The building of the four pioneer ships involved several new departures. The Congress that authorized their construction and made an appropriation toward it, also made provision for creating what was termed a second “Naval Advisory Board,” which was to have charge of the details of their building. By this expedient Congress hoped to avert the evils of the Bureau system on the one hand, and to limit the one-man power of the Secretary on the other. This board consisted of five members, three naval officers and two civilians, to be selected by the Secretary of the Navy. Of the two civilians, one was a ship-builder, the other a mechanical engineer. The ship-builder was Henry Steers. This gentleman was a nephew of George Steers, a somewhat celebrated naval architect in his time, whose principal achievement was the design of the yacht “America,” which won the cup which the English have struggled ever since to recapture. The famous steam-frigate “Niagara,” built a short time before the war, though constructed in a navy-yard, was designed by Henry Steers. During the paralysis of American ship-building which followed the Civil War, Mr. Steers became discouraged at the outlook and, having a considerable fortune, went into the banking business.
The other civilian member, the mechanical engineer, was Miers Coryell, of New York. This gentleman was connected in his professional capacity with the Cromwell Line of steamships plying between New York and New Orleans. He had shortly before the time under consideration designed an engine for the “Louisiana” of that line, which Mr. Roach built, involving an entirely new departure in sea-going engine construction. Perhaps the most concise way to describe this engine would be to say that it represented an effort to introduce the walking-beam of a side-wheel river steamboat into the engine compartment of a screw steamship. The advantage claimed for it was that it permitted the use of vertical cylinders within a deck-height not sufficient to admit the regular type of vertical inverted cylinders. This it undoubtedly did; but there its merit stopped. For the rest it was cumbrous, complicated, and of weight exceedingly disproportionate to its power. This unspeakable device Mr. Coryell offered to the Advisory Board, and, to the speechless amazement of the engineering world, it was adopted as the propelling machinery of the most important ship then authorized for the navy. It is worthy of remark here that these beam-engines were subsequently taken out of the “Chicago,” and a pair of vertical inverted or slightly inclined engines of the usual type substituted. And it might also be observed that this work, with some alterations in the hull, was done in the New York Navy-Yard at a cost of $1,300,000 as against an original contract price of $889,000 for the whole ship new; or, in other words, the cost of re-engining and overhauling the “Chicago” in a navy-yard was 40 per cent. more than the first cost of the new ship under contract in a private shipyard!
The Navy Bureaus were not slow to discern what the creation of the Advisory Board meant for them. At first they tried to defeat it. Finding that impossible, two of the Bureau chiefs besought the Naval Committees of the Senate and House to provide that at least one of the four ships be built in a navy-yard. No member of the Senate committee favored this proposition, and but two members of the House committee, both of whom, it is hardly necessary to say, represented navy-yard districts and danced to the music of labor agitators. Thus, at the inception of the new navy the navy-yard snake was “scotched,” if not killed.
When the contracts and specifications were drawn up in form, two facts became evident: One was that the knowledge of the new conditions of naval construction possessed by the authorities of the navy itself was altogether academic; and the other was that neither naval authorities nor civilians interested had any adequate idea of what the requirement of the law in regard to material actually signified. The law said that the ships must be built of “steel, of domestic manufacture, having a tensile strength of 60,000 pounds to the square inch, and an elongation of 25 per cent. in eight inches.”
Verbally, this was the English Admiralty standard for mild steel plates and shapes. But the English had an elastic system of inspection which left much to be determined by the judgment and knowledge of the inspector. The system adopted by our earlier inspectors of material was rigid as a rock and inelastic as cast-iron. The letter of the law, not the spirit of it, was their guide. These requirements and the mode of enforcing them would have been drastic had the mild-steel industry been in a flourishing condition. But as a matter of fact it had not been developed at all in this country; so they were formulating crucial requirements for the product of an industry which did not exist. The production of mild steel, or at least its use in naval construction, was still in the experimental stage then, even in England, its native home. The “Iris” and “Mercury,” the first all-steel ships built in England, had not been in commission more than two years, when the requirements for our new ships were formulated by the naval authorities and embodied in an Act of Congress.
