Debates over what types of ships to build are as old as the Republic itself.
There was a costly, unpopular, long war under way against insurgents. Congress and the Navy debated about the costs of large ships. The economy was in crisis. The Navy faced multiple missions, including maritime interception and anti-piracy operations. Today's headlines? No, the year was 1837.
'The Best Looking Three-Decker'
Visitors began arriving at 0700 from "all parts of the compass" at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Less than three hours later, the current of people coursed "like a stream of many tides." Staging seats for 800 people were available for $1 each though most people on this calm, sunny July day would have to stand or climb to the roofs of local buildings to get a glimpse of the event. "One great sea of human heads"—100,000 to 200,000—attended. The designer, Samuel Humphreys, and the ship's builder, James Keen, sat close to the shipway, with the yard's commandant presiding over the launch.
Two cannon roared at 1410 signaling the launch was ten minutes away. Three hundred men knocked away the supporting beams; the ship slowly met the waters as Commodore James Biddle, who assumed the governorship of the Philadelphia Naval Asylum the following year, joined his wife to break two bottles—Pennsylvania whiskey and wine—over the ship's bow. Two hundred steam and sail commercial and private vessels formed a semi-circle around the yard but as the warship approached they parted like the Red Sea for Moses. Shouts were heard from Philadelphia to the New Jersey shoreline across the river. According to one witness, "never was there a more beautiful launch."
The ship-of-the-line bore the name of the state in which she had been constructed—the USS Pennsylvania. The largest sailing warship ever built in the United States had finally come to life.1 In a letter to his wife, James Fenimore Cooper wrote: "She is, altogether, the best looking three-decker I have ever seen."2
Ships-of-the-line were not a new concept for the U.S. Navy in 1837. Two- and three-deckers were considered as early as John Adams' administration but the cost precluded construction and U.S. shipyards were more familiar with the construction of frigates. With the War of 1812, the U.S. Navy found it could successfully engage in single-frigate combat with their British counterparts, but these frigates were outgunned by ships-of-the-line or frigate squadrons. The USS Constellation, for example, remained unable to break out from Norfolk because of British Admiral Sir John Warren's squadron. The Royal Navy demonstrated power projection when it sailed a fleet up the Patuxent River to land an army in 1814. Vessels were needed that could challenge Britain's large capital ships.
By the end of the war, the United States was fitting out its first two ships-of-the-line while a third neared completion. In April 1816, Congress gradually expanded the Navy to include nine more ships-of-the-line, each no less than 74 guns. One was designed for 120 guns—the USS Pennsylvania. Secretary of the Navy Benjamin W. Crowninshield wrote to House Naval Committee Chairman Charles Tait that building and equipping a 74 would cost $384,862 ($217,412 for construction and the remainder for fitting out).3 Given that the federal budget for 1816 was $30 million including $3.9 million for the Navy, the proposed ships represented a significant investment.4 Although authorized in 1816, the Pennsylvania, along with her proposed smaller sister ships, had insufficient funds for construction; her keel was not laid down for another six years.
As originally designed, the Pennsylvania had 120 32-pounders, although the ship was pierced for 136 guns. Her keel was laid in 1822. Again, due to budget limitations and other national priorities shifting the country's focus to westward expansion rather than to the British-dominated oceans, the ship's backbone would remain on the dock until her fate and that of some of the other 1816 ships-of-the-line was reconsidered.
Sail or Steam
After the War of 1812 steam power was still in its infancy with regard to naval warships. Although the congressional act of 1816 did include plans for three steam batteries, the Navy initially resisted this new, unproven technology. In his annual report to Congress in 1835, Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson asked for $150,000 for the completion of a steam vessel of war, but the Board of Naval Commissioners recognized that the Navy suffered from "a want of experience in the construction and equipment of steam vessels of war" and that the cost estimates might not be accurate.5 The United States lagged far behind Europe in educational institutions and the application of naval engineering theory.
