In view of recent Soviet claims to have invented everything important, it is significant to note that one particularly deserving American never received due recognition and today is virtually unknown. This man was a modest Quaker named John Elgar, and a century and a quarter ago his not inconsiderable contribution was to design and build with American workmanship and materials America’s first iron ship and then to sail it up a river never before navigated. Although metal hulls had appeared experimentally in England, it is improbable that Elgar had heard of them and certainly his creation was in no way influenced by what had gone before on the other side of the Atlantic.
It is of course the combination of mechanical propulsion machinery in a metal hull that has enabled the development of the present behemoth naval ships and ocean liners. The largest vessels attained by American shipbuilders employing but one of these two indispensable characteristics were puny indeed compared to the giant 968-foot aircraft carriers of the Midway class completed at the end of World War II, and to the 980- foot liner United States, now building at Newport News. In the 1860’s the Pacific Mail Steamship Company ordered a quartette of virtually similar wooden-hull, side- wheel steamers of which the 1868 Japan measured 385 feet in over-all length, and proved to be America’s largest wooden steamship. But even she was heavily strapped with iron rods and braces, and serviceable hulls completely made of wood rarely attained 300 feet in length. Conversely the largest steel-hull sailing vessel built in this country was the famous seven masted schooner Thomas W. Lawson, completed in 1902 at Fore River. She measured 403 feet over-all and needed steam donkey winches to hoist her sails.
Considering the necessary interdependence of steam and steel, it is surprising to discover that although the origins of marine steam engineering have been most carefully investigated, the question of establishing a starting point in the use of metal hull construction in the United States has received but scant attention. On the one hand we find a well documented and considerably argumentative body of literature on who “invented” the steamboat; on the other, the best available is the general statement that although America tagged behind Britain in the manufacture of iron plate, a few metal hulls did begin to appear here before the middle of the nineteenth century.
The reason for this lack of precision may possibly be explained by the fact that John Elgar either did not appreciate the significance of his attainments or, as was more likely, that at the time the country at large did not—and he was too modest to brag about them. Material now available on his iron steamboat, the Codorus, is tantalizingly meagre. Apparently only two letters by Elgar’s hand concerning the vessel have survived, and there are no plans or detail specifications. Contemporary accounts were confined to local newspapers. But today the giant steel shipbuilding establishments which ring the coast and lake shores of the United States are as much monuments to the nationally unfamiliar and not too clean little tributary of the Susquehanna named Codorus Creek as they are to Chancellor Livingston’s well-known estate of Clermont on the banks of the Hudson.
Without intending to detract from the invaluable contributions of Fitch, Rumsey, Fulton, and others, it should be pointed out that the first pair spent considerable time and effort in acrimoniously pamphleteering against the claims of invention advanced by the other. Robert Fulton, the popular “inventor,” employed a boat built by someone else propelled by an imported English steam engine and secured sufficient publicity by claiming patents and monopoly to insure, according to James Thomas Flexner’s Steamboats Come True, inclusion in fourth-grade readers and consequent immortality.
Just when the discovery was made that a metal container would float was probably not very long after the manufacture of the first metal dish pan. But this was a prankish feat and the fact that wood floated and iron sank was used as an argument against iron-hull ships as late as 1867. The first recorded metal boat, a twelve-footer, was built in Yorkshire in 1777; an Englishman named Aaron Mamby produced an iron- hull steamer which crossed the English Channel in 1822; and by 1830 John Laird of Birkenhead had laid the foundations for successful iron shipbuilding for which the Clyde has since maintained preeminence.
In the United States, however, shipbuilding timber was plentiful and iron scarce and dear. Only a handful of people possessed the equipment and know-how to roll plate. John Elgar’s 1825 creation undoubtedly would have been made of wood were it not for the fact that extreme lightness combined with strength was requisite to its sole purpose of opening navigation on the Susquehanna River—up to that time only sailed downstream by rafts and arks. Trade rivalry between Baltimore and Philadelphia prompted the attempt to use successfully this unmanageable artery. But of all the large rivers of the Atlantic Seaboard, the beautiful but treacherous Susquehanna, shallow, rock-bound, swift and steep, was the least adapted to navigation by any means. John Elgar’s boat navigated it, but this proved to be a stunt like tightrope walking and of about equal commercial utility as a way of getting from one place to another. Possibly this explains why a ten-year period elapsed before another iron vessel was attempted in America. But this period sufficed to give John Elgar a clear-cut claim to priority. Meanwhile America’s infant iron industry could content itself with making nails and kettles.
