A Tale of Two Wilmington Ships
As the SS United States makes her final voyage this month from Philadelphia to be sunk off the Florida coast, my thoughts wandered to Hagley’s excellent shipbuilding collections. We hold records and photographs from companies like Sun Shipbuilding, Bethlehem Shipbuilding, and Wilmington’s very own Pusey & Jones. Some of this firm’s buildings are still intact along the north bank of the Christina River near the present-day intersection of Front and Lombard Streets. Viewed from the river, they provide a haunting reminder of Wilmington’s great shipbuilding past.
In 1848, Joshua L. Pusey (1820-1891) and John Jones (1818-1897) formed the partnership of Pusey & Jones with machine shops and a factory for the building of engines. In 1853, the firm entered the field of shipbuilding with the iron side-wheel steamer the Flora McDonald. That same year they also built the iron schooner Mahlon Betts, reputed to be the first iron sailing vessel built in the United States.
After the U.S. Civil War, Pusey & Jones found a robust market for river steamers in Central and South America. Between 1865 and 1900, approximately 110 steamers set off from Wilmington to destinations as far away as the Amazon. Many of these ships are captured in a Pusey & Jones photograph album here at Hagley.
The Queen of the Lake
One ship depicted in that album, the SS Victoria (see right), led a life of great adventure, if ships can be said to lead lives. Pictured below at the Pusey & Jones dock in Wilmington, she was a typical steamer of her day, with a length of 130 feet, commissioned by the firm Muñoz & Espriella. The SS Victoria steamed away in 1882 bound for her new home port of Greytown, Nicaragua. Not much, if anything, was heard in Wilmington from the vessel until 1930, 48 years after she had left.
In that year, U.S.M.C. Captain F. M. Howard, the Commandante of the Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua, Departamento de Chontales, in Juigalpa, wrote to Pusey & Jones in Wilmington with an interesting update on the vessel. As it turns out, in 1912, on one of her voyages up the San Juan River making call around Lake Nicaragua, she became land-locked in the lake after an earthquake hit. Boulders fell into the river, forming an impassable barrier at the river’s entrance out of the lake! Being stuck, the SS Victoria spent decades making endless rounds carrying passengers, mail, and cargo around the lake. Occasionally, she got swept up in whatever political tides came her way.
In the 1930 update, Captain Howard wrote of the SS Victoria:
“This sturdy, slow going, twin-screw craft is the Queen of the Lake and carries in her hull, bulkheads and railings the scars of many local revolutions and in the past has been the deciding issue in the outcome of more than one attempt to seize the balance of power in the large area of Nicaragua surrounding the lake. At present her arrival weekly at each lake port is the big event and the only one which will bring out the entire population. Her history in this republic has been long and interesting. At present one of her major missions is the transporting of personnel and material for the Nicaraguan Canal Survey Commission, which is a far cry from her first mission when she came up the San Juan River into the lake."
When searching for more evidence the SS Victoria, I found two stereographs from the Keystone View Company in the digital collections of the Library of Congress. They depict unidentified steamboats in Lake Nicaragua, both dated circa 1903. If you look closely at the one below, you can read the name of the vessel, and it's our very own SS Victoria - looking just as Howard described her in the lake - with a crowd around her at the dock and the beautiful volcano on Ometepe Island in the distance. I was unable to find out SS Victoria’s fate, but I like to imagine she is still the Queen of the Lake.
The Dragnet of Science
From land-locked lakes to the deepest, darkest oceans, another Pusey & Jones vessel, the Albatross, had adventures of her own. She launched in 1882, one of two ships that Pusey & Jones built for the U.S. Fisheries Commission. She was the first purpose-built vessel for exploring the ocean floor and its inhabitants. During her 39 years in service, the Albatross went all over the world conducting deep-sea soundings to map the ocean floor, reading water temperatures, and collecting animal specimens.
In another of Hagley’s photo albums from Pusey & Jones, the below picture of the Albatross is adorned with pasted newspaper clippings. They note some of the ship’s accomplishments after it left the company's drydock on the Christina. One covers a talk that Professor C. C. Nutting of the University of Iowa gave about the "strange creatures brought up by the dragnet of science." In it, Nutting is quoted as saying "Albatross was the most wonderful ship afloat for deep-sea soundings."
The Albatross and her discoveries routinely made headlines around the country during her long scientific career. While the Albatross ended her explorations in 1921, her impact endures. The specimens collected aboard her became part of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and today make up about 40% of their entire marine animal collections!
Pusey & Jones closed in 1960, and the firm’s photographic archive came to Hagley, where the Queen of the Lake and the Dragnet of Science still run full steam ahead.
Learn more about the Albatross on the Smithsonian's website. For information on Pusey & Jones, their operations, and their ships, visit the Hagley Finding Aids Database or reach out Reference Services staff at askhagley@hagley.org.
Angela Schad is the Head of Reference Services at Hagley Museum and Library