Looking at England's 23 steamships of war and France's 21, U.S. officers debated the issue of steam-powered warships. Some suggested in 1836 that "nothing further has been done, among us, toward the construction of steamers of war, until within the last year."6 They may have referred to one captain whose design for a steam-powered "prow"-configured warship in 1835 found support from the House Committee on Naval Affairs on the order of $75,000, but failed to pass the full House.7
According to Dickerson's 1835 report, four ships-of-the-line could be made available to the Navy. "The ships of the line Alabama, Vermont, Virginia, and Pennsylvania . . . are on the stocks, well protected from the weather, and as nearly completed as it is proper they should be, until it is determined to launch them." The Royal Navy continued to maintain many of its ships-of-the-line, but even those were destined to adopt emerging technologies, such as the Queen- and Cressy-class that were modified into screwships (akin to the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines currently being modified into guided-missile submarines.)
The Navy recognized steam power's value; it also saw advantages in its trusted sail-powered capital ships. Steamships required refueling stations. While the Royal Navy had ready access to British-controlled ports, the United States was at a significant disadvantage if it planned to operate steamships beyond the Navy's own logistics chain. One officer evaluated seven maritime nations as having superior capability to the United States, but only two—France and England—were "along in a condition to cope with us on the ocean."8 The United States had to build far more large ships. While many of those could remain on the stocks or in ordinary awaiting a crisis, the officer argued, the United States could maintain an operational nucleus of 6 ships-of-the-line and 12 frigates. In the waning days of the age of sail, these capital ships were still a "symbol of military might," a fact not lost on either the Navy officers who sought to build something familiar, shipyards who wanted the opportunity to build, and members of Congress who attempted to justify these vessels.9
Copeting Priorities
In 1836, the Navy asked Congress to appropriate construction funds for the Pennsylvania but admitted these funds were insufficient. According to the shipyard's commandant, an additional $400,000 was needed.
After an extended period without building a major capital ship, a number of factors influenced the Navy's and Congress' decision-making processes. First, the country had been fighting an exhaustive, guerrilla-type war. The Second Seminole War (1835-42), with more than 1,500 casualties, drew criticism from both Congress and the public for its cost in lives as well as money, which reached an estimated $20 million—greater than the federal budget itself.
Second, the Navy, in the midst of the steam versus sail debate, faced a number of different missions, including the four-year, six-ship Exploring Expedition (1838-42), interception operations against African slavers in the eastern Atlantic, and anti-piracy operations in the Caribbean. Although the country had not fought a maritime war in 20 years, the potential for incidents at sea persisted, with the possibility of erupting into broader conflicts.
Finally, the nation faced an economic crisis during the winter of 1836-37 precipitated largely by a disruption in banking, a drop in cotton prices, and falling farm income. In Philadelphia alone, thousands of jobs were lost.
The Politics of Money
Congress had begun consideration of its annual naval bills when President Andrew Jackson declared in his farewell address: "your Navy will not only protect your rich and flourishing commerce in distant seas, but it will enable you to reach and annoy the enemy," a surprising reversal of his administration's policies. The 1837 naval appropriations bill initially called for $6.6 million. Debate was not contentious until the House discussed striking out a provision of the bill funding the Pennsylvania.
Congressman Joel B. Sutherland, representing part of Philadelphia, where the ship was built, lamented the great tragedy: "Would it not be more suitable for her to be set upon her proper element than to be detained rotting where she now was . . . why had this ship been built, if only to be kept under a roof, to be looked at by a few occasional visitors to Philadelphia."10 Sutherland accused Representative Leonard Jarvis, the Chair of the Naval Affairs Committee, of "having expressed preference for small sloops and schooners—for a mere Lilliputian naval force," and that Jarvis was "really afraid that if we employed such large vessels, the large ships would be lost, and the men all be drowned!"
Sutherland envisioned another mission for the Pennsylvania: "It ought to be fitted out and launched and sent to foreign ports, that it might there be seen what American naval architecture was, what the seamen were, and what force we could command in war." Sutherland never directly mentioned the potential for jobs in his home district, nor did he address any concerns for future threats that might warrant another ship-of-the-line.
