“L’eminent ingenieur en chef de la marine des Etats Unis, le plus fecund des experimenteurs de ces quarante dernieres annees.”—Dwelshanvers-Deery.
There yet remains to be written a definitive history of the United States Navy; if by a definitive history we mean one that includes not only the exploits that set the pulse pounding, but also the accomplishments which have contributed to the sum total of man’s knowledge. We should perpetuate the deeds of our Decaturs, Porters, and Farraguts, true. But we should also give credit, where credit is due, to the Haswells, the Isherwoods, the Melvilles, the Michelsons, the Spragues, engineers and scientists whose accomplishments have impinged upon everyday life. They were navy-trained and are part of the vast mosaic which comprises naval tradition.
One of the brightest chapters of this definitive history will have to be reserved for the scientific accomplishments and practical achievements of Benjamin Franklin Isherwood, possibly the greatest engineer the United States Navy has developed. The work of this officer extended from the highly theoretical task of dispelling the theories of Mariotte and Gay-Lussac to the very practical task of superintending the construction of the engines of the fleet of vessels needed for the Civil War.
Benjamin Franklin Isherwood was born in New York City, October 6, 1822, the son of Benjamin and Eliza Isherwood. His father, a well-known physician and a pupil of the famous Dr. Mott, died when he was very young and his mother later married a civil engineer by the name of John Green. Isherwood was projected toward an engineering career by the joint influence of environment and heredity. His stepfather was an engineer, and his great grandfather, Captain DuClose, was a distinguished military engineer who served on the staff of General Lafayette and who, at the termination of the American Revolutionary War, married a Miss Stevens of the Jersey family of that name.
At the age of nine, young Isherwood was sent to Albany Academy at Albany, New York, to round out his education. In that institution he studied “Natural Philosophy” under the tutorship of Dr. Joseph Henry, the American scientist who, simultaneously with Michael Faraday, discovered the principle of electro-magnetic induction. We have Dr. Robert Thurston’s word to the effect that Henry was so impressed with the character and ability of his young pupil that his interest in him ended only with death. However, the zeal of the scholar was not able to keep in control certain animal spirits and, after nine years at the Academy, Isherwood was expelled because of “serious misconduct.”
This “misconduct,” whatever it was, had no bearing upon his ability to find employment. It was an age of industrial expansion and no bright and ambitious youngster was without a job for any length of time. Isherwood entered the employ of the Utica and Schenectady Railroad, serving under William C. Young, one of the most prominent civil engineers of that day, and later under David Matthews, a well- known master mechanic of the time, as a draftsman in the locomotive shops. It was on this job that he obtained his thorough grounding in the details and methods of design and construction.
Upon the completion of the Utica and Schenectady Railroad, Isherwood worked as a civil engineer on the Croton Aqueduct, under the direction of John B. Jervis. The completion of this project forced him to seek new employment and he obtained a position as civil engineer on the Erie Railroad under the supervision of Charles B. Stuart, division engineer at Susquehanna. This was the Stuart who later succeeded Charles H. Haswell as Engineer in Chief of the United States Navy.
Later employment found Isherwood in the service of the U. S. Treasury Department, working under Stephen Pleasanton in the construction of lighthouses. He designed the lighthouse on Sankaty Head, Nantucket, and was sent to France to superintend the construction of lighthouse lenses of his own design, and to report on the lighthouses of France. All this work was accomplished before Isherwood had yet reached his majority.
At this juncture, the thoughts of the young engineer turned towards the engineer corps that was being formed by the United States Navy. But before appointment to the corps, it was necessary that an applicant show evidence of having worked with tools. There were no technical schools to which the Navy could turn as a source of supply for human material for the corps. The repository of engineering knowledge, as it pertained to marine engineering, was the shops of the engine builders. There the young apprentices received not only the practical training which many of our highly theoretical technicians of today lack, but also a training in the theory of engine building and operation.
Isherwood chose for his “finishing school” one of the most famous engine building shops of the day—the Novelty Iron Works. This firm had been founded in 1831 by Rev. Eliphalet Nott, president of Union College, to build a boat which would enable him to try out his improved tubular boiler which was designed to burn coal. This boat was named The Novelty and the shops where it had been built were dubbed the Novelty Works. From this modest beginning the works expanded until, in the early fifties, the production ran above $1,500,000. The old president never lost his interest in the works, and Frederick W. Seward reports him in 1845 as asking one of the students who had gathered at his home, “Howard, my son, how are they getting on at the Novelty Works with that newly invented cut-off valve for the steam engine?”
