El centro de Construcción Naval en Madera de Boston

in East Boston

Samuel H. Pook tenía 23 años cuando diseñó Surprise, el primero de varios de sus muy veloces clippers y uno de los clippers más activos en el comercio con China. Más adelante, Pook se convirtió en arquitecto naval de la Armada de los Estados Unidos.

Surprise by Xanthus Russell Smitth, photo courtesy of the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site, National Park Service

En 1839, apenas seis años después de que East Boston comenzara a desarrollarse como barrio, Samuel Hall estableció un astillero en este sitio. Se expandió hasta incluir diques secos que utilizaban la tecnología de vapor más avanzada, y también varaderos, representados en la acera detrás de usted. Entre las 110 embarcaciones construidas por Hall en este lugar, se encontraba el primer clipper de Boston, Surprise. Su botadura en el año 1850 fue acompañada por el sonar de campanas de iglesia. Los nombres de algunas de las otras embarcaciones de Hall están grabados en los adoquines de granito.

El astillero de Hall era uno de varios que se encontraban a lo largo de la costa desde aquí hacia el norte hasta el puente de la calle Meridian, donde Hall, Donald McKay, Robert Jackson, Paul Curtis y otros construyeron embarcaciones de fama mundial. Impulsados por la fiebre del oro en California y la demanda de barcos más rápidos, botaron más de 200 embarcaciones en 20 años.

Junto con el astillero de Charlestown Navy Yard al otro lado del puerto y los astilleros de South Boston, los constructores navales de East Boston convirtieron a la ciudad en uno de los principales centros de construcción naval del país a mediados del siglo XIX.

Samuel Hall portrait

constructor naval Samuel Hall

Sailing card advertisement for fearless

Tarjetas de navegación como esta para Fearless se usaban comúnmente para publicitar la salida de embarcaciones. Fearless, también diseñado por Pook, fue construido aquí por George Sampson, que alquiló parte del astillero de Hall a partir de 1852.

FDR's model of the ship surprise

Sara Delano, la madre del presidente Franklin Delano Roosevelt, cumplió ocho años a bordo del Surpirse cuando estaba en camino a Hong Kong con su madre y seis hermanos. Iban a encontrarse con Warren Delano, quien trabajó activamente en el comercio con China durante muchos años. FDR sentía admiración por la historia marítima de su familia y tenía dos pinturas y este modelo del famoso clipper. También tenía la bitácora del viaje de su madre.

Photo courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum

Ubicación del Cartel

Más…

Los clippers eran veloces, tenían proas largas y finas y llevaban nombres como Chariot of Fame, Empress of the Seas, Flying Fish, Coeur de Lion, Staghound y Lightning. “En todos los sentidos, se calificaba a los barcos clipper como unos de los más hermosos jamás puestos a flote.”[1] Los barcos clipper tenían tres mástiles y aparejos cuadrados. Eran buques mercantes inusuales porque estaban diseñados para una gran velocidad en lugar de gran capacidad. Navegaban los océanos siguiendo rutas comerciales donde la velocidad se traducía en ganancias significativas. En el comercio con China, un clipper excepcionalmente rápido podía vencer a la competencia, trayendo té de Guangzhou (antes llamado Cantón para los occidentales) por el que podía cobrar los precios más altos. La fiebre del oro de California (1848-1855) y la fiebre del oro australiana de la década de 1850 impulsaron la construcción de más barcos clipper.

Los barcos clipper establecieron récords: Flying Cloud: Nueva York a San Francisco en 89 días y 8 horas; Sovereign of the Seas 22 nudos; Champion of the Seas 465 millas náuticas en un día. Ningún barco de vapor de su época podría vencerlos. Y ningún barco de aparejo cuadrado ha nunca batido el récord de de Flying Cloud. Finalmente, en la década de 1870, con calderas y motores marinos mejorados, los barcos de vapor lograron batir los récords de velocidad de los barcos clipper.[2] Y así fue que, al igual que la fiebre del oro, la era de los barcos clipper duró poco. Debido a que los barcos tenían velas tan inmensas, requerían tripulaciones grandes, lo que incrementaba los costos operativos. Y la apertura del Canal de Suez en 1869 favoreció a los barcos de vapor. Para muchos, los barcos clipper representan el cenit de la era de la navegación a vela. Su memoria perdura en libros, pinturas y modelos.

