the honor to make the following report of results 
 obtained during the experimental trial of this vessel at sea: 
 
 On the 7th instant I tried the ship under top-gallant sails, jib 
 and course, propeller disconnected, wind fresh abeam, sea smooth, 
 speed ten and one-half (10.5) to eleven knots per hour, propeller 
 making twenty-nine (29) revolutions, the ship steering easily, helm 
 amidship, no sail on mizzenmast. 
 
 On the 9th instant I began trial under steam to obtain a contin- 
 uous speed of eleven (11) knots, with the least consumption of coal, 
 I was obliged to end this trial in twenty-five (25) hours, and heave 
 the ship to during a heavy gale from SE. to S W. , with a topping 
 sea. 
 
 During these twenty-five hours we ran two hundred eighty-two 
 five-tenths (282.5) knots, consuming not quite forty-seven (47) tons 
 of coal. This gives an average of about forty-five tons per day for 
 an hourly speed of eleven and three-tenths (11.3) knots. 
 
 During this gale, which blew hard for twenty hours, we sus- 
 tained some damage to our spars, owing to iron bolts carrying away. 
 We lost one whisker, and our port bee. The F. T. mast stay with 
 the staysail were blown to leeward, but finally secured. The parral 
 eye-bolt in jaws of F. topsail yard broke, and sheet hook in fore- 
 topsail also. Before the yard and sail could be secured the foretop 
 mast was chafed severely. 
 
 Owing to the weather being intensely cold, and the heavy sea, 
 we could do nothing more than temporarily secure our spars. 
 
 As the gale moderated, I determined to run in and anchor 
 under Sandy Hook, and there repair damages. 
 
 Eeceived a New York pilot at 9 p. m., and at midnight 
 anchored ; at daylight commenced repairs, made new whiskers and 
 bees, secured spars, stays, etc., and at sunset stood to sea. I would 
 here remark, that in my opinion iron is used too much in rigging our 
 ships. It would be more preferable to have the old-fashioned rope 
 parrals to topsail yards, than to have either u tubs 55 or "jaws." 
 
ST 
 
 c 
 
 GENERAL ARRANGEMENT OF MACHINERY, U. S. CRUISER u WAMPANOAG." 
 
 (The same arrangement existed in the Cruisers Ammonoosuc and Neshaminy.) 
 
THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 56S 
 
 Iron cannot be trusted at any time, and is especially dangerous in 
 extremely cold weather. 
 
 At 9 p. m. on the 11th I commenced a trial of the full steaming 
 power ; this trial continued through a period of thirty-eight hours, 
 until 11 o'clock a. m. of the 13th instant. At this time a rubber 
 washer in after crank working loose, endangered the heating of that 
 journal. I therefore stopped the engines to have the washer re- 
 placed. This haying been accomplished, at 2 o'clock the engines 
 were again started, the ship going fourteen knots. At 3 p. m., as 
 the sea was heavy, with appearance of bad weather, I determined, 
 after consulting with Chief Engineer Zeller, presiding officer of the 
 board of engineers, that it was unnecessary to work the engines up 
 to full power again, as it had already been proved that an average 
 speed of nearly seventeen knots could be continuously maintained dur- 
 ing good weather. 
 
 During the first twenty-four hours of the trial we logged 
 405.375 knots, equal to 467.53 statute miles. During the thirty- 
 eight hours we logged 630.875 knots, equal to 727.61 statute miles, 
 an average of 16.6 knots, or 19.14 statute miles for each and every 
 hour of the trial. Greatest speed obtained 17.75 knots, or 20.47 
 statute miles. I append a statement of the hourly speed made dur- 
 ing thirty- six hours, arranged in six hours' tables for convenient 
 reference. The speed and courses are copied from ship's log. The 
 remarks are my own, made from personal observation. I add that 
 the logging of the ship and distance run were verified by observa- 
 tion. We having started from a point twenty miles north by east 
 from Barnegat light, passing Cape Hatter as at about a distance of 
 twenty miles, and ceasing the run in latitude 31° 42' north, longi- 
 tude 80° 24' west, 29 miles southeast half east of Tybee light- 
 house. 
 
 The results of all trials in abstract are as follows : 
 
 We steamed seventeen knots with full boiler power on a con- 
 sumption of five and three-fourths tons of coal per hour. 
 
 We steamed eleven to twelve knots per hour with a consump- 
 tion of one seven-eighths (1.875) tons of coal half boiler power. 
 
 We steamed nine (9) knots with one-fourth boiler power, on a 
 consumption of one and three-eighths ton of coal per hour. 
 
§64 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE TOOTED STATES. 
 
 Under sail, with a fresh breeze, she steers well arid sails fast, 
 but in light breezes not well, as she needs to move four to five 
 knots through the water to turn the propeller. Under steam and 
 sail she " lies to" well, shipping no seas. 
 
 Under all circumstances she steers perfectly easy. At fourteen 
 knots speed she turned in nine minutes forty-five seconds, the sea 
 heavy and wind fresh. At ten knots speed, fresh wind, smooth sea, 
 turned in twelve minutes. 
 
 Under all sail by the wind, with a moderate breeze and smooth 
 water, we logged seven to eight knots, propeller disconnected, mak- 
 ing 21.5 revolutions. 
 
 Under sail it requires a speed of from four to five knots to 
 turn the propeller, but once started it turns very easily. 
 
 I have had no fair opportunities for exercising under sail 
 alone. 
 
 I consider the u Wampanoag," as a ship, to be faultless in her 
 model, and, as a steamship, the fastest in the world. 
 
 If at any time it should be contemplated to alter the vessel by 
 reducing her power, her forward boilers could be dispensed with, 
 giving increased room for storage, and then she would be a twelve 
 knot steamship. 
 
 I would recommend that a light spar-deck be built on the 
 vessel, and that she be rigged as a ship. The addition of a light 
 spar-deck will not require any alteration in her spars. The accom- 
 modations with this additional deck would be ample for her crew, 
 and it would also give room for storage. In both these particulars 
 the ship is at present cramped. 
 
 I neglected to state that at a tri^l with one-half boiler power 
 and all sail, with a moderate wind abeam, we logged fourteen 
 knots. 
 
 I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. W. A. NICHOLSON, 
 
 Captain* 
 
 Hon. Gideon Welles, 
 
 Secretary of the Navy, Washington, D. C. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 565 
 
 m 
 
 03 
 
 0 
 
 
 O 
 
 
 W 
 
 M 
 
 
 8 
 
 10 
 
 8 
 
 11 
 
 16 
 
 12 
 
 16 
 
 1 
 
 17 
 
 3 
 
 17 
 
 3 
 
 17 
 
 Total... 
 
 101 
 
 4 
 5 
 6 
 7 
 8 
 9 
 
 Total... 
 
 10 
 11 
 13 
 
 1 
 3 
 3 
 
 Total.. 
 
 4 
 5 
 6 
 7 
 8 
 9 
 
 Total.. 
 
 10 
 11 
 13 
 1 
 3 
 3 
 
 Total.. 
 
 5 
 6 
 7 
 8 
 9 
 
 Total... 
 
 17 
 17 
 16 
 17 
 16 
 17 
 
 101 
 
 17 
 17 
 16 
 8 
 8 
 16 
 16 
 
 100 
 
 17 
 17 
 17 
 17 
 17 
 16 
 
 102 
 
 16 
 16 
 16 
 16 
 16 
 16 
 
 99 
 
 16 
 
 7 
 9 
 
 16 
 15 
 16 
 15 
 
 96 
 
 United States Ship Wampanoagl 
 Tabular statement full power steam trial. 
 
 CO 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 6 
 4 
 4 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 3 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 3 
 6 
 6 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 3 
 3 
 
 6 
 6 
 4 
 2 
 4 
 3 
 
 2 
 3 
 4 
 6 
 4 
 
 Course. 
 
 S. by W. % W.. 
 
 S. by W 
 
 do 
 
 do 
 
 S.SW 
 
 do 
 
 do 
 
 S.SW. 
 
 .do. 
 .do. 
 .do. 
 .do. 
 .do. 
 
 S.SW. 
 
 sw. 
 
 .do... 
 .do... 
 
 S.SW. 
 
 .do. 
 .do. 
 
 W.SW 
 
 do.. 
 
 do.. 
 
 SW 
 
 do.. 
 
 SWby W. 
 
 SW. by W. 
 
 do.... 
 
 W.SW 
 
 do,... 
 
 do.... 
 
 do.... 
 
 do.... 
 
 FEBRUARY U, 9 p. m. 
 
 Commenced full power steam trial from latitude 
 40° 6' north, longitude 74° V west. Wind light, 
 northward and westward. Sea smooth. Ship 
 rolling- 3° to 4° each way. Compass deviation % 
 point west. 
 
 Average speed per hour during six hours, 16.896 
 knots. 
 
 FEBRUARY 13, 4 A. m. 
 
 These six hours wind from northward and west- 
 ward to northward and eastward. Sea increas- 
 ing. Ship rolling as previously. Compass de- 
 viation % west. 
 
 Average speed per hour during six hours, 16.875 
 knots. 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 10 A. M. 
 
 These six hours wind fresh from the northward. 
 Sea heavy, ship rolling to 6 Q each way. 
 
 Average speed per hour during six hours, 16.79 
 knots. 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 4 p. m. 
 
 Wind fresh from northward to light E.SE., 
 thence back to a moderate northward breeze. 
 Sea heavy. Ship rolling as before. 
 
 Average speed per hour during six hours, 17 knots 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 10 P. m. 
 
 Wind fresh N.NE. to east. Heavy, irregular sea. 
 Ship rolling deeply. 
 
 Average speed per hour during 6 hours, 16.5 
 knots. 
 
 FEBRUARY 13, 4 a. m. 
 
 Wind very variable, but fresh. The sea irregular 
 and heavy. Ship rolling 13° each way. 
 
 Average speed per hour during six hours, 16.125 
 knots. 
 
566 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 EEPOET OF THE BOARD OF ENGINEERS. 
 
 United States Steamer Wampanoag, 
 
 Hampton Roads, Virginia, February 17, 1868. 
 
 Sir: We have the honor to report that we have completed the 
 trial of the machinery of the " Wampanoag" at sea, with the vessel 
 driven at the maximum speed, under steam alone, during 37J con- 
 secutive hours; and at the speed of 11 nautical miles per hour, 
 under steam alone, during 25 consecutive hours; the latter perform- 
 ance being to ascertain with what consumption of coal per hour the 
 speed of 11 knots can be maintained at sea. 
 
 The average performance during the 37i consecutive hours of 
 maximum speed was as follows: 
 
 Average speed of vessel per hour in nautical miles 16.71 
 
 Average speed of vessel per hour in statute miles 19.265 
 
 Average number of the revolutions of the engines per minute , 31.06 
 
 Average number of the revolutions of the screw per minute 63.673 
 
 Average steam pressure in boilers in pounds per square inch 31.97 
 
 Average position of the throttle valves open , wide. 
 
 Average consumption of coal in pounds per hour , 12,690 
 
 There was a fresh breeze abaft the beam, with a moderate sea 
 most of the time on the quarter; the latter part of the trial the sea 
 was heavy. During the above maximum performance the vessel 
 averaged, for 24 consecutive hours, 16.97 nautical miles, or 19.566 
 statute miles, per hour. During 12 consecutive hours, 16.98 nauti- 
 cal miles, or 19.577 statute miles, per hour; and during 6 consecu- 
 tive hours, 17.25 nautical miles, or 19.89 statute miles, per hour. 
 
 The greatest distance run in any one hour was 17.75 nautical 
 miles, or 20.465 statute miles; the latter speed was obtained and 
 logged four separate half hours, and it is only necessary that the 
 men shall be properly drilled at their duties in the fire-room and 
 coal bunkers to maintain that speed continuously in smooth water. 
 
 The average performance during the 25 consecutive hours, 
 with the intended speed of 11 nautical miles per hour, was as 
 follows: 
 
 Average speed of the vessel in nautical miles per hour 
 Average speed of the vessel in statute miles per hour.. 
 
 11.39 
 13.13 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 567 
 
 Average number of revolutions of the engine per minute.. 21.36 
 
 Average number of revolutions of the screw per minute 43.78 
 
 Average steam pressure in the "boilers in pounds per square inch 20.69 
 
 Average position of the throttle valves open ^ of 1 hole. 
 
 Average consumption of coal per hour in pounds , 3,474 
 
 There was a light wind and sea ahead for six hours, and a 
 light breeze and moderate sea abaft the beam during nineteen hours 
 of the trial, when it was suddenly interrupted by a gale. 
 
 The main valves, gearing, and all other parts of the machinery 
 worked smoothly and in a satisfactory manner, and every journal of 
 the engines, during their entire performance at sea since leaving the 
 navy yard on the 4th instant worked perfectly cool until the 38th 
 hour of the maximum speed trial, when the crank-pin of the after 
 engine began to warm; the speed of the engines was then reduced 
 by throttling, the first and only time for any requirements of the 
 machinery. The warming of the crank-pin did no injury whatever 
 nor would it have been the cause of a non-completion of the 48 
 hours 5 trial at maximum speed. There was no foaming or priming 
 in the boilers, and the performance of the whole machinery was 
 excellent, and it returned to this port in a condition for any service 
 without requiring repairs. 
 
 The maximum performance can be easily maintained during a 
 passage across the Atlantic, or for any required service, and we are 
 of opinion that it is not equalled for speed or economy by that of 
 any sea-going screw vessel of either the merchant or naval service 
 of any country. 
 
 Very respectfully, your obedient servants, 
 
 Theo. Zeller, 
 
 Chief Engineer U. S. K 
 Jno. S. Albert, 
 
 Chief Engineer U. S. N. 
 John H. Long, 
 
 Chief Engineer U. 8. N. 
 
 Hon. Gideon Welles, 
 
 Secretary of the Navy, Washington, D. C. 
 
 The return of the Wampanoag to port with the report of her 
 wonderful performance was a sad blow to the writers who had been 
 
568 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 assailing the engineer-in-chief and his engine practice, and proved 
 an effective quietus to the most of them; some continued the war by 
 disparaging the published reports and insinuating that they were 
 incomplete, inaccurate and unreliable, while a few stood their ground 
 and openly denied the truth of the reported performance. Chief in 
 this latter class were some of the engineering journals of England 
 which had the mortification of seeing all their theories and conten- 
 tions swept away by the occurrence of what they had vociferously 
 proclaimed impossible, and had the further provocation of seeing a 
 rival nation suddenly become possessed of a naval weapon with 
 which British pride could be humbled, British wealth destroyed, and 
 all classes of British subjects distressed in case of war by the com- 
 plete capability of that weapon to take possession of the seas and 
 reduce the vast over- sea commerce of England to floating masses of 
 smoking rubbish. Probably no engineer ever experienced a profes- 
 sional triumph of the magnitude of this one, nor had greater cause 
 for rejoicing over his opponents, but Mr. Isherwood is said to have 
 manifested little elation at the result ; with much knowledge and ex- 
 perience to sustain him, he had not been working in the dark and 
 so far as human certainty goes he had known what the result would 
 be all the time. 
 
 With the higher rates of sea speed now familiar to all con- 
 nected with steam navigation it is not easy for us to comprehend 
 the greatness of the achievement of the Wampanoag without con- 
 sidering the state of steam at sea in her day. The fastest ocean 
 steamers then were the City of Paris of the Inman line and the Ville 
 de Paris of the French line which were competing for the champion- 
 ship in the trans- Atlantic trade and in which rivalry each had made 
 the westward voyage at an average speed of about knots, though 
 this was considerably more than the general average of either. The 
 famous old side-wheeler, Adriatic, originally built for the Collins line, 
 had made a record of 15.91 knots as the average of four runs of 
 one mile each over a measured course, but this was about two knots 
 more than her sustained sea speed. The Warrior, Black Prince and 
 some other steamers of the British navy were classified as being of 
 14 knots speed; but then, as now, the measured mile fallacy 
 existed in that service and the speed attained by a vessel running a 
 mile after gathering headway and bottling up her steam bore no 
 
THE STEAM KAVT OF THE UNITED STATES. 569 
 
 more relation to the speed she could maintain at sea than does the 
 record achieved by a college athlete in a hundred jards foot-race 
 indicate the rate he is able to travel on foot over ordinary roads for 
 a day or a week. Two paddle-wheel steamers of abnormal propor- 
 tions for that day (327 feet long; 35 feet beam; 1,900 tons displace- 
 ment; 336 square feet greatest immersed midship section; 677 
 square feet of grate surface) engaged in carrying the royal mails 
 between Holyhead and Dublin, a distance of about fifty-seven sea 
 miles, were then regarded as the best examples of swift steamers in 
 existence, although not strictly speaking ocean steamers, and they 
 had made some remarkable runs under favoring conditions, but 
 their average speed for a great number of trips was only 14.51 
 knots. 
 
 From all the foregoing it appears that 14^ knots was an unusual 
 sea speed for even the Atlantic u Greyhounds " of that day, and 
 sufficient to entitle the vessel making it to the championship in the 
 struggle for speed. The record in that race is now (1895) led by the 
 Lucania of the Cunard line, . which, in September, 1894, ran from 
 Sandy Hook light-ship to Daunt's Rock, a distance of 2,810 knots, 
 in 5 days, 8 hours and 38 minutes, or an average of 21.84 knots 
 per hour for the whole voyage. From the above figures and 16.758 
 knots, the average sustained sea speed of the Wampanoag, a propor- 
 tion may be formed from which is derived 25.24 knots as the sea 
 speed of an ocean cruiser of the present day that would parallel the 
 performance of the Wampanoag in 1868. The speed of 23 knots 
 recently achieved by the triple-screw cruiser Minneapolis is justly 
 regarded as a signal triumph for the distinguished engineer whose 
 brain conceived her machinery and for the mechanics whose skilful 
 hands constructed it, but her performance was relatively inferior to 
 to that of the Wampanoag. And it must be remembered also that 
 while the Minneapolis won her laurels in a smooth summer sea and 
 was only four hours in the ordeal, the Wampanoag made her record 
 by a long struggle with a mid-winter gale. 
 
 The importance of speed as a factor in naval warfare, although 
 demonstrated by many events of the Civil War, was disputed, or at 
 least not admitted, as soon as that war was over, and the element 
 that disparaged the Wampanoag type of war vessel by referring to 
 them as u engine carriers " and " runaways " succeeded so well in 
 
570 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 checking naval development in this direction that it was more than 
 twenty-one years after the triumph of the Wampanoag before her 
 speed was again reached in our navy; the first vessel to equal it 
 being the steel cruiser Charleston on the occasion of her four hours 5 
 trial trip in smooth water in September, 1889. The British, more 
 progressive and less hide-bound in naval matters than ourselves, 
 arrived at the speed of the Wampcmoag in their navy in 1879 with 
 the large despatch vessels Iris and Mercwy. In commercial life, 
 speed at sea has always been a prime factor and the most flattering 
 circumstance in the whole story of the Wampanoag is that with all 
 the rivalry for speed between the great trans-Atlantic steamship 
 lines and with all the engineering talent of two continents at work 
 upon the problem it took more than eleven years to produce an 
 ocean steamer that was her equal, this steamer being the Arizona of 
 the Guion line, which in June, 1879, crossed the Atlantic at an 
 average speed of 16.6 knots, only slightly less than the rate estab- 
 lished by the Wampanoag ; this remained the fastest Atlantic pass- 
 age for more than two years when the Arizona herself lowered it by 
 about two hours in the whole time of crossing. The first steamer to 
 land passengers at New York on the same day of the week after 
 leaving Europe was the Alaska, also of the Guion line, in 1882, and 
 her best day's run on that voyage was 419 sea-miles, not much in 
 excess of the 405 knots made by the Wampanoag during the first 
 twenty-four hours of her trial trip, and probably not as much when 
 allowance is made for difference in time due to the Alaska's 
 westing. 
 
 Besides the cry of fraud raised against the Wampanoag, it was 
 also charged that she was a freak ; that is, the hostiles reluctantly 
 admitted that she had actually made the remarkable speed reported, 
 but asserted it to be the result of a chance combination of circum- 
 stances verging upon the miraculous that could not be repeated, and 
 was in no way due to the machinery or creditable to the engineer 
 who had designed it. This contention held well for a few months 
 but was overthrown by the performance of the Ammonoosuc, the 
 only other one of the swift cruisers with Isherwood's machinery that 
 was ever entirely completed. This ship left New York June 15th, 
 1868, for Boston with orders to make a full speed trial on the pass- 
 age, but was prevented from carrying out the order on account of 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 571 
 
 fog over a considerable portion of the course. Full speed rates were 
 obtained for two short intervals which, as reported by the captain, 
 Commander Wm. D. Whiting, and chief engineer, Mr. John S. 
 Albert, actually exceeded the performance of the Wampanoag, 
 although they cannot be fairly compared with the latter on account 
 of the shortness of the runs and the smoothness of the water. They 
 prove conclusively enough however that the Wampanoag was not a 
 freak or a miracle, but rather the carefully considered production of 
 a master engineer. 
 
 One of the runs of the Ammonoomc on which the speed at full 
 power was ascertained was from a bearing off Sandy Hook light- 
 house to the light-house on Fire Island, and the other was from the 
 Highland light on Cape Cod to Fort Warren in Boston harbor. The 
 principal data of these two performances are given in the following 
 table, which is a summary of Chief Engineer Albert's report: 
 
 Distance run in nautical miles 
 
 Time of making the run 
 
 Average speed per hour in knots 
 
 Average speed per hour in statute miles....... 
 
 Average number revs, of engine per minute 
 
 Average number revs, screw per minute 
 
 A verage steam pressure in boilers, lbs 
 
 Average position of throttle valves , 
 
 State of the sea 
 
 Sandy Hook 
 to 
 
 Fire Island. 
 
 30 
 
 I hr. 47 min. 
 
 16.82 
 
 19.36 
 
 31.35 
 
 64.27 
 
 32.12 
 wide open, 
 smooth. 
 
 Cape Cod 
 to 
 
 Fort Warren 
 
 49.8 
 2 h. 54Jmin. 
 17.11 
 19.89 
 32.68 
 67.00 
 31.66 
 wide open, 
 smooth. 
 
 Regardless of this fine showing, the Ammonoosuc was ]aid up 
 in ordinary as un suited for the naval service and for many years 
 remained at the Boston navy yard a prey to wind and weather, her 
 name in 1869 being changed to Iowa. In September, 1883, she 
 was sold by inviting proposals, for $44,605. Her original cost was 
 11,261,250.27, of which sum $729,565.00 was for machinery. 
 
 At this day when we are accustomed to seeing the navies of all 
 nations striving for speed as a determining element in warfare it 
 is decidedly odd to know that the strongest argument used in con- 
 demning our first fast cruisers was the very fact that they were fast. 
 
572 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Some of the old and experienced officers recognized and deferred to 
 the exigency which called these peculiar ships into being, but naval 
 opinion in general was decidedly against them because they were 
 steamers pure and simple, full of machinery, and the naval mind 
 was not then ready to accept any advance in construction that in- 
 volved the subordination of sail power to steam for ocean cruising. 
 No one can justly condemn the opinions of the older officers of that 
 day, for every man is entitled to his own beliefs, and when those 
 beliefs are founded upon a long and illustrious professional career 
 their possessor can hardly be expected to suddenly throw them over- 
 board in deference to some new thing, even if that new thing is an 
 evident improvement over old methods. The logic, arguments, and 
 opinions of that older day are extremely curious and in some respects 
 almost ridiculous in the light of present knowledge, but they are 
 interesting nevertheless. 
 
 For international political reasons it was not expedient for the 
 Secretarv of the Navy to inform Congress in public reports of the 
 exact object in view in building these swift cruisers, and they were 
 therefore referred to as designed to hunt down the vessels of the 
 enemy, the only open enemy at the time being the Southern Con- 
 federacy. No one can imagine that the Navy Department projected 
 so many large ships at such great cost for the sole purpose of inter- 
 cepting blockade-runners and hunting down the two or three armed 
 cruisers of the enemy, and we consequently know that a much more 
 important object must have been in view. At that period of the war 
 (1863) the probability of European interference in our domestic 
 affairs was imminent and under cover of building cruisers to chase 
 blockade-runners the Navy Department was really arming itself to 
 resist such interference with the best possible weapons to use 
 against a commercial enemy. The ships thus created never had an 
 opportunity to prove themselves in actual war, but they played a 
 silent, though forceful, part in the negotiations that brought about a 
 peaceful settlement of the quarrel over the Alabama depredations. 
 The poss<: ssion by the United States in 1868 of the Wampanoag and 
 AmmonoosiiCj with the ability to quickly fit for service two or three 
 other commerce-destroyers like them did more to convince Great 
 Britain that arbitration was better than war than did all the argu- 
 ments of statesmen expended upon that controversy. 
 
CHIEF ENGINEER B. F. ISHERWOOD, U. S. NAVY, 
 
 Engineer- in-Chief of the Navy, March 26, 1861, to March 15, 1869. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 575 
 
 The military value of vessels like the Wampanoag in a war with 
 a nation whose very life depends upon its ocean commerce is mani- 
 fest and it is a curious fact in connection with the building of that 
 class of vessels that their military uses were better comprehended by 
 the naval engineers, a corps sometimes charged with being of a 
 civilian character incompetent to deal with military questions, than 
 they were by many members of the naval corps whose functions are 
 supposed to be military. The Engineer-in-Chief, Mr. Isherwood, 
 conceived the idea of building these ships for the object above stated ? 
 asserted his ability to provide them with power that would make 
 them the fastest in the world, and by persistent argument convinced 
 the Navy Department of the soundness of the policy of constructing 
 them. Political pressure for the distribution of government work 
 and the rivalry existing between private ship-building and marine 
 engine manufacturers and designers induced the Department to con- 
 tract for some of these cruisers on competetive conditions, as has 
 been told, while others were constructed by the government at navy 
 yards and engined by contract from Mr. Isherwood's designs. 
 
 As the originator both of the military policy of building these 
 ships and of the means of making the successful ones go, Mr. 
 Isherwood is the best authority as to the purposes of their creation 
 and his explanation, given after the danger of foreign war had 
 passed, will be repeated as a straightforward statement in which the 
 objects are clearly set forth and no disguise as to the name of the 
 nation for whose discomfiture the ships were designed attempted. 
 Shortly after the trial trip of the Wampanoag she was ordered to 
 make a short voyage at sea with a board of three commodores — 
 Melancthon Smith, Thornton A. Jenkins, and James Alden, who 
 were to report upon the qualities of the vessel. In the order to the 
 president of this board Secretary Welles reminded him that the ship 
 was intended for fast ocean cruising and stated that the Department 
 wanted an opinion as to whether or not she was efficient in view of 
 that object. The report of the board, signed by two members, 
 stated that — "The original purpose of providing a vessel of the 
 greatest attainable speed, with a sufficient armament for destroying 
 the enemy's commerce, and for self-defense in case of need, has been 
 attained." The junior member of the board, Commodore Alden, 
 differed from his associates and submitted a minority report severely 
 
576 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OP THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 condemning the steam machinery of the Wampanoag and instituting 
 unfavorable comparisons between it and the machinery of the Mino- 
 taur, a British iron-clad built for a totally different purpose. This 
 report was referred to Engineer- in- Chief Isherwood for an opinion, 
 which he wrote out at considerable length ably defending the 
 Wampanoag and leaving very little of Commodore Alden's argumen- 
 tative fabric intact. 1 In explanation of the ship's being in existence 
 Mr. Isherwood offered the following: 
 
 "The commodore could have stated in his report that the con- 
 struction of the Wampanoag' s machinery was commenced in 1863, 
 during the war, under a guarantee by the contractors that it should 
 be completed in one year; that the vessel was designed for an 
 exceedingly fast ocean cruiser, fast enough to capture any British 
 mail or merchant steamer, as at that date a rupture with Great 
 Britain was imminent, and we were wholly unprepared with any 
 steamers that could be used against her commerce; that the career 
 of the Alabama had shown the necessity of such vessels in war; 
 and, finally, that in constructing the Wampanoag other qualities 
 were to be necessarily sacrificed in a greater degree than usual to 
 obtain unprecedented speed, as upon speed alone depended her 
 utility, of which it was the direct measure. The speed was to be 
 so great as to make any attempt to exceed it hopeless. This 
 required a very large vessel, and much of it to be devoted to the 
 machinery and fuel; the battery being made only what was sufficient 
 for the special service intended. The vessel itself, constructed of 
 live-oak frames, would be the most formidable projectile that could 
 be devised when hurled as a ram at her enormous speed against the 
 sides of a slow antagonist, though armed with a three-fold battery. 
 She was planned with a special view to that use, for which purpose 
 even the bowsprit was to be omitted. In the design of such a 
 vessel the sails were a secondary consideration, the first being the 
 
 "'All the correspondence in this matter, as well as official reports of the trial 
 trips of the Wampanoag, Madawaska, Idaho, Ammonoosuc, and Chattanooga, is 
 printed in Executive Document No. 339, House of Eepresentatives, 40th Congress, 
 2d Session, from which document the greater part of the material presented in 
 this and the preceding chapter has been obtained. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 577 
 
 durability, simplicity, and reliability of the machinery, combined 
 with maximum power to be exerted continuously as long as the fuel 
 lasted, and with extreme economy of fuel in the development of 
 that power. It was proposed to construct a vessel having a greater 
 speed by several miles per hour than any other ocean steamer; 
 which should be able to go to the British coast in case of hostilities, 
 and burn, sink, and destroy every vessel of inferior force, naval or 
 merchant, that might be found there. Nothing she pursued could 
 escape her, and nothing she fled from could overtake her. The 
 more heavily armed but slower cruisers of the enemy could only 
 follow her by the flames of the burning wrecks she left behind her. 
 She would obtain a plentiful supply of coal, water, provisions, and 
 other stores from her prizes for an indefinite length of cruising, and 
 would neutralize the large number of naval steamers required to 
 form a cordon around the British coast for the protection of its com- 
 merce from her depredations. Her speed would enable her to enter 
 and leave any port despite the most vigilant blockade. In fact, the 
 destruction made of the enemy's resources and the military ad- 
 vantages of breaking up his communications and obtaining the 
 quickest intelligence of his movements, due to the employment of 
 one such vessel, are incalculable. Modern naval warfare includes 
 much more than a yard-arm to yard-arm fight in mid-ocean. These 
 are the ideas that would naturally have occurred to any naval officer, 
 and without comprehending the purpose for which the vessel was 
 built, it is impossible for any one to properly criticise it. It must 
 be judged as to how successfully the design has been carried out, 
 and not as to whether the vessel is adapted to wholly different 
 uses." 
 
 The year after the completion and trial of the Wampanoag her 
 name was changed to Florida and she was condemned for naval 
 purposes by a board of officers which examined and reported upon all 
 steam machinery afloat at the different navy yards. That board con- 
 sisted of Rear Admiral E. M. Groldsborough, Commodore Charles S. 
 Boggs, Chief Engineers E. D. Kobie and John W. Moore, and Mr. 
 Isaac Newton, the latter an ex-naval engineer whose connection 
 with the Monitor is well known. He was an anti-Isherwood man, a 
 fact that is said to have had something to do with his selection for 
 service as a civilian member of the board. The report of this 
 
578 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 board condemned many of the vessels of the navy, because they 
 possess qualities now regarded as essential, and its pages reveal a 
 sentiment of opposition to the spirit of progress that in our day has 
 replaced sails on war vessels with steam and made the safety of 
 ships at sea a matter of scientific control instead of the chance sport 
 of the winds. To the student of steam navigation the report of 
 this board is a veritable curiosity of professional literature, more 
 than worth reading, and may be found printed in full in the annual 
 report of the Secretary of the Navy for the year 1869. It is proper 
 to say in connection with it that the two naval chief engineers, 
 Eobie and Moore, submitted a minority report dissenting from 
 many of the expressions and opinions of the other members of the 
 board. Some of the faults found with the Wampanoag by this 
 board were compared with modern essentials by Passed Assistant 
 Engineer Ira N. Hollis, U. S. Navy, in a lecture on marine engines 
 delivered in 1892 at the Naval War College, Newport, as follows: 
 
 6 ' It was a stroke of genius which put geared engines with slow 
 reciprocating parts and rapid rotating screw into a ship that would 
 have been racked to pieces by the engines we construct to-day. She 
 was condemned in 1869 by a board of naval officers for various 
 reasons, among them the following : 6 Excessive weight of machin- 
 ery and coal.' The Minneapolis has 3,971 tons devoted to this 
 purpose, about the displacement of the Wampanoag. ' Enormous 
 coal consumption. ' She burned 136 tons of coal a day, while our 
 latest cruiser will burn 360 tons for her sustained speed. 6 Because 
 her grate surface was 1.53 times the midship section. 5 6 Kelative 
 length to breadth said to cause inordinate rolling and dangerous 
 straining of ship. 5 The latter cruiser has about the same relative 
 dimensions and a lower coefficient of fineness. c Carried coal 
 enough to last only five or six days at maximum power. 5 The 
 Minneapolis has the same endurance. 6 Four-bladed screw nullified 
 the use of canvas.' c The substitution of a two-bladed screw recom- 
 mended, and the removal of several boilers for the purpose of 
 giving her full sail power.' Her later sister carries no sails at all. 
 Her speed was superior to that of most of our cruisers, and we have 
 gained between two and three knots by building a ship of twice her 
 size. Nobody thought of the fact that she had no water-tight sub-* 
 division, and would fill from one hole in her side or bottom." 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 578 
 
 The board recommended the removal of four of the Wampanoag^ s 
 boilers to do away with two of the smoke-pipes, and advised that th e 
 other two pipes be made telescopic; the superheating boilers were 
 declared of no benefit and two of them were recommended to be 
 removed ; to re-arrange the masts so that the vessel could be rigged 
 as a ship it was seriously suggested that one of the gang of driving 
 gear wheels and pinions of the main engine be taken out to make 
 room for the step of the mainmast. Yarious other changes were 
 advised, bat after all had been enumerated the report adds: 
 
 u Although the Wampanoagh arrangements may be modified as 
 just stated, yet in truth but little, comparatively, will be gained by 
 it, considering the expense that will have to be incurred, and, above 
 all, the condition in which she will still be left. It is, in short, 
 utterly impracticable to render her a vessel of war worthy of our 
 navy. Her case is so bad as to be beyond cure, and to make pallia- 
 tives appear as though they were labor lost. 
 
 ' It nevertheless may serve, like most others of the sort, as a 
 source from which important lessons can be drawn, and among them 
 it impresses the expediency of consulting, instead of ignoring, expe- 
 rienced and intelligent naval minds as to the properties to be secured 
 in the construction and arrangements of a vessel of war. ' 5 
 
 A few comments relative to other high-powered vessels which 
 this report contains are worth quoting, as serving to show how 
 utterly different from the present were the naval beliefs of only a 
 quarter of a century ago and how far away the era of the steam war- 
 vessel was even then. Thus, with reference to the Madawaska we 
 find the following : 
 
 "The case of this vessel is essentially that of the Wampcmoag. 
 They are twin ships—both the unfortunate offspring of an irretriev- 
 able blunder ab initio. 
 
 u The boilers are the same in number, size and type, as those 
 on board the Wampanoag^ and they are as bountifully provided with 
 smoke-pipes of a standing order. ' 5 
 
 With regard to the NesJiaminy the following is remarked; 
 
580 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 "The predominent idea in getting her into existence seems to 
 have been the production of a sort of overgrown Indian canoe in 
 shape and lightness, and thus to obtain speed at all hazards, no mat- 
 ter what might become of other indispensable qualities; and the 
 result has been, as it were, scarcely anything less in effect than— ■ 
 pardon the expression — a slunk foal. 
 
 "Her designer, a man of marked ability as a naval architect, 
 and, indeed — without meaning to be invidious — certainly at the very 
 head of his profession in this country, was, no doubt, pressed to 
 yield his own solid judgment, as to her model and construction, to 
 the importunity of others, and in a way difficult, if not almost im- 
 possible, to resist. He is not, therefore, in common fairness, to be 
 held to a strict accountability for her palpable, terrible failure in 
 embryo. 
 
 "The real source of the difficulty in her case, and in that of 
 others of similar size and shape, is to be traced to the egregious 
 error of assuming the want of vessels of their type, and the possi- 
 bility of their production to answer the ends of efficient vessels of 
 war, and this never proceeded from his clear and ample brain." 
 
 With reference to the Mosholu, or Severn: . ..... 
 
 ' ' This vessel, in hull, may be regarded as having the Wam- 
 panoag or Madawaska as an archetype, except that she is rather 
 better as to relative breadth, and rather worse as to relative depth, 
 whether the later be compared with her length or breadth; but she 
 has about the same extravagant running off at the ends. Essentially 
 she is a diminished pattern of the same tribe, but yet not loaded 
 perhaps with steam appliances to quite the same exorbitant degree. 
 
 " In all, therefore, the number of furnaces amounts to thirty, 
 and their grate surface amounts to 585 square feet, which exceeds 
 the area of the vessel's immersed section, the proportion being : : 
 1.083:1; which, although in the same exceptional way as in the ease 
 of the Wampanoag or Madaivasha^ is not carried to the same extrava- 
 gant extent. 5 ' 
 
 The Wampanoag was not altered into what the board regarded 
 
THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAG. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 583 
 
 as a vessel of war worthy of our navy, but remained in ordinary at 
 the New York navy yard for about five years and was then, in 1874, 
 taken to New London, Connecticut, and used as a receiving and 
 store ship at the naval station there; in this unworthy employment 
 the finest war-steamer ever built, all things considered, remained for 
 over ten years rusting and rotting away, unknown and almost 
 unappreciated except by the young cadet engineers of the Naval 
 Academy who on their annual practice cruises made pilgrimages to 
 this spot to see what had been accomplished by the engineers before 
 their day, and to acquire a spirit of emulation that in after years 
 with better facilities and with a less stubborn generation to deal with 
 enabled many of them to aid most materially in making the swift 
 cruisers of our new steam navy so successful that they are the 
 admiration and envy of officers of all navies. 
 
 In February, 1885, th6 Warnpanoag, or Florida, was sold for 
 $41,508.00, which is less than three per cent, of her original cost of 
 $1,575,643.84. She disappeared from naval surroundings soon 
 after the sale when a swarm of screeching New York tug boats 
 gathered about the battered and disheveled relic and dragged it 
 away, like a band of ants tugging at the carcass of a big beetle; and 
 in this .ignoble fashion ended the career that had begun so 
 gloriously. 
 
 32 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 ' * Give me the ocular pi oof ; — 
 Make me see't ; or, at the least, so prove it, 
 That the probation bear rio hinge, nor loop, 
 To hang a doubt on." 
 
 Othello ; Act III, Scene 3. 
 
 Some Naval Events After the Civil War—The Voyage of the Monadnock to 
 California—The Miantonomoh Visits Europe — The Mohongo in a Pampero 
 — Loss of the Narcissus— Yellow Fever on the Kearsarge and Muscoota 
 — Wreck of the Sacramento — Earthquakes and Tidal Waves — Wreck of 
 the Suwanee — The Affair of the Forward — Loss of the Oneida — Wreck 
 of the Saginaw. 
 
 IMMEDIATELY after the close of the war it was determined to 
 send one of the monitors to the Pacific coast, partly to pro- 
 vide a coast guard ship for that region, but more especially to give 
 a convincing object lesson to the great multitude of doubters in and 
 out of the navy, at home and abroad, as to the ability of this type 
 of vessel to make a voyage of any length at sea. Assistant Secre- 
 tary Fox appears to have been the prime mover in this determina- 
 tion and he had in the navy, besides the great majority of the engi- 
 neers who naturally favored the monitor type, a most able and influ- 
 ential supporter in the person of Commodore John Eodgers, the 
 hero of the Weehaw ken- Atlanta duel. Perhaps none of the older 
 class of naval officers had a better right by reason of length of 
 service and family traditions to be prejudiced against the introduc- 
 tion of the new form of war- ship to the disadvantage of the old than 
 had John Eodgers, and the fact that an officer of his distinction was 
 capable of subordinating his natural predilections to a development 
 in the line of naval progress is not only creditable to his name, but 
 was most beneficial by example to the naval service. 
 
 The iron-clad selected to make the voyage was the Monadnock, 
 one of the four large twin-screw, double-turreted wooden monitors 
 placed under construction at navy yards in 1862. She was built at 
 the Boston yard from designs of Naval Constructor Isaiah Hanscom 
 and had two pairs of Ericsson's vibrating lever engines, the latter 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 585 
 
 built by Morris, Towne & Co., Philadelphia. The turrets were 
 made by the Atlantic Works, Boston. Her length was 259 feet; 
 beam, 52 feet ; draft, 12 feet, and displacement about 3,300 tons 
 when fully loaded for sea. She left Hampton Koads the 2d of 
 November, 1865, in company with the Vanderbilt, Powhatan, and 
 Tascarora, and arrived safely at San Francisco the 22d of June, 
 1866. Her commander was Lieutenant Commander Francis M. 
 Bunce and chief engineer, Mr. J. Q. A. Zeigler. Commodore John 
 Eodgers in the Vanderbilt commanded the squadron and kept a 
 watchful eye on the behavior of the monitor. 
 
 The Vanderbilt is worthy of passing notice. She was a large 
 side- wheel steamer (3,360 tons burden), built in 1855 at a cost of 
 $800,000 by Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, of New York, and used by 
 him as a passenger steamer between New York and Havre in com- 
 petition with the French line. In 1857 she had made a run from 
 New York to the " Needles, " off the Isle of Wight, in nine days 
 and eight hours. Not being able to break up the French line, Mr. 
 Vanderbilt withdrew his competition in 1861 and presented the 
 steamer Vanderbilt to the War Department, whence she was trans- 
 ferred to the naval service about September, 1862. The chief event 
 in her naval career was the long and fruitless search for the Alabama, 
 thwarted by Commodore Wilkes diverting her from her mission for 
 use as his flagship. In 1873 she was sold out of the service to 
 George Howes, of San Francisco, for $42,000. Her machinery 
 was removed by the purchaser and under the name of Three Brothers 
 she became one of the largest and fastest sailing ships in the world. 
 As an illustration of the wonderful ship-building materials of the 
 Pacific coast it is told that in fitting the Vanderbilt out as a sailing 
 ship the mainmast and bowsprit were made from the same stick. 
 She is now, or was a few years ago, a coal hulk in the harbor of 
 Gibraltar. 
 
 The experience of the Monadnoch on her long voyage may be 
 best told by the following extracts from official reports made by the 
 officers most directly concerned in her management : 
 
 From Report of Commodore Rodgers luritten at St. Thomas : 
 
 ' 4 The Monadnoch has behaved so well at sea as to inspire her 
 
586 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 officers not only with confidence but with enthusiasm at her per- 
 formance as a sea boat. They do not doubt her ability to go any- 
 where. Her fire-room, however, is very hot. Eight men were 
 carried out in a state of collapse during the passage to this place. 
 I am putting some ventilators upon her through holes previously 
 made for the purpose, which I hope will in great part remedy the 
 evil. A board of surgeons has recommended a spirit ration to her 
 firemen while under way. I shall approve it and order the recom- 
 mendation carried out. 5 5 
 
 From report of Commander Bunce written at St. Thomas : 
 
 66 The engines have not stopped except in obedience to the 
 
 bell. 
 
 u She has made an average speed of 5.85 knots per hour, the 
 greatest distance run in one day being 162 ; the least, 79.5. 55 
 
 From report of Commander Bunce written at Salute Island : 
 
 " The temperature of the fire-room has been from 120° to 
 140° during the passage. Sixteen of the firemen and coal-heavers 
 have been removed from the fire-room in a state of insensibility ; 
 they soon, however, recovered, and returned to duty. A spirit 
 ration of half a gill has been served out to the firemen and coal- 
 heavers at the expiration of each watch and drank mixed with oat- 
 meal and water. 
 
 u A call for volunteers from the crew to serve in the fire-room 
 in case of emergency, with the inducement of forty cents additional 
 pay, made during the passage from Hampton Roads to St. Thomas, 
 produced three men willing to serve. A similar call during this 
 passage, the additional incentive of the whisky ration being under- 
 stood, brought out seventeen. 5 ' 
 
 From report of Commodore Modgers written at Rio de Janeiro : 
 
 " I have the honor to inform the Department that the Emperor 
 of the Brazils visited the Monadnock this morning, on board which 
 I hoisted my broad pennant to receive him. He examined the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 587 
 
 vessel, and, as far as we could judge, seemed well pleased with his 
 visit." 
 
 From report of Commander Bunce written at Panama : 
 
 u Since crossing the equator the weather has been very hot. 
 The temperature of the fire and engine-rooms very high. The fire- 
 men, however, more accustomed to their work, have not suffered 
 from the extreme exhaustion experienced in the same latitude 
 before. ' ' 
 
 From the report of Commodore Rodgers written at San Francisco : 
 
 u The Monadnoch found no weather in her voyage from Phila- 
 delphia to this place which seemed to touch the limit of her sea- 
 going capacity., 
 
 " In a gale off Point Conception, on the coast of California, 
 two successive waves rose which interposed between my eye and 
 the masthead light of the Monadnoch. Upon inquiry I found that 
 the light was elevated seventy- five feet above the water, my own 
 eye being about twenty-five feet above the sea level. In this sea, 
 according to the testimony of her officers, she was very easy. While 
 it blew the hardest, and the sea was the most violent, she twice 
 parted her tiller ropes in quick succession. Thus, without the use 
 of her rudder, she hove to with the double screw propellers, lying 
 dry and comfortably in the storm. 
 
 46 The engines have performed as satisfactorily as the hull, and 
 have arrived in complete order. 
 
 u The Monadnoch has not been towed, nor while at sea, during 
 the entire voyage, has she received any assistance whatever. 
 
 u The success of the voyage amply vindicates the judgment of 
 the Department in undertaking it ; and the hopes of the most 
 sanguine of £ monitor' people are fulfilled in this crucial experi- 
 ment. 5 ' 
 
 From, reports of Chief Engineer Zeigler written at San Francisco : 
 4 4 The engines of this vessel are in good working condition, 
 
588 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 having been thoroughly tested in the long, heavy sea during the 
 passage from Magdalena Bay to San Diego, and more so during a 
 gale of fifty hours' duration which we encountered off Cape Concep- 
 tion, between San Diego and this port, which tried not only the 
 engines and machinery, but the ship generally, more than any 
 time since leaving Philadelphia. They have worked admirably, 
 giving the utmost satisfaction. 
 
 " I also take pleasure in reporting that I have had no occasion 
 to use any of the spare brasses or extra machinery during the entire 
 cruise from Philadelphia to San Francisco, it having been a long and 
 severe test to the engines. 
 
 6 < The boilers are also in good working condition and repair, 
 The blow and part of the feed pipes are entirely worn out and will 
 require new ones. 
 
 " With these trifling exceptions the engines and boilers are 
 fit for immediate service, and ready to return to Philadelphia. 
 
 c c The passage on the Atlantic side, from Hampton Roads to 
 Bahia, was severe and trying to the men, many of them giving out 
 from exhaustion, caused by the extreme heat in a tropical climate, 
 making it difficult for the department to get along. 
 
 < ' The passage from Callao to Acapulco, on the Pacific side, 
 was also a severe one on the department, several of the engineers 
 being sick, besides a number of the firemen giving out, the ther- 
 mometer standing at times as high as one hundred and fifty degrees 
 in the fire-room. 
 
 ' c The cruise has been a long and severe test to the engines, and 
 a hard and arduous one on the engineer's department." 
 
 The Monadnoch was laid up at the Mare Island navy yard for a 
 few years and was then pronounced unseaworthy, her wooden hull 
 being badly decayed in many places. Mr. Phineas Burgess took 
 her in hand at his ship-yard in Vallejo and repaired her by building 
 a complete iron hull; before the new ship was completed, complica- 
 tions arose which caused the government to take possession of her 
 and remove her to the Mare Island navy yard, where she has after 
 many years been finished. New engines (triple expansion) and a 
 new battery of boilers have also been built for her at the same yard, 
 so the Monadnoch of to-day possesses little but the name that 
 belonged to the old Monadnoch of the war period. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OFTHE UNITED STATES. 
 
 589 
 
 The successful voyage of the Monadnock from the Atlantic to 
 the Pacific convinced American skeptics of the seaworthiness of well 
 built monitors, but murmurs of doubt still came from across the 
 Atlantic. A prominent naval and engineering journal of London 
 sturdily maintained its contention that monitors could not swim and 
 afterward, when convinced by seeing an American monitor in British 
 waters, explained its previous doubts by saying editorially: u Although 
 we knew that monitors had within the last year or so gone on mod- 
 erately long voyages, the details of those voyages never reached 
 England. The only information to be had was gleaned from the 
 pages of the American press, and we regret to say the standard of 
 Yankee journalism is so low that it was difficult to take even the 
 meagre statements made as being positive truths." An unsuccessful 
 attempt to assassinate the Czar gave our government an opportunity 
 to express its appreciation of Russia's friendly attitude toward us 
 during our domestic strife by sending a special envoy bearing a 
 message of congratulation, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Fox 
 being selected as the envoy and the monitor Miantonomoh as his 
 conveyance. 
 
 That vessel belonged to the same class as the Monadnock and 
 was of the same general dimensions: she was built at the New York 
 navy yard by Naval Constructor Delano and engined by the Novelty 
 Works of that city, the engines being of Mr. Isherwood 's design. 
 Of course her sea voyage furnished an excellent opportunity for 
 controversy over the relative merits of Isherwood and Ericsson 
 machinery by comparing the Miantonomoh and Monadnock and that 
 well-worn contention came again to the fore in the newspapers, but 
 as the performances of the two ships were almost identical and each 
 eminently satisfactory it is hardly worth while to revive the rivalry 
 at this date. One point of difference, however, should be noted, 
 and that is in the matter of engine and fire-room temperatures. The 
 Monadnock, as shown by the reports quoted, was very hot, while the 
 fire-room of the Miantonomoh ranged from 106° to 115°, the engine- 
 room being about ten degrees less. This difference was partly due 
 to the difference in latitude in which the two vessels cruised, but was 
 more especially a result of difference in design: Mr. Isherwood with 
 many years of actual experience at sea knew the disadvantages of 
 hot working places and would naturally think of them and arrange 
 
590 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 his machinery to avoid them, while Ericsson had no such experience 
 and no means of detecting hot places from an engine or fire-room 
 plan on a sheet of drawing paper. 
 
 The policy of sending an iron-clad to England was much criti- 
 cised by the press, the weight of opinion being that it was not 
 incumbent upon the United States to convince its maritime rival of 
 the advantages of the monitor system, especially as the English 
 newspapers, lay and scientific, and even debaters in the English 
 parliament, were engaged in declaring the inability of monitors to go 
 to sea and laughing at the idea of one of them ever appearing in 
 British waters. The opinion of the American public on the question 
 may be fairly shown by the following extract from an editorial in a 
 New York newspaper devoted to military and naval affairs: 
 
 " Now, having satisfied ourselves on this point, why should we 
 so itch to prove it practically to Englishmen ? With tremendous 
 stupidity, they have insisted year after year that the monitors could 
 not go to sea. Argument has been pooh-poohed, facts denied, and 
 official reports made the subject of ridicule by two-penny London 
 wits. 
 
 u For all that, as we have said, we think it best, in a national 
 point of view, not to insist on forcing open the eyes which an en- 
 lightened British public persists in keeping shut. When they have 
 exhausted all their appropriations for iron-clad navies, then is the 
 time to send over a monitor. ' ? 
 
 Notwithstanding public objection, the Miantonomoh proceeded 
 on her mission, sailing from New York May 6, 1866, under the 
 command of Commander J. C. Beaumont, Mr. Wm. A. R. Latimer 
 being her chief engineer. The iron double- ender Ashuelot and the 
 purchased side-wheel steamer Augusta accompanied her. To guard 
 against any Yankee trick, presumably, as to the method of getting 
 her across the ocean, the British naval attache was allowed to go in 
 her as a passenger. After touching at Halifax and St. John's, the 
 Miantonomoh proceeded directly acrossithe Atlantic without mishap of 
 any kind, arriving at Queenstown in perfect order less than eleven 
 days after leaving St. John's, as appears from the following extracts 
 from the report of the commanding officer of the Augusta, who as 
 senior officer commanded the squadron: 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 591 
 
 "I have the honor to report the arrival of this ship, the 
 Miantonomoh and Ashuelot at this port, having performed the trip 
 across the Atlantic in ten days and eighteen hours, without accident 
 of any kind. 1 
 
 " Our progress was uniform, the longest day's run being 176 
 miles, and the shortest 137; average 168. 
 
 "A great portion of the way (1,100 miles) the Miantonomoh 
 was in tow of the Augusta, as a matter of convenience and precau- 
 tion more than necessity, the Miantonomoh consuming a fair propor- 
 tion of coal. 
 
 ' 4 1 think she could have crossed over alone. The weather 
 generally was very good, the only strong winds being from the west- 
 ward. Heavy weather does not appear to materially affect the speed 
 or rolling of the monitor, for while the other vessels were lurching 
 about, and their progress checked by heavy seas, she went along 
 comparatively undisturbed or unchecked." 
 
 Assistant Secretary Fox made an elaborate report to the De- 
 partment detailing the behavior of the vessel at sea and discussing 
 her qualities from a military point of view in such manner as to set 
 the American public at rest so far as any fear of our ability to defend 
 ourselves at sea then existed. 
 
 From Queenstown the Miantonomoh went to the great British 
 naval station at Portsmouth and by allowing free inspection con- 
 vinced the naval and editorial minds of England that she was a 
 ship built for war, capable of making it near the shore or on the 
 high seas, and, according to the surprised comments of the English 
 press, rather superior as a fighting machine to anything then pos- 
 sessed by that country. Like the Wampanoag, she later played a 
 quiet but impressive part in bringing about a change of heart on the 
 part of England as to the settlement of the Alabama claims. No 
 one can now regret that the Miantonomoh went to England when she 
 did, for the story of her peaceful conquest of a nation's prejudice is 
 one of the most pleasing incidents in the annals of our steam navy 
 and is fully as worthy of being a source of national pride as would 
 
 1 Time estimated by the sun; by the watch it would be four hours less, or 
 ten days and fourteen hours. 
 
592 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 have been the career of destruction of which the Miantonomoh was 
 capable. 
 
 From England the Miantonomoh and Augusta went to Cronstadt 
 and the monitor and her officers received such a reception that it is 
 an event still told of in St. Petersburg, gay as that capital is, and 
 has become traditional in our navy; the interesting details of this 
 affair are foreign to the subject of this book, which deals with men, 
 iron, and steel, rather than with softer material. The Miantonomoh 
 subsequently visited many of the chief seaports of Europe, admired 
 everywhere by naval officials, and probably accomplished more than 
 any vessel we ever possessed in spreading abroad a knowledge of 
 the power of the United States and the skill of our mechanics. 
 
 An incident illustrative of the general usefulness of a skilled 
 engineer on board ship occurred during the voyage of the Mohongo 
 from New York to join the Pacific squadron in the fall of 1865. 
 After leaving Montevideo and when about the center of the wide 
 and shallow gulf at the mouth of the river La Plata the vessel was 
 caught in a pampero, a furious wind peculiar to that region, and 
 was brought to anchor to ride out the gale, the sea being so heavy 
 and so much water boarding the ship that about sixty tons of coal 
 had to be thrown overboard to keep her from foundering. During 
 the night the working of the rudder was so violent as to break the 
 tiller off near the head of the rudder-stock, and this was followed by 
 the breaking of the yoke-bolts and quadrant below deck, rendering 
 the steering gear useless. All efforts to repair this damage were 
 unavailing owing to the constant swinging of the rudder under the 
 blows of the sea, and three days of anxiety and hard work were 
 passed in futile attempts to secure the rudder by appliances from 
 the outside, the ship being battened down all the time and extremely 
 uncomfortable as well as in much peril. 
 
 The senior assistant engineer of the vessel, Mr. B. F. Wood, 
 had remarked to others who were lamenting the plight they were in 
 that he could secure the rudder if given a chance to try, and his 
 remark was finally carried to the captain with the suggestion that it 
 was his duty in the emergency to give the engineer an opportunity, 
 as the salvation of the ship seemed to depend upon getting the 
 steering gear repaired and getting under way. After some hesita- 
 tion Mr. Wood was told to do anything he saw fit, and within 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 593 
 
 twenty minutes he had the rudder fast and was at work readjusting 
 the gear below, completing the latter work within three hours, when 
 the ship got under way and struggled back to Montevideo for per- 
 manent repairs. Mr. Wood took aft a section of the bow chain and 
 wound it about the rudder-head until the mass furnished sufficient 
 leverage to allow a deck tackle hooked in each side to hold it fast. 
 The largest steamship ever built — the Great Eastern — had had an 
 exactly similar break-down in mid-ocean and had not only secured 
 the rudder in the same manner but had actually been steered to port 
 by means of the tackles hooked in the mass of chain. This is not 
 an especially bright expedient after one knows of it, but in the case 
 of the Mohongo no one but Mr. Wood appears to have been able to 
 think of it, or to have had it stowed away in his mind, after reading 
 of the Great Eastern's mishap. The captain of the vessel, Commander 
 J. W. A. Nicholson, often remarked to naval officers afterward in 
 telling the story that "Ben" Wood saved the Mohongo by his 
 ingenuity. 
 
 The only instance in the history of the American navy of a 
 steam vessel being lost with all on board occurred at the beginning 
 of 1866. The unfortunate vessel was the Narcissus, a small pur- 
 chased steamer that had been in service in the West Gulf squadron 
 as a gun-boat and had been in bad luck there, having been sunk by 
 a torpedo in Mobile Bay in December, 1864, without any loss of 
 life, however. She had been subsequently raised and repaired for 
 use as a tug and despatch vessel at the Pensacola navy yard. On 
 the first day of January, 1866, she left Pensacola for Key West, 
 under the command of Acting Ensign J. S. Bradbury, and was 
 wrecked in the surf on Egmont Key, near Tampa, Florida, the night 
 of January 2nd, the entire ship's company of thirty-two officers and 
 men perishing with her. Among the lost was the chief engineer, 
 Acting Second Assistant Engineer Francis R. Shoemaker, and three 
 acting third assistants — Messrs. Edward A. Hopkins, Joshua 
 Halsall, and George Anderson. 
 
 In March, 1866, yellow fever appeared on the sloop-of-war 
 Kearsarge, at sea at the time making a passage from Monrovia, 
 Liberia, to Lisbon, and seven officers, including the surgeon, Dr. 
 Benjamin Vreeland, and seven men died. Four of the unfortunate 
 officers were members of the engineer corps — Messrs. Joel A. 
 
594 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Bullard and Joseph Hoops, second assistant engineers, and Richard 
 F. Edwards and E. R. Tyson, third assistants. 
 
 In August of the same year the iron double-ender Muscoota 
 doing service on the coast of Mexico also suffered from the same 
 dread disease, losing one officer and a number of men and was 
 forced to proceed to a home port for help as the deceased officer was 
 the surgeon, Dr. J. Wesley Boyden. When the Muscoota arrived 
 off Pensacola in distress she had over seventy cases on board and 
 was wholly unable to proceed further on account of all the engineers 
 but one — Acting Third Assistant Engineer Jos. P. Mickley — and 
 the greater part of the fire-room force being down with the fever. 
 It being imperative that she should go to a northern climate, volun- 
 teers were asked for the perilous service and a sufficient number 
 cheerfully offered themselves to take the ship to Portsmouth, N. H., 
 where she was put out of commission. Acting Passed Assistant 
 Surgeon S. P. Boy er, Acting First Assistant Engineer Thomas Dobbs, 
 Acting Third Assistant Engineer J. V. Home, and a sufficient 
 number of firemen to run the Muscoota, all volunteered from the 
 special service steamer Newbem then at the Pensacola navy yard. 
 Other volunteers were Acting Ensigns A. J. Iverson and R. Hunter. 
 To offer one's self for service of such deadly peril as this in time of 
 peace requires courage of a lofty order and it is a pleasure to know 
 that these gallant men received an appropriate expression from the 
 Navy Department of its appreciation of their heroism. The follow- 
 ing is a copy of a letter sent to Acting Engineer Dobbs, and is the 
 same in terms as others sent to the other officers who came forward 
 so nobly in the distressing emergency : 
 
 u Navy Department, 
 
 "Washington, Sept. 7th, 1866. 
 
 "Sir: The Department has learned through Commodore 
 Winslow, commanding the Gulf squadron, and Commander Pattison ? 
 commanding the U. S. Steamer Muscoota, of your heroic conduct in 
 volunteering for service on that vessel when her complement of 
 officers and men had been reduced and weakened by death and dis- 
 ease from a contagious fever then raging, there being at the time 
 seventy-five cases on board. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 595 
 
 66 Your conduct on the occasion deserves commendation and is 
 appreciated by the Department. 
 
 " Very respectfully, &c, 
 
 " Wm. Faxon, 
 
 ' ' Acting Secretary of the Navy. 
 
 "Act. 1st Asst. Engineer Thomas Dobbs, 
 
 " U. S. S. Muscoota, Portsmouth, N. H. " 
 
 The screw-sloop Sacramento, of the Ganandaigua class, while 
 making a special cruise in the East Indies was wrecked on the 19th 
 of June, 1867, on the reefs near the mouth of the Godavery Eiver 
 on the Coromandel coast of Hindustan. The vessel was a total loss 
 together with all the effects of the officers and men, but no lives 
 were lost. In attempting to get on shore by the use of rafts con- 
 structed on the wreck, one raft with twenty-nine officers and men 
 was swept out to sea by the tide and currents and its occupants 
 would have perished but for their chance discovery and rescue the 
 following day by a passing steamer — the Arabia, of the British 
 India Company. After a succession of privations on a sterile coast 
 the shipwrecked crew reached Madras and subsequently proceeded 
 to the United States in a chartered British ship, the General Caul- 
 field. The executive officer, Lieutenant Commander P. C. Johnson, 
 and Chief Engineer Wm. B. Brooks were left behind to guard the 
 interests of the United States in disposing of the wreck. The other 
 engineers who shared in this unpleasant experience were F. L. 
 Miller, John D. Ford, James Wylie, and David M. Fulmer, all 
 second assistant engineers, and third assistant Robert X). Taylor. 
 
 An earthquake in the West Indies on the afternoon of Novem- 
 ber 18th, 1867, followed by a tremendous tidal wave, dragged the 
 U. S. sloop-of-war Monongahela from her anchorage in the harbor of 
 Frederiksted, St. Croix, and carried her over the warehouses into 
 the streets of the town; the reflux wave left her stranded on a 
 reef at the water's edge practically uninjured and almost on an even 
 keel. Only three of her men, who were on duty as boatkeepers at 
 the time, were lost. Her chief engineer, Mr. J. Q. A. Zeigler, was 
 enthusiastic over a project to launch her and he was sent to the 
 United States with drawings and plans to explain his plan to the 
 
596 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Department officials, the result being that the bark Purveyor was 
 fitted out at the New York navy yard with all the material deemed 
 necessary by Mr. Zeigler and with a force of twenty-six shipwrights 
 under charge of Naval Constructor Thomas Davidson proceeded 
 to the scene of the disaster. After an infinite amount of labor for 
 more than three months in building launching ways and strengthen- 
 ing the ship she was successfully floated and thus preserved for 
 many years of active naval service. Constructor Davidson in 
 reporting upon his work expressed his indebtedness to Chief Engin- 
 eer Zeigler who was indefatigable in his exertions, and to whom the 
 success of the undertaking was largely due. Mr. Zeigler then held 
 only an acting appointment as a chief engineer continued over from 
 the war time, and for this service, in connection with his manage- 
 ment of the machinery of the Jtfonadnock on her voyage to California, 
 he was rewarded with a commission as a chief engineer in the 
 regular navy. 
 
 A much more terrible earthquake on the west coast of South 
 America the 13th of August, 1868, almost completely destroyed the 
 city of Arica, Peru, and hurled to destruction the U. S. storeship 
 Fredonia, her annihilation being so complete that no vestige of 
 her remained when the waters subsided. Her commanding officer, 
 the surgeon, the paymaster, and two men, who happened to be on 
 shore, survived, but the remainder of the crew amounting to twenty- 
 eight officers and men perished. The U. 8. S. Wateree, the first 
 built of the iron double-enders, was also in the harbor of 
 Arica and was removed from the navy list, though not destroyed. 
 She was carried inland by the tidal wave and deposited almost 
 uninjured about one-fourth of a mile beyond high water mark, 
 where she is yet unless her remains have been very recently removed, 
 the nature of her surroundings being such as to make the cost of 
 floating her by means of ways or digging a trench much more than 
 her value. Incredible as it seems, she lost only one man in the 
 remarkable experience. 
 
 Another of the iron double-enders came to grief in the same 
 ocean about a month before the disaster to the Wateree. While 
 bound for Alaska from Victoria, B. C. , the Suwanee ran upon a 
 rock in Shadwell Passage, Queen Charlotte Sound, and became a 
 total wreck, the tide leaving soon after she struck causing her to 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 597 
 
 break up. Her people were taken off by Her Majesty's steamer 
 Sparroivhawk, and were able to save many of their effects, as the 
 water was smooth. A coast pilot was in charge at the time of the 
 wreck and the rock on which she struck was previously unknown. 
 
 On the 17th of June, 1868, six armed boats from the U. S. S. 
 Mohican under command of Lieutenant W. H. Brownson, the exe- 
 cutive officer of that vessel, were sent up the Teacapan river, 
 Mexico, for the purpose of cutting out the piratical steamer Forward 
 which had been guilty of depredations in that region. A sharp 
 fight ensued, resulting in the capture and destruction of the Forward, 
 but the American force suffered the loss of Ensign J. M. Wain- 
 wright and one enlisted man killed, and three wounded, one of the 
 latter being Second Assistant Engineer F. W. Townrow, who was 
 shot from shore while in one of the boats and severely injured. 
 
 The sloop-of-war Oneida, having completed a cruise on the 
 Asiatic station, sailed from Yokohama homeward bound late in the 
 afternoon of January 24th, 1870. Less than two hours later when 
 about ten miles from Yokohama she was run down by a heavy iron 
 mail steamer inward bound — the Bombay of the Peninsular and 
 Oriental line — -and sank fifteen minutes later. Of 24 officers and 
 152 men but two of the former and fifty-seven of the latter escaped 
 death, the surviving officers being Master I. I. Yates and Surgeon 
 James Suddards. The entire starboard quarter of the Oneida was 
 cut off down to below the water line and her sinking was so ob- 
 viously a question of brief time that the Bombay was hailed for as- 
 sistance, signal guns were fired and the whistle blown constantly : 
 regardless of which the Bombay proceeded on her way to Yokohama, 
 her master, Eyre, testifying later that he heard no signals, although 
 the guns of the Oneida were distinctly heard in Yokohama, more 
 than nine miles away. 
 
 The frightful loss of life on the Oneida was due to lack of 
 boats, the gig being crushed in the collision and one of the cutters 
 destroyed by the smoke-pipe falling on it shortly before the ship 
 went down ; three other boats had been lost in a gale not long 
 before and had not been replaced. Had the Bombay sent her boats 
 to the rescue nearly all would have been saved. The Oneida had 
 been very popular on the station and the circumstances of her taking 
 off were such that public feeling in the foreign settlement at Yoko- 
 
598 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 hama was intensely bitter against the master of the Bombay; so 
 bitter in fact that serious thoughts of lynching him were enter- 
 tained. A sailor can commit no more grievous crime against his 
 fellows than to sail away from a sinking ship. A court of inquiry 
 composed of the British consul at Yokohama, two commanders of 
 British war vessels, and the masters of two British merchant ships, 
 subsequently punished Captain Eyre by suspending his master's cer- 
 tificate for six months ! Much has been said about this verdict and 
 about the tragedy generally, and much might be said about it even 
 now, though perhaps it is better to pass the opportunity by. 
 
 In her lonely and terrible ending in Yedo Bay the Oneida^ un- 
 fortunate from the day of her birth, furnished examples of devo- 
 tion to duty, self-sacrifice and true manhood as glorious to our 
 navy and nation as any deeds in war, and proved that heroism and 
 nobility in the American sailor had not ended with the war in which 
 she took such a conspicuous part. Her people went to their sta- 
 tions on deck and below when the alarm was given and coolly 
 performed their allotted duties without murmuring or panic, though 
 they knew that death was very near. The sick were put into the 
 only boat that could be lowered and with the surgeon in charge 
 shoved off from the doomed vessel without a word of protest or 
 an attempt on the part of any man to get into it, when the only 
 hope of all of that ship's company left behind lay in a single 
 cutter lying in chocks on the deck. Commander Williams refused 
 the entreaties of officers and men to try to save himself, and went 
 down standing on the bridge of his ship where he said he belonged. 
 The last official act on the Oneida was performed by the navigator, 
 Lieutenant Commander Alonzo W. Muldaur, who at the last mo- 
 ment saluted the captain as calmly as at Sunday inspection and 
 reported the condition of the ship. He was the same officer who, 
 as an acting master, received commendation and promotion for his 
 conduct in the Sassacus- Albemarle fight, and whose brilliant career 
 as a volunteer officer during the war had won him a commission in 
 the regular navy. These are but a few of the many instances of 
 heroism related by the survivors. The engineers of the ship died 
 at their stations, and were the following : First Assistant Engineers 
 N. B. Littig (acting chief), and Haviland Barstow; Second Assist- 
 ant Engineers C. W. C. Senter and John Fornance. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 599 
 
 In August, 1870, the U. S. steamer Palos, having been altered 
 into a small gunboat, was sent to the Asiatic station for service in 
 the rivers of China and passed through the Suez canal the 11th, 
 12th, and 13th of that month, the fact being sufficiently important 
 to mention because she was the first vessel of the American navy 
 to make use of that canal. 
 
 The act making appropriations for the naval service, approved 
 March 1, 1869, appropriated $50,000 for beginning the work of 
 deepening the entrance to the harbor of Midway Islands in the 
 North Pacific ocean to afford a harbor of refuge for naval and 
 merchant vessels of the United States in those remote waters. The 
 work was undertaken by a contractor and the side-wheel steamer 
 Saginaw detailed to assist therein. No appropriation being made 
 the following year to pursue this desirable improvement, it had to 
 be abandoned, the Saginaw collecting the contractor's men and 
 tools and departing for San Francisco the 28th of October, 1870. 
 Before proceeding on his course, Commander Sicard determined to 
 run down to Ocean Island, about one hundred miles to the west- 
 ward, to rescue any sailors who might be wrecked there; a fatal act 
 of kindness, for at three o'clock the next morning the Saginaw, run- 
 ning slowly in the darkness, struck and was wrecked on a reef pro- 
 jecting from the island she was seeking. The people got ashore 
 without loss of life and succeeded in saving from the wreck a scanty 
 supply of provisions estimated as sufficient to last for three months 
 on one-fourth rations, just enough to sustain life. 
 
 Accounts of previous wrecks on the same dangerous spot 
 reported the existence of a spring of fresh water, but all efforts to 
 find it failed and the men began to suffer terribly from thirst, only 
 two small breakers of water having been brought on shore. Men 
 were set digging for water all over the islet, but no fresh water 
 could be found, the supply in the breakers being husbanded in the 
 meantime by serving it out at the rate of two table-spoonsful three 
 times a day. This was but an aggravation and the men sought 
 relief by keeping their clothes soaked with sea water, many of them, 
 as they waded out into the water for this purpose, thinking of suicide 
 by drowning as a last alternative to the more terrible death from 
 thirst. In this extremity the chief engineer of the Saginaw, First 
 Assistant Engineer James Butterworth, who is described as having 
 
 33 
 
600 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 been foremost in all efforts to recover necessary articles from the 
 wreck in the dangerous surf, discovered a small boiler, that had 
 belonged to the contractor and had rolled off the deck, lying sub- 
 merged near the reef. Knowing the use he could make of it he 
 carefully noted its position, and after reporting his discovery 
 returned with boats and men and succeeded in getting it ashore after 
 great labor. Stowed inside the paddle-box of the wreck was a coil 
 of iron pipe with a section of hose attached to it, and this Mr. 
 Butterworth secured at much risk, though quickly, as he knew just 
 where to look for it. With the coil immersed in the sea and con- 
 nection made from it with the hose to the boiler set up on the beach 
 a distiller was extemporized that would produce ten gallons of water 
 an hour, and the danger of death by thirst was past. The spring of 
 fresh water was found after the party had been three weeks on the 
 island. 
 
 The prospect of rescue by being discovered by a passing vessel 
 was very remote in those unfrequented waters, and the executive 
 officer, Lieutenant John Gr. Talbot, volunteered to go for assistance 
 in the whale-boat to the Hawaiian Islands, about fifteen hundred 
 miles distant. This being the only hope, though a desperate one, 
 he was allowed to go, departing from Ocean Island with a volunteer 
 crew of four men on the 18th of November, and after experiencing 
 much privation and difficulty arrived, on the 19th of December, off 
 one of the Hawaiian Islands. In attempting to land, the boat was 
 capsized and all drowned but one man — ¥m. Halford, coxswain. 
 The details of this distressing event are too well known to need 
 repeating, though it is proper to say that the simple mural tablet 
 in memory of Lieutenant Talbot which is in the chapel at the Naval 
 Academy tells of as noble an example of heroism as any of the im- 
 posing shafts throughout the world that preserve the deeds of the 
 great. A small steamer was dispatched as soon as possible to 
 Ocean Island and the shipwrecked men rescued early in January, 
 1871, they having at that time nearly completed a small schooner 
 in which to attempt their own rescue. 
 
 But one sextant was saved from the Saginaw and this of course 
 had to go with Talbot in the whale-boat. As the odds were great 
 that this boat would never reach her destination, another sextant 
 became a necessity to those left behind who might remain to perish 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 601 
 
 on their sand heap without the means of making another attempt to 
 cross the sea, and this other sextant was supplied by the ingenuity 
 of Assistant Engineer Herschel Main, a graduate of the Naval 
 Academy of the class of 1868. Without proper tools and in abso- 
 lute lack of material it seems an impossible feat to make an instru- 
 ment of precision like a sextant, but the task was well done and the 
 result, a curious instance of what patience and ingenuity may accom- 
 plish, is still preserved in the engineering department at the Naval 
 Academy, where the maker acquired the knowledge that made his 
 labor possible. 
 
 The dial plate of a vacuum gauge washed ashore was used for 
 the body of the instrument, screws and other fittings for it being 
 made from some brass curtain rods found in the wreckage. The 
 moving arm was made from a copper bolt cut out of a piece of ship 
 timber and laboriously hammered flat and filed into shape. . A for- 
 tunate find was made on the beach of a gauge cock with a taper hole 
 in it for the plug, this hole being smaller than the curtain rods and 
 the cock therefore available for the material from which to make the 
 accurate pivot on which the moving arm was to swing. The material 
 for the mirrors was a small oval shaving glass such as sailors use, 
 and the only one in camp. From dread of breaking this precious 
 mirror, each edge was first filed almost half through before attempt- 
 ing to break it to shape, and these filings were carefully treasured 
 for use in grinding in the taper pin made from a curtain rod to fit 
 the pivot sleeve formed from the gauge cock. The frames for the 
 mirrors were made from two brass bureau-drawer locks. The shade 
 glasses were spare ones taken from the saved sextant. A piece of 
 sheet zinc cut to shape and scoured with ashes served for a scale 
 plate, the scale being transferred to it from the sextant by marking 
 with the point of a knife, and the vernier was made in the same 
 way. Kivets made from copper tacks taken from the sheathing of 
 a boat held the scale plate to the arc of the extemporized sextant. 
 Pieces of curtain rods were used for legs and a handle was formed 
 by burning a hole through a piece of wood and mounting it on a 
 piece of curtain rod, with brackets made of drawer-lock plates. 
 
 The most difficult part of the undertaking was making the 
 tangent and thumb screws, there being no die plate with which to 
 cut the threads. Mr. Main had a small tap with which he tapped 
 
602 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 some holes in a piece of sheet iron and then used the holes for dies, 
 the threads being first filed nearly to shape, using the tap as a model. 
 The tools at the disposal of this young engineer were a hammer, a 
 chisel, two small taps, four or five half- worn and ill adapted files, a 
 pocket knife, a drill brace, and some pieces of steel wire from which 
 he made drills and a small chisel. When finished and adjusted, the 
 instrument was found equal to the work for which it was intended, 
 and accurate to within one minute as compared with observation, 
 made with the other sextant. 
 
 A noteworthy act of bravery on the part of an engineer is told 
 by the following official letter; 
 
 ' ' Navy Department, 
 
 £ 6 Washington, June 12, 1872. 
 
 "Sir: The Department takes pleasure in informing you that 
 it has received from your commanding officer, Captain Crosby, a 
 report highly honorable to you as an officer, and giving you claims 
 to public respect and esteem as an individual. It refers to the cour- 
 age and humanity displayed on the 27 th ultimo by yourself and also 
 by Ordinary Seaman Henry Couch, and Landsman George W. 
 Cutter, in leaping overboard from the Powhatan in order to save 
 the life of Seaman James Mitchell, who had fallen from aloft, and 
 was so injured by the fall as to be unable to help himself. This act 
 of true heroism will make a part of your history and reputation in 
 in the service, and give you a record well worth preserving 
 unblemished. 
 
 " Medals of honor will be prepared for Ordinary Seaman Couch 
 and Landsman Cutter, and you are at liberty so to inform them. 
 "I am respectfully your obedient servant, 
 
 4 ' Geo. M. Robeson, 
 
 ' 4 Secretary of the Navy. 
 
 u 2d Asst. Engineer George Cowie, Jr., U. S. N., 
 
 " U. S. S. Powhatan, Norfolk, Va." 
 
CHAPTEK XXXI 
 
 ' * Their names were counted on the day of battle ; but they were overlooked in 
 the division of the spoil." — Gibbon. 
 
 Condition of the Engineer Corps after the War — Kesignations— -The Question of 
 Brevet Rank — First and Second Assistant Engineers Become Commissioned 
 Officers— Chief Engineer J. W. King Appointed Engineer-in-Chief — Sweeping 
 Eeduction in Rank of Staff Officers— Use of Steam Discontinued on Ships of 
 War— The Pay Act of 1870— The Act of 1871. 
 
 THE Navy Kegister issued in January , 1865, contains the names 
 of 474 regular and 1,803 volunteer engineers, of whom 59 
 regulars and 55 volunteers were chief engineers, and the total num- 
 ber was about the same four months later when the war, so far as 
 the navy was concerned, was practically over. The sale of vessels 
 no longer needed and the stoppage of work on those building made 
 it advisable to dispense with the services of many of these officers 
 and the process of disbanding the volunteer force began at once, 
 although it was several years before all the acting engineers dis- 
 appeared. In the case of all volunteer officers the custom was to 
 grant about three months' leave with pay prior to discharge and 
 to give an ornamental discharge paper embellished with the great 
 seal of the Navy Department as a suitable and appropriate souvenir 
 of military service. The wording of this discharge was complimen- 
 tary to the recipient, and as follows: 
 
 ' ' The war for the preservation of the Union having, under the 
 beneficent guidance of Almighty God, been brought to a successful 
 termination, a reduction of the Naval force becomes necessary. 
 
 "Having served with fidelity in the United States navy from 
 
 the . . . day of , 186 . . to the present date, you are 
 
 hereby honorably discharged with the thanks of the Department." 
 
 The regular engineers who remained in the navy were rather more 
 unfortunate than their volunteer brethren who, without any claim for 
 retention, could not object to being discharged and returned to 
 civil life with an honorable record of duty well done, and with all 
 
604 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the possibilities of the reviving industries of the country before them. 
 The number of regulars was fixed by the act of July 4, 1864, which 
 limited the number of chief engineers to one for each first and 
 second rate steam vessel of war and the number of assistants to the 
 very indefinite 4 < actual needs of the service. 5 5 With the rapid 
 diminution in the number of ships and the certainty that the number 
 of first and second rates could not in time of peace equal the number 
 of chief engineers already in the service came discouragement over 
 the hopelessness of their prospects and the engineers began to 
 resign. Within four years no less than one hundred and fifty-five, 
 or about one-third of the whole corps, left the service in this 
 manner. 
 
 The futility of hoping for promotion was not the only source of 
 discouragement to the engineers, for they had excellent reasons for 
 feeling themselves slighted in the distribution of rewards for war 
 service. They knew perfectly well the invaluable character of the 
 services rendered by them as a corps and as individuals, and when 
 they saw other officers being advanced as a reward for similar service 
 and themselves passed by without notice it is no wonder that they 
 became heart-sick. The history of our naval personnel for the few 
 years succeeding the Civil War is anything but pleasant. Rivalry, 
 jealousy, and strife for preferment were rampant, not only between 
 corps, but between individuals and factions within separate corps. 
 The columns of the service newspapers at the time were literally 
 flooded with letters from officers urging the claims of some individual 
 or party, or assailing some other interest. In former chapters some 
 reference has been made, especially in connection with the com- 
 petitive trials of machinery, to the war within the engineer corps 
 between what may be called the Isherwood and anti-Isherwood 
 factions, and this on a small scale represents the greater strifes 
 raging throughout the navy. 
 
 Although line and staff had just emerged with equal credit 
 from a long and weary war in which they had shared common 
 dangers and striven side by side for the salvation of their country 
 and the glory of the navy, the relation now existing between them 
 was far from the ideal bond of comradeship. One side was obliged 
 to seek official recognition for service well done, and the other just 
 as energetically opposed the endeavors and denied the claims of its 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 605 
 
 comrades in arms. Without going into this controversy at any 
 length, it will be instructive to touch upon one of the many issues 
 quarrelled over, as we may in this way obtain an idea of the feeling 
 then existing, the example selected being the question of brevet rank 
 in the navy. 
 
 When the war was over and the great army disbanded, every 
 officer of the regular army who had at all distinguished himself was 
 given the somewhat empty, but nevertheless gratifying, honor of 
 an advance in rank by brevet, no distinction of corps being made in 
 the distribution of this honor, all — cavalry, infantry, engineers, 
 medical department, all arms and branches — sharing alike in the 
 reward. Brevets were not confined to the regular army, volunteers 
 of distinguished and faithful service receiving the same honor, in 
 consequence of which thousands of captains were mustered out as 
 majors, hundreds of majors as colonels, and scores of colonels as 
 brigadier generals; all which did no harm and justly honored the 
 recipients. With this example before it, the navy was not long in 
 seeking the same recognition for its war service and the subject of 
 conferring additional rank by brevet upon all naval officers whose 
 record of service was meritorious soon became a question of general 
 and favorable public consideration. As in the army, the question 
 of corps or of line and staff had no place in this proposition, the in- 
 herent capability of a man to be brave, zealous, and faithful remain- 
 ing the same whether he serve on foot or on horse- back, whether 
 above or below decks, or whether he be called a colonel, a com- 
 mander, or a surgeon: unhappily, however, this issue was soon 
 dragged into the discussion, as appears from the following extracts 
 from letters published over assumed names in the correspondence 
 columns of one of the service newspapers: 
 
 . . . " Why should brevets be confined to the army? In that 
 service, general, field, staff and line, have been breveted — even 
 doctors have been made colonels, brigadiers and major generals, but 
 no one in the navy has been found worthy of the honor. Surely the 
 boon craved has been richly earned by the work performed at New 
 Orleans, Wilmington, and Mobile. Brevets in the army never pro- 
 duce a conflict of authority. Cavillers on that ground may be as- 
 sured that the regularly educated naval officer is possessed of too high 
 
606 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 a tone ever to allow his brevet rank to affect the discipline of the 
 service. It would be absurd to confer brevets on the staff, for, 
 with all due respect for these gentlemen, it is believed that line 
 officers are only fairly entitled to them, beside which, the line have 
 been already sufficiently humiliated to claim exemption from further 
 inroads on their prerogative. The navy is in a state of transition, 
 and queer changes are taking place. Time-honored class distinc- 
 tions are ruthlessly swept away, and, if the ' steerage be fleeted aft, ' 
 and bulkheads knocked down, then good-by to peace and comfort 
 in every dignified ward-room. " 1 
 
 Another correspondent adds the following fuel to the brightly- 
 blazing controversy: 
 
 < < There is frequent complaint by staff officers that their rank 
 stops at captain, while a line officer may get to be an admiral; is 
 not the contrast which their position offers to that of their army 
 brethren sufficient to show them that non-combatants can not and 
 ought not to look for such high rank? 55 
 
 Of course staff officers were foolish enough to reply to these 
 aspersions, citing many cases of gallant service performed by u non- 
 combatants 5 ' upon whom it would be ' 4 absurd to confer brevets. ' 5 
 Instances were brought up of engineer officers whose heroism and 
 devotion to duty, at the risk of their own lives, had saved the ships 
 in which they served and the lives of all on board, line and staff ; 
 of the paymaster who, sword in hand, fought like a lion on the 
 deck of his ship against an overwhelming boarding party and 
 rescued from death his commanding officer; of the assistant 
 surgeon who carried a line through a storm of shot and shell to 
 a disabled vessel while other officers looked on: but nothing came 
 of it all. The navy got no brevets for either line or staff. 
 
 Under the Welles order of March 13, 1863, first and second 
 assistant engineers held rank with masters and ensigns respectively, 
 but as they did not hold commissions from the President they pre- 
 sented the absurdity of warrant officers ranking with commissioned 
 
 1 <l Bogus " in Army and Navy Journal, June 16 , 1866 ; page 681. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 607 
 
 officers, but constrained on ship-board to the status of warrant 
 officers. This anomaly was removed by Congress in 1866, an act 
 approved July 25th of that year providing "That naval constructors 
 and first and second assistant engineers in the navy shall be 
 appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and shall 
 have naval rank and pay as officers of the navy." Even this did 
 not assure to the engineers the enjoyment of privileges pertaining to 
 their improved official status, for lack of room on ship-board was 
 given as a reason for not improving their messing and living accom- 
 modations, and a year later, in July, 1867, the Department issued 
 a circular order saying: 
 
 u First and second assistant engineers, being now commissioned, 
 are no longer regarded as steerage officers. For want of sufficient 
 ward-room accommodations, they will room and mess in conformity 
 with existing regulations, but they are entitled to all other privi- 
 leges of commissioned officers with whom they have relative rank. ' ' 
 
 The act of July 25, 1866, was a most important one for the 
 navy in many respects. It fixed the number of line officers in each 
 rank, making the total number on the active list 857 commissioned 
 officers, which was more than twice as many as the number then in 
 the service. To fill the vacancies thus created in the different 
 ranks it was provided that promotions be made by selection from 
 the rank next below of officers who had rendered the most efficient 
 and faithful service during the war. It also provided that a certain 
 number of vacancies in the different grades from ensign to lieuten- 
 ant commander both inclusive, and amounting in the aggregate to 
 150, might be filled by the appointment of volunteer officers who 
 had served not less than two years, and in this way a number of 
 these very deserving men were rewarded for their war services. 
 
 The flow of promotion resulting from this act was simply 
 feverish, in many cases youths going from the position of midship- 
 men through the lower grades and receiving commissions as lieu- 
 tenant commanders within less than three years. This rapid advance 
 in rank was by comparison somewhat of an injury to the staff 
 officers, for whom the act provided no promotion, and who conse- 
 quently stood still while their former juniors went far ahead of them. 
 
608 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 This overlooking of the interests of the staff was especially galling 
 to a number of the most capable members of the engineer corps 
 who had been on duty as instructors at the Naval Academy and 
 who, upon going to sea at the expiration of their details, found 
 themselves junior in rank to youngsters who a short time before had 
 been their pupils: the navy lost the services of some of these able 
 gentlemen, for with such a practical demonstration of neglect they 
 became disgusted and resigned; one of them, Mr. John T. Hawkins, 
 first assistant engineer, giving his reasons as above in an open letter 
 to the Secretary of the Navy. Another of them, Mr. Eobert H. 
 Thurston, now Director of Sibley College, Cornell University, is 
 recognized as one of the foremost scientists in the United States 
 and by achieving such a position has proved the folly of the policy 
 that drove his talents out of the navy. 
 
 With an apparent wish to do justice to the volunteer engineers 
 the Department offered them an opportunity similar to the one pro- 
 vided by Congress for the volunteer line officers, and all who so 
 desired were given permission to appear before a board in Phila- 
 delphia for examination for admission into the regular service. As 
 the number of regular engineers then in the navy exceeded the 
 actual needs of the service there was no possibility of making room 
 for more, so little attention was given to the findings of the Phila- 
 delphia examining board and only one volunteer engineer, so far 
 as the writer has been able to discover, received an appointment in 
 the navy by virtue of having passed that examination. To provide 
 rapid promotion for line officers and create vacancies for worthy 
 volunteers that branch was increased far beyond the needs of the 
 fleet, and it would not have been an intolerable burden upon the 
 country to have similarly increased the engineer corps and thus 
 rewarded in the same manner the regular and volunteer members of 
 an equally loyal and deserving arm whose energetic performance of 
 duty contributed so much to the success of the navy in the war. 
 
 One of the first acts of the administration that came into power 
 in the spring of 1869 was to relieve Mr. Isherwood from his office 
 as engineer-in-chief, his successor being appointed on the fifteenth 
 of March, a few days before his term of office would have expired 
 by limitation. Mr. Isherwood needs no eulogy from one who has 
 grown up in the service long since his day. His eight years occu- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 609 
 
 pancy of the office of engineer-in- chief were the most exacting and 
 important in the history of the steam navy, during which time every 
 demand made upon that office was promptly and efficiently met and 
 the standard of naval engineering in the United States, despite the 
 cries of those personally hostile to him, raised to an enviable height. 
 Ever watchful over the welfare of his corps and a fearless defender 
 of its rights, he missed no opportunity to advance its interests and 
 laid aside the duties of his office as the head of the corps with 
 the satisfaction of knowing that more progress had been made 
 under his stewardship than had been accomplished in all the years 
 before. 
 
 Chief Engineer James W. King, XJ. S. Navy, was appointed 
 to succeed Mr. Isherwood. His name has occurred frequently in 
 the preceding pages and he was at this time one of the best known 
 engineers in the service, having been trusted by the Department 
 with the execution of many important duties. He had been fleet 
 engineer of the naval force that captured the forts at Port Koyal in 
 1861, and later, in 1863, was detailed as superintendent of the hulls 
 of all iron vessels and their machinery building west of the Allegha- 
 nies, a duty that involved constant travel over a region about eight 
 hundred miles in extent and embraced the superintendence of the 
 construction of vessels costing in the aggregate nearly seven million 
 dollars. In 1864 he was sent on a special mission to Europe to 
 collect information to be used in equipping some of our navy yards 
 for building iron ships and manufacturing marine machinery and 
 armor plates. The boiler explosion on the Chenango and some 
 minor casualties having convinced the Department that the govern- 
 ment was being imposed upon by some of the contractors it was 
 determined to subject all work under contract to a rigid special 
 examination and Mr. King, in December, 1864, was selected for 
 this very responsible duty, his orders containing the following 
 paragraph: 
 
 " It is deemed best that an engineer of approved integrity, and 
 rigid and critical ability, should visit in detail every place outside of 
 the navy yards, where contract work is being executed for the navy, 
 and, after a personal and careful examination, report the condition 
 of all such work, and whether it is equal in every respect to the 
 
610 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 specifications of the contracts. You are hereby selected for this 
 important duty, on which you will enter the 2d prox. You will 
 make separate reports for every contract, and address them to the 
 Secretary of the Navy. ' ' 
 
 Under this order Mr. King examined and reported on the con- 
 dition of the hulls of twenty light and four deep draft monitors, and 
 their machinery, nine iron screw tugs and machinery, twenty-seven 
 pairs of marine screw engines, boilers, etc., for wooden ships, and 
 three sets of engines for paddle-wheel ships. In all 11 7 marine 
 engines, 245 marine boilers, and the hulls of 33 iron vessels, in 
 different localities from Portland, Maine, to St. Louis, Missouri. 
 
 Mr. King was especially well known among engineers as the 
 author of an excellent text book on marine engines, which first 
 appeared in 1860. His book is now out of date, but for many years 
 was regarded as the best American work of the kind and had a 
 greater sale than any book ever written by a naval officer up to the 
 appearance of Captain Mahan's work on Sea Power in 1893, nine- 
 teen editions of it having been disposed of before it was supplanted 
 by more modern books on the same subject. 
 
 Mr. King held the office of engineer-in- chief for one term of 
 four years, his position being one of much difficulty as the aim of 
 the administration at that time was to reduce expenses to a mini- 
 mum, and the appropriations granted by Congress for the engineer- 
 ing department were barely sufficient to provide for the repair of 
 machinery already afloat. He also fell heir to the vexing task of 
 straightening out the many claims against the government for 
 machinery contracted for during the latter years of the war and for 
 which the ships were never built. The principal professional event 
 of his administration was the introduction of the compound engine 
 into the navy, he having been sent to Europe in 1871 to collect data 
 regarding the subject and in his report recommended the adoption of 
 the new type for all naval vessels. 
 
 Within a month after the advent of the new administration the 
 naval engineers and all other staff officers suffered a severe blow in 
 the publication of General Order No. 120, dated April 1, 1869. 
 This order annulled the order of Secretary Welles of March 13, 
 1863, quoted in Chapter XXII. of this work, which raised the 
 
CHIEF ENGINEER JAMES W. KING, U. S. NAVY. 
 
 Engineer-in-Chief of the Navy from March 15, 1869, until March 20, 1873. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 613 
 
 assimilated rank of staff officers, and restored to operation the act 
 of March 3, 1859, which has also been quoted. 
 
 General Order No. 120 read as follows: 
 
 ' 4 The Attorney General having advised the Department that 
 Congress alone can fix the relative rank of line and staff officers in 
 the navy, and the only officers whose relative rank has been thus 
 legally established being those below mentioned, the order of March 
 13, 1863, and the Navy Regulations, Article II., paragraphs six 
 to twenty-eight (both inclusive), are hereby revoked and annulled. 
 
 ' 4 Surgeons of the fleet, paymasters of the fleet, and fleet engi- 
 neers; and surgeons, paymasters, and chief engineers of more than 
 twelve years, rank with commanders. 
 
 u Surgeons, paymasters, and chief engineers of less than 
 twelve years, and the Secretary of the Admiral, and the secretary of 
 the Vice Admiral, rank with lieutenants. 
 
 4 4 Passed assistant surgeons and first assistant engineers rank 
 next after lieutenants. 
 
 44 Assistant surgeons, assistant paymasters, and second assistant 
 engineers rank next after masters. 
 
 4 4 Third assistant engineers rank with midshipmen. 9 ? 
 
 The practical effect of this order upon the standing of officers 
 of the engineer corps may best be shown by figures. Prior to its 
 issue the corps had, under the operation of the Welles order, five 
 members ranking with captain; forty- three with commander; one 
 with lieutenant commander; ninety-one with lieutenant; one hun- 
 dred and twelve with master, and thirty-three with midshipman. 
 When the change was made only the eight senior members of the 
 corps ranked with commander; the next forty with lieutenant; those 
 who had before ranked with lieutenant were put down as ranking 
 44 next after " that grade, and their next juniors appeared as rank- 
 ing 4 4 next after" masters. In other words, every engineer in the 
 service with the exception of three who remained in the grade of 
 commander was reduced one rank, and forty who were in the com- 
 mander's grade were degraded two ranks, that is, to the rank of 
 lieutenant. The phrase 4 4 ranking next after " was simply another 
 
614 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 way of saying that the rank was of the grade below, and to make 
 sure that this be understood the general order was followed six 
 weeks later by a circular letter to commanders of stations and 
 squadrons as follows: 
 
 "The Department is informed that certain officers of the navy 
 are wearing the uniform of a rank above them. Those officers rank- 
 ing by order and the law of Congress ' next after 5 certain grades 
 will be considered as ranking with the next lower grades. For 
 example, a staff officer ranking next after lieutenant will rank with 
 master, and one ranking next after master will rank with ensign, 
 and will wear in each case a corresponding uniform. Commanders 
 of stations, navy yards, and squadrons will see this order earned 
 out." 
 
