Description
Book SynopsisThomas R. Heinrich explores American shipbuilding from the workshop level to subcontracting networks spanning the Delaware Valley. Winner of the North American Society for Oceanic History's John Lyman Book AwardOriginally published in 1996. Sustained by a skilled work force and the Pennsylvania iron and steel industry, Philadelphia shipbuilders negotiated the transition from wooden to iron hull construction earlier and far more easily that most other builders. Between the Civil War and World War I, Philadelphia emerged as the vital center of American shipbuilding, constructing a wide variety of vessel types such as passenger liners, freighters, battleships, and cruisers. In Ships for the Seven Seas, Thomas R. Heinrich explores this complex industry from the workshop level to subcontracting networks spanning the Delaware Valley. He describes entrepreneurial strategies and industrial change that facilitated the rise of major shipbuilding firms; how naval architecture, marine engineer
Trade ReviewHeinrich has written a detailed, compelling account of iron and steel shipbuilding . . . This is a finely crafted book on a fascinating period when technical transformations, political compromises, broad economic changes, and world power aspirations reconfigured American shipbuilding . . . Well-designed and nicely illustrated.
—John K. Brown,
H-BusinessA comprehensive study of Philadelphia shipbuilding in its entire historical, economic, and entrepreneurial context.
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Lloyd's ListA lucid and instructive study.
—Robin Craig,
Mariner's MirrorTable of ContentsAcknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1: "Ship Building as Much as Possible Advanced": The Rise and Decline of Wooden Shipbuilding, 1640-1870
Chapter 2: "A Small Margin": Ironclads and the Transition from Wooden to Iron Shipbuilding
Chapter 3: The American Clyde: Corporate and Proprietary Capitalism in the Philadelphia Maritime Economy, 1865-1875
Chapter 4: Workshop of the World: Commerce, Crafts, and Class Conflict, 1875-1885
Chapter 5: A Vicious Quality: Cramp and the Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex, 1885-1898
Chapter 6: New Departure: Growth and Crisis, 1898-1914
Chapter 7: This Machine of War: World War I
Chapter 8: What Next? The Postwar Depression, 1919-1929
Epilogue
Abbreviations
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index
