User:Gatoclass/SB/Ariel Patterson

Life and career
Ariel Patterson was born in September 1807 in Brockville, Canada, a village on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River. Patterson moved to New York at the age of sixteen, where he commenced training as a shipbuilder.

In 1845, Patterson joined forces with two other shipbuilders, William Perine and Thomas Stack, to establish the firm of Perine, Patterson & Stack. In its brief eight years of existence, this firm would rise to the front rank of New York-based shipbuilding companies, with output rivalling that of the state's two most prolific shipbuilders, William H. Webb and J. A. Westervelt. Perine, Patterson & Stack was noted for its clippers, steamships and transatlantic packet ships, and it also built a substantial number of ferryboats. With more than 60 ships built in the course of its history, the company's record accounts for the bulk of Patterson's output as a shipbuilder.

During the "boom" year of 1853, Perine, Patterson & Stack was dissolved, with the three former partners each subsequently establishing their own independent shipyards. Patterson's new shipyard was in Williamsburg, just north of the former yard. In 1854, his first full year of operation as an independent shipbuilder, he attracted a large business, his yard completing seven vessels, including five full-rigged ships, for a total in excess of 7,000 register tons. Before the year was out, however, the U.S. shipbuilding industry had entered a slump. Patterson built only one vessel in 1855&mdash;a small lighter&mdash;and he came to focus on ship repairs rather than ship building. He also became a timber merchant, specializing in the supply of custom timber to other shipbuilders.

Although Patterson built few ships during the American Civil War, he nonetheless "did a great deal of shipbuilding for the United States government", one given example being his reported supervision of all the woodwork for the monitor USS Dictator. In 1863, he attempted to organize the construction in Brooklyn of a new $750,000 sectional dock, with the financial backing of Cornelius Vanderbilt and others, but the project was eventually shelved indefinitely due to high wartime inflation.

Patterson evidently made a substantial investment in his shipyard during the war. In 1864, he completed "a sawing and planing mill for ship work exclusively". The mill included steam-powered lifting equipment, composed of chains and pulleys, that enabled a team of two men to "lift ... with ease a weight of two or three tons", leaving his workforce with "but little manual labor to perform". A "fearful" planer was used to plane ship knees which were "fed along by the engine", while another planer "of very superior make and of the newest pattern ... polishes off an almost incredible amount of lumber daily". "Large and small circular and other saws" were also installed. Power for the whole was supplied by a steam engine plant "on the opposite side of North 3d Street, the shaft passing under the roadway." The mill itself was designed by Patterson, using "an inverse system of bracing" said to be stronger, and cheaper to build, than common methods. Patterson's yard also had facilities for the "planing, turning, punching and cutting" of metal.

Patterson reportedly "retired from business" in 1867, during the prolonged postwar shipbuilding slump that devastated the industry in New York.

Production table

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refs

 * model of harriet lane -fulton
 * patterson launch
 * yard description 1864 -npc
 * "builder and contractor" 1864 -ancestry
 * submarine explorer 1865 -fulton
 * explorer -gbook
 * extensive works, where?
 * advert 1865 -fulton
 * advert 1866 -fulton
 * adelaide stephens daughter -fulton
 * helen paige daughter -fulton
 * aug 1854 yard idle -fulton


 * ships carpenter, ny directory 1839-40
 * shipbuilder 314 first 1854 -ancestry
 * 1865 directory -ancestry
 * 1850 census
 * 1855 census
 * 1865 census canada
 * 1875 census widowed, kings county, "native"
 * obit -npc
 * notice -ancestry
 * -fag


 * marriage, brother in law perine - htrust
 * perine patterson list 1854 -gbook
 * 1854 city of new york, jeremiah thompson, f. b. cutling, david hoagley, emily keith - fhistory
 * patterson birth year, other info -gbook
 * jeremiah thompson 1850s -htrust also, image p179?
 * 1855 no launches, 1 lighter on stocks -fultonhistory
 * launch of pilot boat ariel patterson, nth 3rd st., williamsburgh -nyt
 * 1864 lighter - htrust
 * city of new york -mystic58
 * emily keith schooner 1854 -mystic58