lnw Abril de 2018

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

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

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Clipper_Ship_Era

George Lewis was a self-emancipated black man who worked as a carpenter in Samuel Hall’s shipyard from 1847 to 1850. Lewis escaped from slavery in Virginia in 1846 and arrived in Boston in July of 1847 after a harrowing, 10-month journey north. He was introduced to Samuel Hall by Austin Bearse, a sea captain and abolitionist, and Hall hired him on the spot. As Bearse later recounted, Hall’s decision to hire Lewis was controversial: “Some of his ship carpenters left on account of it, but Mr. Hall kept George.”[1] Samuel Hall left no account of his thinking in hiring Lewis, but his friendship with Bearse and a longstanding neighborhood rumor that Hall’s house on Webster Street was a stop on the Underground Railroad suggest that he may have been sympathetic to the anti-slavery cause. Most of Lewis’ fellow shipyard workers were white New Englanders and Maritime Canadians. They were trained in an apprentice system that was largely closed to outsiders,[2] which makes Lewis’ success all the more extraordinary – in 1848 Lewis described himself as a “carpenter” in the City Directory, but by 1850, he was listed as a “shipwright”, one of the most skilled and highly paid jobs in the shipyard.[3][4] Lewis very likely helped build Massachusetts’ first clipper ship, the Surprise, launched from Hall’s shipyard in 1850.

George Lewis quickly built a life in Boston. In 1849, he bought a house near Hall’s shipyard at the corner of Havre and Porter Streets.[5] He became an early leader in Boston’s Twelfth Baptist Church, a black congregation that was known as the “Fugitive Slave Church” at the time for its commitment to abolitionism and reputation for welcoming and assisting former slaves.[6] Lewis served as one of three trustees who secured land and financing to build the congregation’s first church on Beacon Hill.[7] In 1850, the US Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, a law that required local authorities to return escaped slaves to their owners, even in free states like Massachusetts. Fearing for his safety, George Lewis fled to Canada with his family.[8] But it seems that he continued to think of Boston as home, and he moved back to East Boston with his family at the end of the Civil War, buying a new house on Chelsea Street in Day Square.[9]

Dan Bailey
July 2018

[1] Bearse, Austin, Reminiscences of Fugitive-Slave Law Days in Boston. (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 12.

[2] O’Har, George Michael, Shipbuilding, Markets, and Technological Change in East Boston. (Doctoral Thesis, MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society, 1995), 127.

[3] Adams, George, The Boston Directory: 1848-9. (Boston: James French and Charles Stimpson, 1848), 280.

[4] Adams, George, The Boston Directory: 1849-50. (Boston: James French, 1849) 189.

[5] Suffolk County, MA. Register of Deeds. Deed Book 600, Page 185.

[6] National Park Service, African American Churches of Beacon Hill. (2015) Retrieved from: https://www.nps.gov/boaf/learn/historyculture/churches.htm

[7] Suffolk County, MA. Register of Deeds. Deed Book 605, Page 30.

[8] Bearse, Austin, Reminiscences of Fugitive-Slave Law Days in Boston. (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 12.

[9] Suffolk County, MA. Register of Deeds. Deed Book 828, Page 2.

Although none of the grand sailing ships built in East Boston survive today, the craftsmanship of the carpenters, woodcarvers, and other workers who built these ships can still be seen in many of East Boston’s 19th century houses. Most shipyard workers were independent contractors, frequently moving from shipyard to shipyard to find work. When shipbuilding work was scarce, they occasionally found jobs building houses in the neighborhood. And when advances in railroads and steamships led to the collapse of East Boston’s wooden shipbuilding industry after the Civil War, many former shipyard workers transitioned to full time jobs in housing construction.

Samuel Manson and Seth Peterson were ship joiners, craftsmen who made cabinetry and other interior finishes for ships. They moved to East Boston in 1841 and set up shop across the street from Samuel Hall’s shipyard. But by the 1870s, Manson and Peterson were exclusively making fireplace mantels, trim, and doors for East Boston houses. The influence of shipyard workers on East Boston’s architecture continued long after most of the neighborhood’s shipyards had closed. In 1976, East Boston resident Janet Graves recalled how her grandfather, a former shipyard worker, oversaw the construction of her family home at 388 Meridian Street in the 1890s: “My grandfather, having been a shipbuilder, knew how things should be built and he watched every nail.” Even today, East Boston’s shipbuilding legacy lives on in the handsome trim and finely carved details that adorn the facades of many of the neighborhood’s Victorian houses.

Dan Bailey
June, 2018

The 19th century Boston directories, which list workers by occupation, provide a ready inventory of what skills were most utilized in East Boston shipyards. Work in the yard, generally, was divided into three main categories: shipwright/ship carpenter, caulker, or joiner.

Some workers identified themselves as ship carpenters, a skilled trade, but not as skilled as that of the shipwright, who would often work in the mould loft, converting drawings into frames, and making sure those frames were set properly. Caulkers used special mallets and chisels to force oakum into the seams of the hull and deck. When these seams were coated with tar, they became waterproof. Ship joiners built cabins, stairs, doors, and furniture.

