User:Gatoclass/SB/Novelty Iron Works

The Novelty Iron Works, commonly known as the Novelty Works, was a major 19th-Century American engineering firm located in Manhattan, New York. Established in about 1830, the Works grew rapidly until by 1850 it was reportedly the largest ironworks in the United States. The company manufactured iron castings of every description, but specialized in the production of marine steam engines and other marine fittings, particularly for oceangoing steamships and other large and demanding contracts. Other notable manufactures produced by the company included sugar mill equipment, fire engines, and Francis lifeboats&mdash;the latter credited with saving thousands of lives in the 19th century.

The Novelty Works built the engines for many of the most notable American steamships of the mid-19th century. Ships engined by the Novelty Works included Southerner and Northerner&mdash;the first clearly successful American merchant steamships&mdash;Washington and Hermann, the first two American transatlantic steamers; the Collins Line steamers SS Arctic, Atlantic and Adriatic; and many of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's early vessels.

Origins and management
In the 1820s, the Rev. Eliphalet Nott, President of Union College, Schenectady, invented a type of stove to burn anthracite coal. In 1827, a company named H. Nott & Co., managed by Howard Nott and Eliphalet Nott's sons, was established in Albany, New York to manufacture the stove. In about 1830, Eliphalet Nott decided to expand upon his ideas by building a steamboat using boilers fired by anthracite coal. For the purpose, H. Nott & Co. relocated to a property on the East River known as Burnt Mill Point, near the foot of modern-day East 14th Street, Manhattan, where the machinery for the experimental steamboat Novelty was subsequently constructed. Locals came to refer to the business as "Novelty's Works" or the "Novelty Works" after the name of the steamboat.

In the late 1830s, possibly as a result of the Panic of 1837, H. Nott & Co. entered receivership. In 1838, the manager of the plant, Thomas B. Stillman, joined forces with three other investors, John D. Ward, Robert M. Stratton and C. St. John Seymour, to purchase the business, which was renamed Ward, Stillman & Co. Ward and Stillman directed the plant's operations while Stratton and Seymour managed the company's financial affairs.

In 1841, J. D. Ward retired, and the business became known as Stillman & Co. In 1842, Horatio Allen, an engineer known for importing the first locomotive into the United States, joined the firm as a partner, which then became known as Stillman, Allen & Co., or just Stillman & Allen. In 1855, the proprietors finally decided to adopt the company's unofficial name, and it was formally incorporated for the sum of $300,000 as the Novelty Iron Works.

Plant and equipment
Under the management of Thomas Stillman, the Novelty Works grew rapidly, until by the late 1840s it was already one of the largest ironworks in the United States. In the early 1850s, a number of essays on the Works were featured in a variety of publications, including an extensive piece in Harper's, from which many details of the plant and its operations are known.

Property and labor force
By 1850, the Novelty Works occupied an area of about five acres (210,000 squ. feet, or about 80 city lots) along the East River between the foot of East 12th and East 14th Streets, Manhattan. The main entrance was via a "great gateway" on 12th Street, opposite Dry Dock Street. Just to the right of the main entrance was the entrance to the porter's lodge and front office&mdash;the latter which has been described as "surely one of the first in the city" and as a symbol of an embryonic American middle class. The office employed a superintendent and 11 clerks, needed to maintain the company's employment and sales records.

The Works at this time employed a workforce of about 1,200&mdash;more than any other ironworks in New York. The workers were divided into between 18 and 20 separate departments, based on trade, with each department having its own foreman. Reflecting the specialized nature of the work in an era before mass production, less than five percent of the employees were laborers, the rest being skilled tradesmen. The highest proportion of tradesmen were machinists, who numbered 359 in 1850, followed by ironfounders (248), boiler makers (242), blacksmiths (71), carpenters and coppersmiths. Other trades with substantial representation included pattern makers, riggers, instrument makers, brass founders and draughtsmen.

Iron foundry
Immediately inside the main entrance was a courtyard, containing a huge crane for transferring heavy items to and from the wagons arriving there. To the left of the courtyard was the iron foundry, a 206 by 80-foot building, where the largest iron castings, such as steamship engine cylinders and bed plates, were produced. Arranged along the near wall within the foundry were a group of four cupola furnaces, while against the far wall were housed six drying furnaces, each serviced with its own railway siding and two carriages. Between the furnaces and ovens, in the center of the foundry, were dug one or more large pits lined with rivetted iron plates, into which the moulds for large castings would be placed. Suspended above were six large cranes, some of which were capable of lifting up to 20 tons. To the rear of the foundry were stables and a pattern shop.