John Elgar was born at Warrington, York County, Pennsylvania, in 1784', the second son of Joseph and Margaret Matthews Elgar, both Quaker ministers. By his own admission he was a “fragile infant” and ill health limited his formal education to only two or three years in school. He had an inquisitive nature, however, and became an omniverous reader, confessing inspiration from the works of Pope and Milton. Fortunately his strength increased with the years and at the age of seventeen he was able to work regularly on his father’s farm. In 1807 the family moved into York and Joseph Elgar turned to nail manufacturing, employing a machine of his own invention. When, three years later, his father died and he inherited the business, son John became a “nailor.” About 1820 he became associated with the firm of Davis, Gartner, and Webb, owners of a foundry and machine shop on South Newberry Street in York. And it was here that America’s first iron ship was born.
Evidently John Elgar’s plans for the Codorus materialized early in the year 1825, when he was forty-one years of age. Although we have an incomplete idea of the appearance of the finished boat, we do know just what materials went into her construction. On March 31, 1825, Elgar and Gartner ordered at a price of $140 per ton a quantity of sheet iron and boiler plate from Dr. Charles Lukens, operator of the Brandywine Iron and Nail Factory at Coatesville, Pennsylvania, today the sprawling Lukens Steel Company. For the most part the sheet iron was to be rolled into plates one-twelfth of an inch thick. Also ordered was a quantity of one-eighth inch plate bent into angle bars which were to be used for ribs, and some still heavier pieces, one of which, measuring two feet, ten inches in diameter, was to make a boiler head. In the division of labor Elgar seems to have been principally concerned with the vessel’s hull, the engine being produced by Phineas Davis, who not many years later, in 1830, built the locomotive York, the first successful coal burner of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and who is also an insufficiently famous inventor.
Apparently the building did not go forward with any great rapidity, for it was not until that fall that a local newspaper, the York Gazelle of November 8, 1825, reported that the Codorus was ready to be launched. The paper printed a fairly lengthy description of the boat “taken by a gentleman of Philadelphia,” not otherwise specified. According to this account, America’s first iron steamboat cost $3000 and was sixty feet long on the keel, nine feet wide, and three feet high. The hull was composed entirely of sheet iron plates riveted to angle iron ribs spaced every foot. The whole weight of the iron was stated to amount to 1400 pounds, which, added to the weight of the woodwork, deck, cabin, and so forth, brought it to a total of two tons. The weight of the steam engine and boiler also amounted to two tons, making a total of four tons for the whole ship.
Mr. Davis’ engine was said to develop eight horse power and to operate at the then high pressure of one hundred pounds to the square inch. The cylindrical boiler was placed upright in the boat and was a forerunner of the fire-tube type. Anthracite coal was to be burned. Regrettably, no contemporary writer saw fit to describe how the power from the engine was applied to the water. Paddles are mentioned, but whether side wheel or stern wheel is a matter of conjecture.
Although no pictures of the Codorus as completed have been located, posterity is fortunate to have a sketch of her in process of construction. This was drawn by an eccentric folk artist named Lewis Miller who apparently created for his own amusement a series of illustrated diaries, now preserved in the Historical Society of York County, which covered events taking place in and around York. Miller might well be described as calamity-minded, and his little water color of Codorus, measuring only two by three inches, appears with other drawings on the same page as a detailed representation of the regrettable accident sustained by a certain John Gallagher who had the misfortune to fall in a privy.
Although the Codorus sketch is out of scale for a sixty-footer, it is of extreme interest, since it shows that the hull was turned upside down to rivet on the shell plates. An active group of riveters is clustered around the boat wielding their hammers lustily.
The Codorus was completed on November 14, 1825, and although it had first been planned to float her down to the Susquehanna on Codorus Creek, in the end she was transported on top of two large wagons coupled together. According to contemporary accounts she received a larger turnout than had General Lafayette when he passed through York the February preceding. Despite inclement weather, sixty or seventy citizens attached a long rope to the wagons and dragged them through town to the outskirts where horses completed the twelve mile trip to Keesey’s Ferry, a point just below Conewago Falls on the west bank of the Susquehanna opposite Marietta.
