Ships for the seven seas : Philadelphia shipbuilding in the age of industrial capitalism, 1860-1900 / Thomas R. Heinrich.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Microformat

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Heinrich, Thomas R., 1963-

Contributor:

Licht, Walter, 1946- advisor.

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Penn dissertations--American history.

American history--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

Penn dissertations--American history.

American history--Penn dissertations.

Physical Description:

xi, 405 leaves : illustrations ; 29 cm

Production:

1993.

Summary:

During the second half of the nineteenth century, Philadelphia became America's leading center of metal steamship construction. The city's diverse manufacturing basis and its geographical location near the centers of the Pennsylvania iron industry facilitated the introduction of new marine technologies like steam engines and iron hulls from the 1850s to the 1870s. Until the 1890s the shipyards were owned and managed by proprietary entrepreneurs who built vessels for corporately-owned steamship lines. The two most important Philadelphia shipyards of this time, William Cramp & Sons and Neafie & Levy, employed thousands of skilled craftworkers in the construction of a wide range of metal steamships. At the end of the nineteenth century, the industry specialized in naval construction, replaced proprietary with corporate forms of business organization, and labor-intensive with capital-intensive production. When the shipyards became a component of the military-industrial complex, they lost their erstwhile production flexibility and started to decline.

Notes:

Supervisor: Walter Licht.

Thesis (Ph.D. in American History) -- Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, 1993.

Includes bibliography.

Local Notes:

University Microfilms order no.: 93-31788.

OCLC:

244970107