In the mid-1840s, Joseph Francis developed a new method for using steam-powered hydraulic presses to stamp large sheets of iron into corrugated shapes to make boat hulls. His 1845 patent model for the process does not survive, but in 1885 he donated models representing the various steps in manufacturing corrugated metal life boats. This object is a model of the weight used with dies for stamping out copper sheets.
Joseph Francis experimented with boat construction methods throughout his life. In collaboration with the Novelty Iron Works in New York, he began to manufacture lifeboats, military cutters, and coastal rescue craft, as well as life preservers and similar gear, in the 1840s. His products proved popular among commercial steamship operators, life-saving stations, and the United States Navy. The Collins Line of express passenger ships, for example, adopted Francis lifeboats for its opulent ocean steamers in the 1850s. When the Arctic sank with great loss of life in 1854—but its patented metallic lifeboats survived—the company ordered more Francis boats for its remaining ships.
Francis is best known today for designing an enclosed rescue craft called a life-car, the prototype for which is preserved by the Smithsonian. In 1848, the Patent Office denied him a patent for the life-car, saying it was already protected under Francis’s own 1845 patent.
Indiana's propeller was manufactured by Spang & Co. of Pittsburgh, PA, as stamped on one of the blades. This firm, a large iron manufacturing company centered in Pittsburgh, PA, was founded in 1828 and was one of the earliest and largest manufacturers of iron products in the United States.
The hub of the propeller is cast iron; the blades are rolled iron. One of the intact blades is chipped and dented, suggesting a collision. Another blade is missing outside the yellow line, which marks where a large section broke loose, probably from hitting an object in the water. This piece struck the Indiana's sternpost, literally “shivered her timbers,” and started the leak that sank the ship. The blade broke off completely when the ship struck the lakebed and was found at the wreck site, buried in the sand under the stern post. It is reproduced here in fiberglass.
The closest design is by Richard Loper of Philadelphia, who registered three propeller-related patents in 1844 and 1845 and licensed his ideas to shipbuilders Reany, Neafie & Co., also of Philadelphia. Contemporary accounts state that Loper’s design was the most popular in the Great Lakes region, and some Lakes propeller manufacturers even advertised his design as the “Philadelphia Wheel.”
This model represents the U.S. Lighthouse Tender Joseph Henry, a side-wheeled steamer built by Howard & Company in Jeffersonville, Indiana, in 1880. This 180-foot-long vessel was built for service along the nation’s inland waterways. Lighthouse tenders served both coastal and inland areas by delivering supplies, fuel, news, and relief and maintenance crew to lighthouses and lightships. They also maintained aids to navigation, including markers identifying channels, shoals, and obstructions. Based out of Memphis, the Joseph Henry worked along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers until 1904.
The vessel’s namesake, Joseph Henry, was America’s foremost scientist in the 19th century. His expertise was in the field of electromagnetism. Henry was a professor at the College of New Jersey (Princeton) when he was named the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, a position he held from 1846 until his death in 1878. He also served on the U.S. Lighthouse Board (1852-78), and implemented various improvements in lighting and signaling during his tenure. This lighthouse tender was named in his honor at its launching two years after his death.
Scotsman Alexander McDougall (1845-1924) was a ship captain on the Great Lakes when he patented the idea of a “whaleback” ship in the early 1880s. With low, rounded hulls, decks and deckhouses, his invention minimized water and wind resistance. Between 1887 and 1898, 44 whalebacks were produced: 23 were barges and 21 were steamships, including one passenger vessel.
Frank Rockefeller was the 36th example of the type, built in 1896 at a cost of $181,573.38 at McDougall’s American Steel Barge Company in Superior, WI. One of the larger examples of the type, Rockefeller measured 380 feet in length, drew 26 feet of water depth and had a single propeller.
