- Joined
- Dec 1, 2016
- Messages
- 5,702
- Points
- 728
MIT Museum Homepage | MIT Museum
The museum strives to be a place where science, technology, the humanities, and the arts are all used to frame and reframe problems, enabling it to address the compelling questions of our time in new ways.
mitmuseum.mit.edu
Nautical
Among the oldest marine technology archives in the United States, the Francis Russell Hart Nautical Collections document marine design and shipbuilding.
The Francis Russell Hart Nautical Collections were created in 1921 by the MIT Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering for the purpose of teaching. Comprised of 18 primary collections, they form one of the most extensive collections related to naval architecture, marine engineering and construction of American vessels in the world. Donated by individuals and other entities, the collections are comprised of approximately 120,000 plans, 200,000 photographic, film, audio-visual and media elements, 75,000 (folder level) business or technical records, 5,000 marine art objects, a 3,000 volume library and 1,500 ship models.
Items date from late nineteenth and twentieth century New England, with the oldest from the sixteenth century. Of note are collections that document iron and steel shipbuilding in metropolitan Boston from 1853 to 1986, the last great chapter in this region's 350-year history of shipbuilding. This includes the largest of three major twentieth century shipbuilding archives documenting the history of Bethlehem Steel's shipbuilding work. (The others are at the Hagley Museum and Library and the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park.) Most of the material in these collections is not duplicated in federal archives or elsewhere.
John G. Alden Collection
Design and corporate archives from yacht designer John G. Alden
John G. Alden (1884-1962) was a Boston-based naval architect known for designing sailing yachts that were comfortable, seakindly, and quick. Alden started his career as an apprentice to yacht designer B.B. Crowninshield, who designed some of Gloucester’s racing fishing schooners, and supplemented with work with a few courses in Naval Architecture at MIT. He started his own yacht design business in 1909, which became famous in the 1920s after a few of Alden’s vessels won races to Bermuda. Sailing yachts made up most of the firm’s business, though Alden also drew plans for commercial and military vessels in the 1940s and 1950s. Alden sold the business to some of his employees after World War II. The firm was later sold again to Tillotsen Holdings, but maintained the same address and design philosophy until it closed for good in 2008.
The Alden collection contains nearly complete design records and some business papers from the John G. Alden Design Co. from its incorporation in 1909 to dissolution in 2008. Design records include complete sets of plans, offsets, specifications, contracts, and lists of builder-supplied equipment for each yacht design produced. Similar material exists for merchant and military vessels designed by the Alden firm; these also often include calculations and other preliminary design work. Photographs of many completed vessels are included in the collection, also organized by design number. Company records are limited, but include records of expenses and profits, employees, general specifications, and lists of plans published during the Alden firm’s lifetime
Atlantic Works Collection
Plans, archives, and photographs from a ship- and engine-building company in East Boston.
The Atlantic Works was a major ship- and engine-building and repair plant in East Boston, Massachusetts from 1853 to the early 1950s. In its first two decades, the firm delivered built engines and, occasionally, ships for Russian, Egyptian, Paraguayan, Hawaiian, and American owners, as well as the United States Navy. Starting in 1869, Atlantic Works acquired neighboring properties and built dry docks and marine railways along the waterfront, increasing its capacity to build and repair ships and engines. The firm was acquired by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation in 1928, and operated until the early 1950s.
The Atlantic Works Collection consists of an large group ship plans, along with some limited photographic and archival material. The plans, largely unprocessed, are roughly cataloged by contract number. The archives include indexed tissue-paper notebooks (from 1879 to 1907, with many gaps) that feature weight and cost calculations, sketches of parts, test results, specifications and other material. Products range from steamer propellers and boilers to locomotive engines and engines for running factory belts. Separately, folders include material from about 1892 to 1920, including maritime calculations, engine test results, lists of orders, blueprints and other material, including 1899 cyanotypes of the steamer Ransom B. Fuller. Photographs depict working scenes from the plant.
William A. Baker Collection
Ship plans, research and design notes, slides, scrapbooks, and other material from naval architect and maritime historian William A. Baker.
Naval architect and maritime historian William A. Baker graduated from MIT’s Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering in 1934. For the the next thirty years, he worked for the Bethlehem Steel Shipbuilding Corporation in Quincy, Massachusetts and San Francisco for the next thirty years before returning to MIT as a lecturer and curator for the Hart Nautical Museum in 1963. Baker had a particular interest in reconstructing designs of English colonial-era vessels; the Mayflower II is among the most famous of his reconstructions afloat today.