 No change in pay was involved in this degradation in rank, 
 but the humiliation was complete as it was, entailing as it did the 
 removal of stripes and other insignia of rank from the uniforms and 
 the substitution of the marks of inferior grades. Severe as this was 
 upon the engineer corps it is proper to say in regard to it that it 
 bore much harder upon the medical corps, which, as a much older 
 establishment, had a greater proportion of its members in the higher 
 grades by virtue of age and length of service. Of the eighty sur- 
 geons fifteen had ranked with captains; thirty- nine with commanders, 
 and twenty- six with lieutenant commanders. The new arrangement 
 gave twenty-one of them the rank of commander and the other 
 fifty-nine the rank of lieutenant, with corresponding reductions 
 among the assistant surgeons. The pay corps also suffered more 
 severely than the engineers, but not so much as the medical 
 corps. 
 
 The personnel of the engineer corps being suppressed by this 
 means, attention was given to the material, the performance of such 
 ships as the Wampanoag .and Monadnock having given a hint that 
 steam was becoming a military arm and a more reliable agent for 
 power than sails or oars. A general order dated June 11, 1869, 
 directed that " Hereafter all vessels of the navy will be fitted with 
 full sail power. The exception to this will be the tugs and dispatch 
 vessels not fitted with sails, Commanders of squadrons will direct 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 615 
 
 that constant exercises shall take place with sails and spars." Then 
 follows in the order a long list of exercises in which proficiency 
 would be required, from which a few may be quoted as examples: 
 
 "Sending up and down top-gallant masts, lower yards, and 
 top-masts at one time." 
 
 " Shifting top-sail yards." 
 
 ' £ Getting under way from single anchor with all sail set. ? ' 
 " Coming to single anchor and taking in all sail, together. ?? 
 " Shifting three top-sails at one time." 
 
 Although issued only a quarter of a century ago, it is a pleasing 
 sign of the progress made in that time that this order sounds as 
 archaic to-day as though it were the translation of an inscription from 
 the columns of the temple of Karnak. 
 
 A week later, on June 18, the above order was followed with 
 another enjoining strict economy in the use of coal and directing 
 the commanders of fleets, squadrons, and vessels acting singly to do 
 all their cruising under sail alone, which, it was stated, 6 'will not 
 only have the effect to economize coal and save expense, but will 
 also instruct the young officers of the navy in the most important 
 duties of their profession." Other provisions of the order were; 
 
 " Kegulations, soon to be issued, will determine the number of 
 times it will be desirable to get up steam for the purpose of turning 
 the engines. 
 
 ' < Commanders are not to make dispatch an excuse for using 
 coal except under the most urgent circumstances. 
 
 " They must not be surprised, if they fail to carry out the 
 spirit of this order, if the coal consumed is charged to their 
 account. ' ? 
 
 The promised regulation to establish the frequency of getting 
 up steam to turn the engines did not materialize, as a change came 
 over the control of the Navy Department about that time. Mr. A. 
 E. Borie, appointed Secretary of the Navy by President Grant at 
 the beginning of his administration, continued his residence in 
 Philadelphia where he had large business interests and gave only 
 
616 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 interrupted attention to the duties of the Department, leaving the 
 latter to the vice admiral of the navy and the bureau chiefs. In 
 June Mr. Borie, finding himself unable to do justice to his office 
 without neglecting his own affairs, tendered his resignation and was 
 succeeded on the 26th of that month by Mr. George M. Robeson 
 of New Jersey. The latter gentleman, having nothing more impor- 
 tant to engross his time, took up his residence in Washington and 
 assumed personal charge of the Navy Department. He was a 
 self-willed man, fond of power, somewhat inclined to be dictatorial, 
 and disposed to govern his department himself, the result of which 
 was an immediate change in the frequency and character of the 
 general orders issued. 
 
 Important legislation was embodied in the first naval appropri- 
 ation bill passed by the 41st Congress and approved July 15, 1870. 
 This act provided a new schedule of pay for all branches of the 
 navy, the rates established being practically the same as those now 
 (1896) in effect, with the exception of the pay of passed assistant 
 engineers which has since been modified. The new pay table 
 amounted to an increase for all officers of about twenty-five per cent., 
 the pay of the admiral being raised from $10,000 to $13,000 per 
 annum; that of captains from $3,500 to $4,500; lieutenants from 
 $1,875 to $2,400; fleet surgeons, paymasters, and engineers from 
 $3,300 to $4,400; first assistant engineers from $1,500 to $2,000, 
 and so on for all the different grades and corps. As an offset to 
 this increase all officers were deprived of a previous commutation for 
 quarters on shore duty amounting to thirty-three per centum of their 
 pay; so while benefitting in sea pay the navy in general lost greatly 
 in shore pay, where the higher rate is usually the most necessary, 
 
 The same act reduced the number of lieutenant commanders 
 from 180 to 80, and increased the number of lieutenants from 180 
 to 280: the numbers of masters and ensigns, fixed by the act of 
 July 25, 1866, at 160 each, were by this latter act reduced to 100 
 each and ensigns were designated as steerage officers unless assigned 
 to duty as watch and division officers. The title of cadet midship- 
 man was substituted for that of midshipman as the designation of 
 students at the Naval Academy, and the grade of third assistant 
 engineer was declared abolished, its occupants being transferred to 
 the list of second assistants. Thus for the first time in its history 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 617 
 
 all the members of the engineer corps became by law commissioned 
 officers. 
 
 The question of staff rank in the navy also came before the 41st 
 Congress. The sea-going staff corps had patiently witnessed the 
 elevation of their comrades of the war and the coincident neglect of 
 their own claims for the same service, but when they were suddenly 
 struck down by the order depriving them of the assimilated rank 
 given them during the war as a reward for duty well done, patience 
 ceased to be a virtue and they combined in an appeal to Congress 
 for redress. A bill regulating staff rank, introduced in the House 
 of Kepresentatives by the Hon. A. F. Stevens of New Hampshire 
 and ably championed by him, went through the usual stages of a 
 bill and after an exhaustive debate, in which the position of the 
 naval staff was presented in a masterful manner by Mr. Stevens, it 
 reached a vote in the House in January, 1871, and was passed by a 
 large majority. The avowed object of this bill was to define the 
 rank of staff officers in the navy in precisely the same manner that 
 the law defined staff rank in the army, and the bill passed the House 
 of Representatives in the exact form desired. That is, it provided 
 for a stated number of medical directors, with the rank of captain ; 
 a stated number of chief engineers, with the rank of commander; 
 etc.. etc. 
 
 In the Senate the bill in the closing days of the session became 
 attached to the naval appropriation bill and was passed as a part of 
 that bill, bat with a fatal alteration. Some influence hostile to the 
 naval staff had so worked upon the minds of the senators in charge 
 of the naval bill that they were persuaded to qualify the rank of the 
 staff by the word relative as an adjective. With this amendment the 
 bill went to a conference committee and the friends of the staff 
 reluctantly accepted the change, as certain material benefits in the 
 matter of fixing definite numbers in the different grades, an increased 
 pay for bureau chiefs, exemption of ex-bureau chiefs of the staff 
 from sea duty, etc., were conferred by other parts of the bill, and 
 thus it became law, the act receiving the President's signature 
 March 3, 1871. 
 
 The sections of this act which fixed the grades and the num- 
 bers in the grades for the engineer corps are the following: 
 
 34 
 
618 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 6 4 Sec. 7. That the officers of the engineer corps on the active 
 list of the navy shall be as follows: 
 
 u Ten chief engineers, who shall have the relative rank of 
 captain. 
 
 " Fifteen chief engineers, who shall have the relative rank 
 of commander; and 
 
 " Forty-five chief engineers, who shall have the relative rank 
 of lieutenant commander or lieutenant. 
 
 " And each and all of the above-named officers of the engineer 
 corps shall have the pay of chief engineers of the navy as now 
 provided. 
 
 6 4 One hundred first assistant engineers, who shall have the 
 relative rank of lieutenant or master; and 
 
 " One hundred second assistant engineers, who shall have the 
 relative rank of master or ensign; and the said assistant engineers 
 shall have the pay of first and second assistant engineers of the 
 navy, respectively, as now provided. 
 
 "Sec. 8. That no person under nineteen or over twenty- six 
 years of age shall be appointed a second assistant engineer in the 
 navy ; nor shall any person be appointed or promoted in the engineer 
 corps until after he has been found qualified by a board of competent 
 engineer and medical officers designated by the Secretary of the 
 Navy, and has complied with existing regulations. 55 
 
 This, in brief , is the story of the origin of "relative rank," 
 that apple of discord arraying line against staff in the Thirty Years' 
 War still progressing and still distracting the naval service. That 
 the intention of Congress was to confer actual rank upon the naval 
 staff is evident from the explanations offered in both branches of 
 that body by members who reported the bill back from conference, 
 and it was only by attaching a peculiar significance to the word rel- 
 ative after the act became law that this intention failed to be real- 
 ized. The following remarks by Senator Oragin in the Senate and 
 by Mr. Stevens in the House, in reporting the result of the confer- 
 ence, show clearly enough what was the intention of those who 
 created this law : 
 
 u Mr. Contcltn — With the permission of the Senator I wish to 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 619 
 
 suggest a point to him. He says that he understands ' relative 
 rank of 5 to be the same in effect with the words ' to rank with. ' I 
 wish he would tell us what would be the force of this if the word 
 ' relative ' were omitted ; in other words, what 6 relative ' means. 
 I understand it when you say a commodore in the navy shall have 
 the relative rank of a major general in the army, there being two 
 services separate and distinct. I know what that means. But 
 when you speak of relative rank in one and the same service, what 
 is the definition of the word ' relative ' there. How does it enlarge 
 or restrict it ? 
 
 Mr. Cragin — " I will have to go back a little to answer that 
 question. In the navy there are four or five different corps. There 
 is the line corps, which, in the English service, is called the mili- 
 tary branch. Then there are the medical corps, the pay corps, the 
 engineer corps, the constructors. They have just as positive rank 
 in their corps as the line have in theirs by law now, and the only 
 reason why they need any relative rank at all in the line corps is to 
 define their position with the line officers; to give them social 
 equality, and official equality in everything except what pertains to 
 actual command. 
 
 6 4 It is just the same practically as between the officers of the 
 army and navy. A commodore by law now ranks with a brigadier 
 general. He is not a brigadier general, but he is equal to a briga- 
 dier general socially and in public estimation. That is what this 
 proposes to do — to place these staff officers on an equality. 
 
 There is another provision in this bill which determines what 
 is known as precedence which does not exist now. The oldest staff 
 officers of the navy now rank with commanders; but they rank 
 junior to all commanders. The youngest commander outranks the 
 highest and oldest staff officer of the line under the law as it now 
 stands and by the construction. But by this bill they are given 
 precedence in their own corps and with line officers in the grades 
 where they hold this relative rank, according to the length of service 
 in the navy, adding six years for the length of service of the 
 staff officers, to compensate for the time spent by the line officers at 
 
620 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 the Naval Academy, and before they received their first commis- 
 sion. This is admitted on all hands to be eminently just, and no 
 person can complain of it. By this provision in relation to prece- 
 dence, a staff officer, a surgeon who has been in the service twenty 
 years and one day, will outrank a line officer who has been twenty- 
 six years in the service ; that is, if a procession should be formed, 
 that surgeon would go before the line officer, and on all other cere- 
 monial occasions, on boards of inquiry, everywhere where they 
 complain that injustice is now done them. 
 
 < ' I will say one word in relation to the executive officer. Great 
 complaint has arisen on this subject. The Senate amendment was 
 in about these words: executive officers of vessels of war and naval 
 stations representing commanding officers thereof shall take pre- 
 cedence over all officers attached to the vessel or the station, and 
 all orders from the executive officer shall be regarded as proceeding 
 from the commanding officer. The provision as adopted by the 
 committee of conference is this: after saying that commanding 
 officers shall take precedence over all the officers under their com- 
 mand, we then say that the Secretary of the Navy may detail a line 
 officer to act as the aid or executive of the commanding officer, and 
 that as far as practicable, that officer so detailed shall be next in 
 rank to the commanding officer, and such detailed officer, while 
 executing the orders of the commanding officer, shall take pre- 
 cedence over all officers attached to the vessel or station, and all 
 orders given by this executive officer shall be considered as pro- 
 ceeding from the commanding officer. Then there is a provision 
 added that staff officers who are senior to this detailed officer may 
 communicate directly with the commanding officer; that is to say, 
 if a surgeon desires to leave to go ashore, he may, if he chooses, go 
 to the captain and ask that leave. That is all there is to that. 
 
 < 4 Now, Mr. President, I believe that this is a fair compromise. 
 Neither side will be entirely satisfied with it. But I believe and I 
 know that it is the best we can do under the circumstances. I want 
 here in this public place to advise the officers, both of the line and 
 of the staff, to accept this in good faith, and to cease this quarrel." 
 
 Mr. Washburn, of Wisconsin — u In order to save the time of 
 the House, I will state that what the clerk has now commenced to 
 read is the bill passed by this House regulating the staff of the navy. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 621 
 
 " As regards the portion of the report relating to naval rank, 
 my friend from New Hampshire (Mr. Stevens) will make some ex- 
 planations, and I yield to him for that purpose." 
 
 Mr. Stevens — "I desire to say, in regard to that portion of 
 the report regulating the official relations of the several corps in the 
 navy, that it is in most respects the bill which passed this House 
 some time since by a very large majority. 
 
 "Although the committee of conference were not able to em- 
 body in terms that bill in this report, yet I think I may safely say 
 that very much has been gained to the navy, and very much to the 
 staff corps of the navy, by the provisions of this bill as amended. 
 Substantially there were but two points of difference between the 
 committees of the two Houses upon this question. The first was in 
 regard to whether the staff corps of the navy should have actual 
 rank, in conformity to the law regulating the staff corps of the 
 army; or whether it should be an assimilated, imperfect, inchoate 
 rank, or a fixed, positive, actual rank; and I think that it was the 
 opinion of the committee that had it in charge that this bill con- 
 ferred upon the staff of the navy the same rank and official position 
 that are enjoyed by the staff corps of the army. At least, the same 
 corresponding' position. There was some sensitiveness in regard to 
 terms, and in that, particular concession became necessary. I wish 
 to say, Mr. Speaker, that while the term 6 relative ' is used in con- 
 ferring position and rank upon the staff corps, my belief is that a 
 fair and liberal interpretation of the language of the bill by the 
 Navy Department, and those charged with its execution, will place 
 the staff corps of the navy in the same position in relation to that 
 organization that is conferred upon the staff corps of the army. 
 That was the purpose of this bill as it originally passed the House^ and 
 a just interpretation will accomplish it. 
 
 u There was another difference of opinion between the com- 
 mittees, and that was as to the position and precedence of the 
 4 executive officer. 5 Upon that we have compromised, modified the 
 law and regulations upon that subject, and giving authority to the 
 Secretary of the Navy to detail an officer to act as the aid or execu- 
 tive of the captain or commandant, and restricting his power and 
 functions. I have made these statements because they are matters 
 of great interest in the navy, and / desire this explanation to go out 
 with the bill. ' ' 
 
OHAPTEE XXXII. 
 
 ' 4 Law is a spider's web, and ever was ; 
 It takes the little flies, lets great ones pass." 
 
 — Braithwaite. 
 
 Shipbuilding Progress in the Navy, 1865-1880— The Alaska and Class— Captured 
 Blockade-Runners — Sale of Monitors — Rebuilding of the Miantonomoh 
 Class — The Puritan— The New Swatara and Class — Compound Engines- 
 Chief Engineer Wood Appointed Engineer-in-Chief— Costly Experiments 
 with Two-Bladed Propellers— The Alert Class of Iron Gunboats— The 
 Enterprise Class— The Trenton— The Nipsxc— The Despatch— The 
 Alarm and Intrepid. 
 
 AS WAS to be expected, the termination of the war caused almost a 
 standstill in the work of building ships for the navy, the prin- 
 cipal work of that nature carried on in the years immediately following 
 1865 being the completion of some of the larger screw vessels begun 
 in 1863 and 1864 upon which such progress had been made that 
 their condition justified the outlay for finishing them. In this way 
 the large government-built commerce-destroyers whose trial trips 
 have been described were completed; also the Querriere, Minnetonka 
 and Piscataqua of the Java class; the Contoocook, Manitou^ Mosholu, 
 and Pushmataha of the Contoocook class, and the Algoma of the 
 Serapis class. The Ouerriere went to the Brazil station as flagship 
 in 1867, her performance under steam being highly satisfactory: 
 Kear Admiral Davis reported of her that she had made on the 
 passage down eleven knots under steam alone, adding that her 
 bottom was so foul that this was not a fair index of what she could 
 do. Subsequently she went to Europe and was accidently stranded, 
 July 26, 1871, on Vado Rocks near Leghorn and so badly damaged 
 that it was estimated the cost of repairing her would be more than 
 she was worth. National pride however dictated that she be brought 
 home, her name being a naval trophy in that it was the perpetuation 
 of the name of a frigate captured by the Constitution in an older 
 war, and she was accordingly repaired at great cost in the Italian 
 government dockyard at Spezzia to fit her for the voyage home. In 
 December, 1872, she was sold by public auction at New York for 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 623 
 
 $54,000. Her original cost, exclusive of armament, was $1,154,- 
 325.10, The Contoocook (Albany) was sold at the same auction for 
 $48,000. 
 
 The Minnetonha became the California by a change of name 
 and the Piscataqua became the Delaware, under which names each 
 performed some service on the Pacific and Asiatic stations, but the 
 inferior materials used in their hulls deteriorated so rapidly that they 
 soon became unserviceable. The California was sold in May, 1875, 
 for $23,650, and the Delaware in February, 1877, for $5,175. The 
 low price brought by the latter was on account of the fact that she 
 was submerged when sold, having been sunk at her dock in the New 
 York navy yard. The four vessels of the Contoocook class thai were 
 completed had similar brief histories, being laid aside and eventually 
 sold for a small part of their original cost. One of them, the 
 Severn, originally Mosholu, was traded to John Koaeh in 1877 at an 
 appraised value of $25,000 in part payment for work done by him 
 in rebuilding the iron-clad Puritan. 
 
 The changes in names of the vessels just referred to were gen- 
 eral throughout the service, a great many changes being made in 
 the summer of 1869 by circular orders issued by the Navy Depart- 
 ment. American names were usually discarded and in many cases, 
 especially with the monitors, names borrowed from the mythology 
 of the ancients substituted for them; some names were changed 
 twice within a few weeks; some were changed back to their 
 originals, and some received for new names those that had belonged 
 to vessels of other classes, much confusion resulting as a conse- 
 quence. The report of the Secretary of the Navy for 1869 refers to 
 the Piscataqua as flagship of the Asiatic station, whereas at the date 
 of the report the Piscataqua, originally the Chimo, one of the light- 
 draft monitors, afterward the Orion for a few weeks, was laid up at 
 the Washington navy yard. The Secretary meant the Delaware, orig- 
 inally Piscataqua, and this is a good illustration of the mixing of 
 names so indiscriminately that even the Department could not keep 
 I track of them. 
 
 As previously stated, the Algoma (Benicia) was the only one 
 of the Serapis class of screw sloops projected in 1864 that ever 
 reached completion, but during the five years that she was under 
 construction the Department duplicated her in three other vessels 
 
624 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 with names different from any of the original class. These were 
 the Alaska, Omaha, and Plymouth, the latter first known as Kenosha, 
 and were fine ships of their kind: they were 250 feet 6 inches in 
 length between perpendiculars; 38 feet beam; about 16 feet mean 
 draft, and were of 2,394: tons displacement. They were powered 
 with the 50" x 42" Isherwood engines built in the navy yards for 
 the Serapis class. 
 
 Within five years after the close of the war all the purchased or 
 captured vessels, with very few exceptions, had disappeared and 
 the navy list again contained only the names of regularly built war- 
 vessels. Three captured blockade-runners of the long graceful 
 type so popular with the British for breaking through our block- 
 ading lines were retained in the navy for several years as despatch 
 or special service vessels, for which employment they were well 
 adapted. They were all side- wheel steamers. The largest of them 
 was the Frolic, an iron vessel of 1,300 tons displacement, captured 
 at sea in September, 1864, under the name of A. D. Vance by the 
 Santiago de Cuba, condemned by the New York prize court, and 
 turned over to the Navy Department at an assessed value of $120,- 
 000. She performed service on two or three different stations, 
 and in the summer of 1873 made a notable voyage from Washing- 
 ton to St. John's, Newfoundland, to bring home survivors of the 
 Polaris arctic expedition. In 1883 she was sold to J. P. Agnew 
 of Alexandria, Virginia, for $11,250. The Gettysburg was another 
 of these captured British steamers found worth retaining in the 
 service: she was of 1,100 tons displacement, built of iron, and had 
 been captured off Wilmington by the Keystone State in November, 
 1863, her name when taken being Margaret and Jessie. She had 
 oscillating engines of a type then a favorite with English engineers. 
 After considerable service in the Home and Mediterranean squad- 
 rons she was sold at Genoa, Italy, in 1879, for $10,983.46. The 
 third vessel of this kind was the Wasp, a wooden side-wheel steamer 
 somewhat smaller than the others: her name when under the 
 British flag was Emma Henry, and she was captured at sea (Lat. 33 
 N. ; Long. 77 W.) in December, 1863, by the U. S. S. Cherokee. 
 The ship and cargo were condemned by the New York prize court 
 at a valuation of $294,869.01, the vessel being afterward trans- 
 ferred to the Navy Department at an appraised value of $83,261, 
 
U. S. STEAMSHIP OMAHA, 1868. 
 
 (Alaska, Benicla, Plymouth). 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 627 
 
 For several years she did duty as a despatch vessel on the Brazil 
 station, and was sold at Montevideo in 1876 for $2,548.47. 
 
 A joint resolution of Congress approved February 3, 1868, 
 authorized the Secretary of the Navy to sell all the iron-clad vessels 
 in the navy except those of the Dictator , Kalamazoo, Miantonomoh 
 and Passaic classes if in his judgment the interests of the service 
 did not demand their retention, the proceeds to be turned into the 
 treasury of the United States. The resolution specified that the 
 value of all vessels offered for sale be determined by appraisal, "to 
 be made by a board of not less than five naval officers, two of whom 
 shall be engineers." The first vessels sold under this authority 
 were the monitors Catawba and Oneota of the Canonicus class, built 
 in Cincinnati, Ohio, by Alexander Swift & Co. Considerable pub- 
 lic excitement resulted from this sale, it being charged that the 
 vessels were sold to the firm that built them for considerably less 
 than had been bid by other parties and less than they were actually 
 worth, they being practically new and had never been in action. 
 The chief cause for public criticism was the fact well known and 
 scarcely disguised that the monitors were really being sold to Peru, 
 then at war with Spain, and the act was liable to make the United 
 States responsible for a breach of neutrality quite as flagrant as that 
 of England in allowing the Alabama and other cruisers to be built 
 or equipped in her ports. Mr. Swift sold the two monitors imme- 
 diately to Peru and they were fitted out with ammunition, pro- 
 visions, etc. , at New Orleans for war service, the intention being to 
 take them directly to Havana and attack that place: fortunately the 
 trouble between Spain and Peru was adjusted before the iron-clads 
 were ready to proceed on their mission, and the United States was 
 spared the disgrace of falling back upon the well-worn excuse of 
 u not knowing that the vessels were intended for war purposes." 
 The price paid by Swift & Co. for the two monitors was $750,000, 
 which was covered into the treasury; their cost to the government 
 had been considerably more than this, being about $620,000 for 
 each. 
 
 There being no demand for vessels of the monitor type after 
 the Peruvian war cloud had passed over, the many other monitors 
 for sale remained laid up at the navy yards rusting away until 1874, 
 when a number of them were sold, the purchasers being generally 
 
628 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ship and engine builders who bought them simply as old material; 
 the prices brought varied from ?about seven thousand to twenty 
 thousand dollars each. Twenty other monitors were broken up 
 about the same time and the proceeds used in rebuilding the large 
 double-turreted monitors. This latter transaction became one of the 
 suspicious items for which Mr. Robeson's administration of the 
 Navy Department afterward underwent an investigation at the 
 hands of Congress, but is too involved a story to be attempted in 
 this place, except in the general way necessary to carry out the 
 object of tracing the history of our different naval steamers. 
 
 The formidable character of the four double-turreted monitors 
 of the Miantonomoh class and their fitness for ocean service so well 
 proved by two of them gave them an especial claim for preserva- 
 tion. Their wooden hulls deteriorated so rapidly as to become 
 worthless in a few years and when the subject of repairing them 
 came up for consideration Mr. Robeson decided to make the repairs 
 in such a radical manner that entirely new monitors with iron hulls, 
 larger dimensions, heavier armor, and improved machinery would 
 result. The only fund available for this building work was the 
 annual appropriation for 4 4 care and maintenance ' ' of vessels and 
 " preservation and repair 55 of steam machinery, and at the time Mr. 
 Robeson assumed this large undertaking those funds were being 
 much drawn upon by the repairs of the fifteen single -turre ted mon- 
 itors, work made necessary by the threatened trouble with Spain in 
 the Virginius affair. A specific appropriation for repairing the 
 double-turreted monitors was not made until June, 1874, when the 
 Secretary of the Navy was authorized to use about $900,000 for 
 that purpose, that sum being an unexpended balance from an 
 appropriation previously made for the construction of a floating iron 
 dock. 
 
 Undismayed by questions of ways and means, however, Mr. 
 Robeson went ahead and placed the work under contract; first for 
 putting the new iron hulls in frame, then, when more money was 
 available, another contract for putting on the inner and outer skin 
 plating, and so on. The contractors for building these new monitors 
 were Harlan and Hollingsworth, Wilmington, Delaware, for the 
 Amphitrite (originally Tonawanda); William Cramp and Sods, 
 Philadelphia, for the Terror (originally Agamentiom)\ John Roach, 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 629 
 
 Chester, Pa., for the Miantonomoh, and Phineas Burgess of Vallejo, 
 California, for the Monadnoefc. Soon after this work was under 
 way the Secretary of the Navy determined to " repair " the unfin- 
 ished Puritan in the same manner, she being one of the big mon- 
 itors undertaken by John Ericsson in 1862 and never completed by 
 him. Accordingly plans were prepared for a larger and more 
 powerful vessel and arrangements for its construction made with 
 Mr. John Roach. The original Puritan was handed over to Mr. 
 Roach at a valuation of about $43,000 and broken up for the 
 material, some of which is said to have been used in building the 
 new vessel. With the assistance of the Miantonomoh the new 
 Puritan also swallowed the light-draft monitors Oohoes, Casco, 
 Ghimo, Modoc, Napa, <Nausett, and Waxsaw, all given to Mr. 
 Roach on account. The new Amphitrite in the same way consumed 
 her original and the Koka; the new Terror absorbed her forebear 
 and the Shawnee, Wassuc and Tunxis. The old Miantonomoh was 
 broken up at the Boston navy yard and thus escaped being devoured 
 by her successor. The swift cruisers Nevada (originally JVeshaminy), 
 sister-ship of the Wampanoag, and Severn (Mosholu) also went to 
 Mr. Roach at a valuation of $25,000 each to help pay for the new 
 Puritan. The old frigate Roanoke which had been razeed and 
 converted into a three -turreted monitor was transferred to Mr. 
 Roach for the same purpose the last day of the Robeson adminis- 
 tration, but the new Secretary of the Navy suspended the barter 
 and subsequently cancelled it altogether. 
 
 As the resolution of Congress authorizing the sale of old mon- 
 itors directed specifically that the proceeds of such sales be turned 
 into the treasury, these trades made with the contractors were 
 highly irregular, not to say an evasion or violation of law, and the 
 subject, in association with various other transactions, led to charges 
 against the Navy Department, investigations, and the suspension of 
 all work on the ships. After taking an immense amount of testi- 
 mony, the Committee on Naval Affairs of the House of Represent- 
 atives reported to the House that many of the transactions of the 
 Robeson administration were without authority of law and in utter 
 disregard of its authority. 
 
 ^'Therefore, in the opinion of your committee, that the law 
 
630 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 may be vindicated, and respect for its mandates maintained, it is 
 the duty of the House to mark its condemnation of the illegal prac- 
 tices of these former officers of the Navy Department, and to invoke 
 the attention of the executive department of the Government, upon 
 which rests the responsibility of further action in the premises, to 
 these violations of law, and accordingly your committee submit for 
 the favorable consideration of the House the following resolutions: 
 
 u Resolved, That the acts and conduct of the late Secretary of 
 the Navy, George M. Robeson, and of the late Chiefs of the 
 Bureaus of Steam Engineering, Construction and Repair, and Pro- 
 visions and Clothing, and who were such since May, 1872, and as 
 referred to in this report, as well as all others aiding and abetting 
 therein, in the sale and disposition of public property, in their 
 method of making contracts and in involving the government m 
 indebtedness over and beyond the appropriations made by Congress 
 for the support of the navy, deserve andjshould receive the severest 
 censure and condemnation. 
 
 " Resolved further. That it shall be the duty of the Clerk of the 
 House of Representatives to deliver certified copies of the testimony 
 taken before the Committees on Naval Affairs and Naval Expendi- 
 tures of this House, together with the reports of said committees 
 and the views of the minority, to the President of the United States, 
 the Attorney General, and the Secretary of the Navy." 
 
 This report was signed by Mr. Whitthorne, Chairman of the 
 committee, and six other members. Four other members of the 
 committee signed a minority report defending the acts of the offi- 
 cials of the Navy Department, and concluding with these words : 
 < 6 The administration of the Navy Department by George M. Robe- 
 son and his subordinates, as shown by the testimony taken, is free 
 from fraud, corruption, and willful violation of law." 
 
 No action was taken by the House on the resolutions offered by 
 the majority of the committee, and with the printing of the two re- 
 ports and the newspaper comments thereon the matter ended. The 
 unfinished monitors remained for a few years in the shipyards of the 
 contractors, incurring expense for the rent of space occupied by 
 them, and were then removed to the navy yards, where, since the 
 
XL S. S. Amphiteite as rebuilt. 
 
 Length on 1. w. 1., 259 feet 6 inches; beam, 55 feet 10 inches ; disp., 3,990 tons ; mean draft, 14 feet 6 inches. 
 
 New Miantonomoh, Monadnock and Terror of same dimensions ; Miantonomoh and Terror are without barbettes ; the Monadnock has 
 triple expansion engines while the others of the class have the primitive design of 2-cylinder inclined engines crossing each other 
 in such manner that the arrangement has caused the term " scissors engines" to be used as descriptive of them. The Miantonomoh 
 is without the superstructure between the turrets. 
 
632 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 era of the new navy dawned, work on them has been resumed and 
 all are now completed or nearly so. As coast defense ships it is 
 doubtful if their superiors exist in any navy; certainly not if the 
 small crew required for their operation, low cost of maintenance, 
 ability to enter shallow water, and other peculiar advantages are 
 taken into consideration. 
 
 Besides repairing the iron-clads, Secretary Kobeson had 
 another difficult and more important task on his hands, and that was 
 to keep the fleet of cruising vessels in a sea-worthy condition with 
 the current appropriations for preservation and repair. The most 
 serviceable ships then in the navy were the frigates and large sloops- 
 of-war built from 1854 to 1858 and these were beginning to show 
 the effects of years, both in hulls and machinery. Of the steamers 
 built during the war scarcely one was in as good condition as the 
 older vessels, the extensive use of white oak instead of live oak 
 and the unseasoned character of much of the material hastened into 
 their construction having resulted in rapid decay. With the fleet in 
 the condition above stated, the Secretary of the Navy had to choose 
 between two horns of a dilemma: he might go on expendiug the 
 annual appropriations in repairing all the ships possible, putting 
 patches and paint on over other patches and paint and in that man- 
 ner keep the old hulks afloat until the disreputable appearance of 
 the navy became such a reproach that national shame would force 
 an appropriation for new ships from Congress; on the other hand, 
 he might keep a few of the better ships in repair and use the remain- 
 der of the repair funds for the construction of entirely new ships 
 under the disguise of repairs, as was done in the case of the double- 
 turreted monitors, and this Mr. Robeson elected to do. The deter- 
 mination was high-handed, and, without mincing matters, was 
 clearly an evasion of the provisions of law, but it resulted in some 
 excellent cruisers whose appearance and service put off for some 
 years the arrival of the day when the fleet of the United States was 
 to become so obsolete as to be a laughing stock throughout the 
 maritime world, even among the sea-faring people of China and 
 Japan. 
 
 Six ships no longer considered worthy of legitimate repairs 
 were selected to be repaired in this wholesale manner and the work 
 of building new ships to fit the names undertaken at different navy 
 
l\ S. STEAMSHIP SWATARA, 1874. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 635 
 
 yards in 1871-'72; the money available from year to year being 
 limited, the work progressed slowly and from three to ten years 
 were consumed in completing the different vessels. Two of the 
 ships selected were the old sailing sloops Marion and Vandalia, 
 built in 1839 and 1828 respectively, the latter having been rebuilt 
 and lengthened thirteen feet in 1848. The experimental armored 
 gun-vessel Galena was another craft to contribute a name for a new 
 ship, as were also the newer vessels Swatara and Quinnebaug of 
 the Besaca class. The last one selected was the old Mohiccm, this 
 making one vessel for each of the principal navy yards. The new 
 ships were built of live oak and with one exception were of the 
 following general dimensions: Length between perpendiculars, 216 
 feet; beam, 37 feet; mean draft, 16^ feet; displacement 1,900 tons. 
 The exception was the Vandalia, which with the same length as the 
 others was two feet greater beam, this increasing her displacement 
 to 2,033 tons. They were built in navy yards as follows: The 
 Marion at Kittery, Maine; the Vandalia at Boston; the Swatara 
 at New York; the Quinnebaug at Philadelphia; the Galena at 
 Norfolk, and the Mohican at Mare Island, California. The first of 
 them to be completed was the Swatara, which was commissioned 
 in 1874 and sailed from New York the eighth of June of that year 
 with a party bound for ports in the southern hemisphere to observe 
 a transit of Venus. 
 
 It having been determined on the strength of Engineer-in-Ohief 
 King's recommendation to supply these ships with compound 
 machinery, a board consisting of Chief Engineers Charles H. Loring 
 and C. H. Baker, with whom Chief Engineer David Smith was after- 
 ward associated, was ordered by the Secretary of the Navy to visit 
 the different navy yards, examine the engines stored in them, and 
 report as to the advisability of converting any of them into compound 
 engines. It will be remembered that eight pairs of the 50" x 42" 
 Isherwood engines had been constructed at navy yards for the 
 Serapis class of sloops and that four of these sets of engines were 
 used in the Benicia, Alaska, Omaha, and Plymouth. Mr. Loring' s 
 board recommended that the other four engines be altered for the 
 new sloops, which recommendation was approved and the work 
 taken in hand at the Boston and New York navy yards. The main 
 feature in the alteration was in replacing the cylinders with new 
 
636 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ones, a high-pressure cylinder 42' in diameter and low pressure 
 64", retaining the former stroke of pistons of 42" to avoid 
 making new crank shafts and many other parts. These four 
 converted engines were erected in the Marion, Vandalia^ 
 Swatara and Quinnebcmg, the engines for the first two named having 
 been rebuilt at Boston and the other two at New York. Entirely 
 new compound engines with the same dimensions of cylinders as the 
 converted engines were built for the Galena and Mohican, for the 
 former at the Norfolk navy yard and for the latter at Mare Island. 
 The cylinders and some other heavy castings for each of these 
 engines were cast at the Washington navy yard. Ten cylindrical 
 one-furnace boilers eight feet in diameter and eight feet one inch in 
 length, constructed to withstand eighty pounds of steam pressure, 
 were built for each vessel. The cost of these early compound 
 engines is not known with any accuracy on account of the peculiar 
 circumstances under which four of them came into existence, the 
 problem being further complicated by the fact that considerable 
 money had been spent on four other of the 50 // x42 // engines partly 
 built at navy yards and then broken up. The cost of these engines 
 and boilers was not, however, extracted from the appropriations for 
 repairs, as the naval appropriation act approved March 3, 1873, 
 contained an item of 1750,000 for compound engines for all these 
 vessels except the Mohican. 
 
 Chief Engineer King's term of office as engineer- in- chief 
 expired in March, 1873, and he was succeeded by Chief Engineer 
 Wm. W. W. Wood, retiring from his office with the written thanks 
 of the Secretary of the Navy for the efficient manner in which he 
 had performed all his duties. Mr. Wood at the time was the senior 
 chief engineer in the navy and possessed an enviable record for 
 efficiency dating from his admission to the navy as a chief engineer 
 in 1845. His name has occurred so often throughout this book as a 
 result of his prominence in the service that it is not necessary to 
 review his record in this place. 
 
 The board of officers that inspected and reported upon steam 
 machinery afloat in 1869, known as the Goldsborough board, 
 recommended among other things that all four-bladed screw pro- 
 pellers be removed from our vessels of war and two-bladed screws 
 substituted for them, the idea being that the ships would sail better 
 
CHIEF ENGINEER WM. W. W. WOOD, U. S. NAVY. 
 
 Engineer-in-Chief of the Navy from March 20, 1873, until March 3, 1877. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 639 
 
 with the two-bladed screw fixed vertically behind the stern-post than 
 they would with a four-bladed screw uncoupled and revolving in the 
 water. This theory was incorrect, as was subsequently shown by 
 experiment and observation, but the chief error existed in supposing 
 that a two-bladed screw of sufficient propelling area could be put 
 into the port or space between the rudder and stern posts formerly 
 occupied by a four-bladed screw. As in the case of the strictures 
 upon the Wampanoag and other cruisers built especially for high 
 speed, the two engineer members of this board, Chief Engineers 
 Eobie and Moore, dissented from the above recommendation in their 
 minority report. Another error was the assumption that the steam- 
 ing power of a war vessel should be tampered with in the interests 
 of the sailing quality, but the day was too early for steam to be con- 
 sidered as comparable with sails as a driving power. Indeed, it 
 may be said that the navy at large still cherished a fiction to the 
 effect that the old screw frigates and sloops were not really steamers 
 at all, and this fond belief sometimes received official support, for 
 as late as 1871 we find the annual report of the Wavy Department 
 referring to all these steamers in a body as u sailing-vessels with 
 auxiliary screws." 
 
 The recommendation of the Goldsborough board was carried 
 out and two-bladed screws made and fitted as circumstances allowed 
 to a number of the principal screw steamers of the navy, at an 
 aggregate cost of about $100,000. Commanding officers and chief 
 engineers began reporting adversely concerning the change and the 
 matter became a question of general interest in the service and one 
 about which there was much diversity of opinion. In his annual 
 report as admiral of the navy Admiral Porter in 18^1 defended the 
 two-bladed screw theory at considerable length, as follows: 
 
 u As you will remember, General Order 131, issued by the 
 Department June 18, 1869, requires all officers to be careful in the 
 expenditure of coal, and to use their sails on every occasion where 
 great dispatch is unnecessary. 
 
 4 'Our steam- vessels, with a few exceptions, having hitherto 
 been supplied with merely sufficient sail to enable them to lay to 
 under, were converted into full-rigged ships, and the two-bladed 
 propeller was substituted for that of four blades; the latter having 
 
 35 
 
640 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 been found, by the experience of officers, unfit for a ship maneuver- 
 ing under sail, while the two-bladed propeller can be hoisted or* 
 placed up and down the stern-post so as to offer but slight resistance. 
 
 4 4 The f our-bladed propeller retards every movement of a ship 
 under sail and renders maneuvering out of the question. By this 
 change in propellers, commanding officers have been enabled to 
 carry out the orders of the Department and effect a great saving in 
 the expenditure of coal, restoring to the service those seamanlike 
 qualities of our crews which seemed almost to have departed from it. 
 
 4 4 In all the trial trips made in vessels where the propellers 
 were changed, the two-bladed propeller invariably gave a small in- 
 crease of speed with only the inconvenience of greater vibration, 
 which latter, though desirable to avoid, is hardly to be considered 
 where so many advantages are gained. 
 
 44 According to the best authorities, the main object of a pro- 
 peller is to utilize the power in such a manner that the greatest pos- 
 sible speed may be obtained with the least possible power. The 
 position of the propeller should be such as not to interfere with the 
 ordinary working of the vessel, and its effect should be produced 
 without any disagreeable sensation to those on board. This can be 
 done only with a two-bladed propeller, fitted to a properly con- 
 structed vessel, in which it is placed sufficiently abaft the stern-post 
 to prevent too much reaction of water against the stern, causing 
 vibration. 
 
 u There are certain disadvantages inseparable from an increase 
 in the number of blades. The friction of the extra blades in the 
 water absorbs a large amount of the power of the engine, without 
 any increase in the propulsive power. 
 
 4 4 The assertion that with a number of blades there is less 
 vibration is partly true, but vibration arises principally from the in- 
 equality of resistance during the successive positions of the pro- 
 peller around its center, and its too close proximity to the stern- 
 post ; a fault of construction, not of propellers. 
 
 4 4 A f our-bladed propeller has one-third more weight than a 
 propeller with two blades, and makes a ship drop heavily in an un- 
 easy seaway. It is, in fact, a heavy drag on all occasions. ?? 
 
 In spite of these authoritative opinions, reports kept coming in 
 
u. s. steamship ranger (Alert, Huron). 
 
 Originally the Ranger and Huron were fore-and-aft rigged, but after the loss of the Huron the Hunger's rig was changed to that of 
 
 bark, the same as the Alert. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 643 
 
 from the ships that had been changed showing that the substitution 
 was producing a marked loss of speed and waste of coal due to the 
 increased percentage of slip incident to the use of two-bladed screws 
 of insufficient area. Engineer-in-Chief King made the subject a 
 matter of comment in his annual reports, taking a view exactly 
 opposite to that of Admiral Porter, and his successor, Mr. Wood, 
 having more information on the subject by virtue of the longer 
 time the experiment had been on trial, made it a special feature in 
 his reports, sustaining his opinions with formidable tables of data 
 from cruising ships, showing beyond dispute that the practice was 
 reducing the efficiency of every ship on which the change had 
 been made, and at the same time was largely increasing the coal 
 bills. In 1875 the Secretary of the Navy gave Mr. Wood the 
 asked-for authority to put the four-bladed screws back where they 
 belonged. 
 
 Eepresentations to Congress of the decaying condition of the 
 navy eventually resulted in a special act, approved February 10, 
 1873, authorizing the Secretary of the Navy to construct eight ves- 
 sels of war, the aggregate tonnage of the whole number not to ex- 
 ceed eight thousand tons, and the aggregate cost to be not more 
 than 13,200,000. The act specified that four of the vessels, in 
 whole or in part, should be built by contract with the lowest respon- 
 sible bidders in public competition. Another noteworthy provision 
 of the act was that the ships were to be " steam vessels of war, with 
 auxiliary sail power. 5 ? The cost limit was repeated in the naval 
 appropriation bill passed the following month and placed in the ap- 
 propriations for the Bureau of Construction, so it did not have to 
 be used to pay for machinery, other appropriations providing for 
 that. 
 
 Three of the resulting vessels were iron gun-boats of 1,020 tons 
 displacement, named Alert, Huron, and Ranger. They were 175 
 feet between perpendiculars; 32 feet beam, and of about 13 feet 
 mean draft. All were built by contract, the Alert and Huron at 
 Roach's Delaware River Shipbuilding Works nt Chester, Pa., and 
 the Ranger by Harlan and Hollingsworth, Wilmington, Delaware. 
 The machinery of all three was built by the Roach establishment at 
 Chester; the engines were of the two cylinder back-acting compound 
 type designed by the Bureau of Steam Engineering, with cylinders 
 
644 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 28J inches and 42| inches in diameter and 42 inches stroke, in- 
 tended for a maximum horse-power of 560. Each ship had five of 
 the single-furnace cylindrical boilers eight feet in diameter, aggre- 
 gating 120 square feet of grate surface. Each had a four-bladed 
 screw, twelve feet in diameter, that of the Ranger being of bureau 
 design and the others of the Hirsch patent. The Huron was wrecked 
 with terrible loss of life in 1877, after little more than two years of 
 service, and the other two still remain on active duty. Four other 
 gun -boats were built under the same authority, of wood, and some- 
 what larger than the Alert class. These were 185 feet long; 35 feet 
 
 SECTION SHOWING ENGINES AS INSTALLED IN THE (< ENTERPRISE 53 CLASS. THE 
 SAME ARRANGEMENT OBTAINED IN THE " ALERT " CLASS OP IRON SLOOPS. 
 
 beam; about 14 feet mean draft, and of 1,375 tons displacement 
 The engines were compound, of bureau design, and of the same 
 type as those of the Alert class, but larger, being designed for 800 
 horse-power. The cylinders were 34 and 51 inches in diameter paid 
 42 inches stroke. They each had originally eight of the single fur- 
 nace boilers, with 192 square feet of grate surface. The screws 
 were all of bureau design, 14 feet in diameter and 19 feet mean 
 pitch. Of these gun-boats, or corvettes, as they were called later, 
 
U. S. STEAMSHIP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 (Adams, Alliance, Essex, Nipsic, 2d). 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 647 
 
 the Enterprise was built at the Kittery navy yard by a private con- 
 tractor, Mr. John W. Griffiths, working in co-operation with the 
 government officials; the Essex was built at the same navy yard and 
 under the same form of dual superintendence, the contractor in this 
 case being Mr. Donald McKay, who had a similar contract for the 
 construction of the Adams at the Boston navy yard. The fourth 
 vessel, the Alliance, was built at the Norfolk navy yard by the 
 government. Machinery for the Adams and Essex was built by con- 
 tract by the Atlantic Works, Boston, for $163,000 and $175,000 
 respectively; that for the Enterprise was built by the Woodruff Iron 
 Company, Hartford, Conn., the contract price being $175,000, 
 while that for the Alliance was by the Quintard Iron Works, of New 
 York, for the same price. 
 
 For the eighth vessel authorized, the Department went beyond 
 the idea of gun-boats and built the large frigate Trenton, for many 
 years after her completion the most formidable cruising ship in our 
 neglected navy and the only one that in type and armament at all 
 approached the practice of other nations at the time?! The hull, of 
 live oak, was designed by Chief Constructor Isaiah JEEanseom and 
 built at the New York navy yard by Naval Constructor S. H. Pook. 
 The Trenton was 253 feet long between perpendiculars; 48 feet 
 beam; 19 1 feet mean draft, and of 3,900 tons displacement. She 
 was full ship-rigged, and carried a ram armed with a heavy compo- 
 sition casting, the point nine feet below the water-line and eight feet 
 forward of the stem. The machinery complete was built from 
 bureau designs by contract with the Morgan Iron Works, New 
 York, the contract price being $650,000. The engines were of the 
 horizontal compound back-acting type, with three cylinders side by 
 side, the high pressure cylinder, 58-J inches in diameter, being 
 between the two low pressures, which were 78 inches in diameter; 
 the stroke of all pistons was 48 inches, and the engines were designed 
 to develop 3,100 horse-power. There were eight cylindrical three- 
 furnace boilers, 12 feet in diameter and 10 feet 3 inches in length, 
 aggregating 464 square feet of grate surface. The propeller was a 
 four-bladed Hirsch screw 19 feet in diameter. The Trenton did 
 considerable service as flagship on different stations, and finally 
 came to a violent end in the South Seas. 
 
 While these ships were building, the Department concluded to 
 
648 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 "repair ?? the gun-boat Mpsic,one of the Kansas class built in 1863, 
 in the same way that the Swatara and others had been repaired. 
 The Enterprise class was taken as a model and an exactly similar 
 vessel built at the Washington navy yard, her completion being 
 delayed until 1879 by the small appropriations for repairs available 
 each year, this being about three years later than the completion of 
 her sister ships. Her engines and boilers, exactly like those of the 
 Enterprise class, were obtained by contract with W. Wright & Co., 
 Newburgh, New York, the contract price being $175,000. 
 
 One steamer was added to the navy in 1874 by purchase, the 
 Department that year buying for a despatch vessel the steam yacht 
 America from Mr. Henry 0. Smith of New York and changing her 
 name to Despatch. This yacht is not to be confused with the more 
 famous yacht America, a sailing vessel, which for a number of years 
 belonged to the Navy Department and was stationed at the Naval 
 Academy, she having been acquired by capture during the war. 
 The Despatch was a wooden screw steamer, 174 feet long; 25-| feet 
 beam; about 12 feet draft, and was of 560 tons displacement. She 
 had a two-cylinder vertical direct-acting engine, with cylinders 33 
 inches in diameter and 33 inches stroke, driving a single screw; the 
 purchase price was $98,500. The Despatch was employed one or 
 two summers as a practice steamer for cadet engineers; was on 
 special service in the Mediterranean for a time; served as a survey- 
 ing vessel in Samana Bay, and finally became a special service 
 tender for the use of the President and Secretary of the Navy- 
 In February, 1891, she ran .ashore on Assateague shoal off the 
 coast of Maryland and became a total wreck, her people losing 
 
 their effects and escaping with their lives with some difficulty. 
 
 A special appropriation for extraordinary expenses of the 
 
 Bureau of Ordnance enabled that bureau in 1874 to have built 
 under its cognizance the two large torpedo vessels Alarm and 
 Intrepid. Both were built of iron, the Alarm at the New York Navy 
 Yard and the Intrepid at the Boston yard. The ifcmwas 158 feet 
 long; 28 feet beam, and of 800 tons displacement. The Intrepid was 
 170, feet long; 35 feet beam, and 1,150 tons displacement. The 
 machinery for both was designed and built by the Morgan Iron 
 Works, New York. That of the Alarm consisted of two two- 
 cylinder compound engines with cylinders 20 and 38 inches in 
 
U. S. STEAMSHIP TRENTON, 1870. 
 
BOW VIEW OF TORPEDO BOAT ALARM IN DRY DOCK. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 651 
 
 diameter and 30 inches' stroke, actuating a Fowler wheel; there 
 were four two-furnace cylindrical boilers 10 feet in diameter, 
 aggregating 169 square feet of grate surface. The Intrepid had 
 twin- screws, each driven by a two-cylinder compound engine, the 
 high pressure cylinders being 24 inches in diameter and the low- 
 pressures 48, the stroke of pistons being 24 inches. She had six 
 two-furnace cylindrical boilers with 260 square feet of grate surface. 
 The Alarm is still in the service, classed as a torpedo ram: the 
 Intrepid, after being experimented with for several years, was 
 hauled up on a building slip in the New York navy yard with a 
 view to remodeling he? into a light-draft gun-boat for service in 
 Chinese waters, but that intention was abandoned and the vessel 
 was broken up. 
 
CHAPTEE XXXIII. 
 
 All your petty self-seekings and rivalries done, 
 Round the dear Alma Mater your hearts heat as one." 
 
 — J. G. Whittier. 
 
 The'Training of Naval Engineers at the Naval Academy. 
 
 TH E United States 
 Naval Academy at 
 Annapolis, Maryland, was 
 established by Mr. George 
 Bancroft when that dis- 
 tinguished historian was 
 Secretary of the Navy 
 under the administration 
 of President James K. 
 Polk. The first session 
 of the school was held in 
 1845, Commander Frank- 
 lin Buchanan being the 
 superintendent and Lieu- 
 tenant James H. "Ward, 
 in charge of the department of gunnery, the second in command. 
 The science of marine engineering was then young, and the naval 
 engineer corps had been established only three years; nevertheless, 
 through the efforts of Lieutenant Ward, steam was one of the prin- 
 cipal subjects taught during the first academic years. Lieutenant 
 Ward was a progressive man for his day and of a decidedly mechan- 
 ical turn of mind, the latter quality impelling him to become an 
 ordnance expert and to develop into a science the rude gunnery 
 knowledge of the time. In steam he saw a power that was destined 
 to revolutionize naval tactics and which therefore should be mastered 
 by naval officers as a force with which they would have to deal in 
 the future. With this view he felt it a duty to prepare the young- 
 men of the navy placed under his charge for the change that was 
 approaching, and he accordingly fitted himself by studying the new 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 653 
 
 science and gave instruction in it by means of lectures, combining 
 steam and gunnery as kindred subjects. When Mr. Ward left the 
 academy in 1847 steam no longer had a champion in that institution 
 and soon fell into neglect, being transferred first to the department 
 of chemistry and later to a new department called natural philos- 
 ophy, in each of which it was starved as a foundling child unwel- 
 come in an already overcrowded household. 
 
 Lieutenant Ward had his lectures and notes on steam published 
 in book form under the title of " Steam for the Million," an excel- 
 lent and popular text book in its time. Ward himself rose to the 
 rank of commander and in June, 1861, a month even before the 
 battle of Bull Run, he was killed while gallantly attacking a Con- 
 federate battery at Mathias* Point on the Potomac River, in King 
 George County, Virginia. In him the navy lost one of its most 
 capable and brilliant officers and the engineer corps lost its best 
 friend in the navy outside its own ranks. Commander Ward was 
 the first naval officer killed in the war of the rebellion. 
 
 Before proceeding with the account of the establishment of a 
 course of instruction for engineer students at the academy it is 
 proper to say that the subject of educating engineers for the navy 
 had been proposed long before the founding of the school for line 
 officers. When making the experimental cruise with the Fulton in 
 the winter of 1837-'38, Captain M. C. Perry in his contact with 
 engines and engineers discovered that the revolution in naval edu- 
 cation and tactics had already dawned. Reporting from Montauk 
 Point in February, 1838, he suggested to the Department that a 
 training school for naval engineers be established by the govern- 
 ment; also that apprentice boys should be enlisted and trained 
 specially for the engineer's force. The latter suggestion was carried 
 out and firemen-apprentices were enlisted for the Fulton, but the 
 proposition relative to a school for young engineers was so long in 
 bearing fruit that Captain Perry did not live to see its perfection. 
 
 With the first actual war operations on the part of the navy in 
 1861 came a realization that a degree of responsibility formerly 
 unsuspected must fall upon the engineers and their machinery. 
 Steam at once took its place as a formidable weapon of war, and 
 was immediately recognized as the only motive power for war pur- 
 poses, however convenient, clean, and economical sails might be for 
 
654 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 peace cruising. The engineers in the navy at the beginning of the 
 war were, as a rule, skillful and efficient, but their number, much 
 reduced as it was by resignations and dismissals of members who 
 were natives of the Southern States, was entirely inadequate to the 
 work that fell upon the engineering branch when many steamers 
 were suddenly added to the fleet and designs demanded from the 
 naval engineers for the machinery for many others to be built. 
 This made the influx of a great number of acting or volunteer 
 engineers necessary, and some mishaps, delays, and disasters fol- 
 lowed as results of the inexperience of the new men, due, in some 
 cases, also to their incompetency, for the emergency did not permit 
 of fine discrimination in their selection. 
 
 The great and constantly growing demand upon the engineer 
 corps for the efficient performance of its part in war was such an 
 important matter that it soon became a subject for consider- 
 ation in the Navy Department. The need for greater scientific and 
 technical knowledge among the engineers was one of the chief 
 demands developed, for the many sudden emergencies and trying 
 circumstances attending the war operations of the navy soon demon- 
 strated that the engineers of a ship should possess considerable 
 theoretical knowledge in addition to practical ability if the ship's 
 machinery were to be kept in an efficient condition when far removed 
 from the vicinity of navy-yards and consulting engineers. The 
 conditions of service also brought forward the fact, in stronger 
 colors than it had appeared before, that the engineer in the navy 
 should be a naval officer as well as a marine-engineer. Mr. Isher- 
 wood fully appreciated the difficulties under which the members of 
 his corps labored, and in the midst of the most engrossing duties he 
 found time to address the Department on the subject, his opinions 
 so far securing attention that in the annual report of the Secretary 
 of the Navy for 1863 we find the following under the caption 
 u Education of Engineers:" 
 
 u To attain and maintain our true position as a naval power ? 
 the best talent in the country must be found among the officers who 
 are to conduct the varied operations of the service, and adequate 
 provision to secure such ability and accomplishment should command 
 the attention of those who have charge of our naval affairs. Our 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 65S 
 
 naval school is producing officers of skill, well educated for their 
 profession, yet if our ships and steam-machinery are not at the 
 highest attainable point of perfection, and the engineers are not 
 skillful, the education and accomplishment of our officers will be 
 unavailing to give us the naval superiority we should obtain. 
 
 u By the introduction of steam into naval operations a new 
 corps is engrafted into the naval service of men combining science 
 with mechanical skill and genius, whose professional attainments 
 and practical power demand the fostering care of the government. 
 Our naval engineers, like those of the army, should be thoroughly 
 educated to their profession, for on them the motive power of our 
 vessels and the efficiency of our steam-machinery must hereafter 
 depend. Steam-engineering should indeed be one of the important 
 studies of all naval officers, and should be taught at the Naval 
 Academy. It would be well to encourage such men as exhibit apt- 
 ness for mechanical studies to cultivate their peculiar talents, whether 
 as naval constructors or engineers, in that department in which they 
 render the highest public service. Other governments pursue this 
 course, and we shall find our advantage in giving similar encourage- 
 ment to the young men of our country. 
 
 "It is a question, indeed, as sails are subordinate to steam, 
 whether every officer of the line ought not to be educated to and 
 capable of performing the duties which devolve upon engineers. 
 The means of acquiring practical as well as theoretical knowledge of 
 the subject should be furnished by the government, and it would be 
 well if every midshipman were to receive instruction in this now 
 important branch of his profession. If the public is not yet pre- 
 pared to combine what at present are two distinct pursuits, and 
 make every naval officer an engineer as well as a sailor, I would 
 recommend the formation of a class at the Naval Academy of 
 youths, giving a preference to those who may have already evinced 
 mechanical skill and aptitude for engineering, who might be educated 
 with special reference to their profession as engineers. After two 
 years' study they could be received into the corps by conferring 
 upon them the appointment of third assistant engineers and assign- 
 ing them to duty. The naval service and the country have suffered 
 injury that can scarcely be estimated from the want of thorough, 
 capable, and well educated engineers. Many of our most efficient 
 
656 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 vessels have been disabled and crippled in the midst of their cruise, 
 and sometimes even at the very commencement of their service, in 
 consequence of the incapacity of the engineers, whereby the country 
 has been deprived not only of the use of the vessel for weeks and 
 sometimes for months, but the officers and crew have been con- 
 strained to inactivity instead of being employed against the enemy. 
 Some measures are necessary to correct and prevent these disasters, 
 so injurious to the country, and I know of none so thorough and 
 complete as that of publicly educating and training engineers to the 
 service. The most important branch of study at the Naval Academy 
 is, very appropriately, seamanship. A general knowledge of the 
 application and use of steam and of practical mechanics should 
 follow as almost equally essential. Line officers of the navy, of 
 whatever rank, should, moreover, have the privilege of attending 
 lectures and pursuing the studies of steam, mechanics, and, indeed, 
 every branch that may be taught at the Naval Academy, and it is 
 recommended that arrangements be made for carrying into effect 
 these suggestions.' 5 
 
 The authorship of these views, although they embody many of 
 Mr. Isherwood's suggestions, is generally credited to the Hon. 
 Gustavus Y. Fox, the assistant secretary of the navy, upon whom 
 fell the consideration of questions relating to the naval personnel* 
 The soundness of his opinions in this matter cannot now be ques- 
 tioned, but at the time they appeared they were so much in advance 
 of the theories of the day that they excited considerable opposition. 
 
 The recommendation of the Navy Department, in regard to the 
 education of engineers, received attention from Congress without 
 much delay, a law being enacted the following summer which gave 
 the Secretary of the Navy authority to establish a class of cadet 
 engineers at the Naval Academy. This was the first appearance in 
 the United States navy of the term cadet as applied to a naval 
 student or aspirant of any corps. The Act of Congress referred to 
 was approved July 4, 1864, and became Sections 1522 and 1523 of 
 the Revised Statutes, reading as follows: 
 
 " Section 1522. The Secretary of the Navy is authorized to 
 make provision, by regulations issued by him, for educating at the 
 
THE STEAM NAYT OF THE UNITED STATES. 657 
 
 Naval Academy, as naval constructors or steam-engineers, such 
 midshipmen and others as may show a peculiar aptitude therefor. 
 He may, for this purpose, form a separate class at the Academy, to 
 be styled cadet engineers, or otherwise afford to such persons all 
 proper facilities for such a scientific mechanical education as will fit 
 them for said professions. 
 
 66 Section 1523. Cadet engineers shall be appointed by the 
 Secretary of the Navy. They shall not at any time exceed fifty in 
 number, and no persons, other than midshipmen, shall be eligible 
 for appointment unless they shall first produce satisfactory evidence 
 of mechanical skill and proficiency, and shall have passed an exam- 
 ination as to their mental and physical qualifications. ' ' 
 
 It is improbable that the provisions of this act whereby ' ' mid- 
 shipmen and others ' ' could be educated for naval constructors and 
 steam -engineers as specialists in these branches came up to the 
 wishes of Mr. Fox in the premises. His desire undoubtedly was to 
 simplify the naval service and render its official element more homo- 
 geneous by making the practical details of engineering a part of the 
 seamanship of the time, a full mastery of which should be incumbent 
 upon the line officers who performed the details of duty at sea. This 
 is shown by the views which appeared in the annual report of the 
 Secretary of the Navy for the year 1864, as follows: 
 
 "CADET ENGINEERS. 
 
 < ' Preliminary measures have been taken to carry into effect the 
 law of the last session of Congress authorizing the education at the 
 Naval Academy of cadet engineers, to be selected from youths not 
 over eighteen years of age, who shall have been engaged at least 
 two years in the fabrication of steam machinery. A circular has 
 been issued and printed in the papers of the great manufacturing 
 cities inviting applications in conformity to the law. 
 
 " Before this plan shall be put into operation, it is respectfully 
 submitted, in view of the radical changes which have been wrought 
 by steam as a motive power for naval vessels, whether steam engi- 
 neering should not be made to constitute hereafter a necessary part 
 of the education of all midshipmen, so that in our future navy every 
 
658 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 line officer will be a steam engineer, and qualified to have complete 
 command and direction of his ship. Hereafter every vessel of war 
 must be a steam vessel. Those designed for ocean service will be 
 furnished with sails in order to economize fuel while cruising; the 
 present and future navy will therefore combine sails and steam as 
 motive power, and seamanship and steam-engine driving will each 
 be necessary to make the finished professional officer. The officers 
 to sail and navigate a ship and the officers to run the steam-engine 
 are about equal in number. 
 
 u The Department is not aware that any line officer, whatever 
 attention may have been given by him to the theoretical study of 
 steam, is yet capable of taking charge of an engine, nor are steam 
 engine drivers capable of taking charge of a man-of-war, navigating 
 her, fighting her guns, and preserving her discipline. When ves- 
 sels were propelled exclusively by sails there were but two officers, 
 excepting in flagships, the surgeon and paymaster, who were not line 
 officers. But under the present naval system a new and additional 
 corps is introduced, as many steam engineers being required for a 
 vessel as there are line officers; and, while cruising under sail, or 
 lying in port, or performing any duty when the engine is at rest, 
 one-half of the officers are, by existing regulations, idle and incapa- 
 ble of participating in duties that are often laborious and oppressive 
 on the officers of the line, comparatively speaking. The engineers 
 would willingly share these duties were they acquainted with them. 
 But half the officers of a steamship cannot keep watch, cannot navi- 
 gate her, cannot exercise the great guns or small arms, nor, except 
 as volunteers under a line officer, take part in any expedition against 
 the enemy. On the other hand, the other half of the officers are in- 
 capable of managing the steam motive power, or of taking charge of 
 the engine-room in an emergency, nor can the commander of a 
 vessel, though carefully taught every duty of a sailor and drill- 
 officer, understand, of his own knowledge, whether the engineers 
 and firemen are competent or not. 
 
 " The remedy for all this is very simple, provided the principle 
 were once recognized and adopted of making our officers engine- 
 drivers as well as sailors. It would not be expedient to interfere 
 with the present status of line officers or engineers, — the change 
 would be too radical; but we should begin by teaching each mid- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 659 
 
 shipman to be able to discharge the duties of line officers and engi- 
 neers, to combine the two in one profession, so that officers so edu- 
 cated can take their watch alternately in the engine-room and on 
 deck. 
 
 " Objection may be made that the duties are dissimilar, and 
 that steam-engine driving is a specialty. The duties are not more 
 dissimilar than seamanship and gunnery. When seamanship was 
 the only education given to an officer, it was not believed he could 
 ever learn to teach sailors to drill, and a sergeant of marines per- 
 formed the duty which is now so admirably discharged by the grad- 
 uates of the Naval Academy. When gunnery became a specialty, 
 it was inconsiderately and unwisely proposed to have a corps of ord- 
 nance officers engrafted upon the naval service, a separate organiza- 
 tion, which should draw to itself the knowledge so necessary to 
 each, and therefore proper to be distributed among all the officers. 
 
 u Fortunately, our naval officers are taught seamanship, gun- 
 nery, and the infantry drill, and the service thereby saved from dis- 
 tinct organizations in these respects which would, inevitably, 
 have impaired its efficiency. It only remains to commence, at 
 this time, and as preparatory to the future of the navy, to teach 
 the midshipmen steam engineering, as applied to running the 
 engine. This would be independent of the art of designing and 
 constructing, which is purely a specialty, and nowise necessary 
 in the management and direction of the ship. And to this 
 specialty, as a highly scientific body of officers, would the pres- 
 ent corps of engineers be always required as inspectors and con- 
 structors of machinery. With the adoption of the suggestions here 
 made, we shall, in due time, have a homogeneous corps of officers, 
 who will be masters of the motive power of their ships in the future 
 as they have been of seamanship in the past. By this arrangement 
 there will be in each ship double the number of officers capable of 
 fighting and running the vessels without additional appointments or 
 expense. Innumerable other advantages commend the plan as 
 worthy of trial, and it is presented for favorable consideration. The 
 work can be commenced and carried forward at the Naval Academy 
 without any additional appropriation, and the authority of Congress 
 is invoked in behalf of the suggestions here submitted. 35 
 
 The only immediate step taken to put these recommendations 
 
660 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 into operation was the detailing of some assistant engineers of the 
 regular navy to duty at the Naval Academy, then at Newport, 
 Rhode Island, as u Acting Assistant Professors of Natural and 
 Experimental Philosophy, 5 ' but they did not make engineers of any 
 of the midshipmen then under instruction. The following year 
 (1865) the Academy was moved back to Annapolis, where it had 
 been before the war, and the ''Department of S team- Enginery ?? 
 (afterward changed to Steam-Engineering) established as one of the 
 regular branches of learning of the institution. 
 
 Thus far, no class of cadet engineers had been formed, but the 
 new department at once undertook the duty of instructing the mid- 
 shipmen in the principles of marine-engineering, using such appli- 
 ances as were then at hand and one or two small naval steamers 
 sent to Annapolis for that especial purpose The present steam- 
 building was erected in 1866, a special appropriation of $20,000 
 having been made for the purpose, and the greater part of its pres- 
 ent equipment installed at that time, making a plant that for pur- 
 poses of instruction in marine engineering was then unequaled 
 in the United States. The chief item in the equipment of this 
 building was a large marine engine set up with boilers, shafting and 
 propeller in complete condition to be run by steam, this being the 
 36" x 36" Isherwood engine mentioned in another chapter as having 
 been built at the Washington navy yard for the first Quinnebaug 
 before foreign-built engines were ordered for that vessel. The fol- 
 lowing complimentary reference to this engine occurs in the annual 
 report of Vice Admiral D. D. Porter, superintendent of the Naval 
 Academy, dated September 25, 1866: 
 
 u The steam building, for which Congress appropriated twenty 
 thousand dollars ($20,000), will be finished in November, and will, 
 I think, be the most complete establishment of the kind in the 
 country. We have already erected in this building, and ready for use, 
 a beautiful propeller engine, similar to those planned by Chief En- 
 gineer Isherwood, and generally used in the vessels constructed by 
 the Navy Department. This engine is. I think, very complete in 
 all its parts. It is compact, strong, and simple, and well adapted 
 for the purpose of instruction. It is a type of the engines used in 
 our vessels-of-war, *arid to be in use for some time to come, for I 
 
STEAM ENGINEERING BUILDING, U. S. NAVAL ACADEMY, 1878. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 663 
 
 venture to say that no better engine can be found, although efforts 
 have been made to bring it into discredit. I am pleased to see this 
 monument of the skill and perseverance of the engineer-in-chief, 
 Mr. Isherwood, erected at the Naval Academy, where it will be 
 properly appreciated, and where it can be inspected at any time by 
 the doubters who would delight to injure its reputation." 
 
 The picture of the steam building here presented shows that 
 structure as it appeared during the late '70s when the cadet engineer 
 system was at the height of its development, this being regarded as 
 more appropriate for this work than a view of its present appearance 
 with the alterations and changes that have occurred to it and its sur- 
 roundings in later years. The two guns standing vertically at the 
 entrance or gateway are iron 24- pounders, trophies captured on 
 board the British frigate Confiance, at the battle of Lake Champlain, 
 by Commodore McDonough. One of them is cracked and indented 
 on the muzzle, the effect of having been struck by a shot; this same 
 gun has been identified as the one which, by its recoil, killed Com- 
 modore Downie, the commander of the British forces. 1 
 
 The two iron screw-propellers arranged on the lawn as orna- 
 ments are also trophies, they having been taken from the British 
 steamer Don, captured in March, 1864, by the XL S. steamer 
 Pequot, while trying to break the blockade off Beaufort. 
 
 The Secretary's report for 1865 again came to the defense of 
 the new system, this time going so far as to assert that line officers 
 would shortly find themselves in a position of secondary importance 
 if they clung to the old seamanship as a profession. Under the 
 head of the Naval Academy we find the following comments in the 
 annual report for that year: 
 
 u In dispensing with vessels propelled wholly by sails from the 
 list of regular men-of-war, it has become necessary to instruct the 
 future naval officer in the principles and practice of steam enginery. 
 A separate department, having this object in view, has been estab- 
 lished at the Naval Academy, under the management and direction 
 
 1 Authorities in support of this identification are cited in J. R. jSoley's " His- 
 torical Sketch of the U. S. Naval Academy." 
 
 36 
 
664 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 of Chief Engineer fm. W. W. Wood, assisted by eight others, who 
 are charged with the duty of teaching the midshipmen not only the 
 theory of the steam-engine, but> as indicated in my last report, its 
 actual manipulation. Sufficient experiments and progress have 
 already been made in running the engines of the vessels attached to 
 the Academy by the midshipmen to warrant the Department to per- 
 severe in its purpose of perfecting the education of the future line 
 officers, by making them competent, in addition to their other 
 acquirements, to manage and work the engine. 
 
 u The management of a man-of-war in a gale, on a lee shore, 
 in a narrow harbor, or the splendid manoeuvres of battle by sailing- 
 vessels, have hitherto been the highest and proudest duties of a 
 thorough naval officer. The skillful disposition of the sails, which 
 was the result of the best training of the old school, is no longer 
 necessary, except as auxiliary to the new motive power which modern 
 invention and science have introduced. The naval vessel is no 
 longer dependent on the winds, nor is she at the mercy of currents; 
 but the motive power which propels and controls her movements is 
 subject to the mind and will of her commander, provided he is 
 master of his profession in the future as he has been in the past. 
 To retain the prominence which skill and education gave him when 
 seamanship was the most important accomplishment, the line officer 
 must be qualified to guide and direct this new element or power. 
 Unless he has these qualities, he will be dependent on the knowl- 
 edge and skill of him who manipulates and directs the engine. To 
 confine himself to seamanship, without the ability to manage the 
 steam engine, will result in his taking a secondary position, as com- 
 pared with that which the accomplished naval officer formerly 
 occupied. 
 
 u For the full development and accomplishment of an object 
 which can no longer be considered a doubtful experiment, the active 
 co-operation of naval officers is required. When this change is 
 effected, engineers will become the designers and constructors of 
 engines and other marine works, and the superintendents of the 
 mechanical employment which a navy propelled by steam has 
 developed and may require. They will constitute in reality a highly- 
 educated and scientific corps, and the line officers will have added 
 to their duties the practical management of the engines." 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 665 
 
 In spite of the steps taken by the Department to carry into 
 effect the law of 1864, authorizing the education of cadet engineers 
 at the Naval Academy, candidates for that attention were not forth- 
 coming. The reason probably being that the people were weary of 
 a long war and not disposed to enter their sons in the service of the 
 government, even to go to school. Besides this, young men who had 
 been 6 ' engaged at least two years in the fabrication of steam 
 machinery " were not disposed to accept conditions that would put 
 them back into the school-room, nor likely to become very apt 
 pupils if they did; they certainly consulted their best interests by 
 remaining where they were, identified with the great awakening of 
 the manufacturing industries of the North that took place at the 
 close of the war. 
 
 In 1866, after two years of advertising of the cadet-engineer 
 programme, the first fruits appeared in the form of two young men 
 who were admitted to the Academy in October of that year, and 
 two others who entered a year later. As these four cadet engineers 
 were the first of their species in the navy, it is worth while to trace 
 their careers. 
 
 Those who entered in 1866 were George D. McOarty, of New 
 York City, and James P. Wilson, of Washington, D. C, and they 
 were to some extent the victims of circumstances, being used by the 
 Naval Academy officials as useful objects upon which to experiment 
 in the development of a course of study for engineer students. The 
 result of this was that when James Steel, of Wisconsin, and C. P. 
 Howell, of New York, entered in 1867, all four were equally pre- 
 pared for the same course of instruction. Toward the end of that 
 academic year Mr. Wilson resigned, and Mr. McOarty, discovering 
 that he had missed his vocation, got an appointment as a midship- 
 man and entered the third class of midshipmen, — the class of 1872. 
 A.bout a year later he, too, tendered his resignation. Messrs. Steel 
 and Howell proved to be bright students and were sent to sea on a 
 probationary cruise in 1868 in the sloop-of-war Contoocook. Cadet 
 Steel died at sea that same year, but Mr. Howell survived the cruise, 
 was promoted in due time, and is now a chief engineer in the navy. 
 
 While the first cadet engineers were being experimented upon 
 there were some engineer students of a different stamp undergoing 
 instruction at the Academy. Not getting any results from the man- 
 
666 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 uf acturing cities in which the cadet-engineer system had been adver- 
 tised, the Department invaded a new field for recruiting by sending 
 circulars to the large colleges of the country in which engineering 
 was taught. In conformity with the terms of the circular about fifty 
 candidates, the most of whom were graduates, appeared at Annapolis 
 in the summer of 1866 and underwent a competitive examination, 
 the sixteen who passed highest being selected for the service. They 
 were too well educated and too old to be made cadets of, so they 
 were appointed acting third assistant engineers and given a special 
 course of instruction in marine engines, and some other naval sub- 
 jects not dealt with at the colleges they came from. They did not 
 live inside the walls of the Academy, and did not form a part of the 
 cadet organization of the time, being more on the footing of junior 
 officers taking a post-graduate course. Five of them came from the 
 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, of Troy, New York; five from 
 Harvard; one from Yale; two from Brown University; one from 
 Union College, and two were not college men. All sixteen grad- 
 uated at the end of a two-years 5 course with credit and went into 
 active service as third assistant engineers. 
 
 A melancholy accident occurred at the Naval Academy on the 
 afternoon of October 19, 1867, resulting in the death of Chief 
 Engineer Eben Hoyt. The steam picket-boat with which Lieutenant 
 Cushing sank the Albemarle was recovered after the capture of 
 Plymouth, repaired, and sent to the Academy as a trophy, where by 
 direction of Vice Admiral Porter it was fitted up as a beautiful 
 little brig-rigged steam yacht, bearing the name Albemarle. On the 
 day mentioned she was taken out for a trial run, having previously 
 developed remarkable speed for such a small craft. Admiral Porter 
 started to go in her but not feeling well and the day being very 
 warm, concluded not to do so, and Chief Engineer Hoyt went in 
 charge. The run was made successfully; the boat was returning, 
 and while nearly all the people in and about the Academy were 
 looking at her, she blew up with a heavy explosion, killing Mr. 
 Hoyt, Wm. Clarke, the engineer, and Samuel Driscoll, who was 
 tending the fires, and mortally injuring the coxswain, John Shea, 
 who died soon after. Three messenger boys who were in the boat 
 escaped with slight injuries. The boiler had been tested to 180 
 pounds hydraulic pressure and the catastrophe, like most boiler 
 explosions, has no logical explanation. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 667 
 
 The loss of Chief Engineer Hoyt was severely felt by a wide 
 circle of friends and official associates, among whom he was highly 
 esteemed for his high character and professional attainments. The 
 following from his obituary notice published in the Army and Navy 
 Journal gives an outline of his important services: 
 
 "He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, May 13, 1834, edu- 
 cated at the public schools, and, after graduating at the high school, 
 became a student under a prominent architect of that city. He 
 subsequently turned his attention to civil engineering and assisted at 
 the erection of the lighthouse on Minot's Ledge. Later, he made 
 mechanical engineering a special study, and in May, 1857, entered 
 the United States Navy, commencing his first cruise in October of 
 that year on the late United States frigate Mcrrimac. The outbreak 
 of the rebellion found him attached to the steam-sloop Richmond, 
 then in the Mediterranean. The vessel was recalled and sent to join 
 the Gulf squadron under Farragut. While in this squadron Mr. 
 Hoyt was present at the engagement between the Water Witch and 
 the rebel gun-boat Ivy ; the fight between the ram Manassas and the 
 U. S. gun-boats on the lower Mississippi; the bombardment of Fort 
 McEae and the batteries at Pensacola; the passage of Forts Jackson 
 and St. Philip, and the Chalmette batteries; the passage and 
 re-passage of Vicksburg; the fight of the rebel ram Arkansas and the 
 siege of Port Hudson. 
 
 6 4 Upon his return North in 1863 he was promoted to the rank 
 of chief engineer, and, his health having become impaired by his 
 arduous duties in the Gulf squadron, he was assigned to duty as 
 inspector of iron-clads and other steamers then building in Boston. 
 In 1865, the Navy Department having determined to establish a 
 department of steam engineering at the Naval Academy, ordered him 
 to duty as senior assistant to Chief Engineer Wood, who was made 
 head of that department. Subsequently, upon the detachment of 
 Mr. Wood, Mr. Hoyt became head of the department, and occupied 
 that position until his death. 
 
 6 4 Mr. Hoyt was well fitted for the profession he had chosen, 
 and both as assistant and head of department has been very largely 
 instrumental in establishing and developing the engineering course 
 at the Academy. Possessing no little mechanical talent, he had 
 
668 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 originated a number of useful devises, while his quick perception 
 and generous appreciation of the labors of others lent valuable aid in 
 bringing forward important improvements that might not otherwise 
 have become known. 
 
 u He was a man of singular energy and industry, which, 
 directed by a clear judgment, were always devoted to the interests 
 of the service and the corps of which he was so prominent a member. 
 The great desire of his later life seems to have been that the naval 
 engineer corps should be permanently established in a prominent 
 and acknowledged position as a body of scientific as well as thor- 
 oughly-trained practical engineers, and to that end no personal 
 sacrifice seems to have been too great. ' ' 
 
 The examination of candidates for admission as cadet engineers 
 in 1866 showed that the age limit of eighteen years fixed by the act 
 of Congress providing for the system was not consistent with the 
 other requirement that they must have had two years practical 
 experience in the manufacture of steam machinery; this was pre- 
 sented to Congress by the the Secretary of the Navy in his report 
 for the year 1866, and the law promptly modified by a section of an 
 act to amend certain acts in relation to the navy, approved March 2, 
 1867, as follows: 
 
 "Sec. 2. And be it further enacted^ That so much of the 
 ' Act to authorize the Secretary of the Navy to provide for the 
 education of naval constructors and steam engineers, and for other 
 purposes,' approved July four, eighteen hundred and sixty-four, as 
 provides that cadet engineers, when appointed, shall be under 
 eighteen years of age, and shall have been employed at least two 
 years in the actual fabrication of steam machinery, is hereby 
 repealed. ?? 
 
 The meagre results of the efforts to inaugurate the cadet-eugi- 
 neer system discouraged the authorities and after the graduation of 
 the two cadets in 1868 the project was dropped for a time, and very 
 likely would never have been revived had it not been for the efforts 
 of Engineer-in-Chief King in lSTO-'TL When Mr. King first 
 proposed to Secretary Robeson that steps be taken to procure 
 
CADET ENGINEERS IN UNDRESS UNIFORM. 
 
 The Every-day Dress of the Academy. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 671 
 
 another class of cadet engineers he was met with a positive refusal: 
 he then interested two senators in the matter and had them call on 
 the Secretary in regard to it, their influence shaking his previous 
 determination. When Mr. King broached the subject again, which 
 was early in 1871, Mr. Robeson authorized him to prepare a new 
 form of regulations for admission, which he immediately did; the 
 proposed regulations were sent to Eear Admiral John L. Worden, 
 the superintendent of the Naval Academy, for his opinion, and were 
 approved by him after Mr. King had made a journey to Annapolis 
 and urged the superintendent to aid him in re-establishing the 
 course. The original approved copy of the paper was lost in some 
 manner between the office of Eear Admiral Worden and that of 
 Secretary Eobeson, but Mr. King prepared another copy, obtained 
 Worden's approving endorsement to it, and took it himself to the 
 Secretary, when he had the satisfaction of seeing it signed and thus 
 finally approved. 
 
 These regulations fixed the age for admission as cadet engi- 
 neers at between eighteen and twenty-two, specified the manner of 
 making application, the scope of the competitive examination, etc. , 
 and as soon as printed were sent by the Bureau of Steam Engineer- 
 ing to colleges and educational institutions all over the United 
 States. Few applications were received in response to this circular, 
 the reason for this, it is claimed, being that the officials at the col- 
 leges did not distribute the information for fear of losing students. 
 Mr. King then appealed personally to senators and representatives 
 in Congress to select boys and file applications for them, and in that 
 manner about forty candidates were procured for the examination 
 held in September of that year. From these a class of sixteen was 
 selected by competition and admitted to the Academy as cadet engi- 
 neers in October. The officers on duty at the Academy having 
 changed in the intervening three years, the new class of cadets 
 became experimental objects for the discovery of a course of study 
 for them, with the result that only five passed into the senior class 
 at the end of the academic year; two were found deficient and 
 dropped, and nine were turned back, making, with seventeen who 
 entered in 1872, a second class of twenty-six members. In Octo- 
 ber, 1873, sixteen more cadets were admitted, the first class then 
 consisting of fourteen members and the second class of twenty- 
 
672 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 three, and the system of educating engineer cadets at the Naval 
 Academy may be said to have been then well established. 
 
 By an act of Congress approved February 24, 1874, the 
 academic course for cadet engineers was made four years instead of 
 two, and another act, approved June 22, 1874, provided "that so 
 much of the act entitled 4 An act to authorize the Secretary of the 
 Navy to provide for the education of naval constructors and steam- 
 engineers, and for other purposes,' approved July 4, 1864, as pro- 
 vides that cadet engineers, not to exceed fifty in number, shall be 
 appointed by the Secretary of the Navy, is hereby repealed; and 
 cadet engineers shall hereafter be appointed annually by the Secre- 
 tary of the Navy, and the number appointed each year shall not 
 exceed twenty-five; and that all acts or parts of acts inconsistent 
 with the provisions of this act be, and the same are hereby re- 
 pealed." 1 These two laws went into effect with the class that 
 entered the Academy in September, 1874, this being the first fourth- 
 class of cadet engineers to become a part of the battalion of mid- 
 shipmen. New regulations governing the appointment of cadet 
 engineers, issued that same year, changed the limit of age for can- 
 didates to sixteen as the minimum and twenty as the maximum. 
 
 The cadet engineer system by this time had become well known 
 and popular, and each succeeding year brought a greater number of 
 candidates to the annual competitive examinations until it was not 
 unusual for nearly two hundred alert and well-schooled youths from 
 all sections of the country to compete for the twenty-five appoint- 
 ments each year. This made a system of selection that could not 
 well be improved, although it involved disappointment to the great 
 
 1 The following opinion as to this act of Congress is from the annual report of 
 the admiral of the navy for the year 1881 and is interesting in connection with it : 
 
 " No doubt this law authorizing 25 cadets to be annually added to the engineer 
 corps was passed through Congress unintentionally, for the law evidently intended 
 that 50 should be the entire number, and the abuse has continued unchecked to the 
 present time. 
 
 " While it was only intended that a few engineers should be annually admitted 
 as cadets at the Academy to educate them for their profession, the Academy will 
 become, if this system is adhered to, almost exclusively a school for steam-engineers, 
 quite losing sight of its original purpose, viz., to educate navigators and commanders 
 for the navy. 
 
 u I submit these remarks for your consideration, hoping that you may be able to 
 arrive at some solution of a problem which threatens to work injury to the navy." 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 673 
 
 majority of those examined. As the number of candidates con- 
 stantly increased, the Navy Department finally issued a warning to 
 applicants in these terms: "Candidates for admission as cadet 
 engineers are cautioned that the number of applicants is large, and 
 the competition exceedingly close. It is, therefore, useless for 
 candidates to present themselves unless well prepared on the sub- 
 ject of the examination, and unless their physical qualifications are 
 within the prescribed standard." This warning may have deterred 
 some who were conscious of deficient schooling from making the 
 journey to Annapolis, but it also served to encourage the highly 
 educated, and resulted in the admission of some each year who 
 found little in the curriculum of the Academy, outside of the purely 
 naval subjects, that was new to them, and who distinguished them- 
 selves in class-standing accordingly. It is a great pity that this 
 system was eventually overturned. 
 
 The subjects for the competitive examination looked easy in 
 the abstract to an average high-school boy, being stated in the 
 circular as follows: u Arithmetic; algebra, through equations of the 
 first degree; plane geometry ; rudimentary natural philosophy; 
 reading; writing; spelling; English grammar; English composition . 
 geography; free-hand drawing; and an elementary knowledge of 
 the principles governing the action of the steam-engine. Candi- 
 dates who possess the greatest skill and experience in the practical 
 knowledge of machinery, other qualifications being equal, will have 
 precedence for admission. 55 This last sounded well, but unfortu- 
 nately had no meaning, as under the rigid system of marking exam- 
 ination papers it was practically impossible for two candidates to 
 come out with the same marks, and the oral examination in steam 
 was assigned such a low multiple in making up the aggregate marks 
 that its weight was inappreciable. 
 
 Elementary as the examination appeared in the descriptive 
 circular issued to candidates, it was far from being so when adminis- 
 tered by the Academic Board. The result was that those who suc- 
 ceeded in getting appointments were the scholars, — often college 
 graduates, — and any young man who had spent much time in gain- 
 ing practical knowledge of machinery had no chance whatever with 
 those who had never been diverted from their books, thus defeating 
 one of the original provisions of the project. Of the classes that 
 
674 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 entered in 1874 and 1875 only one member of each is on record as 
 having had any practical experience with machinery, while in the 
 succeeding classes there was seldom even one. 
 
 A few questions taken from the examination papers of that time 
 will show how far beyond the stated subjects the examining officers 
 saw fit to go. In " algebra, through equations of the first degree" 
 we find things like this, — 
 
 "Reduce x« — 5x5-f4x 4 — 3x3-|-2x 2 — x-fl to the form Ax+ 
 B by means of the equation x 2 = 2x — 3. " 
 
 "Rudimentary natural philosophy" was considered broad 
 enough a subject to warrant this question: "Find the number of 
 units of work expended in raising from the ground the materials for 
 building a uniform column fifty feet in height and ten feet square, 
 a cubic foot of the material weighing one hundred and twelve 
 pounds. How high is the column when the work is half com- 
 pleted? " This was one of fifteen questions (and not the hardest 
 one, either) given in an examination limited to three hours. 
 
 The spelling examination was an aggregation of orthographic 
 horrors that would have struck terror to the soul of a professional 
 philologist, and the sentences given out for grammatical analysis 
 were simply unspeakable. In geography the uttermost parts of the 
 earth were ransacked for strange names and unknown regions; the 
 candidate was asked to u describe the Syr-Daria River, telling 
 where it rises, in what direction it flows, and into what water it 
 empties." He was asked to bound Servia and Routnania; to name 
 the four provinces of Ireland, and to locate Cape Lopatka. 
 
 There were of course twenty-five candidates each year who 
 weathered this ordeal better than the others and got the appoint- 
 ments; strange as it may seem, these twenty-five youths generally 
 came out with very creditable marks in spite of the fact that the 
 questions set them were far beyond what they had been notified to 
 expect, and each class of these cadet engineers possessed one or 
 more of those prodigies who, according to the pleasant fictions of 
 the service, drove the esteemed heads of the various academic 
 departments to despair r because the task of finding some new thing 
 to teach them was a hopeless one. Be this as it may, it is a fact 
 
Engineer Cadet-Officer, First, or Senior, class. The star on the collar was worn by a 
 few ranking members of each class as a mark of excellence in scholarship. 
 The stripes and double-diamond on the sleeve indicated cadet 
 rank corresponding to that of cadet captains of companies. 
 
 Cadet Engineer in "Parade Dress" " Service Dress " Uniform, worn by Cadet 
 Uniform Engineers after graduation, while per- 
 
 forming the two years' sea 
 service prescribed. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 675 
 
 that this system of selection, as it progressed from year to year, 
 brought remarkably fine material into the Academy, and made it 
 possible to build up at that institution a school of marine-engineering 
 and kindred sciences that was admittedly not excelled in the United 
 States at the time that the whole system was ruthlessly swept away. 
 
 In 1882, after the cadet-engineer system had been long enough 
 established to become an important element in the academic organi- 
 zation, and when the course of instruction, both professionally as 
 marine- engineers and generally as naval officers, had been developed 
 until it was almost perfect, the whole thing was abolished by act of 
 Congress, and the cadet-engineers then at the Academy were trans- 
 formed into naval cadets of the line. The act referred to, which 
 was approved August 5, 1882, provided that from and after that 
 date " there shall be no appointments of cadet-midshipmen or cadet- 
 engineers at the Naval Academy, but in lieu thereof naval cadets 
 shall be appointed from each Congressional district and at large, as 
 now provided by law for cadet-midshipmen, and all the undergrad- 
 uates at the Naval Academy shall hereafter be designated and called 
 'naval cadets;' and from those who successfully complete the six 
 years' course, appointments shall hereafter be made as it is neces- 
 sary to fill vacancies in the lower grades of the line and engineer 
 corps of the navy and of the marine corps: And provided further, 
 That no greater number of appointments into these grades shall be 
 made each year than shall equal the number of vacancies which has 
 occurred in the same grades during the preceding year; such 
 appointments to be made from, the graduates of the year, at the 
 conclusion of their six years' course, in the order of merit, as deter- 
 mined by the Academic Board of the Naval Academy; the assign- 
 ment to the various corps to be made by the Secretary of the Navy 
 upon the recommendation of the Academic Board. But nothing 
 herein contained shall reduce the number of appointments from such 
 graduates below ten in each year, nor deprive of such appointment 
 any graduate who may complete the six years' course during the 
 year eighteen hundred and eighty-two. And if there be a surplus 
 of graduates, those who do not receive such appointment shall be 
 given a certificate of graduation, an honorable discharge, and one 
 year's sea pay, as now provided by law for cadet-midshipmen; and 
 so much of section fifteen hundred and twenty- one of the Revised 
 Statutes as is inconsistent herewith is hereby repealed. 
 
676 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 ' 4 That any cadet whose position in his class entitles him to be 
 retained in the service may, upon his own application, be honorably 
 discharged at the end of the four years' course at the Naval 
 Academy, with a proper certificate of graduation. ' ' 
 
 The standing taken by the cadet engineers transferred into the 
 classes of midshipmen shows well the superior nature of the method 
 by which they had been selected. A year after the exchange was 
 made we find that seven of the first ten members of the graduating 
 class were former cadet engineers, and four of the six " star's " of 
 that class were engineers, although the first two members had been 
 midshipmen: it must be remembered that the engineers of this class 
 were seriously handicapped by going into the first class to compete 
 in technical studies with the midshipmen who had had at least one 
 year's study in such subjects before, and which the cadet engineers 
 had to make up in addition to the regular work. In the next class 
 the three leading members were former cadet engineers, the first one 
 having a multiple fifteen units above the highest midshipman, and 
 this same cadet engineer became the next year the "four-striper," 
 as the cadet who commands the battalion is called in academic 
 language. In the third class after the amalgamation took place, 
 and in which class the cadet engineers were on an equal footing with 
 the midshipmen, as their previous year's studies had been practically 
 identical, we find that thirteen of the first fifteen members, nine of 
 the first ten, and all six of the " stars " were former engineers, and 
 one of these cadet engineers also became in turn the commander 
 of the battalion of cadets. 
 
 For seven years following 1882 the few vacancies that occurred 
 in the engineer corps were filled by the promotion of cadets who had 
 been educated as line officers only; since 1889 the cadets destined 
 for the engineer corps have had the last year of the academic course 
 partially devoted to engineering subjects, and a little more attention 
 is now being given to the mechanical education of the line cadets, 
 although the older art of seamanship still retains a prominent place 
 in the curriculum of the school. All cadets now receive during 
 their third year (when second-classmen) theoretical and practical 
 instruction in steam engineering about equal to that formerly given 
 to cadet engineers of the second class, the shop-work now given 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 677 
 
 being if anything an improvement upon that form of instruction 
 under the former system. In the last, or first-class year, that por- 
 tion of the class that has been selected for future admission into the 
 engineer corps is withdrawn from the technical studies of seaman- 
 ship, ordnance, and navigation, and the time thus obtained devoted 
 to marine engines, higher mathematics, and other subjects having an 
 affinity with the profession of engineering. It remains to be seen 
 whether or not the present practice will inculcate that love of 
 mechanical science produced by the cadet-engineer system, and 
 which put forth graduates who as ship and engine designers in the 
 recent work of rebuilding our navy have reflected great credit upon 
 the navy, the corps to which they belong, and the system of educa- 
 tion under which they were trained. 
 