John Elgar was busily engaged during the following week getting the machinery installed. A reporter from the York Recorder witnessed the trial trip, concluding his remarks by stating that the boat “will, as a work of art, elicit the praises of all who inspect her. She makes a beautiful appearance on the water and moves gracefully through it.”
This was at the gratifying speed of six miles an hour and despite the fact that steam escaped freely from numerous “crevices which could not be closed in time.” Loaded with personnel, stores, and fuel, the total draft amounted only to a mere six and a quarter inches.
Evidently shipbuilder Elgar, now Captain Elgar, and his backers were reasonably well satisfied with the Codorus’ initial swim in the Susquehanna, and preparations for a triumphal barn-storming trip to prove the navigability of the river went forward apace. Unfortunately no reference has been discovered which gives the names or even the number of men who made up her crew. We hear of the vessel a week later at York Haven, having been locked up through the canal around Conewago Falls. York Haven set the pattern for visits to succeeding towns along the way: “Her arrival was greeted by the firing of guns and reiterated cheers,” reported the York Recorder of November 29, 1825.
The little vessel did not tarry long at York Haven and proceeded up the river to Harrisburg the very next day. This city was much impressed by the novel spectacle of its first steamboat, inspiring the Harrisburg Oracle of December 3rd to go off the deep end with seven hundred odd words of the purplest prose imaginable which involved “river gods . . . enticed, by the warbling of the finest music, from their deep recesses,” “lovely Naiads,” and even King Neptune himself! Apparently none of these characters were on hand to greet the Codorus at Harrisburg, but the inspired Oracle writer concluded that a “substantial visitation of sylphs and Hebes, residing principally within the jurisdiction and demise of our own borough” actually did turn up in the flesh to welcome the boat.
Captain Elgar was evidently an individual of preternatural patience, and at Harrisburg the local citizenry was entertained by the first of many excursions he operated for the benefit of well-wishers. On this particular one:
A part of a numerous company of from eighty to a hundred, after having spent a delightful afternoon on board of this the first steamboat that ever reached Harrisburg, the star-spangled banner waving above them, the blue wave beneath them, and an excellent band of music at their side repaired in the evening to Mr. Buehler’s Hotel, where innocent mirth, and the light dance, wound up the entertainment of the day.
After the long trip was over, poor Elgar confessed to his niece in a letter now preserved in the Library of Congress, that these dinners and the inevitable longwinded speeches that accompanied them were “more trying than ascending rapids.” Instead of cheers, artillery, and “martial musick,” Elgar undoubtedly would have preferred a hot bath and a comfortable bed.
The voyage to Harrisburg concluded the Codorus' adventures for that year, and she did not set out on her trip to the Susquehanna’s headwaters until ice had cleared from the swollen river the next spring. Presumably she was safely tied up in the Conewago Canal at York Haven during the worst of the winter months. In March, 1826, however, she returned to Harrisburg and then kept on going up stream. At Northumberland she turned eastward into the North Branch of the Susquehanna, arriving at Catawissa on April 6th and at Bloomsburg two days later. As usual, the “genial proprietor” was feted and dined at both places, his home-town paper duly recording the events and printing in full the pious toasts (including one “to the fair sex of Bloomsburg”) proposed in honor of the occasions.
Although the Codorus' trip so far had been a gradual ascent and she had had to negotiate many stretches of rapids and “white water,” her greatest difficulty and closest brush with disaster occurred on April 12th when mounting Nanticoke Falls below Wilkes-Barre where, in addition to a few miles of rapids, the river made a perpendicular drop of several feet, hurling itself over a wall of Blue Ridge granite.
