Benjamin Franklin Isherwood, Naval Engineer. Edward William Sloan III
to be the new bureau chief, on July 11, 1862. At the same time, he nominated John Lenthall to continue his work as chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair.
The nominations went routinely to the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, but six days later Isherwood and Lenthall realized they might be in trouble as their nominations were tabled and the Committee on Naval Affairs was discharged from further consideration of the matter. Although the Senate had not confirmed the presidential nomination, Welles sent Isherwood his commission as bureau chief as of July 23. The Engineer in Chief gratefully accepted it, giving Welles his thanks “for this continued evidence of the great confidence and trust you have reposed in me; and to assure you that no efforts will be wanting on my part to justify your selection.”31 In a situation like this, the support of his superior was no small matter.
As the months went by, Isherwood served as bureau chief, but there was no further move in the Senate to act on his nomination. Finally, on December 1, Lincoln again nominated Isherwood and Lenthall as bureau chiefs. After the nominations went to the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, there was a period of bitter debate concerning the merits of the two men. On December 22, James W. Grimes presented to the Senate three “memorials of proprietors of the principal marine-engine building establishments in the country,” along with one from engineers in the Navy, all asking for the confirmation of Isherwood as bureau chief.32 At the same time there was fierce opposition, as disgruntled contractors, administration opponents, and professional rivals sought the removal of both Isherwood and Lenthall. By the end of January there was still no resolution of the issue. Welles wrote to his son Edgar that the Senate refused to confirm the two men and that he “would not be surprised if matters go hard with Isherwood,” because of the sharp criticism of the engines he had designed and had placed in government vessels.33
There were many influential line officers who, despite their absence from Washington, could wield powerful influence against both Isherwood and Lenthall. Reflecting their attitude was a colorful diatribe by David D. Porter, which, though written during the previous year, indicated the distrust and contempt felt by line officers for the bureau chiefs.
“That man Lenthall,” fumed Porter, “has been an incubus upon the Navy for the last ten years.” Convinced that the naval constructor was the tool of Stephen Mallory, former chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee and now secretary of the Confederate Navy, Porter claimed that Lenthall and Mallory had plotted to “throw as much of the Navy as possible into the hands of traitors” in early 1861. Lenthall was responsible for keeping the Merrimack at Norfolk, Porter asserted in a letter to Gustavus Fox, July 5, 1861; for as a civilian, he tried to get the Navy yards out of the control of naval officers and into the hands of civilians, so that at the proper time he could hand over the yards to the South.34
Declining to assail the Engineer in Chief as a traitor, Porter contented himself in the same letter to Gustavus Fox, with a contemptuous description of “that little fellow Isherwood who will take all the signs in Algebra to prove how many ten penny nails it will take to shingle a bird’s nest, who will bring out more equations to prove that a pound of water can be so expanded that it will make a ship go 25 miles an hour, and yet he can’t make an Engine.” With a convenient inaccuracy of recollection, Porter related that Isherwood had been “Engineer with me 9 months; I took him out of the Engine Room for incapacity, [but] he may have improved since. . . .”35
Porter, in his unique way, mirrored the line officers’ frustration with a Navy Department that, to them, seemed unable to meet their needs and appeared to disregard or depreciate their views. In the midst of battle, they resented those men back in Washington who appeared indifferent to their problems which, the officers insisted, should be of paramount importance in the conduct of the war. The never-ending accumulation of data for Isherwood, continuing on vessels even as they came under fire, drove commanding officers to distraction. They had no patience for work which seemed to bear no relation to the actual operation of their vessels. Isherwood’s only duty and responsibility, they believed, was to produce engines which would never break down and engineers who would never make mistakes. As neither of these demands would ever be wholly met, Isherwood was bound to become a target of frustrated and often vengeful men who had become convinced that he neither knew nor cared about their vital interests out on the firing line.
Despite the resistance to his nomination from so many quarters, Isherwood emerged triumphant. When President Lincoln nominated him for the third time on March 7, 1863, the opposition collapsed; and three days later, the Senate considered and confirmed Isherwood’s appointment. By an order of the Secretary of the Navy, dated March 13, Isherwood, as bureau chief, now ranked with commodores, taking precedence among the other staff officer bureau chiefs according to the date of his commission as a naval officer. Lenthall had met less opposition and, consequently, received confirmation as chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair on February 21, 1863.
As Engineer in Chief under Lenthall, and then as Chief of the Bureau of Steam Engineering, Isherwood, throughout the Civil War, mastered a tremendously complex, arduous, and often frustrating assignment. In later years he would describe the full scope of his duties with a succinct and disarmingly direct statement :
During the war the appointing and detailing of nearly two thousand Engineers were in my hands, besides the designing of the machinery of several hundred naval vessels, and the direction of the repairs and alterations of as many more. The contracts for all these, and for the immense quantity of engineering supplies, were part of my duty, and in addition there was the examination of the innumerable plans of vessels and machinery daily presented to the Department, and the writing of complete reports upon the same.
In short, everything connected with the engineering of the Navy during the war—in the widest sense of the word—was under my immediate direction, and I was held responsible for it. The nominal and the real responsibility were the same, and no Boards of officers were allowed to either shield or assist me.36
Characteristically, he had preferred to depend on his own judgment, rarely asking for help as he brought the vast, unco-ordinated aspects of wartime naval engineering together into a unified whole. Absorbed in his work and convinced of its importance, he needed no praise nor prodding. His country had called him to this service; he could do no less than his best.
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