Читать книгу Benjamin Franklin Isherwood, Naval Engineer - Edward William Sloan III - Страница 8

Abraham Lincoln, busy with the mass of executive nominations required of a newly inaugurated President, sent a short note, on March 22, 1861, to his Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles.

Sir: I understand there is a vacancy in the office of Engineer-in-Chief of the Navy, which I shall have to fill by appointment. Will you please avail yourself of all the means in your power for determin[ing] and present me the name of [the] best man for the service. . . .¹

As sectional tensions moved the American nation toward a crisis, no choice for an important naval office, even for one as presumably nonpolitical as engineer in chief, could be made without regard to special political pressures which now were added to the normal intraservice rivalry for such a post. Moreover, the competition for the office of engineer in chief was not confined within the service, as it would necessarily be for most naval positions.

It was entirely appropriate that a civilian marine engineer should be considered for the post, because a naval engineer in the 1860’s was still, in the eyes of the Navy, a civilian in officer’s dress. The difference in training and professional duties between a naval and civilian marine engineer was slight; consequently, the transition from civilian life was still easy and frequent at all levels of engineering duty. Although the naval engineer was technically a commissioned officer and his corps a recognized branch of the service since its creation in 1842, the fact remained that, in practice, he was still not a Navy man but only a glorified mechanic, especially in the eyes of line officers who sighed morosely for the days of sail.

That a leading civilian marine engineer should now have hopes for direct appointment as chief of the Navy’s engineers was not unreasonable, especially as such appointments had been made several times before. Many such civilian experts saw in this office an opportunity for professional recognition and advancement; perhaps some also perceived the alluring prospect for quick wealth, derived from influence over government contracts for machinery and supplies.

The office of engineer in chief had grown in stature during the previous twenty years. Although the incumbent as yet did not command his own bureau, he still was a key figure in naval administration, working closely with his immediate superior, the chief of the Bureau of Construction, Equipment, and Repairs. Together, these men had primary responsibility for the design, construction, and maintenance of all the vessels in the United States Navy. Furthermore, in an age of rapid transition from sail to steam, the Navy depended increasingly on its engineer in chief—the man who governed that mode of propulsion which, day by day, posed a greater challenge to the “Old Navy,” which for centuries had ruled the sea under clouds of canvas, undefiled by the sooty residue of man-made power.

Secretary Welles, though new in office, had anticipated the President’s request, and for several days had been scrutinizing candidates for this key post in the Navy. While newspapers speculated on his ultimate choice, civilian and naval engineers alike applied what influence they could muster. Sectional considerations, so vital at this particular moment in American history, intruded to the extent that a former North Carolinian became a particular favorite because his candidacy was pressed by many leading Union men from the crucial border states, reported The New York Times, on March 21.

The Secretary of the Navy, however, had made up his mind. On the day following the President’s request, Gideon Welles made his recommendation; and on the same day, Abraham Lincoln nominated a career naval engineer, Benjamin Franklin Isherwood, to be the new engineer in chief of the Navy.

By law, Isherwood’s nomination was subject to Senate confirmation. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, Benjamin Isherwood met opposition as Charles Sumner, speaking for a group of civilians objecting to the nomination, rose in the Senate to present a memorial against the candidate. Referred to the Committee on Naval Affairs, this petition met a quick death as Senator John P. Hale, the chairman, reported back his committee’s favorable decision on Isherwood’s nomination. With the opposition squelched, the Senate, on March 27, then duly advised and agreeably consented to Benjamin Isherwood’s being the new chief of the naval engineers.

In general, public reception to the appointment was cordial. Although several civilian engineers were sadly disappointed, The New York Times reported, the choice of Isherwood was “very gratifying to the Engineer Corps.”² On April 13 the Scientific American enthusiastically endorsed Isherwood and concurred in the view of The Times that this choice was not only a feather in the cap of the naval engineers, by contributing one of their own, but was also a tribute to the “true and deserving worth” of Isherwood himself. Less than thirty-nine years old, he, nevertheless, had already achieved a considerable reputation for professional ability; and his appointment was a confirmation of professional respect.

Why had Secretary Welles chosen Benjamin Isherwood, junior both in age and in seniority on the list of chief engineers in the Navy? What were those personal qualities which had brought this man to the top of his profession and had won him international recognition in the field of marine engineering? How would he respond to the challenge of a position where his authority and responsibilities would expand within months to an unprecedented degree? The answers to these questions were not so simply stated.

Benjamin Franklin Isherwood was born in New York city, on October 6, 1822. His father, a graduate of Columbia College and a practicing physician in New York, died shortly after the birth of his son. Benjamin Isherwood’s mother, Eliza, remarried in 1824, only to lose her second husband before her only son had reached maturity. Twice-widowed, she then remained single until her death in 1896, depending upon Benjamin for support. A strong woman, tenaciously devoted to her son, Eliza found full reciprocation in his unwavering love and concern for her welfare—a filial affection which proved to be too intense to tolerate the later competition of his marriage.

In March, 1831, when less than nine years old, Benjamin Isherwood was enrolled in the Albany Academy, a boys’ preparatory school which, in many respects, was considered “a college in disguise.” When Isherwood arrived at the school, the young physicist and mathematician Joseph Henry was on the faculty, although in the following year he would depart for Princeton, where he would earn increased fame for his continuing experiments in electromagnetic induction.

