Jacob Aaron Westervelt


Jacob Aaron Westervelt was a renowned and prolific shipbuilder who constructed 247 vessels of all descriptions during his career of over 50 years. From 1853 until 1855 he was Mayor of New York City.
Together with his partners he designed some of the fastest and most successful sailing packets, clippers and steamships ever built, among these the screw sloop and the clipper, as well as many vessels for foreign governments and Royal Houses. Westervelt was awarded the Order of Isabella the Catholic by the Queen of Spain for the preparation of models and plans for three Spanish frigates. For many years he was the President of the Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Marine Society, the Port Society and the St. Nicholas Society. He was also President of the Board of Dock Commissioners for several years. After Westervelt's death, the flags at City Hall were lowered to half-mast.

Early life (1800–1817)

Westervelt was the eldest son of Ari and Vrowti Westervelt. Ari Westervelt was a builder by occupation. He built several houses in Franklin Street, New York, and constructed the South Church in Schraalenburgh in today's borough of Bergenfield, New Jersey. Westervelt was born in Tenafly, on January 20, 1800, and was baptized at Schraalenburgh on February 16, being the first child to receive that sacrament after the completion of the new church. The Westervelts then resided at the old family homestead on Tenafly Road midway between Englewood and Tenafly. When Ari Westervelt was working on improving the riverfront, he moved, together with his infant son, to New York in 1804, to be nearer his work. It was to his father that Jacob Aaron owed his good education. His father died when Westervelt was only 14.
The sources differ as to Westervelt's further education and early career. He received additional education under the tutelage of James P. Forrester, then headmaster of the school connected with the Collegiate Church in New York, and was afforded greater educational opportunities under Barron & Brown, in a special course on surveying and navigation. Afterwards he went to sea, serving on ships for more than two years. He left the sea in 1817 and became an apprentice under Christian Bergh, a prosperous shipbuilder on the East River. A differing source reports that he went to sea directly after his father's death, while another states that he was already apprenticed to Christian Bergh in 1814.

Christian Bergh's shipyard (1817–1836)

Westervelt learned the "art, trade and mystery" of his profession in a most independent way—as a teenage sailor and as an apprentice to Christian Bergh, for whom he worked at the very latest from the year 1817. Such was his talent that he was in Bergh's absolute confidence. Before even graduating from his apprenticeship, Westervelt accepted an offer to start business in Charleston, where he undertook the construction of two schooners, with the help of African American slaves from planters in and around Charleston. He was so successful during those few months that he continued in business there, but he found the environment too confining for his ambitions and in 1822 he returned to New York, where he formed a partnership with Robert Carnley and his old master under the name of C. Bergh & Co. Some of the ships built by Bergh and Westervelt were Hope, Henry IV, Charlemagne, Albany, Philadelphia, Utica, Westminster, and Toronto. Christian Bergh retired a wealthy man in 1837, and was succeeded by his sons Henry and Edwin Bergh, who continued the business until just after their father's death in 1843.

Westervelt & Co. shipyard (1836–1864)

In 1836 Westervelt built at least two ships under his own name, the Baltimore and Mediator, in partnership with the 22-year-old ship chandler Marshall Owen Roberts as Westervelt & Roberts. Soon after Christian Bergh's retirement, Westervelt and Robert Carnley made an extensive tour of Europe, visiting the principal shipbuilding points, where Westervelt gathered information that he subsequently put to good use. Westervelt found an inactive life disagreeable and, after a year of travel, returned to the dry docks in 1838 and resumed shipbuilding.
There are differing reports as to the start of this new chapter of Westervelt's life. On one side it is stated that Westervelt bought out his former partners Carnley and the Bergh brothers and took control of the Bergh shipyard, at the foot of Gouverneur Street and extending to Water Street and up to Scammel. Other sources state that Westervelt and William MacKay established one of a few new yards at Corlear's Hook in 1841 and moved to Lewis and Seventh Street in 1844. Westervelt may also have designed and built ships in connection with Edward Mills.
The shipyard Westervelt & MacKay, later Westervelt & Sons, became prominent and prospered. Together with MacKay and his sons he built 50 steamships, 93 traditional sailing vessels and clippers, 5 barques, 14 schooners, one sloop, two lightships, and 11 pilot boats—a total of 181 vessels of 150,624 tons.
Some of his noteworthy pilot boats are:
Westervelt built more vessels of medium tonnage than any builder of his time.
Some of his noteworthy sailing packets are:
  • The Constellation, built for the Robert Kermit Red Star Line—1,534 tons; 201 feet 10 inches x 41 feet x 28 feet ; 3 decks; draft 23 feet. This was the largest sailing vessel in the New York–Liverpool packet service at that time. The Constellation carried between 800 and 900 steerage passengers per passage on the lower deck.
  • The and the Waterloo were among the fastest on the North Atlantic route.
  • The, a packet sailing between New York and London on a regular schedule. She was built in 1846 in New York by Westervelt & MacKay and owned by E. E. Morgan. The ship is renowned because of the sea shanty "Clear the track", also called "Clear the track, let the bullgine run" or simply "Margaret Evans".

