impress on American shipbuilding in the nineteenth century is Charles Henry Cramp, who began his life-work with the construction of ships of wood and canvas, and then became a leader in the transition to steel and steam. He designed the New Ironsides and many coastdefenders during the Civil War, and subsequently became a leading architect of the new navy that did valiant service in the Spanish War. He was a most earnest and persistent advocate of government subsidies in support of the merchant marine, and probably did more than any other one man toward raising the United States merchant marine out of the depths into which it had sunk in consequence of the Civil War.1

Charles Frederick Herreshoff, a native of Minden, Prussia, was the ancestor of the naval architects of New England. An accomplished scholar and musician, he married the daughter of John Brown of Providence, one of the founders of Brown University. Their son, Charles Frederick Herreshoff (born in Providence, R. I., in 1809), agriculturist and shipbuilder, bent his energies in the direction of naval architecture. With his sons, all of whom inherited their father's skill and love for naval architecture, he laid the foundation of the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company. John Brown Herreshoff (born in 1841) was the noted "blind boat-builder"; his elder brother, James Brown Herreshoff (born in 1834), made most of the inventions, the coil-boiler, the fin-keel for sailingyachts, which made possible the construction of the fastest steam- and sailing-yachts in the world. He also invented

1

1 Cf. A. C. Buell, The Memoirs of Charles H. Cramp. (Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1906.)

2 Cf. The National Cyclopædia of American Biography, vol. xii, pp. 352,

SHIPBUILDING, NAVIGATION, AND SHIPPING 107 the sliding-seats in row-boats, now universally used in racing-shells.

In navigation and shipping the Germans have contributed a large share. We have seen that on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers they were the pioneer skippers,' in flatboats, sail-boats, and finally steamboats. The great promoter Baum, of Cincinnati, opened the first regular service between his city and New Orleans by means of sailing-vessels, Captain Bechtle, formerly a skipper on. the Rhine, having the boat in charge, about 1805. As Jacob Yoder (Joder) in 1782 had been the first flat-boat skipper of the Ohio, so the operator of the first steamboat on the Western rivers was Bernard Rosefelt. The first boat was built in 1811, at Pittsburg, and was named after the city of New Orleans, which was its destination. The boat on its first trip encountered an earthquake at the mouth of the Ohio, but survived and reached its port. The captain was Henry Schreeve and his machinist was Becker; both claimed to be Germans. Heinrich Schreeve was also the inventor of a steam saw for cutting snags."

2

Very important service in the development of American commerce was rendered by the German agents of the German trans-Atlantic lines from Bremen and Hamburg. The agents' of the North German Lloyd in New York have

1 As ferrymen we have seen Germans on the Potomac (Harper's Ferry) and on the Ohio River (Maysville and Covington).

2 Captain Schreeve (Schriewe), in December, 1814, on arrival at New Orleans, offered his services to General Jackson against the British. The town of Shreveport, Louisiana, was probably named after him. He died in St. Louis, in 1851. Cf. Der deutsche Pionier, vols. i and xi. For Jacob Yoder, see also Rosengarten, German Soldiers in the Wars of the United States, p. 158. 3 The first prominent agent in Baltimore of the North German Lloyd was Albert Schumacher (born in Bremen, in 1802); after 1839 he was consul for Bremen and Hamburg, director of several railroads, and at one time president of the Baltimore Chamber of Commerce.