The William A. Baker collection contains material from across William A. Baker’s career, from his time as a student at MIT to his death in 1981. The bulk of the material are plans, notes, and research related to ship design, including both Baker’s own reconstructions of historic vessels, ships he worked on at Bethlehem Steel, and plans historic iron and steel vessels he collected for reference. The collection also includes transcripts of papers and presentations, research notes, and an extensive collection of slides documenting Baker’s design work, travel abroad, and sailing adventures at home.
Bethlehem Steel Fore River Shipyard Records
Plans, business records, and photographs from a major twentieth century commercial and naval shipyard.
Bethlehem Steel’s Fore River Shipyard was founded in 1884 by Thomas A. Watson, who previously worked with Alexander Graham Bell on telephone technology, as the Fore River Engine Company. The firm started building steel ships in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1896 and was purchased by Bethlehem Steel in 1913. It went on to become one of the largest commercial and military shipyards on the East Coast, producing destroyers, battleships, aircraft carriers, submarines, and merchant ships. Due to its proximity to MIT, the yard also provided practical field trips to MIT’s Naval Architecture students for decades. It was sold to General Dynamics in 1964, and closed for good in 1986.
Scope and content:
In 1980, Bethlehem Steel Corporation donated a large collection of plans, photographs, and some archival material from the Fore River Shipyard to MIT. Approximately 13,000 plans and drawings detail commercial and military ships built between 1900 and 1937, augmented by an additional 5,000 architectural and engineering plans for the shipyard buildings. Archival material deals with the yard’s business before World War I. The photographs, many of them glass plate negatives, cover the yard’s history from the 1890s to 1963. The yard’s activities after 1964 are documented separately in the General Dynamics Collection.
Arthur Binney Collection
Ship and yacht design archives of Arthur C. Binney and Edward C. Burgess
Arthur C. Binney was an MIT graduate and naval architect who worked alongside some of the most prominent yacht designers of the late nineteenth century. Binney (1865-1922) graduated from MIT’s industry-focused School of Mechanic Arts in 1883. In 1888, he began working for yacht designer Edward Burgess, head of a firm that had produced three consecutive America’s Cup winners. Binney became a partner in the firm after Burgess’s death in 1891, eventually running the business on his own. Binney’s designs included fishing and racing schooners as well as steam and motor vessels.
This collection contains approximately 380 drawings that span Arthur C. Binney’s design career. The earliest material dates from his work with Edward C. Burgess. About ten percent of the drawings are by Burgess, including plans for America’s Cup winners Puritan, Mayflower and Volunteer. The bulk of Binney’s own designs are for yachts, and a majority of the surviving plans are for interior details.
Arthur H. Clark Collection
Prints, paintings, plans, and half models documenting European and American ship design in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
Arthur H. Clark (1841-1922) was a ship captain, marine insurance representative, and collector of maritime art and ship design materials. Son of a Boston merchant and ship owner, Clark went to sea as a teenager and quickly worked his way to command. In addition to captaining merchant sailing ships and steamers along the American and Chinese coasts, Clark was also a yachtsman, crossing the Atlantic in the yacht Alice in 1865. He retired from the sea in 1877, representing the Boston Board of Underwriters in London, and then Lloyds of London in New York.
The Arthur H. Clark Collection consists of some 1,400 pieces of marine art, including prints, lithographs, etchings, engravings, photographs, and paintings. Materials date from the seventeenth to the 19th centuries. European shipbuilding and American and British vessels are primary subjects. The collection also includes about 300 plans, including several for clipper ships, and 16 half models of 19th century craft. Approximately 400 books related to ship design, maritime law, and yachting are held by the MIT Libraries.
Davis-Hand Collection
Boat design archives of William Hand and Richard O. Davis
William Hand, Jr. (1875-1946) was one of the early twentieth century’s most prolific boat designers. He started his career designing sailing cruisers, schooners, fishing launches, and V-bottomed powerboats, but was best known for his sturdy, sea-kindly motorsailers that he developed in the 1920s and ‘30s. Richard O. Davis (1899-1969) joined Hand as a draftsman in 1923 and became an associate designer at the firm 13 years later. Davis spent World War II designing navy minesweepers with Henry B. Nevins, Inc. of New York, and continued there designing yachts and motorsailers after the war. In 1954, Davis joined the Frank L. Sample & Son Yard in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, again overseeing a minesweeper program. Davis’s final job was with Philip L. Rhodes, an MIT alum and successor to the Gibbs & Cox design firm of New York.