To make a large casting, all four furnaces could employed simultaneously, melting 65 tons or more of iron in a single heat, which would be transferred to a large reservoir in the center of the foundry from which it could be poured into the mould. The largest and most complex castings were for marine engine bedplates, which could weigh up to 65 tons, have as many as 80 mould components, and take up to six weeks to prepare. In addition to the four main furnaces, an air furnace, heated from a fan delivering a blast of air through an underground pipe five feet in diameter, was also available for special jobs.

Other facilities
To the right of the main entrance to the Works, on the opposite side of the courtyard and southwest of the iron foundry, were the finishing and boiler shops, adjacent to which, on the far side of the Works, were smaller buildings housing the brass foundry, coppersmith's and carpenter shops. Beyond these, along the northeast and southeast sides of the Works, were slipways on the East River, "capable of accommodating eight or ten of the largest class of steamships".

The main purpose of the finishing shop was to take the rough castings produced in the iron foundry and machine them to precise dimensions. To this end, the shop was equipped with lathes, cutting mills and planers "of vast size and strength". The boiler shop was equipped with shears to cut boiler plates to the correct size, rollers to add the appropriate curvature to the plates, punching machines to punch rivet holes, along with drills and boring machines.

In the blacksmith's shop were produced wrought iron parts. This shop contained 30 forges, hoists and cranes for moving heavy parts, and a large trip hammer. Brass fittings for ship engines were produced in the brass foundry and coppersmith's shop. A separate section of the Works was also set aside for the manufacture under licence of Francis lifecars and lifeboats. The entire machinery of the Works was powered by a centrally located, 100-horsepower steam engine.

Antebellum period, 1830s–early 1860s
After the construction of Novelty, the Novelty Works diversified its output to include a wide variety of products. Heating and cooking stoves of designs "display[ing] ingenuity" were one early product line. An 1840 advertisement lists "steam engines, sugar mills, saw mills, lathes, and other machinery of any required magnitude", along with "steam boilers and tanks", water pipes, and "iron castings of every description". The first marine engines of any note built by the company after those of Novelty appear to be two small side-lever engines for a pair of Spanish gunboats named Lion and Eagle in 1841.

From the mid-1840s, the Novelty Works began to accept machinery orders for the largest class of steamships, a market it would continue to dominate for the next quarter-century. Major customers prior to the Civil War included Spofford, Tileson & Co. and the New York & Savannah Steam Navigation Company, both Atlantic Coast steamship companies, and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, which operated steamships on the West Coast of the United States and to the Far East. The Novelty Works also built the engines for three of the five transatlantic steamships of the ill-fated Collins Line. Pacific Mail would continue to be a major client after the war.

Coastwise steamships
In 1846, Spofford, Tileson & Co., a company which operated a line of sailing vessels between New York and Charleston, South Carolina, placed an order with New York shipbuilder William H. Brown for construction of a steamship to operate along the same route. Novelty Works was subcontracted for the engine. The new ship, named Southerner, was the first American coastal steamship, and only the second American merchant steamship (as opposed to steamboat) ever built. Her 67-inch bore, 8-foot stroke engine was the first U.S.-built engine of the side-lever type ever installed in an American merchant vessel. Though initially criticized for some aspects of her design, Southerner proved such a success that she set the pattern of American steamship design for the next decade.

Another pioneering steamship powered by a Novelty Works side-lever in this period was the SS California, built by William H. Webb for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company in 1848. In the winter of 1848–49, California became the first steamship to round Cape Horn and reach San Francisco Bay on the East Coast of the United States. The Novelty Works supplied the engines for a number of other notable coastal steamers prior to the war, such as the Golden Gate, the first U.S.-built ship fitted with large oscillating engines, and the Nashville, described as the "finest and fastest" steamship in American coastal service.

Transatlantic steamships
From 1845, the United States Congress began to offer mail subsidies for American steamship lines prepared to compete with foreign lines on transatlantic routes. Three U.S. companies were subsequently established to take advantage of these subsidies: the Ocean Steam Navigation Company, the Collins Line, and the Havre Line. All three of these companies would turn to the Novelty Works for the manufacture of most of their marine engines. The Novelty Works thereby came to power most of the first generation of American transatlantic steamships.

Ocean Steam Navigation Company
The first company to take advantage of the Congressional mail subsidies was the Ocean Steam Navigation Company. Established in 1846, the company ordered two new 1,600-ton steamships for a service between New York and Bremen, Germany. These two vessels, named Washington and Hermann, were built in 1847–48 by the New York shipyard of Westervelt & Mackay, with the engines for both supplied by the Novelty Works. The two vessels were about twice the tonnage of the coastal steamship Southerner, built the previous year, and were each powered by a pair of side-lever engines as opposed to the single engine installed in Southerner.

