A Morning With Valentine Fries, Shipbuilder – Fall 1985
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The Great Lakes… 84% of the continent’s fresh water… a different story in every drop.
By Donald Wood
Congress, in setting up the 1880 Census, ordered a series of special reports on economic matters. One of these reports is the only census of shipbuilding ever done.
Henry Hall, a business reporter and business manager of the New York Tribune, was appointed special agent for this survey. This narrative report is based on personal interviews with ship and boat builders across the country.
Some of Henry Hall’s personal notebooks still exist. They are in the possession of the Stephen Phillips Memorial Library of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine. The interviews recorded in these notebooks provide not only a record of the industry but also some insight into the character of the shipbuilders themselves.
What follows, by courtesy of the Stephen Phillips Memorial Library and its librarian, Charles H. Howard, is a delightful summer morning with Valentine Fries.
This is a transcription of field notes, and no correction of grammar has been attempted. The ship, in the stocks, was the Golden Age.
Henry Hall Notebook, Page 54
Schooner-barge GOLDEN AGE docked in the Cleveland harbor. Image courtesy of Alpena County George N. Fletcher Public Library.
Huron, Ohio; Aug. 10, 1881- The builder here is a tall, strong, energetic man who builds for himself. Twenty-five years ago, Valentine Fries left a small grocery store. Now he owns half a dozen or more of the finest vessels on the lakes, which he built himself. I found him, today, five miles from the village, with a ship on the stocks longer and larger than any seen on the Atlantic Coast. He was working in the shipyard, his trousers in his boots, his coat off, and driving six bulls and oxen with a big whip, hauling logs up to his sawmill, big timbers to the ship, and extracating planks for his carpenters to work.
The yard lies in a beautiful valley, with no houses in site [sic] except his own at the shipyard. He employs only about 15 men, and boards them at his own house. Sometimes 35 men. It is hard to get men out here, and keep them. The river is about as small as some of those Delaware creeks. It is possible to launch his vessels only by doing so sideways.
His propeller William Edwards cost $85,000 and required about 900,000 feet of oak and white pine, taking 225 tons of iron. It will carry 66,000 bushels. This propeller has proved so capable that it always tows one or two consorts. He built five schooners before the war. Since 1863 he has built three schooners, including the one under way, and one propeller. Eighteen seventy- three stopped building all along the lakes, and he stopped then, but began again about four years ago. It takes him about two years to build a vessel. He employs only a few men, buys his oak in the vicinity, saws it himself, and works along slowly until his ship is done. He pays $8 per thousand for the oak on the stump. Saving is estimated by him to cost $4.50 or $5. They charge neighbors $4.50 for sawing. There is a good deal of loss by waste and the discovery of hidden defects.
The ship now building is a four-masted schooner, 278’ keel X 39’ X 21½’ inside. Overhang at the stem about 8’ or 10’. The stem almost straight. Floor almost perfectly flat. Curve of the bow begins 28’ from stem. Bow very round and full. Frames made with three floors 16” X 6”. These floors shift joints. They are moulded 15” at the bilge and 14” just above the turn. Above the bilge the frames are double 6” siding X 2, and tapering to an 8” moulding. Spaced 22”, 158 frames in all, 8 cuts forward, 13 adaft. There are seven sister keelsons on each side of the main keelsons, the first one on each side being sided 10” and moulded 14”, all the others 8” X 14”. They are spaced about 30” from center to center. They run clear fore and aft. The flooring is of 2” hemlock put on in two thicknesses, the upper course lapping seams. It runs across the vessel. Next the center keelsons space is left for a limber streak. The center board runs from the 72nd to the 90th frame. It is about 30 feet long. Ceiling 7” at the bilge, diminishing to 6” at the planksheer. Planking 5” overall the outside. Both ceiling and planking edge bolted over the whole vessel, bolts about 4’ apart, and, of course, driven between the frames. Probably not edge bolted on the bottom, except the garboard streaks. Two of the out- side planking, 3½ and 7 feet from the planksheer, are wearing pieces, 8” board, and projecting 2” beyond the plank. Plank 6” wide topside, 8” below.
The beams are not in the vessel yet. I think she is to have two rows of beams, the lower one not decked over, but having a shelf secured to them. So she will have a pony engine for hoisting sails. Capacity 120,000 bushels. Register tonnage about 1700; 300 tons of iron in this ship.
The vessel all oak except decking and houses. Mr. Fries is impressed that oak plank costs $60 at Albany. That is all he has to pay here for black walnut. He says he is going to build no more wooden vessels. If he goes on, he will build of iron.
Bibliography
Report of the Shipbuilding Industry of the United States; Henry Hall, Special Agent. 10th U. S. Census, Vol. 8. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1884.
The Henry Hall Notebooks, Stephen Phillips Memorial Library of the Penobscot Marine Museum; Sears- port, Maine.
Read More of Inland Seas Online
About the Author: Donald Wood, a Toledo, Ohio, native, is a history major at Bowling Green State University. His family’s boating interests and his own research on the United States Army Corps of Engineers in the Great Lakes led him to the Henry Hall material.
