Of course, this was a development of a tendency on the part of the rural or country legislator of that time, which unfortunately has not entirely died out, to tax the great cities by special enactments for the benefit of the general revenue of the State.
As already stated, other causes had for some time been operating to weaken or shake Philadelphia’s supremacy in the Oriental trade, but the imposition of this tax, falling upon the heels of those causes, proved to be the last straw that broke the camel’s back. The result was that between 1825 and 1836 the great India and China traffic of Philadelphia almost disappeared. However, and notwithstanding the diversion of this trade to other ports, principally in New England, the marine architects and ship-builders of Philadelphia managed to retain the better part of the construction of vessels, which for many years afterward were employed by their successful rivals.
This somewhat extensive and discursive survey of the early colonial and post-Revolutionary conditions of Philadelphia ship-building seems requisite to a proper understanding of the state of the art and its accompaniments at the time when the subject of this Memoir first appeared upon the scene, and it also serves to indicate or explain what he had to do and the prior achievements which he had to equal or excel in his pursuit of professional success and eminence.
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Birth—Relatives—High School—Magnetic Observatory—Note on Davidson—Surf-boats for Mexican War—First Propeller Tug “Sampson”—Ship-builders of New York and Philadelphia—Clipper Ships, 1850—Zenith of American Carrying Trade—Crimean War—Cunard Line—“Libertador”—Armored Ships—Board Appointed to Take Charge of Appropriation to Build Them—Account of “New Ironsides”—The “Monitor”—Speech of Bishop Simpson—Sub-Department of Navy—Light-draught Monitors—Sinking of the First—Collapse of Sub-Department—Rebuilding of “Yazoo,” “Tunxis,” and others—“Miantonomah”—Origin of Fast Cruisers—Evolution of Modern Marine Engineering in this Country.
CHARLES HENRY CRAMP was born May 9, 1828. He was the eldest son of William Cramp and Sophia Miller. At the time of his birth his father was a master shipwright, not yet engaged in ship-building on his own account, or at least not the proprietor of a shipyard.