The transition for Joseph Henry between teaching at Albany Academy and at Princeton was not so great as it might seem. The academy, at the time Henry taught there and Isherwood attended his class, had a system of education which Henry described as being “more extensive and more thorough than that of many colleges in our country.” Its curriculum, Joseph Henry later pointed out, “paralleled the courses of study at Yale College, and was more exacting in its requirements for graduation than were many of the smaller colleges.” Albany Academy, in fact, had a course of study sufficiently advanced for its graduates to enter the junior and even senior years of good colleges.³

The emphasis upon subject matter at Albany Academy was unusual for its time. Although there was the usual attention paid to the study of the classics, the school also had shorter programs in mathematics and in the “mercantile” field. The mathematics program of study, in which Isherwood apparently enrolled, included all of the classics program, except for advanced work in Latin and Greek. In particular, his program contained courses in algebra, solid geometry, plane and spherical trigonometry, analytical geometry, and integral and differential calculus. Moreover, the student in this program, who might be barely in his teens, took courses in physics, chemistry, mineralogy, architecture, civil engineering (including topography and linear drawing), and optics.

The object of this program, established only a few years before Isherwood arrived, was to prepare the academy graduate for the practical world of business, as well as that of gracious living. The Albany Academy student, even though he might be in the “General,” or classics, course, would receive above all an education of practical utility which would lay particular stress on “mechanical pursuits.” Science as pure speculative theory or history as an antiquarian interest had no place at the Academy, the trustees had decided, and all courses had to serve “useful purposes of practical life,” so that man and his society might benefit and progress toward perfection.⁴

Albany Academy, consequently, was a serious place with little time for frivolity. To encourage its students to prepare for the struggle of life, the academy was rigorously competitive, ranking the entire student body by class each day, awarding innumerable prizes for performance at formal public examinations, and exhorting the boys to hard work and the sober, moral life.

For the submissive or diligent pupil, Albany Academy may have been ideal. Not so, however, for those of a more positive or original bent. Into this latter category fell young Benjamin Isherwood, as perhaps also did a student in the class ahead, Herman Melville.

Under the benign despotism of the scholarly principal, Dr. T. Romeyn Beck, Isherwood and his fellow pupils labored for all but a few weeks of the year. Extracurricular activities did not exist. The boys were there to study; and under a small but well trained faculty whose scholarship often vastly exceeded its teaching skills, the students slowly advanced through the mass of material toward graduation as early as age fourteen. Benjamin Isherwood worked hard, at least initially; and in his first three years he won numerous prizes in geography, algebra, and, especially, in history.

Discipline was severe and unremitting at the academy. The principal, Dr. Beck, may have been the sensitive man whom some students recalled; but his coat of arms, as one alumnus feelingly remarked, should have been “the crimson shield, signifying gore, upon which is emblazoned the figure of a boy rampant, with the hand of one unseen holding him in position, while above, as a crest, are two rattans crossed. . . .⁵ Expulsion, according to the school regulations, might come for a wide variety of causes, in particular, “disobedience or disrespectful conduct towards teachers.”⁶ In January, 1836, when apparently in the final year of his course work, Benjamin Isherwood was expelled from Albany Academy for “serious misconduct.”⁷

Only fourteen years old, but already possessing a formidable accumulation of knowledge in mathematics and engineering, Isherwood sought work and was hired as a draftsman in the locomotive shop of the Utica and Schenectady Railroad. For two years he remained in the shop, gaining familiarity with the structure and operations of steam boilers and engines to the point where his foreman could recommend him as well qualified to discharge the duties of a “practical Steam Engineer.” After this, Isherwood spent many months in the field, absorbing the details of road and bridge construction from the British civil engineer William Lake, then resident engineer for the railroad.

From this study of railroad structures came Benjamin Isherwood’s first professional publications. In March, 1842 he collaborated with another engineer to produce a pamphlet entitled, “Description and Illustration of Spaulding and Isherwood’s Plan of Cast Iron Rail and Superstructure for Railroads.” Illustrated by Isherwood, this brief description of rails which had been placed in use on the Ithaca and Oswego Railroad was endorsed and highly praised by a number of railroad men, including Charles B. Stuart, an experienced engineer who later would superintend the Erie Canal and then would be engineer in chief of the Navy from 1850 to 1853.

In the following year there appeared a more ambitious work. The British engineer John Weale edited a series of articles and published the collection, in 1843, as Ensamples of Railway Making; Which, although not of English Practice, Are Submitted with Practical Illustrations, to the Civil Engineer and the British and Irish Public. Issued also in abbreviated form as The Theory, Practice, and Architecture of Bridges, this book included a long and thoroughly illustrated article by Benjamin Isherwood on the timber bridges of the Utica and Syracuse Railroad. Already bearing the unmistakable stamp of an Isherwood product, the article presented the minutest details of construction, including isometrical projections of bridges, elaborate examinations of the grading of culverts and viaducts, and exhaustive compilations of data on construction costs and timber specifications. Weale gratefully acknowledged Isherwood’s work as a “liberal contribution” to the comparative study of American and British railway construction.

Styling himself a civil engineer, Benjamin Isherwood next went to work in the office of his stepfather, John Green, an engineer working on the construction of the Croton Aqueduct which would supply the water needs of New York city. At the completion of this project, Isherwood returned to the railroads, to work on the New York and Erie, under Charles B. Stuart.

Calling on the training in optics he had received at Albany Academy, Isherwood now turned for the first time to the federal government for employment, receiving an assignment by the Treasury Department to specialize in the construction of lighthouses, a duty which took him to France to superintend the manufacturing of lighthouse lenses from his own designs. Returning from Europe, Isherwood continued to work for the Lighthouse Bureau of the Treasury Department, but he soon discovered a more promising opportunity for advancement of his engineering career.

In 1842 the engineers operating the several steamships in the American Navy had finally become members of the naval service through a congressional act which permitted the Secretary of the Navy to appoint engineers to the service and to establish an engineering corps in the Navy. Perceiving the opportunities available to an experienced steam engineer in a Navy just beginning to utilize steam, Isherwood investigated the possibilities of an appointment to the corps.