 The law governing the present system of dividing the classes 
 at the Academy was created by a special act of Congress, approved 
 March 2, 1889, and entitled " An act to regulate the course at the 
 Naval Academy." It reads in full as follows: 
 
 u That the Academic Board of the Naval Academy shall on or 
 before the thirtieth day of September in each year separate the first 
 class of naval cadets then commencing their fourth year into two 
 divisions, as they may have shown special aptitude for the duties of the 
 respective corps, in the proportion which the aggregate number of 
 vacancies occurring in the preceding fiscal year ending on the 
 thirtieth day of June in the lowest grades of commissioned officers 
 of the line of the navy and marine corps of the navy shall bear to 
 the number of vacancies to be supplied from the Academy occurring 
 during the same period in the lowest grade of commissioned officers 
 of the engineer corps of the navy; and the cadets so assigned to the 
 line and marine corps division of the first class shall thereafter pur- 
 sue a course of study arranged to fit them for service in the line of 
 the navy, and the cadets so assigned to the engineer corps division 
 of the first class shall thereafter pursue a separate course of study 
 arranged to fit them for service in the engineer corps of the navy, 
 and the cadets shall thereafter, and until final graduation at the end 
 of their six years' course, take rank by merit with those in the same 
 division, according to the merit marks; and from the final graduates 
 of the line and marine corps division, at the end of their six years' 
 
678 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 course, appointments shall be made hereafter as it shall be neceessary 
 to fill vacancies in the lowest grades of commissioned officers of the 
 line of the navy and marine corps; and the vacancies in the lowest 
 grades of the commissioned officers of the engineer corps of the 
 navy shall be filled in like manner by appointments from the final 
 graduates of the engineer division at the end of their six years' 
 course: Provided, That no greater number of appointments into the 
 said lowest grades of commissioned officers shall be made each year 
 than shall equal the number of vacancies which shall have occurred 
 in the same grades during the fiscal year then current; such 
 appointments to be made from the final graduates of the year, in the 
 order of merit as determined by the Academic Board of the Naval 
 Academy, the assignment to be made by the Secretary of the Navy 
 upon the recommendation of the Academic Board at the conclusion 
 of the fiscal year then current; but nothing contained herein or in 
 the naval appropriation act of August fifth, eighteen hundred and 
 eighty-two, shall reduce the number of appointments of final gradu- 
 ates at the end of their six years' course below twelve in each year 
 to the line of the navy, and not less than two shall be appointed 
 annually to the engineer corps of the navy, nor less than one 
 annually to the marine corps; and if the number of vacancies in the 
 lowest grades aforesaid, occurring in any year shall be greater than 
 the number of final graduates of that year, the surplus vacancies 
 shall be filled from the final graduates of following years as they 
 shall become available. 
 
 4 4 That after the fourth day of March, eighteen hundred and 
 eighty-nine, the minimum age of admission of cadets to the Academy 
 shall be fifteen years and the maximum age twenty years," 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 41 The Arctic Ocean has been for years the nursery of heroic deeds. And had 
 the results of enterprise been even less than they have been in that region of 
 frost and ice, and months-long night, what has been shown there of that which 
 is noblest and most admirable in man would have been worth all that it has 
 
 Steam Vessels of the United States Navy in the Arctic Ocean — The Polaris Ex- 
 pedition — Cruise of the Juniata and Tigress — The Je Annette Expedition 
 ■ — Retreat on the Ice— Heroism and Fortitude of Chief Engineer Melville — 
 Voyage and Loss of the Kodgeks — Naval and Congressional Investigations 
 Into the Loss of the Jeaotette — The Greely Relief Expedition — Tardy 
 Promotion of Chief Engineer Melville for Heroism Displayed in the Jean- 
 nette Expidition. 
 
 A N ACT of Congress approved July 12, 1870, authorized the 
 
 i\ President of the United States u to organize and send out 
 one or more expeditions towards the North Pole, and to appoint 
 such person, or persons as he may deem most fitted to the command 
 thereof; to detail any officer of the public service to take part in the 
 same, and to use any public vessel that may be suitable for the pur- 
 pose; the scientific operations of the expedition to be prescribed in 
 in accordance with the advice of the National Academy of Sciences. " 
 Several officers of the navy volunteered to go, but as finally ogan- 
 ized the expedition was composed wholly of civilians and therefore 
 cannot be regarded as a naval undertaking except to the extent that 
 the vessel employed was taken from the navy. The commander was 
 Mr. Charles F. Hall, a traveler of much arctic experience, and the 
 three officers next in rank were practical seamen who as masters or 
 mates of whaling and sealing vessels had grown familiar with the 
 northern seas. The chief engineer was a German named Schuman, 
 a civil engineer by profession, and the only assistant engineer was 
 Mr. Alvin A. Odell of New London, indirectly a naval man from 
 having been an acting third assistant engineer during the war and 
 honorably discharged at its close. 
 
 The vessel selected for the expedition was the Periwinkle^ a, 
 screw-steamer purchased in 1864 for $80,000, under the name of 
 
 cost. 
 
 —Rev. W. L. Gage. 
 
680 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 America, and used as a gun-boat in the Civil War. She was 
 strengthened and fitted for the voyage at the Washington navy 
 yard, her name changed to Polaris, and early in July, 1871, set out 
 on her venturesome journey. She was 135 feet long, 28 feet beam, 
 and when loaded with stores for the exploring trip drew nearly 12 
 feet of water. The large screw-sloop Congress was detailed to carry 
 coal and stores for the Polaris and proceeded as far north as 
 Godhavn in the island of Disco, on the west coast of Greenland, 
 she being by far the largest ship that had ever visited that port. 
 The transfer of supplies being effected at Godhavn, the Polaris on 
 the 17th of August, 1871, took her departure for the polar regions, 
 being cheered as she got under way by the crew of the Congress. 
 
 From that time no tidings were received from the expedition 
 until in May, 1873, when a telegram from the United States consul 
 at St. John's, Newfoundland, announced that ten of the people of 
 the Polaris had been brought to that port by the sealing steamer 
 Tigress, which had found them adrift on the ice in Baffin's Bay. 
 The United States steamer Frolic was at once despatched to St. 
 John's and took these survivors to Washington. They knew noth- 
 ing of the Polaris or of their shipmates, from whom they had been 
 separated in October, 1872, by the breaking up of the ice and had 
 been floating about on the ice since that time until rescued by the 
 Tigress, a period of one hundred and eighty-seven days. Immediate 
 preparations were made to seek for the Polaris and her crew: the 
 Tigress, as a vessel built for ice navigation, was chartered and com- 
 missioned at New York under the command of Commander James 
 A. Greer, proceeding to the arctic regions in July with orders to go 
 where the Polaris was last seen and make every effort to find her 
 people. The sloop-of-war Juniata was also sent north to carry sup- 
 plies for the Tigress and assist in the search as far as was prudent for 
 a vessel not built for arctic navigation. 
 
 She went as far as Upernavik on the west coast of Greenland 
 about 250 miles north of Godhavn, whence she supplied the Tigress, 
 and from which point her steam launch, named Little Juniata, made a 
 most extraordinary voyage of ten days to the northward in search of 
 signs of the Polaris. Two of the lieutenants of the Juniata who 
 went on this boat expedition were George W. De Long and Charles 
 W. Chipp, both fated to end their lives in the arctic regions at a later 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 681 
 
 period. The chief engineer of the Tigress was First Assistant Engi- 
 neer George W. Melville, and Lieutenant Kobert M. Berry was a 
 watch-officer in the same ship, both whom have since become dis- 
 tinguished for arctic deeds. 
 
 The search of the Tigress was not successful for the reason that 
 the people of the Polaris had been rescued by other means. Their 
 ship was crushed in the ice the day after the unfortunate portion of 
 the crew had been carried away on the ice-floe, and the remainder 
 of the crew had remained in camp by the wreck until the next 
 spring when they built two boats from the ship's timbers and made 
 their way southward until picked up by a whaling steamer off Cape 
 York. Mr. Hall, the commander of the expedition, had died of 
 apoplexy a short time before the disaster to the Polaris^ but with 
 that exception the whole ship's company survived their trying 
 adventures. The Tigress got as far north as the highest point 
 reached by Dr. Kane's expedition, her success in this particular 
 being, according to Commander Greer's reports, largely due to the 
 energy and skill of Mr. Melville who kept the machinery in running 
 order under many disadvantages. 
 
 While the Juniata was at Godhavn Mr. Henry E. Khoades, 
 second assistant engineer of that vessel, was sent on an expedition 
 with the steam launch about ninety miles to examine some coal 
 mines on the island of Disco. He found coal in abundance and 
 with the boat's crew aided by natives mined a quantity of it for 
 the use of his ship, storing it at a convenient place on the beach. 
 On the return voyage of the steam launch Mr. Rhoades made use 
 of this coal to keep up steam, carefully observing and noting its 
 qualities, his observations being subsequently embodied in a report 
 which was regarded as such an addition to the subject that it was 
 printed in full in report of the Secretary of the Navy for that year 
 (1873). 
 
 In 1879 another arctic expedition under government auspices 
 left the United States, it having been brought about through the 
 liberality and public spirit of Mr. James Gordon Bennett, proprietor 
 of the New York Herald. In this case the route selected was by 
 way of Behring Straits, on the theory that less ice than elsewhere 
 would be found in that region on account of the Kuro Siwo, or 
 black stream of Japan, dividing and discharging some of its warm. 
 
 87 
 
682 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 waters up through the straits. No polar expedition had ever gone 
 by this route before, though its supposed advantages were recog- 
 nized and an expedition several years before, under the command of 
 a French lieutenant, would have gone that way but for the outbreak 
 of the Franco-Prussian War. 
 
 Mr. Bennett employed Lieutenant De Long of the navy to 
 examine vessels fit for arctic service in different ports in Europe 
 and to purchase the one that in his judgment was most serviceable, 
 the result of De Long's work being the purchase from Sir Allen 
 Young of London of the steamer Pandora in which the owner had 
 made two or three voyages to the arctic regions. She had originally 
 been a gun-boat in the British navy and had been purchased by Sir 
 Allen Young to enable him to gratify his taste for arctic adventure. 
 She was 142 feet in length, 25 feet beam and drew about 13 feel- 
 when fully equipped for service. Mr. Bennett changed her name 
 to Jeannette, though the name Pandora might very appropriately 
 have been retained, for a veritable box of evils she proved to be for 
 those who embarked in her. Commanded by Lieutenant De Long, 
 the Jeannette proceeded from Havre to San Francisco during the 
 summer and fall of 1888. 
 
 Congress had already passed an act in aid of the proposed 
 expedition, reading as follows: 
 
 " Whereas James Gordon Bennett, a citizen of the United 
 States, has purchased in Great Britain a vessel supposed to be 
 specially adapted to arctic expeditions, and proposes, at his own 
 cost, to fit out and man said vessel, and to devote her to efforts to 
 solve the Polar problem; and 
 
 " Whereas it is deemed desirable that said vessel, while so 
 engaged, shall carry the American flag and be officered by American 
 naval officers: Therefore, 
 
 66 Be it enacted by the Senate and Souse of Representatives of the 
 United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of 
 the Treasury be authorized to issue an American register to said 
 vessel by the name of 6 4 Jeannette, 5 9 and that the President of the 
 United States be authorized to detail, with their own consent, com- 
 missioned, warrant, and petty officers of the navy, not to exceed 
 ten in number, to act as officers of said vessel during her first voy- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 683 
 
 age to the Arctic seas: Provided, however, That such detail shall be 
 made of such officers only as the President is satisfied can be absent 
 from their regular duties without detriment to the public service. 
 "Approved, March 18, 1878." 
 
 About a year later another act, approved February 27, 1879, 
 authorized the Secretary of the Navy to accept and take charge of 
 the Jeannette; to use public material in fitting her for arctic service; 
 to ship her crew for special service and pay them from the naval 
 pay fund, the same to be refunded by Mr. Bennett if required. 
 The act also specified that the expedition should be carried out under 
 the auspices and orders of the Navy Department, and that the men 
 enlisted for it should be subject in all respects to the Articles of 
 War and the Navy Eegulations. 
 
 At the navy yard at Mare Island, California, the Jeannette was 
 thoroughly fitted out for her voyage, receiving new boilers, and 
 being strengthened by a system of heavy internal bracing to with- 
 stand the the pressure of ice. Finally with ample provisions for a 
 long cruise and all the clothing, equipment and paraphernalia for a 
 long sojourn in the cold, she sailed from San Francisco on the 8th 
 of July, 1879, her officers being the following: 
 
 Lieutenant George W. De Long, U. S. N... Commanding. 1 
 
 Lieutenant Charles W. Chipp, " Executive. 
 
 Master John W. Danenhower, " Navigator 2 
 
 Passed Assistant Engineer George W. Melville, U. S. N Chief Engineer. 3 
 
 Passed Assistant Surgeon James M. Ambler, " Surgeon. 
 
 Mr. Jerome J. Collins, (civilian) Meteorologist, 
 
 Mr. Raymond L. Newcomb, (civilian) Naturalist. 
 
 Mr. William Dunbar, (civilian) ...» Ice Pilot. 
 
 The three civilians named were shipped as seamen to satisfy 
 the terms of the act of Congress authorizing the enlistment of the 
 crew, but were in all respects treated as officers, officially, socially, 
 and in all ways. Besides those named, the crew consisted of 
 twenty-four persons, all picked men as to physique, and many of 
 
 1 Promoted to be Lieutenant commander, November 1, 1879, 
 * Promoted to be Lieutenant, August 2, 1879. 
 3 Promoted to be Chief Engineer, March 4, 1881. 
 
684 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 them of previous arctic service. The experience of one of these 
 men, Wm. F. C. Nindemann, rated as Ice Quartermaster, is worthy 
 of remark: He had been one of the crew of the Polaris and was 
 one of the party drifted away from that ship and subjected to the 
 memorable six months' hardship of the long drift on the ice-floe; 
 when rescued and taken into St. John's he had not had enough of 
 the polar regions and promptly volunteered to go in the search party 
 with Commander Greer in the Tigress, his knowledge being found 
 of much value on that expedition. Now we find him embarking on 
 another attempt to penetrate the frozen zone, and it may be remarked 
 that his services were so valuable that he was one of two enlisted 
 men recommended by De Long for medals of honor. 
 
 On the second of August the Jeannette was at Ounalaska, where 
 a quantity of deer skins, seal- skin blankets and other furs were 
 procured. Thence she proceeded to the old Russian trading post of 
 St. Michael's, in Norton Sound, where two Indian hunters were 
 engaged and where the schooner Fanny A. Hyde, previously chartered 
 to carry a cargo of coal, was met. With the schooner in company 
 the Jeannette crossed over to a harbor just below the East Cape of 
 Asia, transferred there the coal and some other supplies and then, 
 on the 27th of August, turned away from the land of the living, 
 passed through Behring Straits, and stood up into the cold and 
 whiteness of the undiscovered northland. The wanderings of the 
 Jeannette for nearly two years after the date we have reached have 
 been fully and pathetically told in other books, for which reason the 
 subject will be passed over quickly. Drifting ice and stormy 
 weather were encountered from the first, and on the eighth day of 
 September, 1879, less than two weeks after entering the Arctic 
 Ocean, she became solidly frozen in the pack ice and never again 
 escaped from it. For twenty-one months the luckless ship was car- 
 ried hither and thither by the drifting ice, sometimes returning to 
 positions that had been observed months before: the summer of 
 1880 brought no release from the grip of the ice as had been devot- 
 edly hoped for, and the wretched people ultimately had the sorrow 
 of seeing the brief sunshine fade away and another long and silent 
 arctic winter set in. When summer came again the ice finally 
 opened alongside the Jeannette, then about five hundred miles to the 
 northwest of where she had been first caught, and for a brief hour 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 685 
 
 she was afloat; but the great masses of ice closed in on her with the 
 power of a million gigantic vises and so crushed her sides that all 
 possibility of ever floating in her again vanished, and the people had 
 to abandon her with their sleds, boats, tents, provisions and some 
 clothing, forming a camp on the ice near by. That was the eleventh 
 day of June, 1881. About four o'clock the next morning the camp 
 was aroused by the man on watch crying, u Turn out if you want to 
 see the last of the Jeannette. There she goes ! There she goes !" 
 
 u Most of us had barely time to arise and look out, when, amid 
 the rattling and banging of her timbers and iron- work, the ship 
 righted and stood almost upright ; the floes that had come in and 
 crushed her slowly backed off, and as she sank with slightly accel- 
 erated velocity, the yard-arms were stripped and broken upward 
 parallel to the masts; and so, like a great, gaunt skeleton clapping 
 its hands above its head, she plunged out of sight." 1 
 
 After this disaster about one week was spent in allowing some 
 of the men to recuperate from illness and in preparing for the effort 
 to reach land, and then this devoted party set out on what is prob- 
 ably the most painful and remarkable march ever performed by 
 men. With their sleds, boats, and all equipage they started toil- 
 somely toward the Siberian coast across the broken and irregular 
 ice floes, dragging their impediments over hummocks, through run- 
 ning ice and half-melted snow, piece by piece, the conditions of the 
 march compelling them sometimes to travel back and forth as many 
 as thirteen times over one stage of the journey in order to transport 
 all the baggage to the advanced point. To save the men's eyes as 
 much as possible from the glare of the sunshine on the ice and snow, the 
 marching was done during that portion of the twenty-four hours 
 that in another latitude would have been night, though here the men 
 had to face the sullen blaze of the red midnight sun. The rough 
 ice cut out moccasins and foot-gear obliging the men to toil almost 
 barefooted, while the unevenness of the surface and the many un- 
 seen pools and streams of water under slush and snow caused so 
 many falls and wettings that it was a usual spectacle to see half the 
 party at a time stripped stark naked on the ice wringing out 
 
 'Chief Engineer G. W. Melville, U. S. Navy, —"In the Lena Delta," p. 32. 
 
686 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 their clothing. It is almost past belief that men can withstand such 
 hardship, but these men did, sleeping on the ice and in the snow 
 for three months without serious illness or evil results. 
 
 After two weeks of this frightful toil De Long found by an 
 observation that they had actually retrogressed twenty-four miles 
 instead of making any distance to the southward, this being due to 
 the fact that the whole vast ice field was afloat and had been drift- 
 ing to the northward faster than the outcasts could make good their 
 route in the other direction. He told only Chipp and Melville of 
 this, rightly considering that the leaders of the working parties were 
 sufficient to know it without adding the discouraging news to the 
 troubles of the weary men. And here it will be well to speak of 
 the invaluable qualities displayed by Chief Engineer Melville 
 during all the discouraging events of a very discouraging voyage. 
 A man of oaken constitution, indomitable will, and truly magnificent 
 courage both moral and physical, he soon proved himself to be by 
 far the most valuable helper that De Long had, and this without 
 disparagement of the other officers, each of whom was a picked man, 
 and resourceful to an unusual degree. De Long's journals abound 
 in complimentary references to the skill and ability of the chief 
 engineer and record with sketches and descriptions a great number 
 of mechanical contrivances and make-shifts devised by Melville to 
 meet emergencies ; there being in fact so much of this that De Long 
 himself remarked that his journal "looked more like an engineer's 
 notebook than a seaman's log." 
 
 Illustrative of Melville's dauntless nature and courage in ad- 
 versity is the fact that during the second winter in the ice-pack, 
 when the hearts of many of his associates were sick with deferred 
 hope and when despair of ever again participating in the affairs of 
 the world had reduced several of them to a condition of hebetude, 
 he rose superior to the surrounding lethargy and employed his spare 
 time in preparing plans and specifications for a steamship for arctic 
 exploration, making all the drawings and describing all the struc- 
 tural details with as great care as though half a dozen shipyards 
 were available to compete for a contract to build the vessel. These 
 plans and specifications were preserved among De Long's papers 
 and are described with reproductions of some of the drawings in 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 687 
 
 Mrs. De Long's " Voyage of the Jeannette. " Perhaps the party 
 
 that some day will see the North Pole will journey there in a ship 
 
 whose designs were born of captivity in the midst of the frozen 
 ocean. 
 
 A few extracts from De Long's journals are worth repeating as 
 indicative of the qualities of Mr. Melville as an officer, engineer 
 and man, as those qualities were impressed upon the mind of his 
 commanding officer. 
 
 6 ' Melville is as bright as a dollar and as cheerful as possible all 
 the time. He sits on my left at table and helps me to carve and 
 serve out. We broke a pump-rod two days ago. Some engineers 
 would have wanted to stop the ship a few days for this, or perhaps 
 turn back. Not he; he says 'all right; we will run without a 
 pump-rod, hey brother, and when we get in I will make you a new 
 pump-rod or fifty of them. ' I believe he could make an engine out 
 of a few barrel hoops if he tried hard. He is one of the strong 
 points of this expedition." 
 
 u Melville is more and more a treasure every day. He is not 
 only without a superior as an engineer, but he is bright and cheer- 
 ful to an extraordinary extent. He sings well, is always contented, 
 and brightens everybody by his presence alone. He is always self- 
 helpful and reliant, never worries about the future, is ready for any 
 emergency, has a cheerful word for everybody night and morning, 
 and is, in fine, a tower of strength in himself. 3 ' 
 
 " Still everything is done quietly and with precision, and aided 
 by Chipp and Melville, whose superiors the navy cannot show, with 
 their untiring energy, splendid judgment, and fertility of device, 1 
 am confident of being able to do all that man can do to carry on the 
 expedition to a safe termination." 
 
 u I have decided to send a party to try to make a landing on 
 Henrietta Island. . . . Having but one commissioned officer 
 available, Melville, he must take charge of the party. 
 Consequently I make out orders for Mr. Melville to go in command, 
 and to take Mr. Dunbar, JSTindemann, Ericksen, Bartlett, and Sharvell 
 with him, and to start to-morrow morning. 
 
 "The party landed on the island on Thursday, June 2d (Fri- 
 day, June 3d), hoisted our silk flag, took possession of the island in 
 
688 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the name of the Great Jehovah and the United States of America, 
 and, agreeably to my orders, named it Henrietta Island. 
 The ice between the ship and the island is something frightful. 
 Road-digging, ferrying, and its attendant loading and unloading, 
 arm- breaking hauls, and panic-stricken dogs made the journey a 
 terribly severe one. Near the island the ice was all alive, and 
 Melville left his boat and supplies, and carrying only a day's pro- 
 visions and his instruments, at the risk of his life went through the 
 terrible mass, actually dragging the dogs, which from fear refused 
 to follow their human leaders. If this persistence in landing upon 
 this island, in spite of the superhuman difficulties he encountered, is 
 not reckoned a brave and meritorious action, it will not be from any 
 failure on my part to make it known." 
 
 After nearly a month of toiling over the ice the crew of the 
 lost Jeannette arrived on Bennett Island and remained there several 
 days repairing their boats and making other preparations for a 
 journey by water, for the ice was now sufficiently open to make this 
 possible. The party left Bennett Island in three boats, De Long 
 commanding the 1st cutter, Chipp the 2d, and Melville the whale- 
 boat, Lieutenant Danenhower, Mr. Newcomb, the naturalist, 
 and eight men being embarked in the latter. Though a staff officer 
 and therefore not allowed by law a right to exercise command of 
 any description, even over the men of his own department for 
 whose conduct and performance of duty he was responsible, Mr. 
 Melville was regularly in command of the whale-boat by De Long's 
 orders. This came about through the physical disability of Lieu- 
 tenant Danenhower, whose eyes had broken down, and there being 
 no other line officer in the party with a right to command, Lieu- 
 tenant Commander De Long selected Melville as the most competent 
 other person and gave him this order in writing: 
 
 U U. S. Arctic Expedition. 
 
 ' < Cape Emma, Bennett Island, 
 " Lat. 76° 38' N., 
 
 " Long. 148° 20' E. 
 
 " August 5th, 1881. 
 "P. A. Engineer Geo. W. Melville, U. S. Navy: 
 
 u Sir,-™- We shall leave this island to-morrow, steering a course 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OFTHE UNITED STATES. 689 
 
 (over ice or through water, as the case may be) south magnetic. In 
 the event of our embarking in our boats at any time after the start, 
 you are hereby ordered to take command of the whale-boat until such 
 time as I relieve you from that duty, or assign you to some other. 
 
 u Every person under my command at this time, who may be 
 embarked in that boat at any time, is under your charge, and subject 
 to your orders, and you are to exercise all care and diligence for 
 their preservation and the safety of the boat. You will, under all 
 circumstances, keep close to the boat in which I shall embark, but 
 if, unfortunately, we become separated, you will make the best of 
 your way south until you make the coast of Siberia, and follow it 
 along to the westward as far as the Lena Eiver. This river is the 
 destination of our party, and without delay you will, in case of 
 separation, ascend the Lena to a Kussian settlement from which 
 you can communicate, or be forwarded with your party to some 
 place of security and easy access. If the boat in which I am em- 
 barked is separated from the other two boats, you will at once place 
 yourself under the orders of Lieut. C. W. Chipp, and, so long as 
 you remain in company, obey such orders as he may give you. 
 
 ' c Respectfully, 
 
 " George W. De Long, 
 ' 1 Commanding XT. S. Arctic Expedition. ? 9 
 
 After perils and adventures sufficient to fill a book in the tell- 
 ing the three boats finally arrived at Simonoski Island only ninety 
 miles north-east of the Asiatic mainland. On the morning of Sep- 
 tember 12th, 1881, they sailed thence with every reason for be- 
 lieving that their troubles were nearly over: the sea was open; the 
 wind fair, and Cape Barkin on the Lena Delta, where they expected 
 to find natives and food, less than one day's sail away. But the 
 wind freshened and increased to a gale, constantly flooding the 
 boats with icy water, and drove them far apart. Chipp 's boat cap- 
 sized and all in it were lost. After being hove to for a considerable 
 time in the gale and enduring the most terrible suffering the other 
 two boats reached the mainland, De Long on the north shore of the 
 delta and Melville on the east coast some two hundred miles away. 
 Leaving to the proper chroniclers the unhappy task of telling of 
 De Long's fate, it will suffice here to say that by the time the land- 
 
690 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ing was effected the winter season was so far advanced that wild 
 game^ had gone from the northern part of the delta and the few 
 natives who roam over that region had also mostly gone to the 
 southward. After about six weeks of wandering about pitifully in 
 quest of human beings and food this boat's crew, with the excep- 
 tion of two men sent ahead looking for help, perished miserably of 
 cold and starvation. 
 
 Melville landed about a week later than De Long and so much 
 further to the southward that he found natives, of whose assistance 
 he was in sore need, for his party was in frightful condition with 
 frozen hands, feet and faces, without proper clothing, and almost 
 without food. They were sheltered in a village called Jamavaeloch 
 inhabited by a few families of squalid Yakuts subsisting upon frozen 
 fish, and received kindly treatment from them so far as their re- 
 sources extended. Mr. Melville, despite his crippled condition, used 
 every effort to induce these natives to assist his party to Belun, 
 about 180 miles distant, where there was known to be a Eussian out- 
 post, but the journey was for some time impossible on account of 
 the broken condition of the ice in the river over which a consider- 
 able part of the route lay. By the offer of a large reward Mel- 
 ville finally induced a Eussian exile to make the journey, after 
 the exile had refused to go with him as a guide. Fifteen days 
 later when this man returned to Jamavaeloch he brought infor- 
 mation that he had met on his return some natives conveying 
 towards Belun two American sailors, as well as a promise from 
 the Cossack commandant at Belun to extend succor to the ship- 
 wrecked people as soon as possible. The two sailors had written 
 a note and entrusted it to the exile, saying that a search party 
 with food and clothing was wanted to go to the assistance of 
 Lieutenant Commander De Long, Dr. Ambler, and nine other 
 men who were stated to be in a starving condition to the north- 
 ward. 
 
 This note was delivered to Mr. Melville the evening of Octo- 
 ber 29th, and was the first intimation he had that the first cutter 
 had reached land. That night he forced the natives to go to a 
 neighboring village for dogs and the next morning he set out by 
 dog sled for Belun to see the two sailors and learn from them 
 the particulars of the landing and condition of De Long's party° 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OP THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 601 
 
 At Belun he found the men to be the faithful Nindemann and a 
 seaman named Itforos, both in a terribly exhausted and debilitated 
 condition as the result of the hardships from which they had 
 barely escaped with their lives. After arranging with the priest 
 of the village to see that the two men were cared for, Melville re- 
 traced his steps as far as the station called Burulach, where, by a 
 written agreement sent by Bartlett, a fireman belonging to his party, 
 he met the Cossack commandant returning from Jamavaeloch with 
 the remainder of the whale-boat's crew. Here he obtained by aid 
 of the Cossack, dogs, sleds, and provisions for a journey to the 
 north of the Delta, and gave Lieutenant Danenhower orders 
 to take all the party but Bartlett as far south as Yakutsk. 
 Bartlett he ordered to remain at Belun for thirty days, and then 
 if he (Melville) had not returned to collect provisions, get 
 together a team of dogs, and go in search of him. Having at- 
 tended to all these matters, Melville with two natives, two dog- 
 sleds and a small quantity of frozen fish for food for the dogs and 
 himself set his face to the northward to search for his missing 
 commander and shipmates. This on the 5th day of November, 
 1881. 
 
 On that day and in that remote and forbidding region occurred 
 the most magnificent example of genuine heroism that this nine- 
 teenth century has seen, for the action of Chief Engineer G. W. 
 Melville just described is entitled to that distinction. To compre- 
 hend exactly what he did it is necessary to mentally review the 
 events of his life that had immediately preceded: the farewell to the 
 sights and sounds of civilization more than two years before; the 
 twenty-one months of helpless drifting in the grasp of the ice, when 
 hope of ever seeing native land and home again must sometimes 
 have left the stoutest hearts; the fearful march over the ice; the 
 hardships and perils of the boat journey; the storm, and bitter dis- 
 appointment when almost within touch of rescue; the separation; 
 the loss of companions, and the final escape, frozen and half- dead 
 from the clutches of the Polar Ocean, had all been his lot. Having 
 passed through all this, it was his natural right, impelled by the in- 
 stinct of self-preservation, to venture no more, but to save his life 
 as something he had well earned. 
 
 To the southward toward Yakutsk whither he had ordered 
 
692 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Danenhower to proceed, a warmer sun was shining, and there lay 
 the great Russian road leading to the borders of civilization; to the 
 railway; to the bine sea; to home. Few men after passing through 
 all the perils that Melville had survived would have thrown away 
 that seeming last chance of personal safety, but he, being cast in a 
 rare heroic mould, turned his back upon the means of saving him- 
 self and set his rugged face to the northward, forcing his way into 
 the darkness and awful silence of the arctic winter like one deliber- 
 ately invading the dominions of death. The cold was intense; the 
 obstacles to progress almost insurmountable; the food supply gave 
 out; the two natives became frightened and discouraged, refusing to 
 go further into the dreary waste until actually clubbed by the in- 
 domitable American into awed obedience; even the dogs, inured to 
 the climate as they were, became seized with terror and crouched 
 down whining in the snow afraid to go further. But all this did not 
 daunt the spirit of the leader: by entreaty; by threats, and by resort- 
 ing to force at times, he kept his little band in motion, sleeping in 
 abandoned fishing huts drifted full of snow and subsisting upon fish 
 heads and other offal found in the scrap heaps left from the last 
 season's fishing, until his object was attained and at the northern- 
 most point of the delta he stood upon the waste shore of the Arctic 
 Ocean. 
 
 There he found the spot where De Long had landed, and near 
 by a cache from which he recovered the log-books of the Jeannette, 
 some nautical and surgical instruments, and some specimens from 
 Bennett Island, left there because De Long's people could carry 
 them no longer. With these and with a meagre supply of fish 
 obtained from the natives in some huts called North Belun, he re- 
 turned through the delta searching for De Long until the trail was 
 hopelessly lost because of the winter changes in the face of nature.. 
 Then, his supply of fish being again exhausted and his men and 
 dogs in despair of their lives, he made his way back to Belun, hav- 
 ing penetrated the bitter night nearly three hundred miles directly 
 north, his course going and coming by the devious paths necessarily 
 followed being more than eleven hundred miles, and returned to 
 tell the tale; something that no white man had ever done before, 
 and no native ever attempted at that season of the year except when 
 spurred by dire necessity. The Skalds of old Norway would have 
 delighted in this story as a subject for epic song. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 693 
 
 Melville arrived at Belun November 27th, where he might well 
 have rested from his terrible journey 5 but to one of his temperament 
 there was no rest so long as work remained to be done. Feeling 
 the need of seeing the governor of the district in person to get 
 authority to draw upon the people of the delta for help and supplies 
 in prosecuting the search and also being desirous of communicating 
 with his own government, he collected reindeer teams and provisions 
 and on the first day of December set out for Yakutsk, six hundred 
 miles distant, over a mountain range on which he more than once 
 slept under the white stars with the temperature seventy degrees 
 below the freezing point. After a short sojourn at the large village 
 of Verkeransk, where in his narrative Melville says he got the first 
 good dinner he had eaten since leaving San Francisco, he arrived at 
 Yakutsk December 30th, where he was royally received by General 
 Tschernaieff, the governor, and found Danenhower and party com- 
 fortably quartered. Here a few days afterward he received tele- 
 grams in reply to others sent by him by courier soon after his 
 landing at Jamavaeloch, the most important one reading: 
 
 c ' Melville, Engineer, U. $* Navy, Irkutsk : 
 
 u Omit no effort, spare no expense, in securing safety of men 
 in second cutter. Let the sick and the frozen of those already 
 rescued have every attention, and, as soon as practicable, have them 
 transferred to milder climate. Department will supply necessary 
 funds. 
 
 fi 4 Hunt, Secretary." 
 
 This and other telegrams had been brought by horse- sled more 
 than two thousand miles over the snow from Irkutsk and arrived at 
 Yakutsk just in time to prevent the undaunted and tireless Melville 
 from undertaking that long journey to get at the end of a telegraph 
 wire. He immediately arranged for the use of money in abundance 
 and gave Danenhower orders to proceed with the men to Irkutsk and 
 thence home, keeping with himself however the two best men, 
 Bartlett and Bmdemann, to aid in the search for De Long on the 
 delta. With the aid and advice of General Tschernaieff, sleds, 
 utensils, previsions, and all necessities for a stay of six months in the 
 
694 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 north were collected, not omitting many useful articles to be given 
 to the natives who had played the Good Samaritan to the miserable 
 boat's crew when cast up by the frozen ocean, and on the 27th of 
 January, 1882, Melville again turned to the northward, this time 
 with a considerable party of followers and a large provision train. 
 
 The frightful journey in snow and cold over the mountains; the 
 winter desolation found at Belun and vicinity, and the difficulty of 
 procuring fish for dog food are all details of delay that may be passed 
 over. At last all obstacles were overcome and by the first week in 
 March Melville was again in that part of the delta where he knew 
 De Long's party should be, and with depots of supplies established 
 was already prosecuting the search, leading one party himself and 
 keeping others on the move under command of Nindemann and 
 Bartlett. By that time nearly all the men, women, children and 
 dogs on the delta had become followers of him, partly because the 
 governor of the province had sent orders by the spravnik of the 
 district to lend every aid in forwarding the search, and partly 
 because Melville had collected almost all the food of the region and 
 stored it in his depots. Facing the furious gales and drifting snow 
 the parties tramped back and forth for about two weeks without 
 result, until on March 23d, Melville, alone at the time except for 
 the presence of a Yakut carrying his compass, came upon three 
 black objects partly buried in the snow, which proved to be the 
 bodies of De Long, Dr. Ambler, and Ah Sam, the Chinese cook. 
 To quote from Melville's own narrative: 
 
 46 1 identified De Long at a glance by his coat. He lay on his 
 right side, with his right hand under his cheek, his head pointing 
 north, and his face turned to the west. His feet were drawn 
 slightly up as though he were sleeping; his left arm was raised with 
 the elbow bent, and his hand, thus horizontally lifted, was bare. 
 About four feet back of him, or toward the east, I found his small 
 note-book or ice-journal, where he had tossed it with his left hand, 
 which looked as though it had never recovered from the act, but had 
 frozen as I found it, upraised." 
 
 The bodies of the others were found in the immediate vicinity 
 soon after, and also journals, books, and records relating to the 
 
" FOUND." 
 
 (Published by permission from a copyrighted photograph by Mr. E. N. Hart, of Brooklyn, from the famous painting by Operti, 
 
 exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition). 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 697 
 
 voyage, now over, Here, then, was the end of the expedition of 
 the Jeannette which had started forth with such lofty hopes and now 
 found its conclusion, not unlike that of other attempts to solve the 
 mystery of the awful North. Some of the brave company were 
 now miserably trailing their way to the southward with the sole 
 desire of finding home; others had been swallowed by the pitiless 
 Arctic Ocean, and here were the remainder, buried in the snow and 
 beaten by the elements, while dumb in a bundle of rags was the 
 leader, the frigid marble of his face, for five months hardened by 
 the blasts of the northern winter, proof against the keen tooth 
 of the arctic fox or prowling wolf. An eloquent object-lesson. Yet 
 the man who saw all this at his feet, and whose cultivated mind did 
 not fail to perceive the moral behind it, was so endowed with that 
 aggressive spirit that never admits defeat that as soon as he was 
 well restored to his own country and the comforts of civilization he 
 offered to lead another expedition, confident of being victorious over 
 all the demoniac powers of the North. 
 
 From the timbers of an old flat boat, drifted down the Lena 
 River, two thousand miles or more by the spring floods and left 
 stranded in the delta years before, Melville built a huge box or 
 coffin for his dead, and from a spar of heavy driftwood he fashioned 
 a rude cross upon which the names of the unfortunates were deeply 
 carved. These with infinite toil and with the assistance of all the 
 natives and dogs on the delta, were dragged some twenty miles to 
 the summit of a great rock, the highest point in all that weary land, 
 and there he buried his comrades, erecting over their grave the 
 cross and a pyramid of stones as a monument which he thought and 
 hoped would last for all time. Afterward, by Congressional ap- 
 proval, the bodies were removed and brought home. The cairn 
 tomb erected by Melville has, by means of voluntary contributions 
 of the officers of the navy, been reproduced in granite and marble 
 and stands on the bank of the Severn Eiver, overlooking the beau- 
 tiful grounds of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. 
 
 The last duty to his comrades done, Melville turned again to 
 his stern labors. Heading one party himself and sending out 
 others under Bartlett and Nindemann every foot of the dreary coast 
 of the delta and the Bay of Borkhia as far eastward as Oceansk was 
 tramped over in search for traces of Chipp and the second cutter's 
 
698 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 crew, but nothing whatever was found; nor did Melville expect to 
 find anything, for the evidence of his own eyes made it certain that 
 that unfortunate party had perished the night the boats were separ- 
 ated in the storm, Still, he felt it a duty to leave nothing undone 
 to remove harrowing doubt and uncertainty from the minds of rela- 
 tives and friends of the missing men. About the first of May Mr. 
 Melville realized that he could do no more and determined to leave 
 the scene of his long labors. So thoroughly had he scoured the 
 whole delta region that he had, to use the words of his official 
 report to the Navy Department, " exhausted all the dogs and had 
 used so many fish that the natives in some places were almost in a 
 starving condition; but I paid for the use of the dogs and for the 
 fish at the regular rates in cash or trade, and had the approval of 
 the spravnik of the district. 55 
 
 Mr. Melville, after a most tiresome journey of over three 
 thousand miles, partly overland through snow and floods and 
 partly in wretched boats on the river, arrived at Irkutsk, the capital 
 city of Siberia, on the fifth day of July, 1882. From there he tel- 
 egraphed his arrival to the Secretary of the Navy, and received a 
 telegram in return authorizing him to return to the United States 
 with the men of his party. At St. Petersburg he, with Lieuten- 
 ant E. M. Berry of the American navy and two of the seamen, was 
 presented to the Czar and most kindly received by him, and 
 throughout the whole journey he was the recipient of the utmost 
 consideration and marks of respect; for the story of his heroic ex- 
 ploits was then known throughout the civilized world. After short 
 stops at Berlin and Paris, where other honors were shown him, he 
 sailed on the steamer Parlhia from Liverpool and set foot on his 
 native soil and in his native city at New York the 13th of Septem- 
 ber, three years and two months from the time the unfortunate 
 Jeannette had passed out of the Golden Gate with her fortunes still 
 unknown. Of the honors tendered Mr. Melville after his return it is 
 hardly necessary to speak. By resolutions of boards of aldermen 
 or other city officials he was given public receptions in the cities 
 of New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, while many similar 
 courtesies had to be declined on account of urgent affairs in 
 Washington connected with the history of the expedition of which 
 he was the most responsible survivor. 
 
. fflCSIMNT WILLIAM SWU€R CHAIH 
 
 *^fr»M, „„,//,.,„. ,,/;./„.,„/,/,.,,„,,,,„„.,„,„ ,,,„,, r/ r7JL mm tf il 
 
 f " -"""ft /It f**/f/f f/tf/t t,.>,<r.-,.. 
 
 r 
 
 fei \mm. lfaamoihfe»r.(f|f-flitcrifinnq spirit 
 
 M, fj„y,„„J lr,„./ n i,.,/,/„„ „/ „„/ /,„„ „, /„ „,„,, 
 
 //„ t/wJ,/. J,/,/.,,,*, ..-'j rt.' rp/,., „,/ //„ //,,„,,, j, ;?.,,,/,, 
 
 t/r/rtt/'f/tfr ri-'// t //„ tf/r/T, ///>/, /A //■/„// ,*„,„„//„ ff/z/ttr/t/,,/. 
 
 ■',.....,/.',. ., . . It . > | <~lnumw«im*i|. 
 
 FAC-SIMILE OF RESOLUTIONS 
 
 Adopted by the Board of Aldermen of the City of New York in Honor of Chief 
 . Engineer George W. Melville, U. S. Navy. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 701 
 
 The presence of Lieutenant Berry with Mr. Melville in St. 
 Petersburg deserves explanation. In 1881, the Jeannette being then 
 long unheard from, the government bought a Behring Sea steam 
 whaler named Mary and Helen and fitted her out for a search expe- 
 dition under the command of Lieutenant Berry. The name of this 
 steamer was changed to Rodgers in recognition of the valuable aid 
 rendered the Navy Department by Bear Admiral John Rodgers as 
 president of the Jeannette Relief Board, and as a proper tribute to his 
 eminent reputation as an officer of the navy. Berry went into the 
 polar sea to a point beyond where the Jeannette had originally been 
 caught in the ice, but of course saw nothing of her for she had then 
 been carried far away and destroyed. He went into winter quarters 
 in St. Lawrence Bay, near the East Cape, where, on the 30th of 
 November, 1881, his vessel took fire and was burned in spite of all 
 efforts to save her. The people thus rendered homeless in a north- 
 ern winter season were distributed about in the villages of natives 
 about St. Lawrence Bay and thus sustained life until the next spring 
 when they were rescued by the whaling bark North Star of New 
 Bedford. One officer of the Rodgers, Lieutenant Charles F. Putnam, 
 lost his life most cruelly early in the winter by being drifted out to 
 sea on an ice-floe and was never heard of more. Assistant En- 
 gineer A. V. Zane, IT. S. Navy, shared the hardships of this unfort- 
 unate crew, he being the engineer in charge of the Rodgers* 
 machinery. 
 
 Lieutenant Berry, though deprived of his ship, did not feel 
 relieved from his duty to search for and succor the Jeannette, he 
 being a man of the Melville order, not readily thwarted by disaster. 
 Accordingly, after making all possible arrangements for the preser- 
 vation of his crew, he set out with Ensign H. J. Hunt and a Kam- 
 schatka boy as interpreter to march westward along the coast of the 
 Arctic Ocean, notifying the natives where found to watch for signs 
 of the Jeannette and for some whalers that were reported missing in 
 those waters. In this way he persistently kept up the tramp until 
 he had journeyed nearly two thousand miles along the frozen shores 
 and finally arrived at Oceansk only a few days after Melville had 
 left that place on his way toward Yakutsk and home. Following 
 on Melville's trail, Berry overtook him at Kangerack, between 
 Verkeransk and Yakutsk, Melville having been obliged to halt his 
 
 38 
 
702 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 nondescript cavalcade there to allow his worn-out horses, substituted 
 for deer at Verkeransk, to recuperate on the scant shrubbery there- 
 about. Berry had with his party a considerable supply of bread, 
 sorely needed by Melville and his men, and thus in a way he actu- 
 ally accomplished the relief of the Jecmnette's people, which was the 
 duty upon which he had been ordered. 
 
 Having escaped the manifold perils briefly and imperfectly 
 sketched in the foregoing pages, Chief Engineer Melville might 
 have been considered deserving of rest and peace after arriving in 
 his own country; but there was no peace. The story of the loss of 
 the Jeannette and the subsequent adventures of her people had become 
 public information through the imperfect reports of newspapers, and 
 considerable distress had been occasioned in the minds of relatives 
 of some who had perished, a false idea having taken root that the 
 tragedy was due to naval discipline rather than to the rigors of the 
 arctic region. In response to considerable public comment, Con- 
 gress, a month before Melville's return to the United States, had 
 adopted a joint resolution directing the Navy Department to inves- 
 tigate the conduct of the cruise, the scope of the inquiry being 
 expressed by the wording of the resolution as follows: 
 
 "Resolved, etc.. That the Secretary of the Navy be requested 
 to convene, as soon as practicable, a court of inquiry to investigate the 
 circumstances of the loss in the Arctic seas of the exploring steamer 
 Jeannette, and of the death of Lieutenant Commander De Long and 
 others of her officers and men, including an inquiry into the con- 
 dition of the vessel on her departure, her management up to the 
 time of her destruction, the provisions made and plans adopted for 
 the several boats' crews upon their leaving the wreck, the efforts 
 made by the various officers to insure the safety of the parties under 
 their immediate charge and for the relief of the other parties, and 
 into the general conduct and merits of each and all the officers and 
 men of the ill-fated expedition, and to submit the finding of such 
 court of inquiry to Congress.' 5 
 
 In compliance with this resolution Secretary Chandler ordered 
 a court of inquiry consisting of Commodore Win. GL Temple, pres- 
 ident; Captain Joseph N. Miller, and Commander F. V. McNair, 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 703 
 
 members, and Lieutenant Sam C. Lemly, judge advocate. This 
 court met on the 5th day of October, 1882, and proceeded to take 
 testimony from all competent witnesses until the 12th of February, 
 1883, when a detailed finding was made and subsequently approved 
 by the Department. Certain efforts were made before the court to 
 show that Chief Engineer Melville had dealt harshly with those 
 placed under his authority, and to belittle his efforts when in inde- 
 pendent command of the whale-boat and on the Lena Delta, but 
 these charges had no foundation in fact and his conduct was praised 
 by the court in these words in the summing up of its finding: 
 
 " Special commendation is due to Lieutenant Commander De 
 Long for the high qualities displayed by him in the conduct of the 
 expedition; to Chief Engineer Melville for his zeal, energy, and 
 professional aptitude, which elicited high encomiums from his 
 commander, and for his subsequent efforts on the Lena Delta; and 
 to Seamen Nindemann and Sweetman, for services which induced 
 their commander to recommend them for medals of honor. ' ' 
 
 The finding of the court, although based upon the testimony of 
 the survivors of the Jeannette, the only persons living competent to 
 speak of their own knowledge of the matter, did not satisfy Dr. D. 
 F. Collins, brother of the meteorologist of that name who had per- 
 ished with De Long's party, he maintaining that his brother's death 
 was due to persecution by De Long on the ship and to neglect on 
 the part of Melville in not going in search of De Long's party as 
 soon as he had himself landed on the Lena Delta. Dr. Collins sub- 
 mitted a memorial to Congress reciting at length the facts as he 
 believed them to be, which were that his brother, Jerome J. Collins, 
 had been " treated with every indignity and outrage, even to being 
 deprived of all the scientific instruments and appliances of his posi- 
 tion as meteorologist of the expedition;" that about the end of the 
 year 1879 he was " placed under suspension or arrest by the com- 
 manding officer of the expedition, and that he remained so until he 
 died of starvation and cold on the bank of the Lena Eiver. ' ' 4 'That 
 the evidence offered to the naval court, and which the undersigned 
 is prepared to furnish, and that has already and will be further given 
 by the survivors, goes to show, beyond any reasonable doubt, that 
 
704 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 had Melville performed the duty devolving upon him as the com- 
 mander of the party, and obeyed the directions given him by Lieutenant 
 De Long to immediately communicate with the Russian authori- 
 ties, and gone to the rescue and conducted a search for the captain's 
 party, each and every member of that party, with the exception of 
 Ericksen, would have been rescued and alive to-day." And finally 
 that the naval court of inquiry "refused to admit or allow to be given 
 valuable testimony, and that said court ruled out nearly every ques- 
 tion that would bring out the true history of the expedition; that 
 many of the survivors were not permitted to give their full and free 
 testimony, and that the naval inquiry was so conducted that all 
 possible chance or possibility of the truth coming out was destroyed. " 
 
 This remarkable memorial induced the House of Representa 
 tives to direct its Committee on Naval Affairs to 6 'investigate the facts 
 connected with said expedition and the alleged unofficerlike and 
 inhumane conduct therein." The investigation was conducted by a 
 sub-committee composed of Messrs. Hugh Buchanan, William 
 McAdoo, and Charles A. Boutelle, who patiently collected testimony 
 until the result was a public document (Mis. Doc. 66; 48th Con- 
 gress, 1st Session) of more than one thousand closely-printed pages, 
 not including the final report of the committee. A lawyer of emi- 
 nence, representing Dr. Collins, was allowed to practice before the 
 sub-committee in the capacity of prosecutor, and Mrs. De Long in 
 defense of her dead husband's name, and Chief Engineer Melville 
 to defend himself, were thus forced to combine in the employment 
 of counsel. The volume of testimony taken forbids its review within 
 a reasonable space, but nothing not already determined by the naval 
 court was discovered except a mass of miserable and trifling details 
 relative to the petty personal quarrels and differences of the men of 
 the expedition, these being extorted from the witnesses for some 
 unknown purpose by the cross- questioning of the prosecuting 
 attorney. 
 
 The report of the investigation made to the House of Repre- 
 sentatives stated that so far from the indignity and outrage alleged, 
 the treatment of officers and men by Lieutenant Commander De 
 Long was kind and considerate, and that no fault was attached to 
 De Long for the suspension or arrest of Collins under the circum„ 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 705 
 
 stances. As to the charges regarding the conduct of the naval 
 court of inquiry, the congressional committee flatly denied their 
 truth. That part of the report relating to the accusations against 
 Chief Engineer Melville reads as follows: 
 
 " The third boat's crew, under command of Chief Engineer 
 Melville, did, on the 26th day of September, 1881, find a place of 
 safety, and received supplies from the natives, some of the members 
 of the party being in a disabled condition. The party under his 
 command had arrived at a small Siberian village called Geeomovia- 
 locke. The country and language were entirely unknown to Mel- 
 ville and his party. Melville did not know that Lieutenant Com- 
 mander De Long and his party had escaped destruction by the storm 
 which overwhelmed Lieutenant Chipp and his party but it was the 
 opinion of Melville and others of the party, that Lieutenant Chipp 's 
 boat and Lieutenant Commander De Long's were submerged by the 
 waves and their crews drowned, and no information was received by 
 Engineer Melville of the arrival of Lieutenant Commander De 
 Long on the Lena Delta until his receipt of the message, by a 
 Kussian exile named Kusmah, from Nindemann and Noros. As 
 soon after receiving this message as Melville could procure the 
 means of making search for De Long and his party, acting on infor- 
 mation obtained from Nindemann, he made a long and diligent 
 search, in which he underwent great privation from cold and hunger, 
 such as few men have ever endured and survived. In this search 
 he came very near the place where the remains of De Long and his 
 party were afterwards found. If Melville had known shortly after 
 his arrival at Geeomovialocke what he afterwards knew of the 
 arrival of De Long and party on the Lena Delta, he could and 
 would have rescued Lieutenant Commander De Long and party, 
 which fully appears by his immediate action on the receipt of this 
 information. 
 
 1 ' The committee do not believe that any blame attaches to 
 Engineer Melville, Lieutenant Danenhower, or any of the party 
 controlled by Melville, under the then surrounding circumstances, 
 for the failure to rescue Lieutenant Commander De Long and his 
 party." 
 
 Lieutenant A. W. Greely, U. S. Army, with a party number- 
 
706 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ing 25 all told, was landed in August, 1881, in Lady Franklin Bay- 
 to establish one of the two American meteorological stations in 
 accordance with the agreement of the international meteorological 
 congress, and left there to carry out his allotted work, it being 
 understood that supplies and food would be sent him each year as 
 long as his observations continued. The failure to do this and the 
 dreadful consequences of that failure need not be entered into here, 
 being told in detail in other books, it being sufficient for the present 
 purpose to know that Greely had not been communicated with up to the 
 winter of 1883-1884, and that the country then was aroused at the 
 neglect or blundering that had left him and his gallant band to an 
 unknown fate far within the Arctic Circle. It was then almost too 
 late, but Congress in response to the pressure of public sentiment 
 took up the consideration of a resolution authorizing a relief expe- 
 dition, in which consideration so much time was consumed in 
 debating about the amount of money to be used, the details of 
 manning the vessels, etc., that Secretary Chandler, feeling that the 
 situation required deeds rather than words, took upon himself the 
 responsibility of buying and equipping suitable ships before Congress 
 had completed its arguments. When finally passed, in February, 
 1884, the congressional resolution simply authorized the President 
 to send the expedition and fixed no definite sum to defray the 
 expense. In the end the actual cost was, in round numbers, 
 $763,000. 
 
 The vessels purchased by Secretary Chandler were the steam 
 whaler Thetis of Dundee, Scotland, for 140,000, and the sealing 
 steamer Bear of Grenock, Scotland, for $100,000. The British 
 government tendered the use of the steamer Alert, formerly the 
 flag-ship of Captain Nares' polar expedition of 1874, and gener- 
 ously prepared and equipped her for service before delivering her 
 to the American authorities. The Thetis and Bear arrived at New 
 York during the winter and were there fitted out for their work. 
 No expense was spared in the outfit of these ships and nothing 
 was left undone that might in any manner contribute to the success 
 of their mission, in which preparation the experience, of Chief En- 
 gineer Melville was found invaluable. The Navy Department 
 required from him suggestions as to the work in hand and he 
 responded with an elaborate series of papers dealing in detail with 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 707 
 
 the kind, quality, and quantity of provisions desirable; clothing; 
 tools; boats; equipment, etc., his recommendations being generally 
 carried out, with results that were highly satisfactory in every 
 particular. 
 
 Mr. Melville himself joined the expedition as chief engineer of 
 the Thetis, flagship of Commander W. S. Schley. Commander 
 George W. Coffin was assigned to the command of the Alert, and 
 Lieutenant W. EL Emory to the Bear. Chief Engineer John Lowe 
 went in the Bear and Passed Assistant Engineer W. H. Nauman in 
 the Alert, The ships sailed from New York at different dates from 
 April 24: to May 10, stopped at St. John's for coal, and then pro- 
 ceeded northward, the Thetis and Bear joining each other at Uper- 
 navik May 29th. The Alert was the last to leave New York and 
 did not reach TJpernavik until June 13, being thereafter hampered 
 by convoying the collier Loch Garry and so often beset with ice that 
 she took no active part in the actual search. After ramming and 
 jamming their way through the ice, with many narrow escapes from 
 destruction, the Thetis and Bear on the 18th of June were off Cape 
 York, and faced up into the North Water with the first of the ven- 
 turesome Scotch whalers; with whom, indeed, they now had to 
 compete, for Congress after providing for the expenditure of many 
 hundreds of thousands of dollars for conducting the relief expedi- 
 tion had passed another act offering a reward of $25,000 to any 
 person not in the military or naval service of the United States who 
 would discover and rescue the Grreely party, or ascertain its fate, 
 thus pitting the whole world against the few American naval 
 officers sent to conduct the search. In the event, the foremost of 
 the whaling steamers were one hundred miles behind when the 
 rescue was effected. 
 
 Without entering into details, the Thetis and Bear on the even- 
 ing of June 22d found the camp of the Greely people near Cape 
 Sabine, in Ellesmere Land, the actual discoverers being a party from 
 the Bear in the steam cutter of that vessel, with which party was 
 Mr. Norman the ice pilot of the Thetis. Mr. Norman was the first 
 to enter the camp, followed closely by Mr. Ash, ice pilot of the 
 Bear, and Chief Engineer John Lowe, the latter being the first per- 
 son belonging to the navy to arrive. News of the discovery was 
 quickly communicated to the ships and in a short time the officers 
 
708 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 and men of both ships were engaged in carrying the survivors on 
 board and collecting the wreckage and records of the camp. Greely 
 and six of his men were found alive, though so near to death's door 
 that a delay of one day more in the arrival of succor would have 
 sealed the fate of all: the others, soldiers of the wealthiest country 
 in the world, had died miserably of starvation within sight of the 
 sea that for several months each year offered a water-way to the 
 seaports and markets of the whole world, and directly to those of 
 their own country. The frightful sufferings which these poor men 
 experienced may well be left to the special narratives dealing with 
 their service in the north. The subject is one worth thinking about, 
 however, and an idea of the utter misery to which these soldiers 
 were reduced may be gained from the following description of their 
 camp, written by one whose eyes, long before accustomed to scenes 
 of human suffering, saw the place in all its hideous nakedness: 
 
 " The scene itself was indescribable, and I shall not attempt to 
 depict our pity and horror as we viewed it. A cold, barren plateau^ 
 between a small outlying promontory and a bleak weather-riven 
 rock of red syenite reaching to the skies, on which even the mosses 
 and lichens would scarce grow. The raging of the wind and the 
 pitiless sea, and the roar of the black water of the bay dashing over 
 the ice-foot, made the lonesome picture look colder and more 
 appalling. Drifts of ice and snow choked the ravines and hollows; 
 but, saving ourselves and the famished, skeleton-like survivors, not 
 a living thing appeared on the whitened landscape. The region 
 truly seemed to be the most desolate on the face of the earth. It 
 looked as though the curses of ten thousand witches had descended 
 upon and blasted it, and even the birds would not dare to take their 
 flight across the lifeless land lest they too fall victims into the death- 
 gap below. 
 
 u Struggling up the valley of death, against the frantic wind, 
 from the low point to the westward of the camp, where we managed 
 with difficulty to effect a landing in our whale-boats, we first came 
 upon the remains of the winter habitation, a parallelogram of four 
 walls about three feet high, built of loose stone, the inside dimen- 
 sions being perhaps 18 x 22 feet, with a tunnel or covered way 
 facing the mountain to the southward. This hut had been roofed 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 709 
 
 over with the whale-boats turned upside down and covered with the 
 sails and tent-cloths; the smoke -flue, made of old tin-kettles bound 
 with bits of canvas, was thrown to one side; and water had risen in 
 and about the wretched dwelling-place to a height of eight inches, 
 concealing much of the foul evidence of squalid misery in which its 
 poor occupants had lived. Cast-off fur and cloth clothing, empty 
 tin cans, and the sickening filth of twenty-five men for nine months 
 lay heaped and scattered about, a veritable Augean scene." 1 
 
 Leaving Cape Sabine the day after the rescue, the two ships 
 proceeded southward, finding the Alert and Loch Garry on the 1st 
 of July, near Sugar Loaf Mountain, beset in the ice-pack. One of 
 the rescued men, Sergeant Ellison of the 10th U. S. infantry, died 
 on board the Bear at Disco July 7th. The ships were at St. John's 
 July 17th, and on the first of August landed the survivors at Ports- 
 mouth, N. H. , where the North Atlantic squadron, assembled for 
 the purpose, extended to the rescuers an imposing reception. The 
 Alert was returned to the British government with suitable thanks 
 for her use; the Thetis was taken into the naval service and fitted 
 out as a gun vessel, and the Bear was transferred to the Ke venue 
 Cutter service, in which she has for a number of years been 
 actively engaged in the patrol of Behring Sea and adjacent waters. 
 
 Before Chief Engineer Melville returned home from the Lena 
 Delta in 1882 the story of his deeds had become so well known and 
 his right to recognition for meritorious service so generally recog- 
 nized that a bill providing for his advancement in the navy was in- 
 troduced in Congress. The bill was favorably considered by the 
 Committees on Naval Affairs and would have been passed had it 
 been recommended by the Secretary of the Navy. When referred 
 to that official for an opinion, as is always done in such cases, 
 Mr. Chandler felt obliged to withhold his approval, and properly, 
 for the accusations against Mr. Melville, growing out of the dis- 
 tress of Dr. Collins, had not been investigated, and until the 
 court of inquiry had completed its work and found him free from 
 blame it would have been hasty and unwise to advocate his promo- 
 tion. The bill appeared in the next Congress (the 48th), this time 
 
 1 Chief Engineer George W. Melville, U. S. Navy, " In the Lena Delta,," 
 page 354, 
 
710 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 as the result of a petition to Congress signed by a number of chief 
 engineers of the navy over whose heads Melville would be advanced 
 by its passage, a most generous and praiseworthy act calculated to 
 reflect honor upon their grade had not the success of the measure 
 been prevented by others of the same grade. A few — not more 
 than three or four — of the chief engineers entertained such objec- 
 tions to losing even one number by the honorable reward of a 
 brother officer that they addressed members of the Naval Committee 
 in protest, and successfully. 
 
 Mr. Melville had nothing to do personally with these bills but 
 was glad to know that they were being supported; now, however, 
 disgusted with the action of members of his own corps, he told his 
 friends both in and out of Congress that he did not care for the pro- 
 motion proposed and hoped the matter would be dropped. In spite 
 of his protest, members of Congress interested in him continued to 
 introduce the bill in succeeding Congresses and it was favorably 
 reported by the Naval Committee of the House of Eepresentatives 
 during the second session of the 50th Congress but did not reach a 
 vote. In the report referred to the following complimentary refer- 
 ence was made to Mr. Melville: 
 
 6 fi The qualities as officer and man displayed by Chief Engineer 
 Melville throughout the cruise of the ill-fated Jeannette, and espe- 
 cially during the retreat of her crew over the ice and waves of the 
 Polar Sea, to the desolate shores of Northern Siberia, and most 
 strikingly during the search for the remains of Lieutenant Com- 
 mander De Long and his party during the perils and privations of 
 an arctic winter, have invoked the admiration of the world. 
 
 u All have united in praise of his services as well as in wonder 
 that such services should remain without recognition from the gov- 
 ernment for which they were performed. 
 
 ' ' There is undeniable evidence of self-sacrifice and absolute de- 
 votion to duty in serving his country." 
 
 In the Fifty-first Congress this bill found an earnest champion 
 in Mr. Chandler, then a member of the Senate and of its Naval 
 Committee, his knowledge of Melville and his work, gained as Sec- 
 retary of the Navy during the time of the Jeannette investigations. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 711 
 
 convincing him of the merits and justice of the recognition asked. 
 He reported the bill favorably to the Senate during the first session 
 of that Congress, the report containing among many expressions of 
 praise the following: 
 
 u In view of such a record the committee feel that the pro- 
 posed promotion, so long after the deeds which it is intended to 
 recompense, is an act of tardy justice and hardly adequate. The 
 usual reward for distinguished bravery is an advancement of thirty 
 numbers; this gives but fifteen. England rewarded the members of 
 the Naves expedition, which was a failure after nine months on ac- 
 count of scurvy, by knighting the commander and promoting every 
 officer a grade. " 
 
 The bill passed the Senate soon after it was reported and a few 
 months later came before the House of Kepresentatives and was 
 passed by that body, becoming a law by Presidential approval Sep- 
 tember 30th, 1890. In illustration of the tardiness of this act of 
 simple justice, it may be remarked that three years before the pas- 
 sage of the bill Mr. Melville had been selected over the heads of 
 many other chief engineers and appointed engineer-in-chief of the 
 navy, with a special rate of pay, so that the promotion given him by 
 Congress amounted to nothing more than changing the position of 
 his name in the list of chief engineers and the honor of receiving 
 from the President a special commission on which was engrossed a 
 statement of the heroic services for which the commission was 
 issued: 
 
 The act of Congress, besides advancing Mr. Melville, provided 
 for the award of a medal to each member of the Jeannette expedi- 
 tion, the full text of the act here following: 
 
 " An act in recognition of the merits and services of Chief Engineer 
 George Wallace Melville, United States Navy, and of the other 
 officers and men of the 6 ' Jeannette 5 ' Arctic Expedition. 
 
 "Be it enacted by the Senate and Souse of Representatives 
 of the United /States of America in Congress assembled. That the 
 President be, and hereby is, authorized, by and with the advice and 
 
712 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 consent of the Senate, to advance Chief Engineer George Wallace 
 Melville, United States Navy, one grade, to take rank from the 
 same date but next after the junior chief engineer having the rela- 
 tive rank of commander at the passage of this act, as a recognition 
 of his meritorious services in successfully directing the party under 
 his command after the wreck of the Arctic exploring steamer Jean- 
 nette, and of his persistent efforts through dangers and hardships to 
 find and assist his commanding officer and other members of the 
 expedition before he himself was out of peril; and that he be allowed 
 the pay of a chief engineer as if he had been commissioned on the 
 same date as the junior chief engineer having the relative rank of 
 commander at the passage of this act; such increased rate of pay to 
 begin from the date of the passage of this act. 
 
 "Sec. 2. That the said Melville shall hereafter continue to 
 be next junior to the junior chief engineer having the relative rank 
 of commander at the passage of this act; and whatever grade he 
 may hereafter occupy shall be increased by one number, but the 
 total number of chief engineers shall not be increased: Provided, 
 That nothing in this act shall cause any officer to be retarded in his 
 promotion or receive a less rate of pay than would otherwise have 
 been the case. 
 
 "Sec. 3. That suitable medals be struck at the United States 
 Mint in commemoration of the perils encountered by the officers and 
 men of the said Jeannette Arctic Expedition, and as an expression 
 of the high esteem in which Congress holds their services in the 
 said expedition; and that one of the said medals be presented to 
 each of the survivors of said expedition, and one to the heirs of each 
 of the deceased members. 
 
 u Sec. 4. That a sufficient sum for the purposes of this act is 
 hereby appropriated out of any money in the Treasury not other- 
 wise appropriated. 
 
 << Approved, September 30, 1890. (Stat. 26, p. 552.") 
 
OHAPTEE XXXV. 
 
 " The earliest reference made to uniformity in the dress of British sailors occurs 
 soon after the Koman invasion, when we read that fleets were supplied with speedy 
 long-boats smeared with wax to lessen the friction of the waves, and having their 
 sails dyed a light-blue color to resemble the sea, while, still further to lessen the 
 chances of being seen, the crews wore clothing of the same hue." 
 
 — Commander Charles N. Robinson, R, N., — The British Fleet. 
 
 UNIFORMS AND CORPS DEVICES OF THE ENGINEER CORPS. 
 
 THOUGH not perhaps entirely within the province of this histo- 
 rical sketch, the subject of the uniforms prescribed from time 
 to time for the officers of the naval engineer corps is believed to 
 possess sufficient interest to warrant its introduction. When pre- 
 paring the Fulton for sea and arranging for the appointment of 
 engineers for that steamer, Captain M. C. Perry foresaw the need 
 of identifying the new class of officials with their surroundings by 
 means of a uniform, and he made this the subject of a recommenda- 
 tion while addressing the Department with reference to the manner 
 of appointing engineers. In reply the following letter was sent: 
 
 66 Navy Department, November 21, 1837. 
 
 u Capt. M. C. Perry, Oom'dg Str. < Fulton, 5 New York: 
 
 "Sir, — Your letter of the 16th instant, relative to the engineers 
 of the c Fulton ' and their uniforms has been received. 
 
 u The adoption of a uniform such as you may approve, if agree- 
 able to those at whose expense it is to be provided, meets with the sanc- 
 tion of the Department, and it is also desirable, as mentioned in your 
 letter, that none be appointed engineers but those of the very best 
 standing. 
 
 C4 Iam, respectfully, &c, 
 
 6 4 M. Dickerson, Secretary of the Nwy. " 
 
 Captain Perry then prepared an order describing the uniform 
 
714 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 to be worn by the engineers of the Fulton, which order was adopted 
 as a general regulation and the uniform prescribed by it was worn 
 by all naval engineers until the issue of a new uniform order in 
 1852. The Perry order was as follows: 
 
 OOAT. 
 
 For chief engineers, dress coat of navy-blue cloth, double- 
 breasted, black velvet rolling collar, two rows of large navy buttons 
 on the breast, nine in each row; the cuffs to have three large navy 
 buttons around the upper edge, with three smallones in the opening; 
 the skirts to be lined with black silk serge, to have one large navy 
 button behind on each hip, two at the center of each skirt in the 
 fold, and one at the end of each; the pocket flaps to be pointed, to have 
 three large navy buttons beneath them, showing one-half their 
 diameter; and one embroidered five-pointed gold star, one inch and 
 a half in diameter, to be worn on each end of the collar. 
 
 For a first assistant engineer, the same as for a chief, except 
 that there shall be but one large navy button in the center of the 
 fold of each skirt, and an embroidered five-pointed silver star, one 
 inch and a half in diameter, on each end of the collar. 
 
 For a second, the same as for a first assistant engineer, except 
 that there shall be but one embroidered silver star, of the same 
 dimensions, to be worn on the right side of the collar. 
 
 For a third assistant, the same as for a second assistant engineer, 
 with this exception, that the embroidered silver star shall be worn 
 on the left side of the collar. 
 
 VEST. 
 
 For all engineers, the same as worn, according to the season. 
 
 PANTALOONS. 
 
 For all engineers, plain navy-blue or white, as the season 
 demands. 
 
 CAPS. 
 
 For all engineers, of the usual style worn: with a gold band 
 
COLLAR DEVICE FOR ENGINEERS, 1852-1861. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 717 
 
 one inch and a half wide for chief engineers, and without the band 
 for all assistants. 
 
 SWORDS AND BELTS. 
 
 For all engineers, of the usual style. 
 
 COOKED HATS. 
 
 For chief engineers only, of the usual style. 
 
 Under date of March 8, 1852, the Navy Department issued a 
 new order making many changes in the uniforms of engineers, as 
 follows: 
 
 UNIFORM AND DRESS — FULL DRESS. 
 
 COAT. 
 
 For a chief engineer. — Shall be of navy-blue cloth, single- 
 breasted, with one row of nine large navy buttons in front, placed 
 four inches and a half apart from eye to eye at top, and two and a 
 half at bottom; stand-up collar, to hook in front at bottom and to 
 slope thence upwards and backwards at an angle of twenty-five de- 
 grees on each side, and to rise no higher than will permit a free 
 movement of the chin over it. It shall have on each side an em- 
 broidered device two inches high and three inches long; the anchor 
 in silver and the wreath in gold, as per pattern. The cuffs to be 
 two inches and a half deep, to have three large-sized navy buttons 
 around the upper edge, with three small ones in the opening. The 
 waist of the coat to descend to the top of the hip bone; the skirts to 
 begin about one-fifth of the circumference from the front edge, and 
 descend four-fifths from the hip bone towards the knee, with one 
 button behind on each hip, and one near the bottom of the skirt in 
 each fold. The pocket flaps to be pointed; to have three large navy 
 buttons underneath them, showing one-half of their diameter ; skirts 
 to be lined with black silk serge; coat to be worn fully buttoned, 
 unless otherwise permitted by the officer in command. 
 
 For a first assistant engineer.— -The same in all respects as for a 
 
718 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 chief engineer, except that the cuffs shall have three medium-sized 
 navy buttons around the upper edge. 
 
 For a second assistant engineer. — The same in all respects as for 
 a first assistant engineer, except that the cuffs shall have no buttons 
 on their upper edges. 
 
 For a third assistant engineer. — The same in all respects as for a 
 second assistant engineer. 
 
 PANTALOONS. 
 
 For all engineer officers. — Shall be of navy-blue cloth or white 
 drill, made loose to spread well over the foot, and to be worn over 
 the boots or shoes. 
 
 Within the tropics white pantaloons willbe worn at all seasons, 
 unless otherwise permitted by the officer in command. 
 
 North of the tropics, blue cloth pantaloons will be worn from 
 the 1st of October to the 15th of May, and the white from the 15th 
 of May to the 1st of October. South of the tropics, blue will be 
 worn from the 15th of May to the 1st of October, and the white 
 from the 1st of October to the 15th of May, unless otherwise 
 directed by written order of the commander-in-chief of a squadron 
 or of a vessel acting singly. 
 
 VEST. 
 
 To be white, single-breasted, standing collar, with nine small 
 navy buttons in front, and not to show below the coat. 
 
 COCKED HAT. 
 
 For chief and first assistant engineers. — When in full dress 
 or undress, of the following description: To be not more than 
 eight nor less than six inches and a half in height on the back (or 
 fan) nor more than eight inches, nor less than five in front, (or 
 cock) and not more than nineteen nor less than seventeen inches 
 long from point to point. The curve to be one inch and one-tenth 
 a t the back; the hat to be bound with black silk lace, to show one 
 inch and a quarter on each side; in the fold at each end of the hat 
 a tassel, formed of five gold and five blue bullions; and on the cock, 
 
CAP DEVICE FOR ENGINEER CORPS, 1852-1861. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 719 
 
 a black silk cockade, five inches wide; over the cockade to be worn 
 a loop, formed of four gold bullions three-eighths of an inch in 
 diameter, not twisted, with a small button in the lower end of the 
 loop. 
 
 EPAULETTES. 
 
 Chief engineers will wear two plain gold epaulettes. The strap 
 
 shall be of silver lace, with the letter ^3^>, three-quarters of an inch 
 long, in old English character, embroidered in gold on the frog, 
 and the crescents to be smooth and solid. 
 
 SWORD AND SCABBARD. 
 
 Shall be cut- and- thrust blade, not less than twenty-six inches, 
 nor more than twenty-nine inches long, half basket hilt, grip white. 
 Scabbards of black leather, mountings of yellow gilt, and all as per 
 pattern. Sword knot to be a strap of gold lace half an inch wide 
 and eighteen inches long, including the tassel; gold slide; tassel of 
 twelve gold bullions, one inch and three-quarters long, with basket- 
 worked head, as per pattern. 
 
 SWORD BELT. 
 
 Shall be of plain black glazed leather, not less than one inch 
 and a half, nor more than two inches wide, with slings of the same 
 not less than one-half nor more than three-quarters of an inch wide, 
 and a hook in the forward ring to suspend the sword. Belt plate of 
 yellow gilt in front, two inches in diameter, as per pattern. The 
 belt is to be worn over the coat. 
 
 CRAVAT. 
 
 Shall be of black silk, or satin, without any tie in front; for 
 full-dress, a white shirt collar to show above it. 
 
 UNDRESS UNIFORM. 
 COAT. 
 
 For a chief engineer. — To be a frock coat of navy-blue cloth, 
 
 39 
 
720 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 faced with the same, single-breasted, with one row of nine large 
 navy buttons on the breast, three large size buttons around the 
 upper edge of the cuff, and three small ones in the opening. 
 
 For a first assistant engineer. — The same as for a chief engineer, 
 except that the cuffs shall have three medium size buttons around 
 the upper edge. 
 
 For a second and third assistant engineer.— The same as for a 
 first assistant engineer, except the buttons around the upper edge of 
 the cuff. 
 
 SHOULDER STRAPS. 
 
 For a chief engineer. — Shall be of blue cloth, four inches long 
 and one inch and three-eighths wide, bordered with an embroidery 
 of gold one-quarter of an inch in width. In the center of the strap 
 
 there shall be embroidered in silver the letter ^J^, in old English 
 character. Shoulder-straps to be always worn as distinctive marks 
 when the epaulettes are not worn. 
 
 CAPS. 
 
 Caps to be of blue cloth, not less than three inches and a half 
 nor more than four inches in height, and not more than ten nor less 
 than nine and a half in diameter on the top, with patent leather 
 visor. An embroidered device and wreath as per pattern, the wheel 
 embroidered in gold and the anchor in silver, similarly placed above 
 the band of gold lace, one inch wide. 
 
 OVERCOATS. 
 
 For all officers, shall be of dark blue pilot-cloth, double- 
 breasted, rolling collar, skirt to descend three inches below the 
 knee. The same number of navy buttons, and similarly arranged 
 as for undress coat; no buttons to be worn on the cuffs or pocket 
 flaps. Officers entitled to shoulder-straps will wear the same on 
 their overcoats, as directed for undress coats. Blue cloth cloaks 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 723 
 
 may be used in boats, or when epaulettes are worn, if it be rendered 
 necessary by cold or wet weather. 
 
 The foregoing uniform regulations were modified by an order 
 issued September 24, 1852, directing that the bands of gold lace on 
 the caps of all officers entitled to wear them be one and one-half 
 inches wide instead of one inch: another uniform regulation issued 
 January 1, 1853, directed that second and third assistant ' engineers 
 should wear cocked hats, the same as for first assistants, and specified 
 shoulder-straps as follows: 
 
 For first assistant engineers. — Of gold lace four inches long and 
 one-half of an inch wide, to be bordered with gold bead cord one- 
 eighth of an inch. 
 
 For second assistant engineers. — Of blue cloth four inches long 
 and one-half of an inch wide, to be bordered with gold bead cord 
 one eighth of an inch. 
 
 With these modifications the uniform remained as specified 
 until February 8, 1861, when the Department issued an order relat- 
 ing to engineers' uniforms particularly, changing them so as to con- 
 form to uniforms worn by line and other officers of the navy, the 
 order reading as follows: 
 
 Hereafter the coats of all engineers will be double-breasted. 
 
 Chief engineers will wear upon the cuffs of their coats the 
 same number of stripes of gold lace as are worn by those officers 
 with whom they have assimilated rank, and will dispense with the 
 three large buttons. 
 
 engineers, and the embroidered wheel, anchor, and wreath on the 
 collars of the coats of all engineers, will be dispensed with. The 
 collar of the full-dress coat for all engineers will have an embroid- 
 ered gold edging a half an inch in width, extending along the top 
 and down the front. 
 
 The present wreath on the cap will be -retained, with an em« 
 
 shouler straps of chief 
 
724 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 broidered centre of four oak leaves in the form of a cross, one and 
 three-quarters of an inch in length, and the same in breadth, 
 instead of the present wheel and anchor. 
 
 January 28, 1864, an order was issued making a number of 
 changes in nayal uniforms, chief among which was the adoption of 
 devices indicating rank the same as were in use in the army, and 
 increasing the number of stripes on the sleeves, the stripes for a 
 lieutenant, for example, being changed from one three-fourths inch 
 wide to three each one-fourth of an inch wide. The parts of this 
 order referring specially to the engineer corps follow: 
 
 COATS. 
 
 For all engineer officers except third assistants. — Frock-coat of 
 navy-blue cloth,faced with the same,and lined with black silk serge; 
 double-breasted, with two rows of large navy buttons on the breast, 
 nine in each row, placed four inches and a half apart from eye to 
 eye at top and two inches and a half at bottom; rolling collar; skirts 
 to be full, commencing at the hip bone and descending thence four- 
 fifths towards the knee, with one button behind on each hip and 
 one near the bottom of each fold; cuffs to be closed and from two 
 and a half to three inches deep. 
 
 For third assistant engineers. — The same, except that the buttons 
 shall be of medium size only. 
 
 OVERCOATS. 
 
 For all engineer officers except third assistants. — Shall be acaban 
 overcoat and cape of dark blue beaver or pilot-cloth, lined throughout 
 with dark blue flannel; skirt to extend four inches below the knee; 
 cape to be ten inches shorter; double-breasted with pockets in side 
 seam, and buttons arranged as for frock coat; the cape to be made 
 so that it can be removed at pleasure, and provided with au extra 
 cloth collar to detach so as to form a separate garment. On each 
 end of the collar of the overcoat shall be the following devices: 
 
 Chief of Bureau of Steam Engineering. — One silver star* 
 
Corps Device Adopted for Naval Engineers in 1861 and still worn. 
 It is the prettiest Corps Emblem in the service when 
 properly made, but is too often so botched 
 in manufacture as to bear no re- 
 semblance to oak leaves. 
 
THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 725 
 
 For a fleet engineer and chief engineer with the rank of cap* 
 tain. — A silver eagle. 
 
 For a chief engineer with the rank of commander. — -A silver 
 
 leaf. 
 
 For a chief engineer with the rank of lieutenant commander. — 
 A gold leaf. 
 
 For a first assistant engineer. — One silver bar. 
 
 For a second assistant engineer. — A small gold cord on the 
 front edge of the collar. 
 
 For a third assistant engineer — No device, but seven buttons 
 in a row. 
 
 CUFF AND SLEEVE ORNAMENTS. 
 
 The lace on the cuffs and sleeve is to be of navy gold lace, a 
 quarter of an inch wide, and to be placed a quarter of an inch apart, 
 except where a half is hereinafter designated, the first stripe being 
 below but joining the cuff seam, and the others distributed in groups 
 upwardly. 
 
 Chief of Bureau of Steam Engineering.' — Seven stripes, with 
 half an inch between third and fourth, fourth and fifth. 
 
 For a fleet engineer and chief engineer ranking with a captain. 
 — Six stripes, with half an inch space between third and fourth. 
 
 For a chief engineer ranking with a commander. — Five stripes 
 with half an inch space between first and second, fourth and fifth. 
 
 For a chief engineer ranking with a lieutenant commander. — 
 Four stripes, with half an inch space between third and fourth. 
 
 For a first assistant engineer. — Two stripes. 
 
 For a second assistant engineer. — One stripe. 
 
 For a third assistant engineer. — Cuff plain. 
 
726 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 SHOULDER STRAPS. 
 
 To be of navy-blue cloth, four inches and a quarter long, one 
 inch and a half wide, including the border, which is to be a quarter 
 of an inch wide and embroidered in gold. 
 
 The center and end ornaments or distinctions of line and staff, 
 and indications of rank, are to be embroidered in gold or in silver, 
 as hereinafter designated, and are to be as follows: 
 
 For the Chief of the Bureau of Steam Engineering. — A device 
 of four oak leaves in gold in the form of a cross, one inch long, 
 upon which is embroidered in silver a five pointed star seven-eighths 
 diameter. 
 
 For a fleet engineer and chief engineer of over fifteen yea/rs. — A 
 silver spread eagle resting upon a device of four oak leaves in silver 
 in the form of a cross. 
 
 For a chief engineer after the first five years. — In the center a 
 device of four oak leaves in the form of a cross, and at each end an 
 oak leaf five eighths inches long, all embroidered in silver. 
 
 For a chief engineer for the first five yea/rs.— -The same, except 
 that the oak leaves at the ends shall be embroidered in gold. 
 
 For a first assistant engineer. — The same device of oak leaves 
 in the center in silver, and at each end of the strap an embroidered 
 gold bar half -inch long and two-tenths inch wide. 
 
 For a second assistant engineer. — The embroidered silver cross 
 of oak leaves in the center. 
 
 Third assistant engineers are not entitled to wear straps. 
 
 CAP AND CAP ORNAMENTS. 
 
 (Jap of dark blue cloth; top to be one-half inch greater dia- 
 meter than the base; quarters one and a half inch wide between the 
 seams; back of the band to be two inches wide between the points of 
 
Undress Uniform of Chief Engineer, 
 1852-1861. 
 
 The "Perry" Uniform worn by Naval 
 Engineers, 1837-1852. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 727 
 
 the visor, with a welt half an inch from the lower edge, extending 
 from point to point of the visor; band in front one and a half inches 
 wide, bound; black patent leather visor, green underneath, two and 
 a half inches wide, and rounded, as per pattern; inside of the band 
 of heavy duck. The cap ornaments are to be worn on the band in 
 front. During rainy weather a black cover may be worn over the 
 cap. 
 
 Cap ornaments shall consist of a gold wreath in front, com- 
 posed of oak and olive branches, three inches in width, and enclos- 
 ing the following described devices: 
 
 For engineers, four oak leaves, in silver, in the form of a cross, 
 one and one-tenth of an inch horizontally, and nine-tenths of an inch 
 vertically. 
 
 In January, 1865, an order of the Department authorized a 
 sack coat of navy-blue flannel or blue cloth to be worn as " service 
 dress" by all officers on board ship and in the United States. This 
 garment was single-breasted, with a row of five buttons in front, and 
 was intended as an informal lounging coat for officers not on duty, 
 the order forbidding its use on shore, or when on duty in a foreign 
 port; as a convenient and comfortable garment it held its place in 
 the navy for about twelve years, until at last superseded by the pres- 
 ent tunic. 
 
 The uniforms prescribed by the order of January 28, 1864, re- 
 mained unmolested for about five years, but then fell before the 
 new broom brought to bear upon naval matters by the administration 
 of President Grant. On March 11, 1869, a general order was 
 issued by the Navy Department, specifying at considerable length 
 the insignia of rank to be worn by the admiral and vice admiral, and 
 making the following alterations in the uniforms for officers of lower 
 grades* 
 
 Captains will wear three stripes of half-inch gold-lace, one 
 quarter of an inch apart, on the sleeve of full-dress and undress 
 coats. 
 
 Commanders will wear two stripes of half-inch gold lace, three 
 quarters of an inch apart, and one stripe of quarter inch lace between 
 them. 
 
728 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 Lieutenant commanders will wear two stripes of half-inch gold 
 lace, one-quarter of an inch apart. 
 
 Lieutenants will wear one stripe of half -inch gold lace, and one 
 stripe of quarter inch lace one-quarter of an inch above. 
 
 Masters will wear one stripe of half -inch lace. 
 
 Ensigns will wear one stripe of quarter-inch lace. 
 
 Midshipmen, after graduation, will hereafter be allowed a full- 
 dress double-breasted coat, nine buttons in each row, with a gold 
 cord one- eighth of an inch wide around the sleeve and an anchor in 
 gold embroidery on each side of the collar, one-inch in length (as per 
 pattern). 
 
 No officer in the navy below the assimilated rank of lieutenant 
 will wear shoulder-straps, cocked-hat, or epaulettes. 
 
 The cap ornament for all commissioned officers in the navy 
 will be a silver shield with two crossed anchors in gold, arranged 
 as per pattern. A gold cord of the same pattern as the one 
 now worn by the midshipmen at the Naval Academy will be worn 
 on the front of the cap bj all officers. 
 
 Staff officers of assimilated rank will conform to the above reg- 
 ulations. 
 
 Medical officers will wear around the sleeve cobalt blue cloth, 
 between the stripes of gold lace. 
 
 Paymasters will wear around the sleeve white cloth, between 
 the stripes of gold lace. 
 
 Engineers will wear around the sleeve red cloth, between the 
 stripes of gold lace. 
 
 Staff officers entitled to wear but one stripe of lace on the 
 sleeve will wear the colored cloth so as to show one-fourth of an 
 inch above and below the stripe. 
 
 With the above mentioned exceptions the uniform of the navy 
 will remain as heretofore. 
 
 This order was supplemented with another issued April 27, 
 1869, directing that masters, ensigns, and midshipmen (and conse- 
 quently engineers assimilated in rank with them) wear, in lieu of 
 shoulder-straps or epaulettes, gold-embroidered shoulder-loops, as 
 per pattern. Other orders at intervals restored the epaulettes and 
 cocked hats to masters and ensigns, until since 1881 only midship- 
 men (naval cadets) have worn the shoulder-knots. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 729 
 
 Another supplementary order, dated May 27, 1869, modified 
 the order of March 11th, to the extent of directing that captains 
 wear four stripes of one-half inch gold lace and commanders three 
 stripes of the same, to which modification staff officers ' c with assimi- 
 lated rank of commander" were directed to conform. 
 
 The next change in uniform of any importance was dated 
 November 7, 1874, the order reading as follows: 
 
 On and after the first of January, 1875, all officers of the 
 navy to whom this regulation can apply will wear on their blue- 
 cloth trousers for full-dress, a stripe of navy gold lace down the 
 outer seam, of the width of that on their full-dress coats. 
 
 After the above date, lieutenant commanders, and officers 
 ranking with that grade, will wear on their sleeves two stripes of 
 gold lace half an inch in width, with one stripe a quarter of an inch 
 in width between them, each a quarter of an inch apart. 
 
 Lieutenants, and officers ranking with that grade, will wear two 
 stripes of half-inch gold lace, one-quarter of an inch apart. 
 
 A uniform circular order issued in January, 1877, directed that 
 after the first day of July next following the sack-coat would cease 
 to be worn as a service coat, and its place taken by a military blouse, 
 the same as now worn. Such a garment had been in use for several 
 years in foreign armies and had become familiar to the navy from 
 being worn as undress by the cadets at the Naval Academy. It is 
 extremely neat in appearance, without metal ornamentations except 
 rank and corps devices on the collar, and its adoption was generally 
 satisfactory to the service, though the highly unmilitary but more 
 comfortable sack-coat was lamented by some. 
 
 The order of March 11, 1869, establishing distinguishing colors 
 for the different staff corps was very distasteful to staff officers in 
 general, and especially to the engineers, who objected to the red 
 because it was a well established corps color for the medical corps 
 in the British and some other navies. The staff officers claimed 
 that the colors were selected for them to wear without regard to 
 their wishes, and that the object in adopting the colors was to make 
 a conspicuous distinction between the appearance of line and staff 
 officers, which allegation was based upon the claim that the devices 
 
730 
 
 THE STEAM HAYY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 already in use for the different corps were sufficient to show to what 
 branch of the service the wearer belonged. At intervals for ten or 
 twelve years after the appearance of the order referred to, staff officers 
 prepared petitions to the Secretary of the Navy asking that the corps 
 colors be abolished, but nothing was ever done to that end, though 
 an order was at one time prepared, but never issued, directing that 
 all corps marks on uniforms be abolished; that uniforms of line and 
 staff officers be the same, and that the different corps be distinguished 
 by the color of the field in the shoulder-straps alone, those colors to 
 be as already established. No efforts to have the colors abolished 
 have been made in recent years and so far as the writer's observa- 
 tion has extended it is probable that a majority of the younger ele- 
 ment of the engineer corps would greatly regret the loss of their red 
 trimmings, which they have always worn and of which they are 
 proud, despite the occasional awkwardness of having to enter into 
 explanations when addressed as 4 'Doctor " by foreign naval officers. 
 
 Two or three different emblems have been used as the distin- 
 guishing mark of the Bureau of Steam Engineering according to the 
 taste of the chief of bureau at different times: the most familiar of 
 these is the crossed anchor and screw-propeller which was adopted 
 about the end of 1877 by Engineer-in- Chief Shock, after a number 
 of designs had been considered, and remained the official device of 
 the bureau until 1893, when a general seal (spread-eagle and anchor) 
 was adopted for the Navy Department and all its bureaus, the dif- 
 ferent bureaus being distinguished by the name printed in a circle 
 about the emblem. Between 1881 and 1886 the bureau emblem of 
 the anchor and propeller was worn on the sleeves of petty officers of 
 the engineers' force, but being complicated and difficult to keep 
 clean was superseded at the latter date by a plain emblem repre- 
 senting a screw-propeller of three blades. 
 
 The orders that have been quoted in this chapter now bring the 
 uniforms down to practically what are worn at the present time, 
 leaving out of consideration unimportant changes made from time 
 to time regarding helmets, white clothes, cap visor, and other minor 
 details. The uniforms for all officers now, line and staff alike, are 
 precisely the same, with the distinctions of grade and corps devices 
 and corps colors for the staff. Under the present regulations no 
 officer can complain of having nothing to wear, as the following 
 list of uniforms will show: 
 
Undress Uniform of Chief Engineer, Special Full Dress of Chief Engineer, rank- 
 ranking with Commander, 1864-1869. ing with Lieutenant Commander, 1895. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 731 
 
 (1) Special lull Dress. — Special full-dress- coat, laced trousers^ 
 cocked hat, epaulettes, sword, and dress belt. 
 
 (2) Full Dress. — Same as Special Full Dress, except that the 
 frock coat shall be worn in place of the special full-dress coat. 
 White trousers may be prescribed. 
 
 (3) Dress. — Frock coat, plain blue or white trousers, cocked 
 hat, epaulettes, sword, and plain leather belt. 
 
 (4) Undress (A). — Frock coat, plain blue or white trousers, 
 blue cap (with white cover if ordered), shoulder straps, sword, and 
 plain leather belt. 
 
 (5) Undress (B). — -Same as Undress (A), except that the sword 
 and sword belt will not be worn. 
 
 (6) Service Dress. — Blue or white service coat, plain blue or 
 white trousers, and blue cap (with white cover if ordered). 
 
 (7) Evening Dress (A). — Evening dress coat, laced trousers, 
 evening dress waistcoat, cocked hat, epaulettes, sword, and dress belt 
 (under waistcoat). 
 
 (8) Evening Dress (B). — Evening dress coat and waistcoat, 
 plain blue trousers, and blue cap. 
 
 In addition to these combinations, a blue cloth overcoat is pre- 
 scribed by regulation and a boat-cloak, or mackintosh, is authorized. 
 Five or six white service coats, or tunics, and at least ten pairs of 
 white trousers are necessary for the wardrobe of an officer serving in 
 the tropics. White cap- covers take the place of summer helmets 
 since January 1, 1895. An increase in width of one-half inch in 
 the gold lace stripe on the trousers of all officers is ordered to take 
 effect not later than July 1, 1897. 
 
CHAPTEK XXXVI. 
 
 The education of the people is the building up of a nation. 
 
 E. H. Thukston. 
 
 The Connection of the Naval Engineer Corps with Technical Education in the 
 United States — Engineers Detailed to Colleges by Authority of Congress- 
 Success of the Experiment — Its Discontinuance. 
 
 A BILL which had its origin in the Bureau of Steam Eiigineer- 
 
 i \ ing, Navy Department, and was supported generally by the 
 leading educators throughout the country was presented to the 45th 
 Congress and after the usual course of consideration was passed by 
 both Houses and became a law by approval near the end of the last 
 session of that Congress. This was a measure of great importance 
 to the engineer corps and to the cause of technical education, its 
 text complete reading as follows: 
 
 6 ' An act to promote a knowledge of steam-engineering and 
 iron-ship building among the students of scientific schools or col- 
 leges in the United States. 
 
 ' c Be it enacted ly the Senate and House of Representatives of 
 the United /States of America in Congress assembled, That for the 
 purpose of promoting a knowledge of steam-engineering and iron- 
 ship building among the young men of the United States, the Presi- 
 dent may, upon the application of an established scientific school or 
 college within the United States, detail an officer from the Engineer 
 Corps of the navy as professor in such school or college: Provided, 
 That the number of officers so detailed shall not at any time exceed 
 twenty-five, and such details shall be governed by rules to be pre- 
 scribed from time to time by the President: And provided further, 
 That such details may be withheld or withdrawn whenever, in the 
 judgment of the President, the interests of the public service shall 
 so require. 
 
 "Approved, February 26, 1879." 
 
 Under the operation of this law assistant engineers, well trained 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 733 
 
 themselves, were detailed gradually for duty in different colleges 
 until there was as many as eighteen or twenty simultaneously so 
 employed. At the time of the enactment of the law our navy was 
 nearly at its lowest ebb in the matter of ships, which was fortunate 
 for the colleges if not for the navy, for the scarcity of vessels in 
 commission made it possible to find engineer officers for this special 
 duty without robbing the fleet. Under the direction of the naval 
 engineers, departments of mechanical engineering were established 
 in many large institutions and new life infused into many others 
 already established but lagging behind from lack of interest or 
 absence of directing zeal, while the presence of the engineers them- 
 selves, with their ideas of discipline and administration gained by 
 their own military training, was of inestimable benefit to the insti- 
 tutions in which they served, as is testified by great numbers of 
 letters from college presidents on file in the Navy Department. 
 
 Details of engineer officers under the law providing for this 
 educational work have been made as follows since the passage of the 
 act: 
 
 1879-1881; Assistant Engineer Walter F. Worthington, to Lafayette 
 
 College, Easton, Pennsylvania. 
 
 1881-1884; Assistant Engineer George S. Willits, to the Franklin 
 
 Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 
 
 Assistant Engineer Ira N. Hollis, to Union College, 
 Schenectady, New York. 
 
 Assistant Engineer H. W. Spangler, to the University 
 of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 
 
 1881- 1885; Assistant Engineer M. E. Cooley, to the University of 
 
 Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 
 
 1882; Assistant Engineer J. L. Gow, to South Western States 
 Normal School, California, Pennsylvania. 
 
