Unfortunately for Benjamin Isherwood, the trial run of the Allegheny when finally held in 1853, was pronounced “an absolute and unqualified failure,”12 and brought forth an investigation by a board of engineers. Not only were the boilers inadequate, it was discovered, but, in particular, the engines had not been adequately braced, and the resulting vibration had broken the bed plates in the bottom of the vessel. Criticized for not providing strong enough frames to compensate for the weakness of the Allegheny’s hull, Isherwood tartly replied that he had been asked only to build engines, not a hull to support them. Nevertheless, he must not have dismissed such criticism, for during the Civil War his engines were attacked for their excessively heavy frames.
After sponsoring a new type of steam boiler which would not only be 40 per cent more efficient with only half the volume of the usual type, but would also be so much less expensive that its cost new would be less than the scrap value of an old one, Isherwood turned again to the drawing board and produced a plan which excited interest throughout the American engineering profession.
A small iron steamer, the Water Witch, had been built in 1843 for the Navy and since then had undergone continued modifications until, by 1851, the original hull had been sacrificed for naval gunnery practice while the engines were placed in a new wooden hull. This second edition of the Water Witch was propelled by a new feathering paddle wheel, designed by Benjamin Isherwood. Using the combined movement of an eccentric and a number of joined levers, Isherwood designed his wheel so that the paddles would enter and pass through the water while always remaining in a vertical position, the object being to avoid the inefficiency of a common, radiating side-wheel whose paddles beat the water on descent and lifted it on ascent, thus losing power. The Isherwood wheel, Charles Stuart reported, “worked admirably, without jar or noise,”13 despite the complex structure of the paddles; and it moved the steamer through the water at a brisk eleven and three-fourths knots. Although this type of design had been used by the English and the French for several years, Isherwood’s feathering paddle wheel was the first used in the United States Navy.
It was not only in the mechanical end of his profession that Isherwood labored to make his name. Close to the administration of his corps, he soon involved himself in service politics, arguing strongly for the cause of the naval engineers. In February, 1852, Isherwood, representing the chief engineers, joined Stuart and First Assistant Engineer James W. King to send a petition to Congress requesting an increase in the size of the Engineer Corps. Stressing the utter inadequacy in the present number of engineers, the three insisted on the “strong probability” that in twenty years there would be no naval vessels “unpropelled, in whole or in part, by steam.” Necessity would compel the use of steam power for all marine war purposes; and to meet this inevitable growth of the steam Navy, they argued, there should be a commensurate growth in the corps of naval engineers.14 From this point, Isherwood’s role as spokesman was to flourish, just as the corps itself was to mushroom in size within a few years.
Like all young naval officers, Isherwood was supposed to have occasional tours of sea duty. In March, 1854, he was ordered to the USS Massachusetts, which departed in early July for a lengthy cruise in the Mediterranean. Within two weeks, Isherwood was no longer with his vessel, having been removed in “critical condition” shortly after the ship had put to sea. He had come down with a case of dysentery so severe that the medical officers and the captain hastily agreed that their Chief Engineer was “very dangerously ill,” and would not last in the “low latitudes.” Wasting no time, the Massachusetts put in at Fayal, in the Azores, where Isherwood might recover sufficiently to be shipped back to the United States.15
Once home, Isherwood took months to shake off his illness ; but by the following April, he was ready for his next assignment at sea. In September he received his orders; and reporting to Mr. Has-well’s “folly,” the San Jacinto, Isherwood embarked on a three-year cruise to the Far East which would be the last sea duty of his naval career.
The San Jacinto, with Commander Henry H. Bell as her captain, was to be the flagship for Commodore James Armstrong, the commander in chief of the East India Squadron. Rated as a second-class screw steamer, the San Jacinto carried a complement of eight engineers, under the charge of Isherwood, the only chief engineer aboard the vessel. The cruise, as it turned out, was to be far from routine, since, as flagship, the San Jacinto was to sail to the Strait of Malacca to pick up the American diplomat Townsend Harris to transport him first to Siam to negotiate a new trade treaty, and then to Japan, where he would become the first American consul general. Consequently, the ship carried a remarkable cargo of gifts to illustrate the manufacturing skill and ingenuity of the American people to the court of Siam.
The long, leisurely trip across the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean was particularly boring for the engineers and their fireroom crew because the Captain, unwilling to expend the coal, rarely used the engines. Boredom grew into active discomfort as the weeks went by; for Commodore Armstrong, in an apparent attempt to inspire greater obedience and respect on board, senselessly rationed water to the point where the crew refused to eat their rations, since cooking required too much water.
To the relief of many, the San Jacinto finally arrived at Simon’s Bay, South Africa, on January 12, 1856. While the ship remained in port for two weeks, Isherwood wasted no time in visiting all of the British steamships in the harbor to examine their machinery and to compile records of their performances for his ever growing files.
On March 21, the San Jacinto arrived at Pulau Penang, in the Strait of Malacca, where Townsend Harris came on board for the trip to Bangkok, where they arrived the middle of April. Greeted there by a small, sky-blue steamer, ambitiously called The Siamese Steam Fleet, the officers of the American warship accompanied Townsend Harris up the Me Nam River on his visit to the King of Siam. Surrounded by the trappings of oriental splendor and borne on sedan chairs past a remarkably heterogeneous palace guard which included twenty elephants, each with an ancient howitzer on its back, the dazzled Americans came before the august presence of the ruler before whom the Siamese nobility had already prostrated themselves.
Surfeited by royal hospitality and successful in their mission, the Americans left Siam on May 31, and sailed toward the East India Squadron headquarters at Hong Kong. After some engine trouble, the San Jacinto arrived there on June 12, to be greeted by a swarm of Chinese, including one enterprising and knowledgeable boatman who proudly sailed up to the American warship, flying from his masthead a large flag which read, “BUM BOAT. U.S. STEAMER SAN JACINTO.”16
Engine trouble continued to plague the ship, so that it was not until July 10 when the San Jacinto finally sailed for Japan to deliver Townsend Harris. Scarcely had the steamer traveled one mile, however, before the keys fastening the propeller to the shaft broke, and the whirling blades slipped back into the rudder, nearly taking the sternpost off the vessel. Towed to Whampoa, “a miserable, marsh-surrounded, pestilential anchorage,”17 the San Jacinto was in dry dock for two weeks before her engineers could finish their repairs. On August 10 the steamer once more set out for Japan, this time arriving, on August 22, at Shimoda, where Townsend Harris left the ship.
The San Jacinto returned to the naval depot at Shanghai in September, to find sporadic warfare going on between the Chinese and the English. In November, the crew participated in the bombardment of Chinese positions at Whampoa. Isherwood, however, was quite unable to participate; for, in July, he had, once again, come down with a severe case of chronic dysentery.
Exhibiting the classic symptoms of this disease—severe cramps, nausea, and a tongue “quite covered with a long, dirty-white fur”—Isherwood