In order to obtain such an appointment, however, an applicant had to demonstrate his working knowledge of marine engines. With no technical or engineering schools available to train an aspiring candidate, there was only one place to obtain the requisite knowledge and skill—the machine shops of private marine engine builders. Aided by his previous experience in railroad boiler and engine shops, Isherwood found employment with the well-known and highly regarded Novelty Iron Works, in New York city, where he gained the necessary skill with marine engines. Consequently, on May 23, 1844, he received an appointment as a first assistant engineer in the United States Navy. As this rank was only one below that of chief engineer, the highest in the corps, Isherwood was beginning his naval career with a distinct advantage.

Although appointed in May, Isherwood did not receive orders until October 1, 1844, when he was sent to the Navy Yard at Pensacola, Florida. At this pleasant, if out-of-the-way garden spot, Isherwood and his fellow officers labored under the eagle eye of their commandant, Commodore W. K. Latimer, a notorious martinet. More amenable now to discipline than in his youth, Isherwood served for a year, nursing the single ninety-eight horsepower engine and ironflue boiler of the steam tender General Taylor, a small side-wheeler too fragile to venture outside of harbors and landlocked bays.

Then in 1845 the first engineer in chief of the Navy, Charles Haswell, embarked on a reorganization of his corps, which had previously been haphazard in its appointments and promotions. Determined to delay no longer in rearranging his engineers on a basis of merit alone, Haswell appointed a board of chief engineers to examine all assistant engineers and to rerank them on the basis of professional and moral fitness, regardless of age, experience, or previous position in the service. Unable to go before the board in July, the time designated for examinations, Isherwood had to wait until the end of the year before traveling to Washington, D. C.

On December 18 he left Pensacola, fortified by a warm letter of recommendation from his formidable superior, Commodore Latimer. So impressed was the Commodore with Isherwood’s competence that he genuinely hoped for the young engineer’s return to Pensacola. Isherwood would surely receive a ranking from the board “such as your merits so justly entitle you to,” Latimer believed, based on Isherwood’s demonstrated efficiency, cheerfulness, and attentiveness to duties, not to mention his “strict observance of moral character and gentlemanly deportment.”⁸

Unfortunately, the December climate in Washington was cold in more ways than one. After a rigorous oral testing by his superiors, Benjamin Isherwood, instead of receiving a promotion to chief engineer, found himself demoted to second assistant engineer, with his initial naval appointment revoked and his new grade warranted from January 22, 1846, thus losing both rank and seniority. For Isherwood, as well as for many of his fellow engineers, “this whole proceeding was most radical and arbitrary, and occasioned much heartburning among those unfortunates. . . .”⁹

Isherwood had little time to brood over his misfortune. On January 26, 1846, he received orders for duty as a second assistant engineer on the steamer USS Princeton, which sailed from Boston in May to join the Home Squadron, which was taking part in the Mexican War by blockading the enemy coastline around Veracruz and assisting in military operations.

For Isherwood, the Princeton was more than just another steamer. Not only was she considerably larger and more complex than the General Taylor, she was one of the most remarkable warships in the world. Sponsored by Captain Richard Stockton, the Swedish inventor John Ericsson had designed this vessel which, when completed in 1843, had been the first screw-propelled steam warship in history. With her machinery placed entirely below the water line, the Princeton demonstrated the marked advantage of a screw-propelled warship, with no paddles or machinery to be exposed to enemy shot. By the time Isherwood was ordered to the vessel, she had already been modified by the addition of new boilers, a new propeller, and engines designed by Charles Haswell to replace the original Ericsson engines.

As in all steam warships of this period, the engines were intended to be only auxiliary to the sails upon which the ship normally depended for propulsion. Only in going in and out of port, or when becalmed, or when suddenly sent in chase of another vessel would a steam warship be expected to use her steam engines. This custom was just as well, so far as summer blockading operations on the Gulf of Mexico were concerned. During this period, Isherwood later recalled, the temperature in the engine room remained at a steady 115 degrees, while the stench from the bilge water under their feet was enough to overpower the sweltering engineers.

After spending the summer and fall of 1846 on the Princeton, Isherwood was ordered to a new ship, the small side-wheel steamer Spitfire, when she joined the squadron in November. Under the command of the peppery, impulsive Josiah Tatnall, Isherwood now found himself the senior engineer in the Spitfire, where life lacked even those few comforts which had been available on the larger Princeton.

Built originally for the Mexican government, the Spitfire had one small engine, which was set in crudely designed wooden frames and which relied for power on two small boilers that could only produce twelve pounds of steam pressure. The steamer was hopelessly bad under sail, normally developing as much leeway as headway in a stiff breeze. In any sort of rough weather, moreover, she was an exceedingly uncomfortable ship. With her low freeboard, the Spitfire readily took in the seas, which then poured into the engineers’ quarters until the cabin floor was awash. Added to this discomfort, the vessel’s main armament was an eight-inch pivot gun, mounted so close to the engineers’ cabin that when the cannon was fired the concussion regularly shook their bunks to the cabin floor.

Throughout the winter of 1846 and into the following summer, Isherwood labored over his engine while the entire blockading force was subjected first to fierce winter storms and then to the peculiar and deadly summer pestilence of the Gulf Coast known to the sailors as the “Vomito.” In March, the Spitfire was included in the “Mosquito division” of light steamers and gunboats which became actively engaged in bombardment operations along the coast and up the rivers into the Mexican interior. Also at this time, the Spitfire received a witty, courageous young first lieutenant as executive officer. His name was David Dixon Porter.

Porter, known to be “a warm friend to young officers,” apparently got along quite well with Isherwood throughout the busy months while the Spitfire took part in such actions as the famous bombardment of the Castle of San Juan de Ulua and the river operations against Tuxpan and Tabasco. At one point, during an attack on Tlacotalpan, Isherwood left his engine to take part in a landing party which clashed briefly with Mexican soldiers. Both Tatnall and Porter complimented Isherwood on his conduct, Porter assuring the engineer, in a letter dated July 28, 1847, that “no one has exhibited more zeal than yourself in marching to meet the Mexicans.”