 1882- 1883; Assistant Engineer Henry K. Ivers, to Washington 
 
 University, St. Louis, Missouri. 
 
 1882-1884:; Assistant Engineer Wm. B. Boggs, to Vanderbilt Uni- 
 versity, Nashville, Tennessee. 
 
 1882-1885; Assistant Engineer F. H. Eldridge, to Ohio State 
 
 University, Columbus, Ohio. 
 
 \ 
 
 Y 
 \ 
 
734 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Assistant Engineer C. A. Carr, to the Steyens Institute 
 of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey. 
 
 1882- 1886; Passed Assistant Engineer Robert Crawford, to the 
 
 Spring Garden Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 
 
 1883- 1885; Passed Assistant Engineer R. G. Denig, to Hamilton 
 
 College, Clinton, New York. 
 
 Assistant Engineer Walter M. McFarland, to Cornell 
 University, Ithica, New York. 
 
 Assistant Engineer W.F. Durand, to Lafayette College, 
 Easton, Pennsylvania. 
 
 Assistant Engineer W. F. C. Hasson, to the Univer- 
 sity of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado. 
 
 Assistant Engineer Win lie Id S. Sample, to the West- 
 ern University, Allegheny, Pennsylvania. 
 
 Assistant Engineer Jay M. Whitham, to St. John's 
 College, Annapolis, Maryland. 
 
 1883-1886; Assistant Engineer W. H. Allderdice, to Washington 
 
 University, St. Louis, Missouri. 
 
 1883- 1887; Assistant Engineer A. W. Stahl, to Purdue University s 
 
 Lafayette, Indiana. 
 Assistant Engineer Arthur T. Woods, to the Univer- 
 sity of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois. 
 
 1884- 1887 Assistant Engineer Goold H. Bull, to the University of 
 
 Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 
 
 1884- 1890; Passed Assistant Engineer John D. Ford, to the Balti- 
 
 more Manual Training School, Baltimore, Maryland. 
 
 1885- 1886; Assistant Engineer W. N. Little, to the Worcester Free 
 
 Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts. 
 Assistant Engineer Andrew M. Hunt, to the Michigan 
 Military Academy, Orchard Lake, Michigan. 
 
 1885-1887; Assistant Engineer F. M. Bennett, to the Chicago 
 
 Manual Training School, Chicago, Illinois. 
 Assistant Engineer J. EL Baker, to St. John's Col- 
 lege, Annapolis, Maryland. 
 
 1885-1888; Passed Assistant Engineer David P. Jones, to the Kan- 
 sas Normal College, Fort Scott, Kansas. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 735 
 
 Passed Assistant Engineer Frank H. Bailey, to 
 Cornell University, Ithica, New York. 
 
 1886-1887; Assistant Engineer E. Q'C. Acker, to Vanderbilt Uni- 
 versity, Nashville, Tennessee. 
 
 1886-1888; Assistant Engineer G. W. McElroy, to the University 
 
 of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina. 
 Assistant Engineer T. W. Kinkaid, to the New Hamp- 
 shire College, Hanover, New Hampshire. 
 
 1886- 1889; Assistant Engineer F. W. Bartlett, to the Michigan 
 
 Military Academy, Orchard Lake, Michigan. 
 
 1887; Assistant Engineer W. F. Durand, to the Worcester 
 Free Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts. 
 
 1887- 1890; Assistant Engineer H. W. Spangler, to the University 
 
 of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 
 
 1887- 1891; Assistant Engineer W. H. P. Creighton, to Purdue 
 
 University, Lafayette, Indiana. 
 
 1888- 1891; Passed Assistant Engineer G. B. Ransom, to the Uni- 
 
 versity of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. 
 
 Passed Assistant Engineer Wm. C. Eaton, to Madison 
 University, Hamilton, New York. 
 
 Passed Assistant Engineer A. B. Canaga, to Cornell 
 University, Ithica, New York. 
 
 Passed Assistant Engineer J. E. Edwards, to the Uni- 
 versity of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina. 
 
 Passed Assistant Engineer Wythe M. Parks, to the 
 Chicago Manual Training School, Chicago, Illinois. 
 
 Assistant Engineer J. E. Wilmer, to St. John's College, 
 Annapolis, Maryland. 
 
 1888- 1892; Passed Assistant Engineer T. F. Burgdorff, to the Uni- 
 
 versity of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee. 
 
 1889; Assistant Engineer Charles E. Eommell, to the Wil- 
 mington High School, Wilmington, Delaware. 
 
 1889- 1890; Passed Assistant Engineer George S. Willits, to the 
 
 Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. 
 Assistant Engineer Leo D. Miner, to the University of 
 Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 
 
736 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 1889- 1891; Assistant Engineer W. F. 0. Hasson, to John Hopkins 
 
 University, Baltimore, Maryland. 
 
 1890- 1891; Passed Assistant Engineer John Pemberton, to the 
 
 Pennsylvania State College, Centre County, Penn- 
 sylvania. 
 
 1893- 1895; Passed Assistant Engineer T. W. Kinkaid, to the Penn- 
 
 sylvania State College, Centre County, Pennsylvania. 
 
 1894- 1896; Chief Engineer John D. Ford, to the Maryland Agricul- 
 
 tural College, College Park, Maryland. 
 
 After this method of extending governmental aid to institutions 
 of learning had become well established and so popular as to 
 actually embarrass the Department in meeting the requests of 
 colleges, the work of rebuilding the navy was undertaken in earnest 
 and the additions to the fleet of modern cruisers with complicated 
 machinery made the services of naval engineers so necessary that 
 few could be spared to continue the good work of technical educa- 
 tion. At the same time that our marine engines were increasing in 
 number and complexity the membership of the engineer corps was 
 slowly diminished. By one of those inscrutable exhibitions of 
 inconsistency that occasionally set the public marveling, Congress, 
 by the very same act that appropriated money for the construction 
 of the first steel ships of the new navy, provided for a gradual 
 reduction of the engineer corps from two hundred and seventy 
 members to one hundred and seventy, the reduction to take place 
 in the grades of passed assistant and assistant engineers only. The 
 officers of these grades being the ones upon whom the duty of 
 standing watch at sea devolves, as well as the ones most available 
 for college duty, the latter had to step aside for the claims of the 
 government upon its own, and the college details were withdrawn, 
 or allowed to expire without sending a relief. 
 
 Strenuous efforts were made by educators and naval engineers 
 to induce Congress to reconsider its action and provide for a suf- 
 ficient membership of the engineer corps to allow the continuation of 
 the college work without interfering with the engineers' duties in 
 building and supervising the machinery of the new navy. So much 
 interest was taken in the matter that a committee, composed of the 
 presidents of three of the most prominent colleges in the United 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 737 
 
 States, was appointed by the Educational Association and sent to 
 Washington to endeavor to enlist the good will of Congress: but 
 such things take time, and when a bill providing for the termina- 
 tion in the reduction of the engineer corps reached a vote and was 
 passed, after having been before Congress for several years, it was 
 too late. The corps had then diminished to within twenty -five of 
 the lower number allowed, and the needs of the new ships demanded 
 many more than there were even with this slight addition. So the 
 educational work had to be abandoned. But two details have been 
 made within the past five years, and these were brought about by 
 the exercise of political influence too powerful for the Navy Depart- 
 ment to withstand. 
 
 With no exception, so far as known, the engineer officers car- 
 ried out the work assigned them in the various colleges with zeal 
 and thoroughness, winning unqualified praise from the educators 
 with whom they were associated, and by their abilities and bearing 
 in the critical communities in which they lived in the college towns 
 reflected credit upon their corps and did much to infuse abroad a 
 better knowledge of and kindlier feeling toward the navy as an 
 organization. The popularity of the army with the public is due in 
 no small degree to the presence always of a considerable number of 
 army officers as military instructors in schools and colleges through- 
 out the country, setting such excellent examples of intelligence, 
 self-control, and good training that the results, reflected in the 
 minds of the growing generation, are sentiments of respect and 
 admiration for the whole army; and the naval engineers on school 
 duty were doing much to bring about the same for the navy. When 
 placed in similar positions they realized that through them the naval 
 service was on trial, often in communities where a predisposition 
 existed to judge harshly anything and anybody connected with a 
 military branch of the government, and to their credit it can be 
 said that in every case the naval engineer appreciated the critical 
 nature of his surroundings and so conducted himself in his official 
 work and in his social life as to inspire a genuine liking and respect 
 for the navy which he represented. In the discontinuance of these 
 details the colleges lost much, but for the reasons just given the 
 navy has lost more in the opportunity to set itself in a true light 
 before the educated and scholarly elements of American society. 
 
 40 
 
738 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Space forbids a detailed account of the work done at different 
 institutions by all the engineers trusted with the carrying out of 
 this important work for which reason a few instances only will be 
 briefly related as indicative of the nature of the work done by all. 
 
 In the summer of 1881 Assistant Enginneer Mortimer E. 
 Oooley reported in obedience to naval orders to the president of the 
 University of Michigan and was directed to establish a course of 
 mechanical engineering parallel with the existing courses in civil 
 and mining engineering that a complete school of engineering might 
 exist in the university. Mr. Cooley was elected to the chair of 
 mechanical engineering by the board of regents and proceeded to 
 create his department from nothing to begin with by laying out a 
 course of study, at first incomplete and difficult to execute because 
 of the entire lack of appliances and facilities for instruction. An 
 appropriation of $2,500 by the State Legislature soon enabled him 
 to build and equip a small workshop or mechanical laboratory, but 
 the trifling sum appropriated so limited the result that only six stu- 
 dents out of about twenty applicants could be admitted to the class 
 first to begin the new course. About a year later a larger appropri- 
 ation by the Legislature enabled Mr. Cooley to enlarge his labora- 
 tories and employ an assistant professor, which allowed of the 
 formation of a new class of eighteen students. 
 
 From this small beginning the growth of the new school was 
 steady and rapid, until now it is one of the largest and best mechan- 
 ical engineering schools in the country, its growth and success 
 being due almost entirely to the professional and executive ability of 
 Mr. Oooley and to his peculiar aptitude for imparting instruction. 
 When his detail expired in 1884 such influence was used by Presi- 
 dent Angell of the university and the great value of his services to 
 the institution so clearly set forth that the Department extended his 
 orders one year. At the end of that time, in response to a most 
 flattering offer made by the board of regents, he resigned his com- 
 mission in the navy and accepted the professorship of mechanical 
 engineering, which position he still holds, being one of the most 
 prominent and popular members of the faculty as well as a leading 
 and well-known citizen identified with the political and material 
 development of the state in which he lives. 
 
 The work done at the Stevens Institute of Technology by 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 739 
 
 Assistant Engineer C. A. Carr, U. S. Navy, is best described by 
 quoting from a detailed report of his duties made to the Depart- 
 ment by him in January, 1885: 
 
 u As shown by the catalogue, I am professor of marine engin- 
 eering and assistant to the professor of mathematics and mechanics. 
 The entire senior class, numbering between forty and fifty students, 
 are required to take the course in marine engineering. Instruction 
 is given almost entirely by lectures and is of a practical char- 
 acter in which I aim to give the class the benefit of the practical 
 knowledge that I have 'acquired. The class provide themselves 
 with "Seaton's Marine Engineering, 55 which they use as a reference 
 book. The subjects of materials of engineering and theory of 
 the steam engine are studied in the department of mechanical 
 engineering, it being left for me to enable the students to become 
 familiar with the practical design, construction, and working of the 
 marine steam engine. The subjects treated of most in detail are, — 
 the different methods of determining the resistance of ships; the 
 different types of engines, their advantages and disadvantages, 
 and a comparison of the simple and compound engine; the com- 
 putation of horse-power to overcome a known resistance; the 
 varied designs used for the different parts of the engine, boiler, 
 and propelling instrument, and the rales for proportioning these 
 parts; and facts regarding the practical working and care of 
 machinery. The practical application of the Zeuner valve diagram 
 and strain diagrams is taught by me in the draughting room. 
 During the year the class visit the principal ocean steamers and 
 engine-building works about New York, and make a tour of 
 inspection of several days to the ship-yards at Philadelphia, 
 Wilmington, and Chester, in my charge. 
 
 66 In the department of mathematics and mechanics I have the 
 freshman and sophomore classes, the instruction given them by me 
 including the following subjects: trigonometry ; theory of equa- 
 tions ; coordinate geometry ; differential and integral calculus ; and 
 elementary mechanics : also a few lectures on determinants and 
 quaternions. 
 
 "This includes everything that has been required of me by the 
 authorities of the institute, but I have voluntarily done a great deal 
 
740 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 of work for the mechanical laboratory, under the direction of Pro- 
 fessor E. H. Thurston. The mechanical laboratory makes tests of 
 engines, boilers, lubricants, etc., for outside parties, the proceeds 
 being used in buying apparatus for the laboratory and in paying the 
 expenses of experimental research on subjects of general interest to 
 engineers. Much of this work is done by students under the super- 
 intendence of a competent engineer, by which means they gain a 
 great deal of practical knowledge and experience. This work I 
 have undertaken for my own instruction, and because it comes 
 directly in the line of work for which I am detailed. The work 
 which I have done, or which has been done under my superintend- 
 ence, includes the following : a test to determine the efficiency of 
 different kinds of worm and spur gearing; a test to determine the 
 law of condensation of steam in the cylinder; tests of boilers; tests 
 of gas engines; tests of engines running dynamos; tests to deter- 
 mine tensile strength and elongation of different brands of telephone 
 wire; and a great many tests to determine the value of lubricants 
 and of all kinds of materials for construction. 5 ' 
 
 Assistant Engineers A. W. Stahl at Purdue University, Lafay- 
 ette, Indiana, and A. T. Woods at the University of Illinois, 
 Champaign, Illinois, did work very similar to that before credited 
 to Assistant Engineer Cooley at the University of Michigan, each 
 developing from a small beginning a thorough course in theoretical 
 and practical mechanical engineering, systematically organized and 
 well equipped with laboratories and modern appliances for impart- 
 ing knowledge. Working in conjunction, their posts of duty not 
 being widely separated, they combined their lectures and supplied 
 the want of a suitable text book for students by having the lectures 
 published in book form under the title of "Principles of Mechanism. 55 
 So valuable were the services of these gentlemen that each, at the 
 urgent solicitation of the authorities of the colleges where they were 
 stationed, was granted an extension of one year in the length of 
 their details, and Mr. Woods 5 when finally detached, was offered 
 and accepted the chair of mechanical engineering, resigning his 
 commission in the navy to remain with the university. Four years 
 later he removed to St. Louis to assume the chair of dynamic en- 
 gineering in Washington University, and a year afterward, having 
 become a recognized authority on the economics of locomotive en- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 741 
 
 gines, was given the position of editor of the Railway Gazette, in 
 Chicago. In February, 1893, he died of typhoid fever, the loss to 
 the engineering world caused by his death being commented upon 
 at length by all the technical journals throughout the country. He 
 was a native of Minnesota, and a member of the class of cadet 
 engineers that graduated from the Naval Academy in 1880. 
 
 The following letter written by the president of St. John's Col- 
 lege, Annapolis, Maryland, commending the services to that insti- 
 tution of Assistant Engineer Jay M. Whitham supplies another 
 account of this class of duty: 
 
 " Mr. Whitham was detailed by the Secretary of the Navy in 
 July, 1883, to act as professor of mechanical engineering, &c, in 
 St. John's College. When he reported for duty, there was not 
 even the beginning of such a department in the institution, either in 
 courses of study or in necessary appliances, — nothing, in short, 
 except a demand for such instruction on the part of a goodly num- 
 ber of the students, and sympathy and encouragement on the part 
 of a few members of the board and facultv. 
 
 " Under these circumstances, too much praise cannot be given 
 to Mr. Whitham for the tact, skill and energy with which he has 
 succeeded, with so little pecuniary assistance and in so short a time, 
 in establishing a department which I venture to believe the friends 
 of the college will never hereafter suffer to be withdrawn from its 
 curriculum. 
 
 u During the first year, in consequence of the utter absence of 
 the most essential mechanical appliances, he was compelled to limit 
 the work of his classes chiefly to the principles and practice of 
 mechanical drawing. In this he has achieved a distinguished suc- 
 cess, the results being of a character, both in quality and quantity, 
 to prove his entire fitness as instructor in this branch of his depart- 
 ment. In connection with this, also, instruction was given in de- 
 scriptive geometry, the course in which was made eminently 
 practical. His success thus far, together with the interest awakened 
 in such practical studies, naturally led to a further development and 
 extension of the work of the department. A steam engine was pur- 
 chased and a work-shop opened, in which our students may now be 
 found laboring at anvil, bench and lathe with an interest and energy 
 
742 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 which are of themselves a sufficient proof of the wisdom displayed 
 in the establishment of this department. 
 
 "I should, however, fail to do full justice to Professor Whit- 
 ham should I omit to acknowledge our obligations to him for most 
 timely and valuable aid in the department of mathematics. That 
 chair having become vacant in consequence of necessary changes in 
 the faculty, he was entrusted with the entire management of the 
 department. His work has been as conspicuously successful as in 
 the department of mechanical engineering. The regular course has 
 been improved and extended, elective courses have been introduced, 
 a new interest in mathematical studies has been awakened, and a spirit 
 of energy and thoroughness infused into the entire department. 
 
 6 1 Mr. Whitham is qualified by natural endowment, as well as 
 thorough training — now also supplemented by the lessons of experi- 
 ence — to give satisfaction as instructor in the departments in which 
 he has labored among us with such marked credit and success. 
 
 " I would also say that as a teacher Mr. Whitham is exceed- 
 ingly painstaking and helpful, easily approached by his pupils, and 
 animated and clear in his manner of communicating instruction; 
 while as a disciplinarian he is firm and positive in the maintenance 
 of order and in requiring of the student satisfactory proofs of honest 
 and faithful application." 
 
 At the expiration of his tour of duty at St. John's, Mr. Whit- 
 ham, as too many other assistant engineers have done, resigned 
 from the navy, accepting the chair of engineering in the University 
 of Arkansas which had been offered him. During his five years 
 occupancy of that position he developed the department of engi- 
 neering from twelve students and no assistant instructors to one 
 hundred and five students iand five assistant professors, besides 
 building and equipping laboratories and work-shops for practical in- 
 struction. During the same time he wrote and had published two 
 professional text books— u Steam Engine Design," and " Construc- 
 tive Steam Engineering." 
 
 The few examples now cited are fairly representative and show 
 that the duties performed by naval engineers assigned to colleges 
 were in the main within the bounds of their profession and con- 
 sistent with the wording of the act of Congress authorizing the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 743 
 
 assignments, but there are some records showing a variety of em- 
 ployment decidedly startling. A report of duty engaged in, made 
 by Assistant Engineer W. F. C. Hasson from the University of 
 Colorado at Boulder in that State, after detailing about eight hours 
 daily class-room work in mathematics, mechanics, electricity, draw- 
 ing, and astronomy, goes on to say that he is acting as secretary of 
 the university and general assistant to the president; has command 
 of the corps of cadets, and is a member of the lecturing force 
 engaged in enlightening the public by means of a series of popular 
 lectures on general subjects in the larger towns about the State. 
 Apparently feeling that some explanation is due for all this variety, 
 Mr. Hasson remarks at the end of his report, — "I have remained 
 here because I am glad to be associated with a faculty composed of 
 earnest hard-working scholars who are struggling against every 
 obstacle to establish a scholarly institution." 
 
 Though now practically abandoned by the government, the 
 work begun so well by many of the naval engineers is being carried 
 on to some extent yet by former members of the corps who have 
 resigned from the service to make educational work a profession, or 
 by naval engineers on the retired list, the latter readily finding em- 
 ployment of this nature as a result of the excellent reputation for 
 the corps established by regularly detailed active members in for- 
 mer years. Prominent among engineers of naval training now 
 educators by profession may be mentioned Dr. R. H. Thurston, 
 Director of Sibley College, Cornell University; Professor W. F. 
 Durand, Principal of the School of Marine Construction at the 
 same university, Professor Ira. N, Hollis, Director of the Lawrence 
 Scientific School, Harvard University, and Professor H. W. 
 Spangler of the University of Pennsylvania. Of retired naval engi- 
 neers engaged in educational work may be mentioned as representa. 
 tives Passed Assistant Engineer John W. Saville, Director of the 
 Baltimore Manual Training School; Passed Assistant Engineer 
 Robert Crawford, Superintendent of the Williamson School, Dela- 
 ware County, Pennsylvania, and Passed Assistant Engineer W. E. 
 King, Commandant of Cadets at the Cheltenham Military Academy. 
 
OHAPTEK XXXVII. 
 
 "Our occupation was formerly an instinct ; now it is a science." 
 
 — Admiral Jurien de la Graviere. 
 
 Brief Mention of Events of Engineering Interest Since 1872 — Peril of the Man- 
 hattan — Titles of Assistant Engineers Changed — Chief Engineer Wm. H. 
 Shock Appointed Engineer-in-Chief — Loss of the Huron — Cruise of the 
 Marion to Heard Island — Reduction of Engineer Corps in 1882 — Case of the 
 Discharged Cadet Engineers — Wreck of the Ashuelot — Longevity Pay for 
 Passed Assistant Engineers — Chief Engineer C. H. Loring Succeeds Mr. Shock 
 as Engineer-in-Chief — Naval Disaster at Samoa — Naval Engineers at the 
 Columbian Exposition and Midwinter Fair — Loss of the Kearsarge— Casualty 
 on the Monterey. 
 
 OWARD the end of the year 1873 the ships of the North 
 
 1 Atlantic, South Atlantic, and European squadrons were 
 assembled at Key West and all serviceable vessels at the navy yards 
 were hurriedly fitted for service and despatched to the same point, 
 the occasion being a possible rupture with Spain on account of that 
 nation's action in the case of the steamer Virginius. One of the 
 vessels prepared for this service was the monitor Manhattan, which 
 was hastily repaired at Cramp's shipyard in Philadelphia and pro- 
 ceeded to sea, convoyed by the Powhatan, the 26th day of Novem- 
 ber. The next day when well clear of the Capes of the Delaware a 
 gale was encountered and the evil effects of the haste with which 
 the vessel had been prepared for sea at once showed themselves: 
 water came in under the turret in volumes, the decks leaked badly, 
 and the bilge pumps, constantly choking with chips and shavings left 
 by the contractor's men, could with great difficulty be kept in oper- 
 ation. It was an exact repetition of the experience of the Passaic 
 the night the Monitor went down, and one can but wonder that the 
 lesson was so soon forgotten. After pluckily fighting against almost 
 certain destruction for one whole day, Commander Yates of the 
 Manhattan signalled the Powhatan that they must return to the Del- 
 aware Breakwater, where the Manhattan arrived eventually so dis- 
 abled as to be of no immediate use for war. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 745 
 
 While the sea was breaking at its worst over the bows of the 
 Manhattan and against her turret in great masses, First Assistant 
 Engineer John Lowe and a seaman, with great darmg ventured down 
 from the top of the turret with a hawser, which they succeeded in 
 adjusting around the base of the turret to aid in keeping out the 
 water. During the time that the vessel was in imminent peril 
 Second Assistant Engineer John T. Smith remained in the bilges 
 soaked with cold water for a period of twenty-six hours keeping the 
 bilge pumps in operation, and with such success that his efforts 
 prevented the Manhattan from foundering. When the vessel had 
 succeeded in finding safety in the Delaware Mr. Smith was so ill 
 from cold and exhaustion that he was sent to a hospital and never 
 sufficiently recovered to return to active duty. The devotion to duty 
 displayed by him was of such character as to call forth the following 
 letter from his commanding officer: 
 
 "United States Iron-Clad Manhattan, 
 
 "Delaware Eiver, November 30, 1873. 
 
 " Sir: — Your conduct during the period that this vessel was in 
 a distressed condition on the 27th instant, while being towed by the 
 United States Steamer Powhatan, was such as requires higher com- 
 mendation than simply to say it met with approval. It was such as 
 to merit the highest praise. 
 
 " Your necessary exposure, being in a wet condition during an 
 entire day to insure the efficient working of the bilge pumps, on 
 which the preservation of the ship depended, was an evidence of 
 your zeal and faithfulness in the discharge of your duty. Your 
 health, which has suffered by your exertions on the day named, will, 
 I trust, be restored to you, and your usefulness preserved to the 
 service. 
 
 " I am, very truly, yours, 
 " A. E. Yates, Commander, U. S. N., Comd'g., 'Manhattan.' 
 "Second Assistant Engineer J. T. Smith, 
 
 "United States Navy (through Navy Department). ?? 
 
 The illness of Mr. Smith resulted in permanent disability and 
 he was eventually condemned by a medical survey and recommended 
 
746 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 for retirement. His friends, believing that the circumstances of his 
 disablement warranted some recognition, caused a bill to be intro- 
 duced in Congress authorizing his advancement to the grade of first 
 assistant engineer previous to being retired, which bill passed and 
 became a law in January, 1875. The report recommending the 
 passage of the bill, made by Senator Anthony, gave the following 
 as a reason for Mr. Smith's advancement: u His record during the 
 war was such as to meet the commendation of his superiors at all 
 times; and it further appears that he lost his health by being sub- 
 jected to extreme fatigue and exposure while in the line of duty. 
 When the Manhattan started for Cuba in 1873, Smith was ordered 
 on board, and it is said that by his very extraordinary exertions he 
 saved the vessel, and at the time was highly complimented by his 
 associates. " 
 
 The act of Congress approved February 24, 1874, extending the 
 academic course for cadet engineers from two years to four, also 
 provided that from and after its passage the title of first assistant 
 engineer should be changed to passed assistant engineer, and the 
 title of second assistant engineer to assistant engineer. 
 
 In the spring of 1877, at the expiration of his term of office, 
 Engineer-in- Chief Wood was relieved by Chief Engineer Wm. H. 
 Shock, the latter assuming the duties of chief of the Bureau of Steam 
 Engineering on the third of March. Mr. Wood, under whose direc- 
 tion the designs for new machinery for the large double-turreted 
 monitors then being rebuilt had been prepared, was ordered to the 
 important duty of general superintendent of that machinery. He 
 was placed on the retired list in May, 1880, having arrived at the 
 age limit, though in vigorous possession of all his faculties. Two 
 years later, August 31, 1882, he was drowned by the capsizing of a 
 canoe in a creek at his summer residence in St. Mary's county, 
 Maryland, thus adding one more to the long list of retired sea-faring 
 men who, after escaping the dangers of the sea for a life-time, meet 
 death by drowning in some quiet stream or mill-pond. 
 
 Mr. Shock, the new bureau chief, had been prominent in his 
 corps ever since his admission to it more than thirty years before 
 and enjoyed an excellent reputation throughout the navy. Besides 
 the many important duties performed by him, he was the inventor 
 of a successful rotary projectile to be fired from smooth-bore guns, 
 
CHIEF ENGINEER W. H. SHOCK, U. S. NAVY. 
 
 Engineer-in-Chief of the Navy from March 3, 1877 to June 15, 1883. From a 
 photograph taken about ten years after Mr. Shock's 
 rertirement from active duty. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 749 
 
 the peculiarities in the construction of the shot giving to it the ad- 
 vantages possessed by shot fired from rifled guns. He also had 
 invented and patented an improved bullet for small arms, and a 
 compensating device for setting up wire rigging in ships. The lat- 
 ter was very heartily approved by Admiral Porter and was used to a 
 considerable extent in the naval service. During the International 
 Exposition in Vienna in 1873 Mr. Shock filled the position of Vice 
 President of the division of " Civil Enginery. 5 ' He is an alumnus 
 of Dickinson College, holding a diploma of Master of Arts from 
 that institution. While chief of the Bureau of Steam Engineering 
 he published an exhaustive and excellent treatise on steam boilers. 
 
 The iron screw gun-boat Huron, after being in commission about 
 two years on the North Atlantic station, sailed for the West Indies 
 from Hampton Eoads November 23rd, 1877. Shortly after 1 a. m. 
 the next morning she ran ashore on the low sandy beach in the 
 vicinity of Nag's Head on the coast of North Carolina and became 
 a total wreck. For some time after she struck no fears were enter- 
 tained for the safety of the crew, but the ship heeled far over to the 
 weather side, allowing the heavy incoming seas to break into and 
 over her, washing away the men as they became exhausted, until in 
 the end the loss of life was frightful ; of sixteen officers only four 
 were saved, or rather saved themselves, for they got ashore by their 
 own exertions after being washed off the ship, and owed their pre- 
 servation to superior endurance and to favorable accidents while 
 struggling in the water. Only one of the marine guard of fifteen 
 men got ashore, and only thirty of the one hundred enlisted men of 
 the crew were equally fortunate. Two of the four officers who 
 saved themselves were engineers — Assistant Engineer R. G. Denig, 
 and Cadet Engineer E. T. Warburton, both young and vigorous 
 men. Chief Engineer E. M. Olsen and Cadet Engineer E. N. 
 Loomis were drowned. 
 
 The behavior of all on board was excellent, and especially so 
 in the engineer's department, as brought out by the testimony before 
 the court of inquiry that investigated the loss. The conditions 
 below were appalling : the boilers started from their foundations 
 and were in momentary danger of shifting bodily into the fire-room; 
 the ship heeled so much that the amount of water in the boilers 
 could not be known, and water from the breaking seas was rapidly 
 
750 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 filling the ship, in spite of all which, the officers and men re- 
 mained faithfully at their posts, keeping up steam at full pressure 
 to work the pumps and main engines and caring generally for the 
 machinery the same as though the ship had been in free route. The 
 engines were kept backing at full speed for nearly an hour after the 
 ship struck and finally stopped only when the accumulation of sand 
 under the stern blocked the propeller. Chief Engineer Oisen then 
 reported the condition of the engines and obtained authority from 
 Commander Ryan to haul fires, which was done in an orderly man- 
 ner and the men permitted to go on deck and take their chances of 
 getting ashore with others of the crew. Five of the enlisted men 
 of the engineer's force saved themselves and seventeen were lost. 
 
 In the latter part of 1881 the screw-sloop Marion, then attached 
 to the South Atlantic station, was ordered to proceed to the vicinity 
 of Heard Island in the Southern Indian Ocean to search for a miss- 
 ing American whale-ship, the Trinity. The long and trying voyage 
 was made and the crew of the whaler found existing miserably on 
 the bleak and barren island where they had been wrecked fifteen 
 months before. This humane expedition cost the life of Cadet 
 Engineer John U. Crygier, a very popular young officer who had 
 graduated from the Naval Academy two years before. Upon the 
 return of the Marion to South America, Mr. Crygier was invalided 
 home by order of a medical survey, he having been found suffering 
 from a fatal disease of the kidneys brought on, as the surgeons re- 
 ported, by protracted watch duty in the variable temperature of the 
 engine and fire-rooms during the long voyage of the Marion. At 
 home he was found disqualified for promotion by reason of his 
 physical disability and was dropped from the service, not being 
 eligible for the retired list on account of being a cadet and not a 
 commissioned officer, although he was entitled to promotion and a 
 commission in June, 1881, long before his disability occurred. 
 His death occurred not long after he was dropped. He was for 
 four years the room-mate of the author at the Naval Academy and 
 was a genial and attractive associate, a true friend, and an accom- 
 plished young gentleman. 
 
 In adddition to the destruction of the cadet engineer system at 
 the Naval Academy, the engineer corps suffered another severe loss 
 by the provisions of the naval appropriation act of August 5, 1882, 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 751 
 
 one of the sections of which fixed the number of passed assistant and 
 assistant engineers at sixty and forty respectively in place of the one 
 hundred previously established as the membership of each grade: 
 the number and relative rank of the chief engineers remained as 
 before. The actual strength of the corps at the time of the passage 
 of the act was seventy chief engineers, ninety-nine passed assistant 
 engineers, and sixty-two assistant engineers, in addition to which 
 there were sixty-two cadet engineers, graduates, serving at sea, and 
 seventy-three cadet engineers, under-graduates, in the different 
 classes at the Naval Academy. Sixteen of the graduated cadets 
 belonged to the class of 1880 and were therefore entitled to promo- 
 tion in June, 1882, before the new law was enacted, which promo- 
 tion they duly received as they became available for examination, 
 but all other cadet engineers at sea or at the Academy were com- 
 bined with cadet midshipmen to make the new corps of naval cadets. 
 This amalgamation and an exchange of duties on board ship was 
 directed by the following general order: 
 
 general order ) "NAVY DEPARTMENT, 
 
 no. 302. J " Washington, December 12, 1882. 
 
 u The attention of commanding and other officers is called to 
 the act of Congress, approved August 5, 1882, which provides that 
 vacancies in the lower grades of the Line, Engineer Corps, and 
 Marine Corps shall hereafter be filled by appointments to be made 
 from the graduates of the Naval Academy, at the conclusion of 
 their six years' course, and in the order of merit as shall be deter- 
 mined by the Academic Board of the Naval Academy. 
 
 u The above applies to all naval cadets who have not com- 
 pleted the prescribed six years' course of instruction. 
 
 4 4 In order that naval cadets who have completed the four 
 years' course of study at the Naval Academy shall have equal 
 opportunity to prepare for their final examination, it is ordered that 
 those who have been doing duty as cadet engineers shall in addition 
 to those duties be assigned to deck and division duties, and shall be 
 given every opportunity to acquire a knowledge of navigation, gun- 
 nery and seamanship, as well as of steam engineering; and that 
 those who have been doing duty as cadet midshipmen shall, in addi- 
 
752 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 tion to those duties, be given the duties in the fire and engine-rooms 
 hitherto performed by cadet engineers. 
 
 44 All naval cadets will, at the end of their six years' course, 
 be finally examined at the Naval Academy by the Academic Board. 
 
 44 The duty performed by each naval cadet shall be specified in 
 the column of 6 Remarks, ? already provided on the Quarterly Re- 
 turns called for by General Order No. 290. 
 
 44 Commanding officers of naval vessels are charged with the 
 execution of this order, which affects naval cadets who appear as 
 cadet midshipmen on pages 25, 26, and 27, Navy Register of July 
 '1, 1882, beginning with and junior to John L. S chock; and those 
 who are designated cadet engineers on pages 39 and 40 of the same 
 register beginning with and junior to Jay M. Whitham. 
 
 "Commanding officers are directed to inform the Department 
 of the date of the receipt of this order. 
 
 ' 4 The attention of commanding officers is also called to para- 
 graph 143, page 51, and paragraphs 3, 4, and 5, page 65, Navy 
 Regulations, edition of 1876. These regulations will be strictly 
 enforced. 
 
 " William E. Chandler, 
 
 4 4 Secretary of the Navy. ' ' 
 
 The gradual reduction in the engineer corps directed by the act 
 of 1882 practically stopped promotion in the lower grades of that 
 arm, and as the line had been reduced more than one hundred num- 
 bers by the same act that branch also suffered from stagnation for a 
 number of years. The result of this was that few vacancies existed 
 at the end of each year for the cadets finally graduating, the most 
 of whom in consequence were honorably discharged in accordance 
 with the terms of the act, which is quoted in the chapter relating to 
 the Naval Academy. The operation of this law was particularly 
 severe upon the cadet engineers who had graduated from the 
 Academy, for they found themselves with little time for preparation 
 obliged to compete for the few vacancies with their midshipmen 
 classmates who had had the benefit of three or four years instruc- 
 tion and practice in the technical branches upon which the examina- 
 tion was based. The general order No. 302 directing an exchange 
 of duties was not received on some of the remote stations until the 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 755 
 
 members of the class of 1881 were about to proceed home for final 
 examination, and the cadet engineers of that class were therefore 
 obliged to appear at the Naval Academy with little experience in 
 seamanship, navigation, and gunnery, in which the midshipmen 
 were proficient, while the examination in steam was that based upon 
 the elementary course the cadet midshipmen had received, and in 
 which they had an equal opportunity with the cadet engineers for 
 excellence. 
 
 Thus handicapped, the cadet engineers of the class of 1881 had 
 the mortification of being obliged to omit the examinations in the 
 most important subjects, with the result that but one of them, after 
 receiving zero for a mark in both seamanship and navigation, had a 
 sufficient multiple to get one of the twenty commissions which were 
 distributed to the combined class of ninety members. The next 
 class of cadet engineers, that of 1882, fared much better, for with 
 one year more time in which to prepare, its members made an 
 excellent showing when put into competition with the cadet micL 
 shipmen, the merit roll of the combined class after the final exami- 
 nations showing the first three members — Robert Gatewood, Emil 
 Theiss and W. H. P. Oreighton — to have been former cadet 
 engineers, and eight of them took a sufficiently high standing to 
 obtain commissions in either the navy or marine corps. The 
 experience of the other classes of cadet engineers transformed into 
 naval cadets has been told in the chapter devoted to the engineering 
 course at the Naval Academy and need not be referred to again, 
 except, perhaps, to remark that of all the injuries dealt the engineer 
 corps by the act of 1882 the loss of these same classes of cadet 
 engineers was not the least. From the method of their selection, 
 sustained by their academic records, the young gentlemen of these 
 classes were of very superior capability, and as they almost without 
 exception went into other branches of the service than the engineer 
 corps when finally graduated that corps lost in them an element 
 that would have been a strong safeguard in after years. 
 
 The courses of instruction for cadet midshipmen and cadet 
 engineers prior to the passage of the act of August 5, 1882, were 
 the same; viz., four years at the Naval Academy and two years at 
 sea, but a different wording of the statutes in the two cases placed the 
 cadet engineers upon a better footing for opposing the application 
 
754 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 of that act to those of them who had already completed the academic 
 course. The period of two years at sea for cadet midshipmen was 
 specified as probationary , while for cadet engineers it was referred 
 to as service; cadet engineers after leaving the Academy were also 
 referred to in law as graduates^ and that word was used in defining 
 them in the very same act that specified that all under-graduates 
 should thereafter be designated naval cadets. So they had ample 
 legal grounds for claiming to be graduates not subject to the opera- 
 tion of the act, and for contending that the Department had com- 
 mitted an error in issuing the general order No. 302. 
 
 Before the final examination of the class of 1881 at the 
 Academy in June, 1883, had taken place, a cadet engineer — Harry 
 G. Leopold — of the class of 1882 had brought the illegality of the 
 Department's action to public attention by bringing suit in the 
 Court of Claims for the difference in pay between that of a cadet 
 engineer and a naval cadet for the period that he had been regarded 
 as a naval cadet, and his claim was sustained by the unanimous vote 
 of that court. In its opinion in this case the Court of Claims held 
 that the cadet engineers were graduates under the law and that the 
 act of 1882 had been misconstrued by the Navy Department in 
 declaring that it applied to the cadet engineers not at the Academy. 
 This was conclusive as an opinion from a proper legal authority, but 
 the Navy Department, instead of accepting it, demanded a rehear- 
 ing of the case and in the meantime discharged all the cadet 
 engineers of the class of 1881 with the exception of one fortunate 
 member whose class standing entitled him to a commission. The 
 Court of Claims sustained its previous finding in the Leopold case 
 and also rendered an exactly similar decision in the case of De f . 
 C. Kedgrave, a member of the class of 1881 who had brought suit 
 for his difference in pay prior to being discharged, but these decis- 
 ions had no effect upon the Navy Department which adhered to its 
 action in discharging the unfortunate cadets. 
 
 When the class of 1882 came up for final examination in 1884 
 and a majority of its members were mustered out, one of them, 
 Lyman B. Perkins, obtained a more important decision by suing the 
 government in the Court of Claims for pay as a cadet engineer after 
 being mustered out. He won his case easily, having the law 
 entirely on his side, the decision of the court being that his dis- 
 
THE STEAM NAYT OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 755 
 
 charge was a violation of law and therefore void, and that he was 
 entitled to continue to draw his pay whether the Navy Department 
 chose to recognize him as a cadet engineer or not. This decision 
 plainly put all the discharged cadet engineers back into the navy by 
 virtue of being on its pay rolls, but the authorities of the Depart- 
 ment had determined that the cadet engineers must go, and refused to 
 recognize them. To avoid paying them in ' accordance with the 
 decision of the court, the Department appealed the Perkins case to 
 the Supreme Court and at the same time, with a view to settling the 
 controversy finally, made a test case of the Redgrave decision and 
 appealed that also to the Supreme Court. In January, 1886, the 
 Supreme Court handed down an opinion in both these cases affirm- 
 ing in every particular the decisions of the Court of Claims and 
 sustaining the position of the cadet engineers. The Navy Depart- 
 ment then, acting on the advice of the Attorney General, issued a 
 general order (No. 344, dated March 10, 1886) restoring the cadet 
 engineers to the service and declaring them to be regarded as on 
 waiting orders since the dates of their discharge. This order was 
 supplemented a few months later by another restoring to the service 
 four cadet engineers of the two classes who had been dropped for 
 physical disability, it being admitted that the Department's action 
 in these cases had been equally illegal with that in the cases of 
 those who had been mustered out. 
 
 Several of these young gentlemen were prosperously estab- 
 lished in business and declined to be restored to the service, or 
 resigned from it soon after such restoration. The others, about twenty 
 in all, found themselves placed junior to the assistant engineers who 
 had been commissioned in the intervening years, and with no better 
 prospect than of remaining cadet engineers for life, for there was 
 no law whereby they might be advanced or promoted. In this 
 predicament they had to lay their grievances before Congress, 
 and bills and resolutions soon appeared before that body making 
 provision for their restoration to their proper places in the list of 
 assistant engineers. Without following out the fortunes of this 
 legislative effort in all its details, it is sufficient to say that an act of 
 Congress, approved July 9, 1888, directed that they be com- 
 missioned assistant engineers in the navy and in their original places 
 on the list, the class of 1881 to be commissioned from July 1, 
 1883, and the class of 1882 from July 1, 1884. 
 
 41 
 
756 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The next lion in the path of these sorely harassed young gen- 
 tlemen was the IT. S. Treasury Department, which refused to pay 
 them as assistant engineers from the dates of their commissions, 
 although as in their original trouble the law was directly on their 
 side. For two or three years they looked to Congress for relief, 
 seeking to have the amount necessary to pay them what was legally 
 due made an item in the general deficiency bill, but these efforts 
 were slow in bearing fruit and they finally had to resort again to 
 the employment of counsel and sue the United States through the 
 Court of Claims for their unpaid salaries. Late in 1892, after 
 many delays, the case reached a hearing and was decided in accord- 
 ance with law in favor of the assistant engineers, who collected their 
 pay and for the first time in ten years were out of trouble, having 
 in the meantime acquired as much legal and legislative experience 
 as is good for any naval officer to possess. 
 
 About four o'clock in the morning of February 18, 1883, the 
 iron double-ender Ashuelot proceeding southward along the coast of 
 China from Amoy ran upon one of the Lamock Eocks near Swatow 
 and was so damaged that she sank forty-seven minutes later. 
 Eleven of her people were drowned, the others escaping by the 
 ship's boats to the island, and thence by a Chinese revenue steamer 
 to Swatow. That greater loss of life did not result was due to the 
 circumstance that the ship struck just at the time when both watches 
 were up, one relieving the other. When the order to abandon ship 
 was given, a messenger boy was sent to notify the officer in charge 
 of the engine room, but the boy was so frightened that he jumped 
 overboard without delivering the message and as a result the 
 engine-room force narrowly escaped being left on the sinking ship. 
 Assistant Engineer J. M. Pickrell, who had stood the mid-watch, 
 was in charge of the watch, assisted by Cadet Engineer W. T. Web- 
 ster, who had come below to relieve Mr. Pickrell just before the 
 ship struck, these young officers having two watches of firemen 
 below with them. 
 
 As the last boat was about to shove off, the executive officer, 
 Lieutenant A. J. Iverson, whose coolness and presence of mind 
 throughout the catastrophe won him high commendation, bethought 
 himself of the engine-room and called down to see if anyone by 
 chance might remain there: to his astonishment he found the two 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 757 
 
 officers and all their men at their posts waiting for orders, although 
 at that time the whole forward part of the vessel was submerged 
 and water was pouring in a broad sheet down into the fire-room 
 over the forward coaming of the fire-room hatch. The boats had all 
 left the ship except the gig, which was still lying under the highly 
 elevated stern and into which Mr. "Webster and some of the men 
 dropped from the jacob's ladder, Mr. Webster being the last person 
 to escape frem the ship and at such a late moment that a man be- 
 hind him on the jacob's ladder was carried down with the ship and 
 drowned. Mr. Pickrell, being a good swimmer and knowing that 
 the gig could not carry -them all, jumped overboard as soon as he 
 came on deck and was picked up in the wreckage over the sunken 
 ship a few minutes later by one of the cutters. 
 
 The conduct of these two young engineer officers on this occa- 
 sion was a subject of much favorable comment on the station at the 
 time, and was considered so meritorious that the rear admiral com- 
 manding the squadron sent each of them a complimentary letter and 
 also addressed the following letter to the Navy Department regard- 
 ing their behavior : 
 
 " U. S F. S. KICHMOND, 2nd EATE, 
 
 4 4 Hong Kong, China, June 2nd, 1883. 
 44 Hon. Wm. E. Chandler, Secretary of the Navy, 
 
 44 Navy Department, Washington, D. C. ; 
 
 " Sir:— 
 
 44 I take great pleasure in mentioning to the Department the 
 names of Assistant Engineer J. M. Pickrell, U. S. N., and Naval 
 Cadet W. T. Webster, IT. S. N., who were on duty in the fire-room 
 at the time the XJ. S. S. Ashuelot was wrecked and in a sinking 
 condition. Both these gentlemen remained in the fire-room keep- 
 ing their men ready for any emergency, at a time when there was 
 great danger of losing their lives. Both these young officers 
 showed great coolness, and when they were authorized to leave the 
 fire-room they saw that every man had left the engine department, 
 and went on deck in order to save their lives. . 
 
 44 Yery Eespectfully, your obdt. svt., 
 
 44 Peirce Crosby, 
 44 Eear Admiral, U. S. N., 
 44 Comdg. XJ. S. Naval Force on Asiatic Station." 
 
758 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 As the U. S. S. Tennessee was proceeding to sea, through the 
 jetties of the Mississippi Kiver the afternoon of April 2, 1883, she 
 touched bottom sufficiently hard to heel her over for a moment, 
 causing a surge of condensed water and then a water-hammer in a 
 badly arranged branch of the main steam pipe, which burst. Cadet 
 Engineer (Naval Cadet) Peter Miller on duty at the time in the fire- 
 room, was unfortunately directly under the part of the pipe that gave 
 way and was so horribly scalded and burned that he died the next 
 morning. He had been appointed to the Naval Academy from 
 Kansas and had graduated in June, 1882, number five and a "star" 
 in a class that contained several unusually capable members. The 
 Tennessee proceeded to Key West where the remains of the unfor- 
 tunate young officer were interred with due military honors. 
 
 An act of Congress approved March 3, 1885, was of much 
 importance to many members of the engineer corps, as it provided 
 rates of longevity pay for passed assistant engineers for their third 
 and fourth five years' periods of service in that grade. Formerly 
 they had had but two rates of pay the same as passed assistant 
 surgeons and passed assistant paymasters, namely $2,000 per annum 
 sea pay for first five years, and $2,200 for second five years. 
 Having had no special promotion as a reward for war service, and 
 the ages of the chief engineers being so nearly their own as to con- 
 stitute a barrier to their promotion, it was evident that the passed 
 assistant engineers would remain in their grades for fifteen or twenty 
 years and in some cases would even arrive at the retiring age in it. 
 Lieutenants, passed assistant surgeons, and passed assistant pay- 
 masters once ranking with the passed assistant engineers had 
 advanced to be commanders or medical and pay inspectors, but the 
 engineer remained where he was with no hope of promotion and 
 restricted to an inferior rate of pay until relieved by Congress. The 
 bill was before Congress in one shape or another for about ten years 
 before it finally became law, and it is worth mentioning that its 
 success was eventually due to the support of the Military Order of 
 the Loyal Legion and the Grand Army of the Republic, the sympathy 
 of those organizations being enlisted by the circumstance that every 
 passed assistant engineer to immediately benefit by the passage of 
 the bill was a veteran of the Civil War. 
 
 Engineer-in- Chief Shock was reappointed at the expiration of 
 
CHIEF ENGINEER CHARLES H. LOBING, U. S. NAVY. 
 
 Engineer-in-Chief of the Navy from January 18, 1884 to July 8, 1887. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 761 
 
 his term of office in 1881 and remained engineer-in-chief nntil June 
 15, 1883, when he arrived at the age of sixty-two and was placed 
 on the retired list. For seven months no chief of bureau was 
 appointed, Mr. W. H. H. Smith, the well-known and efficient chief 
 clerk of the bureau, acting in that capacity in accordance with the 
 provisions of law, until, in January, 1884, Chief Engineer Charles 
 H. Loring was selected for the office and commissioned chief of 
 the bureau. Mr. Loring at the time was the ninth in order on the 
 list of chief engineers with relative rank of captain, and had an 
 unblemished record of faithful and efficient service. Upon him fell 
 some of the first knotty problems in the work then in hand of creating 
 a new navy, a subject that will be dealt with especially in other 
 chapters. 
 
 A disaster of unusual magnitude overtook a squadron of our 
 naval steamers in the harbor of Apia, Samoan Islands, the J 6th of 
 March, 1889. Certain international complications had led to the 
 assembling in that remote port, of the Trenton, flagship of Rear 
 Admiral L. A. Kimberly, the Vandalia, and the Nipsic, of the TJ. S. 
 Navy; the Olga, Eber, and Adler, of the German Navy, and the 
 Calliope of the British Navy. A gale from seaward set in during 
 the 15th of March with such threatening indications that steam was 
 raised, topmasts housed, lower yards sent down, and all the required 
 preparations made for meeting heavy weather. By the morning o* 
 the 16th a hurricane was raging and huge seas, gathered from the 
 wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean, were falling into the harbor in 
 such masses and with such force as to be almost irresistible. The 
 American and Germau war vessels began dragging down upon the 
 reefs despite the full power of their engines and the grasp of their 
 anchors, but the Calliope, being a newer vessel with much greater 
 engine power in proportion to her displacement than the others, got 
 under way and by putting forth her utmost exertions succeeded in 
 slowly laboring out of the harbor and into the open ocean, where 
 she remained until the hurricane had passed, returning then to Apia 
 to find not a single keel afloat in that harbor. The struggle of the 
 Calliope against the elements furnishes probably the most eloquent 
 illustration in the history of steam navigation of the overcoming 
 power of steam when trusted to fight alone for the life of a ship, and 
 the spectacle she presented when driving into the great seas and 
 
762 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 against the hurricane was such a dramatic and inspiring personifica- 
 tion of Power that the men of the Trenton forgot for the moment 
 their own peril and broke forth into loud cheers of admiration. For 
 this exploit the commander and chief engineer of the Calliope were 
 rewarded with promotion. 
 
 The Nipsic, lying nearest in shore, after vainly trying to hold 
 on and after losing her smoke pipe and boats by collision with one 
 of the Germans, was beached by her commander and abandoned by 
 means of life lines, only seven of her people being drowned. Her 
 chief engineer, Mr. George W. Hall, then considerably past fifty 
 years of age, suffered so much from exposure and hardship that he 
 never recovered, dying a few weeks afterward in a lonesome village 
 in one of the neighboring islands whither he had been taken. His 
 part in the preservation of his ship may best be told by quoting 
 from a letter addressed the engineer-in-chief by Commander D. W. 
 Mullan of the Nipsic : 
 
 6 1 Being myself cognizant of the valuable services of the engi- 
 neer officers of the navy, and especially so during the memorable 
 hurricane at Samoa in March, 1889, I will say that had it not been 
 for the engines of the IT. S. S. Nipsic, which vessel I commanded 
 at that time, (and whose chief engineer was the late George W. 
 Hall) and also had it not been for the valuable aid rendered me by 
 Mr. Hall throughout that terrible hurricane, the vessel and her 
 crew would have been a total loss. During the trying hours of that 
 storm, Mr. Hall was ever at his post and stuck to it until assistance 
 was no longer necessary. Had poor Hall survived, his services 
 would undoubtedly in time been recognized, but his valuable services 
 during that time will ever be remembered by me and they shed a 
 bright lustre on the engineer corps of the navy." 
 
 The Vandalia with steam on seven of her eight boilers, all the 
 engines could use, struggled for nearly twelve hours trying to steam 
 up to her anchors, but slowly dragged down until aground on the 
 reef when the engines were stopped and the men sent on deck. In 
 describing this critical period, Passed Assistant Engineer Harrie 
 Webster, U. S. Navy, writing in the United Service Magazine, says 
 this of his men: 44 Here the discipline and steadiness of the engi- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 763 
 
 neer department showed itself, for as soon as the order to stop the 
 engines was given everything was done exactly as it would have 
 been had the ship been coming to anchor, and when I went into 
 the fire-room to give the order to abandon the ship the men were 
 there, and only left in obedience to command." Of Mr. Webster 
 himself, Lieutenant J. W. Oarlin, who was in command of what was 
 left of the Vandalia when the storm had passed, reported to the 
 Navy Department: " Passed Assistant Engineer Harrie Webster 
 remained at his post under the most trying circumstances and ex- 
 hibited the greatest zeal and ability." The chief engineer of the 
 Vandalia, Mr. A. S. Greene, was washed overboard and was swept 
 sufficiently near the beach to be rescued by the Samoan warriors 
 who by grasping hands had formed a line extending into the surf, 
 ready to succor any who might come within reach. In this escape 
 Mr. Greene was remarkably fortunate, for with one other exception 
 he was the only one of many who got overboard who was not swept 
 out to sea by the counter-current and drowned. 
 
 The Vandalia sank to her hammock rails after striking on the 
 reef and her people took refuge in the rigging, over which the seas 
 were breaking as high as the tops. Late in the evening the Trenton 
 drifted down upon her and those who remained alive found safety 
 by getting on board the larger ship. Captain Schoonmaker, Pay- 
 master Arms, Lieutenant Sutton of the marine corps, Pay Clerk 
 Roche, and thirty-nine enlisted men of the Vandalia were drowned 
 during the day. The Trenton lost her steam power early in the day 
 of the disaster, water coming through the hawse-pipes, which were 
 located on the berth deck, in such quantity that the fires under the 
 boilers were extinguished about 9.30 A. M. An idea of the terrific 
 power of the incoming seas may be gained from the fact reported 
 by the officers of the Trenton that in the endeavor to keep the water 
 out, blankets and other material were wrapped upon the cables and 
 veered into the hawse-pipes, making an obstruction that would seem 
 immovable, but whJch was actually forced out time after time by 
 the furious impact of the water driven into the pipes. The ship 
 dragged slowly all day and soon after 8 p. m. she brought up along- 
 side the wreck of the Vandalia where she sank to her gun-deck. 
 She lost but one man, who was killed by the breaking in of a port. 
 The Trenton and Vandalia became total losses: the Mpsic was tern- 
 
764 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 porarily repaired, floated, and taken to San Francisco to be fitted 
 for service again. The largest of the German ships— the Olga — 
 was beached and afterward saved: the two others were completely 
 destroyed with terrible loss of life, but five people escaping from 
 one of them. Fifteen merchant vessels in the harbor were all 
 wrecked or stranded. 
 
 In the latter part of December 1892, the Alliance had a narrow 
 escape from destruction in the same harbor, though in her case the 
 storm was not so violent as to prevent her from steaming against it. 
 Early in the morning of December 28 she began dragging, even 
 after a second anchor was let go, and in a few minutes struck on the 
 reef on her starboard quarter, which occurrence of course brought 
 the engines into great demand. Fortunately the chief engineer had 
 observed the possibility of this accident and on his own responsi- 
 bility had got a full watch of men on duty and the fires worked up 
 almost in condition for use, so when the order was given to get up 
 steam it took only eight minutes to begin steaming, and the vessel 
 worked her way off the reef and into deep water with the loss only 
 of her two anchors and some damage to the propeller. Had it 
 taken the usual half -hour or more to get steam from banked fires 
 the delay would probably have been fatal to the Alliance. In re- 
 porting the affair to the Department, Commander Whiting of the 
 Alliance referred to the rapidity with which steam was employed and 
 said: " This was due to the energy and ability displayed by Passed 
 Assistant Engineer H. N. Stevenson, chief engineer of this ship, 
 whose conduct deserves the highest commendation." 
 
 The engineer corps derived much credit from the efficient man- 
 ner in which Chief Engineer L. W. Robinson administered the 
 affairs of the great department of machinery at the World's Colum- 
 bian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Mr. Eobinson had had excel- 
 lent experience in that class of work by being the superintendent of 
 Machinery Hall at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 
 1876, he being the principal assistant of Chief Engineer John S. 
 Albert, IT. S. Navy, who held the position of chief of the bureau of 
 machinery at that exposition. Mr. Robinson was also a civil engineer 
 by profession before entering the navy, which specially fitted him 
 for the work of designing foundations and supports for heavy 
 machinery. As chief of the department of machinery Mr. Robin- 
 
MODEL BATTLE-SHIP ILLINOIS, AT WOKLn's COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION, 1893. 
 
 An exact copy as to size, etc., of the new battle-ships of the Indiana class. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 767 
 
 son had the responsible control of an exhibit covering more than 
 thirty acres of floor space, valued at many millions of dollars, and 
 cared for by hundreds of employes of all grades, which important 
 trust was administered by him in such manner as to excite the 
 highest expressions of appreciation and esteem from the directors of 
 the exposition. 
 
 The navy as an organization gained much popularity and good- 
 will from the people by the unique and excellent exhibit made by 
 the Navy Department at the Columbian Exposition. This, the con- 
 ception of Kear Admiral K. W. Meade, U. S. Navy, was a full- 
 sized and perfect imitation of a modern battle-ship of the Indiana 
 class, built of brick, wood and steel on piling in the lake on the 
 shoz-e of the exposition grounds, and was so perfect in details of 
 guns, equipment, personnel, and arrangement, that many who should 
 have known better were deceived into believing it to be a genuine 
 battle-ship, while many thousands of landsmen from the interior 
 went home fully believing that they had seen one of the veritable 
 giants of the new navy. The exhibits of the Navy Department 
 were artistically arranged on the decks of this imitation battle-ship 
 and made, with the structure itself, a display so novel and so 
 different from all others that the " brick ship 55 was by all odds the 
 most popular exhibit at the exposition. It was the good fortune of 
 the author to be one of the officers detailed by the Secretary of the 
 Navy to manage this naval exhibit, and in participating in the life 
 of the wonderful White City that summer he experienced the greatest 
 privilege and opportunity for both instruction and enjoyment that 
 the naval service has ever afforded him, or can ever afford, for the 
 waking splendors of all the dreams that were realized in the city 
 built to honor the name of Christopher Columbus may not be seen 
 again in our time. 
 
 The engineer corps of the navy was again well represented at 
 the Midwinter Fair in San Francisco the first six months of the year 
 1894 by Passed Assistant Engineer A. M. Hunt, who was granted 
 leave of absence to allow him to occupy the position of chief of the 
 machinery exhibit, a position which he filled with great credit to him- 
 self and to the navy; unfortunately the ability which the oppor- 
 tunity enabled him to display led to more profitable employment in 
 civil life, and the navy lost his services by his resignation. The 
 
768 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 following from a Pacific Coast journal, though committing the usual 
 error of assuming that a naval staff officer has the rank and title of 
 the grade in which he holds a commission, indicates the reputation 
 for the navy and himself that Mr. Hunt established while associated 
 with the Midwinter Fair: 
 
 " It should be known that the Mechanical Arts Building is un- 
 der the supervision of Lieutenant A. M. Hunt, whose portrait we 
 publish in another column of this paper. Of all the chiefs in the 
 various departments at the Midwinter Fair, we think it will be 
 acknowledged that Lieutenant Hunt stands almost first in popu- 
 larity. With a thorough education in mechanics, which give him a 
 clear grasp of the technical duties of his position, and with a man- 
 ner at once genial and persuasive, he has made friends with all with 
 whom he has come in contact, not alone the employes of the de- 
 partment who are immediately under his supervision, but also with 
 our local manufacturers and exhibitors, who would have been 
 fatally slow to further the plans of the Administration had they not 
 been stimulated to interest by the enthusiastic efforts of this well- 
 selected chief. Mr. Hunt is Passed Assistant Engineer of the 
 United States Navy, holding the rank of Lieutenant. On account 
 of his thorough technical knowledge and his strong executive ability, 
 his services were requested by the promoters of the Fair at an early 
 stage of its operations, and in accordance with that request, Lieu- 
 tenant Hunt was granted leave of absence by the Navy Department 
 to accept his present responsible position. Lieutenant Hunt was 
 born in Iowa, thirty-four years ago, and, after receiving a good 
 education, was appointed to the Naval Academy at Annapolis from 
 the Seventh Congressional district of Indiana. He graduated from 
 the Academy in 1879, and has continued in the naval service ever 
 since. He has occupied several positions of trust, and has always 
 acquitted himself with honor. It is a matter of pride and congratu- 
 lation to our navy that it can furnish executive officers for the 
 furtherance of such a great exhibition as the Midwinter Fair, and 
 have them prove so eminently qualified and satisfactory as has been 
 the case with Lieutenant Hunt." 
 
 The engineer corps was represented also at the Midwinter Fair 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 769 
 
 by Mr. W. F. 0. Hasson, whose resignation of his commission as 
 an assistant engineer in the navy less than a year before was so re- 
 cent that in public estimation he was still identified with the naval 
 service, which gained the credit for his extraordinary efficiency and 
 administrative capacity. Mr. Hasson was chief of the department 
 of electricity, in which capacity he succeeded as admirably and 
 won as high encomiums as did Mr. Hunt in his department. 
 
 The famous okLsloop-of-war Kearsarge, which had outlived all 
 her sisters by reason of the public sentiment which compelled 
 Congress to make appropriations for her repair and preservation, 
 ran ashore about 6 p. m., February 2, 1894, on Eoncador Keef, 
 while on her way to Bluefields, Nicaragua, and became a total loss, 
 though but one of her crew lost his life. The people remained on 
 the reef eight days and were taken off by the City of Para, leaving 
 the bones of the historic old ship to the tender mercies of the West 
 India wreckers. When the news became known, Congress made an 
 immediate appropriation and despatched a steamer to the scene of 
 the wreck to save the vessel if possible, or at least to recover prop- 
 erty from her, but it was too late : the human buzzards, black and 
 white, of the West Indies had stripped her clean. Her flag, bell, 
 and numerous other relics were subsequently recovered by trav- 
 eling Americans who found and purchased them in junk shops at 
 different Caribbean ports. 
 
 A modern instance of an emergency not at all unusual in the 
 life of a naval engineer, and of devotion to duty in meeting it, is 
 told by the following news item from the San Francisco Chronicle 
 of March 27, 1895 : 
 
 li The Monterey reached Mare Island this evening from Sausa- 
 lito. She is tied up at the quay wall. The bursting of one of the 
 feed-pipes while the vessel was about to make an experiment with 
 her rudder gearing resulted in the scalding of Assistant Engineer 
 Theiss, Machinist Powell, Watertenders Arthur and Hayes, Oiler 
 Lee, and Fireman Carlson. Every one of the men received a 
 severe scalding. 
 
 u Theiss is in a very bad condition. It appears that his in- 
 juries were brought about by his own heroism. When the superior 
 officer was informed of the leak it was the general belief that it was 
 
770 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 of small importance. Theiss, happening to hear the report, decided 
 to investigate matters for himself. He found the water pouring out 
 of the pipe into the fire-room and the men in the place in a dazed 
 condition. His cries were : ' Boys, pull the fires, and do it quick — 
 no telling what will happen. ' 
 
 6 ' The boiling water surged on the floor of the fire-room, but 
 the minute Theiss gave the command every man buckled down to 
 work. But they did not work fast enough to suit Theiss. He 
 grasped one of the long rakes and was about to assist in the work 
 of drawing the fires, when he fell in a pool of scalding water. The 
 men never wavered in their work, but while their commanding 
 officer was lying in the boiling water every man labored at the 
 drawing of the fires. 
 
 " It turns out that the act of Theiss saved the boilers of the 
 Monterey. The flesh on one side of Theiss is almost raw. All of 
 the others had their feet scalded. Theiss was sent to the hospital, 
 and it will be some time before he will be able to get around. 
 While no comment is made of the work done by Theiss, it is a fact 
 that his act saved the government thousands of dollars." 
 
CHAPTEK XXXVIII. 
 
 1 ' Up ! Up ! In nobler toil than ours 
 No craftsmen bear a part ; 
 We make of Nature's giant powers 
 The slaves of human art. " 
 
 — J. G. Whittier — The Ship Builders. 
 
 The New Navy — Naval Advisory Boards — First Acts of Congress Providing for the 
 Eebuilding of the Navy-— The Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, and Dolphin — The 
 Newark, Yorktown, and Petrel — The Charleston — The Texas, Maine, 
 and Baltimore — The Dynamite-Gun Cruiser — The Monterey — The Phila- 
 delphia and San Francisco — Chief Engineer George "W. Melviile Appointed 
 Engineer-in-Chief of the Navy. 
 
 THE story of the rebuilding of the American Navy is too enter- 
 taining a subject and includes too many matters of great public 
 interest to be properly dealt with within the space remaining for this 
 volume. Again, the New Navy is still so. far from finished that 
 any detailed account of all that has been accomplished thus far 
 would of necessity be but the beginning of an incomplete story, for 
 there is every reason to hope that the reconstruction work so well 
 begun will be carried on until our navy is in every essential worthy 
 of our race and nation. When that time comes the opportunity will 
 be fitting for the history of the new navy to be written in detail, 
 with minute regard for the designs and construction of all the ships; 
 the far-reaching influences upon the manufacturing industries of the 
 country exerted by the Navy Department in prosecuting this work; 
 the union of political parties on the naval question; the change in 
 public sentiment regarding the navy, and, in brief, the subject 
 treated with the particularization it deserves. 
 
 Aside from being incomplete at present, the subject of the new 
 navy is one so different from much that has preceded in these pages 
 as to make it a subject by itself, only slightly connected with all 
 that has gone before. With the first of our new ships came a great 
 change in naval methods, amounting practically to an abandonment 
 of all previous practices and making the new fleet a creation by 
 itself. New ideas came into play in the designing of hulls and 
 
772 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 machinery ; new forms of ships and entirely new designs and types 
 of marine engines and boilers came into use; new types of guns were 
 adopted; new methods of manufacture and vastly improved building 
 material for ships, engines and guns began to be used; new and 
 younger men began to gain attention for new ideas; in short, the 
 change was so abrupt as to create a sharply defined line where the 
 old and the new joined, instead of the former merging gradually 
 into the latter, as has been the case in other navies. For this reason 
 a general account only of our naval awakening will be here pre- 
 sented. An effort will be made to describe with some detail the 
 preliminary steps that led to the establishment of a national policy 
 of building a navy, but thereafter the ships and machinery rapidly 
 created will be referred to briefly, and in statistical rather than 
 descriptive manner. Some time in the future some other pen may 
 assume the agreeable task of describing our beautiful new ships and 
 the mighty steel embodiments of power within them. 
 
 By the year 1880 the navy of the United States had fallen to a 
 pitifully low ebb. Its condition ten years before, when Secretary 
 Kobeson had been driven by a sentiment which the judgment of 
 history will pronounce patriotism to stretch the law in order to build 
 new ships, had been bad enough, but now it had reached bottom. 
 Eepairs were no longer possible, for space for more patches was 
 lacking upon almost every ship of ours then afloat. Our ships were 
 wooden; their machinery was, as a naval critic somewhat wittily 
 remarked, " one cylinder behind the practice of the rest of the 
 world;" the guns were even further behind; our cumbersome 
 rigging and top-hamper was so antique and out of fashion as to excite 
 curiosity in foreign ports; even the organization of our ships' com- 
 panies was on an obsolete basis: the youngest of the great nations 
 was, by its naval representation, the most ancient. A sense of 
 humiliation dogged the American naval officer as he went about his 
 duty in foreign lands; in the Far East; in the lesser countries along 
 the Mediterranean Sea, and even in the seaports of South America, 
 people smiled patronizingly upon him and from a sense of politeness 
 avoided speaking of naval subjects in his presence. None but naval 
 officers and a few Americans who happened to be abroad compre- 
 hend just how insignificant and cheap the Great Kepublic appeared 
 in the eyes of the world at and about the time mentioned. If these 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 773 
 
 classes of our citizens had to bear the contempt that had fallen upon 
 our country as a result of naval neglect, they are likewise in a posi- 
 tion now to appreciate and exult over the wonderful change in senti- 
 ment abroad that is the direct sequence of the regeneration of our 
 navy. 
 
 In 1881 the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. William H. Hunt, 
 resolved to prepare for Congress a plain and practical statement of 
 the pressing need of appropriate vessels for the naval service, and, 
 to reconcile as far as possible the conflicting views and theories of 
 officers of different ages and different corps as to the types of vessels 
 desirable, organized an Advisory Board to examine into and report 
 upon the entire question. This board met the 11th of July of that 
 year and remained in session almost daily until the 7th of November, 
 on which date its report was submitted. The board was fairly rep- 
 resentative of the naval service, containing as it did old and young 
 officers from the different corps that deal with naval material : its 
 membership was as follows: 
 
 Rear Admiral John Rogers, President. 
 Commodore William G. Temple. 
 Captain P. C. Johnson. 
 Commander H. L. Howison. 
 Commander Robley D. Evans. 
 Commander A. S. Crowninshield. 
 Lieutenant M. R. S. McKenzie. 
 Lieutenant Edward W. Yery. 
 Lieutenant Frederick Collins. 
 Chief Engineer B. F. Isherwood. 
 Chief Engineer C. H. Loring. 
 Passed Assistant Engineer C. H. Manning. 
 Naval Constructor John Lenthal. 
 Naval Constructor Theo. D. Wilson. 
 Naval Constructor Philip Hichborn. 
 
 The order convening this board directed it to consider and 
 advise the Department upon the following subjects: 
 
 1st. The number of vessels that should now be built. 
 2d. Their class, size, and displacement. 
 
774 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 3d. The material and form of their construction. 
 
 4th. The nature and size of the engines and machinery 
 required for each. 
 
 5th. The ordnance and armament necessary for each. 
 
 A 6th. The appropriate equipments and rigging of each. 
 
 7th. The internal arrangements of each, and upon such other 
 details as may seem to be necessary and proper, and, lastly, the 
 probable cost of the whole of each vessel when complete and ready 
 for service. 
 
 The Board in its report recommended that vessels of the fol- 
 lowing classes, types, material, armament, and estimated cost be 
 built at once: 
 
 "Two first-rate steel, double-decked, unarmored cruisers, 
 having a displacement of about 5,873 tons, an average sea speed of 
 15 knots, and a battery of 4 Vlll-ineh and 21 Vl-inch guns. Cost, 
 $3,560,000. 
 
 "Six first-rate steel, double- decked, unarmored cruisers, having 
 a displacement of about 4,560 tons, an average sea speed of 14 
 knots, and a battery of 4 VHI-inch and 15 Yl-inch guns. Cost, 
 $8,532,000. 
 
 "Ten second-rate steel, single-decked, unarmored cruisers, 
 having a displacement of about 3,043 tons, an average sea speed of 
 13 knots, and a battery of 12 Yl-inch guns. Cost, 19,300,000. 
 
 "Twenty fourth-rate wooden cruisers, having a displacement 
 of about 793 tons, an average sea speed of 10 knots, and a battery 
 of 1 Vl-inch and 2 60-pounders. Cost, $4,360,000. 
 
 " Five steel rams of about 2,000 tons displacement, and an 
 average sea speed of 13 knots. Cost, $2,500,000. 
 
 "Five torpedo gun-boats of about 450 tons displacement, a. 
 maximum sea speed of not less than 13 knots, and one heavy- 
 powered rifled gun.. Cost, $725,000. 
 
 " Ten cruising torpedo boats, about 100 feet long, and having 
 a maximum speed of not less than 21 knots per hour. Cost, 
 $380,000. 
 
 "Ten harbor torpedo boats, about 70 feet long, and having a. 
 maximum speed of not less than 17 knots per hour. Cost, $250,000. 
 
 "Total cost of vessels recommended now to be built, $29,- 
 607,000. " 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 775 
 
 The object in recommending wood as the material for the 
 twenty small cruisers or gun-boats was to utilize the large supply of 
 ship timber then on hand, and to afford employment to the work- 
 men of Eastern cities in which wood ship-building was a leading 
 industry. The board was of the opinion that all vessels of the 
 cruiser classes be provided with full sail power, the amount of sail 
 surface not to be less than twenty -five times the area of the immersed 
 midship section. The 15, 14 and 13 knot classes were recom- 
 mended to be ship-rigged, and the ten-knot class to be barkentine- 
 rigged. 
 
 It was recommended that the engines of the unarmored vessels 
 be of the horizontal, back-action, compound type, with steam- 
 jacketed cylinders, surface condensers, and independent expansion 
 valves on each cylinder; that the boilers should be of the ordinary 
 cylindrical type, with return tubes above the surfaces, and of a 
 strength capable of carrying a working pressure of ninety pounds to 
 the square inch. That the screws should in all cases be fixed, 
 four-bladed, and of a uniform pitch, one screw for each vessel. That 
 the smoke-pipes of the three larger classes of vessels be telescopic, 
 and of the smaller vessels standing with a hinged arrangement for 
 lowering to the deck. Steam capstans and steam steering-gear were 
 recommended for the larger classes. Nine carefully elaborated 
 reasons were given why, in the opinion of the board, single instead 
 of twin screws were recommended. 
 
 The report of the Advisory Board was sent to Congress with 
 the annual report of the Secretary of the Navy that year (1881) ? 
 with a full exposition of the decayed condition of the navy and an 
 earnest recommendation that something be done in the premises. 
 The same year President Arthur in his annual message urged upon 
 Congress the importance of immediate action to save the American 
 navy from total disappearance. 
 
 The next step was taken by Congress, the naval appropriation 
 bill approved August 5, 1882, authorizing the construction of new 
 vessels, as follows : 
 
 66 Any portion of said sum (the general appropriation for the 
 Bureau of Construction and Eepair) not required for the purposes 
 aforesaid may be applied towards the construction of two steam 
 cruising vessels of war, which are hereby authorized, at a total cost. 
 
 42 
 
776 
 
 THE STEAM NAYY OF THE UNITED 'STATES. 
 
 when fully completed, not to exceed the amount estimated by the 
 late Naval Advisory Board for such vessels, the same to be con- 
 structed of steel, of domestic manufacture, . . . said vessels 
 to be provided with full sail-power and full steam-power. One of 
 said vessels shall be of not less than five thousand nor more than 
 six thousand tons displacement, and shall have the highest attaina- 
 ble speed, . . . one of said vessels shall be of not less than 
 four thousand three hundred, nor more than four thousand seven 
 hundred tons displacement. 
 
 "The Secretary of the Navy is hereby empowered and directed 
 to organize a board of naval officers and experts for his advice and 
 assistance, to be called the ' Naval Advisory Board, 5 to serve dur- 
 ing the period required for the construction, armament and trial of 
 the vessels hereby authorized to be constructed, and no longer- 
 Said boaid shall consist of five officers on the active list of the navy 
 in the line and the staff, to be detailed by the Secretary of the Navy, 
 without reference to rank and with reference only to character, ex- 
 perience, knowledge,and skill, and two persons of established repu- 
 tation and standing, as experts in naval or marine construction, to 
 be selected from civil life. . . . 
 
 u Before any of the vessels hereby anthorized shall be con- 
 tracted for or commenced the Secretary of the Navy shall, by 
 proper public advertisement and notice, invite all engineers and 
 mechanics of established reputation, and all reputable manufacturers 
 of vessels, steam engines, boilers, and ordnance, having or con- 
 trolling regular establishments and being engaged in the business, 
 all officers of the navy, and especially all naval constructors, steam 
 engineers, and ordnance officers of the navy, having plans, models, 
 or designs of any vessels of the classes hereby authorized, or any 
 part thereof, within any given period not less than sixty days, to 
 submit the same to said Board. 
 
 "Any part of the appropriation for said bureau (general appro- 
 priation for the Bureau of Steam Engineering) not used as above 
 specified, may be applied toward the construction of engines and 
 machinery of the two new cruising vessels provided for in this act. ' ' 
 
 The Naval Advisory Board thus authorized by law was organ- 
 ized October 9th, 1882, with the following members : 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 777 
 
 Commodore R. W. Shufeldt, TJ. S. Navy, President. 
 
 Chief Engineer Alexander Henderson, XL S. Navy. 
 
 Commander J. A. Howell, U. S. Navy. 
 
 Lieutenant Edward Very, TJ. S. Navy. 
 
 Naval Constructor R L. Fernald, IT. S. Navy. 
 
 The two civilian experts selected by the Department for em- 
 ployment were Messrs. Henry Steers and Miers Coryell, the former 
 a ship architect, the latter a marine engineer, and both prominent 
 in their professions. Assistant Naval Constructor Francis T. Bowles, 
 TJ. S. Navy, was detailed as secretary of the board; Passed Assist- 
 ant Engineer C. R. Roelker and Assistant Engineer H. P. Norton 
 were also detailed to act as designers and draftsmen for the board 
 and to perforin such other duties as might be required. 
 
 After ample deliberation, this Advisory Board reported ad- 
 versely to the construction of the first, or largest, cruiser authorized 
 by the act of August 5, 1882, for the reasons that so large and ex- 
 pensive a vessel was not immediately required, and that in begin- 
 ning a modern navy it would be better to make the start with 
 medium-sized vessels. One steel cruiser of about 4,000 tons dis- 
 placement was recommended ; also three steel cruisers of about 
 2,500 tons displacement, and one iron despatch boat, or " clipper," 
 of about 1,500 tons displacement. The new Secretary of the Navy, 
 Mr. William E. Chandler, transmitted the recommendations to 
 Congress and asked that the previously granted authority for build- 
 ing the two steel cruisers be modified to suit the more recent 
 recommendation as to what was wanted. The question came up 
 shortly in Congress in connection with the naval appropriation bill 
 and the debate showed that the low level to which the navy had 
 been allowed to sink had left it few friends in public life. Those 
 few, however, carried the day, and an act, approved March 3, 1883? 
 made appropriations for and authorized the construction of four 
 vessels of practically the same types proposed by the second Ad- 
 visory Board. These vessels became the Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, 
 and Dolphin. Through all these preliminary stages and in the 
 manner thus outlined was the New Navy born. 
 
 Contracts for the building of these vessels were awarded to 
 Mr. John Roach and the Dalp hin was practically completed under 
 the terms of the contract for her. No premium or penalty condi 
 
778 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 tions for speed or horse-power appeared in any of these contracts. 
 The succession of rigorous trials to which the Dolphin was subjected 
 to test her horse-power, structural strength and sea- worthiness, in- 
 cluding among others a trial-trip completely around the world, may 
 be better detailed in a more extended work than this. So may also 
 the unhappy story of the failure and assignment of Mr. John Roach 
 before the other vessels were finished, and of their subsequent com- 
 pletion by the Navy Department, which took possession of them in 
 accordance with a provision of the contracts. It is sufficient in 
 this place to say that by the end of the year 1887 the three were 
 completed and have been in active service the greater part of the 
 time since. For their time and types they excelled in almost every 
 element that contributes to naval efficiency, and their appearance 
 did much to give new hope to our all but discouraged naval officers, 
 and to inaugurate that wave of popular sentiment in favor of the 
 navy which has now extended so generally throughout the country 
 that the navy has become the favorite of the two military arms of 
 the nation. 
 
 The designs for these pioneer vessels of the new navy origi- 
 nated with the Advisory Board of which Commodore Shufeldt was 
 president, and the naval service is indebted to the members of that 
 board for their work to an extent little appreciated. It is not un- 
 fashionable now to harshly criticise that board for not knowing 
 everything that experience has taught since, but its work speaks 
 well enough in results for the thoroughness and the earnest endeav- 
 ors of its members to do the best possible for the service in the 
 beginning of its new life. A decided influence upon the type of 
 the ships designed was exerted by Mr. Bowles, the secretary of the 
 board, and his classmate, Assistant Naval Constructor Richard 
 (xatewood, then on duty in the Bureau of Construction and Repair. 
 These two young gentlemen had graduated with great credit as 
 cadet engineers in the class of 1879 at the Naval Academy and had 
 subsequently undergone a course of instruction at the Royal Naval 
 College, Greenwich, England, they being the first American 
 cadets to be sent abroad for that purpose. Returning in 1881 to 
 receive appointments in the construction corps, they brought with 
 them much knowledge and information as to European methods, 
 and this knowledge was liberally used by the Advisory Board, 
 
U. S. STEAMSHIP CHICAGO, 1887. 
 
 Length on L w. L, 325 feet ; Beam, 48 ft. 2 in.; Mean Draft, 19 feet ; Displacement, 4,500 tons. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 781 
 
 especially in preparing the designs of the Atlanta and Boston. The 
 hull of the Dolphin was designed by Naval Constructor Fernald, 
 and the Chicago, as beautiful a ship as this country has produced, 
 was also his. 
 
 Nothing especially novel entered into the machinery designs of 
 the Dolphin, Atlanta, and Boston. The former was provided with a 
 vertical compound engine so high as to be exposed to shot, though 
 her designation as a despatch vessel put her out of the category of 
 vessels of war. The Atlanta and Boston had horizontal back-acting 
 engines and cylindrical return-tubular boilers, both engines and 
 boilers being of the type described in a former chapter as having 
 been supplied the Trenton. All three were fitted with single 
 screws in deference to the prejudices of the time, though some 
 members of the board, notably Mr. Bowles, urged the adoption of 
 twin screws. The machinery of the Chicago presented a novel de- 
 parture from ordinary naval practice. Two large compound engines 
 were provided, one on each side of the ship, the cylinders standing 
 vertically on the bottom of the ship and communicating power by 
 means of athwartship walking-beams to the crank-shafts, the port 
 engine driving the starboard screw and vice versa. As pointed out 
 before, this installation is remarkably like the arrangement of en- 
 gines put into the Stevens Battery thirty years before. The boilers 
 of the Chicago were even more a radical departure from conven- 
 tional forms. They were cylindrical, with return tubes, a usual 
 arrangement, but were externally fired ; that is, the furnaces were 
 under the, outer shell of the boiler, built around with brick-work, 
 the general arrangement of the boiler being not unlike the type 
 familiar in the American backwoods as the generator of power in 
 saw-mills. These engines and boilers were prepared by Mr. Coryell, 
 the civilian engineer of the board, and their adoption was, as a 
 member of the board has told the author, "due to the popular 
 pressure to give the outside a chance." It is proper to say that at 
 the time similar machinery was in successful operation in an Amer- 
 ican coast- wise steamer — the Louisiana — and that the Chicago has 
 been actively cruising for over seven years without any lengthy re- 
 spite. She has recently been laid up to be fitted with modern 
 triple-expansion machinery. 
 
 The act of August 5, 1882, directed the Advisory Board which 
 
782 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 it created to report in detail as to the wisdom and expediency of 
 undertaking and completing the work on the double-turreted moni- 
 tors whose building had languished for so many years and had been 
 fraught with so many scandals. In a report signed by all the mem- 
 bers the board advised the immediate completion of those vessels, 
 which recommendation was cordially endorsed by Secretary Chand- 
 ler and by him referred to Congress. Appropriations for this object 
 followed, notably in the appropriation act of August 3, 1886, and 
 thus after many delays these vessels have been restored to the active 
 list of the navy. The long time occupied in their construction has 
 
 BXTEBNALLY FIRED, DOUBLE-ENDED BOILER, U. S. S. " CHICAGO." 
 
 Diameter of shell, 9 feet; extreme length, 26 feet. 
 
 resulted in their appearance with obsolete machinery, with the ex- 
 ception of the Monacknock, but with their heavy guns they are 
 efficient enough for the duty of defending harbors, which is all 
 their original designs contemplated. 
 
 Two years elapsed after the passage of the act directing the 
 building of the four vessels described before Congress again came 
 to the relief of the navy ; then the act of March 3, 1885, author- 
 ized the construction of "two cruisers of not less than three thou- 
 sand nor more than five thousand tons displacement, costing, exclu- 
 sive of armament, not more than one million one hundred thousand 
 dollars each ; one heavily-armed gun-boat of about sixteen hundred 
 tons displacement, costing, exclusive of armament, not more than 
 five hundred and twenty thousand dollars ; and one light gun-boat 
 of about eight hundred tons displacement, costing, exclusive of 
 armament, not more than two hundred and seventy-five thousand dol- 
 
STRAIGHT-THROUGH. OR LOCOMOTIVE, BOILER. 
 
 With varying details as to size, number of furnaces, etc., and with flat or curved heads. This type has been used to a considerable extent in the new navy, being in the Charleston, Petrel, TorMown class, etc. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 789 
 
 lars." The vessels thus authorized were the Newark, Charleston, 
 Yorktown,and Petrel. In order to enlist the contractors pecuniarily 
 in the attainment of successful results, the Navy Department be- 
 gan the practice with the contracts for these ships of offering premi- 
 ums and exacting penalties, the requirement first selected being 
 horse-power on the assumption that that was a true criterion of 
 speed. The contracts fixed the horse-power of the Newark at 8,500; 
 of the Charleston, 7,000 ; of the Yorktown, 3,000, and of the 
 Petrel, 1,100. In each case a premium of $100 was specified for each 
 horse-power in excess of that required, and a penalty of the same 
 sum for each horse-power below that stated in the contract. Under 
 this stipulation the Newark won for her builders nearly 137,000, and 
 the Charleston lost over 133,000, which latter, however, was sub- 
 sequently remitted by act of Congress. The Yorktown won nearly 
 $40,000 and the Petrel lost about $500. 
 
 The designs for these vessels were various and not especially 
 creditable, though no great results were to be expected on account 
 of the inexperience that was one of the natural results of the long 
 period of inaction the navy had undergone. In the proposals to bid- 
 ders, choice was given between the plans of the Department and 
 those of the bidders themselves, and the bids and contracts showed 
 that the former were not regarded with much confidence by ship and 
 engine builders. The Petrel was built by the Columbian Iron Works 
 of Baltimore, hull and machinery complete, according to the plans 
 furnished by the Department. The Newark and Yorktown were 
 built by the Wm. H. Cramp and Sons Ship and Engine Building 
 Co., of Philadelphia, which establishment accepted the plans of 
 hulls offered by the Department but bid on designs of their own for 
 machinery, in each case substituting horizontal triple-expansion 
 twin-screw engines for the compound ones proposed, and the con- 
 tracts were awarded on that basis. 
 
 The designs for the Charleston have been the subject for con- 
 siderable discussion and animadversion. It is generally believed 
 throughout the navy that she is a copy of the Japanese cruiser 
 Ncmiwa-Kan, but such is not exactly the ease. Owing to the lack 
 of experience in war- ship building in our country, there was at that 
 time a decided sentiment in the navy in favor of imitating the 
 British and in the pursuit of this idea an officer attached to the 
 
790 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 American legation in England was directed to look about the ship- 
 yards of that country and negotiate for any plans of vessels that in his 
 
 judgment might be desirable to copy. This resulted in the purchase 
 of a set of plans for a ship, believed to be the Naniwa-Kan, from 
 
 Sir William Armstrong^ establishment at Newcastle-on-Tyne. The 
 machinery designs were not such as an engineer would have 
 selected, and were not in accord, being a mixture of designs that 
 had been used in different vessels built by the Armstrong Company. 
 When received in this country and examined for the purpose of pre- 
 paring specifications from them our engineers found that the general 
 plans of machinery were those of an Italian cruiser, the Etna, while 
 the details were made up from the Giovanni Bausan, the Naniwa- 
 Kan and a fourth Armstrong ship not named on the drawings but 
 believed to be the Chilean cruiser Esmeralda. 
 
 These various details did not agree with each other as to pro- 
 portion and location, and as a result the contractors for the Cha/rles- 
 ton (the Union Iron Works of San Francisco) had to make many 
 expensive changes in machinery as the work progressed. The 
 Bureau of Steam Engineering had attempted to harmonize the 
 designs before the proposals to bidders were issued, but the Secre- 
 tary of the Navy, having explicit faith in the source from which the 
 plans had been secured, directed that they should go out just as they 
 were. Besides being out of agreement, these designs were out of 
 date also, they being for compound instead of triple-expansion 
 engines — " one cylinder behind, ' 5 as it were. As built with this 
 machinery the Charleston is the last example of this type of engine 
 in our navy. The hull was built from the purchased plans without 
 material alteration, but, as before stated, many changes in machinery 
 were found desirable. 1 
 
 With the changes in machinery the Charleston has been a rea- 
 sonably efficient cruiser and has had much active employment. Her 
 most important service thus far is her famous chase of the steamer 
 Itata in May and June, 1891, during the civil war in Chili. The 
 
 1 Many interesting details regarding the purchase and execution of the designs 
 for the Charleston's machinery are given in a paper, and its discussion, entitled 
 " Auxiliary Machinery of Naval Vessels,' ' read by Mr. George W. Dickie, manager 
 of the Union Iron Works, at the International Engineering Congress held in Chicago 
 during the Columbian Exposition in the year 1893. 
 
OtC_.26_.lS 63. 
 
 TYPE OF MODERN" SCREW PROPELLER. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 793 
 
 Itata, engaged in carrying contraband of war for the insurgents, had 
 escaped from the custody of the United States marshal at San 
 Diego, California, and it was considered proper that she be over- 
 hauled and captured if possible. With this object in view the 
 Charleston left San Francisco May 9th and proceeded southward, 
 with necessary stoppages for coal, as far as Iquiqui, a distance of 
 over six thousand miles, before her mission was accomplished. 
 This long chase was maintained under the varying conditions that 
 would exist in war, full boiler-power and forced draft being used 
 much of the time, and the experience gained constitutes the best 
 lesson we have as to the behavior of a modern cruiser under war 
 conditions. A full account of the performance of the Charleston's 
 machinery, the casualties and derangements encountered, their 
 remedies, etc., has been given the ilaval profession by Passed 
 Assistant Engineer Ira N. Hollis in an admirable paper published 
 in the ' i Journal of the American Society of Naval Engineers, ' ' 
 August, 1892. A dramatic incident of the chase was a meeting in 
 the night-time with the Emieralda, the Itata's protector. When the 
 identity of the Esmeralda was established, all outside lights were 
 extinguished on the Charleston, the ship cleared for action, battery 
 loaded, and further developments awaited with intense anxiety. 
 Nothing happened, and the ships passed on, though the chance 
 snapping of a primer or discharge of a small-arm on either vessel 
 would beyond doubt have precipitated a desperate encounter, for 
 each crew, that of the Esmeralda especially, longed to fight the 
 other. The Charleston at the time had all boilers and her forced- 
 draft system in use. 
 
 Besides directing the completion of the double-turreted moni- 
 tors, the naval act of August 3, 1886, made extensive provision for 
 increasing the naval establishment. One second-class battle-ship, one 
 protected cruiser, one armored cruiser, one dynamite -gun cruiser and 
 one torpedo boat were authorized, the names subsequently given 
 these vessels being respectively, Texas, Baltimore, Maine, Vesuvius and 
 Gushing. The act directed that one or more of the new vessels be 
 constructed in government navy yards; it also specified that all armor 
 and machinery be of domestic manufacture, but by a saving clause 
 gave authority for the purchase of shafting abroad should it be found 
 impossible to procure it within reasonable time from American 
 manufacturers. 
 
794 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The second-class battle-ship Texas was selected as one of the 
 vessels to be built at a navy yard and her construction was under- 
 taken at the Norfolk yard; a controversy as to her stability, floating 
 capacity, and general design so postponed her beginning that the 
 keel was not laid until 1889, while difficulties in obtaining armor 
 and other heavy material delayed her completion until the summer 
 of 1895. The plans for the Texas were bought in England for 
 $15,000, and were the result of a competition instituted by the 
 United States Navy Department. The general design was by the 
 latje William John, a distinguished English naval architect at that 
 time in the employ of the Naval Construction and Armaments Com- 
 pany, Barrow-in-Furness. Owing to a dispute as to whether the 
 prize of $15,000 belonged to the designer or to his employers, Mr. 
 John left the service of the Barrow Company, and the detailed plans 
 for the Texas were worked out by his successor, Mr. A. D. Bryce- 
 Douglas, especially distinguished as a marine engineer, though an 
 architect of note also, Vertical triple-expansion twin-screw engines 
 and four double-ended steel boilers were included in the plans, all 
 the machinery being obtained by contract from the Richmond Loco- 
 motive Works of Richmond, Va. This contract required 8,600 
 horse-power and stipulated the usual premium and penalty of $ 100 
 for each horse-power in excess or default. 
 
 The protected cruiser Baltimore was built by the Cramp Com- 
 pany of Philadelphia, her designs, hull and machinery, being also 
 of foreign extraction. They were bought of the Armstrong Com- 
 pany by the officer who had selected the designs from which the 
 Charleston was evolved, but unlike that combination possessed the 
 merit of unity. These plans had been prepared to enter a competi- 
 tion for a cruiser for the Spanish government and not having been 
 successful were left on the hands of the designers. The Cramp 
 Company made a number of changes, especially in machinery, and 
 produced an excellent cruiser. The contract specified the develop, 
 ment of 9,000 horse-power to be maintained for four consecutive 
 hours and provided for the usual premium and penalty of $100 per 
 horse-power. On her trial trip the Baltimore averaged 20.09 knots 
 and exceeded the required horse-power to such an extent that she 
 won for her builders the sum of $106,441.80. Her first important 
 duty was during the summer of 1890 when she carried to Sweden, 
 
U. S. DYNAMITE CRUISER VESUVIUS. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 801 
 
 his native land, the remains of the great engineer John Ericsson, 
 whose genius had done so much for the American navy in the day 
 of its distress. 
 
 The Maine, known for a long time officially as Armored Cruiser 
 No. 1, was put under construction at the New York navy yard in 
 1888, and a contract made with the N. F. Palmer, Jr., Company 
 (Quintard Iron Works) of New York for the machinery, both hull 
 and machinery being of Navy Department designs. 9,000 horse- 
 power was specified with $100 per horse-power premium and 
 penalty. The engines designed for the Maine were vertical triple- 
 expansion, and marked the change in our navy from horizontal 
 engines cramped into the bottom of the ship to vertical ones pro- 
 tected by an armored deck. 
 
 The legislation authorizing the construction of a dynamite-gun 
 cruiser particularized as follows: " Said cruiser to be not less than 
 two hundred and thirty feet long, twenty-six feet beam, seven and 
 one-half feet draught, three thousand two hundred horse-power, and 
 guaranteed to attain a speed of twenty knots an hour, and to be 
 equipped with three pneumatic dynamite-guns of ten and one-half 
 inch calibre, and guaranteed to throw shells containing two hundred 
 pounds of dynamite or other high explosives at least one mile, each 
 gun to be capable of being discharged once in two minutes, at a 
 price not to exceed three hundred and fifty thousand dollars; said 
 contract to be made only on condition that there shall be a favorable 
 report made by the existing Naval Board on the system." In 
 accordance with this authority the Navy Department made a contract 
 for the vessel specified with the Pneumatic Dynamite-Gun Com- 
 pany, of New York, which company had the craft built by sub-con- 
 tract with the Cramp Company. As actually built the dimensions 
 are: Length on load water-line, 251 feet 9 inches; beam, 26 feet 5 
 inches; mean draft, 10 feet H inches; displacement, 930 tons. The 
 twin screw engines are of the vertical triple-expansion type with two 
 low-pressure cylinders for each engine. The contract exacted the 
 development of 3,200 horse-power, but offered no premium for extra 
 power: on the official trial the Vesuvius, as the vessel had been 
 named, averaged 22.5 knots and 3,795 horse-power. After a long 
 series of experiments she has not been found a success for the pur- 
 pose for which she was built, and a subsequent appropriation for 
 
802 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 another dynamite-gun cruiser has been by authority of Congress 
 applied to other purposes. 
 