The necessary requirements having been met, Isherwood was appointed to the United States Navy on May 23, 1844, as First Assistant Engineer reporting at Pensacola Navy Yard. His was a most opportune time for entering upon service with the steam navy. On May 12, 1846, Congress declared war against Mexico and the Navy was called upon for blockade duty.
Isherwood’s first detail was to the Princeton. Later he was transferred to the Spitfire, a small sidewheel vessel, under the command of “Blood is thicker than water” Tattnall. If it was Isherwood’s desire to see active service, Tattnall satisfied that desire with a vengeance. He was at Tampico when Commodore Connor captured the town. Later, at Vera Cruz, Tattnall took the Spitfire, accompanied by the Vixen, under the walls of the castle of San Juan de Ulloa and, in spite of a terrific cannonade, peppered away at the walls of that redoubtable fortress with his own woefully inadequate popguns. Then, like his distinguished predecessor, Lord Nelson, Tattnall used his “blind eye” to the telescope when Commodore Perry raised the recall signal, and it was not until the irate Commodore had sent a boat off to the Spitfire that she withdrew. The Spitfire also took part in the expeditions against Tuxpan and Tabasco which brought to an end the naval activities of the Mexican War.
Then followed for Isherwood tours of duty on board the General Taylor and with the Lighthouse Board. Having been raised to chief engineer on October 31, 1848, Isherwood was detached from duty and ordered to the Washington Navy Yard to serve as technical assistant to the Engineer in Chief, Charles B. Stuart.
While assigned to this duty, Isherwood designed the feathering paddle wheels for the Water Witch. This was the first time that this type of paddle wheel had been used in naval service, although they had been adopted by Robert L. Stevens for use on the Phoenix. He also became involved in a question of design on the rebuilding of the Allegheny which had a distinct bearing upon his subsequent career.
The Allegheny had been built in 1847 for use with the Hunter wheel. This interesting but impractical device having proved a complete failure, the Allegheny was rebuilt in 1851-52. Mr. Isherwood readapted the engine by using the cylinders of the old engine to work athwartship from the diagonally opposite corners of a new bed plate, the connecting rods reaching backward from crosstails. Unfortunately, the Allegheny proved a lamentable failure on trial, due to improper placing of bracing and defects of original design of the hull. The engine bed plate broke in several places and Isherwood was scored for not having compensated in the design and strength of the engine frame for the weakness of the hull. A little later in his career he was condemned for over-compensating for weakness of machinery and personnel.
Early in his career Mr. Isherwood realized that there was more to steam engineering than the mere boiling of water. He studied avidly the works of Tyndall, Joule, Mayer, Rankine, Clausius, Hirn, and other eminent engineers and scientists who were laying a foundation for the study of thermodynamics. In order to obtain the information he desired, it was necessary for Isherwood to go beyond the meager limits of the technical press of his day and to make translations from the French. Further than this, Isherwood was not content to accept blindly the dicta of the European scientists. He must subject their hypotheses to the court of last appeal of the engineer—experimentation. These experiments were, in the opinion of a modern critic, “The first systematic and sustained efforts to ascertain the distribution of energy and losses in engines and boilers by actual measurement under operation condition.” The results of these experiments and data on experiments conducted with propellers, comparison of coals, cost per unit of power, were published in 1859 in a two-volume work, Engineering Precedents.
It was about this time that Isherwood entered upon a series of experiments upon the expansion of steam which stamped him for all time as one of the leading experimentalists in the field of thermodynamics. Engineers had, from the time of Watt, been familiar with the benefits to be derived from the use of steam expansively. In fact, these benefits had been enumerated by Watt in his patent of 1769. However, engineers of the day considered steam as a perfect gas and applied the law of Mariotte which states that, “With constant temperature the product of volume and pressure is a constant.” Isherwood suspected that the laws pertaining to perfect gases did not strictly apply to steam at the pressures in vogue in the early sixties.
A brilliant series of experiments were conducted from November 10, 1860, to February 18, 1861, on board the U.S.S. Michigan in the lake harbor of Erie, Pennsylvania, by a board composed of B. F. Isherwood, Theodore Zeller, Robert H. Long, and Alban C. Stimers. These experiments, the results of which were submitted to the Hon. Isaac Toucey, Secretary of the Navy, on February 18, 1861, “demonstrated conclusively that under the conditions then prevailing of a slow moving engine and low steam pressure, a ratio of expansion was soon reached beyond which an increase would cause an absolute diminution of economy instead of an increase thereof as would have been predicated by a strict adherence to Mariotte’s Law” (G. W. Melville).
