UNH’s Jeffrey Bolster rethinks our shamed maritime history

From the days when Native Americans paddled along the Piscataqua River and out to the Isles of Shoals on birch bark canoes, up through World War II, when the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was churning out submarines faster than any other shipyard in the world, the Seacoast has enjoyed a rich culture around the construction of sea vessels. To this day, Portsmouth’s working seaport remains a vital part of the regional economy and identity.

But American maritime history, which has its roots in northern New England, has long been rife with inaccuracies. That’s according to Portsmouth resident Jeffrey Bolster, who co-authored the recent book, “The Way of the Ship: America’s Maritime History Reenvisioned, 1600-2000.” According to Bolster, an associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, the canonical view of the nation’s maritime history has focused almost exclusively on oceanic ships, and not enough on the domestic ships that have crisscrossed the country’s lakes, rivers and coastlines for centuries. The historical focus on deep water ships and the U.S. Merchant Marine belies the fact that America’s shipping trade has thrived for centuries in the country’s interior.

“In other words, the real story of waterborne commerce in America is a story of Americans trading with each other, of Americans using ships and tugs and barges to trade with each other,” Bolster said.

Even more significant in Bolster’s mind is the revelation that the most important shipping developments of the last half-century have come from the United States—a nation that most historians have accused of losing its deep maritime history long ago. Bolster’s new book shifts the perspective on American shipbuilding and attempts to set the record straight. “It tells a much more compelling story, I think a richer story, that conforms better to the evidence,” he said.

Traditional accounts of America’s shipping history recount a major fall from grace. Historians agree that America’s early shipping industry, established while under British rule, helped define the country. That industry continued to prosper through the middle of the 19th century, which was considered the heyday of American clipper ships, whaling ships and various cargo ships. In the mid-1800s, America’s state-of-the-art shipbuilding could not be surpassed.

But, after the Civil War, England and other European countries advanced their shipbuilding technology, switching to vessels with iron bodies and steam engines, while the United States clung to increasingly outdated wooden sailing ships. It was not until the two World Wars that the United States caught up, pouring huge resources into construction of modern ships that could carry fighters across both oceans. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of those ships were built in places like Portsmouth, Exeter, Durham and southern Maine, Bolster said.

“And so the story in the 20th century is that while in general the American shipbuilding industry—which, of course, has long, deep roots in Portsmouth—could not compete in a peacetime economy against cheaper more efficient ships from elsewhere, during the two moments of crisis in the 20th century, American ships largely saved the free world,” Bolster said.

The idea that the U.S. Merchant Marine fell apart after its ascendancy in the 18th and early-19th centuries is a source of shame to maritime historians. But, if those historians shifted their gaze a little, they would find that American shipping continued to thrive even after its Merchant Marine shrank. Between 1820 and 1994, the United States shipped more cargo internally than it did overseas, Bolster said. Even as foreign ships dominated the deep sea, American ships were bustling across a vast network of inland and coastal waters.  

“The first point that we really want to make in this book, among others, is that Americans have a long and involved history with shipping that has persisted to this day, but it’s been an internal history of coastwise shipping, Great Lakes and river shipping, rather than deep sea,” Bolster said.

Later in the book, the authors point out that the most significant shipping developments that have emerged since World War II have all come from the United States.

“If you look at the way that global shipping has changed in the last 50 years, the three biggest innovations were all developed by Americans,” Bolster said.

The first of those three innovations came from an American named Daniel Ludwick, who is responsible for the shift to “gigantism.” Ludwick pioneered the development of massive tankers, some of them up to a quarter-mile long, to carry crude oil around the globe. The second big innovation came from another American named Malcolm McLean, who is responsible for “containerization.” McLean developed the process of transporting intermodal cargo in massive container ships, some too large to fit through the Panama Canal. The final major shipping development came in 1970, when Ted Arison established the world’s first cruise ship company in Miami. Today, that company is called Carnival Cruise Lines, and Ted Arison’s son Micky is one of the wealthiest people in the nation. 

