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User:Gatoclass/SB/David Brown (1832)

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History
NameDavid Brown
OwnerJames P. Allaire
OperatorNew York and Charleston Steam Packet Company
BuilderBrown & Bell (NYC)
Completed1832
In service1832 to about 1845
General characteristics
TypeSidewheel steamer
Tonnage190[1]
Length136 ft
Beam18 ft
Draft8 ft 3 in
Installed powerCrosshead steam engine

David Brown was a small American sidewheel steamboat built in New York in 1832. She was the first steamer to make regular passage between New York and Red Bank, New Jersey, and later became the first to operate between New York and Charleston, South Carolina.[2][3]

Design and construction

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David Brown was built in 1832 by Brown & Bell of New York for James P. Allaire, who intended to use her for the transport of goods and supplies between his bog iron foundry, Howell Works, in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and his marine steam engine plant, the Allaire Iron Works, in New York. The steamer was evidently named after David Brown, co-proprietor of Brown & Bell. David Brown's crosshead engine—an advance over previous engines of the type as it dispensed with the redundant flywheel[4]—was built by the Allaire Iron Works.[5] The vessel was a small, 190-ton, 136-foot long coal-burning sidewheel steamer.[2]

Service history

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After completion in 1832, David Brown began her career in her intended role, transporting freight between Allaire's depot at Red Bank, New Jersey and New York, becoming the first steamship to operate a regular service between the two localities.[6] Allaire and his business partners—who included future transport magnate Charles Morgan, then 37 years of age—had however been discussing the prospect of a passenger-and-freight steamship service between New York and Charleston, South Carolina, a route then totally controlled by the sailing packets. After only a few months' service to Red Bank, Allaire and his partners decided to try David Brown on the Charleston route.[2][3]

The experiment proved highly successful, and by April 1833 David Brown was making regular fortnightly passages between New York and Charleston. David Brown's owners soon added a second ship, the William Gibbons, to the route, the two vessels providing a regular weekly service from March 1834. By this time, the ships were returning profits in excess of 30%, or between $1,000 and $2,000, per voyage.[2][3]

In March of the following year, a third, larger steamship, Columbia, was added to the line, and in April David Brown was briefly transferred to a service between New York and Norfolk, Virginia. After three months, the steamer was returned to the Charleston route alongside the other two vessels,[3][7] enabling the proprietors to maintain an alternate biweekly service, with David Brown leaving New York for Charleston every second Wednesday.[7] In early 1836, David Brown was again briefly moved from the Charleston route, when for a three-month period she tested the economic potential of a service between Havana, Cuba and New Orleans.[8]

In spite of the early financial success of these Charleston steamers however, the small steamships of this time were underpowered, and ill-suited to oceangoing service, particularly around the rough seas of Cape Hatteras. David Brown and William Gibbons in particular were subject to frequent groundings, and occasional damage, as their engines often proved incapable of overcoming strong shoreward-blowing winds. In October 1836, William Gibbons ran aground and sank in the vicinity of New Inlet, South Carolina, and her owners, perhaps anxious to avoid a similar loss, sold David Brown to parties in the West Indies the same year.[9]

Allaire and his partners subsequently replaced William Gibbons and David Brown with two new steamers, but when one of them, Home, ran aground in 1837 with the loss of almost 100 lives, the New York to Charleston service was withdrawn due to loss of patronage.[10][11] It would be another ten years before a steamship service between New York and Charleston was attempted again.[12]

David Brown, meanwhile, remained in service in the West Indies for about another ten years. She was reportedly "worn out" by 1845.[3]

References

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  1. ^ Baughman, p. 239.
  2. ^ a b c d Baughman, p. 13.
  3. ^ a b c d e Morrison, p. 437.
  4. ^ Ridgely-Nevitt, pp. 74-75.
  5. ^ Morrison, p. 438.
  6. ^ Morrison, p. 180.
  7. ^ a b Baughman, pp. 15-16.
  8. ^ Baughman, p. 19.
  9. ^ Baughman, p. 16.
  10. ^ Morrison, pp. 437-438.
  11. ^ Baughman, pp. 16-18.
  12. ^ Morrison, p. 442.

Bibliography

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  • Baughman, James P. (1968): Charles Morgan and the Development of Southern Transportation, Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville.
  • Morrison, John H. (1903): History of American Steam Navigation, W. F. Sametz & Co., New York.
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