Work - Overview
The tools, rules, and relationships of the workplace illustrate some of the enduring collaborations and conflicts in the everyday life of the nation. The Museum has more than 5,000 traditional American tools, chests, and simple machines for working wood, stone, metal, and leather. Materials on welding, riveting, and iron and steel construction tell a more industrial version of the story. Computers, industrial robots, and other artifacts represent work in the Information Age.
But work is more than just tools. The collections include a factory gate, the motion-study photographs of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, and more than 3,000 work incentive posters. The rise of the factory system is measured, in part, by time clocks in the collections. More than 9,000 items bring in the story of labor unions, strikes, and demonstrations over trade and economic issues.
"Work - Overview" showing 6 items.
Half Model, Fishing Schooner Helen B. Thomas
- Description
- Unlike most of the half-hull models in the Smithsonian’s National Watercraft Collection, this one was not intended for use in shipbuilding. Instead, this half model of the fishing schooner Helen B. Thomas was made to show a radical design innovation to potential vessel owners. Its maker, Thomas F. McManus, a naval architect in Boston, adapted an idea from sailing yachts to the fishing schooners of New England. He eliminated the bowsprit, the spar projecting forward from the schooner’s bow, in an attempt to make the vessel safer for the fishermen working in treacherous conditions far offshore. In McManus’s new design, fishermen would not have to clamber out on the bowsprit to tend the jib (the vessel’s forward-most sail), a dangerous task especially in bad weather that, in McManus’s view, resulted too often in injury or death.
- McManus made this half-hull model and displayed it in his Boston office, hoping to attract a client. After nearly a year, Capt. William Thomas of Portland, Maine, decided to try the design and contracted with the Oxner & Story yard in Essex, Mass., to build the schooner. The Helen B. Thomas was launched in 1902 and measured 106’-7” overall, with a beam (width) of 21’-6” and 13’ deep. The vessel became a successful fishing schooner. While no other schooners were built to this exact design, many were built without the bowsprit, a schooner design that became known as the “knockabout.”
- date made
- 1901
- Associated Date
- early 20th century
- ship built from model design
- 1902
- Captain who contracted the design
- Thomas, William
- contractors who built the ship
- Oxner & Story
- maker
- McManus, Thomas F.
- ID Number
- TR*310888
- catalog number
- 310888
- accession number
- 131237
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Ship Model, Tobacco Ship Brilliant
- Description
- This is a 1/8-scale model of the tobacco ship Brilliant, a 250-ton vessel built in Virginia in 1775 for British owners. The Brilliant's first and probably only commercial venture from Virginia took place when it set sail for Liverpool, with a full hold of tobacco, in the summer of 1775. Typically the Brilliant would have returned with manufactured goods, but because of growing hostilities between Britain and the colonies, the ship remained in England. Records show that the Brilliant made one voyage to Jamaica and returned to London in 1776. Later that year, the Royal Navy purchased the vessel for just over £3,000 and converted it to a ship of war for service in the American Revolution.
- The ship Brilliant had three masts and square-rigged sails. Its lower deck was 89'-3" long, its breadth was 27'-1/2", and the depth of the hold was 12'-2". The ship was built of oak, pine, and cedar. When purchased for war service, the Royal Navy assessed its hull, masts, and yards at £2,143. The cordage, including halyards, sheets, tack, and anchor cables, were assessed at £340. Brilliant's sails, 27 in all, were valued at £143. Five anchors were assessed at £58, while a long boat with a sailing rig and oars was estimated to be worth £45. Other items aboard the Brilliant were inventoried, including block and tackle, metal fittings, iron-bound water casks, hour and minute glasses, compasses, hammocks, an iron fire hearth, and 10 tons of coal.
- After its conversion in 1776 as a ship of war in the Royal Navy, the Brilliant was commissioned as the HMS Druid. Its first voyage westbound across the Atlantic was as an escort for a convoy to the West Indies. The vessel served as the Druid until 1779, after which it became the fire ship Blast. In 1783, it was sold out of the service for £940 and, for the next 15 years, the former Virginia tobacco ship served as a whaler in Greenland. The vessel was lost in the Arctic in 1798.
- This model was built by Charles and N. David Newcomb of Bolingbroke Marine in Trappe, Md. The model makers began their work in March 1975, scaling every timber to size and making everything out of the same type of wood as the original. They devised miniature rope-making equipment to manufacture the 5,000 feet of rigging and anchor cable required in 20 different sizes. Women from the Newcomb family and the surrounding community made the rigging and sails.