In view of the bitterness which existed between Porter and Isherwood in the 1860’s, Porter’s opinion of the engineer in 1847 commands particular attention. First as executive officer and then as commanding officer of the Spitfire, Porter wrote warm testimonial letters on Isherwood’s conduct. In one unsolicited letter of commendation, Porter complimented his engineer on the exemplary performance of the engineering crew, and went on to thank Isherwood for serving as watch officer in place of regular line officers when the latter had been unavailable. Although unqualified to judge Isherwood’s professional qualifications, Porter remarked, his performance of duties had always provided such perfect satisfaction that Porter would always welcome Isherwood under his command.

Before Isherwood left the Spitfire in August, 1847, he received his warrant as first assistant engineer, as of July 10, thus returning him to his original appointive rank in the Navy but without his original seniority. After several months leave he was then assigned to the office of the engineer in chief, Charles Haswell; but his stay was brief, for late in February, Isherwood was sent off on duty “connected with lighthouses,” which again took him abroad. While in Europe he found time to pursue his interest in steam engineering, for he sent back thorough and critical reports on proposed methods of utilizing steam more effectively as a motive force. On August 13, 1849 he finally received his promotion to chief engineer, thereby becoming for the first time a commissioned officer in the United States Navy.¹⁰

In late November, 1850 disagreements and maneuverings for power within his corps presented Isherwood with an opportunity for advancement and preference. The incumbent engineer in chief, in his dedication to duty, had assumed virtually the entire task of designing as well as supervising the construction of the Navy’s new steam warships. After several successes, Mr. Haswell met failure with his San Jacinto, a strangely designed vessel even for those days. Her engines were placed far aft, so that the stern rode deep in the water, and Haswell had designed a ten-ton, six-bladed, screw propeller which was placed behind the rudder and on a shaft deliberately located some twenty inches to one side of the center line of the vessel’s keel. Despite his inability, through uncontrollable circumstances, to alter this arrangement, much of which had not been his own intention, Mr. Haswell was finally replaced by another civilian engineer, Charles B. Stuart, under whom Isherwood had served on the New York and Erie Railroad. On December 3, the day after Stuart came into office, Benjamin Isherwood was detached from his lighthouse duties and ordered to Washington as assistant to the new Engineer in Chief.

Not a marine engineer, Stuart necessarily depended upon his younger associate for advice, and the orders and memoranda which issued from the office of the Engineer in Chief bore the unmistakable impression of Isherwood’s views. A board of engineers was appointed to examine the Haswell machinery on the San Jacinto, and Isherwood soon produced the design for a new, four-bladed propeller to replace Haswell’s. Lighter in weight, the Isherwood propeller was placed on a shaft which ran along the center line of the San Jacinto, and the propeller was moved forward to fit in front of a new rudder, also designed by Isherwood. By September, 1851, the San Jacinto was ready for trials.

So that he might defend his professional reputation, Haswell was made chief engineer in charge of the San Jacinto’s trials, but this assignment made Isherwood apprehensive. Writing hastily to his bureau chief, Charles Skinner, Isherwood urged him not to expect too much from the San Jacinto because the steamer still had Haswell’s engines; and they were so poor that they were “a disgrace to the service and our corps,” an object of ridicule, and a “standing monument of Mr. Haswell’s incompetency and folly.”¹¹ In poor health, but denied, through an administrative error, from taking necessary sick leave, Haswell attempted to comply with the orders to operate his machinery on the trial runs; but he became seriously ill, and in a fit of depression, left his ship without permission, for which act he was summarily dismissed from the service. The San Jacinto, after repeated failures to meet the departmental requirements, received new engines in the following year.

In the office of the Engineer in Chief, Isherwood continued to supervise machinery design and enhanced his professional reputation by contributing regularly to the scholarly Journal of the Franklin Institute. Most of his notes and articles were little more than compilations of machinery specifications and performance data; but he occasionally entered into controversy with such vigor that the editors of the Journal, in printing his replies to critics, had to omit or alter his words because of the degree of personal abuse which Isherwood had showered on those who disputed his ideas.

In April, 1851 he was detached from his duty in Washington and ordered to Sankaty Head, Massachusetts, where he was to superintend the completion of a lighthouse under construction. Finding this assignment less congenial than his busy life in the Navy Department, Isherwood sent off a letter to Stuart, in June; and a few days later was back in the office of the Engineer in Chief, this time to remain for over two years.

Once re-established in the Navy Department, Isherwood contributed some original machinery designs to the Navy, but with mixed results. First he traveled to the Gosport Navy Yard at Norfolk, Virginia, in late June, 1851, to supervise the installation of new machinery which he had designed for the steamer Allegheny. Replacing its underwater, horizontal Hunter paddle wheels with a screw propeller, Isherwood also rearranged the position of the Allegheny’s engines, so that instead of having a fore-and-aft movement, the pistons worked athwartships. Isherwood then joined the pistons to the propeller shaft by horizontal connecting rods, which extended over the shaft and then reached back from crosstails. Considered quite novel at the time, this type of engine with the back-acting motion later became a standard design for the American Navy, especially during the Civil War, and became known as the “Isherwood engine.”

Unfortunately for Benjamin Isherwood, the trial run of the Allegheny when finally held in 1853, was pronounced “an absolute and unqualified failure,”¹² and brought forth an investigation by a board of engineers. Not only were the boilers inadequate, it was discovered, but, in particular, the engines had not been adequately braced, and the resulting vibration had broken the bed plates in the bottom of the vessel. Criticized for not providing strong enough frames to compensate for the weakness of the Allegheny’s hull, Isherwood tartly replied that he had been asked only to build engines, not a hull to support them. Nevertheless, he must not have dismissed such criticism, for during the Civil War his engines were attacked for their excessively heavy frames.

After sponsoring a new type of steam boiler which would not only be 40 per cent more efficient with only half the volume of the usual type, but would also be so much less expensive that its cost new would be less than the scrap value of an old one, Isherwood turned again to the drawing board and produced a plan which excited interest throughout the American engineering profession.

