only struggled to find workers for his office, he had to strive hard to keep them there. Understandably, his young engineers chafed at their inability to be out on the firing line, but Isherwood turned a deaf ear to their requests for transfer. He detained them “without regard to . . . personal wishes or interest,” Isherwood explained, because he didn’t have the time to educate replacements; and once he had a trained, reliable man in his office, he was not about to let him go.29
The problems of the Navy were not always caused by the shortcomings of private contractors or the gyrations of the economy. If Isherwood indignantly complained about the unconscionable profit-seeking behavior of the builders, there were reasons enough for these men also to become impatient. The rapid advance in naval technology, spurred on by wartime demands, had its inevitable repercussions as builders struggled with new and ever changing designs. Much of the delay in building was the result of more than constructors’ procrastination; the fertile minds of both civilian and naval inventors made their contribution to the chaos. Assistant Secretary Fox, in a letter to Alban Stimers, dated February 25, 1864, indicated this influence on mounting costs and delays as he attacked “those horrible bills for additions and improvements and everlasting alterations, all of which have cursed our cause and our Department.” Doubling the contract price with such alterations, additions, and improvements was common, as Isherwood and Lenthall, supervising the design and the building of vessels, continually disrupted the progress of construction with new specifications and changed designs.
As the Civil War progressed, it became obvious that certain of the Navy Department bureaus were overloaded with work. In particular, the Bureau of Construction, Equipment, and Repairs was clogged with the excessive responsibilities for both the vessels and machinery of an expanding fleet. Steam engineering had suddenly become paramount, and expenditures in this area were soon to exceed any other in the Navy Department. “Steam has become such an indispensable element in naval warfare,” Gideon Welles reported, March 25, 1862, in a letter to the House Committee on Naval Affairs, “that naval vessels propelled by sails only, are considered useless for war purposes.” The last sailing vessel for the Navy, the Constellation, had been completed in 1855, and soon the Navy would be “exclusively a steam navy,” and a very large one.30
To meet the demands for a more efficient department, Welles combined with Senator James W. Grimes, of Iowa, in early 1862, to plan a Navy reorganization which would create three new bureaus, while removing the excessive work load from the existing ones. Their plan, which became law on July 5, 1862, broke apart Lenthall’s bureau, leaving him the function of construction and repair, placing the equipment duties into a new Bureau of Equipment and Recruiting, and, in particular, creating a new Bureau of Steam Engineering. The tenure of bureau chiefs changed from an indefinite status, subject to the pleasure of the President, to a regular four-year term. Salary would be $3,500, in lieu of regular Navy pay for those bureau chiefs who were naval officers.
The new steam engineering bureau was to have six clerical assistants to the chief—two clerks, two draftsmen, a messenger, and a laborer—with salaries high enough, it was hoped, to attract civilians to fill the positions. Beating down an attempt to open up the position of bureau chief to civilians, Grimes managed to restrict the position to chief engineers in the Navy, a move which was greeted with enthusiasm by the corps of naval engineers, but met with a civilian reaction which presaged trouble for the future.
Many naval engineers, confused by the new structure of the department, thought that the chief of the bureau and the Engineer in Chief would be separate positions, requiring two men. Several of the senior chief engineers thus eyed the new office with interest, quietly marshaling support for their cause, while publicly disclaiming their own ambition. This was not what the Secretary of the Navy had intended. In creating the new bureau, Welles had expected the Engineer in Chief simply to switch hats, continuing his former duties without interruption. On Welles’s advice, President Lincoln nominated Isherwood to be the new bureau chief, on July 11, 1862. At the same time, he nominated John Lenthall to continue his work as chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair.
The nominations went routinely to the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, but six days later Isherwood and Lenthall realized they might be in trouble as their nominations were tabled and the Committee on Naval Affairs was discharged from further consideration of the matter. Although the Senate had not confirmed the presidential nomination, Welles sent Isherwood his commission as bureau chief as of July 23. The Engineer in Chief gratefully accepted it, giving Welles his thanks “for this continued evidence of the great confidence and trust you have reposed in me; and to assure you that no efforts will be wanting on my part to justify your selection.”31 In a situation like this, the support of his superior was no small matter.
As the months went by, Isherwood served as bureau chief, but there was no further move in the Senate to act on his nomination. Finally, on December 1, Lincoln again nominated Isherwood and Lenthall as bureau chiefs. After the nominations went to the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, there was a period of bitter debate concerning the merits of the two men. On December 22, James W. Grimes presented to the Senate three “memorials of proprietors of the principal marine-engine building establishments in the country,” along with one from engineers in the Navy, all asking for the confirmation of Isherwood as bureau chief.32 At the same time there was fierce opposition, as disgruntled contractors, administration opponents, and professional rivals sought the removal of both Isherwood and Lenthall. By the end of January there was still no resolution of the issue. Welles wrote to his son Edgar that the Senate refused to confirm the two men and that he “would not be surprised if matters go hard with Isherwood,” because of the sharp criticism of the engines he had designed and had placed in government vessels.33
There were many influential line officers who, despite their absence from Washington, could wield powerful influence against both Isherwood and Lenthall. Reflecting their attitude was a colorful diatribe by David D. Porter, which, though written during the previous year, indicated the distrust and contempt felt by line officers for the bureau chiefs.
“That man Lenthall,” fumed Porter, “has been an incubus upon the Navy for the last ten years.” Convinced that the naval constructor was the tool of Stephen Mallory, former chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee and now secretary of the Confederate Navy, Porter claimed that Lenthall and Mallory had plotted to “throw as much of the Navy as possible into the hands of traitors” in early 1861. Lenthall was responsible for keeping the Merrimack at Norfolk, Porter asserted in a letter to Gustavus Fox, July 5, 1861; for as a civilian, he tried to get the Navy yards out of the control of naval officers and into the hands of civilians, so that at the proper time he could hand over the yards to the South.34
Declining to assail the Engineer in Chief as a traitor, Porter contented himself in the same letter to Gustavus Fox, with a contemptuous description of “that little fellow Isherwood who will take all the signs in Algebra to prove how many ten penny nails it will take to shingle a bird’s nest, who will bring out more equations to prove that a pound of water can be so expanded that it will make a ship go 25 miles an hour, and yet he can’t make an Engine.” With a convenient inaccuracy of recollection, Porter related that Isherwood had been “Engineer with me 9 months; I took him out of the Engine Room for incapacity, [but] he may have improved since. . . .”35
Porter, in his unique way, mirrored the line officers’ frustration with a Navy Department that, to them, seemed unable to meet their needs and appeared to disregard or depreciate their views. In the midst of battle, they resented those men back in Washington who appeared indifferent to their problems which, the officers insisted, should be of paramount importance in the conduct of the war. The never-ending accumulation of data for Isherwood, continuing on vessels even as they came under fire, drove commanding officers to distraction. They had no patience for work which seemed to bear no relation to the actual operation of their vessels. Isherwood’s only duty and responsibility, they believed, was to produce engines which would never break down and engineers who would never make mistakes. As neither of these demands would ever be wholly