The results of these experiments, the record of the performance of a number of naval vessels, and also the detailed data of various experimental trials were included in Experimental Researches, the two volumes of which were published by Isherwood in 1863 and 1865. While most of the data contained in these volumes have been superseded, the reports themselves deserve study as model laboratory reports. They are complete in every detail from compilation of experimental data to a summation and analysis of results.
It should be noted that Isherwood’s Michigan experiments on the limitations to steam expansion and the amount of cylinder liquefaction were not wholeheartedly accepted by engineers. He was accused of wasting government money, and one technical writer, Thomas Main, sourly remarked that he ignored the example of his predecessors, C. W. Copeland, C. H. Haswell, D. B. Martin, and S. Archbold; they had all used the principle of expansion cutting off at ½ stroke and even less. Isherwood’s results were confirmed by the independent work of Drs. Tyndal and Mayer and made evident the advantages of high-pressure, multi-expansion engines.
This work was not done by a man whose mind was burdened only by academic cares. On March 26, 1861, Isherwood had been appointed Engineer in Chief of the Navy and it was apparent to everyone, except the pathetically sanguine, that the issues between the North and South were to be decided by “the proud control of fierce and bloody war.” Jefferson Davis had been inaugurated President of the Confederacy on February 18, and on April 12 Fort Sumter was fired upon. The task then that Isherwood faced was that of providing an efficient steam navy to blockade the Confederate coast line.
It would, perhaps, be too much to paraphrase Mahan and say: “Isherwood’s storm-tossed ships, on which Lee’s Army never looked, stood between it and success.” But, certainly, if we agree that the blockade was one of the great factors in undermining the Confederacy, we must agree that Isherwood’s magnificent genius in creating an adequate steam navy made that blockade possible.
His first task in taking over was to prevent existing ships from falling into the hands of the Secessionists. The steam frigate Merrimac lay at Norfolk Navy Yard undergoing extensive repairs and Isherwood was disturbed lest she be taken over by the Confederates. He pointed out the danger to Gideon Welles and received orders on April 12, 1861, to proceed to Norfolk and prepare the Merrimac for sea.
An official report had stated that it would take at least a month to put the Merrimac in condition. On April 14, upon Isherwood’s arrival at the yard, accompanied by Chief Engineer Robert Dabney, he found the machinery down and scattered about the shops. By using his personal influence with the men and by working day and night shifts, he was able to report on April 17 that the Merrimac was ready for sea. Unfortunately the Merrimac was not destined to come out under the Union flag.
Isherwood had the engines of the Merrimac turning over and men stationed with axes at the hawsers. His orders specifically gave him command until the engines were turning over; then Commander Alden was charged with the responsibility of taking the vessel to sea. While vainly attempting to wrest from McCauley the necessary orders, Isherwood was tempted to take the vessel to sea himself, but he realized his limitations as a staff officer. He appealed to the Commandant, citing his peremptory orders, but McCauley, on April 18, indicated that in spite of insuperable odds, he had decided to defend the yard. He countersigned the orders of Isherwood, who then immediately returned to Washington. On April 20, Norfolk Navy Yard went up in flames, destroying 11 ships besides large quantities of supplies including over 1,000 cannon, ranging from 11 inches to 32 pounders.
Once he had accomplished all that was possible toward preserving existing vessels, Isherwood turned his attention to the design of the engines of the fleet that must, of necessity, be created. In June, 1861, the Navy Department contracted for the building of 23 gunboats of a little less than 600 tons, known as the “90-day” gunboats because it was anticipated that they could be built in that time. They were built from plans and specifications furnished by J. Lenthall for the hulls and by Isherwood for the machinery.
The second class of vessels to issue from the design boards were the so-called “double-enders.” These vessels were designed to follow the sinuous twisting and turning of the southern rivers. They were pointed at both ends and had rudders at each end which permitted them to go in either direction without the necessity of coming about. The third demand, towards the end of the war, was for exceedingly speedy vessels to pursue the privateers.
During this period, Mr. Isherwood, in addition to the administrative duties in connection with his office, gave the leading dimensions for the engines. “He scrutinized every detail drawing as it progressed, making such frequent changes that the draftsmen (assistant engineers of the Navy) were rarely able to claim even a detail of their own design.”