When Washington made her maiden voyage from New York to Bremen in 1847, she became the first fullpower American steamship ever to make a crossing of the Atlantic, and the first U.S. steamship to operate on a regular transatlantic route. Unfortunately, her builders Westervelt & Mackay, though renowned for their clipper ships, had no prior experience in building steamships, as a result of which, both Washington and Hermann suffered from design flaws which led to poor performance and frequent breakdowns. Both vessels were withdrawn from transatlantic service when the Ocean Steam Navigation Company's mail subsidy was withdrawn in 1857, the company winding up its affairs at that time.

Collins Line
In 1847, E. K. Collins, former owner of the Dramatic Line, a prestigious line of transatlantic sailing packets, secured a large mail subsidy from Congress for the establishment of a new transatlantic steamship company to compete directly with the most successful transatlantic line then in operation, the British Cunard Line.

For his new line, known eponymously as the Collins Line, Collins ordered four new 2,800-ton steamships, which were to be the largest, fastest and most lavishly outfitted transatlantic steamships yet built. All four were constructed in New York in 1849–50. Two of them, Pacific and Baltic, were built by Jacob Bell and engined by the Allaire Iron Works, while the other two, Arctic and Atlantic, were built by William H. Brown with engines from Novelty. The four vessels were each fitted with a pair of large side-lever engines of either 95-inch bore by 9-foot stroke (Atlantic and Pacific) or 96-inch by 10-foot stroke (Arctic and Baltic). The two Bell/Allaire-built vessels turned out to be slightly faster in service than the Brown/Novelty pair, both of the former winning the Blue Riband for record Atlantic crossings in the 1850s.

In September 1854, Arctic was sunk with heavy loss of life in a collision with the iron-hulled steamer Vesta off Cape Race, Newfoundland. Eighteen months later, the Pacific sailed from Liverpool for New York and was never seen again. Loss of these two vessels caused a sharp decline in public confidence in the Collins Line, and in hopes of reviving the company's fortunes, Collins ordered the construction of an even larger and more impressive replacement vessel, the Adriatic.

When launched in April 1856 from the New York shipyard of George Steers, Adriatic was the largest wooden-hulled vessel afloat. Like the Arctic and Atlantic, Adriatic's engines were supplied by the Novelty Works; her engines, however, were of the oscillating type, as the side-lever type by this time was bordering on obsolescence. With 100-inch bore and 12-foot stroke, these were the largest oscillating engines yet built in the United States, and they were also among the first American marine engines to be fitted with surface condensers. Misfortune continued to dog the Collins Line however, when it was discovered that the engine valves, of a new design by Allen & Wells, were faulty. More than 14 months would pass before the valve problems were rectified, delaying Adriatic's entry into service and ensuring the bankruptcy of the Line.

Despite being a "superb" steamship for her era, Adriatic's subsequent career was undistinguished. After one voyage with the failing Collins Line, she briefly entered service with another transatlantic line before being laid up due to a second bankruptcy. Her engines were removed in 1869 and she finished her days as a coal hulk. Of the five Collins Line steamships, the Brown/Novelty-built Atlantic would prove the most reliable and successful. She was broken up at Long Island in 1871.

Havre Line
In 1848, after the disappointing performance of the Ocean Steam Navigation Company's steamships Washington and Hermann became evident, a second subsidized steamship company, the New York and Havre Steam Navigation Company, better known as the Havre Line, was organized by one of the directors of the Ocean SNC and some associates. The Havre Line's directors returned to the firms of Westervelt & Mackay and the Novelty Works for construction of two new steamers and their machinery. The new vessels, Franklin and Humboldt, launched in 1850 and 1851 respectively, were about 500 tons larger than Washington and Hermann, and were each fitted with a larger pair of side-lever engines, of 93-inch bore and 8-foot stroke. The performance of Franklin and Humboldt was much more satisfactory than that of their Ocean SNC predecessors, but both new vessels were lost to accidents after only a couple of years' service.

Undeterred by their misfortune, the directors of the Havre Line resolved to build two more vessels to replace those lost. The first of these, Arago, launched in 1855, was again contracted to the Westervelt yard and the engines to the Novelty Works. On this occasion however, the Novelty Works supplied a pair of more modern and economical surface condensing oscillating engines, with 65-inch bore and 10-foot stroke. The second vessel, named Fulton, was contracted to Smith & Dimon and the engines to the Morgan Iron Works. Arago and Fulton have been described as the finest American-built wooden-hulled sidewheel steamships ever constructed. Both vessels, along with the Washington and Hermann, would later see service as U.S. Navy transport ships during the American Civil War.