Although it belonged to several different owners over its 73-year working life, the Rockefeller spent most of its early life transporting iron ore from mines in Lake Superior to steel mills along the shores of Lake Erie. In 1927, new owners put it in service as a sand dredge that hauled landfill sand for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. From 1936-1942 the old ship saw service as a car carrier for another set of owners. In 1942 the ship wrecked in Lake Michigan, but wartime demand for shipping gave the old ship repairs, a new name (Meteor) and a new life as a tanker transporting petroleum products for more than 25 years. In 1969 Meteor ran aground off the Michigan coast, Instead of repairing the old ship, the owners sold it for a museum ship at Superior, WI. In poor condition today, Meteor is the last surviving example of McDougal’s whaleback or “pig boat”.
The extreme clipper ship Challenge was built at New York by the famous shipbuilder William H. Webb. At its launch in May 1851, the $150,000 Challenge was the largest merchant ship ever built, measuring 227 feet in length by 42 feet in beam and 2006 tons. The high length:beam ratio of 5.4:1 was what made the three-decker an extreme clipper, and it set a few speed records over the course of its working life.
The Challenge was expected to set a record on its maiden voyage, and Capt. Robert H. Waterman was offered a $10,000 bonus if he could drive the ship to San Francisco in under 90 days. He pushed his 60-man crew hard, but poor weather and a mutiny by 50 crewmen off Rio slowed the Challenge to a 108-day trip. The mutiny and the unrelated death of seven crew on that maiden voyage gave the ship a bad reputation. Capt. Waterman was relieved of his command after reaching San Francisco, but the next master had to pay a signing bonus of $200 to lure new crewmen aboard for a China trip. Another mutiny on this second leg of the maiden voyage occurred as well—testament to how driven these men were to sail hard and fast.
Over the next decade as a China clipper, an additional mutiny, widespread crew illnesses, frequent dismastings and leaks, and other events cemented the bad reputation of the vessel. It was sold to its captain for $9,350 in 1861. The Challenge changed hands a few more times before sinking off the Brittany coast in February 1877.
Bryant’s New Showboat was built at Point Pleasant, W. Va., in 1917. Launched in 1918, it could seat around 880 people in its theater. Most of the shows put on for Bryant’s patrons in small towns along the Kanawha, Ohio, Monongahela, Illinois, and Mississippi Rivers were vaudeville or follies productions.
The ornate stage of Bryant’s New Showboat was home to dozens of plays like Hamlet and Little Nell of the Ozarks, and even the antics of a trained bucking mule named January. Owner Billy Bryant offered $10 to anyone who could stay on the animal’s back, but he had to retract that offer in mining towns, as the miners were strong enough to stay on.
The vessel was sold to new owners in 1945, at the end of World War II. Movie theaters, personal automobiles and other developments had gradually ended the colorful showboat era on America’s rivers.
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.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed a small fleet of three small ships west from Spain across the Atlantic Ocean, hoping to find a shorter route to the riches of Asia. Before his voyages, Chinese and Indian luxuries for European markets were transported over the long and hazardous overland route through Arabia.
The three-masted vessel Santa Maria was the largest of Columbus’s expeditionary vessels and his flagship. Measuring around 70 feet in length, it carried a crew of 40 men. The Santa Maria and Columbus’s other fleet members the Niña and the Pinta were older ships used for coastal trading rather than vessels designed for ocean crossings. Nine weeks after the little fleet left Spain, land was sighted in the Caribbean on 12 October 1492, but exactly which island Columbus’s crew first spotted remains disputed.
The fleet went on to explore the north coasts of the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola (now Haiti). On Christmas Day 1492, the Santa Maria ran aground on a reef off Hispaniola and was declared a total loss. The ship’s timbers were salvaged and used to build a small fort on shore. Fortunately for Columbus, he was able to return to Spain on the Niña.
Instead of Asia, Columbus had landed in the Caribbean islands on his first voyage. Although they were already inhabited, he claimed them for Spain. Columbus made three more voyages to the western hemisphere between 1493 and 1504.
Waves of conquerors and colonists—both free and enslaved—followed. What was a triumph for Spain became a catastrophe for native peoples. New livestock, plants, diseases, and beliefs unsettled centuries-old communities and ecosystems, changing and destroying the lives of millions.
