The Memoirs of Charles H. Cramp

by Augustus C. Buell

“This trip was a most useful one besides the investigation of compound engines; it gave us an opportunity of examining every method pertaining to hull construction and equipment there, and to discuss all of the problems and methods belonging to it.

“Two great changes in mechanical method and practice in certain details of engine building took place in Great Britain as a result of our visit, and the arrival of the ‘Pennsylvania,’ the first of the American Line; although we took no active measures in that direction.

“We found during this trip that the art of flanging boiler-plates in Great Britain was entirely unknown, and that all British boiler-heads were secured to the side plates and to the furnace ends by means of angle bars in the corners, a crude and primitive method of construction. It was impossible for us to understand this backwardness or ignorance on the part of the British, as the flanging of boiler-heads had always prevailed here.

“We called the attention of the British builders generally to this superiority in boiler construction, but little or no attention was paid to what we said at that time; but when the four ships of the new line arrived in Liverpool, draughtsmen from all quarters were sent to make sketches of the boiler work, and of many other devices new to them, besides the boiler construction, one of which was the use of white metal in bearings and journals. This feature in the engine construction the British had not taken up when we visited their works.

“We can claim to have introduced boiler flanging and the use of white metal in British ship construction on account of our recommendations, and the practical illustration of their utility on the arrival of the ships of the American Line.

“The builders there, however, were very slow in the general adoption of these methods. At first boiler-heads were delivered at engine-works flanged by the mills that made the plates, and Sampson Fox added boiler flanging to his business of making corrugated furnaces. Having seen a boiler furnished with corrugated furnaces by Sampson Fox in England, I introduced them in two yachts built for George Osgood and Charles Osbourne, the first furnaces of the kind in America. These yachts were known as the ‘Corsair’ and the ‘Stranger.’”

The construction of the four pioneer ships went on as it had begun, without promise of aid from the government, which steadily maintained its attitude of neglect as to the national merchant marine, while hundreds upon hundreds of millions in the shape of guarantee bonds and public land grants were poured out by the Congress in favor of western railroads, but not one dollar for the merchant marine.

Still, notwithstanding these discouraging conditions, Mr. Cramp did not abate in the slightest degree his endeavors to keep the needs of the country in the direction of a national merchant marine before Congress and the public. A compilation of the articles he published and of his statements before the committees of both Houses of Congress would, on the whole, fill several volumes like this one. It is therefore impracticable to reproduce here the actual text of his arguments and his expositions.

Newspaper organs of the foreign steamship interests published in this country denounced him as a “subsidy beggar” and other like epithets, which was all that they had to offer in answer to his deductions and arguments; but even that did not disturb the even tenor of his way.

Finally, in the Forty-seventh Congress, a joint select committee of three Senators and six Representatives was organized, of which Nelson Dingley, of Maine, was chairman; and this organization led to the formation of a new standing committee of the House known as the Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries. Mr. Dingley’s committee spent an entire summer in going from point to point on the sea-board and taking testimony and statements of all classes of business men interested in any way or informed to any responsible degree as to the condition of the merchant marine and as to the possible or probable means to bring about its resurrection.