We are fortunate in having Elgar’s own words to prove that climbing water-falls was no picnic. Later on in the same letter to his niece he wrote:
Thee cannot readily conceive the dangers I sometimes had to dare. Being constitutionally a coward, it required great exertion of mind to meet them in the face. To give Thee an instance, at Nanticoke Falls (where more boatmen have been lost than at any other place on the river) we had to throw out the tow line to a number of men on shore who had come down from Wilkes- barre to see us ascend the falls. Five of us remained on the boat, four good polemen to brace her off the rocks along shore, that the steam power might be used without endangering the wheels, myself to tend the engine and, tho’ a cold morning, icicles hanging to houses 2 ft long, I took off my coat, prepared to swim out in case of accident, resolved that the boat should go up or sink. When all was ready the boat was pushed out of an eddy into the main current & all the steam power put on, which was at least 25 horses, but to little effect. The violence of the water being so great, It seemed to increase the motion of wheels. The boat remained stationary for several minutes, at length the greater exertion at the rope drew her bow so low that the rush of water dashed over the deck. I saw the boat was in great danger of being drawn under. I ran forward with my knife opened to cut the rope, which is considered when necessary a very dangerous resort on account of the boat swinging round in the current & oversetting. But to my joy she bounced up like an egg & began to move ahead. This was a greater voluntary hazard than I would like to run again . . .
But fortunately the voyage had its compensations and lie went on to provide an almost lyrical description of the mountain scenery of the Valley of Wyoming.
The one minor mishap of the voyage occurred on April 15th when a steam pipe burst, necessitating retracing thirty-seven miles of river back to Wilkes-Barre where repairs could be made. Back in order, the little Codorus negotiated over a hundred meandering miles to the junction of the Chemung River and, again bearing east, she passed out of Pennsylvania into southern New York State. On May 20th she reached her highest point on the river at Binghamton, 825 feet above sea level and some six hundred feet above her launching point at Keesey’s Ferry. Further progress in both the Susquehanna and the Chenango which joined it at Binghamton was precluded by numerous mill dams, and Elgar had to abandon his original plan to proceed to the Susquehanna’s headwaters at Otsego Lake in central New York State. Four days later, the Codorus began to retrace the three hundred odd miles back to York Haven.
Theoretically the trip down stream should have been quicker and easier than coming up, but Elgar was now seriously hampered by low water. Some places where the Codorus had encountered ten feet under her keel on the up trip were now completely dry, and had it not been for obliging summer freshets, the little steamboat, despite her scant six-inch draft, would have had to wait until the river filled again in the spring. In spite of the fanfare, speeches, and testimonials tendered at every river port, this served to bring home the all too obvious realization to John Elgar and his backers that sailing the Susquehanna could never be made a successful commercial proposition. The merry-go-round completed its orbit on July 17, 1826, when the Codorus came back to York Haven for good. Somehow it was forgotten that her iron hull had not also been unsuccessful. Therein lies her tragedy.
Presumably John Elgar went back to making nails. A few years later, however, he moved to Baltimore and entered the employ of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and the remainder of a long and useful life was spent designing and building locomotives. He invented many useful railroad devices, including types of switches, turntables, chill-bearings, and friction wheels, and collaborated with Ross Winans in the design of “camelbacks.” He even designed the hinges used on the doors of the Capitol. An acquaintance of later years described him as “a dignified Quaker gentleman, very gentle in his manner, but with decided convictions.” He died at Sandy Spring, Maryland, on December 6, 1858, at the age of seventy- four.
The remainder of the career of the Codorus may be briefly told. Some time in 1828 she was taken down from York Haven to Baltimore where she was purchased for $650 by some North Carolina promoters who planned to use her on a service connecting New Bern and Beaufort via the new Clubfoot and Harlow’s Creek Canal. Leaving Baltimore in mid-December, 1828, the Codorus reached Norfolk on the very day that the Dismal Swamp Canal furnishing a connection through into Albemarle Sound was opened. This happily obviated the necessity of going out into the open Atlantic, for which her extremely shallow draft was unsuitable. She reached New Bern without mishap and was immediately put to work. Thus for the first time in her career she was able to earn money. Unfortunately this did not last, and a year later an advertisement was placed in the North Carolina Sentinel of April 29, 1830, offering her for sale.
Regrettably, at this point the curtain closes and the subsequent fate of our first iron steamboat may forever remain in obscurity. She might have lasted a little longer as a river tug on Pamlico Sound or the Neuse, or possibly she might have been converted to a barge and her engine taken ashore to run a saw mill.