OPERATION SAIL 2000 OFFICIAL PORT CITIES, PART II
Philadelphia, City of Pioneering Ships and People by Peter Stanford illiam Penn wanted rich alluvial farmland for the " Great Towne" he dreamed of founding in the New World. So he pushed through De lawa re Bay with its tricky shall ows and on up the broad reaches of the Delaware River, more than 100 miles from the Atlantic he 'd come across, to fo und the city of Philade lphi a. Thi s was in 1682, late in the morning of co loni al settlement. For nearly three quarters of a century New York had been establi shed as a flouri shing center of Dutch and then English trade with the suITounding Algonquian nations, and half a century earlier John Harvard 's College had been set up to en li ghten the grow ing seaport town of Boston and its environs. And far to the south the great Spanish cities of Santo Domingo, Mexico City, San Juan and St. Augustine had been establi shed for over a hundred years. The Dutch had claimed the Delaware River in their drive to set up seaport cities built on trade in North America. They called the Delaware, in fact, the South River, making up one border of their claim to all New Jersey, with the Hudson River as the North River-a term that astonishingly survives in New York mariners ' argot to thi s day , though few know where the name comes from , and most New Yorkers don't know it at all. The Dutch had pretty wel l g iven up thi s extended effort when Penn arrived in the Delaware to found Philadelphia. They had yielded their Nieuw Amsterdam to the British, who renamed the town New York, and turned their energ ies to the East Indi es , where they built the perfect Dutch city of Batavia on the lu sh tropical island of Java, driving off all rival s in order to command the rich trades of the South China seas.
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A Brotherly Ethos William Penn had no such ends in view as he sailed up the Delaware. On the way, he passed the thriving Swedish settlement at Wilmington , where the Brandywine and Christiana Rivers flow into the Delaware. He landed some 30 miles upstream where the Schuylkill flows into the main river, to found Philadelphia-a name which translates as "City of Brotherly Love. " This was a Quaker city, devoted to the precepts and moral convictions of the Society of Friends-an ethos placing great value on open di scuss ion , hard work and cooperation. The settlement prospered on the productivity of its farmers , preserving remarkably good re lations with the Indians and thus avoiding the horrors and the costs of the colonial drive for domination that resulted e lsewhere in the ghastly massacres of Indians , such as King Philip 's War in Massachusetts. Besides brotherly love the Quakers brought with them the makings of a strong merchant economy- a thing built more with ideas than material s. From an earl y date Philadelphia merchants began shipping the products of an efficient agriculture south along the coast to feed the grow ing slave labor force of the plantations of the Caribbean world. This gave the coloni sts valuable island products to trade to England, notably sugar and rum. And thi s meant books, fine clothes and furniture, plows , guns for the hunt, and all the other accoutrements of a civilized society which the English colonies in their East Coast beachhead enclaves , could not yet produce. With these things go ing for it, Philadelphia grew apace. Within less than 100 years the city outshipped its older rivals and became the biggest, wealthiest and arguably the most cultivated of American cities. By the time of the American Revolution it was recognized as the second greatest city in the 22
English-speaking world-a stunning achievement, c learly based on its leadership in maritime trade.
The City, Teacher of Man "The city is the teacherof man ," sa id Aristotle in a line that any educated Philadelphian wou ld have recognized. Two great Philadelphians might serve as examples of the kind of Americans the city provided: Benjamin Frank lin , the internationally renowned scientist and philosopher, and Joshua Humphreys , designer of the frigate USS Constitution and her sisters. Franklin, born in Massachu setts, came to Philadelphia to seek his opportunity in the printer's trade. He was a great talker who also was greatly interested in what other people had to say, founding societies and libraries and charitab le institutes so all could be hea rd in the American discourse of hi s day. He was not just tolerant of different points of view, he sought them out. But he was also a sc ientist in search of facts. He pursued the factual reality of natural phenomena, and hi s inquiries ranged from sending a kite up in a thunderstorm to catch a lighting bolt to dipping a thermometer overboard during an Atlantic crossing to measure the extent of that great ocean current, the Gulf Stream. The English made him a member of the Royal Society in recognition of hi s achievements in such efforts and made much of him during hi s visit to Eng land to represent American interests shortly before the Revo lutionary War. Joshua Humphreys , a native-born Philadelphian , grew up in the shipbuilding business and eventuall y establi shed his own yard . It was natural that the design of the first frigates built for the American Revolution were developed in Philadelphia with Humphreys ' s participation. Afterthe Revolution he designed the first frigates for the newly estab li shed US Navy. These were the super-frigates that won a stunning series of single-ship actions in the War of 18 12, lead ing to the famous order of the British Admiralty that British frigates should travel in pairs. Humphreys's frigates we re sophi sticated warships built to a new concept of the type, not merely outsize versions of what had gone before. Isaac Hui I described the ir conceptual basis in crystal-clear language, and foug ht li ke a tiger to reta in such features as the li ve-oak framing which considerab ly increased the cost and difficulty of building them. It was iron-hard framing , spaced so close as to provide a virtual wall of support to the outer planking. Upon Humphreys's retirement, the bright young Englishtrained architect Josiah Fox took over the building of the last ship of the class, USS President. He did away with the heavy , close-spaced framing Humphreys had designed into the class, making President a lighter, faster ship. Fortunately she never saw the close action in which Constitution and her sister United States won their staggering v ictories. Her light frame was wrenched cross ing the harbor bar at New York and a pursuing Briti sh squadron was ab le to catch her and force her surrender without a serious fight. This was no " Old Ironsides" they' d caught, but it's not clear whether the British rea lized that the ship was not the real thing. Humphreys stood for something fundamental in the character of Phi ladelphia sh ipbuilding, in the utter honesty and integrity of his design and building practices-and hi s ability to shape an important new concept and carry it through to achievement in three-dimensional reality. Similar qualities served Franklin (and America) well in hi s dealings with the Bostonian John Adams and the New Yorker SEA HISTORY 84, SPRING 1998