A small iron steamer, the Water Witch, had been built in 1843 for the Navy and since then had undergone continued modifications until, by 1851, the original hull had been sacrificed for naval gunnery practice while the engines were placed in a new wooden hull. This second edition of the Water Witch was propelled by a new feathering paddle wheel, designed by Benjamin Isherwood. Using the combined movement of an eccentric and a number of joined levers, Isherwood designed his wheel so that the paddles would enter and pass through the water while always remaining in a vertical position, the object being to avoid the inefficiency of a common, radiating side-wheel whose paddles beat the water on descent and lifted it on ascent, thus losing power. The Isherwood wheel, Charles Stuart reported, “worked admirably, without jar or noise,”¹³ despite the complex structure of the paddles; and it moved the steamer through the water at a brisk eleven and three-fourths knots. Although this type of design had been used by the English and the French for several years, Isherwood’s feathering paddle wheel was the first used in the United States Navy.

It was not only in the mechanical end of his profession that Isherwood labored to make his name. Close to the administration of his corps, he soon involved himself in service politics, arguing strongly for the cause of the naval engineers. In February, 1852, Isherwood, representing the chief engineers, joined Stuart and First Assistant Engineer James W. King to send a petition to Congress requesting an increase in the size of the Engineer Corps. Stressing the utter inadequacy in the present number of engineers, the three insisted on the “strong probability” that in twenty years there would be no naval vessels “unpropelled, in whole or in part, by steam.” Necessity would compel the use of steam power for all marine war purposes; and to meet this inevitable growth of the steam Navy, they argued, there should be a commensurate growth in the corps of naval engineers.¹⁴ From this point, Isherwood’s role as spokesman was to flourish, just as the corps itself was to mushroom in size within a few years.

Like all young naval officers, Isherwood was supposed to have occasional tours of sea duty. In March, 1854, he was ordered to the USS Massachusetts, which departed in early July for a lengthy cruise in the Mediterranean. Within two weeks, Isherwood was no longer with his vessel, having been removed in “critical condition” shortly after the ship had put to sea. He had come down with a case of dysentery so severe that the medical officers and the captain hastily agreed that their Chief Engineer was “very dangerously ill,” and would not last in the “low latitudes.” Wasting no time, the Massachusetts put in at Fayal, in the Azores, where Isherwood might recover sufficiently to be shipped back to the United States.¹⁵

Once home, Isherwood took months to shake off his illness ; but by the following April, he was ready for his next assignment at sea. In September he received his orders; and reporting to Mr. Has-well’s “folly,” the San Jacinto, Isherwood embarked on a three-year cruise to the Far East which would be the last sea duty of his naval career.

The San Jacinto, with Commander Henry H. Bell as her captain, was to be the flagship for Commodore James Armstrong, the commander in chief of the East India Squadron. Rated as a second-class screw steamer, the San Jacinto carried a complement of eight engineers, under the charge of Isherwood, the only chief engineer aboard the vessel. The cruise, as it turned out, was to be far from routine, since, as flagship, the San Jacinto was to sail to the Strait of Malacca to pick up the American diplomat Townsend Harris to transport him first to Siam to negotiate a new trade treaty, and then to Japan, where he would become the first American consul general. Consequently, the ship carried a remarkable cargo of gifts to illustrate the manufacturing skill and ingenuity of the American people to the court of Siam.

The long, leisurely trip across the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean was particularly boring for the engineers and their fireroom crew because the Captain, unwilling to expend the coal, rarely used the engines. Boredom grew into active discomfort as the weeks went by; for Commodore Armstrong, in an apparent attempt to inspire greater obedience and respect on board, senselessly rationed water to the point where the crew refused to eat their rations, since cooking required too much water.

To the relief of many, the San Jacinto finally arrived at Simon’s Bay, South Africa, on January 12, 1856. While the ship remained in port for two weeks, Isherwood wasted no time in visiting all of the British steamships in the harbor to examine their machinery and to compile records of their performances for his ever growing files.

On March 21, the San Jacinto arrived at Pulau Penang, in the Strait of Malacca, where Townsend Harris came on board for the trip to Bangkok, where they arrived the middle of April. Greeted there by a small, sky-blue steamer, ambitiously called The Siamese Steam Fleet, the officers of the American warship accompanied Townsend Harris up the Me Nam River on his visit to the King of Siam. Surrounded by the trappings of oriental splendor and borne on sedan chairs past a remarkably heterogeneous palace guard which included twenty elephants, each with an ancient howitzer on its back, the dazzled Americans came before the august presence of the ruler before whom the Siamese nobility had already prostrated themselves.

Surfeited by royal hospitality and successful in their mission, the Americans left Siam on May 31, and sailed toward the East India Squadron headquarters at Hong Kong. After some engine trouble, the San Jacinto arrived there on June 12, to be greeted by a swarm of Chinese, including one enterprising and knowledgeable boatman who proudly sailed up to the American warship, flying from his masthead a large flag which read, “BUM BOAT. U.S. STEAMER SAN JACINTO.”¹⁶

Engine trouble continued to plague the ship, so that it was not until July 10 when the San Jacinto finally sailed for Japan to deliver Townsend Harris. Scarcely had the steamer traveled one mile, however, before the keys fastening the propeller to the shaft broke, and the whirling blades slipped back into the rudder, nearly taking the sternpost off the vessel. Towed to Whampoa, “a miserable, marsh-surrounded, pestilential anchorage,”¹⁷ the San Jacinto was in dry dock for two weeks before her engineers could finish their repairs. On August 10 the steamer once more set out for Japan, this time arriving, on August 22, at Shimoda, where Townsend Harris left the ship.

