Benjamin Franklin Isherwood, Naval Engineer. Edward William Sloan III
demonstrated the marked advantage of a screw-propelled warship, with no paddles or machinery to be exposed to enemy shot. By the time Isherwood was ordered to the vessel, she had already been modified by the addition of new boilers, a new propeller, and engines designed by Charles Haswell to replace the original Ericsson engines.
As in all steam warships of this period, the engines were intended to be only auxiliary to the sails upon which the ship normally depended for propulsion. Only in going in and out of port, or when becalmed, or when suddenly sent in chase of another vessel would a steam warship be expected to use her steam engines. This custom was just as well, so far as summer blockading operations on the Gulf of Mexico were concerned. During this period, Isherwood later recalled, the temperature in the engine room remained at a steady 115 degrees, while the stench from the bilge water under their feet was enough to overpower the sweltering engineers.
After spending the summer and fall of 1846 on the Princeton, Isherwood was ordered to a new ship, the small side-wheel steamer Spitfire, when she joined the squadron in November. Under the command of the peppery, impulsive Josiah Tatnall, Isherwood now found himself the senior engineer in the Spitfire, where life lacked even those few comforts which had been available on the larger Princeton.
Built originally for the Mexican government, the Spitfire had one small engine, which was set in crudely designed wooden frames and which relied for power on two small boilers that could only produce twelve pounds of steam pressure. The steamer was hopelessly bad under sail, normally developing as much leeway as headway in a stiff breeze. In any sort of rough weather, moreover, she was an exceedingly uncomfortable ship. With her low freeboard, the Spitfire readily took in the seas, which then poured into the engineers’ quarters until the cabin floor was awash. Added to this discomfort, the vessel’s main armament was an eight-inch pivot gun, mounted so close to the engineers’ cabin that when the cannon was fired the concussion regularly shook their bunks to the cabin floor.
Throughout the winter of 1846 and into the following summer, Isherwood labored over his engine while the entire blockading force was subjected first to fierce winter storms and then to the peculiar and deadly summer pestilence of the Gulf Coast known to the sailors as the “Vomito.” In March, the Spitfire was included in the “Mosquito division” of light steamers and gunboats which became actively engaged in bombardment operations along the coast and up the rivers into the Mexican interior. Also at this time, the Spitfire received a witty, courageous young first lieutenant as executive officer. His name was David Dixon Porter.
Porter, known to be “a warm friend to young officers,” apparently got along quite well with Isherwood throughout the busy months while the Spitfire took part in such actions as the famous bombardment of the Castle of San Juan de Ulua and the river operations against Tuxpan and Tabasco. At one point, during an attack on Tlacotalpan, Isherwood left his engine to take part in a landing party which clashed briefly with Mexican soldiers. Both Tatnall and Porter complimented Isherwood on his conduct, Porter assuring the engineer, in a letter dated July 28, 1847, that “no one has exhibited more zeal than yourself in marching to meet the Mexicans.”
In view of the bitterness which existed between Porter and Isherwood in the 1860’s, Porter’s opinion of the engineer in 1847 commands particular attention. First as executive officer and then as commanding officer of the Spitfire, Porter wrote warm testimonial letters on Isherwood’s conduct. In one unsolicited letter of commendation, Porter complimented his engineer on the exemplary performance of the engineering crew, and went on to thank Isherwood for serving as watch officer in place of regular line officers when the latter had been unavailable. Although unqualified to judge Isherwood’s professional qualifications, Porter remarked, his performance of duties had always provided such perfect satisfaction that Porter would always welcome Isherwood under his command.
Before Isherwood left the Spitfire in August, 1847, he received his warrant as first assistant engineer, as of July 10, thus returning him to his original appointive rank in the Navy but without his original seniority. After several months leave he was then assigned to the office of the engineer in chief, Charles Haswell; but his stay was brief, for late in February, Isherwood was sent off on duty “connected with lighthouses,” which again took him abroad. While in Europe he found time to pursue his interest in steam engineering, for he sent back thorough and critical reports on proposed methods of utilizing steam more effectively as a motive force. On August 13, 1849 he finally received his promotion to chief engineer, thereby becoming for the first time a commissioned officer in the United States Navy.10
In late November, 1850 disagreements and maneuverings for power within his corps presented Isherwood with an opportunity for advancement and preference. The incumbent engineer in chief, in his dedication to duty, had assumed virtually the entire task of designing as well as supervising the construction of the Navy’s new steam warships. After several successes, Mr. Haswell met failure with his San Jacinto, a strangely designed vessel even for those days. Her engines were placed far aft, so that the stern rode deep in the water, and Haswell had designed a ten-ton, six-bladed, screw propeller which was placed behind the rudder and on a shaft deliberately located some twenty inches to one side of the center line of the vessel’s keel. Despite his inability, through uncontrollable circumstances, to alter this arrangement, much of which had not been his own intention, Mr. Haswell was finally replaced by another civilian engineer, Charles B. Stuart, under whom Isherwood had served on the New York and Erie Railroad. On December 3, the day after Stuart came into office, Benjamin Isherwood was detached from his lighthouse duties and ordered to Washington as assistant to the new Engineer in Chief.
Not a marine engineer, Stuart necessarily depended upon his younger associate for advice, and the orders and memoranda which issued from the office of the Engineer in Chief bore the unmistakable impression of Isherwood’s views. A board of engineers was appointed to examine the Haswell machinery on the San Jacinto, and Isherwood soon produced the design for a new, four-bladed propeller to replace Haswell’s. Lighter in weight, the Isherwood propeller was placed on a shaft which ran along the center line of the San Jacinto, and the propeller was moved forward to fit in front of a new rudder, also designed by Isherwood. By September, 1851, the San Jacinto was ready for trials.
So that he might defend his professional reputation, Haswell was made chief engineer in charge of the San Jacinto’s trials, but this assignment made Isherwood apprehensive. Writing hastily to his bureau chief, Charles Skinner, Isherwood urged him not to expect too much from the San Jacinto because the steamer still had Haswell’s engines; and they were so poor that they were “a disgrace to the service and our corps,” an object of ridicule, and a “standing monument of Mr. Haswell’s incompetency and folly.”11 In poor health, but denied, through an administrative error, from taking necessary sick leave, Haswell attempted to comply with the orders to operate his machinery on the trial runs; but he became seriously ill, and in a fit of depression, left his ship without permission, for which act he was summarily dismissed from the service. The San Jacinto, after repeated failures to meet the departmental requirements, received new engines in the following year.
In the office of the Engineer in Chief, Isherwood continued to supervise machinery design and enhanced his professional reputation by contributing regularly to the scholarly Journal of the Franklin Institute. Most of his notes and articles were little more than compilations of machinery specifications and performance data; but he occasionally entered into controversy with such vigor that the editors of the Journal, in printing his replies to critics, had to omit or alter his words because of the degree of personal abuse which Isherwood had showered on those who disputed his ideas.
In April, 1851 he was detached from his duty in Washington and ordered to Sankaty Head, Massachusetts, where he was to superintend the completion of a lighthouse under construction. Finding this assignment less congenial than his busy life in the Navy Department, Isherwood sent off a letter to Stuart, in June; and a few days later was back in the office of the Engineer in Chief, this time to remain for over two years.
Once re-established in the Navy Department, Isherwood contributed some original machinery designs to the Navy, but with mixed results. First he traveled to the Gosport Navy Yard at Norfolk, Virginia, in late