At first he thought to follow his father into the navy, but he had a strong taste for electricity and mechanics generally, and he ended by entering the services of the ship building company, after spending three years at Edison's Electrical University at Llewellyn Park.
Oscar was a smart young man, and already many of his electric and other devices were beginning to attract attention. When the improved submarine torpedo-boat destroyer, Holland X., was building at Elizabethport he had gone to see her, and had come away much impressed by the novel construction of the craft.
"I'll build such a boat myself some day," he said to his boy friends, "only I'll make her better than anything afloat."
Some of his friends laughed at this, but others only smiled faintly. "Perhaps the boy is right," said one old machinist. "He had a smart father and a smart grandfather. Blood ought to tell."
And blood did tell, for, although only twenty years old, Oscar now had the whole run of the extensive shipyard and hardly any plan went through but what somebody came to him for his opinion on it.
Once Oscar disapproved of the plan of a new submarine boat, invented by an old war captain from Vermont.
"That boat will sink fast enough," he said. "But she won't come up."
The experts laughed at him and said he was mistaken. Then the boat was built. She sank on her first trial and blew up in her effort to raise herself.
After that Oscar Pelham's opinion counted for a good deal in all matters under consideration, so far as ship structure and the use of electricity went.
"Can't git around him," said George Dross, the oldest engineer in the yard. "He's got it all down on his finger tips. Him as tries ter corner him will git bit sure!"