Gavin Duncan Being part of "Maritime Data Bases: Getting it all Together", you might be expecting a more technological talk, and for that I apologize. The organizers of the program put me in this category. I hope you will enjoy the subject matter. Three years ago, at the 6" Maritime Heritage Conference in Wilmington, NC, I gave a paper delineating my wishes regarding the museum and maritime libraries coverage of the geographically extensive and much faceted American shipbuilding industry. I spoke of my desires regarding the delineation of the extent of shipbuilding both time wise and geographically, the whereabouts of extant ship plans and thirdly exhibitions of shipbuilding methods. This paper is an update of that presentation and mostly deals with the part which has my personal involvement. The third recommendation is by far the most complicated because of scale. However there is the excellent preserved wooden yard, formerly Percy & Small's in Bath and in the Mariner's Museum, there is a creditable exhibition with models and photographs of both wooden and steel shipbuilding. There is also a very fine exhibition in the Franklin Institute on Philadelphia shipbuilders and there may be many more of which I'm not aware. Anyone who saw a ship being built in any period could not fail to be greatly impressed by the complexity of the process. The second recommendation was for a compilation of the surviving ship drawings on a national basis. This would considerably ease the task of the historian and model maker. A number of the marine libraries have collections of drawings but finding what is wanted, if it exists, is largely a lucky bag of asking the libraries until the right one is found. At Mystic, at the Hart Museum in Boston and the Winteruhr Museum in Delaware there are extensive collections. At the Mariner's Museum, The collection of over 10,000 sets at The Mariners' Museum is being cataloged by Greg Cina, an assistant archivist so that it will be easier to find total collection. At the other end of the spectrum you have a small, random collection of Jackson & Sharp! American Car & Foundry drawings at the Delaware Hall of Records in Dover. By the way, does anybody know of the fate of the Sparrow's Point drawings? That facility has recently expired after over 100 years of operation. The first recommendation is really my prime interest, namely to record the extent of the industry from the American Revolution to the present day. At this stage a brief description of the industry and its fascination is in order. The United States, and before that, the British North American colonies have always been in many respects on the forefront of ship design and construction. This was initially driven by the enormous coastal trade, fisheries and international trade as well as by the ubiquity of first growth trees which yielded superb long timbers ideal for shipbuilding. These vast stands of timber led to shipbuilding being well spread out geographically although the industry tended to concentrate in the northeast. It also tended to keep a scale of wooden shipbuilding active long after Europe had gone over to iron and later, steel ships. Sea-going vessels of wood were still being built after World War I To build a wooden vessel, all the fixed plant that is required is a steam box for bending timbers and a portable gin pole or set of shear legs for lifting larger structural members. All other requirements were met by hand tools which were usually the property of the tradesman. Of course the use of power tools made the job much easier and from the mid 19th century the larger yards used them to a greater or lesser extent. Some of the World War I emergency yards were highly mechanized. This was a necessity to accommodate the intended scale and speed of production. In the early days the power tools were driven by lineshaft from a central steam engine. Latterly the source of power was an electric or compressed air motor directly on the tool. This gave greater flexibility in the layout of shops and permitted the use of power tools on the building ways, taking over from what was, by necessity, still a hand tool job. On the other hand, to build an iron or steel vessel, even in the earliest days, involved a considerable amount of fixed heavy tools, namely rolls used to bend plates to a desired shape, a furnace to permit hot bending of frames, shears to cut the metal to desired contours, punches for rivet holes and various machine tools common to all types of metal working. Due to the relatively great strength of iron or steel, the power requirements of such a shipyard were very much greater than for a yard that built wooden ships. The rolling, shearing and punching machines most often used hydraulic power. As you can see, an iron or steel building yard had much more fixed plant and the skills involved were different. As a result very few wooden shipbuilders made the transition to iron builders. Of course, over 150 years iron and steel shipbuilding has developed dramatically, welding with the associated development of prefabrication has replaced riveting and burning has replaced shearing. Even building a vessel on a berth and sliding it into the water has been replaced by building it in a graving dock and floating it out. Some yards build the ship on land and transfer it to a floating dry dock for "launching". A very large change has been the growth of ships in size and complexity making many of the traditional building sites inadequate. Another factor has been the improvement in transportation; the older yards were located as closely as practicable to the source of the major material whereas now it is more advantageous to locate in parts of the country where loss of production due to inclement weather is minimized. Although wood has long ceased to be the pre-eminent shipbuilding material being gradually replaced by iron from the 1850s and steel from the 1880s, it is still used for specific applications, principally for vessels