The House reconvened the following day when Jarvis, in a measured and logical response, advised Sutherland that if the Pennsylvania was completed it could only be supported by northern ports because of its immense size and show a partiality to those cities. Second, Jarvis denied that he feared the drowning of so many sailors because he compared it in relation to the size of the ships of the forthcoming Exploring Expedition.
Representative John Reed, a Democrat from Massachusetts, thought the money for an expensive and large warship might be better spent on domestic programs. Reed suggested that "extravagance and wastefulness may deprive us of the means of being liberal for useful purposes." For those in Congress and the Navy who estimated that annual repair and upkeep of the Pennsylvania would only be $70,000, Reed said it would be wasteful since five other ships-of-the-line were "lying useless and rotting at our wharves." Contrary to Sutherland's belief that the Pennsylvania be sent around the world, Reed foresaw that the ship would either remain at Philadelphia or rot in some other yard.
The Committee on Naval Affairs was unanimously opposed to money for the Pennsylvania and instead they agreed to invest in many smaller fourth-class ships that had 16-20 guns. One of the arguments in favor of this was that there would be far more opportunities to improve, instruct, and qualify young naval officers. In addition, fourth-class ships, unlike ships-of-the-line, could easily navigate the littoral areas, such as the West Indies and South America, where such vessels would be needed for interception operations. On 23 February, Representative Dutee J. Pearce, an Anti-Masonic from Rhode Island, disagreed with Reed, declaring that "the work which had been done [on Pennsylvania] ought not to be abandoned; the expenses incurred ought not to be thrown away."11
Sutherland remained conspicuously silent about strategic reasoning or force structures, noting instead that any delay in constructing the Pennsylvania was unacceptable because of a new Wharf Street being built between the ship and the shipyard, making future considerations of construction unfeasible. In addition, silt deposits were daily increasing in the river and, due to the ship's great draft, any delay would mean the ship could never be launched.
The provision of $400,000 for the Pennsylvania was overwhelmingly (125-55) struck from the bill. Among those voting against the ship were future President Franklin Pierce and southern statesman John Calhoun who stated the cost of the Navy was already too high and that the budget of the Navy including its balances was greater than the entire federal budget under President Monroe.12 Voting for funding was former President John Quincy Adams whose father had created the Department of the Navy.
One More Chance
Advocates of smaller ships were again victorious when they proposed an amendment appropriating $400,000 for 18 vessels of war, "of not less than ten nor more than sixteen guns." The legislative process allowed one more chance for the Pennsylvania; she found a champion in Senate Committee on Naval Affairs Chairman William C. Rives of Virginia. Rives inserted an amendment, agreed to in the Senate, for $100,000 for "launching and securing the ship-of-the-line Pennsylvania."13 When the amendment returned to the divided House, the measure passed 91-87.
Although funding was secured, controversy continued. When Philadelphians, the shipyard, and its congressional champions became aware that on completion the warship would be sent to Norfolk for coppering, the community rallied against the decision. Residents and interested parties met at the State House yard in the largest public meeting in Pennsylvania's history to that time to express support for continuing the work in Philadelphia. Speakers claimed that having the ship coppered in Norfolk was an "insult that the mechanics of [Philadelphia] are unskilful [sic] in naval architecture" and that sufficient copper was already in Philadelphia.14 Like communities fighting modern day Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommendations, Philadelphians alleged that the Navy Board of Commissioners had "strong prejudices against the navy yard." Despite their protestations, the Pennsylvania would go to Norfolk.