 The torpedo boat Cushing was built by the Herreschoff Manu- 
 facturing Company, of Bristol, Rhode Island, from the contractors' 
 designs. She has twin-screw vertical quadruple-expansion engines, 
 with two low-pressure cylinders for each engine, making thus five 
 cylinders to each engine. The boilers, two in number, are of the 
 well-known English Thorny croft type. 
 
 The act of March 3, 1887, authorized the construction of the 
 following named vessels: Philadelphia, San Francisco, Concord, 
 Bennington, and Monterey. The Concord and Bennington are heavily 
 armed gun- boats, duplicates in hull and machinery of the Yorktown, 
 and were built by the N. F. Palmer Co. of New York, the hulls 
 being built at Chester, Pennsylvania, and the machinery at Mr. 
 Palmer's establishment (Quintard Iron Works) in New York. The 
 contracts called for 3,400 horse-power maintained for four hours 
 and contained the usual premium and penalty clause. Each vessel 
 won a small premium. 
 
 The Monterey is an improved low-freeboard monitor, and was 
 built by the Union Iron Works, San Francisco. Horse-power 
 (5,400) was the main requirement of the contract, with the usual 
 premium and penalty of $100 per horse-power. On her trials she 
 failed by more than three hundred to develop the required horse- 
 power and a penalty of nearly $33,000 was exacted. An important 
 departure from naval engineering precedents was made in this ship 
 in supplying her with coil boilers for two-thirds of the generating 
 plant. Two cylindrical, or u Scotch, " boilers were supplied and 
 four large coil boilers of the type patented and manufactured by 
 Mr. Charles Ward of Charleston, West Virginia. On the trial trip 
 these boilers gave great satisfaction, carrying both steam and water 
 with fair uniformity, and passing through the ordeal without leak or 
 mishap of any kind. The failure of the Monterey to realize the re. 
 quired horse-power was attributed to lack of skill and lack of interest 
 on the part of the firemen hired for the occasion. 
 
 In regard to the two cruisers, the act of Congress directed that 
 the contracts for their construction should contain provisions to the 
 effect that a speed of 19 knots per hour should be guaranteed by 
 the contractors and that a premium of $50,000 should be offered for 
 
U. S. S. BENNINGTON, ( CONCORD, YOKKTOWN). 
 
 Length, on 1. w. 1. 230 feet; beam, 36 feet; mean draft, 14 feet; disp., 1,710 tons. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 805 
 
 every quarter-knot in excess of this with a deduction of the same 
 amount for each quarter-knot the vessels should fail to reach the 
 guaranteed speed. These were the first ships of the new navy for 
 which premiums were offered for speed. Poth vessels had hori- 
 zontal triple-expansion engines, those of the Philadelphia being 
 designed by the builders, and those for the San Francisco by the 
 Bureau of Steam Engineering. The San Francisco was built by the 
 Union Iron Works of San Francisco. On the official trial trips the 
 Philadelphia averaged for four consecutive hours 19.678 knots, and 
 the San Francisco 19.51 knots, each earning $ 100,000 under the 
 terms of the act of Congress. 
 
 Engineer-in- Chief Charles JEL Loring resigned his position 
 during the summer of 1887, domestic affliction of a peculiarly dis- 
 tressing nature impelling him to take this step, and his place was 
 taken by Chief Engineer George W. Melville. Mr. Melville at the 
 time was well down on the list of junior chief engineers and his 
 elevation to the head of his corps was a surprise to himself as well 
 as to the naval service. Having spent the greater part of his 
 career in the navy at sea, he had not had the opportunity of making 
 a reputation for excellence in office work or designing that is an 
 attribute of shore-duty, and for that reason he was not supposed to 
 be in the list of eligibles for advancement. In selecting him Sec- 
 retary Whitney was influenced chiefly by the story of Melville's 
 conduct during the cruise of the Jeannette. At the rate and in the 
 direction that the navy was growing it was important that the head 
 of the bureau most concerned should possess boldness, executive 
 ability and sterling good judgment, and these qualities Mr. Mel- 
 ville's record showed him to have to an unusual degree. A quickly 
 acquired knowledge ol : some of the theoretical necessities of his 
 profession added to his great practical genius enabled Mr. Melville 
 to produce machinery that has made our ships famous and has 
 placed his name foremost among marine engineers throughout the 
 world. The success that has attended our naval machinery on trial 
 and in every-day use is phenomenal when compared with the expe- 
 riences of other navies, and the mind that has directed this great 
 work is entitled to no less qualification than that of genius. Of 
 the many great services rendered the navy by Secretary Whitney 
 none has been greater in resulting benefits than his selection of 
 George W. Melville to be chief of the Bureau of Steam Engineering. 
 
806 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 One of the first of Mr/ Melville's acts after becoming engineer- 
 in- chief was to outlaw the venerable notion that the engines of 
 a war vessel should be horizontal that they might be stowed in the 
 bottom of a ship, below the water-line, and in any space that might 
 be left after other departments had made choice of all they wanted; 
 The engines of the Maine were his first creation in this direction. 
 The adoption of. ; coil boilers for the Monterey was another early step 
 of his towards freeing our navy from the tangle of conventional 
 precedents that had grown upon it. As a measure of his profes- 
 sional abilities, it may be stated that after his accession to the office 
 of engineer-in- chief bidders for new vessels ceased supplying ma- 
 chinery designs of their own and gladly accepted those furnished 
 by the Bureau of Steam Engineering. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 We're creepin' on wi' each new rig — less weight an' larger power : 
 There'll be the loco-boiler next an' thirty miles an hour ! 
 Thirty an' more. What I ha' seen since ocean-steam began 
 Leaves me no doubt for the machine : but what about the man?" 
 
 — Rudyard Kipling — ■ 'Mc Andrews' 
 
 Hymn. 
 
 The New Navy, Continued — The New York and Olympia — The Detroit Class — The 
 Cincinnati and Raleigh — The Bancroft — Gastine and Machias — The Ammen 
 Ram — Coast-Line-Battle-Ships — The Ericsson — The Columbia — Her Re- 
 markable Voyage Across the Atlantic Ocean—The Minneapolis — The 
 Brooklyn and Iowa — New Torpedo Boats and Gunboats — The New 
 Kearsarge. 
 
 A N ACT of Congress approved September 7, 1888, authorized a 
 
 i\ greater addition to our new fleet than any that preceded or 
 has followed it. The construction was authorized of one large 
 armored cruiser of about 7,500 tons displacement ; one cruiser of 
 about 5,300 tons displacement; two cruisers of about 3,000 tons; 
 three cruisers of about 2,000 tons, and one steel practice-vessel of 
 about 800 tons. Premiums for speed were authorized in all cases. 
 An important provision in this law was that — "in all their parts 
 said vessels shall be of domestic manufacture," which shows that 
 the steel- making industry in the United States had developed under 
 the impetus of naval demands to the extent of disposing of the fear 
 that shafting or other heavy forgings could not be obtained at 
 home. 
 
 The large armored cruiser, originally designated as No. 2, and 
 subsequently named New York, was built by the Cramp Company 
 from designs furnished by the Bureaus of Construction and Steam 
 Engineering, the contract price being $2,985,000. The contract 
 exacted that she should develop a speed of not less than twenty 
 knots per hour, maintained successfully for four consecutive hours, 
 the air pressure in the fire-rooms not to exceed two and one-half 
 inches of water. $50,000 per quarter-knot was offered as a 
 premium for any speed in excess of the contract requirement. The 
 engine design provided for two large vertical triple-expansion 
 
810 
 
 The steam navy of the united states. 
 
 engines for driving each of the two shafts, a coupling intervening 
 between each pair of engines. The object of this arrangement is to 
 run at moderate speed with the after engines only, the forward ones 
 being uncoupled. The cylinder diameters are 32", 47", and 72", 
 the piston stroke of all cylinders being 42". Six double-ended 
 main boilers and two single-ended auxiliary boilers provide steam, 
 the total heating surface being 32,958 square feet, and grate surface 
 1,052. On her official trial trip, May 22, 1893, the New York 
 developed 17,025 horse-power and averaged 21 knots for four 
 hours, thereby earning for her builders a premium of $200,000. 
 
 Showing the extent to which steam is now used on a modern 
 vessel of war, the following list of the steam engines on board the 
 New York is inserted : 
 
 STEAM 
 CYLINDERS. 
 
 4 main propelling engines, vertical triple-expansion 
 
 4 main air-pumps 
 
 4 main circulating pumps . 
 
 3 main feed pumps 
 
 3 auxiliary feed pumps, 
 
 12 blowing engines for force-draft, high-speed 
 
 2 fire and bilge pumps 
 
 2 ventilating fans for engine-room 
 
 4 ventilating fans for ship 
 
 3 engines for running dynamos 
 
 1 steam steering engine 
 
 4 evaporator and distiller pumps.. 
 
 1 ice machine ....- 
 
 2 auxiliary feed and fire pumps. 
 
 4 main and auxiliary fire pumps 
 
 2 auxiliary boiler feedpumps. 
 
 2 wrecking pumps 
 
 2 water-service pumps 
 
 2 auxiliary air and circulating pumps. 
 
 1 steam capstan, 
 
 6 steam winches 
 
 2 auxiliary-boiler blowing engines 
 
 6 ash-hoists - 
 
 2 turning engines 
 
 4 reversing engines - 
 
 2 turrett-turning engines 
 
 2 steam ammunition-hoists .... 
 
 1 workshop engine 
 
 1 air-pump for sweeping decks 
 
 2 propelling engines in steam cutters 
 
 2 duplex feed pumps in steam cutters ....... 
 
 12 
 4 
 
 12 
 
 4 
 4 
 4 
 4 
 1 
 1 
 4 
 4 
 
 12 
 8 
 4 
 6 
 6 
 
 24 
 4 
 4 
 8 
 6 
 2 
 5 
 1 
 4 
 8 
 4 
 
 9, 
 
 4 
 2 
 
 92 engines 
 
 170 
 
U. S. SECOND-CLASS BATTLESHIP TEXAS. 
 
 Length, 301 ft. 4 in.; Beam, 64 ft. 1 in.; Displacement, 6,315 tons. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 813 
 
 It is difficult to resist the temptation to enter into a detailed 
 description, from an engineer's point of view, of this majestic steel 
 cruiser, and to institute comparisons between her features and per- 
 formance and those of similar vessels in other navies, but the sub- 
 ject is one that can be properly treated only in a more detailed and 
 extended work than this. On one occasion already, when stripped 
 for action with hostile intent in a foreign harbor, her mere appear- 
 ance was sufficient to compel a respect for the rights of Amer- 
 ican merchantmen that had previously been defiantly refused. As 
 flagship of the squadron that represented the United States at the 
 recent naval assemblage at Kiel, Germany, she was the most 
 admired of all the vessels present, and the praise lavished upon her 
 by naval experts of many countries is most gratifying to the Amer- 
 ican people as well as flattering to the naval engineers and construc- 
 tors whose genius created her. The Emperor of Germany examined 
 her critically, especially in the engine department and was so im- 
 pressed with the machinery and the exquisite order in which he 
 found it that he was profuse in complimentary expressions to Mr. 
 Andrade, ber chief engineer, and gave greater evidence of his 
 admiration by subsequently ordering the chief engineers of the 
 German war-ships, in the harbor, to go on board the New York 
 and see how perfectly great engines can be made and how well they 
 may be kept. 
 
 The second large cruiser — the Olympia — as built is of about 
 5,800 tons displacement and is very like the New York in appear- 
 ance, though smaller. She was built by the Union Iron Works, 
 San Francisco, under a contract the same in details as that for the 
 New York She exceeded her contract speed by 1.69 knots and 
 won for the contractors the enormous premium of $300,000. 
 
 The authorizing act of Congress fixed the limit of cost of the 
 3,000-ton cruisers at $1,100,000 each, and when proposals for 
 their construction were issued it was found that no ship-building 
 firm would bid on them at that price. Under authority of the same 
 law the Secretary of the Navy directed their construction at navy 
 yards and they were built in that way, the Cincinnati at New York 
 and the Raleigh at Norfolk. Triple-expansion twin-screw engines 
 for both were built at the New York navy yard under the immediate 
 supervision of Chief Engineers James H. Chasmar and George 
 
 48 
 
— SCALE „ OF FEET. 
 
 ELEVATION AND DECK PLAN OP THE UNITED STATES CRUISER "CINCINNATI^" 
 
 u. s. s. ' 'Cincinnati" ("kaleigh.") 
 Length on 1. w. 1. 300 feet; beam, 42 feet; disp., 3,213 tons. 
 
i 
 
 ONE ENGINE OF OLYMPIA. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 817 
 
 Kearney, U. S. Navy. These engines have equaled in performance 
 any built by contract and the records of the Navy Department show 
 that their actual cost was less per horse-power than contract-built 
 engines. They differ from large triple-expansion engines of the 
 usual type in having two low-pressure cylinders each, the fining 
 in of the ship not leaving room for the location of single low- 
 pressure cylinders of sufficient diameter. 
 
 The 2,000 ton cruisers became the Detroit, Marblehead, and 
 Montgomery. The cost of each, exclusive of premiums, was limited 
 by the enabling act of Congress to $700,000, and the Navy Depart- 
 ment fixed eighteen knots as their required speed. Contractors 
 bid in excess of the limit under these conditions and in consequence 
 the proposals were modified by making seventeen knots the limit of 
 required speed. Contracts for two of them were made with the 
 Columbian Iron Works of Baltimore for $612,500 each and for the 
 third — the Marblehead — with Harrison Loring, Boston, for 
 $674,000, the premium offered in each case being $25,000 for each 
 quarter-knot in excess of seventeen. All had vertical triple-expan- 
 sion twin-screw engines of bureau design. The machinery for the 
 Marblehead was built by sub-contract by the Quintard Iron Works 
 of New York. On their trial trips all exceeded the required speed 
 by considerably more than one knot and the Montgomery by more 
 than two, earning a premium of $200,000, which is by far the 
 greatest premium any of our new ships has won in proportion to 
 the contract price. 
 
 The steel practice-vessel Bancroft, designed for the training of 
 cadets at the Naval Academy, was built by the Samuel L. Moore and 
 Sons Company, Elizabethport, New Jersey, the premium offered in 
 her case being $5,000 per quarter-knot, on which basis she won 
 $45,000. The contract price was $250,000. The name of this 
 vessel was bestowed in memory of the distinguished American 
 historian, Mr. George Bancroft, who was Secretary of the Navy 
 during the first part of the administration of President James K. 
 Polk, and through whose influence the United States Naval Acad- 
 emy was established. 
 
 The Fiftieth Congress, which had dealt so liberally with the 
 navy by authorizing the ships that have been mentioned in this 
 chapter, continued its good work at its last session by directing the 
 
818 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 construction of two steer gun-boats of the most approved type 
 and 6 ' one ram for harbor-defence, of the general type approved by 
 the Naval Advisory Board in their report to the Secretary of the 
 Navy of November seventh, 1881, of the highest practicable speed. " 
 The two gun-boats, named Castine and Machias, were built by the 
 Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine, a speed of thirteen knots main- 
 tained for four hours with a premium and penalty clause of $5,000 
 per quarter-knot being the chief requirement of the contract. Each 
 exceeded the contract speed by about two and one-half knots. When 
 completed and put in service these two gun-boats were found so 
 dangerously near being unstable that they were taken to the New 
 York navy yard, cut in two, and lengthened enough to increase 
 their displacement about one hundred and ten tons each. 
 
 The harbor-defense ram was also built by the Bath Iron Works? 
 her general design being from plans prepared by Rear Admiral 
 Daniel Ammen, IT. S. Navy, a distinguished officer who for many 
 years has advocated the ram as a formidable weapon in naval war- 
 fare. The name— Katahdin — given this craft is that of a mountain 
 in Maine, and was formerly borne by one of the u Ninety-day " 
 gun-boats. With the exception of a light battery of machine guns 
 her offensive power lies wholly in her speed and ram. 
 
 During the first session of the Fifty-first Congress a new de- 
 parture in our naval construction was taken by authorizing the 
 building of three sea-going, coast-line battle-ships, 4 'designed to 
 carry the heaviest armor and most powerful ordnance . . . and 
 to have the highest practicable speed for vessels of their class, to 
 cost, exclusive of armament and of any premiums that may be paid 
 for increased speed, not exceeding four million dollars each." 
 These powerful ships — the Indiana, Massachusetts, and Oregon — are 
 now approaching completion, the two former at the works of the 
 Cramp Company in Philadelphia, and the Oregon at the Union Iron 
 Works, San Francisco. They will be of about 10,200 tons displace- 
 ment each, and their fighting factors— battery, steam power, and 
 armor — are combined in such proportions that they will be fully the 
 equals of any battle ships now afloat. 
 
 The same act that provided for the building of these battle ships 
 also authorized the construction of one protected cruiser of about 
 T ? 300 tons displacement, to have a maximum speed of twenty-one 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 821 
 
 knots; one swift torpedo cruiser of about 750 tons displacement, to 
 have not less than twenty-three knots speed, to cost not more than 
 $850,000; and one torpedo boat. The act repeated a previous 
 clause requiring all parts of the vessels to be of domestic manu- 
 facture. The torpedo cruiser has never been undertaken for the 
 reason that the price fixed by Congress as the limit of cost was con- 
 sidered by engineers and builders insufficient to procure a vessel of 
 the size and speed specified. The torpedo boat, named Ericsson in 
 honor of the great engineer, was built by contract by the Iowa Iron 
 Works at Dubuque, Iowa, and has not yet succeeded in running a 
 successful steam trial. A fatality seems to have followed her from 
 her inception; unforseen obstacles delayed her completion more 
 than two years beyond the contract time, and repeated efforts to 
 run a trial trip have failed from accidents to her machinery. The 
 most distressing casualty that has befallen her was the bursting of a 
 steam pipe while running at high speed, this killing three and 
 severely injuring five men of the engineer's force employed by the 
 contractors. 
 
 The large swift cruiser was given the name Columbia, and her 
 remarkable speed and beautiful appearance have combined to make 
 her the pride of the new navy and have won for her the popular 
 appellation, u The Gem of the Ocean." The name bestowed upon 
 her is in accordance with a law requiring vessels of her size to be 
 to be named after states of the Union, the District of Columbia 
 being regarded as a state for this purpose. While work was pro- 
 gressing on the designs for this so-called commerce- destroyer, Chief 
 Engineer N. P. Towne, XL S. Navy, then director of the drafting 
 room of the Bureau of Steam Engineering, facetiously dubbed her 
 the Pirate, and this name, being seized upon by the newspapers as 
 appropriate, clung to her long after the authorized name was an- 
 nounced, and has appeared many times in serious use both at home 
 and abroad in descriptions of the ship. The Columbia was built by 
 the Cramp* Company from designs furnished by the Bureaus of 
 Steam Engineering and Construction and Repair, the contract price 
 being $2,725,000. A speed of twenty-one knots maintained for 
 four consecutive hours was specified and a premium of $50,000 
 offered for each quarter-knot in excess of this, while a penalty was 
 provided of $25,000 for each quarter-knot the speed might fall 
 
U. S. GUNBOAT CASTINE (MacMas). 
 
 Length on 1. w. 1., 204 feet ; beam, 32 ft. 2 in.; displacement, 1,177 tons. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 825 
 
 below twenty-one knots. The official steam trial took place 
 November 18th, 1893, and the Columbia maintained for four con- 
 secutive hours the remarkable speed of 22.8 knots; the premium for 
 seven quarter-knots in excess of the contract speed amounted to 
 $350,000. 
 
 For the legislation that called this magnificent specimen of the 
 engineer's art into existence the naval service is indebted to Honor- 
 able Charles A. Boutelle more than to any one man, while credit for 
 her wonderful steaming qualities belongs to Engineer-in-Chief 
 George W. Melville. Mr. Boutelle was Chairman of the Committee 
 on Naval Affairs in the House of Representatives and he had much 
 opposition to overcome, both in his committee room and on the 
 floor of the House before the building of the ship was voted. This 
 opposition was based upon doubt as to the possibility of building a 
 ship of the size and speed proposed, and also as to the propriety of 
 providing vessels of such a type for the navy. Mr. Boutelle knew, 
 just as Mr. Isherwood had known years before when he had pro- 
 jected the Wampanoag^ that the mere possession of such a vessel 
 in time of war yields an invaluable advantage to the nation owning 
 it, and his faith on the subject was not theoretical, for as a volunteer 
 officer he had learned in the hard school of experience the mos t 
 useful lessons of naval warfare. 
 
 When the question of supplying power to drive the ship at the 
 high speed desired was being considered at the Navy Department, 
 Engineer-in-Ohief Melville proposed to secure it by installing three 
 screws, an unusual but not novel practice, for we have seen in 
 former chapters that some of the Mississippi River iron-clads during 
 the Civil War had as many as four screws, and triple screws had 
 been applied more recently to small torpedo cruisers in Europe, 
 Secretary Tracy hesitated about undertaking such an experiment on 
 so large and expensive a scale and gave his approval only after the 
 most earnest arguments from Melville, who well knew that any- 
 thing short of complete success would involve his own professional 
 ruin. To all who knew the prominent part taken by Mr. Melville 
 in establishing the characteristics of this great ship, it was a source 
 of gratification to observe that the principal credit for the achieve- 
 ment was accorded him when the trial performance of the vessel 
 became a triumph. 
 
826 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Though matchless in her class when compared with foreign 
 vessels, the Columbia has not been free from attack by theorists 
 within our own country. It has been asserted that she, or her type 
 in general, is not as well adapted for war purposes as a swift armed 
 mail steamer; that in spite of her high trial speed, no speed com- 
 parable with that of the better mail steamers can be developed by 
 her under the usual conditions of service, and that the engineers 
 and firemen of the navy cannot drive her at the rate obtained by 
 the picked men used in running contractors' trial trips. The first 
 objection to her type — that regarding her qualities as a combatant 
 in comparison with commercial steamers — has been answered suf- 
 ficiently in Chapter XXVII. To the other criticisms noted the 
 Golumbia herself has recently replied satisfactorily by her perform- 
 ance in returning to the United States from Europe after having been 
 an object of wonder and admiration at the Kiel naval celebration. 
 
 To settle the question of her endurance at sea, the Secretary 
 of the Navy ordered her to cross the Atlantic Ocean at full speed, 
 without using forced draft except the last day of the voyage. The 
 Golumbia left Southampton, England, shortly after noon on Friday 
 the 26th of July, 1895, and arrived at Sandy Hook at 8.59 a. m. 
 the next Friday, having made a run of 3,090 knots in six days, 
 twenty- three hours and forty -nine minutes, or at an average speed 
 of 18.41 knots per hour for the whole distance. The daily perform- 
 ance is shown by the following summary of her log, first pub- 
 lished in the Journal of the American Society of Naval Engineers : 
 
 ' 'Friday, July 26. — Passed the Needles at 2 p. m., and the 
 Lizard at 9.50 p. m. ; making from 18 to 19 knots in the Channel. 
 Light westerly wind. 
 
 66 Saturday, July 27. — Moderate sea; light to fresh northerly 
 wind. Distance run to noon, 405 miles. Coal, 196.25 tons. 
 Average revolution of engines: starboard, 97.2; port, 97.3; center, 
 96.6. Leaky tubes in one boiler rendered that boiler useless for 
 seven hours. 
 
 44 Sunday, July 28. — Gentle breezes, smooth sea. Distance 
 run, 460 miles. Coal, 201.25 tons. Average revolutions: star- 
 board, 104.1; port, 103.9; center, 103.7. 
 
 u Monday, July 29. — Smooth sea, fresh S. S. W. wind. Dis- 
 
HARBOR DEFENSE RAM KATAHDIN. 
 
 Length on 1. w. 1. 250 foot 9 inches; beam, 43 feet 5 inches; disp., 2,155 tons. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 820 
 
 tance run, 462 miles. Coal, 225.5 tons. Average revolutions: 
 starboard, 105.8; port, 105.8; center, 105.7. 
 
 " Tuesday, July 30. — Fresh breeze from W. by S. Distance 
 run to noon, 450 miles. Coal, 229.75 tons. Average revolutions: 
 starboard, 103.2; port, 103.3 ; center, 102.6. Slowed for four 
 hours on account of fog and heavy sea. 
 
 "Wednesday, July 31. — Fresh breeze from W. S. W. Dis- 
 tance run to noon, 455 miles. Coal, 230 tons. Average revolu- 
 tions: starboard, 105.9; port, 105.9; center, 105.1. 
 
 "Thursday, August 1. — -Fresh breeze from W. S. W. Dis- 
 tance run to noon, 453 miles. Coal, 230 tons. Average revolutions: 
 starboard, 105; port, 104.9; center, 104.4. 
 
 "Friday, August 2. — Passed Sandy Hook lightship at 8.59 
 A. M. Distance run since preceding noon, 405 miles. Coal 
 burned to 9 A. M., 221 tons. Coal on hand at noon, 328 tons." 
 
 About eleven tons should be deducted from the daily coal con- 
 sumption to account for that used in running auxiliary machinery. 
 An inspection of the bunkers after the run showed a surplus on hand 
 great enough to indicate that the amount charged each day exceeded 
 that actually used by about ten per centum. The mean draft of 
 water at the beginning and end of the voyage was 24 feet, 2J 
 inches, corresponding to a displacement of about 8,150 tons, or 800 
 tons more than the displacement on the acceptance trial trip. 
 Natural draft was used the whole trip, it having been found impos- 
 sible with the force on board to supply coal from the remote bunkers 
 the last day in sufficient quantity to permit of forcing the fires. 
 The engineers' force of the Columbia numbered 196 men of all 
 ratings, the working force being less than this by about a dozen men 
 detailed as mess cooks, and by the daily sick list; sixty men from 
 the deck force were sent to duty in the fire-rooms, but even with this 
 help the force was inadequate and the work was most killing for all. 
 
 The few officers who directed the remarkable performance of 
 the Columbia's machinery deserve mention, for upon them fell a 
 laborious and vexing task, and a very serious responsibility: the 
 latter not confined to the safety of machinery and boilers at high 
 power and the lives of a large company of men, but involved also 
 the reputation of the American navy and of American ship-builders, 
 
830 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 for the run of the Columbia was wat( ' the whole world. 
 
 They were, Chief Engineer William H. ; Passed Assistant 
 
 Engineer Martin Bevington; Assistant 1 o rs W. H. McGrann 
 and George H. Sheppard, and Naval Cadets (engineer division) 
 B. K. McMorris and Ralph H. Chappell. Only six directing 
 officers in all. There are as many, or more, licensed engineers in 
 each watch on board the swift trans-atlantic mail steamers with the 
 speed of which the Columbia was forced to compete. Mr. Beving- 
 ton was severely injured in a street-car accident shortly before the 
 Columbia left Southampton, but realizing the importance of the 
 task ahead of the ship he voluntarily undertook his duties and aided 
 greatly in making the voyage a triumphal one. Captain Sumner 
 speaks thus of him in his official report of the Columbians run: 
 
 " I feared that I was to be deprived of the valuable services of 
 Passed Assistant Engineer Bevington of our engineer force, as he 
 met with a severe and painful accident' just previous to our de- 
 parture from Southampton, which placed him on the sick list. He 
 left the list, however, though still suffering severely from the effects 
 of the accident, and took his watch and duty in the engine room all 
 the way over. " 
 
 This voyage of the Columbia was by far the fastest trans-atlantic 
 or long-distance passage ever made by a vessel of war, and proved 
 that in her the United States owns a steamer that can sustain for as 
 long a period as will ever be necessary a sea-speed greater than that 
 of any but a very few of the Atlantic u greyhounds, " while her 
 speed under natural draft was but a little less than that of the fastest 
 mail steamers running over the same route with adequate force in 
 their engine departments, and habitually using forced draft. This 
 is shown by the following table of the best performance of the 
 swiftest Atlantic liners between Southampton and New York: 
 
 Fuerst Bismarck 
 
 6 d 
 
 ays, 
 
 10 hours, 
 
 32 minutes. 
 
 Normannia 
 
 6 
 
 u 
 
 12 
 
 u 
 
 30 
 
 £ i 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 16 
 
 i I 
 
 13 
 
 i C 
 
 
 6 
 
 f / 
 k » 
 
 17 
 
 i I 
 
 14 
 
 4 I 
 
 Augusta Victoria 
 
 6 
 
 (. 4 
 
 20 
 
 ( i 
 
 22 
 
 i I 
 
 
 0 
 
 * i 
 
 18 
 
 u 
 
 4T 
 
 i i 
 
 (7. S. S. Columbia 
 
 6 
 
 
 23 
 
 c i 
 
 4:9 
 
 U 
 
ENGINKS OF U. S. RAM KATAHDIN. 
 
 Example of Modern Horizontal Triple-Expansion Engine. 
 
DOUBLE-ENDED BOILER, U. S. S. ' 'COLUMBIA.' ' 
 
 This type of boiler is in general use in the larger naval vessels at the present time. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OP THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 833 
 
 When the orders for the Columbia to make this long sea- trial 
 were issued, the antagonists of speed as a factor in naval warfare 
 were happy, for they believed her incapable of maintaining a high 
 speed for any considerable time and confidently expected her failure 
 to furnish the final argument against the policy of building war 
 vessels in which steam is given predominant space. Even the 
 friends of her type, knowing the disadvantages under which she 
 labored from lack of engineering personnel, were very modest in pre- 
 dicting the result. The two men most directly interested in her suc- 
 cess — Engineer-in- Chief Melville, and Mr. Charles H. Cramp, her 
 builder — did not anticipate a better record than eight days in cross- 
 ing, and this estimate of time was about the average of the range 
 established by betting men, for the sporting fraternity seized upon 
 the event and pools were sold on it in many cities. Very few and 
 very sanguine were those who expected to see her in New York 
 before Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning. 
 
 Friday, August 2, was eagerly looked forward to, for it was 
 expected that the incoming mail steamers that day would have passed 
 the Columbia and would bring tidings of her progress. When, 
 therefore, the news was flashed to New York early that morning 
 that the Columbia was off Fire Island there was much surprise and 
 doubt, but the latter was quickly dispelled by the great white 
 cruiser herself as she rushed into New York Bay and moved majes- 
 tically up the North Eiver, being cheered as she passed by thou- 
 sands of people assembled at the Battery and on the piers, and 
 answering with hoarse blasts of her steam-whistle the congratula- 
 tory screams of innumerable river-craft. The Hamburg- American 
 liner Augusta Victoria followed the Columbia out of the English 
 Channel five hours behind her, with the boasted intention of beat- 
 ing her to New York. She did not see the Columbia on the voyage 
 and her people were so confident they had passed her in" the night 
 and left her far astern that when they arrived at the New York 
 quarantine station at noon, Friday, the bluff German captain shouted 
 derisively, 6 4 Where is that white whirlwind now?" The answer 
 was a bitter disappointment to him and rudely disillusioned his pas- 
 sengers; for it said the Columbia had passed up the harbor hours 
 before. 
 
 The Fifty-first Congress completed the excellent work it had 
 
834 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 performed in strengthening the navy by authorizing at the close of 
 its last session the construction of another commerce destroyer, a 
 sister- ship of the Golmnbia. As in the case of the Columbia, Mr. 
 Boutelle was responsible for this ship, his practical knowledge of 
 naval affairs assuring him of the importance of possessing a few 
 very swift cruisers as a menace to grasping powers that have a large 
 over- sea commerce to protect. The new vessel was built by the 
 Cramp Company and was named Minneapolis. The contract re- 
 quirements were identical with those for the Columbia. On her 
 trial trip, which took place July 14, 1894, she developed over 20,000 
 horse-power and maintained for four consecutive hours the unpre- 
 cedented speed of 23.073 knots per hour, for which her builders 
 received a premium of $414,600. The Minneapolis is probably a 
 swifter and better ship than the Columbia, but as the latter has had 
 longer and more varied sea-experience it has been thought proper 
 to describe her performance more at length as representative of the 
 type. The following popular comparisons of certain features of the 
 Minneapolis are interesting, and are quoted from a lecture delivered 
 at the Naval War College by Passed Assistant Engineer Ira IS 1 ". 
 Hollis, U. S. Navy, in October, 1892: 
 
 "Her low-pressure piston, which is 92 inches in diameter, hag 
 an area of 46 square feet, a very comfortable 6 feet by 8 feet state- 
 room on board ship, and this piston has an initial load of 100 torus, 
 equal to the weight of three locomotives. The mean piston speed 
 at maximum power will be 11 miles an hour, and the maximum 
 speed 16 miles an hour. The tip of the propeller blades will move 
 through the water at the moderate rate of 75 miles an hour. The 
 condenser tubes, if placed end to end, would form a tube 33 miles 
 long, and, if flattened out, would cover about f of an acre. The 
 cooling water passed through these tubes will be equal to 36,000,000 
 gallons per day, enough to supply a large city with water. The 
 main boilers, if placed end to end, would form a tunnel 156 feet 
 long, and large enough for a train of cars to pass through. If 
 divided up into rooms, they would supply a hotel with 16 fair-sized 
 bed-rooms. The heating surface is equal to \\ acres. The grate 
 surface, if arranged on one grate, would equal one small town lot of 
 20 feet front and 77 feet depth. The boiler tubes, placed end to 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 837 
 
 end, would be 13^ miles long. The blowers are capable of supply- 
 ing 84,000,000 cubic feet of air an hour, which would supply a good- 
 sized yacht with a ten- knot breeze. 
 
 "The coal required for a full-power run across the Atlantic 
 would supply 150 families for one year in New York State. With 
 20,000 horse-power she would lift herself (7,500 tons weight) to the 
 Brooklyn Bridge in three minutes, if hoisting ropes were coiled 
 around drums on the shafts. If the engines were set up on shore 
 and used as a catapult, they would throw a 300-pound weight with 
 such velocity that it would go off into space entirely clear of the 
 earth's influence. The fictions of Jules Verne sink into insignifi- 
 cance by the side of this coal-eating monster of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. 5 ' 
 
 During the first session of the Fifty- second Congress, an act, 
 approved July 19, 1892, authorized the construction of one armored 
 cruiser of the general type of the New York and " one sea-going, 
 
 U. S. ARMORED CRUISER "BROOKLYN." 
 
 Length on J. w. 1., 400 ft. 6 inches ; beam, 64 ft. 8 inches ; mean draft, 24 feet ; dis- 
 placement, 9,270 tons. 
 
 coast-line battle-ship, designed to carry the heaviest armor and most 
 powerful ordnance, with a displacement of about 9,000 tons, to have 
 the highest practicable speed for vessels of its class, and to cost, ex- 
 clusive of armament and of any premiums that may be paid for in- 
 creased speed, not exceeding four million dollars." In designing 
 these two ships the Bureaus of Steam Engineering and Construction 
 and Kepair introduced many improvements gained by experience 
 with the work on former vessels of the same types, and produced 
 what are probably the best examples of ghip designs now in our 
 
888 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 navy. Contracts for both vessels were awarded the Cramp Com- 
 pany and they are now well advanced towards completion. The 
 armored cruiser, named Brooklyn, is twenty feet longer and of about 
 seven hundred tons more displacement than the New York. Her 
 engines are the same, but certain changes in the dimensions and 
 arrangement of boilers give her about 500 square feet more heating 
 surface. A marked departure from former practice gives her three 
 very tall smoke-pipes (100 feet above the grates) to obtain extraord- 
 inary furnace draft without the use of blowers. The battle-ship — 
 the Iowa — is over 1,000 tons displacement greater than the Indiana 
 class, and is larger in all particulars. Her engines and boilers are 
 designed for 11,000 horse-power as against 9,000 in the Indiana 
 class. 
 
 Three light-draft gun-boats were authorized by the last naval 
 appropriation bill passed by the Fifty-second Congress, and after 
 
 THE "NASHVILLE." 
 
 Length on 1. w. 1., 220 ft. ; beam, 38 ft. 3 in. ; disp., 1,371 tons. 
 
 the usual process of issuing proposals and receiving sealed bids in 
 competition from ship-builders, contracts for all three were awarded 
 the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry-Dock Company, of New- 
 port News, Virginia. First known officially as Gunboats Nos. 7, 8 
 and 9, these vessels have been named after the cities of Nashville, Wil- 
 mington (Delaware), and Helena, and are now nearing completion. 
 The Nashville, and Wilmington were launched October 19th, 1895, 
 from the same ways, they having been built " tandem" in the same 
 slip to economize room in the ship-yard. The Nashville, 220 feet 
 
V. S. BATTLESHIP "INDIANA" ( "MASSACHUSETTS" AND "OKBOON," 1895). 
 
 From a copyright photograph by W. H. Ran, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 841 
 
 long and about 1,370 tons displacement, has a peculiar arrangement 
 of machinery. Her twin screws are actuated by two sets of vertical 
 inverted quadruple-expansion engines, having cylinder diameters of 
 11, IT, 24, and 34 inches respectively, with a stroke of 18 inches. 
 The low-pressure cylinders are placed forward of the others and so 
 arranged that they can be disconnected when it is not desired to 
 run the engines at full power. The remaining cylinders may be run 
 as triple-expansion engines of the usual arrangement. This is accom- 
 plished by having two sets of boilers, four water-tube boilers of the 
 Yarrow type carrying 250 pounds pressure, and two ordinary cylin- 
 drical boilers designed to carry 160 pounds pressure. When the 
 engines are working at full power all the boilers will be used, the 
 Yarrow boilers supplying steam directly to the high-pressure cylin- 
 ders, while the other boilers will deliver their steam to the first 
 intermediate cylinder — or into the first receiver — where it will meet 
 the high-pressure exhaust at 160 pounds pressure. This novel, but 
 purely scientific, combination was devised by Passed Assistant Engi- 
 neers Frank H. Bailey and Ira N. Hollis, on duty in the Bureau of 
 Steam Engineering. The contract requires the Nashville, when 
 weighted to a mean draft of 11 feet, to average 14 knots for four 
 consecutive hours, during which period the air-pressure in the ash- 
 pits of the cylindrical boilers shall not exceed one inch of water, 
 and in the ash-pits of the coil boilers two inches. 
 
 The Wilmington, and Helena, sister ships, are 250 feet, 6 inches 
 long on the load water line, 40 feet beam, and are limited to a mean 
 draft of about 8 feet 10 inches to adapt them for cruising in shallow 
 rivers. They will have one military mast and no sails. A feature 
 in their construction is the possession of two rudders, one forward 
 of the other, to give great area for turning purposes. Twin-screw 
 vertical triple-expansion engines of the usual type and six single- 
 ended cylindrical boilers comprise the motive power. The contract 
 requires a speed of thirteen knots maintained for four hours and 
 provides a premium and penalty of $20,000 per knot, the same pro- 
 vision existing in the contract for the Nashville. 
 
 The first naval appropriation bill that came before the Fifty- 
 third Congress received an unusual amount of attention in the form 
 of talk, the question of further strengthening the navy being debated 
 at length, during which debate the orators on each side did not fail 
 
842 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 to claim for their political parties all the credit for the naval con- 
 struction that had gone before. The end did not justify the pro- 
 ceeding, for all that came of this lengthy debate was authority to 
 build three torpedo boats. Even this did not involve any new 
 appropriation, for the act specified that, "The Secretary of the Navy 
 hereby authorized to use the four hundred and fifty thousand 
 dollars ' for the additional cruiser of the Vesuvius type,' appropri- 
 ated by the act of March second, 1889, or so much thereof as may 
 be necessary, for the construction, armament, and equipment of 
 three torpedo boats, to cost, all together, not more than the said 
 sum of four hundred and fifty thousand dollars." The three boats, 
 designed to be large and swift, are now being built by the Colum- 
 bian Iron Works, Baltimore, Maryland. 
 
 U. S. GUNBOAT u WILMINGTON " (AND "HELENA.") 
 
 Length on I. w. 1., 250 ft. 6 in ; beam, 40 ft. 2 in.; clisp., 1,392 tons. 
 
 The next, and final, session of the Fifty-third Congress provided 
 much more liberally for new ships, authority being granted for the 
 construction by contract of two sea-going coast- line battle-ships of 
 about 10,000 tons displacement, to cost, exclusive of armament, 
 not more than $4,000,000 each; six light-draft composite gun-boats 
 of about 1,000 tons displacement, to cost not more than $230,000 
 each, and three torpedo boats, to cost not more than $175,000 each. 
 These torpedo boats have been designed to be larger than any before 
 undertaken in our navy and the contracts for them demand a speed 
 of 26 knots per hour. 
 
 In the plans for four of the six gun-boats, at present designated 
 
ONE ENGINE OF U. S. STEAMSHIP MASSACHUSETTS. 
 
 Example of Modern Vertical Triple-Expansion Engine. 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 843 
 
 by the numbers 10, 11, 12, and 13, several important departures 
 from accepted practice appear, they going back to a type similar to 
 the Alert class of more than twenty years ago. The idea in this is 
 to provide some small vessels for distant cruisijag that will be able 
 to proceed under sail and not be subject to the expensive necessity 
 of frequently seeking a dry-dock for repairs. The move is not 
 regarded by naval engineers as a retrogression, for the excellence 
 of the type proposed, for ordinary cruising service in time of peace, 
 
 DESIGN OF SINGLE-SCBEW COMPOSITE GUNBOATS NOS. 10, 11, 12, AND 13, NOW UNDER 
 
 CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 Length on L w. 1., 168 feet ; beam, 36 feet ; disp., 1,000 tons. 
 
 is recognized by all. The under-water hull framing of the four 
 vessels will be of steel according to the usual mode of construction, 
 but will be planked instead of plated, and the planking will be cop- 
 pered. A single screw actuated by a vertical triple-expansion 
 engine of only 800 horse-power and two small " Scotch " boilers 
 will be the chief items in the machinery plant. These gun-boats are 
 to be barkentine-rigged, spreading 11,000 feet of canvas, and are 
 designed to have the overhanging clipper-bow that looked so graceful 
 before we became accustomed to other forms. The other two gun- 
 boats, numbered 14, and 15, will have the same composite form of 
 construction just described; but otherwise are of modern type 3 having 
 
 44 
 
844 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 twin-screws, and no sail power except steadying sails on two light 
 schooner masts. 
 
 The two battle-ships have been designed for 11,500 tons dis- 
 placement and will be in general very like the Iowa in hull and in 
 design and arrangement of machinery. A decidedly new feature 
 has been adopted for these big ships in locating the turrets for the 
 VHI-inch guns on top of the XHI-inch gun turrets. The act 
 authorizing the building of these ships concludes with the words, 
 " and one of said battle-ships shall be named Kearsarge. " This in 
 deference to a general public sense of bereavement over the loss of 
 the famous sloop -of- war Kewrsarge on EoncadorKeef a year before. 
 The sister-ship of the new Kearsarge will, according to law, be given 
 the name of one of the States of the Union. Now that the Civil 
 War is admitted in all parts of our country to be over, and sectional 
 feeling has so far vanished that friendly gatherings of 6 ' blue and 
 grey" veterans on famous battle fields have become established 
 annual features of our social life, it may be fitting time to give the 
 battle-ship, sister of the new Kearsarge, the name of the State of 
 Alabama. 1 
 
 1 Siuce the above left the hands of the author the ship has been named Kentucky 
 
CfiAPTEK XL. 
 
 "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you freeS'—New Testa- 
 ment." 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 THOSE who have read these pages to this point have obtained 
 the means of knowing something of the introduction and de- 
 velopment of steam as a military agent in the United States navy, 
 and of the part in that growth taken by engineers who have been 
 identified with the naval service. The change has been great from 
 the Fulton of 1837 to the Indicma of 1896, but, great as it has 
 been, one wonders after reading the story that the present form was 
 not sooner attained. Its possibility and desirability were known 
 long before the realization. From the day of Ericsson's Monitor 
 the naval world has known perfectly well what a real war-ship 
 should be— a steam engine and a gun, properly joined together— 
 but it has taken a whole generation to allay the prejudices and effect 
 the compromises necessary before the combination could be made. 
 The result, in the form of a modern battle-ship, is a majestic monu- 
 ment to the skill and perseverance of man considered as an engineer. 
 
 Mr. Kuskin says that in after ages this century will be especially 
 famous for one thing — " It will always be said of us, with unabated 
 reverence, 4 They built ships of the line.' Take it all in all, a ship 
 of the line is the most honorable thing that man, as a gregarious 
 animal, has ever produced." And much more in the same strain. 
 Commenting upon this, Mr. Church in his " Life of John Ericsson '> 
 says, "It is impossible to transfer to a monitor the sentiment con- 
 nected with a ship-of-the-line," and herein lies the key to the causes 
 that have so retarded the development of the war- ship. The ship 
 of the line was a grand object and with it great deeds were done: 
 hence the sentiment that so exalted it and has lingered to the disad- 
 vantage of later days long after the ship of the line itself passed 
 away. Such sentiment was as honorable as the object that inspired 
 it and against it engineers have no right to rail, though it has done 
 them much evil Its effects have finally b^en, pvercome, and the 
 
846 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE (JOTTED STATES 
 
 engineers' battle-ship at last made possible is so far superior as a 
 sum total of destructive energy and as an epitome of the capability 
 of man that the past may well be allowed its own memories. Our 
 mastodon of iron and steel, though not a ship-of-the-line, has its 
 proper place in the line of battle and time will transfer to it, monitor 
 though it is, the sentiment that glorified its tall predecessor. 
 
 Next to the sentiment that strove from affection to preserve old 
 forms, engineers in their work of changing navies have been most 
 hampered by what may be termed official precedent — a sort of 
 slavery to past practice. The rules that hedge about a military 
 organization foster in a peculiar degree respect for old forms and 
 precedents because they suffice to satisfy superior authority and 
 shield from censure those who cling to them. The bald statement, 
 4 4 It has always been so," is too often an all-sufficient reason 
 against changes that may involve extra brain work or responsibility, 
 and the progressionist finds this a stone wall in front of his 
 endeavors. Dread of responsibility and arrogance of office are twin- 
 brothers, and they are the discouragers of industry. The officers 
 of our navy who have been concerned in the developments of naval 
 architecture, steam, and the gun, know too well how iron-bound are 
 the rules of past practice. 
 
 In illustration it is only necessary to turn back these pages and 
 review the receptions accorded such typical vessels as the Princeton^ 
 Monitor and Wampanoag when they appeared in the navy as fore- 
 runners of what was coming. After all opposition to those ships 
 has passed into history it is noticeable that the features peculiar to 
 them that excited the greatest opposition are now combined in a 
 harmonious union to make the fighting ship of to-day. Is it too 
 much to suggest that but for the insistence and persistence of 
 engineers our Indianas and Brooklyns would not yet exist? Public 
 opinion and to some extent naval opinion have sustained the engineer 
 in his revolt against precedent and sentiment, but to him is due the 
 chief praise for what has been achieved. 
 
 Steam has at last triumphed in its long warfare with sails, and 
 navies are much better for it. Looking backward upon the history 
 of that struggle one realizes that but for accident it would never 
 have existed. The modem battle-ship, stripped of the refinements 
 of science which are not essential to it, is just what Robert Fulton 
 
THE STEAM ,NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 847 
 
 called his Demologos — a steam battery. But for the unexpected 
 lack of opportunity of proving the superiority in battle of that 
 structure we would have been spared the fifty years of strife, with 
 all the engendered animosities, that have been wasted in bringing 
 the steam fighting ship back to its original form. With the passing 
 of sails vanishes also the dream, so long cherished, of restoring in 
 some useful form the picturesque fabrics of other daj^s with all their 
 masts and spars and without engines or engineers. Few indeed to- 
 day would seriously propose a sailing vessel for military purposes 
 any more than we would advocate slings or spears as weapons of 
 war or implements for the instruction of our cadets and apprentices. 
 
 The history of the steam fighting ship has now been traced from 
 the rude beginning to the present gigantic and expensive form. In 
 its contemplation a curious thought suggests itself. During the 
 Middle Ages the wealth of nations and all the arts of men were 
 lavished upon those great cathedrals that are still the admiration 
 of the world. Now, after centuries of political and social advance- 
 ment, all great nations are expending their substance and skill upon 
 these huge battle-ships. Those of old time built for the glory of 
 God and that righteousness might hold dominion over the spirits of 
 men ; we, with ail our enlightenment, build the most powerful en- 
 gines for the destruction of life and property that the earth has ever 
 seen. This is the contrast that at first thought abruptly presents 
 itself, but after consideration the question resolves itself into a com- 
 parison of methods for accomplishing a desirable end. Perhaps the 
 battle-ship, as an object lesson, is better than the cathedral for 
 compelling nations and men to practice in their dealings those fun- 
 damental precepts that lead to peace on earth and good will toward 
 men. History seems to support this assumption. 
 
 Having reviewed the story of the steamship it is now fitting 
 that this work should close with a few words about the man who 
 made the steamship possible — the engineer. In all that precedes 
 the aim has been simply to write history: to follow the growth of 
 the war-steamer and to trace the career of the naval corps most 
 closely identified with that growth, without speculating as to what 
 might have been done or left undone to better advantage. Com- 
 ments upon what may be termed naval politics — the strife between 
 old and new ideas and the jealousies of corps, both incident to the 
 
848 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 introduction of steam— have been withheld. The waging of inter- 
 necine naval warfare for the purpose of instituting or opposing re- 
 forms lies properly within the province of the pamphleteer, and 
 from him the subject has always had ample attention. 
 
 By patient endeavor the corps of naval engineers has com- 
 pletely realized its life-long conception of the proper form of war- 
 vessel, but it has not yet succeeded in gaining similar recognition 
 for its own members. Indeed, a review of these pages presents a 
 curious contrast, for we find the official status of naval engineers re- 
 maining practically unchanged during all the years that the ship 
 whose type they have championed has been steadily advancing 
 toward perfection. Personally, the present members of the corps 
 may be better situated than were their predecessors, because with the 
 same education and training as line officers there no longer exis* 
 those petty causes for friction that formerly precipitated personal 
 and corps animosities when military and civil educations were con- 
 trasted. In official standing there has been no advance and no 
 change of importance for fully thirty years. 
 
 In the early days when steam was merely auxiliary and seldom 
 used there was some reason for classing the engineer with the civil 
 or non-combatant part of the service, but the time for that ceased 
 with the experiences of the Civil War. The steam engine is now as 
 important a military feature as the turret-gun in the composition of 
 a war-ship, and the director of the one is entitled by virtue of his 
 duties to the same official standing and dignity as the other. As a 
 matter of fact the duties of the two officers are very similar: the 
 engineer directs the operation of machinery, which is the business 
 he has been trained for; the gunnery officer also directs machinery 
 and thus does the work of an engineer whether he is one or not and 
 whether he relishes it or not. These officers with their men and 
 machines are the main fighting force of the ship and there is no 
 reason why one should be elevated over the other. Not only are 
 their duties practically the same but they are performed under 
 almost identical conditions. Each is locked in a steel-clad compart- 
 ment full of men and moving machinery; each receives orders by 
 mechanical means from a common superior and each is dependent 
 upon himself alone for power to execute those orders. Each must, 
 if efficient at his post, possess the quality of command and an un- 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 849 
 
 usual degree of self-reliance and appreciation of discipline. No 
 other station on board ship demands the exercise of so many purely 
 officer-like qualities. 
 
 From the very nature of steam ships of war and the objects for 
 which a navy is maintained the identification of the engineer and the 
 men of his division with the combatant element of the ship is com- 
 plete. To refer to them as 4 4 non-combatants ' ' is merely a foolish 
 use of invective, the absurdity of which is self-evident, for if there 
 were either truth or reason in the charge humanity and the estab- 
 lished rules of war would dictate that the engineer and his men, one- 
 half the ship's company perhaps, be removed to a place of safety 
 when danger approaches and the remainder of the crew left to fight 
 out its own salvation. That anything so absurd has ever been done 
 is disproved by history ; that nothing of the kind is contemplated 
 is shown by the fact that all battle tactics for fleets and ships are 
 based upon the use of steam power as the primary element for 
 offense and defense. 
 
 The duties actually performed by naval engineers in war have 
 been described to some extent in the chapters of this book relating 
 to the Civil War. A naval lieutenant recently wrote in the Naval 
 Institute that the prosecution of that war overthrew to great extent 
 the previously existing distinctions between line and staff because 
 u the emergencies of war caused every man to step outside his own 
 duties and his rightful authority in order to help the general situa- 
 tion. 5 ' That this was the case has been shown by many examples, 
 and we have also seen that when the war ended the interrupted 
 distinctions were restored. Unless all the rules and maxims of war 
 that exist or ever have existed are fallacious, the duty of every per- 
 son connected with a war organization is to " help the general situ- 
 ation," and if the peace conditions of our navy are such that any 
 class of officers must, in the event of war, step outside their duties 
 and exceed their "lawful authority" in order to perform the services 
 that fall upon them, there must be something fatally wrong. The 
 great duty of a navy in peace is universally conceded to be prepara. 
 tion for war, and the way to do this surely cannot be by preventing 
 a considerable part of the official personnel from acquiring a knowl- 
 edge of the duties that will devolve upon it in war. When war con- 
 ditions exact the performance of duties and the exercise of authority 
 
850 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 that peace conditions deny, it would seem that inefficiency and dis- 
 aster are being courted. 
 
 The varied services rendered the country by the naval engineer 
 corps during the war were, as we have seen, well performed. And 
 it must be remembered that much of the work was done by young 
 men, regulars and volunteers, fresh from civil life, mostly without 
 previous military service, and obliged, like the volunteer line officers, 
 to learn exacting duties in the hurried school of rude and dangerous 
 experience. That better and more varied service would have been 
 rendered by a trained corps of engineers bred to the navy from 
 youth, is so certain that it may be asserted without in the least dis- 
 paraging the gallant engineers of the war period, or finding fault 
 with what they did. It was an understanding of this very point that 
 impelled the Navy Department during the war to urge successfully 
 upon Congress the desirability of providing at the Naval Aca4emy 
 a system of training for the future engineers of the navy. The 
 recommendations of the Department on this subject, quoted in 
 Chapter XXXIII., are worth reading again in this connection. 
 
 In reading those reports one is impressed with the earnestness 
 of the opinions regarding the necessity of line officers accepting 
 steam engineering as an essential part of naval seamanship. If it 
 were then important that " every naval officer should be an engineer 
 as well as a sailor," the need is doubly important at this time, yet 
 it does not seem to be as well appreciated now as then. There are 
 among the writer's acquaintances some competent engineers in the 
 line of the navy, but their mechanical talents are inherited or have 
 been developed by circumstances external to their profession rather 
 than by any serious effort to familiarize themselves with that naval 
 science which constitutes so much of the real seamanship of to-day. 
 The older seamanship was, perhaps, more agreeable as a calling and 
 fiction has disguised it in the drapery of romance, but it cannot 
 fight battles or carry war-ships over the seas in these days. 
 
 The prediction of Assistant Secretary Fox that the change in 
 naval methods would result in < 4 the sailor swallowing the engineer, 
 or the engineer swallowing the sailor," has not yet come to pass. 
 In fact, after thirty years of working at cross-purposes neither the 
 sailors nor the engineers have bettered themselves or gained any 
 advantage in the rivalry. Perhaps the admission on each side that 
 
THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 851 
 
 the other has a right to live and that each is dependent for success 
 upon the other would make mutual understanding and endeavor 
 possible and result in benefit to the naval service, which has higher 
 claims upon us than the interests of corps. The position of the 
 engineer in the navy is too well established by what he has done 
 and is doing to require defense. On shore his functions are those 
 pertaining to the staff of a military organization, the same as those 
 of any officer of any corps doing shore. duty. At sea he directs the 
 most needful fighting factor in the ship — power. Upon his ability 
 to control that force depends the choice of position and the ability 
 to give or refuse battle. So long as power can be maintained the 
 ship has life ; its failure involves general failure. The engineer and 
 his division of men are so much the corner-stone upon which the 
 fighting fabric rests that they may, to borrow an idea from their 
 surroundings, be aptly ^called the Iron Brigade of the naval organi- 
 zation. 
 
 By custom and the requirements of service, sustained to some 
 extent by the navy regulations, the engineer officer exercises all the 
 functions of subordinate command over what is usually the largest 
 division of men in the ship. Statute law, as its provisions regard- 
 ing command are usually interpreted, prohibits him from exercising 
 such command. For consistency and a logical distribution of 
 authority more than for any reflected honor upon themselves the 
 engineers of the navy have been for several years, and are yet, 
 asking Congress to make their command legal, the same as that of 
 divisional officers of the line and marine corps serving in the same 
 ships. They also ask that real rank as a just recognition of their 
 education and training as naval officers and commensurate with the 
 responsibilities of their offices be conferred upon them. These are 
 both essential steps toward harmony in the service and will make it 
 lawfully possible for the military training that has been expended 
 upon the engineers to be utilized in augmenting the general 
 efficiency of the navy instead of its being wasted or suppressed. 
 
 The future of the naval engineer corps appears to be assured 
 regardless of occasional predictions of its speedy dissolution. It is 
 not likely that serious efforts will ever be made to operate a navy 
 propelled wholly by steam power and composed of ships whose 
 every function is effected by steam, without the services of steam 
 
852 
 
 THE STEAM NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 engineers. Should a more economical source of power than steam 
 ever be found practicable, that power and its confining machinery 
 must still be directed by engineers. If the young men of the corps 
 will observe the same loyalty to the service and the profession that 
 we have seen was an admirable characteristic of that splendid body 
 of older engineers who preceded us, we need have no fear for the 
 future. The honor and safety of the navy must hereafter depend 
 upon machinery and those who know how to use it. The men who 
 will supply the intelligence for successfully directing the many oper- 
 ations of the fighting ship of the immediate future must be engi- 
 neers. The old conception of seamanship may finally be laid to 
 rest, and some who are now line officers may become engineers, but 
 in any event the profession of naval engineering will remain un- 
 changed and those who now belong to it will be all the more for- 
 tunate. Engineers, whether by that name or some other, but engi- 
 neers nevertheless, will hold in their hands the fate of the coming 
 years. 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 LIST, alphabetically arranged, of the names of all 
 
 persons who have been members of the Engineer 
 Corps of the Eegular Navy since its establishment. Giving 
 the dates of their original entry and subsequent promo- 
 tions, and the manner in which they left the service, if 
 not still in it. 
 
A BLE, AUGUSTUS H 
 
 i\ Acker, Edward O'Conner. 
 
 Adams, James M 
 
 Adamson, Alfred 
 
 Addicks, Walter R 
 
 Albert, John S... 
 
 Albert, Sidney 
 
 Aldrich, William S 
 
 Alexander, George W 
 
 Alexander, John 
 
 Alexander, Joseph D.... 
 Allderdice, William H. . 
 
 Allen, David Van H 
 
 Allen, Francis B 
 
 Allen, Louis J 
 
 Allen, Theodore 
 
 Allen, Wiliiam A. H.... 
 
 Allison, Oscar W 
 
 Ames, John EL... 
 
 Anderson, Martin 
 
 Andrade, Cipriano 
 
 Annan, John W , 
 
 Arcnbold, Samuel 
 
 Archer, Edward K 
 
 Armistead, Samuel W. . 
 
 Arnold, Edward R 
 
 Arnold, Leroy 
 
 Arnold, Solon 
 
 Ashton, Francis M 
 
 Aston, Albert 
 
 Aston, Ralph 
 
 Atkins, James 
 
 Atkinson, James . 
 
 Auchinleck, Alexander. 
 Ayres, Samuel L. P 
 
 BABBITT, GEORGE H. T. 
 Badlam, William H 
 
 Bailey, Frank H 
 
 Bailey, Horace J 
 
 Bailey, Joseph H 
 
 Bailie, William L 
 
 Baird, George W 
 
 Baker, Charles H 
 
 Baker, George A 
 
 Baker, Henry T 
 
 Baker, John H 
 
 Ball, Charles H 
 
 Ball, Walter 
 
 Bampton, Benjamin C 
 
 Bankson, Lloyd 
 
 Barker, Henry S 
 
 Barlow, Frederick S , 
 
 Barnard, Lemuel 
 
 Barnes, Charles E 
 
 Baron, Charles C 
 
 Barr, William M 
 
 Barry, George J 
 
 Barry, James J 
 
 Barry, Patrick Henry 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 15 Sept, 1875 
 1 Oct.* 1878 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 15 Sept 1875 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 \ Oct. 1873 
 
 1 Oct. 1873 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET. 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 6 Sept. 1887 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 ug. 1882 
 
 15 Sept. 1875 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 
 7 Oct. 1890 
 
 6 Sept. 1888 
 5 Aug."'l882 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 21 Feb. 1861 
 
 14 May, 1847 
 13 May, 1861 
 
 8 Sept. 1855 
 11 Apr. 1859 
 
 31 Oct. 1848 
 
 13 Mar. 1847 
 
 1 Mar. 1862 
 3 May, 1859 
 29 July, 1861 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 1 Feb. 1862 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 27 May, 1843 
 26 June, 1856 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 
 20 May, 1863 
 
 21 Feb. 1861 
 9 Dec. 1861 
 26 Aug. 1859 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 17 Dec. 1862 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 17 Dec. 1861 
 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 28 July, 1845 
 
 15 Oct, 1863 
 13 May, 1861 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 28 Sept. 1864 
 15 Oct, 1863 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 28 July'/l845 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 
 3 May, 1859 
 
 25 July. 1866 
 8 Dec. 1862 
 8 Dec. 1863 
 
 21 Oct. 1861 
 28 July, 1845 
 
 22 Mar. 1848 
 17 June, 1861 
 
 8 Oct 1861 
 
 < • » • • 
 
 21 Nov. 1857 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 2 Aug. 1855 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 20 May, 1857 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 22 June, 1860 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 Dec. 1864 
 
 15 Dec. 1853 
 1 Jan. 1865 
 
 30 Aug. 1859 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 
 27 June, 1855 
 4 Mar,1842 
 26 Feb. '51 
 
 { 
 
 20 May 1863 
 22 Nov!'l872 
 
 30 Jan. 1865 
 10 Juiyj'l847 
 
 I Dec. 1864 
 
 II Oct 1866 
 1 Oct. 1863 
 
 26 May 1839 
 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 17 Mar. 1863 
 28 May, 1864 31 Jan. 1874 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 21 July, 1858 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 19 July, 1861 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 30 July, 1862 
 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 26 June, 1856 
 8 Dec. 1862 
 3 May, 1862 
 
 17 Dec. 1862 
 
 1 Sept. 1864 
 3 Aug. 1859 
 8 April, 1864 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 10 June, 1881 
 
 10 June, 1882 
 22 Aug. 1894 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 * • • » * « 
 
 21 Feb. 1893 
 
 1 July, 1883 
 10 June,'l881 
 
 * » a • • • 
 
 1 July, 1883 
 
 i • 9. a 9 * 
 
 B • * • » • 
 
 1 July, 1877 
 1 July ,"l 877 
 
 1 July, 1896 
 10 June, 1881 
 
 25 Feb. 1895 
 1 July, 1883 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 20 Nov. 1874 
 
 19 May, 1879 
 
 29 Oct. 1861 
 21 Mar. 1870 
 
 4 Mar. 1871 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 25 May, 1894 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 April, 1894 
 14 Dec. 1878 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 « a « • a • 
 
 11 Sept. 1881 
 11 Mar."l851 
 
 12 June, 1873 
 28 July, 1888 
 
 *»•••« 
 
 21 Mar. 1870 
 
 7 Oct. 1884 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 17 June, 1874 
 
 * * *"« « 4 
 
 27 June, 1896 
 
 22 June, 1892 
 29 Oct. 1861 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 10 Nov. 1863 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 31 Dec. 1889 
 
 Res'd 2 Aug. '62; vol. Oh. Eng. war; hon. dis. '67 
 In service 
 
 Died in service 3 July, 1880 
 Resigned 31 December, 1872 
 Resigned June 11, 1883 
 
 Resigned 5 April, 1861; went into Confed. army 
 
 Died in service, 26 January, 1863 
 
 Resigned 25 August, 1847 
 In service 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 18 February, 1868 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 13 June, 1865 
 Retired list 14 June, 1890 
 Resigned 8 December, 1869 
 Resigned 30 September, 1865 
 In service 
 In service 
 
 Died in service, 9 January, 1891 . 
 
 Engineer-in-Ohief 16 Oct, '57; res. 25 Mar. '61 
 
 Resigned 3 November, 1860 
 
 Ensign '85; To Construction Corps '87; died ? 95 
 
 Resigned 13 April, 1864 
 
 Resigned 18 Feb. 1856 
 
 In service 
 
 Res'd4Jan.'71;reap'd. 2d. Asst. '73; died '86 
 Died 10 Sept. 1881 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 1 August, 1865 
 
 Reduced to 2d Asst. Eng. '45; dropped 18 Jan. '84 
 Dism'd 28 July, '48; Act'g. Ch. Eng. war; res. '65. 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 10 Aug. 1886 , ! 
 Resigned 10 March, 1866 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 28 Sept. 1877 
 
 Dropped 11 July, 1873 
 
 Retired list 30 June, 1885 
 
 In service; vol. 3d Asst. Eng. Sept, '62— Sept '63 
 
 Retired list 16 January 1893; died 6 May, 1896 
 
 Died in service 6 June, 1864 
 
 In service 
 
 Died in service 13 Sept. 1890 on Monocacy 
 Resigned 31 August, 1865 
 2d Lt. Mar. Corps, '94; exch'd. to Eng. Corps 
 Retired list 6 Sept. 1873 
 
 Appointed Asst. Naval Con. 1 July, 1889 ; In service 
 
 Died in service 25 July, 1855 
 
 Killed in action 5 August, 1864 
 
 Resigned 21 March, 1866 
 
 Resigned Nov. 15, 1881 
 
 Resigned Feb. 7, 1883 
 
 Resigned 16 April, 1866 
 
 Retired list 24 Mar. '74; died 10 Nov. '77 
 
 Retired list 2 January, 1891 
 
 Died in service 1 August, 1863 
 
Bars tow, Haviland 
 
 Bartholow, Frank L , . . . 
 
 Bartholomew, L. S 
 
 Bartleman, Richard M 
 
 Bartlett, Frank W 
 
 Barton, George F , 
 
 Barton, James A 
 
 Barton, John K 
 
 Bates, Alexander B 
 
 Battele, Everett... 
 
 Baughman, Henry C 
 
 Baxter, William J 
 
 Bayley. Warner B 
 
 Beach, Edward L 
 
 Beach, Robert J 
 
 Bean, William S 
 
 Beard, George W 
 
 Beckwith, Henry C 
 
 Belden, Charles E 
 
 Benckert, James M 
 
 Bennett, Frank M 
 
 Bennett, Rudolph T 
 
 Bernard, Lemuel 
 
 Beuret, John D 
 
 Be vington, Martin 
 
 Biddle, Andrew P 
 
 Bieg, Frederick C 
 
 Bilisoly, Joseph 
 
 Bingham, John F.... 
 
 Birkbeck, Alexander, Jr 
 
 Bispham, Harrison A 
 
 Bissell, Frederick W 
 
 Bisset, Henry O......,, 
 
 Bissett, John J 
 
 Blue, Yictor , 
 
 Blye, Henry C 
 
 Blythe, Andrew 
 
 Bogardus, Peter C 
 
 Boggs, William Brenton 
 
 Bond. William 
 
 Bon sail, A. G 
 
 Bootes, James T 
 
 Bordiey, Thomas H 
 
 Borthwick, John L. D 
 
 Botsf ord, Jerard H 
 
 Bowers, Frederick C 
 
 Bowles, Francis T 
 
 Boyd, Harry L 
 
 Boynton, Edward S 
 
 Bradford, Henry F.. 
 
 Brady, John R .... 
 
 Bray, Charles D 
 
 Breaker, Charies W 
 
 Brecht, Theodore C 
 
 Breese, E. Marshal 1 
 
 Bright. George S. 
 
 Bright, Jacob L 
 
 Broadnix* Amos 
 
 Brooks, Emory J 
 
 Brooks, Samuel R 
 
 Brooks, William B 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 15 Sept. 1875 
 1 Oct." 1874 
 1 Oct.* 1871 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 1 Oct.1874 
 
 15 Sept. 1875 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 1 Oct. 1871 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 15 Sept. 1875 
 15 Sept. 1875 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET. 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 20 May, 1884 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 7 Sept. 1888 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 6 Sept 1892 
 6 Sept." 1883 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 6 Sept. 1889 
 
 • 9 # t* • fl 
 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 fSia\j\JJHU 
 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 ir Attar 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 24 Dec. 1853 
 
 9 May, 1857 
 
 1 Sept. 1845 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 27 June 1862 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 
 23 Jan. 1874 
 28 May, 1864 
 
 2 Sept. 1870 
 
 1 Jan. 1874 
 
 15 Apr. 1847 
 25 Mar. 1862 
 27 June 1862 
 
 21 Nov. 1863 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 8 Oct. 1861 
 
 
 
 25 Mar." 1862 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 2 Feb. 1864 
 
 Uan. 1868 
 
 2 Aug. 1855 
 25 Aug. 1862 
 
 20 Feb. 1864 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 8 Tune 1844 
 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 
 28 Sept. 1864 
 
 
 30 July, 1862 
 
 15 Feb. 1864 
 
 1 Jan.' 1868 
 
 17 Nov. 1862 
 24 Dec. 1861 
 27 Jan. 1848 
 
 23 Mar. 1864 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 
 •••«»» 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 23 June, 1863 
 19 Feb. 1863 
 
 
 
 26 Aug, 1859 
 8 Oct. 1861 
 3 Oct. 1861 
 
 16 Oct. 1861 
 3 Aug, 1863 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 I Oct. 1863 
 
 II Oct. 1866 
 
 26 Aug. 1859 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 28 Oct. 1862 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 2 July'* 1868 
 17 Dec. 1862 
 28 May, 1861 
 25 Mar. 1862 
 21 May, 1857 
 
 20 Nov. 1861 
 13 Dec. 1850 
 
 3 May, 1859 
 
 21 Feb. 1861 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 
 8 Apr. 1864 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 1 Nov. 1863 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 25 Aug. 1863 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 3 Oct. 1861 
 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 
 27 June,1855 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 20 May, 1863 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 
ASSISTANT 
 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 20 June. 1880 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 13 Oct. 1875 
 1 July, 1885 
 24 Feb., 1874 
 1 July, 1890 
 
 10 June, 1881 
 
 10 June, 1881 
 20 June*1880 
 
 1 July, 1889 
 
 1 July, 1877 
 
 10 June, 1881 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 19 June, 1890 
 
 1 Nov. 1879 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 3 ' It II 
 
 21 Sept. 1877 
 27 June,1896 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 28 Oct, 1861 
 
 15 Jan. 1895 
 12 Apr. 1892 
 
 25 May, 1894 
 
 24 Apr, 1892 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 22 June,1892 
 21 Oct.* 1890 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 18 Dec. 1885 
 
 2 Mar. 1847 
 
 ••***• 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1892 
 
 1 July, 1895 
 
 7 Sept. 1885 
 
 10 Nov. 1863 
 
 1 Aug, 1861 
 
 Lost in the Oneida, 24 January, 1870 
 Dropped 28 September, 1877 
 Resigned 20 April, 1847 
 Died 22 December, 1884 
 In service 
 
 Died in service 4 Sept 1853 
 Resigned 5 March, 1868 
 In service 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 29 June, 1865 
 
 Retired list, 15 July, 1886 
 
 Appointed Asst. Naval Constr. 6 June, 1888 
 
 In service; acting 3d Asst. Engr. 1864-1869 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 21 April, 1886 
 
 Resigned 23 Oct. 1847 
 
 Retired list 1 February, 1866 
 
 Retired list 2 December, 1876; died 12 July, 1885. 
 
 Disappeared in San Francisco, 1883; never heard of 
 
 Died 28 June, 1862, on board Itaska. 
 
 In service. 
 
 Retired list 21 May, 1880 
 Resigned 21 March, 1866 
 
 Appointed Assistant Naval Constructor July 1, 1894 
 In service. 
 
 Resigned 6 June, 1883 
 In service 
 Died 3 Sept. 1855 
 Died 3 May, 1891 
 Resigned 23 Dec. 1847 
 Ensign 1 July, 1887; in service 
 Resigned 22 October, 1867 
 In servce 
 
 Retired list 21 Oct. 1882 
 
 Exchanged into line 12 Dec. 1892; now ensign 
 
 Retired list 28th Oct. 1874 
 
 Died 19 April, 1870 
 
 Resigned 6 February, 1852 
 
 Died 21 June, 1886 
 
 Resigned 25 May, 1867 
 
 Appointment revoked 12 January, 1866 
 
 Honorably discharged 30 June, 1887 
 
 Died 10 December, 1865 
 
 In service 
 
 Died in service 25, July 1864 
 In service 
 
 Ap. Asst. Nav. Con. 1 Nov. '81; Nav. Con. 10 Oct. '88 
 
 Resigned 4 February, 1884 
 
 Resigned 7 November, 1863 
 
 Died in service 16 September, 1873 
 
 In service 
 
 Res'd 18 March, 1869 
 Died in service, 9 Feb. 1871 
 
 Resigned 18 Jan. 1865; Act'g 1st Ass. Eng. 1865-68 
 
 Resigned 2 March, 1868 
 
 Retired list 5 June, 1873; died 29 May, 1875 
 
 Resigned 18 Oct. 1870 
 
 Resigned 14 Feb. 1856 
 
 Resigned 7 Dec. 1868 
 
 Resigned 13 Dec. 1865 
 
 Retired list 1 March. 1892 
 
Brosnahan, John G.... 
 
 Brower, Alfred S 
 
 Brown, Frederick E. .. . 
 
 Brown, Henry ... 
 
 Brown, Jefferson 
 
 Bryan, Benjamin C 
 
 Buckhout, Nathan W. 
 
 Budd, Samuel P 
 
 Buchler, William G 
 
 Bulkley, Henry W. ..... 
 
 Bull, Frederick Jr 
 
 Bull, Goold EL 
 
 Bullard, Joel A 
 
 Bunce, Benjamin 
 
 Burchard, Charles M.. 
 Burchard, Francis C... 
 
 Burchard, Jabez , 
 
 Burd, George E 
 
 Burgdorff, Theodore F., 
 
 Burke, Walter S 
 
 Burnap, George J 
 
 Burritt, Harvey II 
 
 Burrow, Walter P 
 
 Burt, Charles P 
 
 Burt, Nelson 
 
 Bush, Arthur R 
 
 Bush, William W 
 
 Butler, Joseph L 
 
 Butter worth, James 
 
 Byles, Ten Eyck 
 
 Byrne, James E 
 
 pAHILL, JOSEPH N.. 
 ^ Caldwell, Lafayette 
 
 Campbell, Louden 
 
 Canaga, Alfred B 
 
 Canfield, Francis A ,.. 
 
 Capps, Washington L 
 
 Carney, Robert E 
 
 Carpenter, John B 
 
 Carr, Clarence A 
 
 Carrick George W 
 
 Carroll, John 
 
 Cars well, William B 
 
 Carter, Thomas F 
 
 Castleman, Kenneth G.... 
 
 Cathcart, William L 
 
 Chambers, William H 
 
 Champion, Newton 
 
 Chappell, Ralph EL... 
 
 Chase, Thomas 
 
 Chase, Volney O , 
 
 Chasmar, James II , 
 
 Chassaing. Benjamin E.. 
 
 Cheney, Edward , 
 
 Cherry, William L 
 
 Chip ley, Charles A 
 
 Chris man, Winner O 
 
 Christopher, Henry C 
 
 City, George W 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET. 
 
 15 Sept. 1875 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 1 Oct. 1873 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 1 Oct.' 1880 
 
 15 Sept. 1875 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 1 Oct. 1873 
 
 1 Oct. 1873 
 1 Oct, 1878 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 11 June,1862 
 
 16 Nov. 1861 
 21 Nov. 1857 
 
 17 Feb. 1860 
 17 Dec. 1862 
 
 28 Oct.' 1862 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 21 Nov. 1857 
 25 Aug. 1862 
 
 29 July, 1861 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 21 Nov. 1863 
 25 Aug. 1863 
 14 June,1861 
 1 Nov. 1861 
 8 April, 1864 
 
 15 Mar. 1864 
 
 22 July, 1862 
 19 July, 1861 
 17 Dec. 1861 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 
 17 May, 1883 
 
 6 Sept. 1892 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 21 May, 1885 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 6 Sept. 1892 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 22 May, 1890 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 8 Oct. 1861 
 20 Feb. 1864 
 20 May, 1863 
 
 13 May, 1861 
 12 Aug. 1861 
 26 June, 1856 
 
 19 Mar. 1858 
 23 May, 1861 
 2 Aug. 1855 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 
 20 Feb. 1847 
 
 21 Julv, 1858 
 
 21 Mav, 1853 
 
 15 Feb. 1864 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 1 Aug. 1866 
 1 Sept. 1870 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 1 Mar. 1864 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 6 Oct. 1862 
 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 
 1 Dec. 1860 
 29 Oct. 1862 
 21 Julv, 1858 
 
 1 Jan. 18( 
 
 15 Nov. 1837 
 
 17 Jan. 1861 
 17 Jaii." 1861 
 
 17 Feb. 1860 
 
 10 June, 1862 
 14 May, 1847 
 
 22 Oct. 1860 
 4 May \' 1863 
 
 7 April, 1862 
 21 Mav, 1857 
 12 Aug. 1862 
 16 Nov. 1861 
 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 12 Jan. 1864 
 
 28 Oct. 1862 
 
 17 Dec. 1862 
 
 2 Feb. 1864 
 
 3 Aug. 1859 
 15 Aug. 1864 
 25 Aug. 1863 
 19 July. 1861 
 
 9 May, 1857 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 
 1 Mar. 1864 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 21 Ocfc. 1861 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 10 June, 1881 
 
 20 June, 1880 
 
 24 Feb, 1874 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 20 June, 1880 
 1 July, 1877 
 12 Dec. 1892 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 | ENGINEER. 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 * « - 0 * ft 
 
 24 Feb, 1874 
 3 Oct. 1891 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 19 Nov v 1890 
 
 4 E May, 1891 
 22 June, 1886 
 5 June, 1896 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 10 Nov. 1863 
 
 28 June, 188 
 
 26 Feb. 1875 
 
 1 July, 1891 
 
 10 June, 1881 
 
 10 June, 1881 
 
 1 July, 1877 
 1 July, 1884 
 
 1 July, 1896 
 
 18 May, 1877 
 
 • a • a « 4 
 
 28 Mar. 1896 
 24 Feb." 1874 
 
 1 Nov. 1879 
 
 10 Mar. 1881 
 
 16 Feb. 1892 
 
 12 Apr. 1892 
 
 24 
 28 
 
 Dec. 1884 
 Aug. 1894 
 
 24 Feb, 1874 
 
 »«•••* 
 
 10 Mar. 1881 
 
 6 Aug. 1895 
 
 11 June, 1774 
 
 27 Jan. 1889 
 10 Nov. 1863 
 
 Died 12 Jan. 1883 
 Died 17 Jan. 1867 
 Died 12 Dec. 1864 
 Resigned 3 March, 1869 
 Retired list 2 Aug. 1892 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 29 June, 1865 
 Resigned 10 August, 1867 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 14 Oct. 1865 
 
 Died August 9, 1863, on board Pocahontas 
 
 Resigned 30 June, 1889 
 
 Died 22 March, 1866, on board Kearsarqc at sea 
 Resigned 17 July, 1865 
 
 Resigned 26 July, 1865; in volunteer service 1866-1869 
 Retired list 24 April, 1877 
 Retired list 26 Oct. 1874 
 In service 
 In service 
 
 In service; Ensign '89-'92; ex. Eng. Corps 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 22 Sept. 1865 
 Dismissed 17 May, 1860 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 20 Nov. 1839 
 Resigned 31 August, 1886 
 
 In service; entered as Cadet Midship 5 n, 22 Sep. ' 80 
 Died in service 14 Sept. 1862 
 Died in service 2 Oct. 1891 
 Resigned 25 Oct. 1858 
 Resigned 1887 
 
 Killed by boiler explosion, Chenango, 15 April, 1864 
 
 Resigned 12 June, 1849 
 
 Resigned (went south) May 6, 1861 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 30 April, 1856 
 
 Ensign >86; Asst. Naval Constr. '88; Naval Constr. '95 
 In service 
 
 Retired list 20 Dec. 1883; died 22 July, 1888 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 18 Nov. 1865 
 
 Died 21 Dec. 1852, on board Warren 
 
 Resigned 9 June, 1883 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 23 Jan. 1891 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 22 Sept. 1863 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 13 Nov. 1865 
 Ensign 1 July, 1887 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 12 Feb. 1867 
 
 Resigned 31 March, 1869 
 
 Resigned 25 Oct. 1867 
 
 Resigned 9 April, 1862 
 
 Retired list 29 June, 1887 
 
 Retired list 16 May, 1867; died 13 Aug. 1872 
 
 Dropped (went south) 2 Aug. 1861 
 
 45 
 
Clark, Edward W 
 
 Clark, James M 
 
 Clark, Nathan Beach. 
 
 Clark, Wm. J. Jr 
 
 Clarke, Arthur H 
 
 Claude, Gordon H 
 
 DADE, FRANCIS G 
 Dahlsreen, Charles B,... 
 
 Danby, Robert 
 
 Danforth, George W 
 
 Daniels, S. J. McK 
 
 Bargan, Milton 
 
 Cleaver, Henry T 
 
 Clemens, Benjamin D 
 
 Cline, Hugh. H , 
 
 Cochran, James 
 
 Coggin, Frederick G 
 
 Coleman, Charles 
 
 Coley, Frederick E 
 
 Colin, Alfred 
 
 Conant, Frank H 
 
 Cone, Hutch I 
 
 Coney, Charles Tabez 
 
 Cook, Allen M 
 
 Cook, Gilbert C 
 
 Cook, Theophilus 
 
 Cooley, Mortimer E. 
 
 Cooper, Conrad J 
 
 Cooper, Francis L 
 
 Cooper, Ignatius T 
 
 Cooper, James G 
 
 Cooper, John E 
 
 Cooper, Theodore, 
 
 Cooper, Thomas J. W 
 
 Copeland, G. M 
 
 Copeland, Robert A 
 
 Copeland, Thomas 
 
 Covell, Emerson G 
 
 Cowie, George Jr 
 
 Cowles, William..... 
 
 Cragg, S. Wilkin s 
 
 Crank, Robert K 
 
 Crawford, Robert 
 
 Crawford, William H 
 
 Creightou, William H. P 
 
 Crenshaw, Arthur . .. 
 
 Crisp, Richard O 
 
 Orolins, Sebastian 
 
 Cronin, Francis.... 
 
 Cronin, Thomas H 
 
 Crosby, Eli 
 
 Cross, John C 
 
 Crummey, Thomas 
 
 Crygicr, John Ulysses 
 
 Culver, William W.... 
 
 Cunningham, Thomas 
 
 Curtis, Edward 
 
 Cushman, William H 
 
 Cuthbert, Mayland.,,,,,,, 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 ( 1 Oct. '73 
 \ 1 Oct. '74 
 1 Oct. 1871 
 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 1 Oct.* 1878 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET. 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Sept. 1890 
 
 22 May, 1889 
 
 20 May, 1890 
 
 1 Oct. 1873 
 
 6 Sept. 1888 
 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 6 Sept. 1892 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 20 May, 1862 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 13 May, 1861 
 16 Nov. 1861 
 
 3 Oct. 1861 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 21 Sept. 1861 
 18 Jan. 1845 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 16 Oct. 1861 
 
 16 Sept, 1862 
 22 May, 1863 
 
 9 Dec. 1861 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 24 Dec. 1861 
 12 Aug. 1861 
 24 Dec. 1861 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER, 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 17 Dec. 1862 
 25 Aug. 1863 
 
 23 Jan. 1874 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 30 July, 1863 
 18 Dec." 1862 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 1 Mar. 1864 
 6 Jan. 1866 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 July, 1865 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 11 June, 1840 
 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 8 Sept." 1863 
 
 21 Jan. 1842 
 20 Sept, 1858 
 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 25 Apr. 1870 
 
 26 Aug. 1859 
 
 23 June, 1863 
 19 Feb. 1863 
 
 28 May, 1861 
 
 9 July, 1870 
 26 Oct" 1861 
 
 5 Aug. 18 
 
 7 Sept. 1885 
 5 Aug."' 1882 
 
 1 July 1861 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 
 20 May, 1857 
 
 22 Sept. 1849 
 8 Dec. 1862 
 
 21 Apr. 1862 
 
 3 May, 1859 
 21 Oct. 1861 
 
 2 Aug. 1855 
 24 Aug. 1861 
 
 20 Jan. 1849 
 24 Dec. 1861 
 18 Jan. 1845 
 
 19 July, 1861 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 20 June, 1864 
 
 21 Oct. 1861 
 3 'Aug. 1859 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 8 Apr. 1864 
 
 13 May, 1861 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 10 July"l847 
 
 18 Dec." 1862 
 
 13 Jan. 1873 
 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 19 Oct. 1842 
 21 May, 1847 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 20 Feb." 1874 
 
 20 May, 1863 
 
 20 May, 186 * 
 3 Aug "i860 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 26 Feb." 1851 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 24 Feb! 1874 
 
 1 July, 1884 
 1 July, 1896 
 
 1 July, 1895 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 19 May, 1879 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER, 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 30 Sept. 1894 
 
 24 Feb- 1874 
 
 20 June, 1880 
 
 
 
 i J uly, loyo 
 
 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 6 July, 1876 
 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 3 Dec. 1876 
 
 12 Sept. 1893 
 
 1 July, 1877 
 
 
 1 July, 1894 
 
 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 
 1 July, 1884 
 
 
 
 
 
 16 Oct. 1861 
 
 
 
 24 Oct. 1859 
 
 
 
 26 June,1856 
 
 1 July, 1891 
 
 
 20 Feb. 1896 
 2 Dec.' 1887 
 
 Died 1 July, 1866 
 Died 24 April, 1872 
 
 Retired list, 16 Oct. 1868; died 18 April, 1892 
 Resigned 1 Dec. 1865 
 
 Second Lieut. U. S. Marine Corps, July 1 '84; dead 
 Dismissed 22 Feb. 1875 
 In service 
 
 Appointment revoked 12 January, 1866 
 
 Retired list 27 Aug, 1894 
 
 Dismissed 7 November, 1845. 
 
 Retired list 5 January, 1866 
 
 Dismissed 18 January, 1851 
 
 Died 19 December, 1883, on board Onward 
 
 Resigned 27 Dec. 1865 
 
 In serviee 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 2 Oct. 1866 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 22 July, 1865 
 
 Retired list 11 Oct. 1881; died 20 July, 1893 
 
 Resigned 1 Jan. 1886 
 
 Resigned 18 July, 1862 
 
 Resigned 10 Oct. 1873 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 19 Dec. 1865 
 Resigned 14 May, 1863 
 Resigned 26 July, 1872 
 Died 29 Jan. 1888 
 Resigned 30 Nov. 1844 
 
 Dismissed 19 Sept. 1861; afterward in vol. service 
 Dismissed 28 July, 1845* 
 
 Died 28 Dec. 1847, on board Mississippi in Mex. war 
 In service ; was in volunteer service 1864-1865 
 Resigned 31 March, 1880 
 
 Res'd 11 Apr. '70; dism. 27 June, '64; reinstated '66 
 In service 
 
 Retired list, 30 June, 1892 
 Resigned 30 April, 1868 
 Retired list 26 July, 1892 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 18 Nov. 1884 
 
 Resigned 13 Aug. 1862; in volunteer service 1863 
 
 Resigned 10 Nov. 1865 
 
 Died in service 8 Dec. 1861 
 
 Died 24 Jan. 1854, on board Susquehanna 
 
 Resigned 21 June, 1865 
 
 Resigned 5 Sept. 1866 
 
 Dropped (physical disability) 30 Sept. 1881 
 
 Resigned 10 April, 1883 
 
 Resigned 16 Nov. 1866 
 
 Resigned 11 Feb. 1863 
 
 Died 2 Nov. 1865 
 
 Resigned 22 Aug. 1864 
 
 Retired list 26 Jan. 1889 
 
 Acting Ensign 15 Dec. 1862; resigned 1 Feb. 1865 
 Retired list 18 Aug. 1883; died 31 Dec. 1886 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 9 March, 1865 
 Dismissed 7 Nov. 1882 
 
Darrah, William F 
 
 Dasheill, Julius M 
 
 Davids, Henry S 
 
 Davids, Oscar 
 
 Davis, Charles C 
 
 Davis, DeWitt G 
 
 Davis, Edward 
 
 Davis, Nailor C 
 
 Davis, Willis 
 
 Day, Willis B 
 
 Deaver, James A 
 
 DeGraff, Isaac 
 
 DeHart, William H 
 
 DeKrafft, James W 
 
 DeLany, Edwin EL 
 
 Delius, Herman A 
 
 DeLuce, Edmund S 
 
 Deluce, George E........ 
 
 Denby, John C 
 
 Denig, Robert G 
 
 DeSanno, William P.... 
 DeValin, Charles E.... 
 
 Diamond, Jasper H 
 
 Dick, Thomas M 
 
 Dick, Edward L 
 
 Dickson, Thomas 
 
 Diifenbach, Alberto... 
 
 Dinsmore, J 
 
 Dismukes, Doctor E.... 
 
 Dixon, Albert F 
 
 Dobbs , Frederick A .... . 
 
 Dodge, Richard D 
 
 Dove, George W. W. ... 
 
 Dowst, Frank B 
 
 Drinen, George C 
 
 Dripps, William A 
 
 Driver, Reynolds 
 
 Dryburgh, J. R 
 
 Drouillard, George L.. 
 Dukehart, Thomas M. 
 
 Dunbar, Asaph 
 
 Dungan, Horace G...... 
 
 Dungan, William W... 
 
 Dunham, William , 
 
 Dunn, Edward H 
 
 Dunning, William B . 
 Duplaine, E. A. C. ...... 
 
 Durand, William F.... 
 
 Duvall, Marius, Jr 
 
 Dyson, Charles, W.. .. 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 
 NAVAL 
 OADET. 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 i • » • o • 
 
 1 Oct. 1871 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 21 May, 1890 
 
 25 Sept. 1891 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 1 Oct. 1873 
 
 EASTMAN", HARRY, 
 Eastwick, Philip G 
 
 Eaton, Charles P 
 
 Eaton, William C 
 
 Eckart, William R 
 
 Eckel, Frederick 
 
 Eckel, Herman ..>>.... >.... 
 
 Eckhardt, Ernest F 
 
 Edwards, John R 
 
 LikI wards, Richard F. . 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 26 Aug. 1859 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 24 Dec. 1861 
 22 May, 1863 
 
 11 Jan. 1849 
 
 e • « 9 • t 
 
 19 Feb. 1863 
 9 Dec. 1861 
 17 Jan. 1862 
 21 July, 1858 
 
 16 Oct. 1861 
 21 May, 1853 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 Oct. 1863 
 
 17 Jan. 1842 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 21 May',1886 
 
 26 Aug. 1859 
 22 Sept. 1849 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 20 May, 1863 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 1 Oct. 1863 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 20 May, 1863 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 •»••*• 
 
 21 May, 1857 
 20 Sept. 1858 
 1 July, 1863 
 
 20 Sept. 1858 
 
 21 May, 1843 
 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 10 July, 1847 
 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 
 21 May, 1863 
 
 23 Jan. 1874 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 17 Jan. 1861 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 5 Auo;. 1882 
 
 29 Oct. 1870 
 11 Apr. 1859 
 22 July, 1862 
 11 July, 1861 
 
 5 Sept. 1891 
 
 25 Aug. 1862 
 
 26 Aug. 1859 
 28 July, 1845 
 
 3 May, 1859 
 19 Feb. 1863 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 17 Mar. 18G3 
 
 15 Feb. 1864 
 
 1 Mar. 1871 
 20 Feb. 1864 
 
 1 Mar. 1862 
 15 Jan. 1845 
 
 26 June,1856 
 
 2 Feb. 1847 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 21 May, 1857 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 1 Oct, 1872 
 
 e a a • * • • 
 
 14 Sept, 1876 
 1 Oct, 1871 
 
 5 Aug. 188 
 
 5 Sept. 1891 
 
 13 May, 1861 
 20 June,1864 
 
 1 Oct. 1863 
 
 20 May, 1863 
 6 June, 1868 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 
 2 Aug. 1859)10 Aug. 1861 
 
 18 Nov. 1862 
 
 e s o s • • 
 
 8 July, 1861 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 23 Mar. 1864, 
 
 1 July, 1863 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 July, 1885 
 
 1 July, 1884 
 
 1 July, 1896 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 29 Jan. 1895 
 
 25 Mar. 1880 
 
 1 July 1891 
 24 Feb. 1874 4 Nov. 1877 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1878 
 10 June,1882 
 1 July," 1885 
 
 26 Feb. 1875 
 
 26 Feb. 1875 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 5 Mar. 1871 
 
 12 Oct. 1859 
 
 29 Jan. 1895 
 
 21 Mar. 1870 
 
 13 July, 1894 
 
 1 July, 1887 
 
 1 June, 1895 
 
 4 Mar. 1881 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 1 Feb. 1862 
 
 1 June, 1885 
 
 11 Sept. 1881 
 
 5 Nov. 1895 
 
 Died in service 25 Feb. 1889 
 Resigned 9 Feb. 1885 
 
 Retired list 7 June, 1884: died 8 Feb. 1888 
 Died 9 Feb. 1859 
 
 Appointment revoked 30 Dec. 1863 
 Lost in Patapsco 15 Jan. 1865 
 Honorably discharged 30 June, 1886 
 Resigned 29 Oct. 1859 
 Resigned 4 Nov. 1850 
 In service 
 
 Retired list 28 Feb. 1874; died 10 Feb. 1887 
 Resigned 23 Aug. 1866 
 Resigned 5 Nov. 1869 
 Died 19 Oct. 1870 
 In service. 
 
 Resigned 22 June, 1865 
 
 Retired list, 13 Dec. 1878; died 25 June, 1890 
 
 Resigned 28 Feb. 1853 
 
 Appointment revoked 1 Sept. 1864 
 
 In service 
 
 Dismissed 19 March, 1862 
 
 Retired list, 11 April, 1892; died 16 April, 1892 
 
 Dismissed 26 July, 1876 
 
 In service 
 
 Dismissed (went south) 28 May, 1861 
 Died 12 Sept. 1847 
 
 Appointed Ensign 1 July, 1887; in service. 
 
 Resigned 28 May, 1864 
 
 In service. 
 