that have to be nonmagnetic or have to endure large ice crushing loads. Aluminum has also come into use for the construction of small fast vessels and in superstructures of some types of large ships to reduce topside weight. Aluminum, being a metal, does not require drastically different means of working from steel. Another material now used in the construction of specialized vessels is fiberglass that involves a totally different process, molding. It is replacing wooden construction in the production of nonmagnetic vessels and is competitive with aluminum for building small fast vessels. Due to the different means of building, facilities must be dedicated to fiberglass construction. Wherever there was a need for ships or boats there were builders, the earliest of course being on the East Coast, particularly in the northeast. As soon as the regions around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River (and its tributaries) became settled the need for waterborne commerce arose, so came the builders, often developing new forms of vessel to suit local conditions. That was also the case on the West Coast where building was concentrated from San Francisco to the north. Ideally, the goal is to list start and end dates for all builders, their location, exact if possible, and number and types of vessels produced. To this end, starting in 1991, I am recording the names of shipbuilders in all parts of the country, the year, vessel name and type built. At first the information was gleaned from local public libraries, but this could only take me so far. My connection with the library at the Mariner's Museum started. The Library at the Mariners' Museum has an almost complete collection of American Bureau of Shipping Registers and those of its predecessor organizations starting with the American Lloyds Register of 1861. It was pointed out to me that the Mariners' Museum library had an earlier register, namely the 1857 New York Register, but it did not give the builders' name. I recorded all the pertinent information from the registers at five year intervals up to 1900. The complete record was copied as it was noted that vessels would show up long after their build date. After 1900, 1 recorded vessels built in the previous 10 years. If an unfamiliar vessel or builder of an earlier date appeared, the information was taken. Since this method depends on my memory, it isn't perfect and some builders/vessels have undoubtedly slipped through the cracks. Not too many however, as in transcribing the data, I would find that it had first appeared in an earlier register. To date, I have covered through the 1930 Record of American & Foreign Shipping (What the ABS Register was formally called until 1933). At the same time, similar information was taken from the "Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships." At present all this information is contained within 20 large 3 ring binders, a sample of which is here. There are 5 on Maine and New Hampshire, 2 on Massachusetts, one on Rhode Island, Connecticut and Vermont, one on New York (Atlantic), one on New Jersey, one on Pennsylvania (Atlantic), one on Delaware, one on Maryland and D.C., one on Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida (Atlantic). There is one on Florida (Gulf), Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. On the Great Lakes there is one on New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, one on Michigan, one on Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The west coast is covered by one on Alaska, Hawaii, Washington and Oregon, and one on California. The inland rivers are covered by one binder geographically organized by river. As the size of the files change, so will the binders. At the moment naval vessels are in two separate binders by builders alphabetically. After the conference the naval vessels will be incorporated into the binders based on geographical location. For the most part, each ship and builders listed has its citation; there are a few exceptions which are the earliest records taken before the importance of citations were made by Ms. Berg and Ms. Williamson of the Mariner's Museum Library. These gaps in citations are gradually being filled in. From the beginning, in 1991, the means of getting information has varied. Initially everything came from public libraries in this area. These institutions were open of an evening and to an extent the option of borrowing existed so it was easy, but unfortunately limited in scope. Next I took advantage of the Mariner's Museum Library with its tremendous resources but not being a lending library or open in the evening, progress was restricted by the busyness of my day job so for around 5 years, work was minimal and disjointed. It has only been in the past three years when the day time job situation has changed and I have really become known to the staff at Mariner's Museum Library that the project has really been worked on systematically. At present with the Record of American and Foreign Shipping, and predecessors, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, the Works by Canney and Schiena on The Coast Guard Vessels, the list includes a substantial if incomplete picture geographically and numerically of the US. Shipbuilding Industry from 1860 to 1945. About 4500 builders are listed at the moment. What the list does not include out of the original list of names is the exact location of builder's activities, and any of that builder's history. There are odd pieces gleaned from various books and the internet on a very limited scale, old trade directories and newspapers. Mention must be made of four geographical areas. One is the Kennebec Region with its centerpiece of Bath covered by William Avery Baker in the Marine History of Bath, Maine and the Kennebec Region. A second is the assorted works which have come out of Essex, Massachusetts. The third is North River of Massachusetts covered by Vernon L. Briggs in his "Shipbuilding on the North