A number of marine engineering designers criticized Isherwood for building engines that were inordinately heavy. Thomas Main, for example, was righteously indignant because the piston rods of the “90-day” gunboats were 2.78 times stronger than was necessary and the other parts were in about the same proportion. What the “slide-rule” boys did not realize was that the machinery was to be handled by inexperienced personnel for whom the stress and strain formulas were not developed. Mr. Isherwood brought to his work not only the highly creative imagination of the designer, the necessary technical skill, but also good, hard, common sense which gave him the courage to use unusually large factors of safety. The results, in the words of Melville, “were engines very much heavier than would ordinarily be built; but they did not break down and they carried our ships to victory. To my mind this was the highest proof of his talent as a sound designer.”
The problem of securing engineering officers for the newly created steam navy was as serious as that of providing the vessels themselves. While many of the engineers were competent, many more, to put it mildly, were men who had no business in an engine-room. Under their ministrations equipment had to be heavy or it just could not stand up. As late as July 30, 1863, we find Farragut writing the Department with some asperity:
Sir: The Department would be astonished to see the condition in which vessels are sent out to me on this station. To explain I will remark that I have at least six vessels in this port just out from the North. It being necessary to dispatch a vessel to Galveston to relieve the Bienville (said to require urgent repairs to her rudder), I found that I had not a vessel that could be gotten ready for sea in less than forty-eight hours, and that they require from that period to ten days generally averaging from five to eight days. It is not surprising that the gunboats which have been long cruising should be in this condition, but there is no difference between them and the new vessels. This state of affairs is due to the rapid increase of the engineer corps. The majority of them know very little of their duties, and the engines are cut up and ruined by neglect and want of proper care, and I might add occasionally by experimentation as in the case of the Pensacola where the agent of Mr. Sickles the other day barely missed killing some four or five men, and the Pensacola cannot move, be her necessities what they may, in less than three weeks ....
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
D. G. Farragut
Rear Admiral
Hon. Gideon Welles
Secretary of the Navy, Washington, D. C.
Welles could only forward the letter to Isherwood and state that he was addressing a circular letter to the commandants of the Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington Navy Yards which listed the qualifications for appointment to the Engineer Corps. One can well imagine what Isherwood’s private thoughts were when he received the letter.
The engineering genius of Isherwood reached its zenith in the design of the Wampanoag. This statement does not, however, completely tell the story. Isherwood was not only responsible for the design, but it was his vision which brought the whole Wampanoag class of vessels into being.
Once the ships had been provided to maintain the grim and relentless blockade, the Navy Department had to devote its attention to the suppression of the commerce raiders such as the Florida and Alabama. Further, during the most intense period of the war, when the Union efforts were being strained to the utmost, information reached the Navy Department that Great Britain and France were about to bring pressure to bear on the side of the Confederates. While Isherwood’s common sense told him that the hardheaded British statesmen were not going to be taken in by the visionary schemes of Louis Napoleon to form a coalition and, by intervention, force the independence of the Confederacy; still, there was that possibility. Further, he knew that if the situation did arise it would be impossible to put a fleet of vessels on the seas to cope with the combined navies of England and France. The only avenue of attack left, he reasoned, was to strike at their commerce.
In order to do this most effectively, he visioned a new type of vessel known as the “commerce destroyers.” These vessels were to have a higher sustained speed than any other vessel of the time. This advantage of speed would give them the choice of combat. In other words, they could fight and run away and thus be capable of fighting another day. They were to be built to destroy commerce and not seek glory by ship-to-ship combat. Further, with the assistance of their sails, it was anticipated that they could remain at sea for indefinite periods renewing their coal supply from the prizes that would be taken.
While it was agreed that vessels of this type were urgently needed, there was not sufficient confidence in Isherwood’s ability to design engines of all the vessels, the Wampanoag, Ammonusuc, Neshaminy, Pompanoosuc, Madawaska, Chattanooga, and the Idaho, which were authorized.
The engines for the Idaho were designed by a civilian engineer, E. N. Dickerson by name. This worthy did not subscribe to Isherwood’s theory of limited expansion. He had prepared for an engineering career by the study of law and, in association with Frederick Sickles (he of the Sickles cutoff fame), had designed the engines of the Pensacola. Perhaps the less said about the Pensacola the better, for there was everything wrong with her that could possibly be wrong with a vessel. She managed to limp down the coast and assist Farragut at the Battle of New Orleans, but she was so unreliable that “she was used more as a floating battery than as a reliable cruising ship.” Nothing daunted, Dickerson went ahead and designed the engines for the Algonquin and the Idaho. The former was pitted against the Winooski, a vessel of the same class with engines designed by Isherwood, on a series of dock trials and competitive steaming tests. The Winooski proved herself by far the superior vessel. A report of the trials of the Idaho declared that “her performance, particularly in speed, shows that she is unfitted for the service, and should be condemned and rejected as totally unfit for service in the navy.” This report ended the naval engineering career of Mr. Dickerson.