Wooden vessels required thousands of holes to be bored, both for iron rods to hold the knees–crooked timbers acting as braces–to the frame, and for treenails (pronounced “trunnels”) to fasten planking to the exterior. Often, carpenters were called upon to do this. They might also be required to adze the exterior joints of the hull, or to act in the capacity of sawyers, hewing planks for logs. This was very heavy labor and the fact that the carpenter sometimes did work more often associated with workers of the lowest skill level in the yards, suggests, again, that the ship carpenter ranked below a shipwright in skill level. Nevertheless, the ship carpenter was a skilled craftsman who had learned his trade through a multi-year apprenticeship.

The caulker, a man of critical importance in the construction of a sailing vessel, often worked on his back under the belly of the vessel. Hammer noise was an occupational hazard in getting oakum into a seam, and men who did this work often became deaf. Their work was perhaps the most repetitive in the yard and required a good deal of physical strength. But for those who had the aptitude, it was one of the most prized and highly paid jobs in the yard, no matter how occupationally risky. In order for a ship to remain tight, caulkers had to do their jobs well. Lives depended upon them. But it was dreadful, tedious work.

Caulkers and joiners pursued specialized finishing trades, and were apt to move from one yard to another looking for ships near the finishing stage. A ship carpenter, or shipwright, tended to remain with a single yard while a ship was under construction. Once the work was done, however, he too would move along.

Excerpt from George O’Har. “Shipbuilding, Markets, and Technological Change in East Boston.” Doctoral Thesis, MIT, 1995.

Activistas comunitarios. Ley colonial. Voluntad política. Nuevas reglamentaciones estatales. Esta combinación permitió la creación del Boston Harborwalk, un camino público de 43 millas de longitud que se extiende desde el aeropuerto Logan hasta el río Neponset a lo largo de siete barrios. En 1978, la Oficina de Manejo de Zonas Costeras de Massachusetts (Massachusetts Office of Coastal Management o CZM) se fijó el objetivo de mejorar el acceso público a la costa. Lograron hacerlo a través de la integración de viejas leyes coloniales en nuevas reglamentaciones estatales.

En las décadas que siguieron, activistas comunitarios, el gobierno de la ciudad y del estado y las empresas constructoras a cargo de proyectos en la costa han trabajado en forma conjunta para garantizar la construcción del Harborwalk a lo largo de la costa. Algunos sitios también ofrecen servicios públicos, como baños, lugares de reunión, rampas para kayaks, etc. El resultado es un fabuloso camino que permite a residentes y visitantes recorrer nuestro activo y limpio puerto.

Las viejas leyes coloniales establecieron el derecho público de acceso a las tierras que están sumergidas cuando la marea está alta con el fin de permitir la pesca, la caza y la navegación a lo largo de la costa. Estas leyes se remontan a tiempos aún más antiguos: Se derivan del derecho romano, que se incorporó al derecho inglés y fue traído a Massachusetts por los colonos ingleses. Luego, en la década de 1640, la Colonia de la Bahía de Massachusetts aprobó leyes que permitían la creación de muelles privados en la zona intermareal (la zona entre la marea alta y la marea baja), siempre que se conservara el acceso público. Casi toda la costa de Boston consiste de terrenos rellenados que antes habían sido parte de la zona intermareal. Esto, junto con el derecho legal de acceso que existe desde hace siglos, sirvió de base para las reglamentaciones de la CZM de 1978.

Recursos (en inglés)

  • Bunting, W.H. Portrait of a Port: Boston, 1852-1914. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1971.
  • Clark, Arthur. The Clipper Ship Era. G.P. Putman’s Sons, 1911.
  • Cross, Robert. Sailor in the White House: Seafaring Life of FDR. Naval Institute Press, 2003.
  • “East Boston Waterfront District Municipal Harbor Plan,” prepared by The Cecil Group for Boston Redevelopment Authority, May 2008.
  • Morrison, Samuel Eliot. The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783–1860. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1961 edition.
  • Seasholes, Nancy & The Cecil Group. Sites for Historical Interpretation on East Boston’s Waterfronts. Boston: Boston Redevelopment Authority, 2009.
  • Seasholes, Nancy. Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
  • Sumner, William H. History of East Boston: With Biographical Sketches of its Early Proprietors, and an Appendix. Boston: William H. Piper and Company, 1858.
  • about Samuel Hall
  • FDR-Surprise link & Delano family China trade
  • FDR’s grandfather’s involvement in China trade; FDR Presidential Library & Museum and Hudson River Valley Heritage
  • about sailing cards

Agradecimientos (en inglés)

  • Translation and recording thanks to the generosity of the Boston Marine Societ
  • Our gratitude to the Perkins School for the Blind and David W. Cook for their partnership in creating the audio files.