Dignitaries were often invited to view the pride of Philadelphia and, supposedly, the entire Navy. While still in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania was visited by a congressional delegation representing Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee accompanied by Sutherland. According to a local reporter, "we need scarcely add that every attention was paid them. . . . Courtesies of this description, between the representatives of remote sections of the Union, cannot be too much encouraged."15
To Sea at Last
Commodore Charles Stewart took command of the Pennsylvania for her only cruise. The ship arrived at Chester, Pennsylvania, on 29 November 1837, where she was partially manned and received 34 guns. On Sunday, 10 December, she passed by Wilmington, Delaware, then laid off Newcastle where she received her gun carriages. The wind picked up at 1100 on the morning of the 11th and quickly strengthened to a gale. Stewart ordered the main and mizzen sails to be double-reefed. When the tars had nearly completed their tasks in the rigging, one man fell from the main yard and instantly died, thus becoming the only Sailor killed while serving on board the Pennsylvania.16
The Pennsylvania did not fulfill her design expectations. She was to possess the qualities of "capacity, buoyancy, and fast sailing; instead, she was "cumbersome, leewardly, and crank."17 Meanwhile, Secretary Dickerson advised the President that the USS Constitution would be recalled from the Mediterranean Squadron and that the Pennsylvania might be sent to that station, "should it be deemed expedient."
On arriving in Norfolk, her hull was coppered and she was almost immediately laid in ordinary, yet remained available should she be needed. In 1841, the Secretary of the Navy reported that she was in "good order" and required only completion of her magazines and some sails.
Foreign relations, particularly with England, were tenuous at best, largely because of a boundary dispute in northern Maine. Once Anglo-American tensions were diminished by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842, the Pennsylvania, designed to be the greatest warship in the world, was relegated to serve as a simple receiving ship in Norfolk. One young officer later wrote of his assignment: "Commo[dore Lawrence] Kearney . . . ordered us all on board the Pennsylvania . . . as she is only a receiving ship and there is but little to do we have very easy times. The hardest work and in fact the only work we have is keeping watch."18
The Pennsylvania was briefly considered for a quasi-diplomatic mission in 1850, when Representative Ferdinand Schenck of New Jersey introduced legislation to appropriate funds to send her to England to convey works of art and products of the United States for the 1851 World's Fair in London. But her day had passed and there was little support for such a measure.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, the Pennsylvania was still in Norfolk. The Union attempted to defend the yard and its ships but found inherent difficulties. It was a situation of "confusion, indecision, and despair."19 Commodore Charles Stewart McCauley, the Gosport Navy Yard commander, had been there at the Pennsylvania's launch; it was now he who ordered her and other ships scuttled or burned to the water's edge.
Lessons of the Pennsylvaina
The Pennsylvania's design and construction might have been effective during the War of 1812 or as a show of force in subsequent crises, but by the time she was launched she was in reality already a relic and unable to meet new naval challenges. The Navy, resistant to change, designed and built ships primarily for the last war fought. Nevertheless, the Navy in the 1830s did recognize that steam-driven ships might yield results, but any single-minded pursuit of that shift was tempered by the reality that steam power was a new and unreliable technology. Further, global logistics support for a steam-driven Navy was still unreliable.
Congressmen in 1837, like Sutherland, only marginally addressed emerging technologies and potential future threats and how those would make the ship-of-the-line largely irrelevant, but the lawmakers remained steadfast to their constituencies by supporting their shipyards and construction of larger capital ships. They recognized that continuing construction ensured that the shipyard and its workers remained intact, thus securing industrial base capabilities that might not be easily reconstituted.
Reminiscent of 1837, in May 2006, Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA), a strong supporter of the military, called for more but smaller ships (such as Sea Fighters and littoral combat ships). Debate at that time also continued on whether or not to decommission or find use for the carrier John F. Kennedy (CV-67). Congress questioned the costs of the next generation capital ships such as CVN-21 and DDG-1000.
The Navy continues to rely on traditional ships while acknowledging that incremental changes to warfighting platforms are subject to the time required to evolve technologies sufficiently to be implemented. CVN-21 is no Pennsylvania nor is DDG-1000, yet future conflicts and revolutions in technological improvement will eventually make them obsolete, whether it is a century or merely decades. Unlike the Pennsylvania, their construction will help advance design methods, but like that great ship-of-the-line, their construction will also secure the industrial base and ensure future power projection.