- The model makers left the starboard side of the vessel unplanked to reveal the timbering and joinery of the hull and to permit a view of the vessel’s living accommodations in the stern and cargo stowage, complete with tobacco hogsheads.
- Date made
- 1978
- ship built
- 1775
- voyage to Jamaica
- 1776
- became a ship of war in Royal Navy
- 1776
- ship lost at sea
- 1798
- maker
- Newcombe, Charles J.
- Newcomb, N. David
- ID Number
- TR*335672
- catalog number
- 335672
- accession number
- 1978.0403
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Ship Model, Catcher-Processor Alaska Ocean
- Description
- This scale model of the fishing vessel Alaska Ocean was custom-built for the Smithsonian by Erik A. R. Ronnberg Jr., at his shop in Rockport, Massachusetts. The starboard hull is cut away to reveal the factory where workers process tons of fish into blocks of frozen fillets, minced fish, and surimi (used in making imitation crab meat and other food products). The cutaway also shows the laboratory where fish products are tested, the freezer hold, a stateroom, and the galley. On the weather (top) deck, the model features all of the deck machinery, the trawling equipment, and the vessel’s rigging. A net full of fish is shown being emptied into one of the bins on the factory floor below.
- Ronnberg spent about 27 months building the model, and estimates he spent 5,500 hours getting every detail right. While he built the wooden hull according to design drawings provided by naval architect Guido Perla of Seattle, he had to make his own drawings and patterns to craft the machinery and equipment, most of which are cast in metal. Ronnberg used cheesecloth and tulle to make the net and spent untold hours fashioning the chafing gear out of acrylic yarn, which he knotted in bunches before separating the strands by hand.
- He studied photographs and films of the actual vessel at sea, and made detailed figures of people dressed in appropriate working gear in the factory, on the deck, in the fish hold, in the galley, and on the bridge. The model is populated with 125 figures, 1,200 individual fish, and several masses of fish in the cod end of the net. Everything on the model is painted by hand. The scale is 3/16th inch = 1 foot.
- The Alaska Ocean itself is a 376-foot-long vessel in the Seattle-based catcher-processor fleet. Workers catch, process, package, and freeze groundfish—mostly pollock and Pacific whiting—in the Bering Sea and in the waters off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. The vessel can harvest about 325 metric tons of fish per day and can freeze over 250,000 pounds of fish product daily.
- The idea to build the Alaska Ocean began in the late 1980s. Jeff Hendricks, a fisherman from Anacortes, Washington, who owned and operated a fleet of boats in partnership with a Japanese company, decided to “Americanize” his operations. This was in advance of the American Fisheries Act of 1998, which sought to increase American ownership in the fleet by requiring that vessels be American-built, owned, and operated. Although Hendricks sought bids from several American shipyards for his new venture, there were none at the time that could handle the scope of the vessel he envisioned. Eventually, he worked with a shipbuilder in Norway to expand and rebuild an American oil supply vessel. The Alaska Ocean arrived in Anacortes in the summer of 1990 and began fishing that fall with a largely local crew. It remains in the fleet and, as of 2008, is owned and operated by Glacier Fish Company.
- Because catcher-processors are so efficient, their operations are highly regulated to prevent overfishing. A harvest quota is determined by the National Marine Fisheries Service and members of the Pollock Conservation Cooperative, a group of catcher-processors including the Alaska Ocean, divide up the quota amongst themselves. This self-regulating measure ends what is often called the "race for fish," and results in more careful, less wasteful fishing.
- Independent scientific observers also travel aboard every vessel in the fleet, monitoring the trawling and empyting operations. They record all by-catch, the term for fish caught in the net other than the target species. There are hard limits on allowable by-catch for certain species, and because the data are computed, reported, and shared for the fleet as a whole, individual vessels are motivated to monitor the by-catch and make adjustments.
- date made
- 2009
- ID Number
- 2009.0080.01
- accession number
- 2009.0080
- catalog number
- 2009.0080.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Ship Model, Steam Schooner Royal
- Description
- This model represents a vessel powered by both steam and sail power. An auxiliary schooner, the Royal was one of several built after 1890 for use in the Alaska salmon fishery. Tenders like the Royal transported workers and supplies, and carried fish packed at remote canneries. The model shows a deckhouse with a pilothouse forward, a fish hatch, and a slide companionway to the forecastle.