 In service 
 
 Died 29 Apn., 1862 
 
 Resigned 1 June, 1868 
 
 Resigned 10 August, 1863 
 
 Resigned 29 July, 1887 
 
 Retired list 19 Oct. 1875 
 
 Resigned 29 January, 1867 
 
 Died 2 Oct. 1866 
 
 Dropped 4 Nov. 1845 
 
 Resigned 10 Oct. 1874 
 
 Resigned 9 March, 1871 
 
 Retired list 31 July, 1869; died 23 Oct. 1875 
 
 Resigned 7 Feb. 1879 
 
 In service 
 
 Dismissed 8 April, 1847 
 In service 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 14 May, 1867 
 Resigned 15 Sept. 1887 
 Dropped 19 June, 1882 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 11 June, 1874 
 Resigned 5 Aug. 1865 
 Appointed Ensign 1885; Lieutenant 1894 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 2 May, 1864 
 Resigned 6 Sept. 1863 
 Dismissed 3 June, 1881 
 In service 
 In service 
 
 Died 23 March 1866 on Kearsarge at sea 
 
 i: in service 
 
Egbert, Daniel B 
 
 Eldridge, Frank H 
 
 Ellicott, John M 
 
 Ellinger, Julius 
 
 Ellis, Kobert N 
 
 Elseffer, Harry S 
 
 Ely, Theodore E 
 
 Emanuel, Jonathan M. 
 
 Emery, Charles E 
 
 Emmons, George D.... 
 
 Emrich, Charles R 
 
 Engard, Albert C 
 
 English , Morgan H. . . . 
 
 Entwistle, James 
 
 Evans, Clarence A 
 
 Evans, George R 
 
 Everding, John 
 
 Everett, William E 
 
 CAGAN, HENRY. 
 
 l Fahs, Charles M 
 
 Fallon, James E 
 
 Farmer, Edward , 
 
 Faron, Edward 
 
 Faron, John., 
 
 Faron, John, Jr 
 
 Fauth, Henry 
 
 Fennimore, Wesley 
 
 Fenton, TheodereC 
 
 Ferguson, George R 
 
 Field, Harry A 
 
 Field, Horace A 
 
 Fisher, Arthur H... 
 
 Fisher, Clark 
 
 Fiske, Samuel 
 
 Fitch, Henry W... 
 
 Fitch, Reuben 
 
 Fitch, Thomas W 
 
 Fithian, Edwin 
 
 Fitts, James H 
 
 Fitzgerald, Edward T. ... 
 
 Fletcher, Frank H 
 
 Fletcher, Montgomery,. 
 
 Follansbee, Joshua 
 
 Forbes, Cornelius A 
 
 Ford, John D 
 
 Ford, John Q. A 
 
 Fornance, John— 
 
 Fort, Isaac B 
 
 Fort, William F 
 
 Foss, Cyrus D 
 
 Franklin, John, Jr 
 
 Fraser, Alexander V 
 
 Freeman, Edward R.... 
 Freeman, Frederick NL 
 
 Freeman, Joseph M 
 
 Freeman, Yirginius 
 
 Frick, Horace E 
 
 Frick , William, Jr. ..... . 
 
 Frizell, Charles H 
 
 Fuller, William H 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET, 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 1 Oct.4880 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 19 May. 1887 
 
 8 Oct. 1861 
 
 [S Aug. 1861 
 
 26 June,1856 
 25 Aug. 1862 
 11 July, 1861 
 3 May, 1859 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 8 Dec. 1864 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 20 Feb. 1864 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 21 Apr. 1862 
 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 21 Nov. 1857 
 29 Oct, 1861 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 
 1 Oct. 1873 
 
 »•••«• 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 13 Sept. 1892 
 
 2 Dec. 1861 
 1 Sept. 1845 
 
 5 Sept. 1860 
 
 •••««• 
 
 17 Dec. 1862 
 3 May, 1859 
 1 Sept. 1845 
 31 Oct 1848 
 
 25 Julv, 1866 
 
 2 Aug'. 1859 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 25 Aug. 1863 
 10 June, 1847 
 
 8 Apr. 1864 
 16 Oct. 1861 
 10 July, 1847 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 4 May 1863 
 
 27 June, 1855 
 
 17 Feb. 1860 
 3 May, 1859 
 9 Mar. 1858 
 3 May, 1859 
 26 Aug. 1859 
 23 June,1863 
 31 Oct. 1848 
 
 22 Oct, 1860 
 24 June, 1850 
 
 17 Jan. 1842 
 
 18 May 1847 
 30 July, 1862 
 
 2 June, 1868 
 
 3 Oct. 1861 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 27 June, 1861 
 2 June, 1868 
 10 June, 1862 
 
 6 June, 1869 
 20 <May" 1863 
 11 Jan.* 1873 
 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 31 Oct. 1848 
 
 20 May, 1863 
 31 Oct. 1848 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 15 Nov. 1837 
 
 27 June,1862 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 3 Oct. 1861 
 29 Oct. 1861 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 1 Mar. 1864 
 20 May, 186 
 
 2 3 
 
 20 May, 1863 
 1 Oct. 1863 
 8 Oct. 1873 
 
 15 Dec. 1853 
 
 9 July, 1863 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 20 July, 1845 
 
 15 Feb. 1864 
 
 2 July, 1869 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 
 9 Sept. 1891 
 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 26 June, 1856 
 23 May , 1861 
 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 2 June, 1869 
 21 Nov. 1863 
 21 Sept. 1861 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 2 Aug." 1859 
 
 26 June, 1856 
 10 July, 1847 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 15 Oct. 1863 
 
 9 May, 1857 
 6 Jan. 1862 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 July, 1877 
 
 10 June,1881 
 
 1 July, 1893 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 5 April, 1887 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1884 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1877 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 5 Mar. 1871 
 3 Oct." 1891 
 1 July,' 1887 
 
 30 Aug. 1852 
 
 4 Mar. 1871 
 
 23 Apr. 1859 
 13 Jan. 1840 
 
 23 Jan. 1871 
 
 24 Feb. 18*4 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 19 Feb. 1875 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 26 Jan. 1886 
 
 11 Mar. 1874 
 
 3 Mar. 1882 
 
 4 Mar. 1871 
 
 23 Oct. 1859 
 
 25 Oct. 1859 
 31 Oct. 1848 
 
 27 Dec. 1890 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 Eesigned 21 Jan. 1865 
 In service 
 
 Ensign 1 July 1885; Lieut. 9 Dec. 1894; in service 
 Eesigned Aug. 11, 1883 
 Eesigned 15 Oct. 1867 
 
 Killed accidently in Nebraska 21 March, 1886 
 
 Died in service 23 Sept. 1861 
 
 Eetired list 8 April, 1891 
 
 Eesigned 26 Dec. 1867 
 
 Eetired list 31 Oct. 1879; died 28 April, 1886 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 Died 23 Dec. 1862 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 4 Sept. 1865 
 Ensign 1 July, 1887; in service 
 Eesigned 19 June, 1864 
 Eesigned 30 Nov. 1859 
 
 Dropped (went South) 8 July, 1861 
 Ensign 1 July, 1886; in service 
 Eesigned 21 May, 1866 
 In service 
 
 Eesigned 1 June, 1849 
 Killed in action, 5 Aug. 1864 
 Resigned 3 April, 1848 
 Eesigned 29 Aug. 1856 
 Eesigned 12 Oct. 1865 
 Ensign 1 July, 1887; in service 
 Eesigned 20 Oct. 1883 
 
 Ensign 1 July, 1885; Lieutenant 23 April, 1895 
 
 Honorably discharged 30 June, 1886 
 
 Eesigned 26 Sept. 1870 
 
 Eesigned 27 March, 1872 
 
 Resigned 12 June, 1858 
 
 Eetired list 29 Sept. 1894 
 
 Resigned 19 April, 1869 
 
 Eesigned 31 Dec. 1875 
 
 Eetired list 13 Dec. 1882 
 
 Eesigned 30 June, 1885 
 
 In service 
 
 Eesigned 6 Feb. 1869 
 Eetired list 15 Feb. 1892 
 Resigned 1 May, 1865 
 Resigned 5 Nov. 1847 
 In service 
 
 Died 23 Feb. 1878; Act. 3d Asst. Eng. N. Acad '66-'68 
 Lost in the Oneida, 24 Jan. 1870 
 Died in service 1 Dec. 1865 
 Eesigned 21 April, 1865 
 
 Eesigned 1 Nov. 73; Act. 3d Asst. Erigr. N. Acad. 'GQSS 
 Eesigned 26 June, 1865 
 Eetired list 24 Mar. 1874 
 In service 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 8 Oct. 1853 
 Dropped (went South) 8 July, 1861 
 Retired list 18 June, 1890 
 Resigned 12 April, 1862 
 Resigned 16 May, 1874 
 Eesigned 16 Nov. 1861 
 
Fulmer, David M. 
 Fulton, Albert K.. 
 
 GAGE, HOWARD,. 
 Gallagher, John. 
 
 Gait, Robert W 
 
 Gamble, William H.... 
 
 Gardner. John W 
 
 Garrison, Daniel M.... 
 Gartley, William H... 
 Garvin, Benjamin F.. 
 
 Gates, George S 
 
 Gatewood, Richard.... 
 Gatewood, Robert W.. 
 
 Gay, Edward 
 
 Gay, Jesse 
 
 Geddes, C. Wright 
 
 Geddis, George W 
 
 George, F. A. R 
 
 Gideon, George, Jr.... 
 
 Gillis, Harry A 
 
 Gladding, William H. 
 Gladstone, Daniel D.. 
 Glasscock, Eustace S.. 
 
 Godfrey, Jones 
 
 Goodwin, Francis C... 
 
 Gorton, William F 
 
 Gow, John L ... 
 
 Go wing, Burdette, C. 
 
 Grafly, Daniel W.. 
 
 Gragg, Samuel 
 
 Greatrake, 0. L 
 
 Green, John P 
 
 Green, Joseph S 
 
 Green, Levi R 
 
 Greene, Albert S 
 
 Greene, David M 
 
 Greene, George M 
 
 Greenleaf, Charles H. 
 
 Greer, Alexander 
 
 Gregory, H. P 
 
 Grier, John A 
 
 Griffin, Levi 
 
 Griffin, Robert S 
 
 Griffin, Thomas J 
 
 Griffiths , Isaac J 
 
 Gross, Charles J 
 
 Gsantner, Otto C 
 
 Guerard, Richard D... 
 Gunnell, Robert H.... 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET. 
 
 mm*,. • • 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 15 Sept. 1875 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 
 1 June, 1891 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 HABIGHURST, C. J 
 Habirshaw, William M. 
 
 Hain, Franklin K 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 
 Haines, Hiram 
 
 Hall, George W.. 
 
 Hall, George W 
 
 Hall, Harry 
 
 Hall, Reynold T.. 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 Hall, William K. 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 4 May, 1863 
 6 Jan. 1862 
 
 21 Jan. 1842 
 
 8 July, 1862 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 28 Sept. 1864 
 1 Oct. 1863 
 
 22 Jan. 1846 
 12 Oct. 1871 
 
 29 Mar. 1847 
 2 June,1868 
 
 28 Sept. 1864 
 
 31 Oct. 1848 
 2 June, 1869 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 8 Dec. 1872 
 
 31 Dec. 1872 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 24 Aug. 1861 
 
 15 Nov. 1847 
 8 July, 1862 
 11 Apr. 1859 
 31 Oct. 1848 
 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 11 Jan.'l849 
 
 20 Sept. 1858 
 
 2 June,1868 
 12 July, 1861 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 
 21 Sept. 1861 
 21 Apr. 1862 
 29 Oct. 1861 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 20 Feb. 1847 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 24 Feb. 1862 
 28 Feb. 1862 
 19 Mar. 1858 
 17 Feb. 1860 
 23 May, 1861 
 
 25 Aug. 1862 
 3 Oct. 1861 
 
 1 Dec. 1854 
 21 Sept. 1861 
 
 2 Aug. 1855 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 1 1 • • • 
 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 30 July, 1863 
 
 2 Feb. 1864 
 
 3 Aui?. 1863 
 15 Mar. 1847 
 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 15 Oct. 1863 
 1 Dec. 1860 
 17 Nov. 1862 
 28 Oct. 1862 
 
 20 Feb. 1864 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 9 May, 1857 
 
 30 July, 1863 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 28 July, 1845 
 
 28 May, 1861 
 
 11 Jan. 1849 
 17 Feb. 1860 
 
 23 June, 1863 
 29 July, 1861 
 
 C23 May, '61 
 \ 21 Nov. '57 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 
 3 May, 1859 
 21 Sept. 1861 
 
 15 Nov. 1847 
 
 27 June,1862 
 2 Sept. 1865 
 
 29 Oct. 1862 
 
 3 Oct. 1861 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 11 Jan. 1849 
 
 15 Oct. 1863 
 1 Mar. 1864 
 1 Jan. 1865 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 3 Aug, 1859 
 1 Nov. 1S42 
 
 IMar. 1864 
 17 Sept. 1873 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 PASSED 
 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER.. 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 REMARKS 
 
 20 June, 1880 
 24 Feb.* 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 19 Nov. 1890 
 24 Feb."l879 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 20 June 1880 
 
 20 June,1880 
 
 *»«•»• 
 
 10 June, 1882 
 20 Apr. 1880 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 9 Oct. 1874 
 
 26 Dec. 3894 
 
 11 May, 1858 
 
 I • ■ • 9 » 
 
 r a • * • • 
 
 31 Oct. 1848 
 
 • « * • • 
 
 23 Apr. 1859 
 
 19 Mar. 1891 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 25 Aug. 1889 
 
 15 Feb. 1886 
 
 5 Mar. 1871 
 
 21 May, 1863 
 31 Jan. "l862 
 
 » a © * * * 
 
 24 Feb., 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 14 Dec. 1892 
 9 Jan. 1889 
 
 2 Mar. 1892 
 
 15 Feb. 1885 
 
 Retired list 26 April, 1884 
 Eesigned 25 April, 1864 
 
 In service. 
 
 Resigned 17 Feb. 1847 
 
 In service 
 
 Died 26 Aug. 1862 
 
 Retired list 18 Feb. 1889; died 16 Sept. 1891 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 1 May, 1886 
 
 Retired list 14 Feb. 1885; died 22 Jan. 1892 
 
 Retired list 1884; was Act. 3d Asst. 1866-68 N. Acad 
 
 Asst.Naval Const'r '81; Naval Constr. '88; died '90 
 
 Honorably discharged at his own request, 30 June, '8-1- 
 
 Died 19 Jan. 1870 
 
 Resigned 22 Oct. 1859 
 
 Resigned 5 Sept. 1855 
 
 Resigned 9 March, 1864 
 
 Resigned 13 Aug. 1862 
 
 Died 16 June, 1863 
 
 Resigned 25 Aug. 1883 
 
 Dropped 4 Aug. 1863 
 
 Dropped 18 Oct. 1881 
 
 Resigned 2 July, 1885 
 
 Dismissed 1873; was Act. 3d Asst. Engr. N.Acad. 66-68 
 Retired list 2 Mar. 1868; died 24 April, 1887 
 Died 31 Aug. 1853 
 In service 
 
 Retired list 28 Jan. 1895 
 
 Resigned 1 April, 1873 
 
 Retired list 23 Dec. 1884; died 25 Dec. 1885 
 
 Resigned 25 Oct. 1847 
 
 Appointment revoked 1 March, 1862 
 
 Retired list 24 May, 1867 
 
 Resigned 2 Aug. 1869 
 
 Retired list 9 Aug. 1893; died 8 Mar. 1896 
 
 Resigned 16 Sept. 1869 
 
 Died 2 June, 1878 
 
 Retired list 18 July, 1885 
 
 Died 10 Sept. 1867 
 
 Resigned 27 April, 1865 
 
 Resigned 15 Nov. 1865 
 
 Resigned 2 Nov. 1847 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 6 April, 1863 
 Resigned 20 Feb. 1863 
 Resigned 28 Feb. 1883 
 Resigned 17 Aug. 1886 
 Dismissed 20 July, 1850 
 Retired list 3 July 1873 
 
 In service 
 
 Appointment revoked 5 Feb. 1862 
 
 Resigned 24 Jan. 1863 
 
 Resigned 25 July, 1854 
 Resigned 16 Nov. 1866 
 Died 16 June, 1889 
 In service 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 15 Feb. 1853 
 
Hallo well. Francis P 
 
 Halsey, Kichard E 
 
 Halstead, Alexander S.. 
 
 Hands, Robinson W , 
 
 Hannum, John L , 
 
 Hardie, David 
 
 Harmony, Joseph H 
 
 Harris, James M 
 
 Harris, Robert L 
 
 Harris, Thomas J 
 
 Harris, William H ♦., 
 
 Harrison, Henry F 
 
 Harrison, William H 
 
 Harsen, Elisha 
 
 Hartrath, Armin.* 
 
 Harvey, Luther R 
 
 Hasbrouck, Raymond D, 
 Hasson, William F. C .... 
 
 Haswell, Charles H 
 
 Hatcher, Jackson R 
 
 Hatfield, Robert E 
 
 Haverly, Lewis A 
 
 Hawkins, John S 
 
 Hawthorne. Harry L 
 
 Hayes, Charles H 
 
 Heaton, William W 
 
 Hebard, Henry 
 
 Hebard, George F 
 
 Hedricks, Alfred 
 
 Heiser, Henry D 
 
 Henderson, Alexander... 
 Henderson, Andrew H.. 
 
 Henderson, John A 
 
 Henry, James B., Jr. 
 
 Herbert, William C 
 
 Herring, Benjamin 
 
 Herwig, Henry 
 
 Hewes, Charles H 
 
 Hewitt, Edward L 
 
 Hibbert, Stephen D 
 
 Hibbs, Frank W 
 
 Higgins, Robert B 
 
 Hill, Frank K 
 
 Hinds, Alfred W 
 
 Hine, Robert B 
 
 Hines, John C 
 
 Hobby, James M 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 
 Hodgson, Richard M 
 
 Hoffman, Frank J 
 
 Hogan, Thomas J 
 
 Holland, William 
 
 Hollihan, James W 
 
 Hollings worth, Charles F. ... 
 
 Hollins, John 
 
 Hollis, Ira N 
 
 Holmes, Henry 
 
 Holmes, Urban T 
 
 Holt, George R 
 
 Hoopes, Joseph 
 
 Hopper, William W 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET. 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 4 Sept. 1884 
 28 Sept 1888 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 Oct. 1879 
 Oct!" 1880 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 Oct. 1878 
 Oct. 1882 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 Oct. 1872 
 Oct. 1874 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 • A « » * D 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 8 Sept, 1863 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 1 Feb. 1862 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 11 May 1860 
 8 July, 1862 
 16 Sept. 1853 
 3 May, 1859 
 27 Jan. 1848 
 21 Sept. 1861 
 
 29 July, 1861 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 11 Feb. 1862 
 
 24 Sept. 1847 
 24 Aug. 1861 
 19 July, 1861 
 29 July, 1861 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 EEGINEER. 
 
 28 Sept. 1864 
 
 28 Oct. 1862 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 9 May, 1857 
 
 29 July, 1861 
 
 30 July, 1863 
 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 20 Apr. 1863 
 
 15 Oct. 1863 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 23 Nov, 1872 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 20 May/ 1863 
 11 Oct."l866 
 30 Jan.* 1865 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 2 Dec. H861 
 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 6 Sept. 1892 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 4 Sept. 1883 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 6 Sept. 1890 
 
 2 Aug, 1882 
 
 13 Sept. 1886 
 
 13 May, 1861 
 24 Dec. 1861 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 
 11 Aug. 1860 
 
 24 Feb. 1862 
 11 Jan. 1849 
 
 24 Aug. 1861 
 
 31 Oct. 1848 
 9 Dec. 1861 
 
 8 Dec. 1862 
 29 Oct. 1861 
 25 July, 1854 
 
 29 Oct. 1861 
 
 16 Oct. 1861 
 16 Sept. 1862 
 11 Apr. 1859 
 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 
 27 Jan."l848 
 19 Feb. 1863 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 
 15 Oct. 1863 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 21 Nov. 1837 
 ( 26 Feb. '51 
 ( 4 June,'61 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 
 30 Jan. 1865 
 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 26 Feb." 1851 
 
 9 May, 1857 
 
 26 June, 1856 
 
 23 Mar. 1848 
 
 8 Apr, 1864 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 9 May, 1857 
 
 3 Ausr. 1863 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 1 Mar. 1864 
 26 Dec. 1861 
 
 25 July. 1866 
 2 May, 1863 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 6 June, 1868 
 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 July, 1885 
 
 1 July, 1890 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER- 
 
 CHIEF" 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 • • • • 
 
 11 Sept. 1895 
 24 Feb.* 1874 
 24 Feb.' 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1894 
 10 June,1882 
 
 28 June, 1889 
 
 3 July, ?.876 
 1 July,'l885 
 9 Sept."l874 
 
 4 May, 1891 
 
 4 Mar. 1871 
 27 Dec.'*1883 
 
 29 Jan. 1896 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1889 
 1 July, 1884 
 
 1 July, 1896 
 
 26 Feb. 1875 
 
 20 June,1880 
 1 July,' 1892 
 
 6 Aug. 1895 
 22 May," 1880 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 12 July, 1836 
 
 26 Jan. 1886 
 6 Feb. 1840 
 
 28 June 1861 
 
 21 Mar. 1895 
 
 15 Jan. 1895 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 16 Sept. 1881 
 24 Feb."l874 
 
 19 Feb. 1889 
 
 29 June, 1861 
 
 14 Dec. 1882 
 
 Resigned 12 Nov. 1867 
 Resigned 30 Oct. 1863 
 In service 
 
 Lost in the Monitor 31 Dec. 1862 
 In service 
 
 Retired list 15 March, 1867; died 20 March, 1889 
 
 Died 27 Nov. 1877 
 
 Died 6 Oct. 1864 
 
 Died 9 Jan. 1889 
 
 Dismissed 7 July, 1849 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 23 May, 1877 
 
 Resigned 8 Oct. 1872 
 
 Killed in action 5 Aug. 1864 
 
 In service 
 
 Died 11 June, 1886 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 1 Feb. 1893 
 
 Engineer-in-Chief '44-50; 1st Eng. Navy; dropped '52 
 
 Died 23 Dec. 1853 
 
 Resigned 18 Aug. 1862 
 
 Died 29 Aug. 1862 
 
 Resigned 18 Jan. 1869 
 
 Honorably discharged 30 June, 1884 
 
 In service; entered originally as Cadet Mid'n 22 Sept.' 80 
 
 Died 31 May, 1895 
 
 Died 4 Aug. 1846 
 
 Dropped 17 Sept. 1856 
 
 Resigned 9 Aug. 1865 
 
 Kesigned 22 April, 1865 
 
 Retired list 12 July, 1894 
 
 Dismissed 17 April, 1866 
 
 Retired list 20 Nov. 1884 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 Dismissed (went South) 8 July, 1861 
 Retired 28 Jan. 1896 
 
 Ensign 1 July, 1886; Asst. Nav. Constr. '88, died '90 
 
 Resigned 2 Nov. 1866 
 
 Retired list 24 Aug. 1889 
 
 Asst. Nav. Const. 1 July, 1891 ; in service 
 
 In service 
 
 Ensign 1 July, 1886; Lieutenant 15 June, 1895 
 In service 
 
 Retired list 20 Feb. 1893; died 27 June, 1895 
 Resigned 31 Dec. 1848 
 
 Resigned 21 June, '55; reap'd '61; retired '70; died '82 
 
 Resigned 6 Jan. 1866 
 Resigned 11 June 1889 
 Resigned 12 Oct. 1886 
 Died 18 Aug. 1856 
 Retired list 31 Oct. 1879 
 Resigned 11 Sept. 1865 
 Died at sea 4 June, 1858 
 Resigned 30 Sept. 1893 
 Resigned 11 Sept. 1865 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 4 May, 1869 
 
 Died 18 March, 1866, on board Kearsarge 
 
 Resigned 22 Nov. 1866 
 
Houston, George P 
 
 Houston, J, Buchanan. 
 
 Houston, Samuel H 
 
 How, Andrew P 
 
 Howell, Charles P 
 
 Howell, John 
 
 Howland, Charles H.... 
 
 Hoyt, Eben, Jr 
 
 Hudgins, John M 
 
 Huffington, Howard W. 
 Hughes, Arthur L 
 
 Hull, Jameson Cox 
 
 Hulme, Walter Q 
 
 Hunt, Andrew M 
 
 Hunt, Charles S 
 
 Hunt, George P 
 
 Hunt, Henry 
 
 Hunt, John H 
 
 Hunt, William H 
 
 Huntley, John C 
 
 Huston, Robert M 
 
 Hutchinson, Edward S. 
 Hutchinson, James W. 
 Huxley, John H 
 
 INCH, PHILIP 
 
 1 Inch, Richard 
 
 Ireland, George C 
 
 Isbester, Eichard T 
 
 Isherwood, Benjamin F. 
 
 I vers, Henry K 
 
 IACKSON, ALBERT.. 
 J Jackson, Thomas A. 
 
 James, Leland F 
 
 Jeffrey, William C 
 
 Jewell, Henry C 
 
 Johnson, Charles N 
 
 Johnson, Edward C. 
 
 Johnson, George R., 
 
 Johnson, John 
 
 Jones, David P....... 
 
 Jones, Horace W.. 
 
 Jones, Owen 
 
 Jones, Thomas J.... 
 Jones, Truman M... 
 Jordan, Charles W.. 
 Jordan, Marshall P. 
 Joynes, *W alker W.. 
 
 KAEMMERLING, G. 
 Kafer, John C 
 
 Kaiser, Julius A 
 
 Karns, Franklin, D 
 
 Kavanaugh, Benjamin. 
 
 Kearny, George H 
 
 Keilholtz, Pierre O 
 
 Keleher, James T 
 
 Kelley, Benjamin F 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 7 Oct. 1867 
 1 6ct."l878 
 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 15 Sept. 1875 
 
 15 Sept, 1875 
 
 NAVAIi 
 CADET, 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 8 Sept. 1890 
 18 May, 1888 
 5 : Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 1 6ct."l873 
 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 21 May, 1857 
 21 May, 1857 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 24 Dee. 1853 
 21 May,"l857 
 
 16 Feb. 1862 
 
 22 July, 1862 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER, 
 
 3 Aug. 1859 
 21 May, 1853 
 24 Sept. 1847 
 15 Aug. 1870 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 27 July, '55 
 30 Apr. '61 
 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 24 Dec. 1853 
 12 Aug. 1861 
 
 3 Oct. 1861 
 5 Nov. 1861 
 19 July, 1861 
 
 21 Nov. 1857 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 16 Sept. 1862 
 
 EIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 9 Dec. 1861 
 
 1 July 1861 
 
 23 June, 1863 
 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 9 May, 1857 
 
 30 Jan. 1865 
 17 Jan. 1842 
 30 Jan. 1865 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 4 Oct, 1873 
 
 25 Aug. 1863 
 28 Dec. 1862 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 15 Oct. 1865 
 1 Mar. 1864 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 22 Jan. 1846 
 
 13 May, 1861 
 31 Oct. 1848 
 
 9 Sept. 1889 
 
 18 Nov. 1862 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 20 May, 1857 
 25 Mar. 1862 
 
 5 An jr. 1882 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 1 Oct." 1873 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 30 Sept." 1891 
 5 Aug." 1882 
 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 
 15 Apr. 1864 
 ] Oct. 1852 
 
 19 Feb. 1863 
 26 June, 1856 
 8 Oct. 1861 
 4 Apr. 1861 
 24 Dec. 1863 
 
 « c • a • • 
 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 
 3 May, 1859 
 2 June, 1868 
 
 17 Feb. 1860 
 
 27 June, 1855 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 1 Nov. 1863 
 
 20 June, 1864 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 5 
 
 23 May, '44 
 10 July,'47 
 
 26 June, 1856 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 1 July, 1861 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 9 May, 1857 
 
 28 May, 1864 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 17 Dec. 1862 
 
 3 Aug. 1859 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 26 June,1872 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1896 
 
 10 June, 1881 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 10 June,' 1881 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER, 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 3 Dec. 1876 10 Nov. 1893 
 
 5 Apr. 1892 
 24 Feb."l874 
 
 28 Sept. 1874 
 
 10 June, 1881 
 
 «*•«•( 
 
 «*•*»• 
 
 1 July, 1896; 
 
 « • 9 * • 4 
 
 28 June, 1889 
 
 1 July, 1883 
 
 I » * 9 • * 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 • « s e 9 < 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 20 Feb. 1896 
 
 10 Nov. 1863 
 
 4 July, 1880 
 14 May, 1847 
 
 19 Feb. 1863 
 
 10 Nov. 1863 
 3 Aug. 1892 
 
 • • • • 
 
 31 Oct. 1848 
 
 10 Aug. 1893 
 24 Feb, 1874 
 
 31 July, 1861 
 10 Nov. 1863 
 9 Jan. 1889 
 
 19 Jan. 1863 
 
 ► D I O • • 
 
 1 Jan. 187627 June, 1893 
 
 2d Lieut. Mar. Corps, 1860; now Lieut. Colonel retired 
 Resigned 28 July, 1865 
 Died 16 June, 1854 
 Resigned 7 Aug. 1849 
 In service. 
 
 Resigned 3 May, 1856 
 Resigned 3 May, 1886 
 
 Killed explos. boiler at Naval Academy, 19 Oct. 1867 
 In service 
 
 Honorably discharged 30 June, 1894 
 Resigned 12 June, 1883 
 
 Resigned 1856; reappointed 1861; resigned 1866 
 
 Ensign 1 July 1886; in service 
 Resigned 31 July, 1894 
 Resigned 9 June, 1863 
 Died 5 April, 1887 
 Died 10 April, 1861 
 Died 21 Nov. 1868 
 
 Retired list 8 Feb. 1871; died 25 June, 1889 
 Died 20 Oct. 1863 
 Resigned 15 May, 1874 
 Appointment revoked 26 Jan. 1862 
 Resigned 6 April, 1865 
 Resigned 16 June, 1865 
 
 In service 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 10 March, 1865 
 Wholly retired 7 Jan. 1886 
 
 Engineer-in-Chief 1861 to 1869; retired list 1884 
 
 Resigned 1 July, 1885 
 
 Resigned 23 Sept. 1865 
 
 Dropped (went south) 6 May, 1861 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 2 Dec. 1872 
 Resigned 11 Jan* 1854 
 Resigned 11 June, 1874 
 Resigned 3 $e£3t. 1863 
 Retired list, 9 Nov. 1890 
 Retired list, 10 June, 1876 
 Retired list 21 June, 1892 
 In service. 
 
 Resigned 22 Dec. 1866 
 
 Dismissed 19 Oct. 1875 
 
 Died 22 Nov. 1872 
 
 Dropped (went south) 6 May, 1861 
 
 Dismissed (went south) 20 May, 1861 
 
 Honorably discharged 30 June, 1887 
 
 In service 
 
 Retired list 18 June, 1888 
 Retired list 8 July, 1873 
 In service 
 
 Retired list 3 April, 1866 
 
 In service; Acting 3d Asst. Engr. N. Academy 5 66-' 68 
 Resigned 6 Aug. 1 884 
 Resigned 17 March, 1868 
 Resigned 29 Oct. 1873 
 
Kellogg, Edward S 
 
 Kellogg, Mortimer 
 
 Kelly, John P., 
 
 Kelly, William H 
 
 Kenyon, Andrew J 
 
 Kid, Charlton B 
 
 Kiersted, Andrew J 
 
 Kilpatrick, Thomas 
 
 Kilpatrick, William H 
 
 Kimball, Henry H 
 
 Kimball , J ames B 
 
 King, Charles A. E 
 
 King, Glendy 
 
 King, James W 
 
 King, William Henry 
 
 King, William Hervey 
 
 King, William Kufus .... 
 
 Kinkaid, Thomas W 
 
 Kirby, Absalom 
 
 Kleckner, Charles C 
 
 Kline, George W 
 
 Knapp, Myron H 
 
 Knepper, Chester M 
 
 Knowlton, IngersollF 
 
 Knowlton, Minor N 
 
 Knox, Simon B 
 
 Koehl, Edward W 
 
 Koester, Oscar W 
 
 Kutz, George F 
 
 | A BLANC, THOMAS 
 
 Lackey, Oscar H 
 
 Laesch, Lewis C. F 
 
 Lamdin, James F 
 
 Lamdin, Nicholas H 
 
 Lamdin, William J 
 
 Lane, S. Cushing 
 
 Lane, Webster 
 
 Lang, William 
 
 Langer, Philip J. + 
 
 Latch, Edward B 
 
 Latimer, Samuel C 
 
 Latimer, William A. R 
 
 Law, William F 
 
 Lawrence, Henry R 
 
 Lawrence, John 0. E 
 
 Lawrence, J. P. Stewart 
 
 Lawrence William H 
 
 Laws, Elijah 
 
 Laws, George W 
 
 Lawton, Andrew 
 
 Lawton, Elbridge 
 
 Lawton, Nelson H 
 
 Lay, John L 
 
 Leavitt, Edward D 
 
 Lee, Caleb E 
 
 Lee, Columbus W 
 
 Lee, James D 
 
 Leiper, Charles L 
 
 Leitch, Robert R 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET. 
 
 • • • * 
 
 14 Sept. 18^6 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 1 Oct. 1871 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 5 Sept. 1888 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 16 Feb. 
 24 Aug. 
 16 Jan. 
 21 Sept. 
 21 May, 
 26 June, 
 23 Mar. 
 11 Feb. 
 20 May, 
 8 Sept. 
 
 1852 
 1861 
 1863 
 1861 
 1857 
 1856 
 1848 
 1862 
 1863 
 1853 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug.'l882 
 
 5 Apr. 1884 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 
 1 Oct. 1871 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 21 May, 1887 
 
 6 Sept. 1892 
 
 2 Aug. 1855 
 2 Sept. 1844 
 6 Feb. 1851 
 20 May, 1857 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 27 
 21 
 28 
 30 
 2 
 
 13 
 15 
 
 July, 
 Apr. 
 May, 
 July, 
 Aug. 
 
 Sept. 
 Oct. 
 
 1855 
 1863 
 1864 
 1863 
 1859 
 
 1849 
 1863 
 
 26 June,1856 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 10 July, 1847 
 26 Feb. 1861 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 3 Oct. 1861 
 
 5 Nov. 1861 
 
 18 Oct. 1882 
 18 Nov. 1862 
 20 Feb. 1847 
 30 July, 1861 
 
 26 June, 1856 
 
 1 Feb. 
 21 July 
 17 Mar. 
 24 Dec. 
 21 Apr. 
 
 6 Feb. 
 
 8 Dec. 
 23 May, 
 
 1862 
 1858 
 1863 
 1853 
 1863 
 1.851 
 1862 
 1861 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 25 Aug. 1863 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 3 
 11 
 
 11 
 1 
 
 9 
 26 
 
 Aug. 1859 
 Oct. 1866 
 
 Oct. 1866 
 Feb. 1862 
 May, 1857 
 Feb. 1851 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 13 Sept. 1849 
 21 May, 1853 
 2 Dec. 1861 
 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 23 Mar. 1864 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 15 Oct. 1863 
 17 Jan. 1861 
 
 » • • • e • 
 
 18 Nov. 1862 
 20 Sept. 1858 
 
 1 Dec. 1 854 
 11 Jan. 1849 
 16 Nov. 1861 
 j 21 Sept.' 61 
 
 ( 28 Oct. 62 
 28 Oct. 1850 
 
 19 Mar. 1858 
 
 24 June, 1850 
 23 Mar. 1848 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 
 24 Aug. 1861 
 4 Apr. 1861 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 
 9 May, 1857 
 17 July, 1872 
 1 Oct. 1852 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 23 Mar. 1864 
 8 Oct. 1861 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 1 Dec. 1860 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 13 Sept, 1849 
 
 8 July, 1861 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 
 IK 
 
 2 Aug. 1 
 9May|'l857 
 
 17 Mar. 186 
 
 22 July, 1866 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 23 Jan. 1874 
 
 15 Oct. 1883 
 1 Jan." 1865 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 22 Aug. 1894 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 10 June, 1882 
 
 1 July, 1877 
 10 June, 1882 
 
 1 July, 1877 
 
 1 July, 1890 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 27 June,1893 
 
 17 Mar. 1887 
 14 Dec. 1892 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 30 June, 1887 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER, 
 
 8 Nov. 1861 
 
 12 Nov. 1861 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 5 Aug. 1861 
 12 Nqv.*'1852 
 
 10 Nov. 1863 
 
 2 Dec. 1886 
 
 21 June, 1896 
 
 22 Mar. 1875 
 
 1 July, 1893 
 
 3 June, 1879 
 
 16 June,1883 
 
 10 Nov. 1861 
 
 21 Mar. 1870 
 
 8 Dec. 1862 
 1 Oct.' 1861 
 
 21 Mar. 1870 
 
 5 June, 1896 
 
 21 Mar. 1870 
 
 23 Apr. 1859 
 26 June,1856 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874|15 Jan. 1879 
 
 30 Sept. 1894 
 
 In service 
 Died 16 Nov. 1870 
 Died 27 Jan. 1890 
 Cashiered 20 Nov. 1866 
 Died 27 July, 1888 
 Resigned 30 Dec. 1867 
 Retired 25 Dec. 1894 
 Resigned 22 Aug. 1853 
 Resigned 9 Feb. 1866 
 Resigned 29 June, 1869 
 Died 18 May, 1879 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 7 Sept. 1858 
 
 Engineer-in-Chief >69- ? 73; retired 26 Aug. >81 
 
 Died 25 April, 1859 
 
 Died 11 March, 1883 
 
 Retired 18 March, 1891 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 5 July, 1889 
 Ensign 1 July, 1887; in service 
 Resigned 8 July, 1867 
 
 Ensign 1 July, 1886; Lieut. 28 April, 1895; in service 
 
 Resigned 17 March, 1865 
 
 Resigned 22 Nov. 1872 
 
 Died 19 Sept. 1855 
 
 Dropped 9 Jan. 1867 
 
 In service 
 
 Retired 26 June, 1896 
 
 Resigned 28 Sept. 1867 
 
 Retired 16 Nov. 1882; died 21 May, 1883 
 
 Resigned 24 May, 1864 
 
 Dismissed 5 March, 1867 
 
 Died 15 Nov. 1885, on board Adams 
 
 Retired list; died 12 Oct. 1888 
 
 Dropped 8 April, 1865 
 
 Resigned 22 March, 1867 
 
 Died 15 Nov. 1880 
 
 Resigned 28 April, 1870 
 
 Retired 22 Nov. 1878 
 
 Killed 24 Aug. 1855, explosion of HetzeVs boiler 
 Resigned 31 May, 1858; Act'g Asst.. and Ch. Eng. '6 
 Died 24 Sept, 1863 
 
 Resigned 21 March, 1863 
 
 Resigned 2 June, 1856 
 In service 
 Died 1 Jan. 1885 
 Retired 20 March, 1895 
 In service 
 
 Died 17 March, 1871 
 
 Retired 3 March, 1881; died 21 July, 1889 
 
 Resigned 25 April , 1865 
 
 Resigned 22 May, 1865 
 
 Resigned 25 May, 1867 
 
 Retired 2 Dec. 1876 
 
 Resigned 2 June, 1855 
 
 Resigned 10 Nov. 1866 
 
 In service 
 
 Retired 19 Feb. 1896 
 
Leonard, Henry S 
 
 Leonard, John C 
 
 Leonard, Samuel H. , Jr. . 
 
 Leopold, Harry G 
 
 Levy, Charles H 
 
 Lewers, J. Henry 
 
 Lewis, Enos M 
 
 Lewis, Oscar C 
 
 Lillebridge, Frederick M. 
 
 Lincoln, Edmund 
 
 Lincoln, Gate wood S 
 
 Lindsly,Cleland. 
 
 Lining, George D 
 
 Littig, James G 
 
 .Littig, Nicholas B 
 
 Little, William N 
 
 Littlefield, William L..... 
 
 Littlehales, George W 
 
 Livermore, Charles W.... 
 
 Logan, George T. W 
 
 Long, James 
 
 Long, John H 
 
 Long, Bobert H 
 
 Longacre , (Mean s . , 
 
 Loomis, Edmund N....... 
 
 Loomis, Frederick J 
 
 Loring, Charles II... 
 
 Loveaire, Henry F 
 
 Lovering, Francis J 
 
 Lowe, John 
 
 Lubbe, Charles C. 
 
 Luce, William.. 
 
 Lynch, Thomas 
 
 Lynch, William F., Jr... 
 Lyon, Frank....... 
 
 ]\/IACOARTY, G. M. L. 
 
 1 v 1 Macomb, David B . . 
 
 3VIagee, Edward A 
 
 Magee, George W. 
 
 Main, Herschel 
 
 Mallory, Charles K 
 
 Manning, Charles E 
 
 Manning, Charles H 
 
 Manning, Edward W. . . . . , 
 
 Mansfield. Newton... 
 
 Manson, Charles H 
 
 Mapes, Charles A 
 
 Mapes, Daniel T 
 
 Mars, Edward... 
 
 Mars, Philip L. 
 
 Marshall, Albert W 
 
 Marshall, James F 
 
 Marsland, Charles F 
 
 Marsland, Edward 
 
 Martin, Daniel B 
 
 Mason, Henry 
 
 Mather, Mason W 
 
 Mathews, Albert C 
 
 Mathews, Clarence H. 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 1 Oct." 1879 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET, 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 20 May, 1892 
 
 30 Sept. 1892 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 19 July, 1861 
 
 21 Nov. 1857 
 28 Oct. 1862 
 17 Feb. 1860 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 6 Jan. 1862 
 
 1 Oct. 1852 
 
 20 Sept. 1858 
 3 Aug. 1803 
 
 21 May, 1857 
 
 • 9 a • 9 • 
 
 15 Sept. 1875 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 31 Oct. 1848 
 16 Nov. 1861 
 
 6 Nov* 1849 
 11 Jan. 1849 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 
 20 May, 1857 
 
 21 Aug. 1861 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 1 Oct. 1863 
 
 3 Oct. 1861 
 17 Jan. 1861 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 25 Aug. 1863 
 
 26 Feb." 1851 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 A » 9 » » 9 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 18 Dee. 1862 
 
 28 July, 1845 
 12 Aug. 1861 
 20 Feb. 1847 
 
 20 May, 1890 
 
 25 Sept. 1891 
 
 7 Sept. 1891 
 
 6 Sept. 1892 
 8 Sept. 1891 
 
 8 July, 1861 
 11 Jan. 1849 
 27 June, 1862 
 4 Apr. 1861 
 2 June,1868 
 
 19 Feb. 1863 
 
 15 June, 1861 
 21 May, 1853 
 1 Jan. 1865 
 
 9 May. 1857 
 
 1 July 1861 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 24 May, 1843 
 21 Apr. 186 
 
 18 Dec. 18 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 21 Nov. 1863 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 2 June,1869 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 30 Jan. 1865 
 26 June, 1856 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 1 Dec. 1864 
 
 26 Oct. 1872 
 
 21 May, 1853 25 June, 1855 21 July, 1858 
 
 «•*«•* 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 17 Aug. 1847 
 16 Aug. 1847 
 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 8 Dec. 1862 
 
 23 Mar. 1848 
 17 Dec. 1862 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 13 Sept. 1849 
 8 Apr. 1864 
 
 21 Sept. 1861 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 14 Aug. 1861 
 17 Jan. 1842 
 j 26 Feb. '51 
 I 31 May ,'61 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 July, 1884 
 2 Oct. 1881 
 1 July, 1884 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 14 
 
 3 
 26 
 
 Feb. 1895 
 Aug. 1892 
 Dec. 1894 
 
 1 July, 1877 
 26 Feb."l875 
 
 1 July, 1896 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 10 June, 1882 
 
 1 July, 1883 
 
 17 Oct. 1885 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 20 Nov. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 10 Nov. 1863 
 26 June, 1856 
 
 25 Mar. 1861 
 
 16 June,1883 
 
 16 Sept. 1881 
 21 Sept. 1860 
 27 Jan. 1889 
 11 June, 1876 
 11 Nov. 1892 
 
 A a ■ * • o 
 
 27 Sept, 1893 
 
 14 May, 1847 
 21 May, 1863 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 Killed in action 5 Aug. 1864 
 In service 
 In sorvice 
 In service 
 
 Dropped. (went south) 7 July, 1861 
 ^Resigned 29 June. 1868 
 Died 12 Jan. 1872 
 Resigned 28 Sept, 1868 
 Resigned 20 Aug. 1879 
 Resigned 4 Feb. 1868 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 12 Dec. 1874 
 
 Resigned 18 April, 1861 
 
 Retired 14 July, 1874 
 
 Lost in the Oneida 24 Jan. 1870 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 Honorably dischurged June 30, 1885 
 
 Retired list 16 Nov. 1882 
 
 Dropped 29 Aug. 1856 
 
 Resigned 17 April, 1865 
 
 Died 2 March, 1882 
 
 Resigned 31 Oct. 1863 
 
 Resigned 6 June, 1866 
 
 Lost in the Huron 24 Nov. 1877 
 
 Ensign 1 July, 1886; resigned 30 June, 1890 
 
 Engineer-in-chief 1884 to 1887; retired list, 1890 
 
 Resigned 26 Oct. 1868 
 
 Resigned 26 June, 1865 
 
 In service 
 
 Drowned 4 Aug. 1879 
 Resigned 29 May, 1847 
 Resigned 21 June, 1869 
 Dismissed 5 Feb. 1852 
 In service 
 
 Retired 20 June, 1896 
 Retired 27 Feb. 1889 
 Retired Nov. 4, 1895 
 Retired 26 June, 1893 
 Retired 10 Sept. 1895 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 30 Jan. 1891 
 
 Retired 14 June, 1884 
 
 Dismissed (went south) 6 May, 1861 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 25 Nov. 1853 
 
 Died 12 Nov. '47, on board Mississippi in Mexican War 
 
 Resigned 21 June, 1855 
 
 Resigned 11 Feb. 1862 
 
 Dismissed 2 Nov. 1861 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 6 Sept. 1865 
 Resigned 4 June, 1864 
 Engineer-in-Chief 1853-1857; resigned 1859 
 
 Retired 16 Oct. 1868 
 
 Resigned 3 March, 1869 
 Honorably discharged 30 June, 1886 
 In service 
 
 46 
 
Matthews, John R 
 
 Matthews, Samuel 
 
 Mattice, Asa M 
 
 Mauglin, James 
 
 Maurice, C. Stewart.... 
 
 Maury, Johu M 
 
 Mayer, C. F., Jr 
 
 McAllister, Andrew 
 
 McAllister, Gates 
 
 McAlpine, Kenneth 
 
 McAusland, Alexander, 
 McCartney, Daniel P.... 
 McCartny, George D... 
 
 McOay, Henry K 
 
 McGleery, Robert 
 
 MaeConnell, Charles J.. 
 
 McOonnell, Henry 
 
 McCormick, Charles M. 
 
 McCreary, Harry R 
 
 McCusker, James F 
 
 McDonough, Thomas... 
 McElmell, Edward F... 
 
 McElmell, Jackson 
 
 McElroy, George W.... 
 
 McElroy, Samuel 
 
 McEwan, Henry D 
 
 McEwan, William G... 
 McFarland, Walter M.. 
 McGrann, William H.. 
 
 McGregor, James 
 
 McGurren, J. B 
 
 Mclivaine, Henry C 
 
 Mcllvaine, William D. 
 
 Mclntyre, John 
 
 Mcluty r e, Sylvanus 
 
 McKay, John E 
 
 McKay, William 
 
 McKean, Frederick G.. 
 
 McKean, Josiah S 
 
 McLanahan, S. Calvin. 
 McMorris, Boling K.... 
 
 McMurtrie, Horace 
 
 McNamara, James B... 
 
 McNary, Isaac R 
 
 Melville 9 George W. 
 
 Mercer, John D 
 
 Mercer, Joseph 
 
 Mercier, David I 
 
 Mercier, William T 
 
 Meredith, Edward D... 
 
 Merian, Henry W 
 
 Merritt, Darwin R 
 
 Messinger, William H. 
 
 Michener, Abram 
 
 Mickley, Joseph P 
 
 Middleton, John M.... 
 
 Miller, Clarence A — 
 Miller, Frederick L.... 
 
 Miller, Peter 
 
 Miller, Philip 
 
 cadet 
 engineer. 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 13 Sept.* 1877 
 
 3 Oct. 1866 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 15 Sept. 1875 
 
 NAVAIi 
 CADET. 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug." 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 20 May, 1887 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 20 Feb. 1847 
 
 29 Oct. 1861 
 18 Nov. 1862 
 23 Mar. 1848 
 26 Aug. 1859 
 
 23 June,1863 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 2 Aug. 1855 
 29 Oct. 1861 
 5 Nov. 1861 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 17 Jan. 1842 
 24 June, 1848 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 23 Mar. 1864 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 • * « o « » 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 27 Mar. 1843 
 2 Aug.* 1855 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 1 July, 1861 
 8 Mar. 1865 
 
 15 Sept. 1875 
 1 6ct'."l872 
 
 27 Oct. 1875 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 
 I 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 15 Sept! 1890 
 
 23 June, 1863 
 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 17 Feb. 1860 
 16 Nov. 1861 
 
 22 July, 1862 
 
 24 Aug. 1861 
 3 May 1859 
 
 10 Sept. 1891 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 21 Feb. 1861 
 17 Mar."l863 
 
 7 Nov. 1871 
 21 July, 1858 
 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 10 July, 1847 
 
 11 Jan. 1849 
 
 26 Feb. 1853 
 
 20 Feb. 1847 
 30 Jan. 1865 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 25 Mar. 1861 
 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 6 Jan. 1862 
 25 Aug. 1863 
 15 Feb. 1864 
 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 25 July," 1866 
 
 3 May, 1859 
 8 Dec. 1862 
 13 May, 1861 
 29 July, 1861 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 12 Aug. 1861 
 
 17 Jan. 1842 
 25 AugV 1862 
 
 28 Oct. 1861 
 
 28 July, 1845 
 
 21 Oct.' 1861 
 20 May f "l862 
 
 29 Oct. 1861 
 8 Apr. 1864 
 19 Feb. 1863 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 10 July, 1847 
 
 1 Mar. 1864 
 
 1 Dec. 1864 
 
 20 May, 1863 
 
 1 Jan. 1865 
 30 Jan. 1865 
 
 29 Oct. 1861 
 15 Mar. 1864 
 20 Mar. 1871 
 10 July. '47 
 2 May, '43 
 
 25 Aug. 1865 
 15 Feb!"l864 
 
 28 Sept. 1864 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 PASSED 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 ASSISTANT 
 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 28 Feb. 1875 
 
 29 Dec. 1880 
 
 
 • ■ » » » * 
 
 1 July, 1884 
 
 9 May. 1895 
 
 
 1 July, 1883 
 
 12 Sept. 1893 
 
 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 22 Aug. 1881 
 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 11 Aug. 1862 
 2 Dec. 1885 
 
 * a 9 • * « 
 
 * • * 0 « • 
 
 20 June, 1880 
 
 28 Jan. 1890 
 
 2 Feb. 1862 
 
 r * » • • * 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 10 June 1881 
 1 July, 3893 
 
 a * • • t « 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 15 Sept. 1891 
 
 3 Mar." 1882 
 
 • * « • 
 
 28 June, 1889 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 5 Nov. 1895 
 
 25 Nov. 1877 
 
 ••»••* 
 
 1 July, 1896 
 
 
 «•«•«• 
 
 1 * • t 0 « 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 14 Dec. 1878 
 4 Mar. 1881 
 
 ?A Feb. 1874 
 
 i 
 
 / 
 ) 
 
 24 Feb. 1878 
 
 i 
 
 .... 1 
 
 # • • • 1 1 
 
 28 Aug. 1894 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 Resigned 17 May, 1849 
 Resigned 18 July, 1849 
 Resigned 30 June, 1890 
 Resigned 11 Aug. 1865 
 Resigned 21 Dec. 1865 
 Resigned 17 Sept. 1856 
 Wholly retired 5 May, 1868 
 In service 
 
 Dropped 18 March, 1867 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 24 Nov. 1850; was Act. Ch. Eng. during war 
 Retired 10 Nov. 1892 
 
 Appointed Midshipman; resigned 15 Mar. 1869 
 Resigned 6 Aug. 1884 
 Died 15 Sept. 1863 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 6 Feb. 1868 
 Ensign 1 July, 1887; in service > 
 Resigned 20 Aug. 1879 
 Resigned 15 June, 1882 
 Resigned 4 Nov. 1844 
 Retired 1 Nov. 1878 
 Retired 4 June, 1896 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 20 June, 1852 
 
 Retired 13 Dec. 1892; died 18 Oct. 1894 
 
 Appointed from vol. serv. for gallantry; retired 1875 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 Died 22 Sept, 1863 
 
 Dismissed 26 Oct. 1863 
 
 Resigned 21 June, 1869 
 
 Resigned 13 Oct. 1865 
 
 Died 21 May, 1865 
 
 Resigned 19 June, 1865 
 
 Resigned 7 July, 1860; in Volunteer service during war 
 Honorably discharged 30 June, 1887 
 Retired 9 Nov. 1893 
 
 In service; entered as Cadet Midi-liipman, 29 Sept. 1879 
 Resigned 21 June, 1869 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 28 Nov. 1865 
 
 Died 23 June, 1864, on board Tioga at sea 
 
 Retired list 11 Sept. 1894 
 
 Engineer-in-Chief 9 Aug, 1887, to date; in service 
 
 Resigned 8 July, 1856 
 
 Resigned 1 May, 1862 
 
 Resigned 22 June, 1877 
 
 Dismissed 14 Aug. 1849 
 
 Resigned 17 June, 1873 
 
 Lost in the Weehawltenft Dec. 1863 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 16 June, 1865 
 Resigned 25 Sept. 18G5 
 jn service 
 
 Dismissed 5 Oct, 1819 
 
 Dropped 20 Aug. 1879 
 Resigned 28 May, 1868 
 
 Killed 3 April, 1883, on Tennessee; bursting steam pipe 
 Dropped 11 Jan. 1873 
 
CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 Miller, William G 
 
 Miller, William W 
 
 Milligan, Eobert W 
 
 Mills, Oscar B 
 
 Miner, Leo D 
 
 Mintzer, William A 
 
 Missimer, Hillary 
 
 Mitchell, Augustus 
 
 Mitchell, John 0 
 
 Mitchell, T. Mason 
 
 Moffett, Noah W 
 
 Molony, Henry H 
 
 Monroe, William 0 
 
 Montgomery, William J 
 
 Moody, Roscoe C 
 
 Moore, John W 
 
 Moore, William S 
 
 Morgan, Cyrus R 
 
 Morgan, Joseph 
 
 Morgan, Leo 
 
 Moritz, Albert 
 
 Morley, Albert W..* 
 
 Morris, John R 
 
 Morrison, James H 
 
 Morton, James P 
 
 Moses, Stanford E 
 
 Moss, Charles B 
 
 Mulford, Harry B 
 
 Mullen, Anthony T. E 
 
 Murphy, Daniel 
 
 Murphy, Monroe 
 
 Murray, Albert S 
 
 Murray, Jacob M 
 
 Musgrave, William 
 
 Myers, John T » 
 
 \TAGLB, AUGUSTUS F... 
 
 N Nagle, Charles F 
 
 Nauman, William H 
 
 Neal, William S 
 
 Neill, John ft 
 
 Neilson, George C 
 
 Newell, Harman 
 
 Newton, Isaac 
 
 Nicholls, Arthur 
 
 Nicoll, William L 
 
 Noble, James M 
 
 Noell, Michael D 
 
 Nones, Henry B 
 
 Nones, Washington H 
 
 Norton, Harold P 
 
 Nulton, Louis M 
 
 Nutting, Daniel C, Jr 
 
 Nyman, Frank W 
 
 /^AKFORB, ISAAC R 
 
 O'Connor, Henry 
 
 Ogden, Julius S 
 
 Offley, Cleland No 
 
 Olmstead, L, L.. ...... 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 15 Sept." 1875 
 1 Oct."i874 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET. 
 
 THTBD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 8 Sept. 1890 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 7 Sept." 1889 
 
 9 Sept." 1891. 
 
 6 Sept. 1888 
 
 5 Aug."l882 
 
 i • • • • 
 
 27 Sept. 1887 
 
 8 Sept. 1885 
 21 May 1889 
 
 • • a * a ft 
 
 i» * » < t 
 
 ««<«•> 
 
 • • • • 6 t 
 
 5 Sept. 1885 
 
 26 Aug. 1859 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 EEGINEER, 
 
 { 
 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 19 Feb. 1861 
 1 July, >61 
 6 Oct. '62 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 
 16 Oct. 1861 
 
 17 Dec. 1862 
 19 Feb. 1861 
 21 May, 1861 
 23 May, 1861 
 
 25 Julv, 1866 
 28 May, 1864 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 2 June, 1868 
 17 Dec. 1861 
 16 Nov. 1861 
 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 29 Oct, 1862 
 29 Oct. 1862 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 3 May, 1859 
 
 12 Aug. 1861 
 
 18 Nov. 1862 
 
 19 Feb. 1861 
 23 June,1863. 
 
 3 May, 1859 
 
 **•*«« 
 
 3 Aug. 
 3 Aug. 
 
 25 Aug. 
 
 26 Aug. 
 13 Oct. 
 22 Sept. 
 
 1863 
 1863 
 
 1862 
 1859 
 1863 
 1849 
 
 21 Oct. 1861 
 19 Feb. 1861 
 
 23 Sept. 1853 
 8 Mar. 1850 
 
 19 Feb. 1863 
 1 July, 1861 
 2 June,' 1868 
 
 Apr. 1861 
 
 27 June, 1855 
 2 June, 1869 
 
 25 Aug. 1863 
 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 3 Oct. 1861 
 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 12 Nov. 1842 
 23 Mar. 1864 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 25 
 24 
 20 
 21 
 1 
 
 26 
 
 July, 1866 
 Apr. 1872 
 Feb. 1864 
 Oct. 1861 
 Jan. 1868 
 Feb. 1851 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 20 May, 1863 
 
 28 May, 1861 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 18 Dec. 1865 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 
 
 25 
 21 
 
 Dec. 1864 
 July,' 1866 
 July" 1858 
 
 25 
 20 
 
 July, 1866 
 May 1863 
 
 25 Jan. 1865 
 
 * » « O O 9 
 
 20 May, 1863 
 
 « « O C « 4 
 
 1 Jan. 186? 
 
 21 
 15 
 
 May, 1853 
 June, 1861 
 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 2 June, 1869 
 
 o a « a a • 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER, 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 10 June, 1882 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1896 
 24 Feb.""l874 
 
 1 July, 1883 
 17 Apr." 1896 
 
 25 Mar. 1874 
 
 11 Nov."*1892 
 
 26 Sept. 1874 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGIHEEB. 
 
 16 May, 1892 
 
 11 June, 1876 
 
 13 July, 1894 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 REMARKS 
 
 5 Aug. 1861 
 10 Aug. 1893 
 
 17 Nov. 1882 
 
 1 July, 1894 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 22 Aug. 1894 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 10 June, 1881 
 1 July, 1891 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 1 July, 1891 
 
 5 Apr. 1874 
 24 Feb. 1878 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 12 Oct. 1891 
 4 July, 1896 
 
 20 Oct. 1875 
 
 29 May, 1844 
 
 12 Sept, 1894 
 
 23 Apr. 1859 
 17 Oct." 1885 
 14 Dec. 1864 
 
 17 Jan. 1893 
 
 Ensign 1 July 1887; in service 
 Resigned 5 Aug. 1861 
 In service 
 
 Retired 26 Oct. 1872; died 10 Aug. 1873 
 In service 
 
 Discharged 11 Nov. 1893 
 Resigned 7 Aug. 1868 
 
 Lost in the Weehawken, 6 Dec. 1863 
 
 Resigned 16 Nov. 1854 ; 
 Resigned 6 Dec. 1862 ' 
 Appointment revoked 16 Sept. 1863 
 Lost at sea on steamer Atlanta Oct. 1865 
 Resigned 1 March, 1871 
 Resigned 25 Oct. 1869 
 In service 
 
 Retired 24 May, 1894 
 
 In service; was Act'g3d Ass't eng'r N. Academy,' 66-' 68 
 Resigned 2 April, 1864 
 Resigned 5 Jan. 1866 
 Resigned 14 May, 1874 
 In service 
 
 Retired 27 March, 1896 
 In service 
 
 Dropped 7 Dec. 1872 
 In service 
 In service 
 
 Dropped 30 Jan. 1846 
 Dropped 5 Feb. 1884 
 Died 20 Sept. 1877 
 Resigned 25 Nov. 1848 
 Resigned 6 Dec. 1865 
 
 Killed on board Chenango; boiler explosion 15 Apr. 1864 
 Resigned 13 May, 1865 
 Resigned 12 Sept. 1865 
 
 Exchanged into Mar. Corps 25 Feb. 1895; now 2d Lieut. 
 
 Resigned 3 May, 1865 
 Retired 26 July, 1892 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 3 Sept, 1872 
 Resigned 23 Nov. 1865 
 Resigned 5 July, 1876 
 Died 24 March, 1880 
 Resigned 8 Feb. 1865 
 Resigned 20 Aug". 1879 
 Died 2 July, 1887 
 
 Retired 5 Jan. 1866; resigned 3 March, 1866 
 
 Died 1 Jan. 1878 
 
 Retired list 15 May, 1892 
 
 Died 9 Sept. 1853 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 Appointed Ass't Naval Constructor 1 July, 1895 
 Resigned 21 April, 1864 
 
 Resigned 13 Oct. 1865 
 Resigned 14 Jan. 1876 
 
 In-service; was Act'g 3d Ass't eng'r, N. Acad. '66-' 68 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 22 Sept. 1862 
 
Olmstead, Loring. 
 Olsen, Edmund.... 
 Orr, Robert H...... 
 
 pALMBR, ALBERT S. 
 
 Palmer, James E 
 
 Park, William D 
 
 Parke, Cornelius T 
 
 Parker, Hiram Jr , 
 
 Parks, John W , 
 
 Parks, Wythe M 
 
 Parmenter, Henry E 
 
 Parsons, Isaac B 
 
 Patten, Edward 0 
 
 Patterson, James W 
 
 Patterson, Nathaniel P.. 
 
 Pattison, Thomas P 
 
 Patton, John B 
 
 Paul, George 
 
 Paxson, Isaiah , 
 
 Peltz, Philip G 
 
 Pemberton, John 
 
 Pendleton, Joseph H , 
 
 Pendleton, William D..., 
 
 Perkins, Con. M 
 
 Perkins, Lyman B 
 
 Perry, James H 
 
 Petherick, Thomas, Jr. 
 Peugnet, Maurice B..., 
 
 Pfeltz, Gustavus A 
 
 Phillips, Henry W 
 
 Phillips. William L.... 
 
 Phillippi, Edwin T 
 
 Pickrell, James M , 
 
 Pierce, Granville T 
 
 Pike, Boaz E 
 
 Pilkington, Hugh L...., 
 
 Piatt, William H 
 
 Plotts, Rezeau B 
 
 Plumley, John L , 
 
 Plunkett, James , 
 
 Plunkett, M. H 
 
 Plympton, G. M , 
 
 Pollard William 
 
 Pollock, Emmet R 
 
 Pomroy, Joseph R 
 
 Porter, John S 
 
 Potts, Howard D 
 
 Potts, Richard 0 , 
 
 Potts, Robert 
 
 Potts, Stacy 
 
 Powers, William A. 
 
 Pratt, William F... 
 
 Prevear, Herbert P. ..... 
 
 Price, Alexander H 
 
 Price, Arthur 
 
 Price, Claude B 
 
 Price, Henry B 
 
 Prindle, Franklin C. . . 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 Oct. 1873 
 Oct." 1880 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET. 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 1 
 
 13 
 
 Oct. 1880 
 Sept. 1877 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 21 May, 1885 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 1 Oct. 1871 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 «•»»«» 
 
 7 Sept. 1889 
 
 18 May, 1889 
 25 Sept/l888 
 
 2 June ,1886 
 20 May, 1889 
 
 4 Feb. 1862 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 16 Nov. 1861 
 31 July, 1847 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 12 July, 1861 
 
 { 
 
 14 Jan. '39 
 28July,'45 
 
 25 Aug. 1863 
 13 Sept. 1849 
 
 3 May, 1859 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 15 Mar. 1847 
 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 26 June,1856 
 
 8 Dec. 1862 
 
 17 Jan. 1862 
 21 Sept. 1861 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 19 Feb. 1862 
 3 May, 1859 
 
 20 May, 1862 
 
 8 July, 1856 
 8 Dec. 1862 
 27 June, 1862 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 3 May, 1859 
 3 May, 1859 
 21 July, 1858 
 14 Sept. 1853 
 17 Feb. 1860 
 
 14 Aug. 1851 
 
 16 Nov. 1861 
 15 Nov. 1847 
 
 17 Feb. 1860 
 
 3 May, 1862 
 25 Aug. 1862 
 
 8 Oct, 1861 
 10 June, 1862 
 
 28 Sept. 1864 
 13 Sept. 1849 
 
 1 Sept. 1864 
 21 July, 1858 
 8 Apr. 1864 
 
 1 Oct. '63 
 Sept. '70 
 
 15 Oct. 1863 
 15 Feb."l864 
 
 21 Nov. 1863 
 7 June,1870 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 21 Sept. 1861 
 25 Aug.* 1862 
 
 25 Aug. 1863 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 27 June, 1862 
 
 20 Feb. 1864 
 
 3 Aug. 1861 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 21 Nov. 1863 
 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 
 15 Oct. 1863 
 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 3 Aug. 1859 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 29 Oct. 1861 
 
 • » • • • « 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 • 9 » • 8 * 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 9 May, 18V7 
 1 Mar. 1861 
 
 1 Jan. ISGfi 
 
 ■ | III III I I 1 1 | y ( l-KT I i'iW T 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER, 
 
 8 May, 1877 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 22 June,' 1884 
 
 1 July, 1891 
 
 1 July, 1883 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 1 July,"l895 
 
 10 June, 1881 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 27 Oct. 1874 
 
 27 June, 1896 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 15 Oct. 1859 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 25 Apr. 1877 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 16 May, 1892 
 
 9 Nov. 1861 
 
 1 Apr. 1894 
 
 1 July, 1895 
 
 1 July, 1894 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 26 Feb. 1875 
 
 12 Oct. 1881 
 
 22 Jan. 1873 
 29 Jan. 1896 
 
 1 July, 1892 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 Resigned 11 June, 1874 
 Lost in the Huron 24 Nov. 1877 
 Honorably discharged 30 June, 1886 
 
 Kesigned 15 July 1848 
 
 Honorably discharged 30 June, 1885 
 Died 11 July, 1863, on board Richmond 
 Resigned 31 May, 1854 
 Resigned 18 Feb. 1875 
 Resigned 21 May, 1853 
 In service 
 
 Ensign 1 July, 1886; in service 
 Resigned 24 Nov. 1887 
 Dismissed 8 January, 1861 
 Retired 21 Oct. 1869 
 Dropped (went South) 10 June, 1861 
 Resigned 4 Oct. 1882 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 9 Sept. 1865 
 Resigned 18 Nov. 1865 
 Died 21 Aug. 1868 
 Retired 14 Sept. 1891 
 
 Second Lieut. Marine Corps 1 July, ' 84; now 1st Lieu't 
 Resigned 4 Jan. 1866 
 
 Entered as Cadet Mid'n 11 Sept. 75, now 1st Lieu't 
 Resigned 12 April, 1886 
 
 In service 
 
 Appointment revoked 26 No" 1862 
 Resigned 18 Sept. 1895 
 Resigned 25 June, 1866 
 Resigned 28 July, 1869 
 Resigned 6 July, 1860 
 Retired list 21 June, 1884 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 8 Aug. 1857; appointed Purser 3 Nov. 1858 
 
 Resigned 6 April, 1864 
 
 Resigned 27 June, 1872 
 
 Retired 3 Nov. 1877 
 
 Retired 16 Jan. 1866 
 
 Resigned 29 Aug. 1860 
 
 Resigned 6 Feb. 1861 
 
 Resigned 9 May, 1865 
 
 Resigned 19 Dec. 1854 
 
 Dismissed 18 Oct. 1867 
 
 In service 
 
 Dropped 20 Dec. 1852 
 In service 
 
 Retired 26 Oct. 1874 
 
 Dropped (went South) 15 June, 1861 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 3 Mar. 1866 
 Resigned 29 July, 1865 
 Resigned 24 Oct. 1879 
 Retired 26 Oct. 1872 
 Resigned 1 Jan. 1890 
 In service 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 11 Sept. 1865; now Civil Engineer U. S. Navy 
 
Proctor, Andre M 
 
 Prudy, John, Jr 
 
 Purdie, Charles F 
 
 Purse, Wilson K 
 
 QUIG, HBNKY M 
 Quin, Richard B 
 
 Quinby, Isaac H 
 
 Quinn, Michael 
 
 RAB, CHAELES W 
 Rae, Thomas W 
 
 Ramsay, Henry A... 
 
 Ramsden, Frederick, T. H... 
 
 Sank, ErastusP , 
 
 Ransom, George B 
 
 Read, Frank D 
 
 Rearick, Peter A 
 
 Redgrave, DeWitt C 
 
 Reed, Milton E 
 
 Reeves, Isaac S. K 
 
 Reeves, Joseph M 
 
 Reichenback, W. C. F 
 
 Reid, Robert I 
 
 Reid, William I 
 
 Reiley, Peter C.,.. 
 
 Renshaw, James 
 
 Rhoades, Henry E 
 
 Rice, George B 
 
 Richardson, Thornton R 
 
 Rider, Frederic C 
 
 Riley, George H 
 
 Rind, S. Z. K , 
 
 Roane. Alexander H 
 
 Roberts, Edward E 
 
 Roberts, William 
 
 Robie, Edward D 
 
 Robie, Henry W 
 
 Robinson, Lewis W 
 
 Robison, John K 
 
 Roche, George W 
 
 Roebling, Edmund 
 
 Roelker, Charles R 
 
 Rogers, George W 
 
 Rommell, Charles E 
 
 Roop, John 
 
 Ross, H. Schuyler 
 
 Ross, Nelson 
 
 Rowbotham, William 
 
 Rowen, JohnH 
 
 Ruiz, Alberto de 
 
 Rust, Armistead 
 
 Rutherford, Jesse F 
 
 Rutherford, William H 
 
 Ryan, John J 
 
 Ryan, Philip J 
 
 Ryan, John P. J 
 
 SACKETT, AUGUSTINE.. 
 Safford, Levi T 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 
 1 Oct. 1871 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 Oct. 1871 
 Oct. 1881 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET. 
 
 6 Sept. 1889 
 
 2 
 30 
 21 
 25 
 
 8 
 
 6 Sept. 1889 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Sept. 1887 
 
 8 Sept. 1890 
 
 6 Sept. 1892 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 21 Nov. 1857 
 2 June, 1868 
 12 Aug. 1858 
 
 8 Oct. 1861 
 21 May, 1853 
 
 June, 1868 
 July, 1861 
 May, 1853 
 Aug. 1862 
 Dec. 1862 
 
 17 Feb. 1860 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 2 June,1869 
 21 Sept. 1861 
 
 3 Aug, 1863 
 27 July, 1855 
 
 15 Nov. 1847 
 
 2 June, 1869 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 26 June, 1856 
 20 Feb. 1864 
 
 MRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 19 Feb. 186b 
 
 11 Mar. 1863 
 
 6 Nov. 1849 
 
 11 Oct, 1866 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 22 July, 1862 
 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 
 2 
 17 
 17 
 
 Dec. 1861 
 Mar. 1863 
 Feb. 1860 
 
 20 May, 1887 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 27 Sept. 1887 
 5 Aug.1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 22 Mar. 1889 
 
 21 
 7 
 27 
 21 
 
 16 
 3 
 21 
 
 July, 
 Sept. 
 Jan. 
 Sept. 
 
 Aug. 
 
 Feb. 
 May, 
 Sept. 
 
 1858 
 1855 
 1848 
 1861 
 
 1855 
 
 1852 
 1859 
 1861 
 
 28 Oct. 1862 
 
 8 
 21 
 
 Dec. 1862 
 July, 1858 
 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 
 8 Dec! 1862 
 25 Feb. 1871 
 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 30 
 
 21 
 
 2/ 
 9 
 30 
 
 July, 1863 
 
 July, 1858 
 
 June,1855 
 Apr. 1862 
 July, 1863 
 
 15 Mar. 1864 
 
 8 Apr. 1864 
 29 Oct, 1861 
 
 3 May, 1859 17 Dec. 1861 
 17 
 8 
 
 Nov. 1862 
 July, 1862 
 
 22 
 20 
 
 Sept. 1849 
 May, 1863 
 
 3 Oct. 1861 
 8 Dec. 1862 
 
 23 Mar. 1864 
 15 Feb. 1864 
 27 Jan. 1871 
 
 17 Jan. 1842 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 8 Apr. 1864 
 
 IMar. 18«4 
 
 1 Mar. 1864 
 
 ( 3 Aug. '59 
 \ 24 Apr. ' 61 
 21 July, 1858 
 20 May, 1863 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 20 May, 1863 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 26 June, 1856 
 
 6 June,1868 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER 
 
 1 July, 1895 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 26 Feb. 1875 
 1 July, 1895 
 
 1 July, 1883 
 1 July, 1893 
 30 June 1875 
 1 July, 1896 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER, 
 
 REMARKS, 
 
 28 Dec. 1875 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 4 July, 1880 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 1 Oct. 1893 
 
 16 Sept. 1883 
 
 15 Dec. 1853 
 21 Feb. 1893 
 
 9 May, 1895 
 25Mar."l874 
 
 1 July, 1878 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1883 
 
 1 July, 1893 
 
 19 June, 1888 
 
 21 June, 1896 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1884 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 1 July, 1893 
 1 July, 1878 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 17 Apr. 1896 
 
 24 Feb., 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 12 Sept*1894 
 24 Feb.'*1874 
 
 25 Nov. 1877 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 30 July, 1861 
 
 19 Aug. 1883 
 25 Aug." 1889 
 
 10 Nov. 1890 
 
 28 Jan. 1890 
 
 1 Dec. 1861 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 30 Jan. 1873 
 
 Resigned '75; was Act'g3d Ass't Eng'r N. Acad.'66«'68 
 Retired 16 June, 1874; died 30 Dec. 1882 
 
 Resigned 26 Nov. 1869 
 Resigned 1 Sept. 1856 
 Dropped 16 March, 1883 
 Dropped (went south) 18 May, 1861 
 
 In service; was Act'g 3d Ass't eng'r N. Acad. '66-68 
 
 Resigned 1 Oct. 1877 
 
 Dropped (went south) 6 May, 1861 
 
 Resigned 14 April, 1869 
 
 Resigned 9 March, 1866 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 27 Nov. 1866 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 29 Jan. 1867 
 Resigned 20 Oct 1863 
 Resigned 14 May, 1867 
 
 Retired 30 Dec. 1874; was Acting Engineer during war 
 In service 
 
 Honorably discharged 30 June, 1886 
 
 Entered as Cadet Midship'n '77; died on Sivatara '85 
 
 Resigned 17 Oct. 1865 
 
 Resigned 10 Nov. 1858 
 
 Resigned 11 Feb. 1850 
 
 Resigned 19 June, 1865 
 
 Resigned 18 March, 1869 
 
 Retired 11 Sept. 1893 
 Resigned 25 May, 1868 
 In service 
 In service 
 
 Retired July 3, 1896 
 Dropped 27 March, 1873 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 23 June, 1865 
 
 In serv; 2d Lieut. U.S. Mar. C's, '84; ex'd. JEng. Corps 
 Resigned 15 Oct. 1872 
 In service 
 
 Retired 26 Oct. 1872; died 6 Aug. 1883 
 Retired 26 Sept. 1893; died 30 May, 1894 
 In service 
 
 Wholly retired 31 Dec. 1885 
 
 Ensign 1 July 1887; in service 
 
 Died 3 Jan. 1862 
 
 Retired 26 Oct. 1874 
 
 Retired 28 Oct. 1874 
 
 Honorably discharged 30 June, 18&5 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 24 Aug. 1865 
 Retired 11 Oct. 1881 
 
Salisbury, George R 
 
 Sample, Winfield S 
 
 Sampson, Bias C 
 
 Samson, Guy 
 
 Sanford, Hiram 
 
 Sasse, Peter A 
 
 Savage, Peter F 
 
 Saville, John W 
 
 Sawyer, Daniel A 
 
 Sawyer, George F 
 
 Scattergood, Edward 
 
 Schell, Franklin J 
 
 Schemerhorn, William E 
 
 Schley, William R 
 
 Schneider, William E 
 
 Schober, Frederick 
 
 Schroeder, Charles 
 
 Scot, John A 
 
 Scott, Charles P 
 
 Scott, Henry W 
 
 Scott, William 
 
 Scribner, Edward H 
 
 Selden, William C 
 
 Sellman, Henry D 
 
 Sensner, George W 
 
 Senter, Charles W. C 
 
 Serra, John 
 
 Sewell, George 
 
 Seweli, William 
 
 Seymour, E. H 
 
 Shallenberger, Oliver B.. 
 
 Sharey, Samuel O 
 
 Shepard, George H 
 
 Sherwood, Gilbert 
 
 Shewell, Walter 
 
 Shields, William 
 
 Shipman, William W 
 
 Shock, George E 
 
 Shock, Thomas A 
 
 Shock, Thomas A. W 
 
 Shock, William H 
 
 Sibley, William E 
 
 Simpson, Henry L 
 
 Skeel, Theoron 
 
 Sloane, John D 
 
 Slosson, Henry L 
 
 Smedley, John K 
 
 Smith, Albert E 
 
 Smith David 
 
 Smith, Francis G. Jr 
 
 Smith, Henry A 
 
 Smith, John A. B 
 
 Smith, John T 
 
 Smith, Sidney L 
 
 Smith, Thaddeus S 
 
 Smith, Walter D 
 
 Smith, William S , 
 
 Smith, William Strother. , 
 
 Smith, William Stuart 
 
 Snyder, George W 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 
 
 14 
 13 
 
 Oct. 1874 
 Sept. 1876 
 Sept. 1877 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 Oct. 1874 
 Oct. 1872 
 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 
 14 Sept. 1870 
 
 15 
 13 
 
 Sept. 1875 
 Sept. 1877 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET. 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 27 Sept."l887 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 24 Dec. 1861 
 
 16 Nov. 1861 
 21 May, 1857 
 28 Oct. 1862 
 6 Oct. 1862 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 26 Aug, 1859 
 
 » • • • • 
 
 2 May, 1857 
 
 23 June, 1863 
 
 24 Dec. 1853 
 3 Oct. 1861 
 
 18 Nov. 1862 
 1 July. 1861 
 
 26 Aug. 1859 
 19 July, 1861 
 22 Oct. 1860 
 4 May, 1863 
 f 29 May, '43 
 \ 14 May, '47 
 
 3 Aug. 1861 
 11 Feb.'.'l852 
 
 3 Aug. 1861 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 6 Feb. 1851 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 21 Nov. 1837 
 
 3 Aug. 1859 
 15 Mar. 1864 
 15 Mar. 1864 
 15 Oct. 1865 
 
 1 Mar. 1862 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 9 May, 1857 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 29 Apr. 1863 
 22 Jan. 1846 
 
 3 Oct. 1861 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 INov. 1861 
 28 Sept. 1864 
 
 13 Mar. 1847 
 
 21 Jan. 1842 
 
 18 Jan. 1845 
 20 May, 1863 
 
 2 June, 1868 
 
 13 Oct. 1863 
 18 Nov. 1862 
 
 26 Aug. 
 29 July, 
 16 Sept. 
 21 Apr. 
 
 21 Oct. 
 12 Aug. 
 1 July, 
 21 Feb. 
 
 1859 
 1861 
 1862 
 1863 
 
 1861 
 1861 
 1861 
 1861 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 6 Feb. 1840 
 
 8 Oct. 1861 
 
 1 Oct. 1863 
 
 3 Aug. 1859 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 30 Jan. 1865 
 20 Mar. 1840 
 
 1 Oct. 1863 
 
 24 Aug. 1864 
 
 10 July, 1847 
 
 10 July, 1847 
 7 Sept. 1865 
 
 1 Aug. 1866 
 23 Mar. 1864 
 
 8 
 
 18 
 1 
 28 
 17 
 25 
 
 18 
 16 
 
 July, 1861 
 Dec. 1862 
 Mar. 1864 
 Sept. 1864 
 June, 1870 
 Aug. 1863 
 
 26 June, 1856 
 
 31 Oct. 1848 
 
 1 Oct. 1863 
 30 Jan. 1865 
 
 Dec. 1862 
 Jan. 1863 
 
 22 Jan. 1873 
 1 Jan7'l868 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 1 Dec. 1864 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 10 June, 1881 
 10 June,1882 
 1 July, 1883 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 20 June, 1880 
 
 10 June, 1881 
 
 27 July, 1892 
 14 Nov!l893 
 
 • * * • • 
 
 16 May, 1889 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 2 Mar. 1892 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1893 
 27 Jan7l876 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 7 June, 1877 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 10 June, 1882 
 1 July, 1883 
 9 Oct. 1876 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 6 July, 1885 
 
 17 June,1874 
 
 27 Oct. 1874 
 
 10 June,1882 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb, 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 27 June, 1883 
 
 11 Mar. 1851 
 15 Mar. 1845 
 
 6 Bee. 1860 
 11 Mar7l851 
 
 5 Mar. 1871 
 
 16 Feb. 1892 
 
 25 Mar. 1880 
 20 Oct. 1875 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 In service 
 
 Eesigned 27 June, 1887 
 In service 
 
 Kesigned 2 April, 1869 
 
 Eesigned 5 Nov. 1849 
 
 Died 23 July, 1862 
 
 Resigned 13 Jan. 1865 
 
 Retired 1 Feb. 1871 
 
 Retired 22 Jan. 1866 
 
 Resigned 12 Oct. 1868 
 
 Died 20 Sept. 1864, on board Maratanza 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 21 Oct. 1872 
 
 Died 25 Feb. 1858 
 
 Resigned 21 Oct. 1872 
 
 Resigned 9 June, 1873 
 
 Dropped (went South) 18 May, 1861 
 
 In service 
 
 Died 20 June, 1864 on board Tioga 
 Died 10 May, 1869 
 Dismissed 5 June, 1850 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 19 Oct. 1668 
 Retired 17 Nov. 1871 
 Retired 25 Jan. 1886 
 Lost in the Oneida 24 Jan. 1870 
 
 Dropped 27 Feb. 1851 
 
 Retired 17 Dec. 1885; died 13 March, 1895 
 
 Resigned 10 Nov. 1853 
 
 Died 11 Apr. 1864 
 
 Resigned 23 Sept. 1886 
 
 Resigned 3 June, 1854 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 29 Oct. 1845 
 Died 30 Nov. 1881 
 Resigned 9 April, 1883 
 Resigned 27 Feb. 1862 
 Died 11 Sept. 1853 
 Died 21 Jan. 1873 
 
 Honorably discharged 30 June, 1885 
 Engineer-in-Chief, , 77-'83; retired 62 years old 
 Dismissed 10 Sept. 1874 
 Resigned 1 Mar. 1881 
 
 Retired 2 June, 1869; resigned 12 Nov. 1870 
 
 Retired 30 June, 1885 
 
 Resigned 15 Sept, 1883 
 
 Resigned 13 March, 1866 
 
 Resigned 7 Dec. 1886 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 28 July, 1869 
 Resigned 28 July, 1866 
 In service 
 
 Retired Passed Asst. Engr. 24 Feb, '75 by Act Congress 
 
 Resigned 29 Aug. 1884 
 
 Resigned 8 July, 1862 
 
 Died 12 Sept. 1887 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 Retired 31 Oct. 1890 
 
 Died 27 Dec. 1884 on board Palos 
 
Snyder, Henry 
 
 Snyder, Henry Lee 
 
 Sornborger, Edwin C......... 
 
 Spangler, Harry W 
 
 Spear, Harrison 
 
 Speights, James E 
 
 Spencer, Levi T , 
 
 Spooner, Henry W 
 
 Sprague, James P 
 
 Stahl, Albert W 
 
 Stamm, William S 
 
 Stanworth, Charles S 
 
 Starr, John B 
 
 Starr, William 0 
 
 Stebbins, Charles W 
 
 Stedman, Francis D , 
 
 Stedman, Robert S , 
 
 Steele, James 
 
 Stell, John , 
 
 Stephens, Thomas A 
 
 Stevens, Benjamin R 
 
 Stevens, John C 
 
 Stevenson, Holland N 
 
 Stevenson, John K 
 
 Stewart, Henry H 
 
 Stewart, Robert, Jr 
 
 Stickney, Herman O 
 
 Stiles, Edward A 
 
 Stimers, Alban C 
 
 Stivers, George W 
 
 Stivers, Henry H 
 
 Stone, Charles H 
 
 Strange, Clarence A , 
 
 Strauss, Joseph , 
 
 Strickland, George D.... 
 
 Stuart, Charles B , 
 
 Stump, T. B. C 
 
 Sullivan, Lucien 
 
 Sum wait, Frederick G 
 
 Sunstrom, Mark T 
 
 Sutherland, Mosher A 
 
 Sweet, George F..,. 
 
 Sydney, Joseph W 
 
 Symmes, Frank J 
 
 TTAGGART, WILLIAM 
 
 1 Talbot, Robert S 
 
 Talbot, Zephaniel 
 
 Talcott, Charles G , 
 
 Tapman, Henry T 
 
 Tawresey, John G , 
 
 Taylor, David W 
 
 Taylor, Edward K 
 
 Taylor, P. Henry 
 
 Taylor, Robert D 
 
 Temple Arthur W 
 
 Tennent, George W 
 
 Tennent, John C 
 
 Theiss, Emil , 
 
 Thomas, Joseph H 
 
 Thompson, Gilbert, L 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 1 Oct, 1874 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 23 Sept, 1867 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 lOct. 1873 
 
 lOct. 1881 
 
 15 Sept. 1875 
 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 
 15 
 1 
 
 Oct. 1881 
 Oct. 1881 
 Oct. 1878 
 
 Sept. 1875 
 Oct.' 1878 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET. 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 4 Sept. 1884 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 25 Aug. 1862 
 19 Mar. 1858 
 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 12 Aug. 1862 
 
 16 Feb. * 1852 
 
 17 Feb. 1860 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 17 Feb. 1860 
 
 19 Jan. 1863 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 
 18 Nov. 1862 
 11 Jan. 1849 
 
 23 June,1863 
 
 24 Feb. 1862 
 2 June, 1868 
 
 20 May, 1863 
 23 Mar. 1848 
 
 8 Sept. 1803 
 11 Jan. 1849 
 2 Dec. 1861 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 EEGINEER. 
 
 21 Feb. 1864 
 16 Oct. 1861 
 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 3 June, 1844 
 27 July, 1855 
 1 Nov. 1861 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 
 20 June, 1864 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 15 Oct. 1863 
 2 June, 1869 
 
 13 Sept. 1849 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 12 July, 1861 
 30 Aug. 1853 
 
 lFeb. 1862 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 20 May, 1863 
 
 3 Dec. 1861 
 
 2 June, 1868 
 
 5 Jan. 1843 
 22 Oct. 1860 
 
 3 May, 1859 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 
 17 Feb. 1860 
 10 July, 1847 
 
 20 May, 1863 
 
 15 July, 1867 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 Uan. 1868 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 1 Mar. 1864 
 
 9 May, 1857 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 
 24 Aug. 1861 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 15 Oct. 1863 
 1 Sept. 1864 
 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 2 June,1869 
 
 10 July, 1847 
 26 Aug. 1^62 
 13 May, 1861 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 31 Oct. 1848 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 15 Sept. 1865 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 9 May, 1857 
 
 24 Aug. 1864 
 20 May, 1863 
 
 31 Jan. 1873 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 PASSED 
 
 CHIEI* 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 
 
 14 Dee. 1864 
 
 20 June, 1880 
 
 20 Dec. 1889 
 
 
 10 Juue,1882 
 
 1 
 
 9 9 9 • • « 
 *»•**• 
 
 5 Mar. 1871 
 29 July, 1861 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 23 Dec.' 1874 
 
 14 Dec. 1892 
 
 1 July, 1883 
 1 July, 1890 
 
 27 June, 1896 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 
 1 July, 1878 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 18 Dec. 1885 
 
 30 Oct. 1875 
 
 
 
 12 Jan. 1876 
 
 i28 Apr. 1884 
 
 « » * • * • 
 •••••• 
 
 10 June, 1881 
 
 • •••>% 
 
 
 
 *•<••• 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 
 1 July, 1884 
 
 1 Aug. 1894 
 
 • so ft a b 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 Resigned 21 Dec. 1873 
 
 Died 30 June, 1887 
 
 Resigned 17 June, 1873 
 
 Resigned 11 Oct. 1891 
 
 Retired 8 July 1873; died 18 Sept. 1874 
 
 Dropped 21 Mar. 1868 
 
 Resigned 18 Nov. 1845 
 
 Resigned 23 May, 1859 
 
 Died 15 Sept. 1881 
 
 Asst. Nav. Const. 11 Aug. 1887; Nav. Const. 9 July, '92 
 
 Retired 1 Dec. 1887 
 
 Ensign 1 July 1887; in service 
 
 Honorably discharged 30 June, 1886 
 
 Resigned 28 May, 1862 
 
 Resigned 22 Jan. 1883 
 
 Resigned 6 Oct. 1866 
 
 Resigned 5 April, 1865 
 
 Died 16 Aug. 1869, on board Contoocook 
 
 Resigned 18 Nov. 1863 
 
 Resigned 6 Sept. 1853; reappointed 1861; died 1864 
 Lost in the Patapsco, Jan. 15, 1865 
 Resigned 25 Oct. 1866 
 
 In service; Acting 3d Asst. Engr. N. Acad nay ; 66-'68 
 
 Dismissed 2 Aug. 1869 
 
 Retired 6 Sept. 1885; died 2 May. 1893 
 
 Retired 17 June, 1890 
 
 In service 
 
 Retired 24 Aug. 1866 
 
 Resigned 3 Aug, 1865 
 
 In service 
 
 Died 24 April, 1881 
 
 Resigned 10 June, 1865 
 
 Died 30 Dec. 1877 
 
 Ensign 1 July, 1887; in service 
 
 Retired 13 Feb. 1895 
 
 Engineer-in-Chief 1 Dec. 1850; -resigned 30 June, 1853 
 Dropped (went south) 22 May, 1861 
 Resigned 5 April, 1866 
 Dismissed 29 Sept. 1864 
 Resigned 10 Nov. 1865 
 Resigned 15 Oct. 1867 
 Dismissed 30 Jan. 1869 
 Died 31 Oct. 1864, on board the Pembina 
 Resigned 18 July, 1871; Act. 3d Asst. Eng. under in- 
 structions at Naval Academy, '66-68 
 Resigned 12 May, 1849 
 Resigned 24 Oct. 1868 
 Resigned 16 Dec. 1865 
 Died 25 July, 1889, on board Atlanta 
 Dismissed 13 Sept. 1864 
 
 Ensign 1 July, 1887; Asst. Nav. Const, 1 July, 1889 
 
 Asst. Nav. Const, 14 Aug. 1886; Nav. Const. 5 Dec. '91 
 
 Died at Naval Academy 10 Dec. 1880 
 
 Resigned 10 Sept. 1856 
 
 Retired 23 April, 1892 
 
 Resigned 6 Feb. 1878 
 
 Resigned 6 Feb* 1861 
 
 Dismissed 5 July, 1849 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 29 Nov. 1873 
 
 Engineer~in~Chief 1 Sept. 1842; appt, revoked 3 Oct. ? 44 
 
Thompson, James 
 
 Thompson, M. M 
 
 Thompson, Smith, Jr 
 
 Thompson, Winfield S 
 
 Thomson, James W., Jr 
 
 Thorne, George W 
 
 Thurston, Robert H... 
 
 Tiffany, William H 
 
 Tobin, John A 
 
 Toppin, John D 
 
 Tower, George E , 
 
 Tower, George B. N 
 
 Towne, Nathan P 
 
 Townrow, Frederick W 
 
 Townsend, Frank H 
 
 Trench, Martin E 
 
 Trevor, Francis N 
 
 Trilley, Joseph 
 
 Tucker, John T 
 
 Tynan, John W 
 
 Tyson, Elijah H. ,....„ 
 
 | TBER, CARLTON A 
 
 U Uberroth, Preston H.... 
 Upham, Joseph B 
 
 \/AN BUREN, JOHN D..,,. 
 
 V Yanclain, James L 
 
 Vauderbilt, William W 
 
 Vanderslice, Thaddeus L 
 
 Van Hovenberg, John 
 
 Van Tine, Charles M 
 
 Van Zandt, Joseph A 
 
 Victor, Henry C 
 
 Voorhees, Philip R 
 
 WALKER, CHARLES H. 
 Wallace, James 
 
 Walters, William L 
 
 Walton, Jesse F . 
 
 Wamaling, Robert L 
 
 Warburton, Edgar T 
 
 War field, Louis E .... 
 
 Warner, Charles K 
 
 Warner, James fi 
 
 Warren, Benjamin H 
 
 Warrington, Joseph H 
 
 Washington, Pope 
 
 Watters, Joseph 
 
 Watts, James E„ 
 
 Weaver, William D 
 
 Webb, Robert L 
 
 Webster, Charles F 
 
 Webster, Harrie 
 
 Webster, William T 
 
 Wedderburn, Lawrence A 
 
 Weems, Edward D 
 
 Weir, Robert 
 
 Wells, Edwin 
 
 Wells, Chester 
 
 Wells, Wiliiam S 
 
 CADET 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 Oct. 1871 
 
 1 Oct. 1881 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 Oct. 1872 
 Oct. 1881 
 
 1 Oct. 1871 
 
 14 
 
 Sept. 1876 
 Oct." 1879 
 
 13 
 1 
 
 Sept. 1877 
 Oct. 1880 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET, 
 
 3 Oct. 1889 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 8 Sept. 1891 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 7 Sept. 1892 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug." 1882 
 
 15 Nov. 1889 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 24 May, 1844 
 1 July, 1842 
 
 16 Sept. 1858 
 
 26 June,1856 
 3 Aug. 1861 
 
 29 July, 1861 
 
 1 July 1861 
 17 Jan. 1862 
 21 Nov. 1857 
 
 6 Jan. 1862 
 20 May, 1863 
 
 8 Sept. 1863 
 
 2 June, 1868 
 11 Aug. 1860 
 19 Feb. 1861 
 21 Nov. 1857 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 
 18 Nov. 1862 
 
 13 May, 
 
 11 Aug. 
 
 18 Nov. 
 8 Sept. 
 
 12 Aug. 
 16 Jan. 
 20 Feb. 
 
 2 Aug. 
 
 19 Feb. 
 
 1861 
 1860 
 1862 
 1863 
 1861 
 1863 
 1847 
 .1855 
 1861 
 
 11 Nov. 1858 
 21 May, 1857 
 25 Aug. 1862 
 8 July, 1862 
 
 1 Feb. 1865 
 6 Feb. 1851 
 
 21 May,' 1857 
 
 22 Oct, 1860 
 17 Mar. 1863 
 
 11 Feb. 1862 
 
 20 May, 1864 
 
 • • • • 9 • 
 
 25 Mar. 1862 
 25 Aug. 1862 
 1 July, 1861 
 
 18 Nov. 1862 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 4 Oct. 1870 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 1 Oct. 1863 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 
 1 Oct. 1863 
 25 July, 1866 
 
 30 July, 1862 
 2 Aug." "i860 
 
 24 July, 1867 
 23 Mar." 1864 
 
 21 
 30 
 23 
 15 
 21 
 28 
 
 20 
 16 
 
 Apr. 
 July, 
 Mar. 
 
