The Memoirs of Charles H. Cramp

by Augustus C. Buell

The Crimean War, which happened during this period, also helped American commerce in the ocean carrying trade, because the French and English took up a great deal of their tonnage for transporting troops and military supplies during the years 1854, 1855, and 1856, and to a great extent the places of these ships were filled by vessels under the American flag.

All these causes combined to create marked activity in American ship-building.

To this might be added the effort to establish a trans-Atlantic steamship line under the American flag in opposition to the heavily subsidized Cunard Line. This was known as the Collins Line, and while the government aid lasted it held its own in competition with its British antagonists, but the subsidy was soon withdrawn, and with it the Collins Line collapsed.

On the whole, so far as American ocean commerce and ship-building are concerned, the decade of the 50’s was one of the most interesting in our history. During that period the Cramp concern built from the designs and under the superintendence of Charles H. Cramp a considerable number of important sailing merchant vessels, together with several steamers, mostly constructed for the coasting trade between the ports on the Atlantic and on the Gulf. Cramp also built during that period seven steamers for Spanish or Cuban account to be used in the coasting trade of the Spanish West Indies. They were called “Carolina,” “Cardenas,” “Alphonso,” “Union ‘Maisi,’” “General Armero,” and “Union No. 2.” The last one was not finished until the outbreak of the Rebellion, when she was taken possession of temporarily by the government and converted into a gun-boat, now in the navy list as the “Union.” An interesting incident in Mr. Cramp’s career was his visit to Havana for the purpose of delivering these ships. In their delivery and in making settlement for their construction he spent several months at Havana, where his knowledge of the Spanish language, in which he always retained considerable proficiency, was of great service to him.

The first war vessel designed by Mr. Cramp was the “Libertador,” built for Venezuela. She was fitted with a pair of trunk engines by Messrs. Sutton & Smith, who were noted for their skill in building trunk and oscillating and other marine engines. She mounted a large pivot-gun on her quarter-deck, and when fired off on her trial trip at Market Street, the windows there were broken and the gun nearly kicked herself overboard.

We now arrive at the period of the Civil War, in the operations connected with which Mr. Cramp’s genius first became conspicuous in the broad or national sense.

The work hitherto described, although important in its time and place and under its conditions, which were those of peace, had really served little more than the purpose of a practical training-school to fit him for the broader and more comprehensive duties and responsibilities which the exigencies of the Civil War imposed.

At the outbreak of that struggle, optimistic statesmen, like Mr. Seward, dreamed that it would be over in ninety days. Those dreams went up in the smoke of the first Bull Run. Then the authorities at Washington awoke to the fact that they had on their hands a long and stubborn war.

It is a fact not generally known, or usually lost sight of, that during the first six months of the Civil War, that is to say from April to September, 1861, inclusive, the South raised and embodied a larger number of troops than the North did, and the scale in that respect did not turn until the government had begun to realize the results of its call for five hundred thousand men. But the problem that confronted our authorities was not military alone. It soon became clear to sagacious minds that a great sea power must be created as well as an overpowering force by land. It was a foregone conclusion that notwithstanding the great numerical disparity between the white population of the South and that of the North,—the proportion being about six millions in the South to twenty-five millions in the North,—it would be impossible to overcome them so long as their ports remained open. If the Southern people could continue without serious hindrance to exchange their cotton for European, principally English, arms, ammunition, military supplies, and munitions of war of all kinds, together with provisions and clothing of the kind which they had habitually imported, their armies could keep the field; their railroad system could be kept in fair running order, and the numerical superiority of the North must thereby to a great extent be neutralized. Therefore an effective blockade became an immediate and absolute necessity.

The total coast-line of the Confederacy, Atlantic Ocean and Gulf together, was three thousand six hundred miles long, measured in straight lines. The shore-line, or sinuosities, was considerably more than twice that length. It is a coast indented with numerous inland bays and estuaries, affording easy access to the immediate interior and safe refuge for their ships or the ships of those with whom they traded. Of course, a mere blockade by proclamation would not be respected by any foreign maritime power. Paper blockade so-called had been ruled out of consideration years before in solemn congress or conference of the Great Powers.