Bessemer steel was produced in large quantities here at the time for making rails and tank-plates. But Bessemer could not stand the navy tests. Nothing but open-hearth steel could do it, and at the time when bids were asked for the first four ships there was not an open-hearth mill in the country that could make the ingots required for the plates and shapes of the sizes and qualities demanded. Still, American steel-makers were found willing to undertake the task, though the sequel soon proved that their conceptions of what confronted them were quite vague. When one surveys the open-hearth steel industry as it exists in the United States to-day (1901), largely exceeding that of Great Britain, and greater than that of all the rest of the world, exclusive of the United Kingdom, put together, it seems impossible to realize that it is all the growth of a score of years. As late as 1887 there was no forging-mill in this country that could forge a three-throw crank-shaft in one piece, and the “Baltimore’s” crank-shafts of that description had to be imported from Whitworth’s works in England.
Such were the conditions which confronted the ship-builders who made estimates and offered bids for the construction of the four pioneer steel ships of the new navy. When the bids were opened early in July, 1883, it became apparent that the views of bidders as to the character of the task they proposed to undertake were quite divergent. To avoid prolixity, we will deal only with the “Chicago,” which was, in fact, the representative ship. For that vessel there were but two bidders worth considering,—Mr. Cramp and Mr. Roach. Mr. Roach bid $889,000 for the hull and machinery. Mr. Cramp bid a little over $1,000,000, or about 14 per cent. in excess of his competitor. As the sequel proved, Mr. Cramp, conservative as his bid was, or as it appeared to be, underwent no misfortune in failing to get the “Chicago” at $1,025,000. Whether Mr. Cramp could have been more successful than Mr. Roach was in creating the new open-hearth steel industry required to produce the material demanded by the law and the specifications need not be discussed. It may, however, be said that the excess of his bid over that of Mr. Roach was due wholly to his misgivings on this point; because on all other points involved, such as experience, skill, and efficiency of organization, he had some advantage.
Mr. Roach got all the ships. The contracts were signed July 26, 1883. The keel of the “Chicago” was laid December 5, 1883; she was launched December 5, 1885, only fifty-two days before the contract date for completion, which was January 26, 1886. Meantime the first of the ships, the despatch-boat “Dolphin,” had been completed, put on trial, and had failed to meet the requirements of the law. Here the evils of the inflexible, inelastic, or “cast-iron” form of contract became instantly evident. The Navy Department could not accept the ship under those conditions without violating the law. Mr. Roach thereupon threw up his hands, and the government, as provided in the contract, had to take possession of the ships as they stood in his shipyard and complete them with its own resources, at the risk and expense of Mr. Roach and his bondsmen. This action on his part is hard to understand or explain. He was perfectly solvent. Although, as the law and the contract stood, the Navy Department could not accept the “Dolphin,” in view of her deficiency in performance, Congress was soon to assemble, and Secretary Whitney was ready to ask for an amendment or modification of the law which would enable him to accept the ship with an equitable penalty for her deficiency, which, by the way, was not great. It was said at the time that Mr. Roach acted upon the advice of certain political friends holding high rank; that a certain group of Republican politicians believed that their party needed a martyr just at that juncture, and they thought Mr. Roach would make a good one. Be this as it may, the government finished all the ships in the Roach yard, and the “Chicago,” contracted for July 26, 1883, was ready for her first commission the middle of April, 1889,—five years and nearly nine months building. We have dwelt with some prolixity on this branch of the subject for two reasons: first, because it was the beginning of the most important epoch in our naval history; and, second, because the errors, miscalculations, and consequent disasters it developed became themselves of very great value as object lessons for guidance or warning in subsequent transactions.
When Mr. Whitney became Secretary in March, 1885, he found ready to his hand authorization for four more ships, the designs of which had been partially worked out by the Bureaus during the previous winter. He, however, proceeded slowly; so deliberately, that the contract for the first of the four ships built under the authorization of March 3, 1885, and August 3, 1886, was not signed until December 17, 1886, a year and nine months after he assumed the office. This delay was due to a variety of causes, the most important of which are interestingly and instructively described by Mr. Cramp himself in an account of his personal connection with the transactions. It may be premised that when Mr. Whitney became Secretary of the Navy, he very soon sought to avail himself of Mr. Cramp’s experience, professional ability, and practical knowledge. Mr. Cramp responded in the same spirit of frankness and candor as that in which the Secretary invited him. There was no mincing of matters in any direction. Mr. Cramp hewed to the line on all the abuses and shortcomings of the old régime, and he also pointed out methods by which they could be overcome or, at least, compelled to get out of the way. Mr. Whitney was a thorough business man and an able lawyer. Far removed both by character and by fortune from any possible temptation, Mr. Whitney’s sole object in taking the navy portfolio was to promote the public welfare, and thereby add lustre to his name.
But let Mr. Cramp tell his own story in his own way.