Our first excursion, while at Norfolk, was to the Navy Yard of Gosport, the suburb of Portsmouth, on the opposite side of the harbour. Having letters of introduction to Commodore Warrington, who commanded there, we were most cordially received, and the Commodore’s son, himself a young officer in the navy, accompanied us in our investigations. This yard is one of the oldest, though not one of the largest, in the United States, containing an area of about twenty acres; and though its original plan is yet far from being filled up, it is, even at present, very complete in all the requisites of a building and repairing establishment. Its ship-houses, or huge sheds, under which are line-of-battle ships and frigates building on the stocks, are equal in size, and superior in construction and finish, to any of those in the best dock-yards of England. Its mast-houses, boat-houses, sail-lofts, smith’s forge, and other workshops, are also very efficient and inferior to none in the world. Its dry-dock is a magnificent structure of New England granite; its solidity and massiveness of material, exquisite closeness of masonry, and its perfect finish of workmanship, would do honour to any country; while its size is sufficient to admit a larger ship than has ever yet been built, even by the Americans, who have at present, lying alongside the wharf of this navy-yard, the largest vessel of war that has ever yet been launched.
We went to visit this colossal ship, the Pennsylvania, built at Philadelphia, and now here ready for equipment when needed. In order that we might see her from every point of view, we first rowed up and down the Elizabeth-river, on the south bank of which the navy-yard is placed, and by advancing and receding, we had the opportunity of seeing her hull in every variety of position. Nothing can be conceived more graceful and beautiful than the form of this immense structure, as she reposed on the tranquil stream. Her model is perfect, and so skillfully are her mouldings and lines rounded off, so they bent towards the stern-post, that the whole fabric does not strike one so much by its magnitude, after all, as by its beauty. . . . From having no poop-deck, the cumbrous appearance of our English line-of-battle ships in that quarter is avoided; and her stern having, for this reason, one tier of cabin windows less, is as light as that of an English 74, though the Pennsylvania has four tiers of batteries or decks, and carries 150 guns. On her cutwater at the head, is placed a colossal bust of the Grecian Hercules, with naked shoulders and breast, the lower part of the waist enveloped with the skin, head, and paws of the Nemean lion.. . .
After examining and admiring the exterior of the hull, we went on board; and it was here that the immensity of her size became for the first time apparent. Her maindeck battery presented 18 long 42-pounders on each side; and each of her decks were splendid examples of length, breadth, height, solidity, and space. On the upper or fourth deck, where the view, in consequence of the absence of a poop, extended in one unbroken line, from taffrel to bowsprit, the vista was magnificent in the extreme. Her length is 237 feet; her breadth of beam 59 feet; her depth amidships 51 feet; and her burden 3,366 tons; her sheet-anchor weighs 11,660 lbs.; the canvass required for one suit of sails, hammocks, awnings, for the ship and boats, is about 33,000 yards. But while the vastness of the scale, and the massiveness of the materials, the solidity of the timbers, knees, beams, decks, cable-bitts, capstans, masts, and bulwarks, first rivet the attention; the careful and critical observer cannot fail to be subsequently struck with the minute accuracy and perfection of the interior workmanship; the shipwright’s knees being as well fitted as the joiner’s or cabinetmaker’s bulk-heads and cabin ceilings: thus uniting the excellence of greatness in size and minuteness of finish. . . .
On our return to Norfolk, we enjoyed the pleasurable conveyance of one of the man-of- war boats, then at the Navy Yard on duty, Captain Payne of the schooner Grampus politely accompanying us. In our way we passed the noble ship-of-the-line Delaware, mounting ninety guns with a fine full-length figure of a Delaware Indian Chief for her figurehead; and at the same time we saw two frigates bearing the names of the English ships taken by the Americans; the Guerriere, the first capture made in the last war by the American frigate Constitution; and the Java, another English frigate taken soon after by the same American ship and the same captain, now Commodore Hull, commanding the Ohio of eighty guns on the Mediterranean station. These British frigates were so crippled in action, that the first was unfit for repair when taken into port, and the second was sunk in the fight. But it was thought politic to keep constantly alive in the memory of American seamen these conquests from the British on their own element, and thus to stimulate them with the hope of new victories, by having always before them the triumphs of old ones. Two frigates were therefore built by the Americans, and called respectively the Guerriere and the Java. The first is now lying up in ordinary, and the second is in commission as the guardship of the port; but their names will, no doubt, be perpetuated in other ships that may be built to replace them; a policy of which we, at least, have no right to complain, as it was our constant practice, long before the Americans had a navy at all, to retain the names of the vessels captured from the French, both in our line-of-battle ships and frigates, as trophies of our prowess by sea, and as examples to our seamen, of what their predecessors had done, and what they were expected to achieve also, wherever the opportunity of so doing was presented to them.
The second excursion we made from Norfolk was to see the Naval Asylum, built on a projecting piece of land, just opposite the usual anchorage of the ships of war in the harbour, and forming a very pleasing as well as appropriate object in the marine picture. . . Around the edge of the projecting land on which the hospital stands, there is a hard white sandy beach, affording the most delightful bathing in the open sea, within hail of the usual anchorage, for ships of war; a frigate and a schooner being now at anchor there. ... In our way from the Hospital, we visited the schooner Grampus, and the frigate Brandywine, both lying here ready for sea, the first waiting for orders, and the second about to proceed to the Mediterranean. The schooner was about 200 tons, mounted 12 guns, 17-pound carronades, and carried a crew of seventy men. She was most efficient in every requisite, and was in beautiful order. The frigate was a superb ship of her class. She was . . . one of the finest frigates I ever remember to have seen. Her exterior form is the perfection of nautical beauty; she sits on the water with the lightness and grace of a bird; and, as in the Pennsylvania, the harmony of her proportions, and the faultless beauty of her model, take away from the impression of her size. But when you stand upon her deck, her dimensions then display themselves. She is 197 feet long, within a few feet, therefore, of the length of the usual run of English line-of- battle ships, which in two-deckers rarely exceeds 200 feet; . . . and she measures about 2,000 tons. She mounts 60 guns, long 32- pounders, and has a crew of 470 men.
In the Brandywine there were forty able seamen, who were free negroes. I was much struck with the fine, and even noble appearance of these men; their erect and muscular forms no longer crouching under the influence of forced servitude, nor their heads hung down under a consciousness of inferiority, but leading a free, bold, independent, and active life, their appearance partook of these new influences, and they were among the finest-looking men in the ship. In answer to my inquiries of the first-lieutenant, who had been upwards of thirty years in the service, I learnt that they received exactly the same bounty, the same wages, the same rations, and the same privileges as the whites; and that in their arrangements and classification for duty, as fore- castle-men, topmen, waisters, and afterguard, no distinction was made between black and white, but each were mingled indiscriminately, and classed only by their relative degrees of seamanship. In this, he said, the blacks were not at all inferior to the whites, either in their skill, readiness, or courage. . . .
The officers of the ships we had visited to-day, and, indeed, all those of the naval service of America that I had yet seen, either now, or at any former time—and I have seen them in many parts of the world, and under a great variety of circumstances—appeared to me in no degree inferior to the officers of the British navy, in knowledge of their profession, gentlemanly manners, or general information: in one respect, indeed, they seemed to me superior to the officers of our own service, generally; namely, in the entire absence of hauteur, and over bearing self-importance; and in the exhibition of great mildness, and respect towards those out of their profession.
The above extracts are taken from John Silk Buckingham’s The Slave Slates of America, (1842), Volume II, pp. 462-473.