 Oct. 
 Apr. 
 May, 
 
 Dec. 
 Jan* 
 
 1863 
 1862 
 1864 
 1865 
 1863 
 1864 
 
 1860 
 1863 
 
 26 Feb. 1853 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 21 July, 1858 
 30 Jan . 1865 
 
 24 July, 1867 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 16 Oct. 1861 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 20 July, 1864 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 1 Jan. 1865 
 20 July, 1864 
 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 1 July, 1801 
 1 Dec. 1864 
 
 » * 4 » « » 
 
 26 June, 1856 
 
 8 Dec. 1862 
 28 Sept. 1864 
 
 15 Oct. 1863 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 1 Nov. 1863 
 20 Feb. 1864 
 18 Dec. 1862 
 
 23 Mar. 1864 
 
 1 Dec. 1864 
 
 30 Jan. 1865 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1895 
 
 2 Oct. 1877 
 
 24 
 
 24 
 
 Feb. 1874 
 Feb7l874 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 14 Apr. 1842 
 
 2 Feb. 1862 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1878 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1887 
 
 26 Feb. 1875 
 
 10 June, 1882 
 
 24 Feb.* '1874 29 Oct, 1874 
 
 30 June, 1887 
 10 Nov. 1863 
 3 July, 1887 
 
 31 Jan. 1873 
 
 23 Dec. 1884 
 
 6 Dec. 1859 
 
 17 Apr. 1896 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 7 Oct. 1892 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 •»•**• 
 
 31 May 1880 
 
 Resigned 3 July, 1845 
 Resigned 25 Aug. 1847 
 Resigned 13 Jan. 1846 
 
 Tendered resignation and left service (went south) '61 
 
 Ret red 26 June, 1896 
 
 Resigned 5 Nov. 1863 
 
 Resigned 1 April 1872 
 
 Dropped 24 Oct. 1872 
 
 Retired 20 Oct. 1890 
 
 Retired 11 May, 1867 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 29 Nov. 1865 
 Resigned 31 March, 1894 
 Dropped 11 June, 1878 
 Resigned 12 April, 1866 
 In service 
 
 Resigned '69; was Act's 3d Ass ? t Eng'r N. Acad..' 66- '68 
 In service 
 
 Dropped (went south) 6 May, 1861 
 Dropped (went south) 6 May, 1861 
 Died 23 March, 1866 on board Kearsarge at sea 
 
 Retired 27 March, 1867 
 
 Resigned 11 June, 1885 
 
 Retired 27 Dec. 1875; died 13 Aug. 1889 
 
 Resigned 22 Sept. 1868 
 Died 27 Sept. 1874 
 Resigned 30 Oct. 1865 
 Resigned 31 Dec, 1871 
 Died 16 Oct. 1885 
 Resigned 4 Jan. 1866 
 Died 7 April, 1849 
 Resigned 16 Dec. 1863 
 Resigned 18 Feb. 1868 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 8 Aug. 1859 
 
 Died 27 May, 1858, on board Merrimac 
 
 Resigned 31 March, 1865 
 
 Resigned 17 Nov. 1865 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 10 June, 1 1884 
 
 Resigned 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 Dropped (went south) 8 July, 1861 
 
 Retired list 11 June, 1878 
 
 Resigned 1 Feb. 1860 
 
 In service 
 
 Died 13 Sept. 1866 
 
 Drowned 9 July, 1871 
 
 Resigned 24 Jan. 1892 
 
 Died 13 June, 1870 
 
 Honorably discharged 30 June. 1885 
 
 In service; wasAct'g 3d Ass't Eng'r 1862-1864 
 
 Resigned 22 May, 1886 
 
 Killed at Naval Academy accidentally, 27 April, 1882 
 
 Resigned 6 Sept. 1867 
 
 Resigned 19 June, 1865 
 
 Died 9 Jan. 1889 on board Omaha 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 12 Oct. 1870. 
 
Wemtz, Bobert L 
 
 West, William H. G 
 
 Wharton, Benjamin B. H.... 
 
 Wheeler, William C 
 
 Whipple, Edward A 
 
 Whipple, John P 
 
 Whitaker, Ezra J 
 
 Whitaker, James W 
 
 White, George H . 
 
 CADET 
 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 
 White, John M 
 
 White, Philip H 
 
 White, William W 
 
 Whitham, Jay M 
 
 Whittemore, John W 
 
 Whittle, Llewellyn Fairfax.. 
 
 Whittlesey, Humes H 
 
 Wight, Charles L 
 
 Wilkinson, George W 
 
 Willett, William. M., Jr 
 
 Williams, Lloyd A 
 
 Williamson. Thorn 
 
 Williamson, William C 
 
 Williamson, William P 
 
 Willis, Clarence C 
 
 Willits, Albert B 
 
 Willits, George S 
 
 Wilmer Joseph R 
 
 Wilson, Fletcher A 
 
 Wilson, James P..... 
 
 Wilson, John 
 
 Winchell, Ward P 
 
 Windsor, William A 
 
 Winship, Emory. 
 
 Winsor, Horace E 
 
 Wood, Benjamin F 
 
 Wood, Joseph L 
 
 Wood, William W. W 
 
 Woodend, George R 
 
 Woods, Arthur T 
 
 Woodruff, Charles E.. 
 
 Wooster, Lucius W 
 
 Worthington, John L 
 
 Worthington, Walter F. ...... 
 
 Wright, Henry X 
 
 Wright, James D 
 
 Wright, Robert A 
 
 Wylie, James... 
 
 1 Oct. 1873 
 
 yARNALL, JOHN H. 
 
 1 Young, Albert 0 
 
 Young, James G 
 
 Young, Jefferson 
 
 yANE, ABRAHAM, V... 
 
 Zeller, Theodore 
 
 Ziegler, John Q. A 
 
 Zinnell, George F 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 
 13 Sept. 1877 
 1 Oct. 1880 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 1 Oct. 1878 
 
 1 Oct. 1872 
 
 1 Oct. 1873 
 
 1 Oct. 1874 
 
 5 Oct, 1866 
 1 Oct.* 1878 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 1 Oct. 1879 
 1 Oct. .1871 
 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 1 Oct. 1873 
 
 15 Sept. 1875 
 14 Sept. 1876 
 
 1 Oct. 1871 
 1 Oct/ 1879 
 
 NAVAL 
 CADET. 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 THIRD 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 SECOND 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 13 May, 1861 
 21 Nov. 1857 
 
 14 Apr. 1847 
 10 July 1847 
 13 Mar. 1847 
 21 Feb. 1861 
 21 Nov. 1857 
 
 21July, , 68 
 23 May,'61 
 
 { 
 
 16 Oct. 1861 
 
 24 Aug. 1861 
 
 21 Sept. 1861 
 24 Dec. 1853 
 16 Feb. 1852 
 21 May, 1853 
 19 Feb. 1861 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 3 June!l890 
 
 5 Aug. 1882 
 
 • • » 9 * i 
 
 26 Aug. 1859 
 19 Feb." 1861 
 16 Sept 1862 
 
 21 May 1853 
 1 Julv, 1861 
 
 21 May, 1853 
 
 3 May, 1859 
 21 July, 1858 
 10 June, 1862 
 19 Feb. 1863 
 
 19 
 2 
 26 
 31 
 13 
 17 
 2 
 
 28 
 
 Feb. 
 Aug. 
 Feb. 
 Oct. 
 Sept. 
 Dec. 
 Aug. 
 
 Oct. 
 
 1863 
 1859 
 1851 
 1848 
 1849 
 1862 
 1859 
 
 1862 
 
 FIRST 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 3 Aug. 1863 
 
 9 May, 1857 
 27 June,1855 
 16 Jan. 1863 
 
 21 Oct. 1861 
 
 17 Dec. 1862 
 
 1 Mar. 1864 
 
 27 July r 1855 
 21 Apr. 1863 
 
 23 Jan. 1874 
 
 27 Jan. 1848 
 
 15 June, 1843 
 
 a 9 o » t v 
 
 17 Jan* 1861 
 12 Nov. 1863 
 20 June, 1864 
 
 6 Nov. 1849 
 
 10 July, 1847 
 
 1 
 
 16 
 26 
 26 
 26 
 1 
 16 
 
 Jan. 1865 
 Oct. 1861 
 June, 1856 
 Feb. 1851 
 Feb. 1851 
 Dec. 1864 
 Oct. 1861 
 
 1 Jan. 1865 
 
 2 Aug. 1859 
 21 July, 1858 
 1 Dec. 1864 
 
 1 Oct. 1863 
 
 1 Jan. 1868 
 
 11 Oct. 1866 
 
 26 Feb. 1851 
 21 Sept. 1861 
 
 6 Nov. 1849 
 
ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 28 June, 1889 
 
 1 July, 1883 
 1 July, 1883 
 
 PASSED 
 ASSISTANT 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 16 Nov. 1893 
 
 1 July, 1884 
 26 Feb. 1875 
 
 1 July, 1877 
 20 June, 1880 
 
 1 July, 1884 
 1 July',1896 
 
 10 June, 1882 
 
 10 June, 1882 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 1 July, 1877 
 
 » • • • * * 
 
 10 June, 1882 
 
 CHIEF 
 ENGINEER. 
 
 10 NOV. 1863 
 
 10 Apr* 1861 
 
 27 June, 1885 
 6 June,1873 
 10 Nov. 1863 
 
 23 Nov. 1878 
 
 12 Oct. 1881 
 1 July, 1885 
 10 Jan. 1891 
 
 21 Mar. 1895 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 24 July, 1867 
 5 Aug. 1861 
 
 20 Oct. 1842 
 
 28 Mar. 1896 
 4 July, 1896 
 
 5 Mar. 1871 
 
 17 June, 1889 
 
 24 Feb. 1874 
 
 14 Dec. 1883 
 
 15 Mar. 1845 
 
 1 Nov. 1879 
 
 19 July, 1885 
 
 26 Feb. 1875 27 Aug. 1881 
 
 11 Sept. 1895 
 27 June, 1855 
 18 June,l868 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 Resigned 30 June, 1890 
 Drowned 19 July, 1872 
 Eetired 14 Jan. 1895 
 Dismissed 17 January, 1863 
 Resigned 20 Feb. 1854 
 Died 26 Sept. 1864 
 
 Retired 8 May, 1895; died 21 Aug. 1895 
 Died 9 Mar. 1881 
 
 Retired 18 Nov. 1890; died 23 Feb. 1891 
 
 Resigned 29 Oct. 1873 
 Resigned 27 April, 1865 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 1 Feb. 1886 
 
 Killed in action 7 Nov. 1861 on board Mohican 
 
 Died on practice cruise 23 July, 1880 
 
 Ensign 1 July, 1886; in service 
 
 Resigned 1 July 1882 
 
 Resigned 23 Sept. 1863 
 
 Resigned 6 Mar. 1857 
 
 Retired 20 Dec. 1866; died 28 Dec. 1873 
 
 Retired 5 Aug. 1895 
 
 Resigned 10 Jan. 1866 
 
 Dropped 6 May, 1861; Eng.-in-Ch. Confederate Navy 
 
 Retired 28 June, 1890; died 11 June, 1895 
 
 In service 
 
 In service 
 
 Retired 4 Mar. 1892 
 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 30 Mar. 1868 
 Resigned 19 May, 1866 
 In service 
 In service 
 In service 
 
 Resigned 20 Aug. 1856 
 Retired 6 Oct. 1892 
 Retired 11 Nov. 1893 
 
 Engineer-in-Chief >73-'77; retired list '80; drowned '82 
 
 Resigned 20 April, 1857 
 
 Resigned 11 July, 1887 
 
 Dropped 28 Feb. 1883 
 
 Retired 29 June, 1887 
 
 Died 14 July, 1881 
 
 In service 
 
 Dropped (went South) 6 May, 1861 
 Resigned 16 Oct, 1861 
 Resigned 16 Oct. 1865 
 Died 26 April, 1869 
 
 Resigned 22 June, 1877 
 
 Resigned 30 June, 1888 
 
 Resigned 14 Nov. 1855 
 
 Retired 7 Mar. 1871; died 3 July, 1894 
 
 In service 
 
 Retired list 1 Dec* 1885 
 
 Act. 1st Asst. and Ch. Eng. ? 62-'68; died 6 J uly, 1885 
 Resigned 9 June, 1883 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 
 A LIST of Steam Vessels of War that have been built 
 for the United States Navy, from the Fulton of 1814 
 to the vessels authorized by the Fifty-third Congress. In- 
 cluding also the names of some of the most noted steamers 
 that have been purchased and fitted as war vessels for 
 the navy. 
 
 The names have been arranged in chronological order 
 that the reader may readily identify the design of hull and 
 machinery of any vessel with the period to which it per- 
 tains. The date given in each case is that when actual 
 work of building the vessel was begun, that being a much 
 closer index of the period of design and type than the date 
 of launching usually given, the latter date in many cases 
 having been so delayed that the type of vessel and 
 machinery had become obsolete. All machinery data 
 refers to original machinery of vessel. 
 
 The cost price of vessels given in these tables is the 
 contract or actual cost of the ship proper — hull and 
 machinery — and does not include the cost of guns, armor, 
 furniture and equipment. In the case of a heavily armed 
 and armored vessel a considerable part of the total cost is 
 for guns and armor. The actual cost of the new battle- 
 ship Indiana, for example, was practically twice the con- 
 tract price, the chief items being distributed as follows : 
 
 Hull and machinery (including hull, armor, 
 
 premium and cost of trial) $4,133,393.10 
 
 Armor for gun protection 977,134.02 
 
 Armament 966, 567. 58 
 
 Equipment 95,691.45 
 
 Total cost to date of being commissioned $6,172,786.15 
 
DATE. 
 
 1814 
 1822 
 1836 
 1836 
 1839 
 1839 
 1841 
 1842 
 1843 
 1843 
 1844 
 1847 
 1847 
 1847 
 1847 
 1849 
 1851 
 1852 
 1852 
 1853 
 1854 
 1854 
 1854 
 1854 
 1854 
 1854 
 1854 
 1855 
 1855 
 1857 
 
 NAME. 
 
 Fulton 
 
 (Demologos. ) 
 Sea Gull 
 
 Engineer. 
 
 Fulton 
 
 (second of name.) 
 Mississippi 
 
 Missouri.. 
 
 Union 
 
 Michigan 
 
 MATERIAL 
 
 Wood. 
 
 (C 
 
 11 
 
 PROPULSION. 
 
 Center wheel. 
 Side wheel 
 
 ( i 
 
 DISPLACE- 
 MENT, 
 TONS. 
 
 Water- Witch 
 
 (first of name) 
 Princeton 
 
 (first of name) 
 Alleghany 
 
 Susquehanna. 
 Powhatan. ... 
 
 Saranac 
 
 San Jacinto. . , 
 
 John Hancock, 
 (first) 
 
 Princeton 
 
 (second) 
 Water- Witch.. 
 
 (second) 
 John Hancock 
 
 (second) 
 Frankiin 
 
 Merrimack 
 
 Wabash 
 
 Minnesota 
 
 Roanoke 
 
 Colorado 
 
 Niagara 
 
 Stevens Battery. 
 
 Arctic 
 
 Despatch 
 
 Brooklyn 
 
 Hunter wheels 
 
 Iron Side wheels 
 
 Hunter wheels 
 Screw 
 
 < i 
 
 Wood. 
 Iron. . . 
 Wood 
 
 < 4 
 
 it 
 
 Hunter wheels, 
 after w'd screw 
 Side wheels 
 
 Screw. 
 
 Screw 
 
 Side wheels .... 
 Screw ............ 
 
 Iron 
 
 Armored 
 Wood 
 
 i 5 
 
 » < 
 
 <« 
 
 2 screws 
 'Screw ... 
 
 " Screw 
 
 1,200 
 3,220 
 3,220 
 900 
 
 685 
 
 95 1 
 1,020 
 3,821 
 
 .tbo 
 2,200 
 2 200 
 
 1,370 
 
 5,170 
 4.636 
 
 4,774.3 
 4,833.4 
 
 4,772.2 
 
 4,772.2 
 
 5,540 
 
 6,000 
 
 2.686 
 
 TONNAGE, 
 
 2,475 
 100 
 142 
 750 
 
 1,692 
 
 1,700 
 
 582 
 190 
 672 
 
 2,450 
 2,415 
 1,446 
 1,446 
 208 
 900 
 378 
 
 3* 
 
 3,173 
 
 3,200 
 
 3,200 
 
 3.200 
 
 3,400 
 
 3,400 
 
 4,580 
 
 235 
 
 2,070 
 
 LENGTH. 
 
 BEAM. 
 
 156' 
 
 56' 
 
 
 
 17' 
 
 2" 
 
 180' 
 
 
 34' 
 
 10" 
 
 229 / 
 
 
 40 / 
 
 
 22 c ) / 
 
 
 40 / 
 
 
 1 85 / 
 
 
 33 / 
 
 
 
 O/f 
 
 o 
 
 27' 
 
 1" 
 
 IfUV 
 
 x\j\j 
 
 
 2V 
 
 A// 
 
 X 
 
 1 fi4 / 
 
 
 
 fi" 
 
 1 ftV 
 
 xou 
 
 
 QO/ 
 
 oo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 45' 
 
 TEC 
 
 
 915' 
 
 u 
 
 37' 
 
 Q// 
 
 
 a// 
 u 
 
 37 / 
 
 Q// 
 
 v/ 
 
 11V 
 
 no 
 
 
 22 f 
 
 
 178' 
 
 
 33' 
 
 8" 
 
 150' 
 
 
 23' 
 
 
 151' 
 
 
 22' 
 
 
 265 / 
 
 
 53' 
 
 g// 
 
 256 / 
 
 9" 
 
 51' 
 
 4" 
 
 262' 
 
 4" 
 
 51' 
 
 zl/"' 
 
 264' 
 
 
 51' 
 
 J. / 
 
 263' 
 
 8J" 
 
 52' 
 
 
 £63' 
 
 8J" 
 
 52 / 
 
 6" 
 
 328'IOJ" 
 
 55' 
 
 
 420 / 
 
 
 53' 
 
 
 
 
 233 / 
 
 42 / 
 
 
BY WHOM AND 
 
 WHERE BUILT. 
 
 HULL. 
 
 A. & N. Brown, New 
 
 MACHINERY. 
 
 COST. 
 
 York 
 
 Steam galliot, bought 
 in New York 
 
 Bought in Balti- 
 more 
 
 U.S. Govt, Navy Yard, 
 New York 
 
 U. S. Government 
 Navy Yard, Phila... 
 
 U. S. Govt., Navy 
 Yard, New York... 
 
 U. S. Govt. Norfolk 
 Navy Yard 
 
 Staokhouse & Tomlin- 
 linson,Pittsburg, Pa. 
 
 U.S. Govt. Navy Yard, 
 Washington, D. C... 
 
 U.S. Govt. Navy Yard, 
 Phila 
 
 Jos. Tomlinson, Pitts- 
 burg, Pa 
 
 U. S. Govt. Navy Yard, 
 Phila 
 
 U. S. Govt. Navy Yard, 
 Norfolk 
 
 U. S. Govt. Navy Yard, 
 Kittery, Me 
 
 U. S. Govt. Navy Yard, 
 New York 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston, 
 Mass... 
 
 Navy Yard, Washing- 
 ton, D. C 
 
 U. S. Navy Yard, 
 Boston 
 
 TJ. S. Navy Yard, 
 Kittery, Me 
 
 U. S. Navy Yard, 
 Boston 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia, Pa 
 
 Navy Yard, Washing- 
 ton, D. C 
 
 Navy Yard, Norfolk, 
 Ya 
 
 Navy Yard, Norfolk, 
 Va., 
 
 Navy Yard, New 
 York 
 
 R. L. Stevens, Hobo- 
 ken, N. J 
 
 Robert Fulton, New 
 
 York 
 
 Steam galliot, bought 
 
 in New York 
 
 Bought in Balti- 
 more 
 
 West Point Foundry 
 Association, N Y... 
 Merrick & Town, 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 West Point Foundry 
 
 Association, N. Y.... 
 U. S. Govt. Washing- 
 ton Navy Yard 
 
 Stackhouse & Tomlin- 
 son, Pittsburg, Pa... 
 U . S. Govt. Navy Yard, 
 Washington, D. C... 
 Merrick & Towne, 
 Philadelphia, Pa. ... 
 Jos. Tomlinson, Pitts- 
 burg, Pa 
 
 Murray & Hazlehurst, 
 
 Baltimore, Md 
 
 Mehaffy & Co. Gosport, 
 
 Va 
 
 Coney & Co. Boston, 
 
 Mass 
 
 Merrick & Towne, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa 
 
 Navy Yard, Washing- 
 ton, D. C 
 
 Vulcan Iron Works, 
 
 Baltimore, Md 
 
 Engines 1st Waterwitch 
 reb'lt Wash. Navy Yd 
 Atlantic Works, 
 
 Boston, Mass 
 
 U. S. Navy Yard, 
 
 Boston. 
 R. P. Parrot, Cold 
 
 Spring, N. Y 
 
 Merrick & Sons, Phila- 
 delphia, Pa 
 
 Navy Yard Washing- 
 ton, D. 0 
 
 Tredegar Iron Works, 
 
 Richmond, Va 
 
 Tredegar Iron Works, 
 
 Richmond, Va 
 
 Pease & Murphy, New 
 
 York 
 
 R. L. Stevens, Hobo- 
 ken, N. J 
 
 J. Westervelt, New 
 New York , 
 
 Jas. Murphy, Fulton 
 Hug. Wks., N. Y. 
 
 $ 320,000.00 
 16,000.00 
 18,997.00 
 299,649.81 
 569,670.70 
 , .568,806.00 
 158,128.60 
 165,000.00 
 53.648.00 
 212,615.00 
 242,595.92 
 697,215.00 
 795,221.00 
 388,368.00 
 408,885.00 
 20,550.72 
 259,460.00 
 74,725.00 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 1,331,000.00 
 
 752,279.71 
 892,373.46 
 846,336.93 
 836,752.36 
 905,338.24 
 1,057,210.14 
 
 139,038.17 
 
 432.113.71 
 
 Destroyed by explosion, 1829. 
 Sold, 1840. 
 
 Despatch boat, Norfolk navy yard. 
 
 In service 1838; burned by' Con- 
 federates 1862. 
 Destroyed at Port Hudson, 1863. 
 
 Burned at Gibraltar, 1853. 
 
 Laid up at Philadelphia, 1848. 
 
 In commission. 
 
 Condemned, 1851. 
 
 Broken up at Boston, 1849. 
 
 Sold 1869. 
 
 Sold 1863. 
 
 Sold 1887. 
 
 Wrecked, 1875. 
 
 Wrecked, 1865. 
 
 See John Hancock, 2d below. 
 
 Sold, 1866. 
 
 Captured by boarding June 3, 1864. 
 Sold 1865. 
 
 Receiving ship, Norfolk. 
 
 Into hands of Confederates, 1861. 
 
 Receiving ship, Boston. 
 
 In action with Merrimac (or Vir- 
 ginia), 1862; Mass. Naval Res. 
 Sold, 1883. 
 
 Sold 1885. 
 
 Sold 1885. 
 
 Never completed. 
 
 Turned over to lighthouse board, 
 
 1859. 
 See Pocahontas. 
 
 Sold 1891. 
 
DATE. 
 
 NAME. 
 
 1857 
 
 
 1857 
 
 T i 
 
 1857 
 
 Richmond 
 
 1857 
 
 
 1858 
 
 /*N * 
 
 1858 
 
 
 1858 
 
 
 1858 
 
 Wyoming 
 
 1858 
 
 
 1858 
 
 
 1858 
 
 
 1858 
 
 
 1859 
 
 Pocahontas 
 
 1859 
 
 
 1859 
 
 Wyandotte 
 
 1859 
 
 
 1859 
 
 
 1859 
 
 
 1859 
 
 
 1859 
 
 
 1861 
 
 Aroostook 
 
 1861 
 
 Cayuga 
 
 1861 
 
 Chippewa 
 
 1 QUI 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 Kanawha 
 
 1861 
 
 Katahdin 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 MATERIAL. 
 
 Wood. 
 
 PROPULSION. 
 
 Screw. 
 
 it 
 
 Side wheel. 
 Screw 
 
 Twin-screws. 
 
 Screw 
 
 Side wheel. . . 
 Screw 
 
 DISPLACE- 
 MENT, 
 TONS. 
 
 2,550 
 3,290 
 2,604 
 3,000 
 
 1,461 
 1,488 
 1,457 
 1,369 
 1,235 
 1,230 
 1,533 
 
 691 
 
 TONNAGE. 
 
 1,900 
 2,362 
 1,929 
 2,158 
 453 
 994 
 1,016 
 997 
 996 
 804 
 801 
 1,289 
 694 
 395 
 464 
 464 
 549 
 464 
 464 
 217 
 507 
 
 a. 
 
 i > 
 
 i I 
 
 1 1 
 
 LENGTH. 
 
 225' 
 
 235' 8" 
 225' 
 
 230' 8" 
 
 198' 9" 
 198' 11" 
 198' 6" 
 198' 6" 
 188' 
 188' 
 221' 6" 
 
 158' 4" 
 
 BEAM. 
 
 44' 
 
 46' 
 
 42' 
 
 44' 6" 
 
 33' 
 33' 10" 
 33' 2" 
 32' 9" 
 30' 4" 
 30' 6" 
 47' 
 
 28' 6" 
 
 28' 
 
 «6 
 
BY WHOM AND WHERE BUILT. 
 
 HULL. 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 Philadelphia Navy 
 Yard 
 
 Norfolk Navy Yard ... 
 
 Navy Yard,Pensacola, 
 Florida 
 
 Navy Yard, Mare 
 sla 
 
 Island 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 
 Me 
 
 Navy Yard, N. Y 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia, Pa 
 
 Navy 5Tard, Norfolk, 
 Va 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 Navy Yard, Pensacola, 
 Florida 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia, Pa 
 
 Purchased 
 
 MACHINERY. 
 
 Purchased. 
 Purchased . 
 Purchased. 
 Purchased. 
 Purchased. 
 Purchased. 
 Purchased. 
 
 N. W. Thompson 
 Kennebunk, Me 
 
 Gildersleeve & Son,. 
 Portland, Me 
 
 Webb <& Bell, N. Y... 
 
 Curtis & Tilden, 
 
 Boston, Mass 
 
 Paul Curtis, Boston, 
 
 Mass 
 
 Hillman & Streaker, 
 
 Phila. Pa 
 
 E.G.&W. H*Goodspeed 
 
 East Haddam,Conn. 
 Larrabee & Allen, 
 
 Bath, Maine 
 
 G. W. Lawrence, 
 
 Thomaston, Maine.. 
 J. W. Dyre, Portland, 
 
 Me 
 
 Loring &Conry, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Reanie & Neafie, Phil- 
 adelphia, Pa 
 
 Navy Yard, Washing- 
 ton, D. C 
 
 Navy Yard, Washing- 
 ton, D. C 
 
 Union Iron Works, 
 
 San Francisco 
 
 Woodruff & Beach, 
 
 Hartford, Conn 
 
 Fulton Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Merrick & Sons. 
 
 Phila. Pa 
 
 Murray & Hazelhurst. 
 
 Baltimore, Md 
 
 Boston Locomotive 
 
 Works 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 
 
 N. Y 
 
 Reanie & Neafie, 
 
 Phila. Pa 
 
 Purchased 
 
 Purchased. 
 Purchased. 
 Purchased. 
 Purchased. 
 Purchased. 
 Purchased. 
 Purchased. 
 
 Novelty Iron Works, 
 N. Y 
 
 Woodruff & Beach, 
 Hartford, Conn 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 
 New York 
 
 Harrison Loring, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Harrison Loring, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 I. P. Morris & Co. , 
 Phila 
 
 Pacific Iron Works, 
 Bridgeport, Conn... 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 
 New York 
 
 Novelty Iron Works, 
 New York 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 
 New York 
 
 COST. 
 
 $ 502,650.16 
 668,769.00 
 566,259.46 
 613,252.16 
 341,493.82 
 
 323,830.81 
 
 338,309.04 
 
 355,539.40 
 
 297,158.54 
 
 257,418.91 
 
 457,151.12 
 139,038.17 
 
 100,000.00(?) 
 
 74,525.51 
 
 72,739.85 
 
 81,708.03 
 
 69,362.51 
 
 70,170.76 
 
 38,092.45 
 
 98,814.35 
 97,912.22 
 101,235.00 
 99,912.01 
 101,421.00 
 98,786.57 
 97,775.00 
 98,868.85 
 103,694.76 
 101,182.30 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 Laid up at Mare Island. 
 Gunnery practice ship. 
 Receiving ship League Island. 
 Laid up Mare Island. 
 Wrecked 1870. 
 Pacific station. 
 Laid up at Mare Island. 
 Sold. 
 
 Sold 1873 
 Sold 1883. 
 Sold 1870. 
 Sold 1884. 
 
 Purchased 1855 as Despatch. Sold 
 
 1865. 
 Sold 1863. 
 
 Sold 1865. 
 
 Sold 1864. 
 
 Sold 1865. 
 
 Sunk by collision 1863 
 Sold 1865. 
 Sold 1865. 
 
 Sold. 
 
 Sold 1865. 
 Sold 1865. 
 Sold 1867. 
 Sold 1869. 
 Sold 1865. 
 Sold 1866. 
 Sold 1865. 
 Sold 1865. 
 Sold 1866. 
 
DATE. 
 
 NAME. 
 
 1861 
 
 Marblehead 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 Sagamore 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 Cimmerone 
 
 1861 
 
 Conemaugh 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 Mahaska 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 Adirondack 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 MATERIAL 
 
 Wood 
 
 a 
 
 t 4 
 
 4 i 
 
 ii 
 
 i i 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 u 
 
 ii 
 
 i i 
 
 a 
 
 i t 
 
 C c 
 
 44 
 
 4 4 
 
 PROPULSION. 
 
 Screw 
 
 Side wheel. 
 
 4 i 
 
 4< 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 u 
 
 a 
 
 i i 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 Screw. 
 
 4 • 
 
 i 4 
 
 44 
 
 DISPLACE- 
 MENT, 
 TONS. 
 
 691 
 
 a 
 
 4 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 44 
 
 (4 
 
 4 4 
 
 44 
 
 4< 
 
 ii 
 
 ii 
 
 i i 
 
 TONNAGE. 
 
 (Old) 
 
 993 
 1,105 
 1,120 
 
 1,070 
 
 981 
 1,210 
 1,163 
 1,070 
 1,105 
 1,120 
 1,934 
 1,934 
 1,934 
 1,934 
 1,461 
 
 507 
 
 4 4 
 
 ii 
 
 LENGTH. 
 
 4 4 
 
 (4 
 4 4 
 (4 
 
 44 
 
 4 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 44 
 
 860 
 955 
 
 803 
 
 832 
 786 
 730 
 829 
 
 863 
 
 805 
 852 
 955 
 819 
 1,240 
 1,240 
 1,240 
 1,240 
 1,031 
 
 158-4 
 
 (4 
 44 
 44 
 
 a 
 i i 
 
 i 4 
 44 
 4 4 
 4 I 
 i 4 
 4/ 
 44 
 
 217.5 
 232 
 207 
 225.33 
 207 
 
 BEAM. 
 
 28 
 
 44 
 
 4 I 
 
 44 
 
 4 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 ( 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 36 
 
 35 
 
 35 
 33 / 10' 
 
 oo 
 
 205 
 216' 10" 
 
 34.5 
 
 35' 4" 
 
 35 
 
 207 ; 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
 225' 4" 33 / 10' / 
 232 35 
 
 207 36 / 11" 
 205 38 
 205 38 
 205 38 
 205 
 198' 9" 
 
 33 / 10" 
 
BY WHOM AND WHERE BUILT. 
 
 G. W. Jackman, 
 
 Newburyport, Mass 
 J. A. Westervelt, New 
 
 York 
 
 Maxon, Fish & Co., 
 
 Mystic River, Conn. 
 Thomas Stack, New 
 
 York, N. Y 
 
 C. P. Carter, Belfast, 
 
 Me 
 
 J. J. Abrahams, Balti- 
 more, Md 
 
 A. & €r. T. Sampson, 
 
 Boston, Mass 
 
 Jacob Bireley, Philadel 
 
 phia, Penna 
 
 Jeremiah Simonson, 
 
 New York 
 
 W. & A. Thatcher, 
 
 Wilmington, Del... . 
 John Englis, New 
 
 York 
 
 C. & R. Poillon, New 
 York 
 
 John Lynn, Philadel- 
 phia 
 
 D. S. Merchon, Jr., 
 Bordentown, N. J..., 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 
 Me 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston.... 
 
 COST. 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 
 Me 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston... 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 J. J. Abrahams, Bal- 
 timore 
 
 T. Stack, N. Y. (by con- 
 tract in Navy Yard). 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 Me 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 Me 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston... 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 Me 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 Me 
 
 Highland Iron Works, 
 
 Newbury, N. Y 
 
 Novelty Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Novelty Iron Works, 
 
 New York ... 
 
 Novelty Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Allain Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 Charles Reeder, Balti- 
 more 
 
 Atlantic Works, Bos- 
 ton 
 
 I. P. Morris & Co., 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 Novelty Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Keany, Son & Arch- 
 bold, Chester, Pa 
 
 Novelty Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Allain Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 Merrick & Sons, Phil 
 
 adelphia, Pa 
 
 D. S. Merchon, Jr., 
 
 Borta, N. J 
 
 Novelty Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Neptune Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Harrison Loring, Bos- 
 ton 
 
 Merrick & Sons, Phil- 
 adelphia 
 
 Neptune Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 Reany, Son and Arch- 
 bold, Chester, Pa 
 
 Thomas Stack, N. Y. 
 (sub-con. Nov. W'ks.) 
 Novelty Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 Novelty Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 
 
 New York, 
 
 Pusey, Jones & Co., 
 
 Wilmington, Del 
 
 Novelty Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 Jabez Coney & Co., 
 
 Boston 
 
 Reliance Machine Co. , 
 
 Mystic, Conn , 
 
 Woodruff & Beach, 
 Hartford, Conn 
 
 97,736.75 
 88,240.37 
 99,750.00 
 88,225,00 
 98,241.52 
 96,735.47 
 
 101,681.52 
 96,279.43 
 88,248.61 
 
 100,486.88 
 88,000.00 
 
 101,240.00 
 98,771.72 
 
 100,000.00 
 
 193,416.70 
 
 190,423.63 
 
 210,137.78 
 187,128.19 
 172,341.25 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 173,071.81 Sold 1866 
 
 Sold 1868. 
 Sold 1865. 
 Sold 1865. 
 Sold 1865. 
 Sold 1869. 
 Sold 1865. 
 Sold 1866. 
 
 Sunk by torpedo, 1865. 
 
 Sold 1868. 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 
 Sold 1869. 
 
 Sold 1865, 
 
 Sold 1865. 
 
 Sold 1866. 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 
 Sold 1868. 
 
 Sold 1868. 
 
 Sold 1865. 
 
 102,603.33 
 100,057.00 
 212,771.22 
 194,962.34 
 199,852.14 
 364,820.26 
 411,529.38 
 368,817.63 
 363,787.10 
 286,918.05 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 Sold 1866. 
 Sold 1867. 
 Sold 1867. 
 Sold 1867. 
 Sold 1891. 
 Wrecked 1862. 
 
 Sunk by torpedo '64; raised; sold '91 
 Sold 1891. 
 Wrecked 1894. 
 
DATE 
 
 NAME. 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 Tuscarora .. 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1681 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 Sacramento 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 
 1861 
 
 New Ironsides 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 Maumee 
 
 1862 
 
 Nipsic (first) 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 Algonquin 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 MATERIAL. 
 
 Wood. 
 
 < i 
 
 Iron. 
 
 Wood... 
 (ironpPg) 
 Wood... 
 (iron s. a. ) 
 Wood... 
 
 PROPULSION, 
 
 Screw 
 
 << 
 
 i i 
 
 Screw 
 
 il 
 
 Side wheels. 
 
 << 
 
 DISPLACE- 
 MENT, 
 TONS. 
 
 1,488 
 1,457 
 1,488 
 2,030 
 2,526 
 2,078 
 2,100 
 2,030 
 2,526 
 987 
 
 4,120 
 836 
 
 a 
 
 1 1 
 
 < < 
 
 < ( 
 
 1,173 
 
 4 4 
 
 I i 
 
 I V 
 
 11 
 
 4 i 
 
 TONNAGE 
 (OLD). 
 
 1,032 
 997 
 1,032 
 1,395 
 1,533 
 1,378 
 1,367 
 1,378 
 1,533 
 776 
 738 
 3,486 
 593 
 
 a 
 
 ; I 
 
 i I 
 
 974 
 
 4 \ 
 
 I i 
 
 I 4 
 
 4 I 
 
 li 
 
 LENGTH. 
 
 198' 11" 
 198' 6" 
 198' 11" 
 
 225 
 234' 4" 
 
 229 
 225 
 234' 4" 
 172' 
 
 232 
 179' 6" 
 
 , i 
 
 I 4 
 
 240 
 
 i . 
 
 .i 
 
 1 1 
 
 1 1 
 
 BEAM, 
 33' 10" 
 
 33' 2" 
 33' 10" 
 38' 4" 
 38' 2' 
 37' 9" 
 
 38' 4" 
 38' 2" 
 41' 6" 
 
 57' 6" 
 30 
 
 35 
 
BY WHOM AND WHERE BUILT. 
 
 HULL. 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston... 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston.., 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 Me 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 Con^l Pn W'ks, N. Y. 
 (by sub-contract) 
 
 C. S. Bushnell, Conn, 
 (s.-con. Maxon-Fish. 
 
 Cramps Shipy'd,Phila. 
 (sub .contract). 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 
 Me 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston. 
 Navy Yard, Boston. 
 
 MACHINERY. 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 Me 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia 
 
 George W. Lawrence, 
 Portland, Me 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 George W. Jackson, 
 Newburyport, Mass.. 
 
 J, Simonson, New 
 York 
 
 Paul Curtis, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 J. J. Abrahams, Balti- 
 more, Md 
 
 Larrabee & Allen, 
 Bath, Me 
 
 Edward Lupton, New 
 York /. 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 Curtis & Tilden, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 J. Murphy & Co, New 
 
 York 
 
 Merrick & Sons, Phil 
 
 adelphia 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Atlantic Works, Bos- 
 ton 
 
 Allaire Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 Merrick & Sons, Phila- 
 delphia 
 
 Taunton Loco. Mfg. Co. 
 
 Taunton, Mass 
 
 Merrick & Sons, Phila- 
 delphia 
 
 Allaire Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 Delamater Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Delamater Iron Works, 
 
 (sub-contract) 
 
 Merrick & Sons, Phila- 
 delphia 
 
 Captured on Princess 
 Royal, English make 
 Stover Machine Co., 
 
 New York 
 
 Woodruff & Beach, 
 
 Hartford, Conn 
 
 S. Brooklyn Eng. Wks. 
 
 Brooklyn, N. Y 
 
 Woodruff & Beach, 
 
 Hartford, Conn 
 
 Corliss St. Eng. Co., 
 
 Providence, R. I 
 
 Corliss St. Eng. Co., 
 
 Providence, R. [ 
 
 Merrick & Sons, Phila- 
 delphia 
 
 Portland Loco. Works, 
 
 Portland, Maine 
 
 Prov. St. Eng. Co., 
 
 Providence, R. I 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 
 
 New York ....... 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Neptune Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 Yulcan Iron Works, 
 
 Baltimore 
 
 Globe Works, Boston, 
 
 Mass 
 
 Washington Iron Wks. 
 
 Newburgh, N. Y 
 
 Allaire Works, New 
 
 York.... 
 
 Globe Works, Bos- 
 ton 
 
 p.. 
 
 294,697.54 
 
 280,090.91 
 
 314,362.85 
 
 388,541.84 
 
 451,069.00 
 
 373,796,39 
 
 393,218.50 
 
 379,717.64 
 
 425,426.63 
 
 275,000.00 
 
 235,250.00 
 
 814,866.83 
 
 212,316.78 
 
 258,408.93 
 
 255,943.99 
 
 257,952.12 
 
 249,231.09 
 
 274,845.14 
 
 232,639.53 
 
 206,262.93 
 
 161,345.42 
 
 277,372.24 
 
 176,143.73 
 
 161,273.71 
 
 163,239.85 
 
 160,200.00 
 
 164,768.68 
 
 163,423.48 
 
 251,480.07 
 
 160,630.41 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 Run into and sunk 1870. 
 Sold 1883. 
 Sold 1887. 
 Broken up 1887. 
 Sold 1887. 
 Training squadron. 
 Wrecked 1867. 
 Sold 1887. 
 Sold 1887. 
 
 Foundered off Hatteras 1862. 
 Broken up about 1871. 
 Burned 1866. 
 Sold 1883. 
 Sold 1869. 
 
 Broken up about 1875. 
 
 Sold 1883. 
 
 Sold 1869 
 
 Sold 1883. 
 
 Sold 1883. 
 
 In commission. 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 
 Sold 1869. 
 
 Sold 1868. 
 
 Sold 1868. 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 
 Sold 1868. 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 
DATE. 
 
 NAME. 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 . 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 Chillicothe 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 1862 
 
 Catskill 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 1862 
 
 
 MATERIAL 
 
 Wood. 
 
 « < 
 
 (I 
 
 ( i 
 
 44 
 
 < ( 
 
 4 t 
 
 ( 4 
 
 Iron . . 
 Wood. 
 
 Wood — 
 Iron arm* r 
 
 Wood—" 
 Ir'ncasmt 
 
 Iron. 
 
 i 4 
 
 i i 
 
 PROPULSION, 
 
 Side wheels. 
 
 44 
 
 it 
 
 44 
 
 i ( 
 
 ii 
 
 i i 
 
 Screw 
 «< 
 
 2 screws and 
 side wheels 
 
 Screw. 
 
 DISPLACE- 
 MENT, 
 TONS. 
 
 < i 
 
 1 1 
 
 ( i 
 
 1,173 
 
 7,000 
 
 1,875 
 
 1 1 
 
 1 1 
 
 TONNAGE. 
 
 (Old). 
 
 974 
 
 5.090 
 
 677 
 203 
 442 
 565 
 344 
 
 4 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 4< 
 
 <( 
 
 LENGTH. 
 
 240 
 
 4 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 4; 
 
 44 
 
 4 i 
 
 i 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 ( I 
 
 44 
 
 4 i 
 
 4 4 
 
 (4 
 
 44 
 
 4 4 
 
 380' 4" 
 159 
 155 
 
 200 
 
 4 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 I 4 
 
 44 
 
 4 4 
 
 BEAM. 
 
 35 
 
 72' 10" 
 36 
 50 
 
 46 
 
 4 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 4 4 
 
 4 4 
 
BY WHOM AND WHERE BUILT. 
 
 HULL. 
 
 A. So G. Sampson, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 F. Z. Tucker, Brook- 
 lyn, New York 
 
 Thos. Stack, New 
 York 
 
 D. 8. Mershon, Bor- 
 dentown, N. J 
 
 Curtis & Tilden, Bos- 
 ton 
 
 J. & D. Westervelt, 
 New York 
 
 Navy Yard. Kittery, 
 Me 
 
 Navy Yard, New 
 York 
 
 Hillman & Streaker, 
 Phila. Pa 
 
 Geo. W. Lawrence, 
 Portland, Me 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 Me 
 
 Navy Yard, New 
 York 
 
 Navy^ Yard, Philadel- 
 phia 
 
 Navy Yard, New 
 York 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston.... 
 
 MACHINERY. 
 
 COST. 
 
 B,eany, Son, & Arch- 
 bold, Chester, Pa.... 
 Navy Yard, Boston. . . . 
 
 C. H. & W. H. Cramp, 
 Philadelphia 
 
 Wm. H. Webb, New 
 York 
 
 J. S.Underhill, I.W'ks 
 for C. W. Whitney. 
 
 McCord&Junger, New 
 Albany, Ind.. 7 
 
 Jos. Brown, Cincinnati 
 O 
 
 Jos. Brown, Cincinnati 
 O 
 
 Secor Bros, Jersey City 
 
 & San Francisco- 
 Continental Iron 
 Works, Greenpoint. 
 
 Keany, Son & Arch- 
 bold, Chester, Pa... 
 
 Continental Iron 
 Works, Greenpoint. 
 
 Harrison Loring, Bos- 
 ton 
 
 Atlantic Works, 
 Boston, Mass 
 
 Continental Iron Works 
 Greenpoint 
 
 Allaire Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 S. Brooklyn, Engine 
 
 Works, Brooklyn.... 
 S. Brooklyn, Engine 
 
 Works, Brooklyn.... 
 Pusey, Jones, & Co. 
 
 Wilmington, Del 
 
 Atlantic Works, Bos- 
 ton 
 
 Fulton Iron Works 
 
 New York 
 
 Prov. St. Eng. Co 
 
 Prov E. I 
 
 Etna Iron Works New 
 
 York 
 
 Neafie, Levy & Co. 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 Portland Locomotive 
 
 Works, Portland 
 
 Atlantic Works, Bos- 
 ton 
 
 Poole & Hunt, Balti- 
 more 
 
 Morris, Towne & Co. 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 Stover Mach. Co. New 
 
 York 
 
 Neptune Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 Reany, Son & Archbold 
 
 Chester, Pa 
 
 Prov. St. Eng. Co. 
 
 Providence, K. I 
 
 Pusey, Jones & Co. 
 
 Wilmington, Del 
 
 J. Roach, Etna Iron 
 
 Works, New York... 
 J.S.Underhill,I. W'ks. 
 
 for C. W. Whitney... 
 McCord & JungeiyNew 
 
 Albany, Ind 
 
 Jos. Brown, Cincinnati, 
 
 O 
 
 Jos. Brown, Cincinnati. 
 
 O 
 
 Jos. Col well, Jersey 
 
 City 
 
 C. H. Delamater, 
 
 New York 
 
 Morris, Towne & Co 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 C. H. Deamater, New 
 
 York 
 
 City Point Works, 
 
 Mass 
 
 Atlantic Works, Boston, 
 
 Mass 
 
 C. H. Delamater, New 
 York 
 
 $ 163,595.17 
 159,631.53 
 159,081.27 
 152,236.00 
 160,575.41 
 161,143.44 
 241,439.39 
 305,199.73 
 163,561.00 
 163,031.58 
 249,037.97 
 268,000.58 
 266,718.23 
 256,824.52 
 241,856.98 
 203,170.00 
 239,617.47 
 162,914.84 
 
 1,250,000.00 
 227,507.02 
 • 92,960.00 
 182,372.00 
 229,669.73 
 613,164.98 
 427,766.78 
 422,726 28 
 423,027.49 
 413,515.14 
 408,091.37 
 423,171.69 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 Sold 1867. 
 Sold 1868. 
 Sold 1867. 
 Sold 1867. 
 
 Sunk by torpedo 1864. 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 
 Sold 1868. 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 
 Sold 1866. 
 
 Sold 1868. 
 
 Sold 1868. 
 
 Sold 1868. 
 
 Sold 1868. 
 
 Sold 1892. 
 
 Wrecked 1868. 
 
 Sold 1868. 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 
 Sold to French Government. 
 Sunk, Fort Sumter 1863. 
 Sold 1865. 
 
 Captured by Confederates 1863. 
 
 Sold 1868. 
 
 Laid up. 
 
 Laid up. 
 
 Laid up. 
 
 See text. 
 
 Laid up. 
 
 Laid up. 
 
 Laid up. 
 
BATE 
 
 1862 
 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1862 
 1863 
 1863 
 
 NAME. 
 
 Patapsco., 
 
 Sangomon (Jason) 
 
 Weehawken 
 
 Oanonicus 
 
 Catawba 
 
 Mahopac 
 
 Manayunk (Ajax) 
 
 Manhattan 
 
 Onesta 
 
 Saugus.. 
 
 Tippecanoe .... 
 
 (Wyandotte) 
 Tecumseb 
 
 Marietta .. 
 Sandusky 
 Neosho ... 
 
 Osage 
 
 Ozark 
 
 Dictator... 
 Puritan.... 
 
 Agamenticus 
 
 (Terror) 
 Miantonomoh. 
 
 Monadnock. 
 
 Tonawanda 
 
 (Amphitrite) 
 Chickasaw 
 
 Kickapoo... 
 Milwaukee . 
 Winnebago 
 Onondaga.. 
 Ashuelot ... 
 Mohongo... 
 
 MATERIAL. 
 
 Iron 
 
 PROPULSION. 
 
 Screw. 
 n 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 U 
 ti 
 
 it 
 
 Wood — 
 
 armored 
 it 
 
 ti 
 
 tt 
 
 Iron 
 n 
 
 tt 
 
 t i 
 
 it 
 
 a 
 
 it 
 
 ti 
 
 ti 
 
 a 
 
 DISPLACE- 
 MENT, 
 TONS. 
 
 Recessed stern 
 wheels 
 
 a 
 
 Screw 
 
 Twin screws. 
 
 tt 
 
 a 
 
 Four screws. 
 
 i i 
 
 Screw 
 
 Side wheels. 
 
 1,875 
 it 
 
 2,100 
 tt 
 
 tt 
 
 a 
 
 i i 
 
 i i 
 
 4,438 
 4,912 
 3,295 
 3,401 
 3,295 
 3,400 
 
 1,370 
 
 TONNAGE 
 (OLD). 
 
 •LENGTH. 
 
 BEAM. 
 
 344 
 
 200 
 
 46 
 
 (t 
 
 t i 
 
 a 
 
 it 
 
 a 
 
 n 
 
 1,034 
 
 225 
 
 43' 8" 
 
 tt 
 
 it 
 
 *. 
 
 a 
 
 tt 
 
 tt 
 
 t i 
 
 1 1 
 
 i i 
 
 tt 
 
 ti 
 
 ti 
 
 a 
 
 i i 
 
 t i 
 
 1 1 
 
 t i 
 
 t i 
 
 it 
 
 i. 
 
 it 
 
 a 
 
 i t 
 
 it 
 
 479 
 479 
 523 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 523 
 
 
 
 523 
 3,033 
 
 
 
 312' 
 
 50' 
 
 3,265 
 
 340' 
 
 50 / 
 
 1,564 
 
 259 / 
 
 52 / 4" 
 
 it 
 
 257 ' 
 
 52 / 10" 
 
 a 
 
 259 ' 
 
 52 / 4" 
 
 tt 
 
 257 / 
 
 52 / 10" 
 
 970 
 
 230' 
 
 56' 
 
 tt 
 
 < t 
 
 u 
 
 it 
 
 n 
 
 a 
 
 n 
 
 1 1 
 
 a 
 
 1,250 
 1,030 
 
 a 
 
 
 255 ' 
 
 35' 
 
 tt 
 
 
 
BY WHOM AND WHERE BUILT. 
 
 HULL. 
 
 Harlan & Hollings- 
 worth , Wilmington, D. 
 
 Beany, Son, & Arch- 
 bold, Chester, Pa 
 
 Secor Bros., Jersey 
 City 
 
 H. Loring, Boston, 
 IVEass. 
 
 Alex. Swift & Co., 
 Cincinnati, O 
 
 Secor Broa , Jersey 
 City 
 
 Snowden & Mason, 
 Pittsburgh. Pa 
 
 Secor Bros., Jersey 
 City 
 
 Alex. Swift Co., Cin- 
 cinnati, 0 
 
 Harlan & Hollings- 
 worth , Wilmington , D 
 
 Miles Greenwood, Cin 
 cinnati, O 
 
 Secor Bros., Jersey 
 City 
 
 Tomlinson,Hartupee & 
 Co., Pittsburgh, Pa.. 
 
 Tomlinson.H artu P ee & 
 Co., Pittsburgh, Pa.. 
 
 James B. Edes, St. 
 
 Louis, Mo 
 
 James B. Edes, St. 
 
 Louis, Mo 
 
 James B. Edes, St. 
 
 Louis, Mo 
 
 Delamater Ironworks 
 
 New York 
 
 Continental Iron W'ks 
 
 Greenpojnt, N. Y 
 
 KavyYard, Kittery, 
 
 Maine 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia 
 
 Thomas G. Gaylord, 
 St. Louis, Mo, 
 
 G, B. Allen & Co. , St. 
 Louis, Mo... , , 
 
 James B. Edes, St. 
 Louis, Mo 
 
 James B. Edes, St. 
 Louis, Mo 
 
 Cont. I. W'ks Green- 
 point,for G.Quintard 
 
 Donald McKay, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Z. Secor, Jersey City... 
 
 MACHINERY. 
 
 Harlan & Hollings- 
 
 worth,Wilmington,D 
 Morris, Towne & Co. 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 Jos. Colwell, Jersey 
 
 City 
 
 Harrison Loring, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Niles Tool Works, 
 
 Hamilton, O 
 
 Jos. Colwell, Jersey 
 
 City 
 
 Snowden & Mason, 
 
 Pittsburgh, Pa 
 
 Jos. Caldwell, Jersey 
 
 City 
 
 Niles Tool Works, 
 
 Hamilton, O 
 
 Harlan & Hollings- 
 
 wor th , Wilmington , D 
 Miles Greenwood, 
 
 Cincinnati, O 
 
 Jos. Colwell, Jersey 
 
 City 
 
 Tomlinson,Hartupee & 
 Co., Pittsburgh, Pa.. 
 Tomlinson,Hartupee & 
 Co. , Pittsburgh, Pa.. 
 James B. Edes, St. 
 
 Louis, Mo 
 
 James B. Edes, St. 
 
 Louis, Mo 
 
 James B. Edes, St. 
 
 Louis, Mo 
 
 Delamater Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Allaire Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 Morris, Towne & Co. , 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa 
 
 Novelty Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 Morris, Towne &Co., 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa 
 
 Merrick & Sons, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa 
 
 Thomas G. Gaylord, 
 
 St. Louis, Mo 
 
 G. B. Allen & Co., St. 
 
 Louis, Mo 
 
 James B. Edes, St. 
 
 Louis, Mo 
 
 James B. Edes, St. 
 
 Louis, Mo 
 
 Morgan I. W'ks N. Y. 
 
 for Geo. Quintard. ... 
 Donald McKay, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Fulton Foundry, Jer- 
 sey City ....^^v 
 
 cost. 
 
 422,779.95 
 422,766.73 
 436,007.29 
 622,963.22 
 621,424.54 
 635,374.55 
 626,582.24 
 628,879.27 
 621,424.54 
 588,466.62 
 633,327.84 
 636,941.76 
 235,039.57 
 235,039.57 
 200,757.67 
 199,632.62 
 207,071.50 
 1,382,991.24 
 1,974,622.93 
 1,016,071.18 
 1,310,773.08 
 981,439.45 
 1,156,323.82 
 389,962.90 
 391,828.24 
 387,432.88 
 384,969.84 
 759,673.08 
 297,415.92 
 $ 305,928.11 
 
 remarks. 
 
 Sunk by torpedo 1865. 
 Name changed to Jason 1869 
 Foundered 1863. 
 Laid up. 
 
 Sold 1868, 
 Laid up. 
 Laid up. 
 Laid up. 
 Sold 1868. 
 Sold 1891. 
 Laid up. 
 
 Sunk by torpedo 1864. 
 
 Sold in 1873. 
 
 Sold in 1873. 
 
 Sold as Osceola 1873 
 
 Sold 1867. 
 Sold 1865. 
 
 Sold 1883. 
 
 See Chap. XXXII. 
 
 Later Terror, 1869. Sold to Wm. 
 
 Cramp, 1874. 
 Broken up about 1873. 
 
 Rebuilt, (see text) 
 
 See new Amphitrite. 
 
 Sold 1874. 
 
 Changed to Harpy and to Keway- 
 
 den. Sold 1874. 
 Sunk by torpedo 1865. 
 
 Sold 1874. 
 
 Sold by builder to French Gov't. 
 Wrecked 1883. 
 Sold 1870, 
 
DATE. 
 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 1863 
 
 NAME. 
 
 Monocacy 
 
 Muscoota 
 
 Shamoken 
 
 Suwanee 
 
 Winnepec 
 
 Ammonoosuc (Iowa) 
 Neshaming (Nevada) 
 
 Wampanoag 
 
 (Florida) 
 
 Pomponoosuc 
 
 (Connecticut) 
 
 Madawaska , 
 
 (Tennessee) 
 Chattanooga 
 
 Idaho 
 
 Kalamazoo (Colossus) 
 
 Passaconaway 
 
 (Massachusetts) 
 
 Quinsigamond 
 
 (Oregon) 
 
 Shackaraaxon , 
 
 (Nebraska) 
 Casco , 
 
 Chinio .... 
 Cohoes.... 
 
 Etlah 
 
 Klamath . 
 Koka ..... 
 Modoc... 
 
 Napa 
 
 Naubuc . . 
 Nausett.. 
 Shawnee. 
 Shiloh.... 
 Squando. 
 Suncook. 
 
 MATERIAL. 
 
 Iron. 
 
 tt 
 
 1 1 
 
 a 
 
 tt 
 
 Wood. 
 
 a 
 i 
 
 u 
 
 tt 
 i i 
 a 
 a 
 t k 
 
 Iron. 
 
 a 
 
 1 1 
 
 1 1 
 
 ( t 
 
 tt 
 
 tt 
 
 a 
 
 t i 
 
 t i 
 
 a 
 
 PROPULSION. 
 
 DISPLACE- 
 MENT, 
 TONS, 
 
 TONNAGE, 
 OLD. 
 
 LENGTH. 
 
 BEAM. 
 
 
 1,370 
 
 1,030 
 
 255 ' 
 
 35' 
 
 
 ti 
 
 n. 
 
 tt 
 
 I ( 
 
 | 
 
 i 
 
 c t 
 
 t t 
 
 .t 
 
 1 1 
 
 tt 
 
 u 
 
 i 
 
 V 4 
 
 t i 
 
 I k 
 
 tt 
 
 u 
 
 U 
 
 i t 
 
 ii 
 
 
 3,850 
 
 3,213 
 ii 
 
 335 ' 
 
 W 4" 
 
 4 4 
 
 
 tt 
 
 t< 
 
 4,215 
 
 3,281 
 
 a 
 
 45' 2" 
 
 
 4 446 
 4,105 
 3,043 
 3,241 
 
 3,713 
 3,281 
 
 t i 
 
 48' 
 
 tt 
 
 tt 
 
 45' 2" 
 
 a 
 
 315 / 
 298' 
 
 46' 
 
 
 2,638 
 
 44/ Q» 
 
 
 5,600 
 a 
 
 3,200 
 i i 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 
 
 i i 
 
 i <. 
 
 i . 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 i i 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 
 614 
 
 223 ' 
 
 w 3" 
 
 tt 
 
 
 u 
 
 tt 
 
 a 
 
 n 
 
 
 it 
 
 1 1 
 
 1 1 
 
 a 
 
 
 u 
 
 1 1 
 
 1 1 
 
 ti 
 
 
 i t 
 
 1 1 
 
 u 
 
 " 
 
 
 I 4 
 
 i 4 
 
 i 4 
 
 a 
 
 
 t t 
 
 4 • 
 
 i 4 
 
 a 
 
 
 I i 
 
 4 4 
 
 i i 
 
 
 
 ii 
 
 44 
 
 it 
 
 
 i 
 
 :t 
 
 I i 
 
 ti 
 
 <c 
 
 
 u 
 
 U 
 
 I i 
 
 
 
 t( 
 
 1 
 
 44 
 
 it 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 a 
 
 
 tt 
 
 44 
 
 tt 
 
 
 
 tt 
 
 <( 
 
 i i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
BY WHOM AND WHERE BUILT. 
 
 HULL. 
 
 A. & W. Denmead & 
 Son, Baltimore, Md.. 
 
 T. S. Rowland, Con ? l I. 
 W'ks,Greenp't, N.Y. 
 
 Beany,Son & Archbold, 
 Chester, Pa 
 
 Keany,Son &Archbold, 
 Ceester, Pa 
 
 Harrison Loring, Bos- 
 ton, Mass..... 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia, Pa 
 
 Navy Yard, New 
 York 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 William Cramp & (Sons 
 Philadelphia.. 
 
 George Steers, New 
 York 
 
 Navy Yard, New York. 
 
 MACHINERY. 
 
 COST. 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 
 Me 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia, Pa 
 
 Atlantic Works, 
 Boston, Mass 
 
 Aquilla Adams, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 M. F. Merritt, Green- 
 point, New York.... 
 
 Ohas. W. McCord, St. 
 Louis, Mo 
 
 Alex. Swift & Co. Cin- 
 cinnati, Ohio 
 
 Wilcox & Whitney, 
 Camden, N. J 
 
 J, S. Underhill, New 
 York, N. Y 
 
 Harlan & Hollings- 
 worth, Wilmington 
 
 W. Perrine, Williams- 
 burg, N. Y 
 
 Donald McKay, East 
 Boston, Mass 
 
 Curtis & Tilden, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 George C. Bestor, St. 
 Louis, Mo 
 
 McKay & Aldus, East 
 Boston, Mass 
 
 Globe Works, South 
 Boston, Mass 
 
 A. & W. Denmead & 
 Son, Baltimore, Md. 
 T.F. Bowland, Con'l I. 
 
 W'ks,Greenp't,N.Y. 
 Beany, Son& Archbold 
 
 Chester, Pa 
 Beany, Son<fe Archbold 
 
 Chester, Pa 
 
 Harrison Loring, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 J. Roach, Etna Iron 
 Works, New York... 
 Novelty Iron Works, 
 
 York 
 
 Corliss St. Eng. Co., 
 
 Providence, K. I 
 
 Allaire Works, New 
 
 York 
 
 Merrick & Son, Phila- 
 delphia, Pa 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Delamater I'n Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Delamater I'n Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Atlantic Works , Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Pusey, Jones & Co., 
 Wilmington, DeL... 
 Atlantic Works, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Aquilla, Adams, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 M. E. Merritt, Green- 
 point, New York 
 
 Chas. W. McCord, St. 
 
 Louis, Mo o 
 
 Alex. Swift & Co., Cin- 
 cinnati, Ohio 
 
 Wilcox & Whitney, 
 
 Camden, N. J 
 
 J. S. Underhill, New 
 
 York, N. Y 
 
 Harlan & Rollings 
 
 worth, Wilmington... 
 William Perrine, Wil- 
 liamsburg, N. Y 
 Donald McKay, East 
 
 Boston, Mass 
 Curtis & Tilden, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 George C. Bestor, St. 
 
 Louis, Mo 
 McKay & Aldus, East 
 Boston, Mass 
 
 293,473.98 
 297,678.80 
 278,020.81 
 278,662.78 
 298,132.24 
 
 1,575,643.84 
 
 1,673,080.52 
 950,159.31 
 550,000.00 
 
 529,996.99 
 620,445.52 
 594,012.10 
 589,458.82 
 602,985.34 
 545,694.81 
 513,353.13 
 506,366.33 
 513,975.74 
 578,110.98 
 581,818.50 
 589.428.20 
 589,535.70 
 
 Globe Works, South 
 Boston, Mass | 593,674.30 
 
 In commission. 
 Sold 1869. 
 Sold 1869. 
 Wrecked, 1868. 
 Sold 1869. 
 Sold 1883. 
 
 Sold in part payment for Puritan 
 Sold 1885. (See Chap. XXIX. 
 Broken up 1883. 
 Sold 1887. 
 Sold 1871. 
 
 Broken up on stocks. 
 
 Broken up on stocks. 
 
 Broken up on stocks. 
 
 Broken up on stocks. 
 
 Sold for use in new vessels. 
 
 Sold for use in new vessels. 
 
 Sold for use in new vessels. 
 
 Sold 1874. 
 
 Sold 1874. 
 
 Sold 1874. 
 
 Sold 1874. 
 
 Sold 1874. 
 
 Sold 1874. 
 
 Sold 1874. 
 
 Sold. 
 
 Sold. 
 
 Sold. 
 
 Traded as old iron for new. 
 
 48 
 
BATE, 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1863 
 
 1864 
 
 1864 
 
 1864 
 
 1864 
 1864 
 
 1864 
 
 NAME, 
 
 Tunxis. 
 
 Iron. 
 
 Umpqua 
 Wassuc . 
 
 Waxsaw 
 
 Tazoo 
 Yuma. 
 
 Antietam. 
 Guerriere. 
 
 Illinois. 
 
 MATERIAL, 
 
 PROPULSION. 
 
 it 
 
 Wood 
 
 Java 
 
 Kewaydin 
 
 (Pennsylvania), 
 
 Minnetonka 
 
 (California) 
 Ontario (New York). 
 Piscataqua 
 
 (Delaware) 
 
 Contoocook (Albany), 
 
 Manitou (Worcester) 
 
 Mosholu (Severn) .... 
 Pushmataha (Cam- 
 bridge) (Congress). 
 
 Arapahoe. , 
 Keosauqua 
 Mondamitf. 
 
 Tahgayuta . 
 Wanalosett. 
 Willamette . 
 
 Algoma (Benicia) 
 
 Alert 
 
 (first) 
 Epervier 
 
 Nantasket 
 
 Quirmebaug 
 
 first) «««£«»«c« 
 
 I ( 
 
 i i 
 
 • • a e e « 
 
 Wood. 
 
 Wood 
 
 **•«»• 
 
 9 a » ■ 8 
 
 2 screws. 
 
 it 
 
 « < 
 
 Screw. 
 
 i c 
 
 ( < 
 
 it 
 
 Screw. 
 
 DISPLACE- 
 MENT, 
 TONS. 
 
 3,953 
 
 2 screws........... 
 
 Screw... 
 
 << 
 
 1 1 
 
 3,003 
 
 TONNAGE. 
 (OLD.) 
 
 614 
 
 3,177 
 
 i 1 
 
 u 
 
 iC 
 
 ( i 
 
 2,348 
 
 2,400 
 
 1,129 
 1,113 
 1,129 
 
 LENGTH. 
 
 223" 
 
 312' 6" 
 
 316' 6" 
 312' 6" 
 
 a 
 
 290' 
 
 250' 6" 
 
 216 / 
 216' 
 216' 
 
 BEAM. 
 
 44' > V 
 
 iC 
 
 t i 
 
 46' 
 
 47' 
 46' 
 41' 
 
 4 4 
 
 38' 
 
 31' 
 30' 
 31' 
 
BY "WHOM AND WHEEE BUILT. 
 
 HULL, 
 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 Philadelphia, Pa.... 
 
 Suowden & Mason, 
 Pittsburgh, Pa 
 
 Geo. W Lawrence, 
 Portland, Me 
 
 A. & W.Denmead, 
 Baltimore, Md 
 
 Merrick & Sons, Phil- 
 adelphia, Pa 
 
 Alex. Swift & Co., 
 Cincinnatti, Ohio.... 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia, Pa 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 U. S. Navy Yard, 
 Kittery, Me 
 
 Navy Yard, New York. 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 Maine 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery 
 Maine 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 Maine 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 Navy Yard, New York. 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia, Pa 
 
 Never built 
 
 machinery. 
 
 Never built. 
 Never built. 
 Never built. 
 Never built. 
 Never built. 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 
 Maine , 
 
 Kever built 
 
 Never built 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston 
 
 Navy Yard, New York. 
 Navy Yard, Kittery.,.. 
 
 Beany, Son <fc Arch- 
 bold, Chester, Pa 
 
 Snowden & Mason, 
 
 Pittsburgh, Pa 
 
 Geo. W. Lawrence, 
 
 Portland, Me 
 
 A. & W. Denmead, 
 
 Baltimore, Md 
 
 Merrick & Sons, Phila- 
 delphia, Pa 
 
 Alex Swift & Co., 
 
 Cincinnati, Ohio 
 
 Morris & Towne, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa 
 
 Globe Works, Boston, 
 
 Mass 
 
 Corliss Steam Eng. Co., 
 
 Providence, R. I 
 
 J. Roach, Etnal.W'ks, 
 
 New York 
 
 Harrison Loring, Bos- 
 
 Ad ton, Mass 
 
 Woodruff & Beach, 
 
 Hartford, Conn 
 
 J. Roach, Etna I. W'ks 
 
 New York 
 
 Woodruff & Beach, 
 
 Hartford, Conn 
 
 Providence St. Eng. Co. 
 
 Providence, R. I 
 
 Woodrug & Beach, 
 
 Hartford, Conn 
 
 S. Brooklyn Eng. Wks. 
 
 Brooklyn, N. Y 
 
 Morris, Towne & Co., 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa 
 
 Providence St. Eng. Co. 
 
 Providence, R. 1 
 
 J. Roach, New York... 
 
 Washington I. Works, 
 Newbury, New York 
 
 Washington I. Works, 
 Newbury, New York 
 
 Hazelhurst & Wiegard, 
 Baltimore, Md 
 
 Poole & Hunt, Balti- 
 more, Md 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery, 
 Maine 
 
 Navy Yard, Washing- 
 ton 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery 
 
 COST, 
 
 $ 648,070.99 
 595,649.36 
 552,374.51 
 592,587.32 
 566,364.26 
 602,985.34 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 1,154,325.10 
 
 1,223,246.97 
 
 1,177.895.04 
 
 Jackson & Watkins, 
 London, England 
 
 Navy Yard, Washing- 
 ton 
 
 785,785.58 
 
 776,380.20 
 
 8flIC9iC00e»9C90?e# 
 
 360,037.64 
 
 Broken up andjsold as old iron 
 Sold 1874. 
 
 Sold as old iron ; used in Terror 
 
 Sold. 
 
 Sold. 
 
 Sold. 
 
 Sold 1885. 
 Sold 1872. 
 
 Broken up on stocks. 
 Broken up on stocks. 
 Broken up on stocks. 
 Sold 1875. 
 
 Broken up on stocks 
 Foundered at dock; sold 1877 
 Sold 1872. 
 Sold 1883. 
 
 Sold for new Puritan. 
 
 Sold 1883. 
 
 Not built. 
 
 Not built. 
 
 Not built. 
 
 Not built. 
 
 Not built. 
 
 Not built. 
 
 Sold 1884. 
 
 Broken up. 
 
 Engines in store, Norfolk 
 Sold, 
 
 Broken up; new ship same name 
 
 built. 
 Sold 1873. 
 
dAte. 
 
 NAME. 
 
 1864 Swatara 
 
 1864 Fortune 
 
 1864 Leyden 
 
 1864 Mayflower 
 
 1664 Nina 
 
 1864 Palos 
 
 1864 Pinta 
 
 1864 Speedwell 
 
 1804 Staudish 
 
 1864 Triana 
 
 1864 Spuyten Duyvil 
 
 1867 Alaska... 
 
 1867 Omaha 
 
 1867 Plymouth 
 1872 
 1872 
 1872 
 
 1872 
 1872 
 1862 
 
 1873 
 
 1874 
 
 .1874 
 1874 
 
 1874 
 
 "J 87-1- 
 1874 
 
 Galena 
 
 (second) 
 
 Mohican 
 
 (second) 
 Marion 
 
 Quinnebaug. 
 
 ((second) 
 
 Swatara 
 
 (second) 
 Vandali a 
 
 Adams 
 
 Alliance*.... 
 
 Enterprise 
 Essex , 
 
 iNipSIC .... 
 
 (second.) 
 Trenton ... 
 
 MATERIAL . 
 
 Wood. . .. 
 
 Iron 
 
 PROPULSION. 
 
 Screw. 
 
 <( 
 
 Wood- 
 Iron armr 
 Wood 
 
 « • 
 
 i c 
 
 ( i 
 
 it 
 
 a 
 
 i i 
 
 Screw 
 
 Alert Iron j 
 
 (second) j j 
 
 Huron 
 
 (second) 
 Ranger , . . . , 
 
 Wood 
 
 i i 
 
 c ( 
 
 4 4 
 
 ii 
 
 iron 
 
 • • • 1 e r> i © « 
 
 Fowler wheel.... 
 
 , — 
 
 DISPLACE- 
 MENT, 
 TONS. 
 
 TONNAQE. 
 (OLD. ) 
 
 LENGTH. 
 
 , , , 
 
 BBS AM. 
 
 1,113 
 
 420 
 
 
 i 
 
 21 (Y 
 216' 
 
 30' 
 26' 
 
 350 
 
 • < 
 
 a 
 
 tc 
 
 a 
 
 cc 
 
 c. 
 
 *.; 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 (. 6 
 
 d 
 
 k 
 
 
 t • 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 
 i c 
 
 U 
 
 u 
 
 a 
 
 .c 
 
 C £ 
 
 a 
 
 d 
 
 a 
 
 i I 
 
 u 
 
 n 
 
 < i 
 
 ii 
 
 i ( 
 
 207 
 
 lift 
 
 fid./ *>// 
 
 OA/ Of/ 
 
 2,394 
 
 
 25(K-6" 
 
 a 
 
 w 
 
 u 
 
 Cc 
 
 
 hi 
 
 
 
 ki 
 
 
 
 oi p./ 
 
 
 it 
 
 
 /« 
 
 £( 
 
 a 
 
 
 ii 
 
 (i 
 
 it 
 
 
 i i 
 
 ii 
 
 t b 
 
 
 t i 
 
 i < 
 
 1 ,020 
 i • 
 
 
 s k 
 
 on/ 
 
 
 175 / 
 
 32 ; 
 
 a 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 
 4 < 
 
 a 
 
 -t r> >-? ff 
 
 J. jU i O 
 I i 
 
 
 1 OK/ 
 
 j oo 
 a 
 
 oO 
 .1 
 
 
 t i 
 
 
 i t 
 
 C i 
 
 ii 
 
 
 u 
 
 hi 
 
 a 
 
 
 u 
 
 U 
 
 3,900 
 
 
 25S / 
 1W 
 
 48^ 
 
 800 
 
 
 
 
 • ■ — t — r' T 
 
BY "WHOM AND WHERE BUILT. 
 
 HULL. 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia 
 
 James Tetlow, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 James Tetlow, Boston 
 Mass 
 
 James Tetlow, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 Reany, Son, <fc Arch- 
 bold, Chester, Pa.. 
 
 James Tetlow, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 Keany, Son, & Arch- 
 bold, Chester, Pa.... 
 
 James Tetlow, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 J ames Tetlow, Boston, 
 Mass 
 
 William Perrine, New 
 York 
 
 S. H. Pook,Iron Works, 
 Mystic, Conn 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston... 
 
 Nav^ Yard s Philadel 
 
 ptila 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 MACHINERY, 
 
 Navy Yard, Norfolk... 
 
 Navy Yard, Mare 
 Island, CM 
 
 Navy Yard, Kittery. 
 Maine , 
 
 Navy Yard, Philadel- 
 phia Pa...., 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston.... 
 
 J. Roach, Chester, 
 
 Pa 
 
 J. Roach, Chester, 
 
 Pa 
 
 Harlan <fe Hollings- 
 
 worth, Wilmington.. 
 D. McKay, Boston, 
 
 Mass... 
 
 Navy Yard, Norfolk. 
 
 J. W. Griffiths, 
 Kittery, Me 
 
 D. McKay, Kittery 
 and Boston 
 
 Navy Yard, Washing- 
 ton, D. C 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 Navy Yard, Ne w York 
 
 Navy Yard Washing- 
 ton, D. C 
 
 James Tetlow, Boston. 
 
 Mass 
 
 James Tetlow,Boston, 
 
 Mass 
 
 James Tetlow, Boston. 
 
 Mass 
 
 Beany, Son & Arch- 
 hold, Chester, Pa.... 
 James Tetlow,Boston, 
 
 Mass 
 
 Reany, Son & Arch- 
 bold, Chester, Pa... 
 James Tetlow, Boston, 
 
 Mass 
 
 James Tetlow,Boston, 
 
 Mass 
 
 William Perrine, New 
 
 York 
 
 S. H . Pook,Iron Works, 
 
 Mystic, Conn 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston . 
 
 COST. 
 
 Navy Yard New York 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 Navy Yard, Norfolk. 
 
 Navy Yard, Mare 
 Island, Cal 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston.... 
 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 Navy Yard, New York 
 
 $ 327,365.07 
 149,600.00 
 128,000.00 
 106,240.00 
 128,000.00 
 128,000.00 
 128,000.00 
 149,600.00 
 106,240.00 
 128.000.00 
 45,036. 29 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston. 
 
 J. Roach, Chester, 
 
 Pa 
 
 J. Roach, Chester, 
 
 Pa 
 
 John Roach, Chester, 
 
 Pa 
 
 Atlantic Works, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Quintard Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Woodruff Iron Co. , 
 
 Hartford, Conn 
 
 Atlantic Works, Bos- 
 ton Mass 
 
 W. Wright & Co., 
 
 Kewburg N. Y 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 
 New York 
 
 326,015.68 
 
 Rrokenup; new ship samename built. 
 In service. 
 In service. 
 
 Practice steamer; sold 1893. 
 
 In service. 
 
 Sold 1893. 
 
 In commission. 
 
 Sold 1894. 
 
 In commission. 
 
 Wrecked 1891. 
 
 War service James River. 
 Sold 1883. 
 
 Laid up 1891. 
 Broken up 1884. 
 
 Sold. 
 
 Pacific squadron. 
 
 Pacific squadron. 
 
 Sold 1894. 
 Laid up 1891. 
 
 Wrecked 1889. 
 
 Pacific squadron. 
 Wrecked 1877. 
 
 Special service Pacific station. 
 Pacific station. 
 Training ship. 
 
 Public Marine School, Boston. 
 Training ship. 
 
 Receiving ship, Puget Sound. 
 Wrecked 1889. 
 |In service. 
 
DATE. 
 
 1874 
 1874 
 1874 
 1874 
 1874 
 1874 
 1875 
 1888 
 1891 
 
 NAME. 
 
 Intrepid 
 
 Despatch 
 
 (second) 
 Monadnock 
 
 (second) 
 Amphitrite 
 
 (second) 
 Miantonomoh .. 
 
 (second) 
 
 Terror 
 
 (second) 
 
 Puritan 
 
 (second) 
 Triton 
 
 Traffie 
 
 Polaris 
 
 Tigress .. 
 
 Jeannette 
 
 Rodgers 
 
 Thetis 
 
 Fern 
 
 MATERIAL, 
 
 Iron. . 
 Wood, 
 Iron 
 
 t t 
 
 Steel > Screw 
 
 Wood. 
 
 PBOPTJLSION. 
 
 2 screws 
 Screw .... 
 
 2 screws 
 
 a 
 
 it 
 
 i( 
 
 it 
 
 < t 
 
 a 
 
 i i 
 
 DISPLACE- 
 MENT, 
 TONS. 
 
 1,150 
 560 
 3,990 
 
 a 
 a 
 a 
 
 6,060 
 212 
 280 
 
 Jtonnage. 
 
 1,250 
 840 
 
 LENGTH. 
 
 170' 
 174' 
 259' 6" 
 
 Ci 
 
 ii 
 it 
 
 289' 6" 
 96' 9" 
 106 / 
 135' 
 
 142 / 
 
 166' 
 
 BEAM. 
 
 35' 
 
 25' 6" 
 55' 10" 
 
 1 1 
 
 60 / 1J" 
 
 20' 9" 
 29* 4" 
 28' 
 
 25' 
 
 30' 3" 
 
 DATE. 
 
 1883 
 
 1883 
 1883 
 1883 
 1887 
 1887 
 1887 
 1887 
 
 NAME. 
 
 Dolphin. 
 Atlanta., 
 
 Boston. 
 
 Chicago. 
 Newark. 
 
 Charleston 
 
 Baltimore. 
 
 Vesuvius. 
 
 THB NEW NAVY 
 
 TYPE. 
 
 Despatch boat. 
 
 Protected cruiser. . . . 
 
 u 
 
 i i 
 
 Dynamite-gun. 
 cruiser 
 
 MATERIAL. 
 
 Steel 
 
 1 1 
 
 «( 
 
 MEAN 
 DRAFT. 
 
 14' 3" 
 
 17 / 
 
 17' 
 19' 
 
 IS' 9" 
 19' 7" 
 
 20' 6 
 
 10' 8' 
 
 TONS 
 DISPLACE' 
 MENT. 
 
 1,485 
 3,189 
 3,189 
 4,500 
 4,098 
 4,040 
 4,600 
 930 
 
 LENGTH 
 
 ON 
 L. W- L. 
 
 240' 
 270' 3" 
 270' 3 /; 
 325 
 310' 
 312 / 
 327' 6" 
 251 / 9" 
 
 BREADTH 
 
 32' 
 42' 
 
 42' 
 48' 2' f 
 49' 2" 
 46' 
 
 48' 6" 
 26' 5" 
 
BY WHOM AND WHERE BUILT. 
 
 COST. 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 HULL. 
 
 MACHINERY. 
 
 Navy Yard, Boston, 
 
 Purchased of Henry 
 0. Smith, New York 
 
 P. Burgess, Vallejo, 
 Cal 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 
 
 Purchased of Henry 
 
 C. Smith, New York 
 Navy Yard, Mare 
 
 $ 98,500.00 
 
 Broken up 1885-'87. 
 
 Wrecked 1891; wreck sold. 
 
 Not yet completed. 
 
 In commission. 
 
 In reserve League Island. 
 
 Not yet completed. 
 
 Not yet completed. 
 
 Tug-boat. 
 
 Tug-boat. 
 
 Crushed in the ice, 1872. 
 Chartered. — Returned to Owner. 
 
 See Chapter XXXIV. 
 
 Burned 1881. 
 
 In service. 
 Transport steamer. 
 
 Harlan & Hollings- 
 worth, Wilmington. D 
 
 John Eoach, Chester, 
 Pa 
 
 Harlan & Hollings- 
 worth, Wilmington, D 
 John Roach, Chester, 
 Pa 
 
 2,102,752.22 
 
 William Cramp & 
 Sons. Philadelphia. 
 
 John Roach, Chester, 
 Pa 
 
 William Cramp & 
 Sons, Philadelphia. 
 
 John Roach, Chester, 
 Pa 
 
 John H. Dialogue, 
 
 D. McCarty, S. Brook- 
 lyn, New York 
 
 John H. Dialogue, 
 
 D. McCarty, South 
 
 Neafie & Levy, Phila- 
 delphia, Pa 
 
 80,000.00 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 100,000.00 
 140,000.00 
 
 Alex. Stevens & Sons, 
 Dundee, Scotland... 
 
 Alex. Stevens & Sons, 
 Dundee, Scotland... 
 
 Delamater Iron Works 
 New York, 1871 
 
 THE NEW NAYY, 
 
 BY WHOM AND WHEUE BUILT OR BUILDING. 
 
 COST. 
 
 PRESENT CONDITION. 
 
 HULL. 
 
 MACHINERY. 
 
 John Roach <& Sons, 
 
 J. Roach & Sons, Ches- 
 ter, and U. S. Govt. 
 
 J. Roach & Sons, Ches- 
 ter, andU. S. Govt. 
 
 J. Roach & Sons, Ches- 
 ter, and U. S, Govt. 
 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 Union Iron Works, 
 San Francisco, Cal.. 
 
 Wm. Cramp <fc Sons, 
 Philadelphia, Pa..... 
 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 Philadelphia, Pa.... 
 
 John Roach & Sons 
 Chester, Pa 
 
 at New York Navy Yd 
 
 at New York Navy Yd 
 
 at New York Navy Yd 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa.... 
 Union Iron Works 
 
 San Francisco, Cal.. 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa. 
 Wm. Cramp <fe Sons, 
 
 $ 360,149.28 
 805,711.64 
 809,923.44 
 1,245,776.46 
 1,379,897.47 
 1,164,504.10 
 1,426,504.93 
 317,555.33 
 
 In commission. 
 
 Repairing. 
 
 In commission. 
 
 Laid up to receive new ma- 
 chinery and boilers. 
 In commission. 
 
 In commission. 
 
 In commission. 
 
 Laid up. 
 
DATE. 
 
 .NAME. 
 
 1887 
 
 
 1887 " 
 
 
 1888 
 
 
 1888 
 
 
 1888 
 
 
 1888 
 
 
 1888 
 
 
 1888 
 
 
 1889 
 
 
 1889 
 
 
 1890 
 
 
 1890 
 
 
 1890 
 
 
 1890 
 
 
 1890 
 1890 
 
 (second) 
 
 1890 
 
 Montgomery 
 
 1890 
 
 
 1891 
 
 Minneapolis 
 
 1891 
 
 
 1891 
 
 
 1891 
 1891 
 1891 
 1891 
 
 (second) 
 (second) 
 (second) 
 
 1891 
 
 
 1891 
 
 
 1891 
 
 
 1891 
 
 
 1892 
 
 
 Gunboat. 
 
 type. 
 
 MATERIAL. 
 
 Steel 
 
 Torpedo boat 
 
 Protected cruiser. .. 
 
 Armored cruiser 
 
 Coast defense — 
 
 barbette monitor 
 Second-class battle 
 
 ship 
 
 Armored cruiser. . . . 
 
 Protected cruiser ... 
 
 a 
 
 t i 
 
 1 1 
 
 Steel 
 
 Cruiser 
 
 Protected cruiser.... 
 
 << 
 
 a 
 
 Practice vessel for 
 
 naval cadets 
 
 Battle-ship 
 
 u a 
 
 Harbor defense ram 
 Gunboat 
 
 Tug boat . 
 
 i c a 
 
 Torpedo boat. 
 
 1 1 
 t i 
 t i 
 1 1 
 a 
 
 £ t 
 
 a 
 1 1 
 
 tt 
 
 1 1 
 
 l l 61 
 
 O • • 
 
 a 
 t i 
 t < 
 tt 
 n 
 
 a 
 1 1 
 
 a 
 
 it 
 
 a 
 
 1 1 
 
 1 1 
 
 a 
 
 it 
 
 it 
 
 MEAN ] 
 DRAFT. 
 
 XUJNfe 
 DISPLACE- 
 
 MciJN x • 
 
 JjJiiJN 1*1x1 
 ON 
 
 T TIT T 
 IjU W • XJ« 
 
 BREADTH 
 
 11/ 7// 
 
 XX # 
 
 890 
 
 1 76' 3 /; 
 
 31' 
 
 C/X 
 
 14' 
 
 XT! 
 
 1 703 
 
 230' 
 
 36' 
 
 14' 
 
 XT 
 
 1 700 
 
 111 w/ 
 
 230 
 
 36' 
 
 14' 
 
 X JL 
 
 1,740 
 
 230' 
 
 36' 
 
 5' 3" 
 
 116 
 
 JL J. \_7 
 
 138' 9" 
 
 14' 10" 
 
 JL JL JL \J 
 
 19' 3" 
 
 4,324 
 
 327 / 6" 
 
 48' 6" 
 
 18' 9" 
 
 4,088 
 
 310' 
 
 49' 2" 
 
 21' 6" 
 
 6 648 
 
 \Jy \J JLV_/ 
 
 318' 
 
 57' 
 
 14' 6" 
 
 4.084 
 
 256' 
 
 59' 
 
 22 / 6' ' 
 23' 11' 
 
 X X 
 
 6,300 
 8 480 
 
 301' 4" 
 380' 6' ' 
 
 64' 1" 
 64' 10" 
 
 21' 6" 
 
 5 870 
 
 340' 
 
 53' 
 
 18' 
 
 3 183 
 
 300' 
 
 42' 
 
 JLAW 
 
 
 3 183 
 
 xt» u 
 
 300' 
 
 42' 
 
 1 4' 6" 
 
 2 050 
 
 257' 
 
 37 
 
 14' 9' ' 
 
 2,068 
 
 257 
 
 37 
 
 14 / 61" 
 
 2,079 
 
 257 
 
 37 
 
 22' 6" 
 
 7,375 
 
 41]' 7" 
 
 JL. .1, JL f 
 
 58' 5" 
 
 22 / 6" 
 
 Ami i^i \J 
 
 7,387 
 
 411' 7" 
 
 JL J - JL. 1 
 
 58' 2" 
 
 IV 6" 
 24 / 
 
 832 
 10 288 
 
 Xvj *WvJ T vJ t 
 
 187' 6" 
 
 348' 
 
 32' 
 
 69' 3" 
 
 24' 
 
 X»/ JL 
 
 10.288 
 
 348' 
 
 69' 3" 
 
 24 / 
 
 10 288 
 
 348' 
 
 69' 3" 
 
 15' 
 
 2 183 
 
 250' 9" 
 
 43' 5" 
 
 X»J» v 
 
 12 / 
 
 1 177 
 
 204' 
 
 32' 
 
 12' 
 
 1 177 
 
 204' 
 
 32' 
 
 8' 
 
 192 
 
 92' 6" 
 
 21' 
 
 8' 
 
 192 
 
 92' 6" 
 
 21' 
 
 8 / 
 
 192 
 
 92' 6" 
 
 21' 
 
 4/ 9// 
 
 120 
 
 150' 
 
 15' 6" 
 
BY TYHOM AND WHERE BUILT OR BUILDING. 
 
 HULL. 
 
 MACHINERY. 
 
 
 
 Columbian Iron W'ks 
 
 Baltimore, Maryland 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa.... 
 N. F. Palmer & Co., 
 
 Chester, Pa 
 
 N. F. Palmer & Co., 
 
 Chester, Pa 
 
 Herreschoff Mfg. Co., 
 Bristol, Ehode Island 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 
 Philadelphia Pa... 
 Union Iron Works, 
 
 San Francisco, Cal... 
 U. S. Govt. Navy 
 
 Yard, New York.. 
 Union Iron Works, 
 
 San Francisco, Cal.. 
 U. S. Govt. Navy 
 
 Yard, Norfolk, Va... 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa 
 
 Union Iron Works, 
 
 San Francisco, Cal. . 
 U. S. Govt, at Navy 
 
 Yard, New York 
 
 U. S. Govt. Navy 
 
 Yard, Norfolk 
 
 Harrison Loring, 
 
 Boston, Mass 
 
 Columbian Iron Wks, 
 
 Baltimore, Maryland 
 Columbian Iron Wks, 
 
 Baltimore, Maryland 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa 
 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa 
 
 S. L. Moore & Sons. 
 
 Elizabethport, N. J. 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa... . 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa.... 
 Union Iron Works, 
 
 San Francisco, Cal. 
 Bath Iron Works, 
 
 Bath, Maine 
 
 Bath Iron Works, 
 
 Bath, Maine 
 
 Bath Iron Works, 
 
 Bath, Maine 
 
 Harrison Loring, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Harrison Loring, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Harrison Loring, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Iowa Iron Works, 
 
 Dubuque, Iowa 
 
 COST. 
 
 Columbian Iron Wks 
 Baltimore, Maryland 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons. 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa.... 
 Quintard Iron Works. 
 
 New York 
 
 Quintard Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Hernesehoff Mfg. Co., 
 Bristol, Rhode Island 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 Philadelphia, Pa... 
 Union Iron Works, 
 
 San Francisco, Cal. 
 Quintard Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Union Iron Works, 
 
 San Francisco, Cal.. 
 Richmond Loco. W'ks. 
 
 Richmond, Va 
 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa 
 
 Union Iron Works 
 
 San Francisco, Cal.. 
 U. S. Govt. Navy 
 
 Yard, New York 
 
 U. S. Govt., Navy 
 
 Yard, New York 
 
 Quintard Iron Works, 
 
 New York 
 
 Columbian Iron W'ks 
 Baltimore , Maryland 
 Columbian Iron W'ks 
 Baltimore, Maryland 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa 
 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa 
 
 S. L. Moore & Sons, 
 
 Elizabethport, N. J. 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa 
 
 Wm. Cramp <fe Sons, 
 Philadelphia, Pa.... 
 Union Iron Works, 
 San Francisco, Cal.. 
 Bath Iron Works, 
 
 Bath, Maine 
 
 Bath Iron Works, 
 
 Bath, Maine 
 
 Bath Iron Works, 
 
 Bath, Maine 
 
 Harrison Loring, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Harrison Loring, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Harrison Loring, Bos- 
 ton, Mass 
 
 Iowa Iron Works, 
 Dubuque, Iowa 
 
 307,996.55 
 498,305.45 
 553,875.55 
 553,117.66 
 98,666.29 
 1,424,864.85 
 1,609,745.71 
 t2 f 600,000. 00 
 2,065,779.30 
 2,500,000.00 
 3,249,224.45 
 1,796,000.00 
 fl,100,000.00 
 tl,100,000.00 
 t674,000.00 
 f612,500.00 
 1612,500.00 
 1-2,725.000.00 
 t2,690,000.00 
 297,360.17 
 1-3,020,000.00 
 *3, 020,000. 00 
 *3,222,810.00 
 *930,000.00 
 ^318,500.00 
 *318,500.00 
 33,253.57 
 33,648,91 
 33,176.52 
 *113,500.00 
 
 PRESENT CONDITION. 
 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission, 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In commission. 
 In service. 
 In service. 
 In service. 
 Undergoing trials. 
 
 t Limit of cost or contract price. 
 
 ^Contract price, or limit fixed by appropriation. 
 
BATE. 
 
 NAME. 
 
 1893 
 1893 
 1894 
 1834 
 1894 
 
 1895 
 1895 
 1895 
 1896 
 1896 
 1896 
 1896 
 1896 
 1896 
 1896 
 1896 
 1896 
 1896 
 1896 
 
 Brooklyn .. 
 
 (second) 
 Iowa 
 
 (second) 
 Nashville.. 
 
 Wilmington. 
 Helena 
 
 Unadilla.. 
 
 (second) 
 No. 5 
 
 Kearsarge.. 
 
 (second) 
 Kentucky 
 
 No. 10. 
 No. 11. 
 No. 12. 
 No. 13. 
 No. 14. 
 No. 15. 
 No. 6... 
 No. 7... 
 No. 8... 
 
 TYPE. 
 
 Armored cruiser. ... 
 
 Battle-ship 
 
 Gunboat 
 
 Torpedo boats. 
 Tug boat 
 
 1 1 a 
 
 Battle-ship. 
 
 it 
 
 Gunboat 
 
 Torpedo boat. 
 
 MATERIAL 
 
 . . 
 
 MEAN 
 DRAFT. 
 
 TOWS 
 DISPLACE- 
 MENT- 
 
 LENGTH 
 
 ON 
 L. W- L. 
 
 BREADTH 
 
 Steel 
 
 24 / 
 
 9,153 
 
 400 / 6" 
 
 64 / 
 
 *' 
 
 24' 
 
 11,296 
 
 360' 
 
 72 / 2\> 
 
 
 11' 
 
 1,371 
 
 220 / 
 
 36' 
 
 
 o o 
 
 
 9.W fi" 
 
 
 
 o o 
 
 
 9.W fi" 
 
 40' 
 
 
 [ 5 / 3" 
 
 135 
 
 160' 
 
 16 
 
 
 9 / 6" 
 
 345 
 
 110 
 
 25' 
 
 
 8 / 6" 
 
 220 
 
 96' 9" 
 
 21' 
 
 
 23' 6 // 
 
 11,500 
 
 368 / 
 
 72' 0" 
 
 
 << 
 
 a 
 
 
 << 
 
 Steel and 
 
 12 
 
 1,000 
 
 168' 
 
 36 / 
 
 wood 
 
 
 
 
 u 
 
 i « 
 
 i i 
 
 «< 
 
 n 
 
 it 
 
 < i 
 
 t i 
 
 << 
 
 i i 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 (( 
 
 t( 
 
 a 
 
 < i 
 
 t( 
 
 it 
 
 174 / 
 
 34 / 
 
 a 
 
 
 u 
 
 
 
 Steel 
 
 5 / 6" 
 
 180 
 
 170' 
 
 17' 
 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 u 
 
 
 a 
 
 t< 
 
 1 1 
 
 ( i 
 
 1896 One submarine torpedo boat, detail designs not yet complete. Under contract with 
 Maryland. 
 
 fNo. 7) 
 
 1896 < No. 8 [ Battleships authorized by act of June 10, 1896; to be practically the same 
 INo. 9) 
 
 1896 Not more than thirteen Torpedo boats authorized by act of June 10, 1896; details 
 
 * Contract price, or limit feed by appropriation. 
 
