The navy yard at Boston, United States as described by Enoch Cobb Wines in 1838

Although men and ships are of the most importance for a navy, you still need facilities like yards, harbours and so on. So if you do research dealing with the history and/or strength of a navy you have to do research dealing with the available facilities. One of the sources you can use, although in fact an unofficial, is that of the accounts of journeys made by travellers. Sometimes they visited for instance a yard just of pure personal interest, sometimes for their work or function. Enoch Cobb Wines visited in 1838 the navy yard at Boston, USA and published his description dealing with his visit to this city. He paid especially attention to the rope walk and the dry dock.

P. 109: “The Navy Yard here is as fine as any in the United States; and the stranger who leaves Boston without seeing it, will miss one of the greatest attractions of the place. It contains at least one object of interest that belongs to no other similar establishment in the country ; I mean the Rope-walk. It is the only article of the kind in Uncle Sam’s pos-

p. 110: session, and has been in operation but five months. It is a granite edifice, thirteen hundred feet long, three stories high at one end, and slated so as to be completely fire-proof. The various operations performed upon the hemp are hatcheling, spinning, tarring the strands, and twisting them into ropes. The machinery by which these operations are performed, is moved by two steam engines, and is of the most perfect and beautiful kind ; and the operations themselves are highly interesting. The hemp first undergoes three hatchelings. It is then passed through the spinning machines, of which there are at present forty, and an equal number is to be added. One hand can tend ten of these machines at the same time. After this comes a most curious and interesting process. It is tarring the yarns. They are passed, more than one hundred and fifty at a time, through a long trough filled with tar, heated to two hundred and ten degrees. In emerging from this trough, they are drawn through a little contrivance, where they are subjected to a pressure so great that, if you afterwards press them between your fingers, scarcely enough tar adheres to produce any sensible stickiness. Finally, they go into the walk, and are twisted into ropes of every conceivable size. What strikes one most agreeably here, and excites the highest admiration, is the perfect finish of both the machinery and its products. About three hundred thousand tons of hemp will be worked up here

p. 511”the present season. The whole Navy may he supplied from this establishment, and with an article greatly superior to any hitherto in the market. The Dry Dock in this Yard is a splendid work. I will frankly confess to you that, before I saw it, I had little conception of what a Dry Dock is. I have not space for a description, and if I had, no description can give an adequate idea of the work. It is constructed of huge blocks of Quincy granite, and answers better than any thing else I have seen to my ideas of the solidity, massiveness, and durability of the ancient Egyptian masonry. It is three hundred and forty-one feet in length, eighty in breadth, and thirty in depth; and is capable of admitting the largest ship in our Navy. There are three vessels now on the stocks in this yard; two line of battle ships, the Virginia and the Vermont, and one frigate, the Cumberland. The officers' quarters are delightful places. Besides the three ship-houses and the Rope-walk, the yard has several massive granite buildings for storage, for the manufacture of machinery, &c. &c. We were much indebted to the politeness of Captain Hixon, who conducted us through the Yard, and shewed us every thing of interest it contains.”

Source

E.C. Wines. Trip to Boston in a series of letters to the editor of the United States Gazette. Boston, 1838.