Prolific Inventor: Otis Tufts
in East Boston
(awaiting installation)
Iron-hulled R. B. Forbes with its twin smoke stacks is shown alongside the U.S.S.Jamestown, famous for its famine relief journey to Ireland. The R. B. Forbes was also used extensively in salvage operations.
Detail of the painting courtesy of the Robert Bennet Forbes House Museum, Milton, Mass
Otis Tufts built the first iron-hulled vessel in the United States on this wharf in 1854. Named the R.B. Forbes, after its owner Robert Bennet Forbes, it was often used to tow clipper ships built along Border Street to their owners in New York. During the Civil War, the tugboat served in the Union blockade of Confederate ports until a gale sank it off Virginia in1862.
The Cambridge-born Tufts was a remarkable inventor, machinist, and pioneer in steam-powered technology, which he applied to printing, marble cutting, and sugarcane refining. On seeing men building the Boston Custom House driving piles by hand (c. 1840), he returned the next day with drawings for a steam-driven pile driver that revolutionized construction.
And in 1859, Tufts invented the first passenger elevator. Previously elevators were used only for freight. His “vertical railway elevator,” as he called it, rose slowly along a solid iron screw. Installed at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City, the novelty drew hundreds of visitors daily.
Otis Tufts (1804 –1869)
Courtesy of Tufts’ descendant, Joe Seamans
Written after Otis Tufts’ death: “Like many other inventors and benefactors, he planted the seed while others have gathered the harvest.” (From the Annals of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, 1795-1892.)
Simplified drawing of a double-hulled iron ship submitted to U.S. Patent Office by Otis Tufts, 1855. The R. B. Forbes “two skinned” hull, trussed and braced throughout, was built based on this novel design.
Otis Tufts built the first elevator considered safe enough for passengers. It is shown here in his patent submitted in 1859.
Drawing submitted to U.S. Patent Office, 1859, reprinted in Harpers New Monthly, 1882.
Sign Location
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It appears that Otis Tufts’ shop was an incubator for talent. Several of his employees went on to establish two of the most successful enterprises in the city. In 1853, Abishai Miller and other machinists from Tufts’ machine shop founded the Atlantic Works to produce boilers and marine engines for the new steamships beginning to be built. In 1869 Atlantic Works moved to Border Street and expanded its business. By 1922, it was the largest private ship repair facility in Boston.
Also in 1853, James Simpson, a mechanic at Otis Tufts’ company, purchased a site on Marginal Street and began to construct a wooden dry dock. The following year, he received a patent for his dry docks and in 1855 added a second timber dry dock to the site (now the East Boston Shipyard). Simpson became famous for his timber dry docks, later building docks for the U.S. Navy and the government of Newfoundland, among others.
Source: “Sites for Historical Interpretation on East Boston’s Waterfronts,” Nancy S. Seasholes & The Cecil Group. Prepared for Boston Redevelopment Agency (BRA), April 2009.
In April 1851, a fierce storm destroyed the first lighthouse on Minot’s Ledge, off Situate, just two years after it was built. Mariners had come to rely on the lighthouse to warn them off the treacherous ledge. Worried that captains might mistake the lack of light for safety, Boston authorities dispatched the reliable tug—R. B. Forbes—equipped with temporary lighting apparatus to anchor off Minot’s Ledge. The tug’s life as a lightship was short-lived, however. Another storm just a few days later forced it to return to the harbor. In 1855, construction on a stone lighthouse began. It was lit five years later.
Source: Baker, William A. A History of the Boston Marine Society, 1742–1981. Boston Marine Society, 1982.
In 1837, a few years after improving the manual printing press (pictured here), Otis Tufts perfected the first steam-powered printing press in the United States.
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
Invention of Pile Driver in “Annals of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, 1795-1892” By Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association.
Baker, William A. A History of the Boston Marine Society, 1742–1981. Boston Marine Society, 1982.
Gray, Lee. From Ascending Rooms to Express Elevators: A History of the Passenger Elevator in the 19th Century. Elevator World, Inc, 2002.
Seasholes, Nancy & The Cecil Group. Sites for Historical Interpretation on East Boston’s Waterfronts. Boston: Boston Redevelopment Authority, 2009.
Tufts’ original patent drawing of double-hulled iron ship https://www.google.com/patents/US13278
Auxiliary Steamships and R.B. Forbes
http://www.pem.org/library/american_neptune/AuxiliarySteamshipsAndRBForbes.pdf
Acknowledgments
- Thank you to Nancy Seasholes for her expertise and support.
- Our gratitude to the Perkins School for the Blind and David W. Cook for their partnership in creating the audio files.