Ships for the Seven Seas

Philadelphia Shipbuilding in the Age of Industrial Capitalism
Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4214-3685-2
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 12, 308 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 178 mm x 254 mm, Gewicht: 587 g

Reihe: Studies in Industry and Society

Thomas 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 Award

Originally 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 engineering, and craft skills evolved as iron and steel overtook wood as the basic construction material; and how changes in domestic and international trade and the rise of the American steel navy helped generate vessel contracts for local builders. Heinrich also examines the formation of the military-industrial complex in the context of naval contracting.

Contributing to current debates in business history, Ships for the Seven Seas explains how proprietary ownership and batch production strategies enabled late nineteenth-century builders to supply volatile markets with custom-built steamships. But large-scale naval construction in the 1920s eroded production flexibility, Heinrich argues, and since then, ill-conceived merchant marine policies and naval contracting procedures have brought about a structural crisis in American shipbuilding and the demise of the venerable Philadelphia shipyards.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Heinrich, Thomas

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Unternehmensgeschichte, Einzelne Branchen und Unternehmer
• Technische Wissenschaften Verkehrstechnik | Transportgewerbe Schiffbau, Seeverkehr
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Geschichte der Schifffahrt
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte Regionalgeschichte der USA: Einzelne Staaten, Städte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
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

Über Autor(innen)

Heinrich, Thomas
Thomas R. Heinrich is senior historian at the History Factory in Washington, D.C.

Thomas R. Heinrich is senior historian at the History Factory in Washington, D.C.