Benjamin Franklin Isherwood, Naval Engineer. Edward William Sloan III
fell young Benjamin Isherwood, as perhaps also did a student in the class ahead, Herman Melville.
Under the benign despotism of the scholarly principal, Dr. T. Romeyn Beck, Isherwood and his fellow pupils labored for all but a few weeks of the year. Extracurricular activities did not exist. The boys were there to study; and under a small but well trained faculty whose scholarship often vastly exceeded its teaching skills, the students slowly advanced through the mass of material toward graduation as early as age fourteen. Benjamin Isherwood worked hard, at least initially; and in his first three years he won numerous prizes in geography, algebra, and, especially, in history.
Discipline was severe and unremitting at the academy. The principal, Dr. Beck, may have been the sensitive man whom some students recalled; but his coat of arms, as one alumnus feelingly remarked, should have been “the crimson shield, signifying gore, upon which is emblazoned the figure of a boy rampant, with the hand of one unseen holding him in position, while above, as a crest, are two rattans crossed. . . .5 Expulsion, according to the school regulations, might come for a wide variety of causes, in particular, “disobedience or disrespectful conduct towards teachers.”6 In January, 1836, when apparently in the final year of his course work, Benjamin Isherwood was expelled from Albany Academy for “serious misconduct.”7
Only fourteen years old, but already possessing a formidable accumulation of knowledge in mathematics and engineering, Isherwood sought work and was hired as a draftsman in the locomotive shop of the Utica and Schenectady Railroad. For two years he remained in the shop, gaining familiarity with the structure and operations of steam boilers and engines to the point where his foreman could recommend him as well qualified to discharge the duties of a “practical Steam Engineer.” After this, Isherwood spent many months in the field, absorbing the details of road and bridge construction from the British civil engineer William Lake, then resident engineer for the railroad.
From this study of railroad structures came Benjamin Isherwood’s first professional publications. In March, 1842 he collaborated with another engineer to produce a pamphlet entitled, “Description and Illustration of Spaulding and Isherwood’s Plan of Cast Iron Rail and Superstructure for Railroads.” Illustrated by Isherwood, this brief description of rails which had been placed in use on the Ithaca and Oswego Railroad was endorsed and highly praised by a number of railroad men, including Charles B. Stuart, an experienced engineer who later would superintend the Erie Canal and then would be engineer in chief of the Navy from 1850 to 1853.
In the following year there appeared a more ambitious work. The British engineer John Weale edited a series of articles and published the collection, in 1843, as Ensamples of Railway Making; Which, although not of English Practice, Are Submitted with Practical Illustrations, to the Civil Engineer and the British and Irish Public. Issued also in abbreviated form as The Theory, Practice, and Architecture of Bridges, this book included a long and thoroughly illustrated article by Benjamin Isherwood on the timber bridges of the Utica and Syracuse Railroad. Already bearing the unmistakable stamp of an Isherwood product, the article presented the minutest details of construction, including isometrical projections of bridges, elaborate examinations of the grading of culverts and viaducts, and exhaustive compilations of data on construction costs and timber specifications. Weale gratefully acknowledged Isherwood’s work as a “liberal contribution” to the comparative study of American and British railway construction.
Styling himself a civil engineer, Benjamin Isherwood next went to work in the office of his stepfather, John Green, an engineer working on the construction of the Croton Aqueduct which would supply the water needs of New York city. At the completion of this project, Isherwood returned to the railroads, to work on the New York and Erie, under Charles B. Stuart.
Calling on the training in optics he had received at Albany Academy, Isherwood now turned for the first time to the federal government for employment, receiving an assignment by the Treasury Department to specialize in the construction of lighthouses, a duty which took him to France to superintend the manufacturing of lighthouse lenses from his own designs. Returning from Europe, Isherwood continued to work for the Lighthouse Bureau of the Treasury Department, but he soon discovered a more promising opportunity for advancement of his engineering career.
In 1842 the engineers operating the several steamships in the American Navy had finally become members of the naval service through a congressional act which permitted the Secretary of the Navy to appoint engineers to the service and to establish an engineering corps in the Navy. Perceiving the opportunities available to an experienced steam engineer in a Navy just beginning to utilize steam, Isherwood investigated the possibilities of an appointment to the corps.
In order to obtain such an appointment, however, an applicant had to demonstrate his working knowledge of marine engines. With no technical or engineering schools available to train an aspiring candidate, there was only one place to obtain the requisite knowledge and skill—the machine shops of private marine engine builders. Aided by his previous experience in railroad boiler and engine shops, Isherwood found employment with the well-known and highly regarded Novelty Iron Works, in New York city, where he gained the necessary skill with marine engines. Consequently, on May 23, 1844, he received an appointment as a first assistant engineer in the United States Navy. As this rank was only one below that of chief engineer, the highest in the corps, Isherwood was beginning his naval career with a distinct advantage.
Although appointed in May, Isherwood did not receive orders until October 1, 1844, when he was sent to the Navy Yard at Pensacola, Florida. At this pleasant, if out-of-the-way garden spot, Isherwood and his fellow officers labored under the eagle eye of their commandant, Commodore W. K. Latimer, a notorious martinet. More amenable now to discipline than in his youth, Isherwood served for a year, nursing the single ninety-eight horsepower engine and ironflue boiler of the steam tender General Taylor, a small side-wheeler too fragile to venture outside of harbors and landlocked bays.
Then in 1845 the first engineer in chief of the Navy, Charles Haswell, embarked on a reorganization of his corps, which had previously been haphazard in its appointments and promotions. Determined to delay no longer in rearranging his engineers on a basis of merit alone, Haswell appointed a board of chief engineers to examine all assistant engineers and to rerank them on the basis of professional and moral fitness, regardless of age, experience, or previous position in the service. Unable to go before the board in July, the time designated for examinations, Isherwood had to wait until the end of the year before traveling to Washington, D. C.
On December 18 he left Pensacola, fortified by a warm letter of recommendation from his formidable superior, Commodore Latimer. So impressed was the Commodore with Isherwood’s competence that he genuinely hoped for the young engineer’s return to Pensacola. Isherwood would surely receive a ranking from the board “such as your merits so justly entitle you to,” Latimer believed, based on Isherwood’s demonstrated efficiency, cheerfulness, and attentiveness to duties, not to mention his “strict observance of moral character and gentlemanly deportment.”8
Unfortunately, the December climate in Washington was cold in more ways than one. After a rigorous oral testing by his superiors, Benjamin Isherwood, instead of receiving a promotion to chief engineer, found himself demoted to second assistant engineer, with his initial naval appointment revoked and his new grade warranted from January 22, 1846, thus losing both rank and seniority. For Isherwood, as well as for many of his fellow engineers, “this whole proceeding was most radical and arbitrary, and occasioned much heartburning among those unfortunates. . . .”9
Isherwood had little time to brood over his misfortune. On January 26, 1846, he received orders for duty as a second assistant engineer on the steamer USS Princeton, which sailed from Boston in May to join the Home Squadron, which was taking part in the Mexican War by blockading the enemy coastline around Veracruz and assisting in military operations.
For Isherwood, the Princeton was more than just another steamer. Not only was she considerably larger and more complex than the General Taylor, she was one of the most remarkable warships in the world. Sponsored by Captain Richard Stockton, the Swedish inventor John Ericsson had designed this vessel which, when completed in 1843, had been the first screw-propelled steam warship in history. With her machinery