Steamboats
Though specializing in powerplants for large coastal and oceangoing steamships, the Novelty Works also produced numerous engines for steamboats built for inland waterway service. The most renowned of these was the Long Island Sound steamboat Metropolis, built for the Bay State Steamboat Company in 1854. Metropolis was fitted with a massive 105-inch bore, 12-foot stroke vertical beam engine&mdash;then the world's largest-bore marine engine, and probably the largest single-cylinder steam engine of any type. To promote the achievement, the President of the Novelty Works, Horatio Allen, arranged a demonstration featuring a luncheon for 22 invited guests, complete with table and chairs, held inside the engine cylinder itself, after which a horse and carriage were driven through the cylinder and 103 men gathered to stand in it. In service, the massive engine would soon prove its usefulness, with Metropolis shaving a full hour from the average time of passage between New York and Fall River, reducing it from 11 hours to 10.

Two more notable Long Island Sound steamboats powered by Novelty Works machinery in this period were City of Boston and City of New York. After entering service in 1861, City of Boston quickly established herself as the fastest steamboat on the Sound, comfortably defeating the reigning champion Metropolis in consecutive races.

Francis lifeboats
In 1841, Joseph Francis, a boatbuilder with an established reputation for lifeboat design and construction, moved to New York City to pursue his goal of building the ideal lifeboat, one strong and buoyant enough to withstand the most challenging conditions. Francis found he could build a lightweight boat of superior strength by the use of corrugated iron, adding buoyancy with the use of inbuilt air chambers. However, he soon came to realize that the large iron dies and 800-pound hydraulic presses he needed to stamp out his metallic boats were beyond his financial means.

Francis decided to approach Horatio Allen, President of the Novelty Works, with an offer of partnership. Impressed by his designs, Allen agreed to provide Francis with the machinery he required in return for 50% ownership of all his existing and future lifeboat patents. Francis was provided with a section of the Novelty Works, over which he was given complete control, to design and build his metallic lifeboats. By the early 1850s, the business had grown to such an extent that Francis was obliged to relocate his operation to a larger facility at Greenpoint, and incorporate a new business named Francis' Metallic Life-Boat Company, capitalized at $250,000, with Allen as its President. Francis metallic lifeboats and lifecars are credited with saving thousands of lives through the 19th century, and in 1890 Francis was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of his achievements.

90-day gunboats and double-enders, 1861–62
Following the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Novelty Works, as a major supplier of marine engines, quickly found its services in demand by the U.S. Navy. The first such contract was in relation to a group of four small screw gunboats, a type required for close inshore and amphibious operations along the Confederate coast. Coincidentally, the Chief of the Navy's Bureau of Steam Engineering, Benjamin Isherwood, had recently designed and overseen construction at the Novelty Works of two such gunboats for the Russian navy, and to hasten delivery of the U.S. Navy vessels, he persuaded the government to adopt the same design, and to award the contracts directly to the same company, rather than go through the usual process of issuing public tenders. This combination of factors resulted in the completion of the first four vessels of the Unadilla class&mdash;Unadilla, Ottawa, Pembina and Seneca&mdash;within the remarkably short time of 90 days, earning the class its informal name of "90-day gunboat". The entire class of 23 vessels was completed by February 1862, with the Novelty Works having supplied the machinery for seven.

In the winter of 1861–62, the Novelty Works participated in the construction of probably the best known Union ship of the war, the ironclad USS Monitor. The first of the monitor type of warship, this so-called "cheese box on a raft" was designed and hastily built in a matter of weeks with the object of neutralizing the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia, then under construction at Hampton Roads. The Novelty Works, as the only company with rolling machines large enough, was given the relatively minor but essential task of bending the heavy armor plates of Monitor's innovative rotating gun turret. Less well known is that the company also supplied the Monitor with 480 specially hardened, wrought iron cannonballs, thought necessary to penetrate Virginia's armor. Monitor's later success at the Battle of Hampton Roads made headlines around the world, and sparked a "monitor craze" in the U.S. Navy that would last to the end of the war.

Following the completion of USS Monitor and the Unadilla class, the Navy's next priority was the construction of a number of double-ended sidewheel gunboats for operation on Confederate rivers. The Novelty Works supplied the machinery for four such vessels in 1861–62&mdash;USS Sebago (1861), USS Port Royal (1862), and the Sonoma-class double-enders USS Conemaugh (1862) and USS Sonoma (1862). The company also supplied the engines for a screw sloop-of-war in this period, USS Adirondack (1862).

