Bay State Iron Company

in South Boston

This 1865 lithograph shows the company’s buildings on this site and details of men manufacturing railroad tracks and iron plates.

Courtesy of the Boston Public Library

Bay State Iron Company manufactured the first rails Central Pacific Railroad used to construct the western part of the transcontinental railroad. May 16, 1863, clipper ship Herald of the Morning sailed from Boston around Cape Horn to San Francisco, carrying the rails as well as the first locomotive used by the Central Pacific. Upon arrival 127 days later, cargo was transferred onto a schooner for the final leg of the journey to Sacramento. On October 26, men laid the first tracks.

Bay State Iron Company began operations here as a rolling mill in the 1840s. The company shaped wrought iron into railroad tracks, armor, and ship and boiler plates. By 1860, it was described as the largest business of its kind in New England. It employed 300 men and operated around the clock to meet the demand for its products.

The company added innovations like open-hearth steelworks in 1870 and won an award for its boiler plate a few years later. But Bay State Iron struggled financially after the 1873 depression and closed by the end of the 1880s.

Sailing cards, like this one for Herald of the Morning, were widely used to advertise ship departures.

Herald of the Morning was used primarily in the Boston to California trade, including the first of two deliveries of Bay State Iron Works rails to Central Pacific Railroad.

Branded with the company’s initials, this segment of rail is part of the original track made by Bay State Iron Company and laid by Central Pacific Railroad between Sacramento and Colfax, California, in 1863.

Courtesy of the Nevada State Railroad Museum

The 1885 map shows Bay State Iron Company’s vast operation between First Street and the South Boston Flats.

Sanborn insurance map, Courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at Boston Public Library

Sign Location

More …

All manufactured materials required by Central Pacific—rails, spikes, rods— were shipped from the industrial Northeast by sea, the most practical route. Between 1851 and 1869, when the transcontinental railroad was completed, approximately 100,000 tons of rail had been shipped from the East Coast to California.

Source: Huffman, Wendell W. “Railroads Shipped by Sea,” in Railroad History, Bulletin 180, Spring 1999.

Not assembled. The parts were transported in what were called “packages,” from 29 to 60 of them. The locomotives were assembled upon reaching their destination in Sacramento. Until the transcontinental railroad opened in May 1869, 195 locomotives had been shipped by sea from the East Coast to California.

Source: Huffman, Wendell W. “Railroads Shipped by Sea,” in Railroad History, Bulletin 180, Spring 1999.

Swift, with long sharp bows and names like Chariot of Fame, Empress of the Seas, Flying Fish, Coeur de Lion, Staghound, and Lightning, “in every way clipper ships ranked among the most handsome vessels ever put afloat.” [1] Three-masted and square-rigged, clipper ships were unusual merchant vessels because they were designed for great speed rather than capacity. They sailed across oceans on trade routes where speed translated into significant profit. In the China trade, an exceptionally fast clipper ship could beat the competition, bringing back tea from Guangzhou (formerly Canton to westerners) and fetching the highest prices. The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) and the Australian gold rushes of the 1850s spurred additional clipper ship construction.

Clipper ships set records: Flying Cloud–New York to San Francisco in 89 days, 8 hours; Sovereign of the Seas 22 knots; Champion of the Seas 465 nautical miles in one day. No steamship of their day  could beat them. And no square-rigged ship has ever broken Flying Cloud’s record. Finally in the 1870s, with improved marine engines and boilers, steam-powered vessels broke clipper ship speed records. [2] And so like the gold rushes themselves, the era of clipper ships was short-lived. Because the vessels carried such immense sail area, they required large crews, which added to operating costs. And the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 favored steamships. For many, clipper ships represent the zenith of the age of sail. Their memory endures in books, paintings, and models.

lnw April 2018

[1] Howe, Octavius T. & Matthews, Frederick C. Matthews. American Clipper Ships 1833-1858. Dover Publications, Inc. reprinted from Publication Number Thirteen of the Marine Research Society, 1926-27.

[2] Clark, Arthur Hamilton. The Clipper Ship Era. G. P. Putmans’ Sons, 1911. link

The clipper ship was built in Medford in 1852 and was owned by Magoun & Company of Boston. She had been designed by Samuel A. Pook, who two years earlier had designed the first clipper ship built in Boston, the Surprise. Pook later became a naval architect for the U. S. Navy.

Among the swiftest clipper ships, Herald of the Morning made 18 voyages around Cape Horn. She made multiple crossings from San Francisco to England before returning to Boston.

Community activists. Colonial law. Political will. New state regulations. The combination created the 43-mile Boston Harborwalk–a public path, stretching from Logan Airport through seven neighborhoods to the Neponset River. In 1978, the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) sought to improve public access to the waterfront. They succeeded by integrating early Colonial laws into new state regulations.

In the decades that followed, community activists, city and state government, and developers of shoreline projects have worked together to ensure the Harborwalk is always constructed along the waterfront. Some sites also provide public amenities–bathrooms, meeting places, kayak launches,
etc. The result is a fabulous path welcoming residents and visitors to our vibrant clean harbor.

Early Colonial laws established public right of access along tidelands to protect citizens’ rights to fish, hunt, and navigate at sea and along the shorefront. These laws go back even further: They stem from Roman law, which was incorporated into English law and brought over to Massachusetts by English
settlers. Then, in the 1640s, Massachusetts Bay Colony passed laws permitting private docks in the intertidal area (between low and high tide) as long as public access was retained. Almost all of Boston’s waterfront is filled land that was once the intertidal area. This, together with the centuries-old legal right of access, served as the underpinnings for the 1978 CZM regulations.

Resources

  • Huffman, Wendell W. “Railroads Shipped by Sea,” in Railroad History, Bulletin 180, Spring 1999.
  • Lesley, J. Peter, The Iron Manufacturer’s Guide to the Furnaces, Forges, and Rolling Mills of the United States. Published by John Wiley, 1859.
  • Private and Special Statutes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Volume 9.
  • Sicilia, David B. “Bay State Iron Company” in Iron and Steel in the Nineteenth Century, ed Paul F. Paskoff. Bruccoli Clark Layman Book, 1989.
  • Simonds, Thomas C. History of South Boston: Formerly Dorchester Neck, Now Ward XII of the City of Boston. Published by D. Clapp, 1857.
  • Toomey, John & Edward Rankin. History of South Boston (Its Past and Present) and Prospects for the Future. Published in Boston by the authors, 1901.
  • about sailing cards & more about sailing cards
  • Central Pacific history site
  • Sacramento Daily Union “The First Rail Laid” October 27, 1863.
  • NPS Historic Handbook “Golden Spike” 2002.
  • For more about rolling mills

Acknowledgments

  • Sincere thanks to Nancy S. Seasholes for her discovery of the connection between Bay State Iron Works and the Central Pacific Railroad and her steadfast support of our work.
  • Our gratitude to the Perkins School for the Blind and David W. Cook for their partnership in creating the audio files.