The San Jacinto returned to the naval depot at Shanghai in September, to find sporadic warfare going on between the Chinese and the English. In November, the crew participated in the bombardment of Chinese positions at Whampoa. Isherwood, however, was quite unable to participate; for, in July, he had, once again, come down with a severe case of chronic dysentery.

Exhibiting the classic symptoms of this disease—severe cramps, nausea, and a tongue “quite covered with a long, dirty-white fur”—Isherwood submitted reluctantly to the ministrations of the San Jacinto’s assistant surgeon, R. P. Daniel, who stuffed the engineer with stiff doses of lead and opium, supplemented with opium suppositories and a diet of rice gruel. Never one to obey a doctor’s admonitions, Isherwood would consent to this regimen only when seriously ill; once improved, he would immediately go on a gastronomic spree and then suffer the inevitable relapse, while the doctor noted in exasperation that it “appears impossible to curb his appetite within the bounds of a proper diet, either in quantity or quality.”¹⁸

Failing to recover his health after a visit to the relatively bracing climate at Macao, Isherwood was put ashore at Hong Kong to rest from the middle of November, 1856 to the following January. He rejoined his ship just in time to avoid being poisoned by a group of xenophobic Chinese who had determined to erase the foreign population by mixing arsenic in the fresh bread. The San Jacinto fortunately patronized a bakery other than the one “through which the mischief was done,” but hundreds of Europeans were not so lucky, and although only one person died, the digestive apparatus of many was never again quite the same.¹⁹

To the utter mystification of the ship’s doctor, Isherwood still catered to his “huge appetite, which he appears to gratify with impunity,” and by the spring of 1857 he was sufficiently recovered to return to duty. Despite occasional relapses, he continued “in good flesh,” and once the San Jacinto finally left the miasma of the Chinese mainland, he was free from the disease.

That Isherwood had been rash in the cavalier treatment accorded his stomach was all too evident to Dr. Daniel. Dysentery in the 1850’s was a formidable disease in the American Navy. Unless controlled within the first five or six weeks, the doctor observed, “it almost invariably terminated either in death, or in a chronic condition which baffled our every effort to produce a permanent cure”—and Isherwood’s case took two years to bring under control.²⁰

Returning to the United States in August, 1858, Isherwood entered a new phase of his naval career. Throughout his cruise in the San Jacinto he had filled his leisure time, and had avoided the lethargy induced by climate and food by a ceaseless pursuit of scientific knowledge, which he equated with the remorseless collection of every available scrap of engineering data. Aware of his preoccupation, his superiors placed him on many experimental boards during 1859 and 1860 so that the Navy might utilize the encyclopedic knowledge that Isherwood had at his command.

In September and October, 1860, he took part in a department survey of all the sailing vessels in the Navy which intended to determine how many might be converted to steamers. Isherwood and his associates concluded that the smaller warships—brigs, sloops, and frigates—should retain their full sail power; but ships of the line were now useless and should be razeed and converted into first-class, screw-steam frigates.

In November, 1860, Isherwood received an assignment which proved to have the greatest significance for his career both as an engineer and as a naval officer. At Erie, Pennsylvania, the old paddle-wheel steamer Michigan became destined for engineering fame—or notoriety—as a board of engineers under Isherwood’s direction spent the winter months experimenting with her engines. Their assignment was to ascertain the most economical method of using steam in the reciprocating steam engine of that period. They were aware that the savings in fuel costs in steam generation by allowing expanding steam to do much of the work within a cylinder were theoretically great. Isherwood’s board, including Chief Engineers Theodore Zeller, Robert Long, and Alban Stimers, labored to determine just how economical the use of expanding steam really would be, by balancing the savings in the cost of coal burned in generating the lesser amount of steam against the loss of steam pressure through expansion and the consequent loss of engine power.

The report of the board on February 18, 1861, by challenging the normal practice as an excessive use of expanding steam, fanned an issue already smoldering in engineering circles. By his prior work in this area and his championing the controversial conclusions in the Erie report, Benjamin Isherwood boldly thrust himself and his theories of steam engineering in the face of doctrines accepted by the great majority of steam engineers, both here and abroad. As a result of his experiments, he became the best known and most controversial engineer in the Navy, if not in the United States.

It was also at Erie where Isherwood made a friend of Theodore Zeller who would be his devoted associate and intimate companion for the next forty years. Polished in his manners, scholarly and refined in his address, and quietly exuding the breeding of generations of New York city aristocracy, Theodore Zeller made an interesting contrast to the brusque, energetic Isherwood. The two shared a love of music and art and a devotion to their profession. Here the similarities ceased. Zeller was ever agreeable, with a placid disposition which covered his personality as a blanket. With his “singularly even” temper and charitable instincts, which undoubtedly proved at times to be his undoing, Zeller amiably accompanied his dynamic and impatient friend through the years of naval and engineering life. Isherwood always led; Zeller never failed as the loyal follower, whose unquestioned acceptance of his friend’s superior energy and ability kept the two bound by a symbiotic relationship severed only by Zeller’s death.

Detached from his work on the Michigan, Isherwood went to Washington in the middle of February, 1861, to be on a board investigating the cause of oxidation in the boilers of the USS Dacotah. Within the month, Engineer in Chief Samuel Archbold suddenly resigned both his position and his commission as a naval engineer and left the service, for reasons which were apparently personal rather than concerned with the political unrest which already threatened the solidarity of the Navy.

If Isherwood solicited the position vacated by Archbold, there is no evidence of such an effort. Undeniably, he had friends in the right places, especially John Lenthall, the chief of the Bureau of Construction, Equipment, and Repairs. Lenthall, a civilian and considerably older than Isherwood, had worked closely with the young engineer while on duty in Washington, and the congenial relationship between the two was to ripen over the years into a close friendship—one of the very few Isherwood permitted himself.

It would be logical for Gideon Welles, secretary of the Navy for only a few days, to have depended heavily on Lenthall’s judgment. In any case, at this crucial period the Navy needed a man of proven energy and ability who would be able to handle the staggering amount of work which might suddenly be thrust upon him if the Union were to commence naval operations against the South. Gideon Welles found that man in Benjamin Isherwood.

