Old Salt Blog

Ships on the East River — Once a City of Ships

Sometime during the Civil War, the poet Walt Whitman wrote a poem about New York City, titled “The City of Ships.” The first stanzas begin:

City of ships!
(O the black ships! O the fierce ships!
O the beautiful, sharp-bow’d steam-ships and sail-ships!)
City of the world! (for all races are here;
All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)
City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!
City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and
out, with eddies and foam!

For a period of roughly forty years from the opening of the Erie Canal to the end of the Civil War, New York City was one of the leading shipping centers of the world. The North Atlantic packet trade was dominated by New York ship owners, sailing fine packet ships built in New York ships yards. The Rainbow, the first extreme clipper ship, was built in New York, sliding into the East River from Manhattan’s Corlear’s Hook. The Young American, Sea Witch, Challenge, Comet and scores of others, which followed, would set records both for speed and profits. New York merchants earned vast fortunes in the China trade and the California clipper trade.  Many New York institutions, from Columbia University to the Metropolitan Museum of Art were funded by money made in silk, porcelain and the opium trade.   New York ship designers and builders Webb, Griffiths, Steers and others, were, for a time, the world’s finest, building ships powered by sail and steam. In the Civil War, Ericsson built the revolutionary battleship USS Monitor in just over 100 days in shipyards and engine works in Manhattan and across the East River in Greenpoint.

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