- The Royal was built in 1891 by Matthew Turner at Benicia, California. Turner, born in Ohio in 1825, grew up on the shores of Lake Erie, where he learned about fishing and the ship-building trades. In 1850 he joined the throngs of fortune-seekers heading to the California gold rush. After some success in the gold fields, he returned east but was soon back on the West Coast, where he organized a trading company that shipped lumber and other cargoes. He also began building ships, and in 1882 he moved his operations to Benicia, on Suisun Bay, northeast of San Francisco. A prolific builder, Turner launched some 228 sailing vessels in his career. The site of Turner’s Benicia shipyard was registered as a California Historical Landmark in 1987.
- date made
- 1891
- maker
- Turner, Matthew
- ID Number
- TR*076238
- catalog number
- 076238
- accession number
- 28022
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Ship Model, Columbia River Salmon Boat
- Description
- This model represents the type of small boat used for gill-netting salmon on the lower Columbia River around 1876. Known as sailing gillnetters, these vessels were well suited to the tasks of fishermen working drift nets, which were walls of netting set across the path of salmon swimming upstream. The round-bottom hull is sharp on both ends, a feature that allowed the boat to ride more easily while the net was adrift. Its sprit rig was used for sailing to and from the fishing grounds and was easily stowed while fishing. The boats ranged between 23 and 28 feet in length. This model represents a vessel of 25 feet 6 inches in length, 6 feet 3 inches abeam, and 2 feet 3 inches in depth.
- The sailing gillnetter type was introduced to the Columbia River region between 1869 and 1872 and quickly replaced the smaller skiffs then in use. The early gillnetters were shipped north from boat builders in San Francisco, but by 1875 the type was being built locally. While a few fishermen purchased their own boats, the vast majority were owned by salmon canneries, which rented the vessels to local fishermen. When this model was made in 1876, there were about 500 sailing gillnetters on the river. By 1905 there were some 2,700.
- This model was donated by Livingston Stone, an early advocate of fish hatcheries, who served as Deputy Commissioner of Fisheries for the Pacific coast from 1872 to 1898, and senior fish culturist of the U.S. Fish Commission from 1898 to 1903.
- Date made
- before 1876
- ID Number
- TR*22216
- accession number
- 5201
- catalog number
- 22216
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Model, Liberty Ship
- Description
- This model represents one of the 2,710 Liberty ships built during World War II. The designation EC2-S-C1 was the standard designation of the dry cargo Liberty ships that were used by the United States Merchant Marine to transport nearly anything needed by the Allies. Whether in Europe, Africa, or the Pacific, most of the essential supplies arrived on ships, including tanks, ammunition, fuel, food, toilet paper, cigarettes, and even the troops themselves. Manning these vessels was a dangerous task, as the merchant vessels faced tremendous losses from submarines, mines, destroyers, aircraft, kamikaze fighters, and the unpredictable elements of the various destinations. One in 26 merchant mariners died during the war, a higher fatality rate than that of any branch of the armed forces.
- Even before the United States was officially involved in World War II, shipyards on the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts were building Liberty ships. Drawing from lessons learned at Hog Island in the First World War, Liberty ships were standardized and designed to be built quickly and efficiently. Using new welding technology, workers pieced together prefabricated sections in assembly-line fashion. This largely replaced the labor-intensive method of riveting, while lowering the cost and speeding up production. While it took about 230 days to build one Liberty ship in the first year, the average construction time eventually dropped to 42 days, with three new ships being launched each day in 1943.
- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt attended the launching of the first Liberty ship on September 27, 1941, at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard in Baltimore, Maryland. The ship was the SS Patrick Henry, named after the Revolutionary War hero whose famous “Give me Liberty or give me Death!” speech inspired the ships’ nickname. At the launching of the first “ugly duckling,” the President’s name for the stout and functional Liberty ships, he praised the shipyard workers: “With every new ship, they are striking a telling blow at the menace to our nation and the liberty of the free peoples of the world.” President Roosevelt proclaimed that these ships would help to bring a new kind of liberty to people around the world.
- date made
- early 1940s
- launching of first Liberty Ship, SS Patrick Henry
- 1941-09-27
- attended first launching
- Roosevelt, Franklin Delano
- ID Number
- TR*313022
- accession number
- 170015
- catalog number
- 313022
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center