The engines of the Madawaska were designed by the great John Ericsson and consisted of two 100-inch diameter vibrating lever engines directly connected to the shaft. On trial they failed by 2 knots to drive the vessel the required IS knots. Further, although the engines were excellent in themselves, they were not suited to the hull, and excessive vibration resulted.
The Chattanooga, built by the Cramp Company with engines designed and built by Merrick & Sons, was reasonably satisfactory except that she failed by 1$ knots to make the required speed.
In designing the Wampanoag, Isherwood evolved a new method of design. He first designed and laid out the necessary space for the engines, auxiliaries, and bunkers, and then proceeded, in an unorthodox manner, to design a vessel to surround this equipment. This, in the eyes of the naval architects, was putting the cart before the horse and it was with no small degree of misgivings that Naval Constructor B. F. Delano took the limiting dimensions and transverse cross sections that Isherwood supplied and completed the design of the hull.
The vessel was 335 feet long, 45 feet beam, and displaced 4,215 tons. In order to reduce the number of reciprocations and consequently the hull vibrations, the two 100-inch diameter, 4-foot stroke engines were geared to the main shaft. The gearing not only reduced the number of reciprocations, but also served as flywheels thus further reducing the vibrations. The twelve 54-pounds-per-square-inch boilers of the vertical water-tube type were arranged in groups of 4 main and 2 superheating boilers. Each pair of main boilers had a pipe in common thus giving 4 pipes in all; this in a day when even one pipe was looked upon with disfavor because it interfered with the sailing qualities of a vessel.
It was not until February, 1868, that the Wampanoag was given her trial run. Then, under the command of Captain J. W. A. Nicholson, with Chief Engineer Theodore Zeller at the throttle, she headed out beyond Sandy Hook to make her trial run in a heavy sea. The trial lasted 37 ½ hours and for the whole run averaged very nearly 17 knots. During several 6-hour periods her speed was over 17 knots and for several single hours she made 17 ½ knots. The speed of the Wampanoag was greater by at least 4 knots than that of any other vessel then afloat and was made under far from ideal conditions.
It is not necessary to fish in the troubled waters of diplomatic history and make the assertion that the speed of the Wampanoag was one of the determining factors that induced Great Britain to arbitrate the Alabama claims. There is sufficient glory for Isherwood in the fact that it was 15 years before the Esmeralda, built by Armstrongs in England for the Chilean Navy, surpassed the speed of the Wampanoag. It further redounds to the credit of Isherwood that the Esmeralda made her record only over a measured mile course while that of the Wampanoag’s was the average of 37$ hours steaming in a heavy sea.
The surrender of Lee at Appomattox rang down the curtain on the great drama of the Civil War. With a foolish consistency the American people then lost interest in the Navy. The strategic and technical lessons of the war were, as has been capably shown by Harold and Margaret. Sproul in The Rise of American Naval Power, completely forgotten. Steam had to take a back seat; the sailing qualities of a vessel were what mattered. Gustavus Fox went so far as to say that the man who first put a steam engine in a warship should have been hanged,
Before his naval career was finally brought to a close by retirement, Isherwood made one more significant contribution to the science of marine engineering. During the years 1870 and 1871 at Mare Island Navy Yard, where he had, to use the words of Melville, "been banished,” Isherwood in association with William R. Eckhart conducted a series of propeller experiments. “The results of these tests formed the basis of propeller design for 27 years thereafter until the advent of Chief Constructor Taylor’s treatise on propellers. Shortly afterwards, Rear Admiral Dyson continued the work of Isherwood; and Taylor and Dyson’s work is standard today” (Rear Admiral H. G. Bowen).
The naval career of Isherwood came to a close on June 6, 1884, when he was retired with the rank of Rear Admiral. Perhaps the most concrete evidence that can be offered of the esteem in which Isherwood was held by his associates is that on April 2, 1898, a testimonial banquet was held at Philadelphia, at which a bronze bust of the Admiral was dedicated. While the speaker of the evening was the distinguished and talented Robert H. Thurston, the most noteworthy aspect of the dinner was the attendance of the 89-year- old Charles H. Haswell, the first engineer ever to enter naval service. He must have felt supreme satisfaction in the realization that the traditions he had so well established had been carried on by his successor, Benjamin Franklin Isherwood.
IF ANYTHING is within the power and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also. —MARCUS AURELIUS.