This model was built at the Museo Maritimo de Barcelona, Spain, under the supervision of museum director Jose Maria Martinez-Hidalgo y Teran, who published a book on the Santa Maria in 1964.
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.”
This champagne glass was among the 57,000 pieces of glassware furnished to the SS United States before its maiden voyage in 1952. Launched in 1952, the “Big U,” as the ship was affectionately called, was 990 feet long, about the length of five city blocks. On its maiden voyage, the ship broke the speed records for crossings in both directions and captured the Blue Riband trophy, an award for the ship making the fastest round trip passage on the North Atlantic. The time set by the United States on the westbound leg from New York to England was 3 days, 12 hours, and 12 minutes, with an average speed of 34.51 knots, a record that remains unbroken.
The SS United States was built in Newport News Virginia, and was the largest and fastest transatlantic passenger liner ever built in the country. The ship had 695 staterooms located on eight of the liner’s 12 decks. It could accommodate 1,972 passengers in first, cabin, or tourist class. Some 1,011 crew were required to run the ship and serve the passengers.
architect and designer for interior of ocean liner
Peto, Harold A.
ID Number
TR.311006
accession number
134437
catalog number
311006
Description
The RMS Mauretania was a British ocean liner owned by the Cunard Steamship Company. Designed to be fast and luxurious, the vessel was launched in 1907, and began its first transatlantic voyage on November 16. Carrying a total of 2,165 passengers and 812 crew members, the Mauretania set a world record in 1907, arriving in New York from Europe in five days, five hours, and ten minutes.
The Mauretania burned 850 to 1000 tons of coal per day depending upon its traveling speed. When running at full speed, the liner boasted the equivalent of 70,000 horsepower. In June 1909 it made the Atlantic crossing in four days, 17 hours, and 21 minutes. This was the fastest time ever recorded, and the Mauretania was awarded the Blue Riband prize. This record stood for 20 years.
British architect and landscaper Harold A. Peto designed the Mauretania’s interior spaces. Peto created elaborate and luxurious rooms, drawing inspiration from French chateaux and the Italian Renaissance style. It took 300 woodworkers two years to carve the Mauretania’s interior decorations.
Like other ocean liners, the Mauretania could be converted for military use during times of war. During World War I, the British Admiralty called on the Mauretania to serve as an armed cruiser and hospital ship. The liner was re-painted in dazzle paint, a quilted camouflage technique used to distort the ship’s silhouette and confuse enemy U-boats. The Mauretania carried 33,610 American soldiers across the Atlantic on seven separate voyages. In May 1919 the liner retired from government services.
That same year, the Mauretania was converted to run on oil. It continued work as a passenger liner until 1934, steaming back and forth across the Atlantic. During its tenure, the Mauretania sailed enough miles to circle the globe sixty times. In April 1935, the Mauretania was sold and broken apart.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a special fondness for the Mauretania and donated this model of the ship to the Smithsonian in 1935.
Sugar was a very expensive item when first exported across the Atlantic from the Caribbean plantations in the 1600s. Only the wealthiest members of European society could afford to use it to sweeten the equally exotic and expensive commodities such as coffee, tea, and chocolate. By the late 18th century, when this tea service was made at the Worcester Porcelain manufactory in England, the increasingly well-to-do middle class could afford to buy English porcelain, and the lower cost of tea and sugar made these desirable commodities accessible to many people. These pieces from a tea set represent this social and economic transition. The service, made of fluted porcelain with a gilt scalloped pattern and bordered in royal blue with gold banding, is not characteristic of Worcester’s most refined output of hand-painted tea wares.
The tea set also represents the truly international nature of new tastes and new trades. Although made in England, the porcelain tea service is rooted in the Chinese culture of tea drinking, but with adaptations to suit European tastes. The Chinese did not take tea with sugar or milk, so a milk jug, covered sugar bowl, and sugar tongs were European additions in response to the Atlantic sugar trade. The uncovered bowl in the set was used for “slops,” where waste tea was disposed of before a fresh cup was poured from the teapot.
