The Memoirs of Charles H. Cramp

by Augustus C. Buell

At the beginning of the career of Mr. Cramp in ship-building, the profession had arrived at its highest state of efficiency in everything that related to the design, finish, and outfit of ships. They were with but few exceptions all of wood, and it was in the wooden ship and during the period between 1840 and 1860 that the art and everything belonging to it attained its highest proficiency. Ship-building as an art, profession, and science culminated about this time,—the great transition from wood to iron.

From the earliest period up to that time the professional ship-builder or “master builder,” as he has always been called, was a master in reality. He designed, modelled, and built his own ships, and his appreciation of the beautiful and his artistic taste were of the most refined and cultivated character, and were everything that the term sculptor, artist, and constructor meant. He was acutely sensitive; his contempt for the quack and commonplace in his profession was as great as that of the physician in regular practice for the medical quack.

The builder, the shipwright, the commander, and sailor of this period have never been equalled in any of their professions since, and with but few exceptions the modern steel ship is a retrograde in everything pertaining to the real art as compared to the ship of the period we refer to. The ships, of course, are larger now, and that is all. This period was not only noted on account of the high character of the art, but ship-building plants in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore turned out the finest specimens of construction in the world. All of the workmen—shipwrights, ship-joiners, ship-smiths, ship-painters, and caulkers—were without equals on the planet.

The Webbs, the Westervelts, the Steers family, Jere Simonson, Smith and Dimon and others of New York, and John Vaughan, John Byerly, the Van Duzen family, John K. Hammett and William Cramp, of Philadelphia, were the leaders of their profession the world over. In the navy were to be found the Grices, the Humphreys, the Hanscoms, Delano, and others.

The introduction of the iron ship was made under very unfavorable conditions. The first to take hold of the new material were people, mechanically speaking, of commonplace character both here and abroad, and the art or profession as a rule retains the original taint up to this time. There are some exceptions; some ship-builders in Great Britain carried their art into the Iron Age,—the Napiers, the Ingliss family, and others in Great Britain, and the Cramps in the United States.

Mr. Cramp’s mould loft practice and methods as carried on from the wooden-ship period is the practice now in use in the construction of the navy.

The great advance in the steamship of the period thence up to this time has been in the machinery; and in marine engineering the English were our masters. There has been no advance here in the ship-building art in any respect.

The decade following the Mexican War and preceding that of the Rebellion was marked chiefly by the final or ultimate development of the clipper type of sailing-vessel, and also by the gradual surrender of sail to steam in propulsion and of wood to iron in construction. The clipper idea was undoubtedly of Baltimore origin, and, in fact, the name of that city was given to the type,—the “Baltimore Clipper.” They were, of course, sailing-vessels. In all respects of model, of structure, size of spars and sails, dimensions of hull, etc., the type was distinctly American. It is known, however, that the earliest clippers built in Baltimore were intended for and used in the African slave-trade. In this nefarious traffic they were extremely successful, because in the day of their beginning there were no steam cruisers to enforce the laws making the slave-trade piracy, and there was no sailing cruiser afloat which could keep within sight of a Baltimore clipper in the slave-trading days.

The type, though originating in Baltimore, was not developed there to its ultimate capacity, but the idea was taken up by Philadelphia, New York, and New England ship-builders and embodied in the famous lines which plied between this country and the Pacific Ocean. The discovery of gold in California also gave a great impetus to commerce in sailing-vessels. Of course, steamships soon began to run from New York to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus and from the Pacific side to San Francisco, but there was no railway across the Isthmus at first, so that very little freight traffic could be handled by these steamers. The result was that all freights between the Atlantic coast and California had to go around Cape Horn, and in this traffic the clipper ship fully asserted its value.

The decade of the 50’s was really the zenith of the American carrying trade on the ocean. Relatively to the total amount of ocean commerce, our ships carried a larger proportion of it than ever before in time of peace. Of course, during the Napoleonic wars, when our flag was neutral, we carried a larger proportion of our own products than in the 50’s, but never before in a time of general peace.