Within only a few weeks, Secretary Welles had ample opportunity to judge the merits of his new Engineer in Chief, and then it was at a moment of national crisis. As Virginia teetered on the brink of secession, the Gosport Navy Yard at Norfolk assumed a critical role in political and military affairs. Unwilling to antagonize the residents of the surrounding countryside and precipitate secession by forcing overt southern resistance, President Lincoln and his Secretary of the Navy grudgingly maintained the status quo in the Norfolk yard, neither building up its defenses nor removing any of the significant portion of the American Navy which was anchored within the yard.

In command of the Norfolk yard was the venerable Commodore Charles E. McCauley, who had earned this comfortable billet by serving fifty-two years in the Navy. With a career stretching back to the days of Isaac Hull and Stephen Decatur, McCauley had long outlived his usefulness as an active seagoing officer. Now, in his declining years, little more than a symbol of naval tradition, he found himself suddenly enveloped in an “atmosphere of treason,” surrounded by younger officers who were largely secessionists and shaken by a series of anonymous threats which made violence appear imminent. McCauley, far more than Gideon Welles, felt the heed for caution—even to the point of inaction.

By early April, Secretary Welles believed he could wait no longer. Although building land defenses against the citizens of Norfolk would be open provocation, the careful removal of a warship might not unduly disturb the existing situation. Consequently, he decided to save the Merrimack, a vessel far more valuable than any other in the yard and a vital part of the small Union Navy.

The Merrimack, a forty-gun, screw-steam frigate, had been designed by John Lenthall and completed in 1854. A wooden-hulled vessel, primarily intended for cruising under sail, her relatively small and inefficient engines were at the moment dismantled and were being repaired under the supervision of Chief Engineer Robert Danby, at the Norfolk yard. Through normal departmental correspondence, Benjamin Isherwood was aware of the steamer’s condition, but he was also aware of the situation in and around the yard. Realizing the danger of the Merrimack in southern hands, Isherwood went to see Welles about saving the ship.²¹

The extent of Isherwood’s influence on Welles at this point cannot be determined, but the Engineer in Chief was undeniably insistent in stressing the importance of the Merrimack, and he “repeatedly urged” the Secretary to rescue the steamer. By April 10, Welles decided to remove the Merrimack to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and ordered her preparation for this trip “with the utmost despatch.” The reply from Norfolk threw Welles into consternation. The engine repairs on the Merrimack would take at least four weeks; the vessel was helpless until the repairs were done. Isherwood, however, flatly rejected this estimate as being far too pessimistic. The work, he believed, could be done in a week; the four-week estimate was an excuse to keep the Merrimack in reach of southern sympathizers. The only recourse, Welles realized, was to send Isherwood himself to Norfolk to supervise the repairs.²²

On April 12, Isherwood set out for Norfolk, together with Commander James Alden, who would sail the Merrimack to Philadelphia once she was ready for sea. Arriving in Portsmouth, Virginia, on the fourteenth, Isherwood located Chief Engineer Danby, and the two went to Commodore McCauley’s office to present the old man with orders from Welles requesting his co-operation with Isherwood’s work. McCauley readily consented, and the two engineers then boarded the Merrimack to examine the task before them. “The engines,” Isherwood recalled, “were in a wretched state.” The engine braces had been removed, and the machinery was scattered throughout the yard. However, disabled as the Merrimack was, there was still hope, since the machinery was all there. What was needed now was an extraordinary amount and speed of reassembly.²³

First recruiting a number of machinists to replace the local laborers who had quit in an attempt to delay the work, Isherwood divided his labor force into three eight-hour gangs to work around the clock, and then steadily urged them on, day and night, with no respite. The driving, uncompromising spirit of the Engineer in Chief brought forth a herculean response from his men. Whether goaded by his impatience or inspired by his fervor, they worked ceaselessly until the job was done. On Wednesday afternoon, two and one-half days after the work began, they had repaired the Merrimack.

Exhilarated by their accomplishment, Isherwood and Danby reported to McCauley that the Merrimack had received fuel, stores, and a special crew of forty-four firemen and coal heavers personally hired by Isherwood; as soon as McCauley gave permission to fire up, the steamer would be ready to steam out of the port. McCauley, however, saw no need for immediate action; tomorrow morning, he believed, would be early enough for raising steam. Isherwood returned to the ship and put on the regular engine-room watch, ordering them to light fires shortly after midnight.

Promptly at nine o’clock Thursday morning, Isherwood returned to McCauley’s office to inform the Commodore that the crew was on board, the steam was up, the engines were working, and all that remained was McCauley’s order to cast loose the Merrimack and take her to safety. To Isherwood’s “great surprise and dissatisfaction,” McCauley stated that he had not yet decided about sending the Merrimack to Philadelphia at all; he would let Isherwood know in a few hours. Astounded at this apparent disregard of both Welles’s orders and the obvious danger to the Merrimack, Isherwood reminded McCauley of the peremptory nature of Welles’s instructions. Futhermore, he said, the Merrimack could now pass over any obstructions in the channel, but any delay might permit the southerners time to block the exit. McCauley stolidly replied that he would make up his mind at a later time.

Throughout this conversation and in subsequent ones, Isherwood later recalled, McCauley had appeared to be completely prostrate, immobile, stunned by the nature of the crisis, and apparently befuddled from drink. Overwhelmed by his unaccustomed responsibilities, wavering at a time for decision, the aged Commodore was tragically incapable of effective command.

