report noted that Napier's building yard and engine factory in Glasgow, on the Clyde, had "a world-wide reputation." Napier's had built the Cunard liners that finally drove American packets and steamers out of the first-class Atlantic trade, and in 1861 they built the great 9,210-ton warship Black Prince, sister of the Warrior-of which it was noted at the time that she could have taken on all the navies of the world and steamed through them leaving nothing but floating wooden The 300-foor New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Company's liner City of Washington is launched from John Roach' s yard in Philadelphia in August 1877, a proudly innovative wreckage in her wake. vessel in a backward US industry. (Oil painting by A. C. Stuart, from Philadephia on the War had forced the US to build River, by Philip Chadwick Foster Smith (Philadelphia Maritime Mus eum, 1986)) ironclads in Philadelphia, New York, Because of the great resource offered by the iron and later Boston and other ports. But these were pygmy vessels not fit to keep the sea-the famous USS Monitor was lost off Cape steel technology of the shipyards in and around Philadelphia, Hatteras after less than a year in service. Nevertheless, when the Philadelphia Navy Yard flourished. Relocated from the the innovative John Roach resolved to build iron steamships, central Philadelphia waterfront where Joshua Humphreys had he came from New York to take over a bankrupt Philadelphia built his mighty frigates, it grew to a huge establishment at yard in 1870, to use the industrial know-how and readily League Island in south Philadelphia, where the Schuylkill accessible coal and iron of the Delaware Valley to build in the flows into the Delaware. By World War I it was thought to be coming technology. By 1871 he was building the first of the the largest in the world. And indeed its record was impressive, famous fast steamers of Charles Mallory 's New York- rising to unheard-of levels of production to build the "Two Galveston line. Before that, the wooden Mallory steamers had Ocean Navy" of the late 1930s, which, with its British allies, been built in Mallory 's own yard in Mystic, Connecticut. won the battles of the Atlantic and Pacific on which victory in Cramp in the meantime built the first steamer in the US driven World War II depended. by the new compound engine, which was efficient enough to The civilian yards played their parts in this, including the compete with sail in any quarter of the ocean world, even on New York Shipyard, which laid its first keel in Camden in the long-distance trades with low-value cargoes where sail 1900, and the Hog Island Shipyard which produced 122 of the had up to then held on. standardized "Hog Islander" freighters too late for the war but The growing volume of steamship building in the Dela- in time to meet the immediate postwar shipping shortage. Sun ware was mainly financed by the railroads, which mustered Oil Co. opened its famous "Sun Ship" facility in 1917, the capital and interest to place the orders for multiple ships continuing in operation until just recently, and the pioneer which made efficient production possible. The Pennsylvania Cramp ' s of 1832-1927, which had closed in the delayed Railroad in particular built ships, which they ran cheaply shipping slump of WWI, reopened to contribute mightily to under Belgian flag, to bring European immigrants to Philadelphia. From Phila- By the time World War I began, the Philadelphia Navy Yard was considered to be the largest delphia they could travel inland by rail to facility ofits kind in the world. This tu~n-of-th~-century_ view ~y F. Cresson Schell looks north Pittsburgh and the American Midwest. along Broad. Street. At the upper left 1s the Girard Pom~ gram elev.ator. The ei:~rance to t_he Th" t .¡ f Schuylkill River appears farther left. (From Philadelphia on the River, by Phtlip Chadwick is was an a 1mos eene re-enactment Foster Smith (Philadelphia Maritime Museum 1986)) Brunel building ships to extend the reach ' of the Great Western Railway from London to the seaports of Bristol and Liverpool and so across the ocean to New York. Roach also built a few sailing ships of iron in the 1880s. This didn't work out well, and it was to be left to Arthur Sewall in Bath, Maine, to pick up steel sailing ship technology by importing a British ship in pieces and assembling her on American ways to start the ball rolling. In all, only 13 American square riggers were built of steel, including the Kaiulani, the ship NMHS was founded to save. One sailing vessel by Roach has survived, the smal I iron sloop appropriate! y named Pioneer. Built in 1885 , she survives under schooner rig sailing out of South Street Seaport in New York today. When she sails back to her birthplace in Marcus Hook, there is cheering in the streets.
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SEA HISTORY 84, SPRING 1998