Later naval contracts, 1863–65
After this productive start, however, the naval work done by the company for the remainder of the war would contribute little to the war effort. In March 1862, the company, under the direction of the Navy's chief engineer Benjamin Isherwood, began the conversion of the screw frigate USS Roanoke (1855) into what was intended to be the Navy's most powerful monitor warship. Initially envisaged as a ship with four turrets, weight considerations reduced the number to three, but even after this modification, Roanoke rolled dangerously in sea trials and was considered barely seaworthy. She was relegated to harbor defence at Hampton Roads for the duration of the war. The Novelty Works also secured a machinery contract for a second monitor, USS Miantonomoh (1863), but for reasons unknown, this vessel was only commissioned after the war.

The last major naval contract secured by the Novelty Works during the war was for building the engines of the experimental screw frigate USS Wampanoag (1864). A radical design, Wampanoag was designed to be the world's fastest ship, capable of running down and capturing any Confederate commerce raider. Due to an internal Navy debate, however, Wampanoag's completion was delayed until long after the war. When finally commissioned, her twin horizontal geared screw engines, capable of generating a massive 4000 horsepower, made her the fastest steamship afloat, with a top speed of more than 17 knots. Continued resistance to the vessel among line officers, however, who objected to her heavy coal consumption, cramped crew quarters and excessive rolling, saw her quickly converted into a stores ship.

In addition to these naval contracts, the Novelty Works also supplied the machinery during the war for two Pawtuxet-class cutter cutters of the United States Revenue Cutter Service, USRC Ashuelot and USRC Pawtuxet. These were screw-propelled vessels, powered by double-cylinder geared oscillating engines. The engines proved unsuitable for the Service's operations, apparently due to their maintenance requirements, and both ships were sold after barely three years.

Naval requisitions
The contribution of the Novelty Works to the war effort was not confined to wartime contracts. A number of merchant ships powered by Novelty Works engines were also requisitioned during the war and commissioned as U.S. Navy gunboats.

Other wartime contracts
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Transpacific steamships
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Attempted diversification and closure, 1869
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Warships and government vessels

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refs

 * excellent summary - book ref
 * 1835 already has departments, stove details etc.
 * 1840 advertisement
 * Good modern ref. on history
 * Short history modern ref.
 * Description 1850, includes workforce, sugar mill details
 * Description and pictures, Harper's 1851
 * Original Harper's piece, 1851
 * Another 1851 description, with some useful statistics
 * Gold crusher 1854
 * Lithograph 1840s
 * "Perhaps most extensive iron works" in U.S. - 1849
 * seneca owasco kennebec sonoma unadilla with prices
 * Adirondack
 * francis boats
 * more on francis boats
 * Check Morrison
 * The steam navy of the United States 1897
 * Steam engines c. 1860
 * USS Monitor turret
 * Hydraulic presses for USS Monitor turret
 * Cannonballs for USS Monitor
 * Three page history and description of the Works
 * As above
 * Various boats, Franklin Institute
 * Swann
 * 1869 description
 * 1869 advertisement, includes info about "architectural" dept
 * 1869 Architectural Dept. said to be prosperous
 * Closed 1871?
 * Isherwood stuff, 90-day gunboats etc
 * Brief history, closure, list of drawings
 * Dickerson-Allen dispute, 1850s
 * Sickels' patent violated on Metropolis (same case as above)
 * "Emergence of middle class" in Works layout
 * Stillman killed by boiler explosion, 1850
 * 85" oscillating engines largest yet -book

Engines

 * Standing engine for Hoe & Coe, illustration
 * List of ships
 * California, Oregon, Columbia, Tennessee, Golden Gate, Atlantic, Arctic, Humboldt, Franklin, Washington, Hermann, Cherokee, all with engine details
 * Clara Clarita, Re D'Italia screw
 * City of New York, City of Boston, Constitution
 * Metropolis 1855
 * Re D'Italia armour plates
 * Adriatic valve problems etc.
 * Conemaugh gunboat
 * John L. Stevens
 * Southerner, Marion, Augusta
 * Eagle, Lion
 * Lots of Pacific Mail steamers
 * Alaska 1867
 * Montana, Pacific Mail, 1865
 * Bankruptcy 1860?
 * arizona, nicaragua, idaho, mangua 1865 eagle


 * sheffield school catalogue


 * Other stuff


 * Adriatic details