{"id":14226,"date":"2020-06-16T11:40:29","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T15:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=14226"},"modified":"2020-07-01T09:40:58","modified_gmt":"2020-07-01T13:40:58","slug":"legendary-lifting-at-cramps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/legendary-lifting-at-cramps\/","title":{"rendered":"Legendary Lifting at Cramp\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cramp’s Derrick at Chestnut Street Pier, May 24, 1898 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe cornerstone of Philadelphia\u2019s Iron Age,\u201d wrote Nathaniel Burt and Wallace E. Davies in a remarkable chapter on the city\u2019s industrialization, consisted of three companies: the Pennsylvania Railroad, Baldwin Locomotive Works and Cramp Shipbuilding Company.<\/p>\n

Today we focus on the last, a company formed in the 1840s that employed 5,600 by the mid-1890s at its 31-acre shipyard in Port Richmond. According to The Scientific American<\/em>, Cramp had \u201csome 282 vessels\u201d to its credit by the end of 1894 and would, by the time of its final closing after World War II, have 500.<\/p>\n

Passenger steamers were Cramp\u2019s bread and butter. They built 112 from the Albatross<\/em> in 1849 to the Evangeline<\/em> in 1927.\u00a0 The latter was known for its service on the Clyde line\u2019s Miami-Havana service. Another, the Great Northern<\/em>, set speed records from Honolulu to San Francisco and for a round trip crossing of the Atlantic: 14 days, 4 hours, 30 minutes.<\/p>\n

Cramp\u2019s fast ships attracted clients from around the world to Port Richmond. The Zabiaka<\/em>, built in 1880 as part of an order for the Imperial Russian Navy, would be clocked as \u201cthe fastest cruiser in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vessels for another client, \u00a0the United States Navy, included 65 destroyers from the Smith<\/em> in 1909 to the Paul Jones<\/em> in 1920; 31 cruisers from the Chattanooga<\/em> in 1864 to the Youngstown<\/em> in the 1940s; 23 submarines from Thrasher<\/em> in 1912 to Wolfish<\/em> in the 1940s and 22 battleships \u2013 from the Indiana<\/em> and the Massachusetts<\/em> in 1893 to the Wyoming<\/em> in 1911.<\/p>\n

Two dozen cargo steamers, could\u2014and often did\u2014serve civilian or<\/em> military purposes. In 1907, Cramp launched the 375\u2019 Massachusetts<\/em> for the New England Navigation Company. Through a series of owners and name changes, this ship became the Ogala<\/em> with the U.S. Navy\u2019s the Mine Division. The Ogala<\/em>\u00a0happened to be stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It was sunk and subsequently put back into service.<\/p>\n

In 1874, Cramp launched ten, 240-foot-long colliers\u2014coal carriers\u2014including six for the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company (appropriately named Reading, Harrisburg, Lancaster, Williamsport, Allentown and Pottsville). <\/em>Over time, Cramp produced 58 barges, 27 tugboats, seven tankers, a handful of ice boats and, of course, ferryboats.<\/p>\n

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Steam Crane Atlas placing a 70-ton boiler in the hold of Armor Cruiser New York.<\/em> “The work of raising the boiler, carrying it a distance of 80 feet and lowering it into position was accomplished in the remarkably short time of twenty-six minutes.”\u00a0Scientific American<\/em>, December 29, 1894. (GoogleBooks)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cramp also made a tool that helped modernize scaled-up shipbuilding. This \u201cmonster floating derrick,\u201d the “largest piece of machinery of its kind in the world\u201d staked its claim to \u201csome really remarkable performances\u201d handling with dispatch the heaviest boilers and canon, up to 125 tons. The four boilers of the battleship Indiana<\/em>, each weighing 72 tons, were choreographed from wharf to vessel in half a day. The 80-ton boiler for the Navy\u2019s cruiser Minneapolis<\/em> was moved into position, more than 100 feet, in 26 minutes.<\/p>\n

The \u201clifting and traversing gear\u201d of this floating 116-foot tall derrick, its \u201cboom, mast, braces, collars, helmet, and all its lifting and traversing gear\u2026 [were] formed of the toughest steel possible.\u201d Its iron pontoon measured 73-by 62-feet by 13-feet deep. The diameter of this derrick\u2019s distinctive cone: 40 feet at the base. This derrick could lift \u201cwith ease the heaviest boiler constructed\u201d\u2014as much as 125 tons.<\/p>\n

What to name a giant of such strength and speed? Cramp turned to ancient mythology and chose the name of the god responsible for nothing less than holding up the celestial heavens. Their machine at the heart of Philadelphia\u2019s Iron Age would be known as Atlas<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[Sources: Nathaniel Burt and Wallace E. Davies, \u201cThe Iron Age, 1876-1905,\u201d in Russell Weigley,\u00a0Philadelphia: A 300 Year History<\/em>\u00a0(W. W. Norton & Company, 1982)]; Farr, Gail E., and Brett F. Bostwick with the assistance of Merville Willis.\u00a0\u00a0Shipbuilding at Cramp & Sons: A History and Guide to Collections of the William Cramp & Sons Ship and engine Building Company (1830-1927) and the Cramp Shipbuilding Company ((1941-46) of Philadelphia.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Philadelphia: Philadelphia Maritime Museum, 1991. (pdf<\/a><\/em>); Jeffery M. Dorwart, Shipbuilding and Shipyards<\/a>, The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia<\/em>; The Cramp Ship Yards, Scientific American<\/em>, (New York) December 29, 1894, 62, no. 26; Millington Miller. \u201cCramp\u2019s Shipyard and the New United States Navy<\/a>\u201d, Frank Lesley\u2019s Popular Monthly<\/em>, \u00a0vol. 38, July to December 1894; \u201cBuilding War-ships at Cramps,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, June 17, 1894; \u201cWarships Nearly Finished,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, Aug 3, 1900; Waldon Fawcett, \u201cMechanical Appliances in Modem Shipbuilding<\/a>,\u201d Technical World<\/em>, vol. 2, no. 1 September 1894; Waldon Fawcett, \u201cFloating Cranes Steel and Iron<\/a>,\u201d American Manufacturer and Iron World, vol. 69, No. 18, October 31,\u00a0 1901.]<\/span><\/p>\n

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William Cramp and Sons Ship and Engine Building Company. August 15, 1917 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe cornerstone of Philadelphia\u2019s Iron Age,\u201d wrote Nathaniel Burt and Wallace E. Davies in a remarkable chapter on the city\u2019s industrialization, consisted of three companies: the Pennsylvania Railroad, Baldwin Locomotive Works and Cramp Shipbuilding Company. Today we focus on the last, a company formed in the 1840s that employed 5,600 by the mid-1890s at its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}