This is the original builder’s half hull model of the famous ship Young America, constructed by the renowned shipbuilder William Webb in 1852/53 at his New York shipyard. Measuring 243 feet long on deck and 1,961 tons, the Young America was an extreme clipper, characterized by a sharp bow and long, narrow hull. Constructed lightly for speed and commonly sailing the harsh waters of Cape Horn off the southern tip of South America with crews of up to 100 men, clippers often lasted only about ten years before being sold to foreign owners.
Costing $140,000 to build, the Young America set a number of speed records. It sailed from New York to San Francisco 20 times, averaging 118 days per trip. Its reputation for strength and speed earned high freight rates—its maiden voyage from New York to San Francisco earned $86,400. The clipper traded mainly between Liverpool, New York and San Francisco, but also sailed to China, Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, the Philippines, Mauritius and other countries. After a very long and profitable 30-year career, the Young America was sold to Austrian owners in 1883 and renamed the Miroslav. In February 1886, the ship cleared Delaware for a trading voyage and was never seen again.
Half hull models were the first step in the construction of a ship. They were carved out of horizontal strips of wood known as lifts, and only one side was needed since ships are symmetrical. After a model was approved, its lines were taken (measured) and it was disassembled. Then the lines were lofted, or drawn at full scale on the floor. The actual ship’s frames were cut to fit the lines on the floor and then set in place along the keel during the construction process. Sometimes the models were discarded or even burned as firewood after use, but many original examples are preserved today.
ship made transatlantic voyages from New York and Liverpool
1851-1880
ship was abandoned
1880-10
shipping firm
Black Ball Line
shipbuilder
Webb, William H.
ship's namesake
Webb, Isaac
maker
Walters, Samuel
ID Number
TR.317527
catalog number
317527
accession number
229943
Description
Operating out of New York, the Black Ball Line pioneered scheduled packet ship service to Liverpool, England in 1818, and the firm continued operating until it was dissolved in 1879. Its success resulted from focusing on the lucrative passenger trade, at a time when immigration to the United States was at its highest level.
In 1851, the massive three-deck packet Isaac Webb was the seventh and last Black Baller launched from the shipyard of famous New York shipbuilder William H. Webb, who also owned a 1/16 share of the ship. Named after the builder’s father, the Isaac Webb measured 185 feet in length and 1,359 tons. It made about four round trips per year between New York and Liverpool, England from 1851–1879. The average length of a passage was 37 days, with the shortest voyage recorded as 25 days.
In June 1863, while westbound from Liverpool to New York with 658 passengers, the Isaac Webb was captured by the Confederate commerce raider Florida. A bond for a $40,000 ransom freed the ship to complete the passage. In late December 1866, while westbound for New York, the Webb encountered a gale so cold that it killed three crew, and several others were badly frostbitten. On the same passage nearly two years later, another powerful gale killed the captain.
The Isaac Webb continued to sail after the Black Ball Line closed. In late October 1880, while bound from Europe to New York, it was abandoned at sea by its crew of 24, who were rescued by a passing steamship bound for Boston. British marine painter Samuel Walters completed this oil painting around 1851, when the ship was new.
A push to recruit 250,000 additional shipyard workers for the Hog Island shipyard in early 1918 led the Emergency Fleet Corporation to create the “U.S. Shipyard Volunteers.” Men who signed up to work in the yards were exempted from the military draft.
In May 1918, shortly after the initiative began, New York led the drive with more than 81,800 volunteers, followed by Illinois and Massachusetts.
This model represents the brig Diligente, a two-masted sailing vessel used in the last days of the transatlantic slave trade. Begun in the sixteenth century, this trade was fueled by the demand for human labor in the New World. Enslaved people were forced to work in gold and silver mines as well as on plantations producing valuable crops like sugar, coffee, rice, cotton and tobacco. The ships that delivered cargoes of these products to European markets also carried millions of enslaved people from their African homelands to the Americas.