Although most of the ships used to execute these innovations are not built in the United States and are staffed by foreign crews, they all came from the minds of Americans. And the impact of these three developments is inescapable in modern American society. Oil shipped in ultra-large crude carriers is used to heat homes and businesses and power vehicles. Container ships pick up clothing, electronics, auto parts and other goods that are cheaply manufactured overseas and carry them to U.S. ports, where they are delivered directly to warehouses and retail outlets in the same freight containers into which they were originally packed. And cruises are nice, too. 

“While most of those ships do not fly the American flag … Nevertheless, Americans have been really involved in the shipping business,” Bolster said.

From the beginning, the Seacoast has played a crucial role in the country’s shipping industry. Bolster previously authored 2002’s “Cross-Grained and Wily Waters: A Guide to the Piscataqua Maritime Region,” documenting the area’s many historic sites. Workers from Portsmouth, Durham, Dover, Kittery, Eliot and South Berwick have been involved in shipbuilding since colonial times. Shipyards could once be found up and down the Seacoast, including several in Portsmouth, at the city’s South End and at North Mill Pond. Clipper ships that held world speed records in the mid-19th century were built on the Piscataqua. Still more shipbuilding sites were located in nearby Boston and elsewhere in Maine.

“Before the Civil War, the New England states, especially the northern New England states of Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire, unquestionably dominated the colonial or national industry,” Bolster said.

After the Civil War, as the United States gradually began to catch up with European technology, the nation’s shipbuilding capitol shifted to Philadelphia. But the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and other sites in the Piscataqua region remained important through World War II. As recently as 25 years ago, schooners and lobster boats were still being built in Portsmouth.
But not anymore. The Naval Shipyard is now used to repair submarines rather than build new ones, and the rest of the region has followed a similar path.

“Portsmouth has been reverted to repair, both of yachts and fishing boats and Naval ships, as opposed to new construction,” Bolster said. “Honestly, at this point, that centuries-long tradition of new vessel construction is pretty dormant in the Piscataqua region, really for the first time in almost 400 years.”

Portsmouth still has a working port that hosts 325 to 350 large ships per year, according to Bolster. The Port of New Hampshire brings in oil, gypsum, salt, electric cables and natural gas, and takes out scrap metal and deep fat fryer waste, among other things. The port has a huge economic multiplier effect on the region, and it contributes to Portsmouth’s historic identity. The city’s working seaport and 18th century architecture have made it a top tourist destination in southern New Hampshire.

“If you took that working waterfront out of there and there was nothing but condominiums and office buildings and parking lots on that waterfront, it would change the nature of the town dramatically,” Bolster said. “All of us get a lot out of this working seaport.”

Although wars have affected the U.S. shipbuilding industry immensely in the past, the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have not altered the Piscataqua region’s shipping practices much, “except for the ridiculous emphasis on national security that has been the result of the September 11 attacks and the paranoia that now exists,” Bolster said. That paranoia has increased the policing presence at the port, which can be chilling for recreational boaters, but the region’s waters have been otherwise unaffected. “In this particular war, the Iraq debacle, there hasn’t been any kind of spillover to the port at all,” Bolster said.
Portsmouth could experience a miniature shipbuilding renaissance within the next couple of years. The Gundalow Company recently announced that it will build a new replica gundalow at Strawbery Banke to provide educational field trips on the Piscataqua River. The Gundalow Company already operates the world’s only remaining gundalow, Captain Edward H. Adams, which was built at Strawbery Banke in 1982, but that vessel is not certified to carry passengers. The new gundalow will be certified by the U.S. Coast Guard to carry up to 40 passengers.

“That would be the renaissance, the resurgence of Portsmouth shipbuilding,” Bolster said.

“The Way of the Ship,” was co-authored by historians Alex Roland of Duke University and Alexander Keyssar of Harvard University and was published earlier this year by John Wiley & Sons. The book is part of a series sponsored by the American Maritime History Project. Bolster is currently on sabbatical leave from UNH and is already at work on his next project, a book about the environmental history of the northwest Atlantic. He plans to have a manuscript finished by September 2009.