Realizing the futility of moving McCauley to action, Isherwood turned to Commander Alden. The engineers’ work was done, Isherwood explained, showing Alden that the Merrimack was ready; now it was the duty of the line officer to take command of the vessel. Once again, however, there was a lack of that leadership and initiative so necessary in a crisis. Alden, at first enthusiastic about removing the Merrimack, now lost his ardor and shrank from the responsibility of overriding the Commodore’s authority and removing the Merrimack on his own.²⁴

Returning to McCauley, Isherwood was further dismayed to discover that the Commodore had finally made up his mind ; the Merrimack, McCauley now insisted, could not escape, for the channel had already been blocked. There was nothing else to do but stop the engines, extinguish the boiler fires, and keep the Merrimack at Norfolk. Since the Commodore would not listen further to Isherwood’s arguments that the warship could still be moved with perfect safety, there was nothing left for the Engineer in Chief but to return to Washington and inform Welles of the tragic situation.

Angered by McCauley’s moral paralysis and Alden’s dread of assuming authority, Isherwood considered rescuing the vessel himself. He had kept the engines running continuously to demonstrate that the vessel was ready to leave. He had personally hired a crew to operate the ship. Without authority he had removed the chain cables binding the Merrimack to the dock, and had substituted rope hawsers—and placed men with axes to cut the ropes when he gave the signal. With few stores and no armament, the ship would ride high enough in the water to pass over any obstructions now in the channel. When McCauley ordered him to stop the engines and draw the fires, Isherwood recalled, he was “greatly tempted to cut the ropes that held her, and to bring her out on my own responsibility.”²⁵

However, such a seizure of the ship without authority and against orders would have been an unforgivable act. The laws of the American Navy were very clear on this point; no engineer could encroach on the prime prerogative of line officers, that of command. Rescuing the Merrimack would have demonstrated great initiative and daring, but it would also have been a most serious breach of naval discipline. Isherwood also realized, looking back over the affair, that an adequate excuse for such unauthorized action did not exist at the time, but only emerged later with the dramatic consequences of the Confederate seizure and conversion of this steam frigate into the ironclad Virginia. Yet had he rescued the Merrimack, “the disasters which followed her detention, and which are my justification for the desire to take the matter into my own hands, would not have happened,”²⁶ thus forcing him to rely only on the saving of a fine warship to explain his actions—an insufficient excuse for the Navy.

Isherwood prepared to return to Washington, leaving behind the pride of the Navy’s steam fleet, although by this time Virginia had seceded from the Union and there was no further need to placate her citizens. Still unable to act, Commodore McCauley remained at his post, dimly hoping for the reinforcements which would never come.

Meanwhile, secessionist elements in Norfolk, outraged at Isherwood’s attempts to snatch the coveted Merrimack from their grasp, determined to capture the Engineer in Chief and to hold him as a prisoner of war. Fortunately for Isherwood, a sympathetic friend in Norfolk discovered the plot, warned the Engineer, and arranged for his secret departure. Obtaining a cabin in his own name on the regular Chesapeake Bay steamer, Isherwood’s friend boarded the ship with the Engineer in Chief’s trunk, then slipped ashore and rode to the Atlantic Hotel where Isherwood was smuggled into his carriage, which then returned to the ship. Boarding inconspicuously, Isherwood locked himself in the cabin until the steamer was safely on its way to Washington. The party of Confederates assembled on the wharf to capture him waited in vain and discovered the deception only after they had returned to the hotel in search of Isherwood.²⁷

On the morning of April 19, the Old Bay Line steamer arrived in Washington where Isherwood and Alden, who had also decided to leave Norfolk, reported to Welles. Furious at Alden’s failure to rescue the Merrimack, the Secretary still hoped to discover a way by which the Navy Yard might be defended, but subsequent discussions with military advisors brought Welles and the President to the reluctant conclusion that the yard must fall to the Confederates.

At this point, McCauley, finally despairing of any help and expecting his yard at any moment to be overrun by Virginian troops, took the situation into his own hands. He promptly scuttled all the vessels in port, including the Merrimack, whose engines and boilers, however, were still intact. Shortly afterward, a Union naval force led by Commodore Hiram Paulding arrived at the yard and attempted to destroy the entire installation; but when the Confederate forces moved in they were able to seize not only the smoldering and partly submerged Merrimack, but also a large amount of cannon and naval stores which would later prove to be of immeasurable value to their cause.

Responsibility for the loss of the Navy Yard rested on many shoulders. Welles and Lincoln had delayed initially through fear of provoking secession. McCauley and Alden, the senile Commodore and the Commander with “heroic drawing room resolution and good intentions.” had vacillated and retreated into impotent inaction, although one might argue that they should have received more explicit and forceful orders from the Navy Department. Only Benjamin Isherwood emerged from the episode with his reputation entirely untarnished. In his circumscribed field of action, he had moved with notable speed and decision. Furthermore, he made a vigorous effort to the limits of his authority to rescue the Merrimack. Failing in this endeavor, he had no alternative but to return to Washington.

Isherwood’s importance in this episode rests on several historical might-have-been’s; for the successful removal of the Merrimack would certainly have altered the course of naval operations in the Civil War, and might have drastically changed the course of American naval technology and strategy for a generation. Without the challenge of the Confederate ironclad built on the hull and machinery of the old Merrimack, John Ericsson’s revolutionary ironclad Monitor might not have appeared or engaged in the dramatic encounter at Hampton Roads. This battle, so influential in encouraging the development of ram tactics and in starting the American Navy off on a “monitor craze” which proved to be a strategic handicap in later years, might never have occurred without the effective challenge by the formidable Confederate ironclad which, phoenix-like, had risen from the ashes of the Merrimack.

Ironically, Isherwood was to a degree fortunate in his failure to prevent the loss of the Merrimack. His actions in this situation demonstrated that energy and resourcefulness which Welles had sought in choosing his new Engineer in Chief. Free from any blame for the Merrimack’s loss, Isherwood had earned the respect and confidence of his superior; and by wisely acknowledging the limitations of his authority, he had avoided a bitter conflict with officers of the line at a time when such conflict would have shattered the effectiveness of the Union Navy.