By the early nineteenth century, several nations had outlawed the slave trade. As a result, slave ship owners regularly changed the names of their ships and sold them frequently in an attempt to remain active in the lucrative trade without getting noticed. Because accurate records of these ships are difficult to find, the date and place where the slaver brig Diligente was built cannot be confirmed. Still, it is thought to be American-built, as the ship’s design is similar to that of ships built along the east coast of the United States, specifically vessels built in Maryland.
In the early 1800s, Lloyd’s of London auctioned off old slave ships, which allowed condemned ships like the Diligente to return to the slave trade. In 1837 Parliament outlawed this practice, making the Diligente one of the last slave ships to be sold by auction. On January 12, 1837, the HMS Scout captured the slaver along the coast of Africa. At this time, the Diligente was sailing under the Portuguese flag and used the name Paquete de Cabo Verde. It was condemned to Sierra Leone, where it was sold to an American named Lake. Records indicate that Lake resold the ship to Miguel Bentinotte, a known slave trader, for the price of 1,000 British pounds.
After changing owners and names twice more, the Diligente soon re-entered the slave trade with a license from the Portuguese government, only to be captured by the HMS Pearl on April 24, 1838. The British government sent the nine crewmen to Portugal to be tried, while the Diligente was condemned to Bermuda. Although there is some indication that the Diligente was caught again in 1839 near Cuba, it was probably broken up after its arrival in the Caribbean.
The skipjack is the last in a long line of sailing craft designed for work in the Chesapeake Bay oyster industry. First built in the late 1800s, this sloop-rigged, single masted vessel was easy to maneuver even in light winds, and its V-shaped hull allowed oystermen to work in shallow waters. This model represents the Gertrude Wands, a skipjack built by John Branford on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in 1899. It is named after a little girl who lived in the community of Inverness.
Like bugeyes, skipjacks were built for oyster dredging under sail. But unlike the round-bottomed bugeye, the skipjack had a V-shaped hull, which was easier to build and did not require the huge logs of the traditional bugeye. Skipjacks were also smaller than bugeyes, ranging in size from 25 to 50 feet.
By the early 20th century, skipjacks had replaced bugeyes and were the main dredging craft on the bay. An 1865 Maryland law restricting dredging to sail-powered vessels ensured the continued use of sailing craft for oystering. Only in 1967 was the law amended to allow the use of a gasoline-powered push boat on Mondays and Tuesdays of each week. A push boat is shown on davits at the stern (back) of this model.
Maryland’s skipjacks are the last commercial fishing boats operating under sail in North America. In 1985, the skipjack was named Maryland’s official state boat. With the steep decline of the oyster population in the Chesapeake Bay, most skipjacks have become floating classrooms for public education programs about the bay. Several have been donated to museums for preservation. Still, many people who live in the Chesapeake region harbor a sense of longing and nostalgia for the days when the large white sails of skipjacks filled the horizon.
This model represents the fishing schooner Dauntless, built at Essex, Mass., about 1855. Its hull is of the “sharpshooter” type, meaning the bottom has a sharp V-shape, as distinct from the rounded hulls of most fishing craft built in New England. The model shows the typical deck arrangement for a schooner sailing to or from the offshore fishing grounds, with the dory boats nested together and lashed bottom-up on the deck. All of the sails are set, including the jib and flying jib on the vessel’s long bowsprit.
Fishing on the shallow banks stretching from Georges Bank east of Massachusetts to the Grand Bank off the coast of Newfoundland was a dangerous enterprise. Thousands of lives were lost in the race to catch more fish and deliver them to market before the competition. The demand for fast schooners led to designs that favored speed over safety. The Dauntless is an example of a mid-century schooner with a fast hull and a great deal of sail. The sailing rig would have required crewmen to venture out on the bowsprit to furl the jib, a dangerous proposition, especially in rough weather.
Details of what happened to the Dauntless and its crew in September 1870 are unknown. But the schooner was lost at sea with all hands aboard, while making a passage to the Bay of St. Lawrence from Gloucester. Those lost included Jas. G. Craig, master, John La Pierre, Martin Costello, John Todd Jr., George Todd, Daniel Herrick, Edward Smith, James Smith, James Welch, George Goodwin, and two others, whose names are unknown.