    Clipper ships

Westervelt also built clippers, for example Contest, Hornet, N.B. Palmer, Kathay, and. Clipper bows were distinctively narrow and heavily raked forward, allowing them to rapidly clip through the waves. The first archetypal clipper, with sharply raked stem, counter stern and square rig, was Ann McKim, built in Baltimore in 1833 by Kennard & Williamson. For some historians, the Rainbow was the first true "Yankee clipper". She was built in 1845 to a new design by the American naval architect John Willis Griffiths who is said to have based his design on the owner's previous ship Ann McKim. This type of vessel had been in demand for the China trade, but they were rather small. From the experience gained in the service of these first clippers, the builder soon found the changes that were necessary in the design for the building of larger and faster ships demanded in 1850 for the California, China and Australia clipper routes.
Image:hornetclippership.jpg|thumb|left|Hornet clipper ship card

Westervelt's clippers

The greatest New York clippers took shape in the yards of Westervelt and his friend William H. Webb. The N.B. Palmer was perhaps the most famous clipper built in the Westervelt yard, besides the Sweepstakes. In China she was known as "the Yacht", and with her nettings in the tops, brass guns, gold stripe, and her lavish entertainment on the Fourth of July and Washington's Birthday, she well deserved the title. A full-rigged model of the N.B. Palmer was exhibited at The Crystal Palace, London, in 1851, and attracted much attention as a fine example of the American clipper ship. In 1858–1859 the N.B. Palmer with her 28-year-old Captain Hingham had tied the record of 82 days for the Shanghai to New York run. The Sweepstakes, though black-hulled like other clippers, bore a stripe of gold, found on only a few others like the N.B. Palmer, and was praised for her sleek lines and speed. Sweepstakes gained celebrity for her record-breaking seventy-four-day run from New York to Bombay in 1857, and for making the trip between New York City and San Francisco in only 106 days.

The end of the clipper ship era

The economic boom spurred on by the California Gold Rush that had brought on the era of the clipper ships had turned to bust. All the secrets of building lofty clippers had been discovered and there were too many of them in existence. The dropping freight rates now gave no incentive to build any more. The San Francisco market was so saturated that many a disgusted ship captain dumped unwanted cargo overboard in the bay before sailing on to other ports. The diary of Robert Underhill, which recorded his 1856 travels on the Sweepstakes, revealed that Westervelt was also traveling on this voyage to San Francisco and the Orient. Underhill's entries made clear that Westervelt recognized the economic situation facing the port of New York and was seeking other possible venues for the family business.
By 1859 most of the extreme clippers had been dismasted more than once after half a decade or more of relentless hard driving. All were in a leaky condition, and most of their owners were by then in dire financial straits and could not afford expensive repairs to clippers that could not find a paying cargo to justify such expenses. Their masts were cut down, their yards shortened and their sails reduced as they were refitted and re-rigged with the new Howes rig to make them easier to handle by smaller crews. Other less fortunate clippers were discarded outright and sold for a pittance.

Steamboats and steamships

Some historians take the view that Westervelt built the first true American steamship that crossed the Atlantic to Europe. The Marquis Claude de Jouffroy d'Abbans from France invented and constructed the first steamboat, the so-called Palmipède, in 1774, and a second one, the steamboat, in 1783. Robert Fulton built the first commercially successful steam paddleship in the US, the in 1807, using a Boulton and Watt engine.
The is usually said to be the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. She was originally planned as a sailing ship but was changed into a steamer. Because she did not make the entire passage under steam, some dispute the Savannahs claim as the pioneering ocean steamer of the Atlantic. The British steamer City of Kingston and the, a Quebec-built craft, have been suggested as the first true steamers to make the crossing.
Three side-wheel steamers were also built in New York: the Lion and the Eagle, built in 1841 by Jacob Bell for the Spanish navy, and at about the same time the Kamschatka built by William H. Brown for the Russian navy. After the Savannah, there was no steamship owned or run by an American company that navigated the Atlantic Ocean to a port in Europe until 1847.
In 1846 began inquiries regarding the building of steamships for regularly scheduled transatlantic service. Edward Mills, a novice in the shipping business, led a syndicate that received the contract for mail delivery to Le Havre and Bremen for five years. With his associates C. H. Sand, Mortimer Livingston and John L. Stephens, he founded the Ocean Steam Navigation Company in May 1846. The company was unable to attract sufficient capital to carry out its original business plan to build four ships and instead ordered two ships from Westervelt & MacKay, Washington and Hermann. The Westervelt shipyard built the hull, and the engines were made by Stillman, Allen & Co. This was one of the less successful chapters in the history of the Westervelt shipyard. Both paddle steamers were said to be slow and had insufficient cargo space, and the government soon revoked the Le Havre portion of the mail contract because of the line's poor performance.
Westervelt and his associates later built very successful steamships. Through 1850 they built 8 of the 38 steamships constructed in New York until that year, including the Franklin and Havre, followed by and Rhode Island and Eagle and Morro Castle. Westervelt & Sons also built Foong Shuey, afterwards named Plymouth Rock, of 287 feet in length, with an engine from the Lake Erie steamer Plymouth Rock. This vessel made the voyage from New York to Singapore in 51 days. The SS Winfield Scott built in 1850 by Westervelt & MacKay, wrecked on Middle Anacapa Island in 1853, and has been the object of numerous salvage operations since; she currently rests underwater as part of the Channel Islands National Park and Marine Sanctuary. The wreck site of the Winfield Scott is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.