Benjamin Franklin Isherwood, Naval Engineer. Edward William Sloan III
further complicate the Engineer in Chief’s duties, there was intense competition for scarce skilled labor between private builders and the government Navy yards. Handicapped by the inability to adjust their wage rates freely to meet the rising costs of labor, the Navy yards soon found themselves unable to compete with private yards for the inadequate supply of workers. As a result, the Navy Department had to farm out its repair work to private yards, “where the most exorbitant prices are charged,” although tools lay idle in its own yards.
To alleviate this uneconomic situation, Isherwood urged Welles to obtain from the government an authorization to offer workers up to a 50 per cent increase in their wages, in order to keep them from leaving. Convinced that it would be more economical to pay much higher wages if this could keep the government yards busy, Isherwood asserted, in a letter to Welles, August 22, 1864, that the Navy would save an “immense amount of money annually by doing its own work.” As it was, many costly tools were now standing idle while the government had to depend on the unpredictable, often irresponsible, and always costly private builders.26
Welles realized the need for utilizing government facilities to the fullest, and, along with his Engineer in Chief, he wished to increase greatly the size and capacity of the Navy yards. Urging the establishment of a new Navy yard for iron vessels and machinery, Welles followed Isherwood’s and Lenthall’s lead in seeking to lessen the government’s dependence on private contractors.
During the war, Isherwood grew more and more pessimistic about the motives of private builders; and in his annual reports to Welles, he sharply criticized their business operations. Only interested in profits, they naturally preferred private to government work, he felt, since the latter, at best, provided a temporary boom in their industry, while they based their business over the years on private construction. As these builders operated with an eye to the least cost for themselves, they built engines for the Navy just to “answer a temporary purpose, using of course the poorest materials and least skilled labor because [it was] the cheapest.” For this reason, engines built in government yards would always be better, Isherwood insisted, since the Navy Department stressed reliability and durability in the products it made for itself, regardless of cost. Not having to worry about profits “paid to wealthy capitalists,” the government manufacturing facilities could afford to employ the most skilled workers at the highest rates, in order to insure the best workmanship.27
Isherwood felt that he had learned a valuable business lesson during the Civil War. Concerning the “popular impression” that the government could depend on private yards in time of war, he asserted, “such expectation would prove wholly fallacious.” Drawing from his wartime experience with private contractors, he maintained that the facilities in private yards were inadequate even for the demands for privateers which, of course, would take precedence over any government work, as they had during the Civil War. Regardless of contract stipulations, private builders would always postpone government work to concentrate on the more lucrative private jobs. The Navy Department would always find itself saddled with inexcusable delays of vitally needed work while the private builders fattened themselves on immense profits, enough to pay, in one or two years, for the entire cost of equipping all the Navy yards. The only solution, Isherwood concluded, was for the Navy Department to have its own machine shops, large and complete enough to handle its own needs.28
Such growth of government facilities was not to occur in the 1860’s. Apart from the strong objections naturally raised by private builders who had no desire to lose this government work, even if it was at times marginal, there was the thorny problem of where to build such facilities and how much they would cost. The bitter and lengthy debate in the late 1860’s over the establishment of the League Island Navy Yard, at Philadelphia, is an instructive example of the problems that arose in locating a large new government facility. Moreover, after the Civil War, Congress was in no mood to authorize large expenditures on the Navy.
Isherwood’s difficulties in finding skilled labor existed even in his own office. The increase of work brought on by wartime demands was more than his small staff could handle. In September, 1863, Isherwood asked Welles for another assistant draftsman, because of the great increase in the drafting department’s work—most of which was on Isherwood’s own engine designs. However, even with the Secretary’s approval of this request, his problems were not over. A month later he wrote Welles, informing him that a naval engineer was currently filling in as the assistant draftsman because, at the government-regulated salary of $1,200, Isherwood could not find any civilian to take the job. As it was, he had raised the engineer’s salary from $800 to $1,000 a year.
The Engineer in Chief not only struggled to find workers for his office, he had to strive hard to keep them there. Understandably, his young engineers chafed at their inability to be out on the firing line, but Isherwood turned a deaf ear to their requests for transfer. He detained them “without regard to . . . personal wishes or interest,” Isherwood explained, because he didn’t have the time to educate replacements; and once he had a trained, reliable man in his office, he was not about to let him go.29
The problems of the Navy were not always caused by the shortcomings of private contractors or the gyrations of the economy. If Isherwood indignantly complained about the unconscionable profit-seeking behavior of the builders, there were reasons enough for these men also to become impatient. The rapid advance in naval technology, spurred on by wartime demands, had its inevitable repercussions as builders struggled with new and ever changing designs. Much of the delay in building was the result of more than constructors’ procrastination; the fertile minds of both civilian and naval inventors made their contribution to the chaos. Assistant Secretary Fox, in a letter to Alban Stimers, dated February 25, 1864, indicated this influence on mounting costs and delays as he attacked “those horrible bills for additions and improvements and everlasting alterations, all of which have cursed our cause and our Department.” Doubling the contract price with such alterations, additions, and improvements was common, as Isherwood and Lenthall, supervising the design and the building of vessels, continually disrupted the progress of construction with new specifications and changed designs.
As the Civil War progressed, it became obvious that certain of the Navy Department bureaus were overloaded with work. In particular, the Bureau of Construction, Equipment, and Repairs was clogged with the excessive responsibilities for both the vessels and machinery of an expanding fleet. Steam engineering had suddenly become paramount, and expenditures in this area were soon to exceed any other in the Navy Department. “Steam has become such an indispensable element in naval warfare,” Gideon Welles reported, March 25, 1862, in a letter to the House Committee on Naval Affairs, “that naval vessels propelled by sails only, are considered useless for war purposes.” The last sailing vessel for the Navy, the Constellation, had been completed in 1855, and soon the Navy would be “exclusively a steam navy,” and a very large one.30
To meet the demands for a more efficient department, Welles combined with Senator James W. Grimes, of Iowa, in early 1862, to plan a Navy reorganization which would create three new bureaus, while removing the excessive work load from the existing ones. Their plan, which became law on July 5, 1862, broke apart Lenthall’s bureau, leaving him the function of construction and repair, placing the equipment duties into a new Bureau of Equipment and Recruiting, and, in particular, creating a new Bureau of Steam Engineering. The tenure of bureau chiefs changed from an indefinite status, subject to the pleasure of the President, to a regular four-year term. Salary would be $3,500, in lieu of regular Navy pay for those bureau chiefs who were naval officers.
The new steam engineering bureau was to have six clerical assistants to the chief—two clerks, two draftsmen, a messenger, and a laborer—with salaries high enough, it was hoped, to attract civilians to fill the positions. Beating down an attempt to open up the position of bureau chief to civilians, Grimes managed to restrict the position to chief engineers in the Navy, a move which was greeted with enthusiasm by the corps of naval engineers, but met with a civilian reaction which presaged trouble for the future.
Many naval engineers, confused by the new structure of the department, thought that the chief of the bureau and the Engineer in Chief would be separate positions, requiring two men. Several of the senior chief engineers thus eyed the new office with interest, quietly