1. Accounts of the launch are from: The Naval Magazine, July 1837 Vol. II, No. 2, pp. 509-513 and Daily National Gazette as recorded in Niles Weekly Register, 22 July 1837 p. 322.
2. Letter of 19 September 1837 from James Fenimore Cooper to his wife. James Franklin Beard, ed. The Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964).
3. A letter from B. W. Crowninshield to Charles Tait of January 13, 1816. Annals of the Congress of the United States, Fourteenth Congress — First Session, December 4, 1815 to April 1816. (Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1854).
4. Federal budget figures in this article are based on The Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Series &, 457-465. Outlays of the Federal Government: 1789-1970-Con. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.
5. Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 5 December 1835.
6. "On Steamers of War," The Naval Magazine, July 1836, Vol. 1, no. 4, U.S. Naval Lyceum.
7. James Phinney Baxter, Introduction of the Ironclad Warship (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933), pp. 337-38. See also Claude Berube and John Rodgaard, A Call to the Sea: Captain Charles Stewart (Dulles: Potomac Books, Inc.), p. 213.
8. The Naval Magazine, January 1837, Vol. II, No. 1. The letter is signed only "A. S." Assuming this was the officer's actual initials, it would have been either Lieutenant Arthur Sinclair or Lieutenant Albert Slaughter. They are the only two officers serving in 1836 with those initials. Source: Edward W. Callahan, ed. List of Officers of the Navy of the United States and Marine Corps from 1775 to 1900 (New York: Hamersly & Co., 1901). The other nations "A. S." referred to were: Russia, Turkey, Holland, Sweden, and Egypt.
9. Harold and Margaret Sprout, The Rise of American Naval Power, 1776-1918 (1966 ed), (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1990), p. 134.
10. Debates in Congress, 22 February 1837, Part II of Vol. XIII.
11. National Intelligencer, 24 February 1837 Vol. XXV. Proceedings of the debate on 23 February.
12. Register of Debates in Congress, Vol. 13, Parts 1 and 2, 24th Congress, 2nd Session, 1836-37, (Washington: Gale & Seaton, 1837), 23 February 1837.
13. Register of Debates, 2 March 1837.
14. Niles Weekly Register, 15 July 1837, p. 308.
15. The Philadelphia Inquirer, Thursday, November 23, 1837.
16. From the American Daily Advertiser as reprinted in the Delaware State Journal of Wilmington, Delaware, Friday, 29 December 1837. See also Logbook of the USS Pennsylvania (27 October 1837-18 January 1838), Old Military and Civil Branch, National Archives and Records Administration.
17. Tony Gibbons, Robert Ford, Robert Hewson, Robert Jackson, eds. The Encyclopedia of Ships (San Diego: Thunder Bay Press, 2001).
18. Andrew Boyd Cummings Papers, Manuscript Collection No 268, Folders 2-3, 23 August 1847. U.S. Naval Academy Special Archives.
19. John Niven, Gideon Welles: Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). p. 342.
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USS PENNSYLVANIA STATISTICS
• Hull pierced for 136 guns• 16 8 inch shell guns, 104 32 pounders
• 3,241 tons
• Length: 247 feet
• Beam: 56 feet 8 inches
• Draft: 26 feet 6 inches
• Cost: $757,589.06
• Complement: 1,100 officers and sailors
• Armament for 1847 (1847 Bureau of Ordnance)
• Lower deck: (4) 8 inch shell guns; (28) 32 pounders
• Middle deck: (4) 8 inch shell guns; (30) 32 pounders
• Upper deck (4) 8 inch shell guns; (32) 32 pounders
• Spar deck (2) 32 pounders; (24) 32 pounder carronades
• Pennsylvania was originally designed for 120 32 pounders
Source: K. Jack Bauer and Stephen S. Roberts, Register of Ships of the U.S. Navy, 1775-1990: Major Combatants. Greenwood Press, NY, 1991. p. 2. Newspaper accounts of the launch note the beam was 56.8 feet and the draft 24.3 feet. Tonnage is taken from the Official Record of the Union and Confederate Navies.