River, Boston, 1889. Lastly, down in Delaware on the Broad Kill the output is described by Captain Tinley Clarke Conwell in his "Ships of the Broadkill", Corte Madera, California, 1966. From the internet, we have "Haze Gray" which has complete hull listings of a number of the north east steel builders by Andrew Toppan, the shipyards of Ohio and Michigan are partially covered by http://geocities.com/svandenbosch/. Lastly, of great personal interest is the complete list of production at Sparrows Point Yard, Maryland put out by Tim Colton in http://www.shipbuildinghistory.com/. Unfortunately Mr. Colton died last year. Sparrows Point deserves special mention as it was one of the least known large yards in the country and had an enviable production record. It was also where I got my first taste of American shipbuilding in the late sixties and seventies. Having given a catalog of what has been done, it would be remiss of me not to describe what is necessary to complete the job. Just over a year ago my daughter, Kate Duncan, during summer break, as a Mariner's Museum volunteer, started to enter my binder into a computer data base using Microsoft Access. Unfortunately when she went back to school, that came to a screeching halt, but with some computer data storage issues sorted out, I hope to get that restarted. Dependent on me, the continued creation of this data base will be a lot slower but we have to take hope from "The Tortoise and the Hare". We shall resume our digestion of the Record of American and Foreign Shipping while noting two things. One is that the name changed in 1933 to Record of American Bureau of Shipping and in the same year started to include builder's hull numbers. Lloyd's Register also gave hull numbers on a restricted basis for U.S. built ships starting in 1903. I like hull numbers since they were almost always in simple sequence starting at 1. As a result you know the number of contracts up to a given stage without having to know the record of each vessel. One caveat is that since hull numbers were given at the time of the contract award, the order of completion may be quite a bit different due to the size and complexity of the job. Hull numbers were also given by yard in tabular form after 1914 at the end of post World War II Registers of American Bureau of Shipping for larger vessels. The Register of American and Foreign Shipping and the Register of American Bureau of Shipping after 1893 give a geographical list of shipbuilders with some particulars at the end of each register. The amount of information on each yard expanded after 1923 but ended in 1995. This information would definitely be of value but have yet to find an efficient means of collating it. On the naval front, ships will be recorded from Janes or equivalent. It is slower than Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships but not a problem. So far, we have projected tasks where the source of data is known; all that is required is to record and transcribe it. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, we have a different problem, namely who the builder was. The earliest Record of American and Foreign Shipping lists builders for less than half of the ships registered. Although the picture gradually improved with time, it will be noted that ships on the Great Lakes are not listed before 1900 and that for the river systems the date is generally 1915. The Customs House Registers which were transcribed by the WPA during the Great Depression gives ship data and place built but not builder. Obviously builder data is available from some sources as many books list builders and the information does not come from registers. From what it is possible to glean, The Record of Metal Vessels, built in the U.S., National Archives RC41, entry 12, lists the builder for all iron and steel ships. This fact is stated in "Ships for the Seven Seas, Philadelphia in the Age of Industrial Capitalism" by Thomas Heinrich, Johns Hopkins Press, 1997. In her most excellent little book, "Design Makes a Difference, Ship Building in Baltimore 1795 1830", Toni Ahrens states that she used the master carpenter certificate required by law after 1792. That would involve "going local" to obtain the information. This far I have operated on an independent basis as time permits and, if nothing changes will continue in the same manner. The staff of the Mariners' Museum Library is always there to answer questions, offer suggestions and give assistance on computer matters. Dreaming, and putting out feelers for the future. It would be good to put the operation on a full time basis. A full time computer data processor would be handy, at least until the backlog of written information is assimilated. Another researcher could be quite handy, permitting information gathering beyond the walls of Mariners' Museum. Eventually it would be great to have network of interested people from all parts of the country able to do some "digging" on a local basis. Any volunteers? I feel that the information listed would encourage some out there to develop histories by town, county or region. One of interesting things about having done this is to visit someplace and see what survives. In Baltimore or Philadelphia there isn't much left but if you go to Newburgh NY, you can easily trace the yard of Newburgh Shipbuilding and see some of the buildings from WW I. Or go Milton and Milford DE or Richmond VA to see where the yards were. Personally about the greatest thrill was to go Weems VA and find a functioning repair yard. Never an important yard, it had been in business on that site for over 100 years although under different owners. Here we are at the stage of having recorded about 4500 shipbuilders, some large were household names, while other yards were only known by a few. By the time it is complete there will probably be in excess of 6000 names. The excitement of it all is in bringing to light such a vast industry.
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