ST WHOM JLSm WHERE BUILT OR BUILDING, 
 
 HULL. 
 
 MACHINERY. 
 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 Philadelphia, Pa.... 
 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 Philadelphia, Pa.... 
 
 Newport News Ship 
 bldg. Co.,Va 
 
 Newport News Ship- 
 
 f - bldg, Co., Va 
 
 Newport News Ship- 
 blag. Co., Va 
 
 Columbian Iron 
 Works, Baltimore, 
 Maryland 
 
 U. S. Govt. Navy Yard, 
 Mare Island, Cal. ... 
 
 U. S. Govt. Navy Yard, 
 Norfolk Va 
 
 Newport News Ship- 
 blag. & Drydock Co. 
 
 Newport News Ship- 
 blag. & Drydock Co. 
 
 Bath Iron Works, 
 Bath, Maine 
 
 Bath Iron Works, 
 Bath, Maine 
 
 Lewis Nixon, Crescent 
 Iron Works, N. J.... 
 
 J. H. Dialogue & Son, 
 Camden, N. J 
 
 Union Iron Works, 
 San Francisco, Cal... 
 
 Union Iron Works, 
 San Francisco, Cal. . . 
 
 Herreschoff Mfg. Co., 
 Bristol, Rhode Isl... 
 
 Herreschoff Mfg. Co., 
 Bristol, Rhode Isl... 
 
 Moran Brothers & Co. 
 Ltd., Seattle, Wash. 
 
 COST, 
 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa 
 
 Wm. Cramp & Sons, 
 Philadelphia, Pa.... 
 Newport News Ship- 
 
 bldg. Co., Va 
 
 Newport News Ship- 
 
 bldg. Co., Va 
 
 Newport News Ship- 
 
 bldg. Co. , Va 
 
 Columbian Iron 
 Works, Baltimore, 
 
 Maryland 
 
 U. S. Govt. Navy Yard, 
 Mare Island, Cal.... 
 U. S. Govt. Navy Yard, 
 
 Norfolk, Va 
 
 Newport News Ship 
 bldg. & Drydock Co. 
 Newport News Ship- 
 bldg <& Drydock Co. 
 Bath Iron Works, 
 
 Bath, Maine 
 
 Bath Iron Works, 
 
 Bath, Maine 
 
 Lewis Nixon, Crescent 
 Iron Works, N. J.... 
 J. H. Dialogue & 
 Son, Camden, N. J. 
 Union Iron Works, 
 San Francisco, Cal.. 
 Union Iron Works. 
 
 San Francisco, Cal.. 
 Herreschoff Mfg. Co., 
 Bristol, Rhode Isl... 
 Herreschoff Mfg. Co., 
 Bristol, Rhode Isl... 
 Moran Brothers & Co. 
 Ltd., Seattle, Wash. 
 
 *$2,986,000.00 
 
 *3,010,000. 00 
 
 *280,000.00 
 
 *280,000.00 
 
 ^280,000.00 
 
 *97,500.00 
 (Each) 
 
 PRESENT CONDITION. 
 
 Building. 
 Building. 
 Building. 
 Building. 
 Building. 
 
 Building. 
 
 *80,000.00 
 
 Building. 
 
 *25,000.00 
 
 Building. 
 
 *2, 250, 000. 00 
 
 Designed. 
 
 *2,250,000.00 
 
 Designed. 
 
 ^229,400.00 
 
 Contract awarded. 
 
 *229,400. 00 
 
 Contract awarded 
 
 *238,200,00 
 
 Contract awarded. 
 
 ^230,000.00 
 
 Contract awarded. 
 
 *209,000.00 
 
 Contract awarded. 
 
 *209,000. 00 
 
 Contract awarded. 
 
 *144,000.00 
 
 Contract awarded. 
 
 *144,000.00 
 
 Contract awarded. 
 
 *163,350.00 
 
 Contract awarded. 
 
 the J. P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company; being built by Columbian Iron Works, Baltimore ' 
 
 as Kearsarge and Kentucky. 
 not yet determined. 
 
APPENDIX C. 
 
 UNCLE SAMUEL 
 
 WHISTLE 
 
 AND WHAT IT COSTS. 
 
 " He whistled as he went, for want of thought." 
 
 Dryden 
 
"So long as a man rides his hobby-horse peaceably and quietly along the king's 
 highway, and neither compels you nor me to get up behind him, pray, sir, what 
 have either you or I to do with it Tristam Shandy, chap. vii. 
 
 " But what shall we do, when he not only forces us to get up behind him, but 
 makes us pay for the ride Citizen's Current Inquiry. 
 
922 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Hatching the Egg. 
 
 I, 
 
 It was a lovely summer morning, in the old days of peace. A cloudless blue 
 sky bent over the glittering metropolis— a bright sun flooded its busy streets with 
 splendor— and a gentle wind made music in the trees that grace its parks and 
 causeways. The haunts, alike of labor and of pleasure, were already thronged. 
 Up and down Broadway and the Avenues, surged the customary tide of human 
 beings. Horse-cars rumbled and jingled along their various tracks, and stages, 
 carriages, carts, and drays added volume and variety to the din of city life. All 
 was light— activity — animation. 
 
 Especially in the City Hall Park ! 
 
 There were no soldiers then in that verdurous region; nor barracks, nor re- 
 cruiting tents, nor hospitals, nor artillery, nor vestiges of the ' ' circumstance of 
 glorious war. " But the peaceful grass grew there untrampled, and birds flitted 
 from tree to tree; and the fountain, which Mr. N. P. Willis has commemorated 
 in song, played away in the cool and sparkling fashion peculiar to fountains; and 
 the baked Jersey mud statute of General Washington—erected by a considerate 
 posterity for the accommodation of the sculptor—gazed placidly at the City Hall, 
 or seemed to smile upon the comfortable enterprise of those youthful Bohemians 
 who thrive by polishing the boots of respectability. A scene of pastoral inno- 
 cence and beauty. . 
 
 Amidst that scene, and near the base of that imposing monument, there stood, 
 on the lovely morning previously referred to, a man. He was wrapped m profound 
 thought— and in seedy garments. His face was pale, and wore the expression of in- 
 tellect tempered by timidity. His black clothes, though they had been carefully 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 923 
 
 brushed, presented that glazed appearance which, except, perhaps, in the case of 
 satinet, is the unmistakable evidence of age. His hat was greasy—his boots were 
 soiled with dust. In his right hand he grasped a heavy walking stick : in his left, a 
 huge roll of white paper. And so he stood — now glancing at the City Hall clock, 
 now at the stately edifice, towards the south-east, whence issue, daily and weekly, so 
 many organs of public opinion, in the shape of newspapers. 
 
 He had waited there already during nearly two hours — a spectacle of superfluous 
 patience, exciting the suspicion of neighboring police officers, and stirring up the ire 
 of contiguous apple-women. For he seemed to have no legitimate calling, and he 
 certainly bought no apples. Nor did he incline the ear of attention to the tattered 
 youths who repeatedly said to him, "blag yer boots." The seedy man was plainly 
 pre-occupied, and intent on serious things. 
 
 At length, as the bell tolled the hour of ten, the stranger emerged from his rev- 
 erie, walked rapidJy from the Washington statue, and disappeared within the 
 principal edifice of Printing House Square. — Let us follow in his footsteps. 
 
 We shall find him in a spacious and handsome office, adorned with a large 
 library, and with pictures, chiefly of a marine character. A close examination of the 
 library would disclose many books of a scientific kind, such as u Mariotte's Law " and 
 "Isherwood's Engineering Precedents;" and mingled with these, divers volumes of 
 poetry and Belles Lettres, showing that their owner, however, devoted to science, is 
 yet addicted to occasional indulgence in " Shakspeare and the musical glasses." The 
 other appointments of this room are correspondingly sumptuous. The carpet is rich 
 and soft — the furniture is carved and valuable. In the centre of the apartment 
 stands a handsome writingtable, littered with papers and drawings. Near this, in a 
 comfortable arm chair, sits a man of singular appearance, and, as the reader will pre- 
 sently preceive, of still more singular talents, He is the hero of this tale. 
 
 The Hebo of Dash-Pots and the Seedy Ikventor. 
 
924 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 To him has entered the seedy stranger. . . . They talk* 
 
 "I am an inventor, sir,— a poor man ; but I have a fortune in these plans. You 
 are rich— you are influential. I have come to ask your aid in presenting my inven- 
 tion to the notice of the United States Navy Department." 
 
 " What is your name, sir ? and what is the nature of your invention ?" 
 
 " My name, sir, is . My invention is a steam cut-off for application to 
 
 marine engines." 
 
 " Sir," said the great man, " you have come to the right shop. My foot is on my 
 native heath, and my name is D n." 
 
 The seedy inventor bowed, and deposited his roll of paper upon th6 table. 
 
 " Sit, my friend," said the magnanimous D n. " I will cast my eye over 
 
 your drawings. The subject of econemizing steam and coal has long been familiar to 
 my thoughts. I am a devout student of Watt, and I know all about water. 
 Mariotte is my vade mecum, and I abhor the very name of Isherwood. (A. ) Like- 
 wise, I am a reader cf the Hebrew melodies of the gifted Lord Byron. I will read 
 them to you, it you like; but not immediately. Amuse yourself for a few moments, 
 while I glance at these papers." 
 
 The inventor again bowed, sat down, and picking up a pamphlet, devoted his 
 mind to the " Tenth Annual Report of the Board of Water Commissioners to the 
 Common Council of the City of Detroit." (B.) 
 
 Let us not dwell upon what he found therein; at least not yet. Suffice it to say, 
 that he had not long to read nor long to wail for the reply of his heroic companion. 
 
 " I will take this invention, sir, under my patronage and supervision. It is not 
 exhaustive, but it is a step in advance* So far as it goes, it harmonizes with my own 
 views. But I warn you beforehand, that mighty obstacles must be overcome ere it 
 can be made a practical success. Be re-assured, however ! Those obstacles are not 
 invulnerable. It was, as remarked by the erudite Game Chicken, "within the resources 
 of science to double up Mr. Dombey :" it is equally within the resources of science 
 to double up Isherwood. (C.) That fellow is very destructive on coals, and it is 
 high time that something were done about it. I behold in this cut-off the immediate 
 means of doing something. I will let loose upon the Navy Department the entire 
 strength of my inspiration— the whole vast power of Mariotte's Law and of Lord 
 Byron's melodies. Nay, sir, I will even press Shakspeare into this service. So shall 
 the cut-off carry the day. Trust yours truly for that. But, in the meanwhile, we 
 must agree, sir, upon terms— upon terms, sir, and conditions. A cut-off is, as it were 
 a machine, but, as noticed by the subtle Mr. Hazlitt, a man of genius is not.— 
 Modesty forbids me to employ more definite language. I see in your intelligent 
 countenance that you perceive the application of this remark. 1 shall stipulate, sir, 
 for an interest in this invention— an interest of liberal scope and of large possible 
 value. Upon that wall, before you, hangs a map of the United States of America, a 
 great and glorious Republic, my friend, founded at an early period by the Father of 
 his Country, and popularly known as an asylum for the oppressed of all nations. 
 Those States, sir, are numerous and wealthy. These upon the northern Atlantic sea 
 board are peculiarly so. I stipulate for the exclusive right of applying this invention 
 in those States. I appropriate to myself New England, New York, Pennsylvania, 
 the Middle States, and those that extend westward along the lakes* The remainder 
 I leave to you. Accept these terms, and I lift you at once from the slough of 
 obscurity to the heights of fame. Reject them, and I leave you to chance. 
 
 " There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
 
 Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune," 
 
 That tide, sir, is now at the flood with you. Will you take it or no? I pause for a 
 
 reply. " 
 
 The seedy inventor, overwhelmed by this eloquence, could only bow and point to 
 
 his plans. , „ j . 
 
 "I acceptTthe terms, sir," he said, at length, "and leave my fate m your 
 
 hands." 
 
 " In my hands," responded the heroic D n, " your fate is glory. You have 
 
 heard, no doubt, of the star of purest ray serene. I am that star. Henceforth it will 
 be my vocation to shine upon you. Be happy in that reflection ! And now, sir, be- 
 fore we part, permit me to read a paraphrase of one of those Byronic melodies to 
 which I have made allusion. Its application will, I think, be sufficiently evident. 
 Here it is : (D.) 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 925 
 
 I walk in lonely beauty bright ! 
 
 The breath of steam around me flies ; 
 And, radiant in metallic light, 
 
 I see the brazen dash-pots rise— 
 A vision, glorious to my sight 
 
 As purple peaks of Paradise ! 
 
 One pot the more, one pot the less, 
 
 Would make no difference in the view; 
 For all that's best of loveliness, 
 
 And all that's best of science too, 
 Are garnered up, mankind to bless, 
 
 In dash-pots of the brazen hue. 
 
 The happy thought around me coils, 
 
 And cheers me on at every turn; 
 While engine-drivers pour their oils, 
 
 And stokers make their coals to burn ; 
 That I appropriate the spoils 
 Wit is. n my dash-pot's portly urn! 
 
 11 There, my friend, 99 added this bard of science and of dash-pots, "that wilF 
 suffice. You are now acquainted with me, and with my sentiment. Haec olim 
 meminisse jwvabit. Leave me your address. I shall write to you from Washington 
 City — from the capital— whither my steps now tend. Consider the cut-off a fixed 
 fact. I will not say that I shall not improve upon your design. Non tetigit, non 
 ornavit. But its success is all the more certain. Give me your hand, sir. Good 
 morning l" 
 
 The dilapidated inventor withdrew, and the hero was left alone. A moment he 
 seemed transfixed as by a mighty thought; then his tall form relaxed, and he sank 
 back into the arm chair and closed his eyes. The recent effort of eloquence had over- 
 powered him. The great man slept— slept and dreamed. 
 
 And this was his vision. 
 
 D N > s Dbeam op Tbiumph. 
 
926 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A golden cloud seemed floating in mid-air, upborne at its four corners by Watt 
 and Mariotte, Brunei and Samuel Smiles. Upon that cloud rested an enormous 
 throne, made of variously colored and strongly welded dash-pots. Upon that throne, 
 in royal state, sat the angust D n. At his feet, and serving for a footstool, ap- 
 peared the scientific writings of the hated Isherwood. In his hands was upreared a 
 a gigantic brazen dash-pot, whereinto fell a continual shower of golden eagles, poured 
 from above by Clio, the muse of history, — a figure, however, closely resembling that 
 
 of Secretary . Around him, in every direction, floated the shapes of war- vessels, 
 
 provided with the S s cut-off. Beneath the cloud, on which rested this impos- 
 ing monarchy, appeared the wretched Isherwood and the Water Commissioners of 
 Detroit, pendant, heads downward, and grasping frantically at nothing. A gentle 
 breeze, as of windy and ever-blowing Fame, impelled this pageant through the 
 heavens. And thus the sleeper beheld, prefigured in light and shadow, his own im- 
 mortality. 
 
II. 
 
 Washington, D. C, , 18—. 
 
 My Dear S s : 
 
 Veni ! vidi ! viei ! So said the great Roman, after victory. So says the 
 engineer of the period, under similar circumstances. 
 
 It was, nevertheless, an achievement of magnitude and difficulty. Prejudice, of 
 deep root and of long continuance, opposed me at the outset. Conventionality, 
 embodied in the form of a naval official, frowned darkly upon the champion of pro- 
 gress, your humble friend. Old ideas of economy—the crude notions of our anti- 
 quated forefathers— arose before me, like battle lines in Parisian streets, before the 
 footsteps of Revolution. But, like Revolution, I nevertheless swept onward, bear- 
 ing down prejudice, conventionality, and old ideas. Accordingly, these latter are 
 dust, and I am jubilant. 
 
 Never shall I forget that memorable morning, when, with miniature dash-pot in 
 one hand, and gilt-edged copy of " Mariotte's Law" in the other, I made my final 
 effectual appeal to the Secretary of the Navy. Like an oracle I stood before him; 
 and it is no exaggeration to say that I forced conviction upon his mind, with an 
 energy and a righteous violence that literally withered him in his official arm chair. 
 At first, I dwelt upon the simple principle of the cut-off. Then, incidentally, I gave 
 him a detailed account of the life and services of James Watt. From this theme, by 
 an easy and natural transition, I advanced to speak of myself; and as is not usual 
 with mankind, I made the most of the subject. I described, with scientific prolixity 
 and minuteness, my own novel machinery, my improvements upon the clever, 
 though crude, idea of your active, ambitious and promising mind; and into this 
 description I introduced, with much effect, my celebrated paraphrase of a Hebrew 
 melody, celebrating the dash-pot. Lastly, in a peroration, worthy, though I say it, 
 of the Ciceronian age, I called upon him to submit to the eternal laws of the Universe, 
 as illustrated in my authentic teachings. " Respect the divine law," I exclaimed, ' 'of 
 which I am but the humble representative ! You may think to escape its power for a 
 time, but you must surely submit to it at last. Yield, therefore, without fruitless 
 resistance. Do what you will, you cannot get far ahead of the old man up above. 
 Even Isherwood, with all his gold lace and all his money, can avail you nothing. 
 The laws of expansion operate without regard to Isherwood. I have placed his 
 book on a cylinder-head of one of my engines, and it never made the least difference 
 in the operation of the piston. Will you, then, be stayed on the noble road of pro- 
 gress by the voice of a quack and a toeast, a knave and a wretch — 
 
 A villain, 
 
 A cup-purse of the empire and the rule, 
 Who from the shelf the precious diadem stole, 
 And put it in his pocket ? 
 
 Will you butt your head against a stone wall, because, like the man in the novel, you 
 find it " so very satisfying ?" No, you will not ! Or, if a stone wall is to be butted, 
 you will rather choose that it be the penetrable stone wall of man's ignorance, than 
 the indomitable barrier of eternal law. You will be mindful of sage fortitude of the 
 pious American citizen of African descent, who said that when de Lord told him to 
 butt a hole through a stone wall, it was his business to butt, and de Lord's business 
 to carry him through. You will think of this, I say; and if Isherwood be powerful, 
 you will be consoled by the reflection that all human power is weak against the power 
 of Nature. And so, side by side with me, you will keep on butting." 
 
 <« p n? » S aid the Secretary, when I thus concluded my harangue, ** you are 
 
 a great man. Take a chair, aad let's liquor. I shall believe in dash-pots as long as I 
 live; and you shall build us a new war ship." 
 
 " But Isherwood is my foe." 
 
 4 i Isherwood be ." 
 
928 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 We drank some straw-colored liquor, with our mouths, after that, and so our in- 
 terview terminated. 
 
 And now the Pbnsacola is in progress of construction. The egg upon which 
 long ago we commenced to brood, will soon break, and enable us to count our 
 chickens — chickens of iron they will be to others, my friend — Mother Cary's 
 chickens — but to us, chickens of gold ! 
 
 " Swift fly the years, and rise th' expected morn !" 
 
 We began our work on this ship in 1858. It is now 1863. She will soon be 
 finished, with the cut-off, and the novel machinery all complete, and 1 shall expect 
 her to make such time as never was made before, by any craft; of equal size and pre- 
 tension. To-day, by way of verifying Mariotte's Law, I have applied the cut-off 
 principle to her stern, and have had the stern cut-off. The effect was rending, and I 
 witnessed it with emotions of awe. To-morrow we shall put the stern on again. 
 Having satisfied the Law, we must now disappoint and effectually dispose of the pro- 
 phets — these latter, collected here in great numbers by the malignant Isherwood, 
 having stated that our ship will be good for nothing without a stern. As if the 
 erudite D n didn't recognize stern necessity. 
 
 The Department recognizes it, at any rate — for I have sent in my bill. All the 
 clerks have been, for several weeks, busy in investigating the accounts: and poor 
 creatures ! — they are quite at their wits' ends. It is a comfort to think that they 
 did'nt have far to go. As a final resort, they have procured a calculating machine. 
 But calculating machines are vain as against dash-pots. The ship will cost $800,000 
 at the very least, and the Department will have to pay it. 
 
 Isherwood, I hear, suggests that such a ship ought not to cost more than $120,000, 
 or, at furthest, more than $140,000. Strange that people will so cling to the delusions 
 of the past. Because old-fashioned ships and engines nave been built for little or 
 nothing, is it imagined that the scientific marvels of the future are to be got without 
 money and without price? Perish the mercenary idea — ignoble prejudice of most 
 ignoble minds ! 
 
 Indignation devours me quite. 
 
 I can no more, 
 
 D n. 
 
 P. S. 
 
 Several Days Later. — The great work is finished. The Ship has been tried, and 
 a competent committee reports to the Navy Department that she is considered safe to 
 run down the Potomac with the tide. Go Triumphe ! D. 
 
 III. 
 
 Eumor — ac spem fronte serenat — had often borne to my ears the musical name 
 
 of D n, the engineer. His engines, with the celebrated cut-off, had 
 
 been described to me — by a pious clerk in the Navy Department — as * * Chief among 
 ten thousand, and althogether lovely." As a natural consequence, I had longed to 
 behold a specimen of the great man's art. And now the golden opportunity had 
 come. I was at Washington. So was the Pensacola, on board which an old friend 
 
 of mine held the office of Chief Engineer. She was furnished with a D n 
 
 engine. She would sail at nightfall. I did not hesitate. As the sun descended into the 
 west, I descended into the grimy but gold-laced presence of my friend the Engineer. 
 
 On the entering the engine-room, I was filled with amazement, not wholly un- 
 mingled with consternation. On every side, as far as the eye could reach, I beheld 
 
 metallic evidences of the ingenuity of D n. With a slight effort of fancy, I 
 
 might have believed my self in a museum of mechanical curiosities. The cloud of 
 witnesses, spoken of in Holy Writ, would be as mere vapor to the dense cloud of 
 wheels which I then beheld. In fact, the very air was black with cogs. 
 
 Cogs to the right of me, 
 Cogs to the left of me, 
 Handles and monkey-tails, 
 Bristled and bothered. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 929 
 
 One wheel, in particular, presently fixed my attention. 44 That," said my com- 
 panion, " is the reversing wheel. It adjusts the link, for going ahead, stopping, or 
 backing. Those only can work it, however, who understand how to manipulate the 
 cut-off implements. You will see presently. It isn't every body that's up to 
 science, in these days." 
 
 At this moment the Captain's bell signalled to start the engine. Simultaneously 
 twelve men joined us on the platform. The area of this latter being about two 
 square yards, we were conscious of being crowded. 
 
 '* These hands will help us," said the Engineer. 
 
 " It appears," said I, '* that science still has a few representatives extant." 
 
 i( A select few," he answered; ''they have received instructions from D n 
 
 First Glimpse of the Engine-Room. 
 
 himself. Now, boys, start her." 
 
 JJS^The D °y s distributed themselves among the cogs, and resolutely commenced 
 operations. I silently admired their resolution. 
 
 " Take it easy, boys," said a Lieutenant, looking in at this juncture. " The 
 
 Captain's gone ashore, to buy a photograph of D n; he'll be on board again in 
 
 half-an-hour. If you begin now, you'll get started by the time he gets back." 
 
 They began. 
 
 Two men stationed themselves at the water-valves; two went to the injection- 
 valves; six assumed charge of the link; one fixed his eyes on the themometer; one, in 
 a corner, drank something out of a black bottle. The Engineer himself wound up 
 the clock. I helped him. Six more men then came in, variously armed with hand- 
 spikes, beetles, hydraulic jacks, oil cans, and wrenches. A number of small boys, 
 all in uniform, also made their appearance, bearing buckets of water, more oil cans, 
 and several crow-bars. They stationed themselves at the dash-pots. 
 
 "I think she will start," said I to the Engineer. " Probably," said the 
 Engineer to me. 
 
930 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Starting the Engine — and the Engineers. 
 
 So saying, lie pushed with tremendous strength upon a monkey-tail. This latter, 
 I noticed, was connected by rods and bell-crank levers with the valve spindle. Being 
 pushed, it had, in course of time, the effect of opening a passover-valve— an 
 auxiliary arrangement for working the engine by hand. 
 
 " The thermometer marks 153° in the shade," said a vigilant assistant. 
 
 " All right," said the Engineer. "Lend me that black bottle," he added, ad- 
 dressing the man in the corner. Receiving the bottle, he drank from it for fiv« 
 minutes. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 931 
 
 Tripping- Valves. 
 
 By this time the small boys had poured several gallons of oil into the dash-pots, 
 and had gone out for more. The men with bars and beetles had also made a 
 vigorous attack on the valves. Several wheels were observed to be in motion. So 
 was the man in the corner. He reeled from side to side, as if with excessive delight 
 at the busy scene before him. Then he suddenly fell backwards down a neighboring 
 hatch-way. 
 
 "He has forgotten his bottle, " said the Engineer. 
 
 A terrific crash was now heard. The link was down — the water valves were in 
 operation — the engine had started. 
 
932 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 "I think they'll cast off the lines in ten minutes," remarked a small boy near 
 me, at the same time oversetting a bucket of water. " We shant move much at 
 first," he added. *' 'Taint science to move." 
 
 now understood the crash. The piston-rod of one cylinder had reached its 
 SSad centre, making an awful noise. The men at the water-valves redoubled their 
 exertions. The piston-rod of the other cylinder met its centre with a yet louder 
 bang. Boys returned, with oil for the dash-pots. The Engineer tugged at his 
 monkey- tail. The injection- valves were knocked open with handspikes. The 
 Lieutenant re-appeared, and announced the return of the Captain. 
 
 " He's got a capital picture of D n," said this officer. " It's along with a 
 
 sketch of the wings of Icarus." 
 
 * 4 I'll go and see it," remarked the Engineer. "We shall have to wait some 
 time, for a vacuum. Boys, put lots of oil in those dash-pots." 
 
 He went away, leaving the black bottle. I took charge of it. Also I wound up 
 the clock, which, by this time, had run down. The man with the thermometer an- 
 nounced that instrument as marking 154°. 
 
 Going on Watch. Coming off. 
 
 "It's warm," he said. 
 
 In ten minutes the Engineer came back. There was, as he had predicted, a 
 vacuum, and we were in motion. The men seemed weary, but they were certainly 
 determined. I encouraged them by circulating the black bottle. 
 
 Thus we started, and thus we were propelled. During the entire watch, the 
 workers in the engine-room never flagged. Kegularly, as did the angels upon Jacob's 
 ladder, the boys, with their oil cans, ascended and decended. Kegularly the link- 
 men tugged at their wheel. Regularly the hammers rose and fell. Never were 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 933 
 
 heroic exertions attended with more amazing results. On every side cogs grated and 
 monkey-tail frisked in air. Crash ! went the engine : bang ! bang ! zip ! zip ! crash ! 
 bang ! zip ! zip ! And faintly through the din, I heard the voices of dash-pot men, 
 crying for monkey-wrenches. 
 
 "Hurrah !" roared a small boy, from a neigboring dash-pot; ' 4 it's as good as fire- 
 works on the Fourth of July — aint it, Mister?" 
 
 I did not hesitate to endorse the opinion of the small boy. 
 
 At this moment, the Captain rang * ' two bells." There was an immediate sensa- 
 tion in the engine-room. 
 
 "Cut oft steam to the ninety-nine hundredth part of the stroke," roared the 
 Engineer. *' Stand by there, with sledge-hammers over the dash-pots ! Put steam 
 on the re versing-cy Under !" 
 
 But the link would not budge; and, in spite of closed throttle, the mill went 
 tearing on. It is not easy to stay the march of science ! 
 
 A Little Oil Necessary. 
 
 " Heave away on that wheel !" cried the Engineer. " Send all the firemen here' 
 and call the other division ! Heave with those crow-bars, and trip the valves !" 
 
 This time success. The link arose, with unearthly shrieks and groans; and the 
 engine was stopped, as if never to move again. 
 
 ;v The black bottle being empty, we all drew a long breath —and wished it were full. 
 
 *' Come away," said the Engineer. u Jenkins will start her; I'm tired." 
 
 The bell rang as we left the engine-room. The terrible noise recommenced, and 
 science, under the guidance of Jenkins, once more impelled us forward at a conserva- 
 tive rate. 
 
 " O that D n were here to see !" I exclaimed, taking the Engineer's arm. 
 
 • ? " O that he were here to feel !" was his rejoinder, the thermometer being at 154°. 
 mv " 1 looked steadfastly upon my companion. He did not appear to advantage. It 
 would not be too much to say that science had used him up. Moreover, he was 
 manifestly disgusted with circumstances. 
 
934 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 « D n i s a great man," he said. "Wait till I fill this bottle, and we'll talk 
 
 it over." 
 
 I waited. We nourished ourselves. Then we sat down on a gun-carriage : and 
 this is what the Engineer said : 
 
 "D n is a great man. I've read his Washington speech, all about the 
 
 Navy, and I know by that his mighty intellect. He's acquainted with Lord Byron's 
 verses, and with Pope and Shakspeare; and he knows all about Mariotte's Law. 
 
 This is one of his engines — with the cut-off. It makes 35 revolutions a 
 
 minute, and it also makes a splendid noise. These are the least of its merits. It is 
 
 an admirable consumer of oil. I suppose D n learned the value of lubrication 
 
 when he was a lawyer and used to oil the bench. The usual allowance to this en- 
 gine is five gallons an hour — which is'nt enough, and the boys smuggle it on, at the 
 rate of about a hundred and twenty-five gallons 
 a-day. All the journals require it constantly (no 
 pun intended). And then the fireman ! It keeps 
 them as busy as bees, because, you know, if the 
 cut-off should become deranged — as I do some- 
 times, for instance — and steam should he used 
 at full stroke on the engines, then the expansion 
 application, through good fires, would rest en- 
 tirely upon them. That is clear, is'nt it ? When 
 the engine is used at full stroke, and there are 
 fifteen pounds of steam in the boilers, five rev- f 
 olutions will reduce the pressure to nine pounds, /i 
 This again shows the wonderful utility of the cut- 
 off, which saves the expense of large boilers for 
 
 marine engines. D n, as I said before, is a ^W* 
 
 great man — a gigantic and tremendous man. I k ^ 
 have read his tribute to Watt (E), and Watt, if }fiy 
 he wots any thing about it, ought to be very 
 grateful for such a first-class notice; and I have 
 
 read also his remarks on expansion. And, 
 trusting in D n, I don't see why a donkey- 
 boiler would'nt do for this ship, just as well as the two big ones that we carry now. 
 But that's a point for science to determine, after we've got rid of the superfluous coal. 
 
 At this point the Engineer's remarks were interrupted by a sudden commotion in 
 the engine-room, wherefrom, presently, several men emerged, bearing the insensible 
 body of an oiler who had just fainted among the dash-pots. They carried him away. 
 
 "It occurs frequently," resumed my companion. " Even D n himself be- 
 came a victim once — in Jerome's yacht, I think. Science must have its martyrs; you 
 know. I've lost several fingers myself, tripping valves; and I know three engineers 
 who, while on duty*, have dropped insensible at their posts. You will notice that our 
 stokers are very like skeletons. Thin men stand the heat better than fat ones; and the 
 thermoneter in 0 ur engine-room rarely marks less than 140°. This is another of the 
 beauties of the 0 ut-off— it paves the way to promotion in the service, by cutting off 
 so maA" h numanobstacles. " 
 
 HE SMUGGLED THE OIL 
 
 The Oiler Comes on Watch. 
 
 He Watches. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 935 
 
 Here my companion (or was I deceived in the dim moonlight ?) deliberately 
 winked upon me with one eye. Then, seizing the black bottle, he drank, with his 
 mouth, for some time. Finally he resumed his remarks : 
 
 '•D n is a modest man, too. All great genius exhibits that characteristic. 
 
 He never blows his own horn. He said once, that he 1 was profoundly ignorant of a 
 steam-engine, and supposed a cylinder head to be a full moon.' That was modesty ! 
 No one, who has ever heard our cylinders work, would credit it of him. They 
 suggest any thing but moons. Meteors, accompained by thunder, would much better 
 typify them. But whatever may be the great man's notion as to cylinder-heads, he 
 has certatnly got very clear ideas on the subject of dash-pots. Look at that engine, 
 for instance ! It's all over dash-pots. They gleam like the brass kettle of by-gone 
 days, in which my venerated and now defunct grandmother used to boil cabbage. 
 Hence the tender associations with which they are fraught. I look upon them, day 
 and night, with never-tiring admiration (F). The rings of Saturn and the splendors 
 of Mars are really as nothing to these irridescent vehicles of science. I have, in- 
 deed, commenced a poem about them — in humble imitation of the great engineer's 
 favorite bard. It will be comprised in four hundred cantos, commencing thus : 
 
 The D n dash-pots are gleaming like gold, 
 
 And are brimming with oil as full as they'll hold ; 
 Neither odor nor sheen more delightful could be— 
 They are pungent to smeli and refulgent to see. 
 
 Diddle dol de ! diddle dol de ! 
 O the D n dash-pot's the dash-pot for me. 
 
 " There, is, however, another feature in this engine, which illustrates to still 
 greater advantage the grandeur of D n's inventive genius. That is, the Link- 
 Motion. The lustre of this device outshines even the lustre of the dash-pots. You 
 
 The Grand Link-Motion. 
 
 have just seen something of its achievements in starting this ship. It is not, like the 
 common and vulgar link-motion in general use, an instantaneously adjustible ap- 
 paratus, easily worked by one man. On the contrary, it requires only about fifteen 
 men to work it, and it keeps them occupied from ten to twenty minutes in adjusting 
 the various cogs, and cranks, and levers, in conjunction with the cut-off machinery, 
 for going ahead or backing. Plainly enough, science marks this link-motion for its 
 
 own. Only a man who, like D n, had read 4 Richard the Third,' and ' drank of 
 
 the pure fountain at its source, ' could have devised it. So ponderous is the mass of 
 metal employed, that it necessitates a huge weight, acting — on a principle of sweet 
 
936 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 simplicity — over a pulley, and attached to the upper part of the arcs of both engines, 
 thereby to lessen what otherwise would be a terrible strain on the ship. I am sure 
 you will sympathize with my admiration for this triumph of skill. There is a great 
 gain, too, in noise by this means — noise so salutary in its impression on the common 
 mind. A free space is made for these weights to run up and down inside the coal 
 bunkers; and so, at the slightest motion of the ship, they create a most exhilarating 
 clatter, harmonizing with the delicious din of the entire engine. 
 
 (i These little touches evince the philosopher. Common minds would have been 
 content with celerity, safety, and economy, without reference to the ornamental in- 
 tricacies of science. Not so the expansive t> n. His progress in the realms of 
 
 thought bears no distant analogy to the wise man's progress in the realms of ex- 
 perience. Youth imagines that the world was made for man. Maturity discovers 
 that man was made for the world. So in mechanism. To the budding and innocent 
 
 D n of long ago, it seemed, no doubt, the dash-pots were made for engines. To 
 
 the full-blown D n of to-day, it is manifestly clear that engines were made for 
 
 dash-pots. Hence the noble machinery, with its patent cut-off and astonishing link- 
 motion, that we have here the privilege to observe. It has been constructed under 
 the white Jight of science, and without the slightest regard to expense. Its dash- 
 pots gleam, in the yellow radiance of polished brass, and its monkey-tails are 
 marshalled like the Assyrian cohorts of the pious Byron. Great facilities are afforded 
 for the soothing influence of oil, and for the consequent liberal dissemination of postal 
 currency and green-backed notes. The whistle is a dear one; but Uncle Samuel 
 (like the old trump that he has always been) pays for it without a murmur, and wins 
 
 the unqualified approbation of D n. Could more be wished ? I leave it to your 
 
 judgment as a citizen. 
 
 Oil is Active. 
 
 " You have observed — doubtless with profound amazement — the striking cere- 
 monies with which it is necessary to approach this engine, on the respective subjects 
 of starting and stopping. This, in itself, is evidence of almost human strength of 
 character. In all experience it has been found that large bodies move slowly — an 
 ancient adage, beautifully illustrated in the case of the Clara Clarita. (G.) 
 
 "It was D n who selected the boiler and adapted the machinery of that 
 
 'thing of beauty/ at a cost, to the gifted Jerome, of over Twenty-One Thouand 
 Dollars. And she sailed precisely one mile and a quarter in two hours and a half, 
 being ultimately thwarted by a stubborn and unaccommodating tide, at Corlear's 
 
 Hook. Equally valid is the venerable adage as applied to all D n engines, with 
 
 their inevitable cut-off. They start slowly; they run with dignity; they stop 
 
 with due deliberation. In watching this one, I am often reminded of an old gentle- 
 man, whose girls I used to flirt with, when I was a boy. A solid old gentleman he 
 was — with the gout, and a purple noise, and staunch conservative views ; and he sat 
 by night in his drawing-room, in a marvellous arm-chair, his noble form arrayed in 
 indescribable complications of raiment. 'Good evening, sir,' I used to say to him, 
 on entering the room; 1 it's a very cold evening.' And then I turned my attention to 
 the girls. But the old gentleman's brain was an active one; and, after precisely 
 fifteen minutes of preparation, his voice, emerging from many bandages, would be 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 heard to answer, 1 Yes, you're right — the evening is very cold.' There was a solidity 
 about that old gentleman, very impressive to me in those days; and there is a similar 
 
 and equally impressive solidity about this D n engine. If it has a fault ; that 
 
 fault consists in its insufficient illustration of its erudite author's idea upon the sub- 
 ject of bricks. With that idea he electrified a Washington Jury, in the Mattingly 
 Case, and that idea once fully realized in practice, would electrify the entire 
 mechanical world. Imagine a platform supporting a ton of bricks (H), placed upon 
 the end of a one-inch piston ! Transport that image to yonder engine-room, and 
 mark the consequence. 
 
 • How reason reels ! 
 O what a miracle to man is man,' 
 
 especially when he happens to be such a man as D n." 
 
 / 
 
 Persuading the Link to Run Up. 
 
 Here conticuere omnes, and the black bottle was circulated. But my eloquent 
 friend, absorbed in the grand theme, soon continued his eulogium. ||f|^ 
 
 " The genius of D — n as been otherwise made manifest in four en ormous 
 
 rock-shafts, garnished with numerous parabolic cams, and designed for worki ng the 
 steam-exhaust and cut-off valves. It appears, too, in the valves themselves, upon 
 which all manner of intricate instruments have been ingeniously brought to bear, in 
 order to prevent any abrupt and decisive action that should by chance resemble that 
 
 of vulgar machinery. I think it was the sublime purpose of D n, in reference 
 
 to this engine, that it should display ' neither variableness nor the shadow of turning.' 
 His liberal ingenuity has combined the heavy metals as never heavy metals were 
 combined before. Not only has he contrived a dash-pot, to prevent the slamming of 
 the cut-off valve; but he has devised a lip to cushion on the steam as it is jammed 
 against the valve-seat. I dwell upon these details with a fascinated interest. This 
 
938 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Rock-Shaft — Rocking in the Bilge- Water. 
 
 valve is plug-shaped. On its outside rim is a ring of metal laid upon the seat, and 
 designed to give lead to this plug-arrangement, by expanding or contracting its circle. 
 You can have no conception of the felicity with which it works, unless you have 
 both seen and heard it. The principle is that of the organ- pedal, while the music — 
 but what words can do justice to the incessant click, click-up, sh, clickety-click, 
 click-up, so clear, so distinctly intoned, so soothing to the nervous system! What 
 says the poet Milton ? 
 
 ' Can any mortal mixture of earth's sound, 
 
 Breathe such divine, enchanting ravishment !' 
 
 " I think not. 
 " You will marvel, perhaps, that such 
 surpassing excellence of mechanism is 
 not more widely appreciated in this 
 scientific generation. I must remind 
 you of Galileo who was incarcerated for 
 his intelligence ; and of the Scottish 
 inventor of umbrellas, who was pelted 
 in the streets for bearing up one of his 
 own anti-pluvial protectors. It was 
 
 not easy for even the mighty D n 
 
 to persuade Uncle Samuel to buy the 
 whistle. The very machinery itself — 
 coy and modest under the eye of dis- Cut off Valve. 
 
 trustful observation — declined at first to 
 
 operate. I recall the trial day of she Pensacola. The great engineer himself was 
 on board, to superintend the engine. All was excitement. Promptly, at the word of 
 command, the dash-pot phalanx seized their implements, and rushed into action. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 939 
 
 Perfectly Clear Indicator and Diagram. — A Triumph of Genius. 
 
 Gallant charge ! I beheld it from my station at the valves, and thought that I had 
 never seen a more extraordinary proceeding towards an engine. We made, I think, 
 some ninety odd trials before the link would rise, and the desired, ^and I may say, 
 
 Gallant Charge of the Dash-Pot Light Guard. 
 
 indispensable vacuum, consent to form. Coyness, as I have said, is the vice of this 
 wonderful engine; but, to cull once more from those sweet pastures of song in which 
 its inventor loves to ramble, 
 
 " E'en its vices lean to virtue's side.' 
 
 I have since noticed other manifestations of that coyness. For example, this ship 
 has excellent lines for sailing. With a ten-knot breeze, she can out-sail her modest 
 engines entirely. They are sensitive and sluggish under ordinary treatment. We 
 have sometimes made nine knots an hour, with the vessel under sail, and the engines 
 doing their utmost. That was brilliant ! But coyness would seem to settle upon 
 those cogs, and paralyze those dash-pots; and then we have disconnected the pro- 
 pellor, and so made eleven-and-a-half or twelve knots under the same amount of 
 sail. At such times, the engine may have attained from forty to forty-four revolu- 
 tions, cutting off, as indicated by the cut-off dial, at three and one- tenth of the 
 stroke, Steam, as you know, soon works off; but by using the best of coal, and keep- 
 
940 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Engineers Ordered to Eeport for Duty on Board the Pensacdi^a, 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 941 
 
 * ■ , 
 
 ing the firemen in a state of incessant and wholesome activity, we have managed to 
 keep up fourteen pounds; which implies that, under certain circumstances, a great 
 number of revolutions may be attained by dragging the propeller through the water 
 as you bowl merrily along. 
 
 T. M ~N (LOQ.)--ShE WONT WOKK, SIR. CAN'T GET HER TO GO OVER 30, 
 
 NO HOW. 
 
 D— « — N. — WELL— ER— GIVE HER OIL, AND SHUT OFF THREE MORE FURNACES, 
 —AND — A — OIL THE WIPER — AND — SLACK OFF A BLADE OF THE PROPELLER, — AND — 
 SCOUR THOSE DASH-POTS— AND SHUT THE THROTTLE — 'AND— YES, SET THE CLOCK 
 BACK, 
 
942 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 T 
 
 Cruise Finished — They Keturn Home. 
 
 i( And now," said my friend, as we rose from the gun-carriage, "I think your 
 
 curiosity is sufficiently gratified in reference to the D n engine with the 
 
 cut-off. You have seen that it is a tremendous and unparalleled affair, and you can- 
 not doubt that its inventor is a tremendous and unparalleled man. How, then, can 
 you censure me for my devotion to science? In such a cause, who would not gladly 
 peril life and limb ? I have lost three fingers, as you see, and one eye ; and Jenkins 
 has lost an arm. Nor have our compatriots in the great work escaped similar honors 
 of martyrdom. Thus the cause of dash-pots is prospered ; and thus, at a continued 
 and most noble sacrifice of oil, time, and human life, Uncle Samuel enjoys and pays 
 
 for the delicious D — n Whistle. And now, as remarked by Hamlet, when about 
 
 to assault his respectable uncle, ' Let us go in together V " 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 (A.) 
 
 Isheewood Defined. — Ignorance and corruption — Nonsense — Snug, the 
 Joiner— Audacity and impudence— False and not ignorant— Entirely ignorant — 
 Utterly worthless ignoramus— The bull who took a fancy to stop a locomotive- 
 Intriguer— Juggler— Fool— Swindler — Penny-a-liner — Bare-faced fraud — Monu- 
 mental brass — Villian — Source of utter demoralization — Iago and Uriah Heep — 
 
 Rascality— The son of a poor widow.— -Speech of D n in the Mattingly 
 
 Case, pp. 3, 5, 12, 25, 30, 31, 32, 34, 43, 49, 60, 70, 73, 77, 79. 
 
 (B.) 
 
 " The contract was awarded to Messrs. D~ — n and By the 
 
 terms of the contract the engine w r as to be fully completed by the 1st day of July, 
 1857, but the time was subsequently extended until July 1st, 1858, and again until 
 March 1st, 1859, in both cases by and with the consent of the sureties. 
 
 " In his report of January 1st, 1858, the engineer of the Board reported, 'that 
 a considerable portion of the parts of the new engine have been received, and 
 the contractors expect soon to commence the erection of the engine. The new 
 engine house is enclosed, and every thing is prepared for the erection of the 
 engine, and that he saw no reason to doubt that every thing on the part of the 
 contractors would be fully carried out during the life of the contract. ' But, on 
 the 1st of Janurary, 1859, we had to report to you that the engine had not been 
 completed, and the engineer reported to us that the work on the new engine was 
 not as far advanced as it was anticipated it would be. The cylinders had been 
 set. No further portions of the work had been received during the season, but a 
 large amount of work in New York was out and nearly ready for shipment. The 
 contractors had notified him that they had made arrangements to send the work 
 forward by rail at once. Still, the 1st of January, 1860, came, and we were again 
 compelled to report to you the engine uncompleted; but our engineer reported to 
 us that the erection of the engine was nearly completed, and the boilers were 
 placed and ready for the setting. 
 
 " During all this protracted and vexatious delay in getting this engine into 
 service, which was deemed essential to the safety of the city, and to ensure an 
 uninterrupted supply of water, the confidence of the engineer remained unshaken 
 in its success, and until last summer the Board had repeated assurances from the 
 contractors and their agent, that it would be completed and brought into use in a 
 very short time. 
 
 " On the 1st of January, 1861, we were compelled to report to you that the 
 engine had not yet been offered us for acceptance, although the engineer in charge 
 of setting it up represented it as nearly completed, and that he was then at the 
 East, with the avowed purpose of consulting his employers, the contractors, in 
 regard to getting it into operation, On his return, in the month of February, he 
 resumed work on it, and, after making some changes in parts of it, steam was got 
 up, and the engine made short runs occasionally until the 14th of May. When it 
 became necessary to throw engine No. 2 out of use, for the purpose of making 
 important improvements on it, the engineer consented to keep up a supply of 
 
944 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 water with the new engine during the time our engine was being repaired. En- 
 gine No. 2 was out of use a longer time than it was expected it would be, and 
 was not again brought into service until the 1st day of June last. 
 
 1 ' Subsequently the new engine was thoroughly overhauled* rollers were 
 removed, and slides substituted, and, after making several short runs, the engi- 
 neer in charge closed the house, and left for the city of New York, taking with 
 him the keys of the engine house, to report to his employers. Shortly after this, 
 in the month of August last, the keys of the house were returned to the Secretary 
 of the Board, by express, and the President of the Board recieved a communica- 
 tion from Mr, D n, one of the contractors, apprizing him that the keys 
 
 had been returned as above, and with an intimation that the contractors w r ould 
 probably abandon their intention of making any further efforts to complete the 
 engine. " 
 
 The above elegant extract was what the seedy inventor read from the "Tenth 
 Annual Report of the Board of Water Commissioners to the- Common Council of 
 the City of Detroit" 
 
 (0.) 
 
 It will be obseived that here, as in several other instances, D n's rage 
 
 (heroic and noble passion! ) against Isherwood breaks out blindly, and causes 
 
 him to confuse history. It was not until the D n egg was very nearly hatched, 
 
 that the offending Isherwood became Chief Engineer. D n's first conquest — 
 
 that of Mr. Secretary Toucey — was made with comparative ease. His martyr- 
 dom, so touchingly depicted by himself, did not really commence until after the 
 advent of the new order of things, under Mr. Welles. 
 
 The poem which the great engineer has thus artfully paraphrased is the fol- 
 lowing peculiarly melodious and fanciful description which commences Lord 
 Byron's " Hebrew Melodies'." 
 
 She walks in beauty, like the night, 
 
 Of cloudless climes and starry skies; 
 And all that's best of dark and bright 
 
 Meet in her aspect and her eyes, 
 Thus mellowed to that tender light, 
 
 Which heaven to gaudy day denies. 
 
 One shade the more, one ray the less, 
 
 Had half impaired the nameless grace 
 Which waves in every raven tress, 
 
 Or softly lightens o'er her face; 
 Where thoughts serenely sweet express, 
 
 How pure, how dear their dwelling place. 
 
 And on that cheek and o'er that brow, 
 
 So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, 
 The smiles that win, the tints that glow, 
 
 But tell of days in goodness spent; 
 A mind at peace with all below, 
 
 A heart whose love is innocent. 
 
 (E.) 
 
 " At this point James Watt, the Shakespeare of mechanics appeared — a man 
 whose equal as an engineer has not stood on this earth since, nor do I see any 
 prospect that another will come — a man on whose intellect the Almighty had 
 impressed that intuitive knowledge of his great physical truths, as he had im- 
 pressed upon the intellect of Shakspeare an intuitive knowledge of his great moral 
 truths. He was an humble man in station, but illumined by the light of genius 
 
 he rose into grandeur which will never fade It was James Watt who 
 
 fought the battles of civil liberty in the earlier part of this century. It was James 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 945 
 
 Watt— not Lord Wellington— who conquered Napoleon. He it was who, by creating 
 that physical power, enabled England to produce out of its internal resources 
 those means by which she sustained herself against the gigantic strength of the 
 great Emperor, and carried on a war that resulted in his overthrow* Had James 
 Watt never lived, the French Emperor would have wiped out from its place in 
 the history of the world, and out of the catalogue of nations, that power and 
 people who now domineer over land and sea. James Watt was the great pillar 
 on which they stood, and he it was who fought the great battles that maintained 
 
 them in their present position.'' Speech. — Speech of D n in the Mattingly Case, 
 
 pp. 13, 14. 
 
 (F.) 
 
 i( I had read the testimony of Isherwood and appreciated its effect; and when 
 I entered this room, there stood upon that stand one of the cubs of this lion — an 
 engine driver from the Navy Yard — sent here to devour whatever fragments had 
 been left from the destructive meal of the day before. He was a gorgeous crea- 
 ture as he stood before me; resplendent with gold lace, his delicate white hands 
 unsullied by vile grease, and unhardened by vulgar toil; his magnificent apparel 
 shedding an effulgence of glory around him, in which the rings of Saturn encir- 
 cling his arms vied with the splendors of Mars all over his body for supremacy. 
 There he stood as — 
 
 " The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, 
 And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; 
 And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, 
 When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.' 
 
 " I never behold one of these magnificent visions without thinking how striking 
 is the resemblance between an engine driver of the United States Navy of this day 
 and the lilies of the valley. Not, perhaps, from any peculiar modesty which they 
 have in common, but because like them ' they toil not, neither do they spin ; but I 
 say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.' " 
 — Speech of— D n in the Mattingly Case, p. 11. 
 
 (G.) 
 
 Mb. D K AND the Stbam Yacht Claka Clabita. 
 
 To the Editor of the 
 
 Mr. D- -li publishes in the Times of Tuesday last, a statement signed by Mr. 
 
 Rowland, concerning the responsibility for the machinery of my steam yacht, the 
 Clara Clarita, which is so erroneous and unjust that I am compelled to ask you to 
 publish the facts of the case, so far as I know them. 
 
 That some one has very grossly blundered in the construction of that machinery, 
 is a fact very well known. In the ship-yards along the East River it is pretty woll 
 understood who the blundering party is, but the public are not quite so well advised. 
 Mr. D— — i), by the statement alluded to, attempts to fasten the blame upon " a 
 gentleman" whom he does not name, but whom he leaves every one reading the 
 article to infer, to be me. Why, after all the trouble and expense he has put me to, 
 he should add this extra charge, I do not know, unless it be that I am done with him, 
 
 and Mr. Forbes (whom he must mean, if he means anybody,) is not. Mr. D — n 
 
 knows perfectly well that I never had anything whatever to do with the construction 
 of that machinery. I never gave an order or made a solitary suggestion respecting it. 
 I have simply paid for the work done under his directions. Knowing nothing what- 
 ever about steam myself, I entrusted tha$ department of my vessel entirely to the 
 
946 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 friendly supervision of Mr. Forbes. I did it chiefly to avail myself of the wonderful 
 
 skiil of Mr. Forbes' engineer, Mr. D n, of whose capabilities in the way of 
 
 steam I had heard glowing accounts— partly from himself and partly from other 
 people. 
 
 Mr. Forbes knew all about my purpose of building a steam yacht from the very 
 beginning, and took a warm and friendly interest in its construction. He knew that 
 I wished it to be reasonably fast, and to be ready for use as soon as possible. He 
 informed me one day that he had found an engine and boiler which might possibly 
 
 answer our purpose, and that he " would have D n examine it." A few days 
 
 after this he informed me that D n had examined it and said it was just what he 
 
 ivanted; that he could adapt it to my yacht, giving her all the power she required. 
 The engine was thereupon purchased for the sum of $5,000, and Mr. D n pro- 
 ceeded to " adapt " it. The cost of this adaptation, as may be seen by the vouchers 
 from the Continental Iron Works, now in my possession, every dollar of which was 
 expended under the direction of Mr. D n, is $16,178.03. It can hardly be sup- 
 posed by any man of sense, that either Mr. Forbes or myself would have purchased 
 
 this engine had it not been represented as available. Nor could Mr. D n, as an 
 
 engineer, have taken in hand the job of adapting it, involving such an enormous cost, 
 unless he had thought so likewise. 
 
 At last a trial trip was had. I was on board. Mr. D— — — n worked the engine 
 himself, assisted by Mr. Rowland and Mr. Kowland's fireman. We started from the 
 Continental Iron Works down the river. The day was fine, everything was in order, 
 the model of the boat was pronounced perfection and we started off with flying 
 colors. 
 
 Her machinery alone remained to be tried. To the best of my recollection we 
 made one mile and a quarter in just two hours and a half. It was (in point of 
 space) a brief if not a pleasant trip to all on board — including myself — especially 
 considering that I had waited eight months for the adaptation of this machinery. I 
 could have had fifty engines built during this time notwithstanding the i{ govern- 
 ment pressure." We should have proceeded further down the river, but at Corlear's 
 Hook we were driven back — by the tide. 
 
 For several weeks subsequent to that day the vessel was held subject to Mr. 
 
 D n's orders for the purpose of making a further trial, and he was repeatedly 
 
 invited to do so, but would not. He having abandoned her, I called in the aid of 
 
 two of the best engineers in New York, (next best of course to Mr. D n,) and a 
 
 second trial was had with no better results. The entire machinery of Mr. D— — — n 
 was condemned as utterly worthless, and is now being sold for old iron. 
 
 Some further apology for this note—if further apology is needed — may be found 
 
 in the statement of Mr. D n yesterday in tbe presence of a number of gentlemen, 
 
 that he was not on board when the trial trip was made; that i( it was made by a chap 
 by the name of Vanderbilt who was a fool." This i ' chap, Vanderbilt," is the super- 
 intending engineer of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. 
 
 Yours, &c, 
 
 Leonard W. Jerome, 
 
 To the Editor of the Times: 
 
 As Mr. 1) — n has seen fit, in your paper of this date, to refer to conversation 
 
 had with me at the Union Club, on the subject of the machinery of Mr. Jerome's 
 yacht, the Clara Clarita, and as his reference to only a portion of the conversation 
 must have arisen from a supposition that the remainder was immaterial to the ques- 
 tion, I deem it but proper, both in justice to truth as well as to Mr. D n's 
 
 reputation as an engineer, to recapitulate the entire conversation. 
 
 Mr, D n, after stating that the machinery was not such as was calculated 
 
 to develop satisfactorily the fine qualities of the yacht — but that he was blameless for 
 it, further than regarded its adaptation — answered my inquiry as to what speed could 
 be got out of the vessel with her (i adapted machinery " by the reply that she would 
 make eleven to twelve knots an hour, (a statement, by-the-by, which, when I made 
 H to Mr. Jerome? so surprised him as to occasion the exclamation, that "if she could 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 947 
 
 not go faster than that he would scuttle her.) But, continued Mr. D n, with 
 
 such machinery as could be put in the boat, giving me the entire control of construc- 
 tion, I will guarantee a speed of 16 to 17 knots; and further the new machinery will 
 require but twenty feet of the length of the vessel, in lieu of the two-thirds of her 
 capacity occupied by the present " adaption," Now, leaving aside the fact of Mr f 
 
 D n's denial that he was present at the trial trip, and that the engine was 
 
 worked by him, and therefore that its capacities were never fairJy tested— -the value 
 of which denial may be ascertained by reference to the subjoined correspondence— it 
 appears tome but fair to calculate, that as Mr. Jerome's yacht, with an estimated 
 speed of twelve knots, went at the extraordinary rate of about half a knot, until she 
 met the tide, when she went backward, it appears, I say, but fair to calculate that 
 
 with Mr. D n's improved machinery, she would have gone much faster than 
 
 Mr. D n's minimum of steam success, a government vessel. In conclusion, I 
 
 fear that when Mr. D — — n admitted, for the purpose of his discussion with the 
 Navy Department, that he was " profoundly ignorant of a steam engine, and sup- 
 posed a cylinder-head to be a full moon, ,, he made an admission of which it will be 
 extremely difficult to disabuse the public, if his future engineering efforts continue to 
 be crowned with the brilliant success of his " adaptation* ' of the machinery of the 
 Clara Clarita. 
 
 Yours, very truly, 
 
 E. Riggs 
 
 Mr. Riggs to Captain Smith. 
 
 New York, Feb, 8, 1864. 
 
 Captain Alex. Smith: 
 
 Dear Sir:— Will you please to state who were on board at the trialtrip of the 
 Clara Clarita, who worked the engine, who assisted, and about how long you were 
 out? 
 
 Yours, &c, 
 
 E. Riggs. 
 
 Captain Smith's Reply. 
 
 Feb. 8, 1864 
 
 E. Riggs , Esq: 
 
 Dear Sir :■— In reply to your favor of this date, I would state that there was on 
 
 board the Clara Clarita on her trial trip, Mr. D n, Mr. T. F. Rowland, and 
 
 Warren E. Hill, of the Continental Iron Works; Mr. Foulkes, the builder of the 
 yacht; Mr. Jerome, the owner; Mr. Wm. Rowland, the joiner owner; some of the 
 mechanics of the Continental Iron Works, and the ships company for the day. 
 
 We were underway two hours and a half, the engine being run by Mr. D n, 
 
 assisted by Messrs. Hill and Rowland, 
 
 This, I believe, answers all your questions, yet I beg to add, that which seemed 
 to me important, viz: that five weeks previously, I was instructed to get up steam, 
 which I did, and Mr. D— n worked the engine at the dock several hours. 
 
 I also desire to inform you that on Saturday last, in a conversation with Mr. T. 
 
 F. Rowland, of the Continental Works, he informed me that what Mr. Jerome had 
 written (refering to his communication in the Times of Saturday last) was all true. 
 I have been in command of the Clara Clarita since the 18th day of August last and 
 I have never known any thing to have been done appertaining to her machinery, 
 
 except under the direction of Mr. D n. For so small a matter as a bilgepump, 
 
 which I required, Mr. Rowland informed me that he would be obliged to consult Mr. 
 D — n. 
 
 Yours, &c, 
 
 Alex. Smith, 
 
 Commanding Yacht Clara Clarita, 
 
948 APPENDIX. 
 
 (H.) 
 
 " I will suppose a little cylinder, one inch in diameter, and of indefinite length 
 and a piston fitting in it, steam-tight, but without water friction; and I will further 
 suppose a cubic inch of water to be passed into the bottom of that cylinder, and the 
 piston to be then let down on the water; and I will suppose that on the top of that 
 
 piston there is a platform carrying a ton weight of bricks." — D n's speech in 
 
 the Mattingly Case f pp. 16. 
 
ADAMS, TJ. S. S., 647 
 Adam son, A., 426 
 Adirondack, 218, wrecked, 332 
 Advisory Board, 1st, 773; 2d, 776 et seq 
 Agamenticus, 347 
 Agawam, 367, 444 
 Alabama, 367; sunk, 430 et seq 
 Alarm, 648 
 Alaska, 474, 624 
 Albany, sloop-of-war, 92, 96 
 Albany, 395 
 
 Albemarle, ram, 450 et seq., sunk, 469 
 
 Albemarle, launch, explosion of, 666 
 
 Albert, John S., 567, 571, 764 
 
 Alden, James, 238, 319, 324, 388, 435, 575 
 
 Alert, 1st., 477, 2d., 643 
 
 Alert, Br. St., 706, 709 
 
 Algoma class, names of, 474 
 
 Algonquin, 357, 517 et seq 
 
 Alleghany, 53 et seq 
 
 Alliance, 647, 764 
 
 "Alvarado Hunter," 97 
 
 Ambler, J. M„ surgeon, 68J, 690, 694 
 
 America, yacht, 151, 648 
 
 Ammen, Daniel, 247, 453, 818 
 
 Ammonoosuc, 399, trial trip, 570 
 
 Amphitrite, 1st, 347; 2d, 628, 631 
 
 Antietam class, names of, 395 
 
 Archbold, Sam'l, engr-in-chief, 104, 154, 158, 162, 
 
 176. 202 
 Arctic, 153 
 
 Arctic exploration, 679 et seq 
 
 "Arms and the Man," 1 
 
 Army & Navy Journal, quoted, 606, 667 
 
 Aroostook, 221, 314 
 
 Ashuelot, 395, 590; wrecked, 756 
 
 Atlanta, 777 et seq 
 
 Atlanta, Oonfed. stmr., captured, 378 
 Atlantic cable, laid by Niagara, 152 
 Atlantic Works, 206, 340, 357, 400, 585, 647 
 Augusta, 247, 250, 371, 590 
 Aulick, J. H.,104, 127, 128 
 
 AILEY\THEODORtTS,325, 327 
 Baker, O. H., 316, 635 
 Balch, Geo. B., 330 
 Baltimore, 794 
 
 Bancroft, Geo., secy, navy, 77, 652, 817 
 
 Bancroft, 817 
 
 Baron de Kalb, sunk, 390 
 
 Barton, paym'r, 467 
 
 Batten, J. M. surgeon, 214 
 
 Bear, 706, 709 
 
 Bell, EL. H., 319, 325, 367 
 
 Benicia, 474, 623 
 
 Bennett, Jas. G., 681, 683 
 
 Bennington, 802 
 
 Benton, 285, 318 
 
 Berry, R. M., 681, 698 et seq 
 
 BevingtOD, M. 830 
 
 Bienville, 247, 250, 437 
 
 Billings, L., pavm'r, 52, 429 
 
 Blake, H, C, 367 
 
 Blockade runners, captured or destroyed, .195 
 
 " Blood is thicker than water," 43 
 
 Boiler, drop-flue, 38; ascending flue, 106; Mar- 
 tin's, 222; Bartol's, 223; of Monitor, 281; 
 Stimer's, 349; straight- way, 515; Dicker- 
 son's, 524: of Chicago, 781 
 
 Bomhshell, 455; captured, 457 
 
 Bonne Homme Richard, 474 
 
 Boris, A. EL, secy, navy, 6,15 
 
 Boston, 777 et seq 
 
 Boutelle, O. A., 458, 467, 704, 825, 834 
 Bowles, F. T., 777, 778 
 Brook, John M., 290 
 
 Brooklyn, 1st, 157; 319 et seq. ; 367, 435 et seq 
 
 Brooklyn, 2nd, 837 
 
 Brown, Jeiferson, 386 
 
 Bryce-Douglas, A. D., 794 
 
 Buchanan, Franklin, 137, 294, 301 
 
 Buehler, Wm. G., 152, 436 
 
 Bunce, P. M., 585 et seq 
 
 Bureau of Steam Engineering, created, 361 
 
 Bushnell, O. S., 370, 272, 277, 281 
 
 Butler, Gen'l B. F., 242, 327, 444, 446 
 
 Butterworth, Jas., 599 
 
 CADET ENGINEERS, at Naval Academy, 
 653 et seq 
 
 Cadet Engineers, discharged, case of, 752 et seq 
 
 Cahill, Jos N., killed, 427 
 
 Cairo, 282; sunk, 390, 425 
 
 California, 623 
 
 Caliope, H. M. S., 761 
 
 Comanch e, 340 
 
 Canandaigua, 218, 332, 369, 424 
 Canonicus, 348, 445, 484 
 Carondelet, 282, 318 
 Carr, O. A., 734, 739 
 Castine, 818 
 
 Casualties at Fort Jackson, 327; at Mobile, 442; 
 
 at Fort Fisher, 497; in engr. corps during 
 
 cival war, 509 et seq 
 Catawba, 348, 627 
 Catskill, 340, 377, 381 
 Cayuga, 221, 319 et seq 
 Ceres, 288, 451 et seq 
 
 Chain armor, by whom devised, 322, 324 
 Chandler, Wm. E. s secy, navy, 703, 706, 709, 752, 
 
 757, 777, 782 
 Charleston, 789 et seq 
 Chattanooga, 399, 531: sunk, 532 
 Chenango, 357; explosion on, 427 
 Chicago, 777 et seq 
 Chickasaw, 347; 436 et seq 
 Chicopee, 357, 469 
 Chilicothe, 348 
 Chimo, 395, 489 
 Chipp, C. W„ 680 etseq 
 Chippewa, 221, 445 
 
 Church, W. C.~"Life of John Ericsson," 
 
 quoted, 71, 72, 296, 310, 313, 340, 422, 845 
 Cimmarone, 221, 378 
 Cincinnati. 1st, 283, sunk 390 ; 2d, 813 
 Clifton, 320, 339, 362. 891 
 Colorado, 145, 244, 319, 325, 445 
 Columbia, wrecked, 368 
 Columbia, 2d, 821 et seq 
 Columbian Exposition, 764 
 Columbian Iron Works, 789, 817, 842 
 Columbine, captured, 426 
 Commodore Hull, 375, 454, 455, 470 
 Commodore Jones, blown up, 425 
 Commodore Perry, 288, 331 
 Composite Gunboats, 843 
 Concord, 802 
 Conestoga, 318, 328 
 Congress, 395, 680 
 Connor, Commo., 91 et seq 
 Contocook, 395, 623, 665 
 Contocook class, names of, 395 
 Cooley, M. E,, 733, 738 
 Copeland, Charles W. ? 31, 36, 56, 103, 104, 13? 
 
950 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Cowie, George, Jr., 602 
 
 Oragg, S. W., 319, 327, 427, 428 
 
 Cramp Shipbuilding Co., 273, 399, 531, 789, 794, 
 
 801, 809,818,821, 838 
 Craven, T. A. M.,436 
 Crosby, Pierce, 319, 602, 757 
 Crygier, J. U., 750 
 
 Cumberland, sloop-of-war, 92, 231, 243, 492, 
 et sea 
 
 Cushing, William B., 289, 330, 331, 448, 468 et seq 
 Cushmg, 802 
 
 Cushman, W. H., 433, 434 
 
 DACOTAH, 169 
 Dahlgren, rear ad., 199, 380, 406, 499 
 Danby, Robt., 132, 133, 199, 231 et seq 
 Danenhower, J. W., 683, 688, 691, 693 
 "David," 424 
 
 Delano, B. F., 142, 176, 399, 528, 555, 589 
 Delaware, 623 
 
 De Long, George W., 680 etseq 
 
 Demologos, 9 et seq 
 
 Despatch, 1st, 154; 2d, 648 
 
 Detroit, 1st. 474 ; 2d, 817 
 
 Diana, captured, 390 
 
 Dickerson, E. N., 161 etseq.; 396, 517, 526 
 
 Diekerson, M. t sec. navy, 16, 19, 713 
 
 Dictator, 340, 344, 347 
 
 Dobbin, sec. navy, 56, 138 
 
 Dolphin, 777 et seq 
 
 "Double-enders," names of, 221, 357, 395 
 Doughty, Th., chief engineer, 391 
 Drayton, Percival, 249, 333, 336, 436 
 Driver, Reynolds, 499 
 Dukehart, T. M., 319, 471 
 Dunderberg, 348 et seq 
 Dungan, W. W., 250 
 
 DuPont, S. F., 148, 245 et seq., 376 et seq., 403 et 
 
 seq., 418 etseq 
 Durand, W, F„ 734, 735, 743 
 
 EDDOWES, A. K., 370, 371 
 Edes, James B., 282, 347, 318 
 Edith, 99 
 
 Ellis, William, 54, 137 
 
 Engine, side lever, 43; half-cylinder, 65; in- 
 clined, 360; Wright's, 516; vibrating lever, 
 537 
 
 Engineer, 32 
 
 Engineer-in-Chief, office created, 40 
 Engineer Corps, U. S. Navy, established, 40; 
 increased in 1861, 205; casualties of, in 
 Civil War, 509 et seq. ; promotes technical 
 education, 732 et seq.; reduced in 1882, 
 751 
 
 Engineers, naval, first in service, how ap- 
 pointed, 24; how berthed and messed, 28; 
 declared to be officers, 40; names of, 25, 
 76, 80; arranged in order of merit, 76 et 
 seq.; receive commission, 75, 607, 616; 
 titles changed, 746. 
 
 Engineers, naval, in Mexican War, 99; in 
 Japan expedition, 132; at Port Royal 
 battle, on Monitor, at Fort Jackson, 319; 
 at Mobile, 436; at Fort Fisher, 497; lost 
 in Mound City, 328; in Weehaivhen, 382; in 
 Tecumseh, 438; in Patapsco, 498; in Kear- 
 sarge, 593; in Na7*cissus, 593; in Oneida, 598; 
 in Huron, 749; volunteer, qualifications 
 of, 205 et seq. ; cadets, 652 et seq. ; detailed 
 to colleges, 733 et seq 
 
 Engineers for revenue cutters, appointed, 75 
 
 Enterprise, 644 
 
 Epervier, 477 
 
 Ericsson, John, 61 et seq. ; his gun, 70, 71, 99, 
 262, 268; builds Monitor, 274 et seq.; 309, 
 339, 392, 396, 399, 419, 484, et seq. ; 532, 801 
 
 Ericsson, 821 
 
 Esmeralda, 790, 793 
 
 Essex, 1st, 285, 318, 385 ; 2d., 647 
 
 Everett, William H„ 151, 352 
 
 FAIRFAX, D. M., 255 et seq 
 Faron, John, Jr., 25, 36, 42, 76, 78, 87, 103 
 Faron, John, 152; killed, 438 
 Farragut, D. G., 318 et seq.; wounded, 329, 336, 
 385, 425, 435 et seq. ; his statue made from 
 screw of Hartford, 157 
 Fernald, F.L., 777, 781 
 Fillebrown, T. S., 109, 427 
 Firemen classified in 1847, 86 
 Florida; confed. cr.,372, etseq.; captured 442 
 Flusser, C W., 330, 448,451; killed, 452 
 Follansbee, Joshua, 72, 152 
 Foote, A. H M 285, 318, 406 
 Fort Donelson, captured, 318 
 Fort Fisher, first attack, 444; eaptured, 496 et 
 seq 
 
 Fort Jackson, battle at, 321 et seq 
 Forward affair of, 597 
 
 Fox, G. V., asst. secy, navy, 278, 310, 419, 477, 478, 
 
 484, 489, 492, 584, 589, 656, 850 
 Franklin, 141, 400 
 Frolic, 624, 680 
 Fulton, 1st., see Demologos 
 Fulton, 2d., 19 et seq 
 Fulton, 3d., 29, 30, 174 
 
 GALENA, 1st., 272, 277, 315, 436 
 Galena. 2d., 635 
 Gay, Jesse, 132, 133, 157, 189 
 Gearing for engines discarded, 64 
 Genessee, 221, 387, 389, 437 
 Germ, 48, 50 
 
 Germantown, sloop-of-war, 231, 242, 290 
 Gettysburg, 497, 624 
 Gilmer, T. W., sec. navy, killed, 70 
 Gotwold, surgeon, killed, 370 
 Goldsborough, L. M., 286, 314, 339, 577 
 Grant, U. S., 95, 318, 498, 615, 727 
 Greely Relief expedition. 706 et seq 
 Greene, S. Dana, 296, 302, 313 
 Greene, Wm. R., killed, 364 
 Greer, J. A., 254, 260, 680 
 Gregory, F. H., 408, 485, 521, 525 
 Grice, Francis, 103, 105 
 Griffis, W. E , 30, 94 
 Griffiths, J. W., 173, 647 
 Griswold, John A., 281, 310 
 Guerriere, 395, 622 
 
 Gunners, originally non-combatants, 2 
 
 | ALL, C. F., arctic explorer, 679 et seq 
 1 Hall, Geo. W., 255, 260, 261 
 Hall, Geo. W.,2d. 762 
 Hands, R. W., 296, 333 
 tlanscom, Isaiah, 357, 584, 647 
 Harriet Lane, 174, 320, 362, captured, 363 
 Hartford, 157, 318, et seq., 385 et seq., 436 etseq 
 Hartt, Saml. 44, 103, 110 
 Hasseltino, D. C, 213 et seq 
 Hasson, W. F. C. 734, 736. 743, 769 
 Haswell, Chas. H., first engr. in navy, engr.- 
 in-chief , etc., 19, 21, 36, 41, 42, 75, 86, 93, 105, 
 110, 120 et seq., 287, 288 
 Ilatteras, sunk, 367 
 Hawkins, J. T., 456, 608 
 Hebard, A., 36, 47, 76, 82 
 Helena, 841 
 
 Henderson, Alex., 332, 5%, 777 
 
 Hobby, J. M., 250, 458, 462, 464, 467 
 
 Holden, Dr. Edgar, 334, 335 
 
 Hollis, I. N., 578, 733, 743, 793, 834, 841 
 
 Housatonic, 218, 369, sunk, 424 
 
 Houston, J. B., 253 et seq., 259 
 
 Hoyt, Eben, 322, 388, killed, 666 
 
 Huber, Jos., chief engr., killed, 330 
 
 Hunt, A. M., 734,768 
 
 Hunt, Henry, 56, 72, 118, 120 
 
 Hunt, W. H., secy, navy, 773 
 
 Hunt, Wm. H., 326, 327, 436, 439 
 
 Hunt, Lieut. W. W., his wheel, 48, et seq 
 
 Huron, 1st, 221; 2d, 643; wrecked, 749 
 
INDEX. 
 
 951 
 
 IDAHO, 165, 396, 533 et seq., 526 et seq 
 Indiana, 818 
 Indianola, 348, 384 
 Inman, Wm., 4T, 362 
 Intrepid, 648 
 Iowa, 1st, 571: 2d, 838 
 Iris, 94 
 
 Iron-clads, first, 263, river type, 282, soLd, 627 
 
 Iroquois, 169, 319, et seq 
 
 Isaac Smith, 246, 247, captured, 372 
 
 Isherwood, B. F., engr. -in-chief, 55, 57, 80, 82, 
 99, 117, 121, 165, 176, 182, 200, 202, 217, 221, 
 232, et seq., 396, 399, 400, 514, 517, 535, 553, 
 568, 576, 589, 608, 654, 656, 663, 773, 825 
 
 Itaska, 221, 319 et seq., 436, 440 
 
 Itata, 793 
 
 Iverson, A. J., 594, 756 
 
 JAPAN, expedition to, 126 et seq 
 Japanese bell at Naval Academy, 135 
 Jeannette, arctic expedition, 682 et seq 
 Jeffers, Wm. N., 289, 314 
 John Hancock, 1st, 137: 2d, 137 
 Jones, Catesby, 301, et seq., 307 
 Jones, David P., 498, 734 
 Jouett, Jas. E., 436, 440 
 Judah, schooner, 244 
 Juniata, 218, 446, 680 
 
 ■KALAMAZOO, class, names of, 400 
 Kane, E. K., arctic explorer, 153 
 Kansas, 357. 515 
 Katahdin, 1st, 221, 319; 2d, 818 
 Kewrsarge, 218, fights Alabama, 430 et seq., 
 
 wrecked, 769 
 Kearsarge, 2d, 844 
 Kellogg, ivl ortimer, 131, 136, 152, 435 
 Kennebec, 221, 319, 436, 440, wrecked, 501 
 Kennon, Beverly, 53, killed, 70 
 Kentucky, 844 
 Keokuk, 348, sunk, 377 
 Keystone State, 370, 624 
 Kickapoo, 347 
 Kimball, J. B., 319, 328 
 Kineo, 321, 319, et seq., 385 
 King, J. W., engr.-in-chlef, 147, 182, 250, 487, 
 
 544, 609, 639, 643, 668, 671 
 King, Wm. H., 132 
 Kipling', Rudyard, quoted, 371, 809 
 Kutz, Geo. F., 152, 385, 386, 436 
 
 BACKAWANNA, 218, 436 et seq 
 *■ Lancaster, 158 
 Lawton, Elbridge, 138, 319 
 Lay, J. L., 389, 376, 468, 481 : 
 Lee, S. P., 319, 329, 332, 375, 455 
 Lehigh, 340, 382 
 Lenapee, 357, 427 
 
 Lenthal, John, 54, 56, 103, 142, 176, 525, 773 
 LeRoy, Wm. E., 370, 436 
 Lexington, 318, 328, 330 
 
 Light-draft monitors, names of, 395; failure 
 
 of, 483 et seq 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 162, 202, 237, 278, 404, 483, 500 
 Lockwood. 289, 424 
 Long, R. H., 147, 173 
 Longshaw, surgeon, killed, 497 
 Loring, C. H., engineer-in-chief, 147, 635, 761, 
 
 773, 805 
 
 Loring-, Harrison, 138, 158, 340, 348, 817 
 Louisiana, 287, 289, 375; used as powder maga- 
 zine, 444 
 Louisiana, Oonfed., 321 
 Lowe, John, 707, 745 
 
 MOCAULEY, Captain Charles S.,331 et seq. 
 McClellan, George B., 60, 95, 297 
 McElmell, J., 152, 436 
 McEwan, William G., 440 
 McKay, Donald, 270, 647 
 Machias, 818 
 Mackinaw, 357, 445 
 Madawaska, 399, trial trip of, 532 
 
 Mahopac, 348, 445 
 
 Main, Herschel, 601 
 
 Maine, 801, 806 
 
 Mallahan, Thos,, killed, 376 
 
 Manassas, Conf ed, ram, 321 et seq 
 
 Manhattan, 348,436,744 
 
 Marblehead, 1st., 221; 3d., 817 
 
 Marietta, 348 
 
 Marion, 635, 750 
 
 Marsden, Captain J., 293, 296, 299 
 
 Martin, D, B., engineer-in-chief, 56, 99, 110, 138, 
 
 148, 154, 163, 169 
 Massachusetts, 1st., 98; 2d., 400 ; 3d., 818 
 Mattabessett, 357, 454, 456, 466 
 Maumee, 357, 516 
 
 Maxey, Hon. Virgil, killed on Princeton, 70 
 Meade, R. W, 495, 767 
 
 Melville, Geo. W., engineer-in-chief, 443, 681 et 
 seq.; 703, 705, 707, 708, 711, 805, 825, 833 
 
 Mercedita, surrender of, 370 
 
 Merchant steamers not fit for war uses, 503 
 
 Merrick & Towne, 36, 63, 110 
 
 Merick & Sons, 147, 169, 270, 273, 399, 516, 531 
 
 Merrimac, 141,145, 146, 330 et seq,; 290; raid of, 
 391 et seq. ; fights Monitor, 301 et seq. ; de- 
 stroyed, 314 
 
 Messimer, H., .248, 250 
 
 Metacomet, 357, 436, 440 
 
 Mexican War, 88 et seq 
 
 Miami, 321, 320, 451 et seq 
 
 Micmtonomoh, 1st.. 347 ; 589 et. seq. ; 2d., 629 
 
 Michigan, 44 
 
 Miller, P., cadet engineer, killed, 758 
 Milwaukee, 347; sunk, 499 
 Minneapolis, 834 
 Minnesota, 145, 148, 243, 292, 313 
 Mississippi, 32 et seq. ; 36, 43, 91 et seq. ; 128 et 
 seq. ; 189, 319 et seq. ; destroyed, 386 et seq. 
 Missouri, 35, 36; burned, 43 
 Mobile Bay, battle, 435 et seq. 
 Mohawk, 175 
 
 Mohican, 1st., 169; 247 et seq.; 2nd., 635. 
 Mohongo, 395, 592 
 
 Monadnock, 1st., 347, 445 ; 584 et ~seq; 2d., 588, 629 
 Monitor, 274 et seq, ; 295 et seq. ; 301 et seq. ; 314; 
 
 founders, 333 
 Monongahela, 318, 385, 436 et seq. ; 595 
 Montauk, 340,376,382 
 Monterey, 769, 376, 382 
 Montgomery, 817 
 Monticello, 243 
 
 Moore, J. W., 319; 322 et seq. ; 388, 389, 577, 639 
 
 Morgan Iron Works, 170, 396, 427, 647, 648 
 
 Mosholu, 395, 580 
 
 Moss, Chas., case of, 76 et seq. 
 
 Mound City, 282, 328. 
 
 Muldaur, A. W., 467,598 
 
 Mullen, A. T.E., 363, 444, 445 
 
 Muscoota, 395, 594 
 
 IAHANT, 340, 377, 378, 383 
 1 Nantasket, 477 
 Nantucket, 340, 377, 382 
 Narcissus, wrecked, 593 
 Narragansett, 170 
 Nashville, 838 
 
 Nashville, Confed. Steamer 363 
 
 Naugatuck, 60, 315. 
 
 Naval Academy, 652 et seq. 
 
 Naval Constructors, 142; commissioned, 607 
 
 Neshaminy, 399, 579, 639 
 
 Newark, 789 
 
 Newell, H M 154, 445 
 
 New Ironsides, 272 et seq. ; 377, 382, 445 
 Newton Isaac, 60, 296, 305, 307, 577 
 New York, 809 et seq 
 Niagara, 141, 151, 152 
 Nicholson, J. W. A., 436, 564, 593 
 Nindemann, W. F. 0., 684. 687, 691 
 "Ninety-day" gunboats, names of, 221 
 Nipsie, 1st., 357, 515; 3d., 648 ; 761 et seq. 
 Norfolk navy yard, loss of, 330 et seq. 
 Norton, H P., 777 
 
952 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Novelty Iron Works, 221, 280, 399, 555, 589 
 Nyack, 357 
 
 OAK LEAVES adopted as corps emblem, 724 
 Octorora, 221, 435 
 Omlypia, 813 
 Omaha, 477, 624 
 
 Oneida, 218, 272, 319 et seq ; 373, 436 et seq. ; sunk 
 597 
 
 Oneota, 348, 627 
 
 Onondaga, 347, 354 
 
 Oregon, 1st., 400; 2nd., 818 
 
 Osage, 348, 391; sunk 499 
 
 Ossipee, 218, 436 et seq 
 
 Ottawa, 221, 247, 250 
 
 Ostego, 357, sunk 443, 469 et seq 
 
 Owasco, 221, 320, 362 
 
 Ozark, 348 
 
 >ALOS, 481, 599 
 Paraguay expedition, 174; steamers char- 
 tered for, 175 
 Passaic, 333 et seq,; 340, 377, 382 
 Patapsco, 340, 377, 382; sunk, 498 
 Paulding, Captain Hiram, 148, 241, 264 
 Pawnee, 173, 243, 247 et seq. ; 426 
 Pay of naval engineers in 1837, 22; in 1842, 40; 
 in 1849, 87; in 1860, 184; in 1864, 494; in 1870, 
 616; in 1885, 758 
 Pembina, 221, 247 et seq. ; 437 
 Penobscot, 221, 368 
 Pensacola, 161 et seq. ; 319 et seq 
 Pensions extended to engineer corps, 86 
 Pequot, 357, 516, 663 
 
 Perry, Captain M. 0., 22, 26, 30, 91 et seq. ; 123, 
 
 127 et seq., 653, 713 
 Petrel 789 
 
 Philadelphia, 1st., 287; 2d, 802, 805 
 PickreU\ J. M., 756 
 Pinola, 221, 319 et seq. ; 437 
 Pinta class, names of, 481 
 Pirsson's condenser, 55 
 Piscataqua, 395,623 
 Pittsburgh, 282 
 Plymouth, N. 0., battle, 471 
 Plymouth, sloop-of-War, 129, 131, 231; sunk, 242, 
 290 
 
 Plymouth, 477, 624 
 Pocahontas, 154, 249, 330 
 Poinsett, 44 
 
 Polaris expedition, 680 et seq 
 Polk, 94 
 
 Pomponoosuc, 399 
 
 Pook, S. H.,272, 482, 647 
 
 Port Hudson, battle, 384 et seq 
 
 Port Royal battle, 245 et seq 
 
 Port Royal, 221, 314, 436, 440 
 
 Porter, Oapt. David, 11, 16 
 
 Porter Adm'l. D. D., 213, 327, 329, 384, 390, 392, 
 444, 446, 472, 639, 666; his opinion of engi- 
 neers, 198; of acting masters,320; of screw 
 propulsion, 639; of Isherwocd engines, 
 660 
 
 Porter, J. L, 290, 314, 450 
 Pvwhatan, 105, 109. 130, 136, 445 
 Princess Royal, 368 et seq m 
 Princeton, 1st., 62etseq.; gun explosion on, 70, 
 72, 91, 98 
 
 Princeton, 2d, 74 t ^ r ^ 1 
 
 Propeller, Loper's, 51; of Alleghany, 56; Erics- 
 son's, 62; of San Jacinto, 118; experi- 
 ments with two-bladed, 636 
 
 Puritan, 1st, 340; 2d, 629 
 
 Putnam, O. F., 701 
 
 f*UA KER CITY, 371, 446 
 
 V Quinnebaug, 1st, 477; 2d, 635 
 
 Quinsigamond, 400 
 
 Quintard Iron Works, 399, 647, 801 
 
 RALEIGH, 813 
 Ranger, 643 
 
 Rank, conferred upon naval engineers in 1859, 
 
 185; reaffirmed in 1861, 186; raised in 1863, 
 401; reduced in 1869, 610,; brevet, in navy, 
 605; "relative," origin of, 617 
 
 Rattler, H.M. 9., 63, 136 
 
 Resaca, 477 
 
 Retired list created, 357 
 Rhoades, H. E., 374, 375 
 Rhoades, H. E., 2d, 681 
 Richmond, 158; 319 et seq ; 388; 436 et seq 
 Roach, John, 350, 396, 399, 544,629, 643, 777 
 Roanoke, 145; 292 et seq.; 301, 354, 629 
 Roanoke Island, battle, 286 et seq 
 Robeson, Geo. M., secy, navy, 544, 602, 616, 628, 
 632, 668 
 
 Robie, E. D„ 129, 132, 250, 344, 405, 406, 524, 526, 
 
 577,639 
 Robie, H. W., 332 et seq 
 Robinson, L. W., 436, 764 
 Rodgers, C. R. P., 245 et seq 
 Rodgers, Geo. W., killed, 381 
 Rodgers, John, 138; 247 et seq.; 285, 314, 343, 378, 
 
 405,584, 701,773 
 Rodgers, voyage and loss of, 701 
 Roe, F. A., 319, 454, 458, 464, 467, 532 
 
 SACHEM. 295, 362, captured, 391 
 Saco, 357, 515 
 Sacramento, 218; wrecked 595 
 Saginaw, 166; wrecked, 599 
 Samoan disaster, 761 et seq 
 Sam Francisco, 802, 805 
 
 San Jacinto, 110, 114; 251 et seq. ; wrecked, 495 
 
 Saranac, 109; wrecked, 110 
 
 Sassacm, 357, 445, 454, 461, 466 
 
 Saugus, 348, 445 
 
 Saville, J. W., 496,743 
 
 Schley, W. S., 707 
 
 Sciota, 221, 319; sunk, 499 
 
 Scott, Winfield, 94, 98 
 
 Sea Gull, 16 
 
 Seminole war, 44 
 
 Seminole, 170, 247, 250, 430 
 
 Seneca, 221, 247 
 
 Sewell, Geo., 97, 109, 136, 166, 250 
 Sewell, Wm., 76, 105, 118 
 Shamrock, 357, 469 
 Shawmut, 357 
 
 Shawsheen, 289, 331 ; captured, 426 
 Shenandoah, 218 
 
 Shock, W. H„ engr.-in-chief, 74, 80, 82, 96, 146, 
 
 730, 746, 758 
 Shufeldt, R. W.,777 
 Sloat, J, D., 89 et seq 
 Smith, Jos. f 264, 278, 281, 486 
 Smith, Melancthon, 319, 326, 386, 454, 455, 575 
 Soley, J. R„ quoted, 292, 419, 663 
 Sonoma, 221, 374 
 Southfield, 287,451; sunk 452 
 Spangler, H. W., 733, 735, 743 
 Spitfire, 92, 96, 97 
 Spuyten Duyvil, 482 et eeq 
 St.Louis, 282, 318, 328 
 Stahl, A, W., 734, 740 
 Stamm, W. S„ 136, 152 
 Steam launch, 1st, 124 
 Steers, Geo., 151, 529 
 Stevens Battery, 57 et seq; 262 
 Stevens, Hon. A. F., 617, 621 
 Stevenson, H. N., 764 
 Stewart. H. H., 170, 471, 526 
 Stimers, A. C, 147, 262, 280, 28!, 295, 296, 305 et 
 
 seq., 313, 340, 349, 377, 392, 404 et seq, ; 409 
 
 484 et seq 
 
 Stockton, Capt. R. F., 61 etseq.; 70, 74, 91, 97 
 Stodder, L. N., 296, 302, 313 
 Stotesbury, Wm., 469, 470,473 
 Stringharo, S. H„ 176, 242, 262, 408 
 Stuart, Ghas. B M engineer-in-chief, 29, 55, 74, 
 117 119 182 
 
 Susquehanna, 104, 128, 135, 152, 243, 250, 314, 373 
 Smvanee, 395; wrecked, 596 
 Swatara, 1st, 477; 2d, 635 
 
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 U.5.5. Maine. 
 
 EXAMPLE OP MODERN SINGLE-ENDED BOILER WITH CURVED HEADS 
 
INDEX. 
 
 953 
 
 T AGONY, 357, 470, 471 
 Talbot, Lieut. J. G., 600 
 
 Tallapoosa, 357, 495 
 
 Tatnall, Josiah, 43, 96, 246, 314 
 
 Taylor, Bayard, master's mate in navy, 131 
 
 Tecumseh, 348; sunk, 437 
 
 Tennessee, confed. stmr., 337 
 
 Tennessee, confed. ram, 437 et seq 
 
 Tennessee, U, S. S., 544, et seq.. 758 
 
 Terror, 628 
 
 Texas, 794 
 
 Theiss, E. 753, 769 
 
 Thetis, 706, 709 
 
 Thompson, G. L., engr.-in-chief, 39, 41, 42 
 Thurston, R. H., 368 et seq.; 372, 608, 732, 743 
 Ticonderoga, 218, 446 
 Tigress, 680 
 Tonawanda, 347 
 
 Torpedo, unchivalrous,425; Lay, deescribed, 
 481 
 
 Toucey:secy. navy, 162 185, 189 
 Trent, affair of, 251 et seq 
 Trenton, 647, wrecked, 761 et seq 
 Tuscarora, 218 
 Tuscumbia, 348 
 
 Tyler, John, President, 69, 70, 77 
 Tyler, 318 
 
 UNADILLIA, 221,247, 368, 369, 445 
 Underwriter, 289; captured, 423 
 Uniforms, 713, et seq 
 Union, 49 et seq 
 
 Union Iron Works, 166, 790, 802, 813, 818 
 United States, frigate, 231; burned, 242 
 Upshur, A. P., secy, navy, 53; killed, 70 
 
 VAN BRUNT, Capt., 302, 306 
 Vandalia, 635; wrecked, 761 et seq 
 Vanderbilt, 585 
 Varuna, 319; destroyed, 326 
 Vera Cruz, bombarded, 94-95 
 Vesuvius, 801 
 Vixen, 92, 96 
 Voorhees, P. R., 380 
 
 WABASH, 141, 145, 147, 245, et seq. ; 225, 245 
 Wachusett, 218. 316, 442 
 Wampanoag, 399, 554, 583 
 Ward, J. H., 652, 653 
 Wasp, 624 
 
 Wateree, 357; wrecked, 596 
 
 Water Witch, 1st, 51; 2d, 52; 3d, 52, 174, 429, 667 
 
 Waxsaw, 395, 491 
 
 Webber, J. J. N., 296, 305 
 
 Webster, Harrie, 387, 389, 437, 762 
 
 Webster W. T. 756 
 
 Wetliawiien,'m] 377, 378; founders, 382 
 
 Weir, Robt., 166, 389, 441 
 
 Welles, Gideon, secy, navy, 272, 274, 277, 279, 281, 
 
 339, 375, 405, 421 
 Wells, Wm. S., 273, 274 
 Westfield, 320, 362; sunk, 364 
 West point foundry, 17, 20, 36 
 White, Geo. H.,244 
 Whitehall, 287, 294; destroyed, 295 
 Whitham, Jay M., 734, 741, 742, 752 
 Whitehead, 331, 451, 453, 470 
 Whitney, W. C«. secy, navy, 805 
 Whittemore, J, W., killed, 249 
 Wilkes, Chas., 251 et seq.; 374 
 Williamson, Thorn., 290, 436 
 Williamson, Wm. P., 50, 54, 76, 104, 118, 202, 290 
 
 292 
 
 Wilmington, 841 
 Winnebago, 347, 436 et seq 
 Winona, 221, 319, 373 
 WinoosM, 357, 517 et seq 
 Winslow, Capt. J. H., 432 
 Wissahickon, 221, 319 
 Wood, B. F., 592 
 Wood, Wm. Maxwell, 90 
 
 Wood, Wm. W. W., engr.-in-chief, 76, 78, 110, 148, 
 158, 173, 198, 350, 468, 481, 489, 636, 643, 664, 
 667, 746 
 
 Woodbury, J. G., paymr., killed, 381 
 Woodruff & Beach, 169, 432, 516 
 Woods, A. T„ 734, 740 
 ^Worcester 395 
 
 Worden, J. L., 295, 296, 302 et seq. ; 310, 313, 376, 
 526,671 
 
 Wyalusing, 357, 454, 457, 466, 468, 470, 471 
 Wyoming, 169 
 
 Y ANTIC, 357, 446, 516 
 Yates, A. R., 745 
 Yorktown, 789 
 Young, Jas. G., 379 
 
 ZANE. A. V., 701 
 Zeigler, J. Q. A., 497, 585, 587, 595 
 Zeller,Theo., 80, 81, 100, 563, 567 
 Zinc first used in boilers, 124 
 
EREATA. 
 
 Page 64, line 17, omit "of" before the word "the." 
 Page 199, line 6, should be "these" instead of "their." 
 Page 330, line 21, "litteral" should be "littoral." 
 Page 465, line 24, "slooping" should be "sloping." 
 Folios 171-172 omitted.