The first vessel described afterward became the “New Ironsides.” Her hull was designed entirely by Mr. Cramp. Generally speaking, her type was that of a broadside sea-going iron-clad. She was a roomy, comfortable ship for her officers and crew. Her fighting quarters were well protected against the shot of that day. Although engaged with forts and batteries a greater number of times than any other one vessel in the service, her armor was never pierced.
Perhaps at this point a description of the vessel and the conditions attending her construction, in the form of a paper read some years ago by Mr. Cramp before the Contemporary Club, of Philadelphia, will be more pointed and interesting than any other delineation.
It is as follows:
“NEW IRONSIDES”
“When the ‘New Ironsides’ was contracted for there was no white oak timber available outside of Pennsylvania. Timber of this kind was cleaned out in Delaware and Maryland, and Virginia was for the time-being inaccessible. So the timber that must be used was growing in the forests of Pennsylvania when the contract was signed.
“With the exception of pine decking every stick of timber was of white oak, and being the largest wooden ship ever built, the frames were very heavy,—the floor timbers were two to each frame, and, being without first futtocks and running from bilge to bilge, they required a tree large enough to be twenty-two inches in diameter at a height of forty-five feet from the ground. Trees of this kind were very scarce in Pennsylvania, and frequently only a single tree would be found in a township, which had been preserved as an heirloom by the owner, and it was often difficult to persuade him to sell.
“During the month of October, 1861, we advertised in the country papers that we would pay a dollar a running foot for every tree that was brought to us by the first of January, under the requirements that they were to be at least twenty-two inches in diameter at forty-five feet from the ground, and the logs were to be sided on two sides anywhere from thirteen inches up to eighteen inches.
“At this time, the beginning of the war, farming and business in country towns being very slack, all suitable trees in the forests of Bucks, Berks, Delaware, and Chester counties and some counties more remote were prospected by the country-people and farmers, who worked very hard utilizing moonlight nights as well as daytime in cutting and shipping this timber. These counties were traversed by the North Pennsylvania Railroad, and the various stations from Quakertown down were soon gorged with logs that had to be delivered at our shipyard on or before the first of January to meet our requirements. By the first of January we had logs sufficient to make all the floors of the ship, and quite a number were left at the stations where they had accumulated too rapidly for the railroad to handle them, and they could not be delivered within our time limit. This timber was afterward bought at a reduced price.
“Not being able to get yellow pine, the beams and water-ways were made of white oak. Some of these pieces were sixty feet long and were sided up to sixteen inches. But notwithstanding these difficulties and the fact that all the frame-timber was standing in the forest when we took the contract, yet the vessel was launched in six months after it was signed.
“The region traversed by the North Pennsylvania Railroad in furnishing the frames, water-ways, and beams became exhausted in its turn, so that toward the termination of the war white oak for the beams of the light-draught monitors had to be procured chiefly in Columbia County, in the interior of the State of Pennsylvania.