The Davis-Hand collection consists of the surviving design archives from William Hand Jr., which were willed to Richard O. Davis after Hand’s death, and material from Davis’s subsequent career at the Nevins and Rhodes design agencies. (Because many of Hand’s plans were destroyed in a hurricane in 1938, the record is far from complete.) Drawings are the bulk of the collection; only a small amount of archival material, primarily specifications for boats, survives. There is also a research collection with copies of original design catalogs, contemporary articles, and similar material related to Hand’s designs.
F. Spaulding Dunbar Plans
Sailing yacht and powerboat designs from F. Spaulding Dunbar
Yacht designer F. Spaulding Dunbar (1905-1991) graduated from MIT’s Naval Architecture program in 1926. His early career included time in the merchant marine and a job with designer Gordon Munro. In the early 1930s, Dunbar moved to Chatham, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and established his own boat design and boat building business. Except for a few years during World War II, when Dunbar designed PT Boats for Elco and his wife, Doris, ran the boatyard in Chatham, he was self-employed until his retirement. Dunbar was best known his sailing designs, including popular small one-design boats and comfortable cruising yachts, but also turned out several successful powerboats based on his wartime experience.
The F. Spaulding Dunbar collection consists of plans for many of Dunbar’s designs. The majority are from his time in Chatham, including local favorites like his Corsair and Catabout one-designs, Monomoy sloop, Bristol motorboats, and cruisers Sea Goose and Ocean Pearl, as well as plans that Dunbar drew for Elco and other boatyards.
Frank C. Paine Collection
Yacht design archives of Frank C. Paine and his partners
Frank C. Paine (1890-1952) was a yacht designer and shipbuilder in the Boston area. A Harvard graduate, he designed seaplanes with W. Starling Burgess before forming the yacht design firm Burgess, Swasey & Paine in 1921. Paine continued in yacht design for the rest of his career, late working as Paine, Belknap & Skene and Paine & Belknap. In 1930, he acquired a controlling share in the George F. Lawley Corp. shipyard in Neponset, Massachusetts, and was heavily involved in the shipyard until the end of World War II.
This collection contains a portion of Frank C. Paine’s yacht design archives. These include designs from his firms, Burgess, Swasey & Paine and Paine, Belknap, & Skene, and designs from his collaborators, including A. Loring Swasey, Francis W. Belknap, Charles G. MacGregor, Norman L. Skene, and L. Francis Herreshoff. Material primarily consists of plans, with specifications, building contracts, half models, and photographs available for some vessels. Most designs are for sailing yachts, but there are also plans for steamers, motorboats, rowing boats, and hydroplanes. A majority of this collection is not yet digitized.
George Owen Professional Naval Architecture Collection
Ship plans, manuscripts, photographs, and artifacts from George Owen, a yacht designer and professor in MIT’s Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering.
George Owen (1877-1959) was a yacht designer and professor in MIT’s Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. After graduating from MIT in 1894, Owen worked as a draftsman at a Lawrence, MA textile mill, as an engineer at an Ontario steel company, and a designer at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, MA, all while designing a string of successful sailing yachts on the side. In 1907, he became a full-time naval architect, turning out yachts and commercial vessels. In 1915, he accepted a teaching position at MIT, where he specialized in teaching yacht design. He continued developing yacht designs at MIT, perhaps most enduringly, drawing the MIT Tech Dinghy that is still in use at the Institute today.
This collection contains ship’s plans, manuscripts, photographs and artifacts from across George Owen’s long career. Plans make up the bulk of the collection. These are primarily of Owen’s own designs, though there are also plans for yachts that Owen altered or which he collected for reference. Manuscripts, photographs, and artifacts likewise primarily relate to Owen’s yacht and commercial designs, with the exception of a large group of slides containing images of Owen family life. Almost all material has been digitized.
Boat design archives of naval architect Gordon Munro
Gordon Munro was one of the first naval architects to successfully pioneer motor-sailors, designing his first such craft in 1921. Born in Scotland in 1889, Munro moved to Massachusetts at the age of five with his family. He worked at George Lawley & Son starting in 1910, and then at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, before starting his own business designing and building yachts in 1920. Early designs included sailing yachts that did well in races. In the early 1930s Munro built a test platform using his yacht club's floats to run towing tests of models of International 6-Metre Yachts. Munro returned to George Lawley & Sons later in the 1930s to lead the boatyard's commercialization of plywood boats, and he stayed on at the yard as an executive through World War 2. He then returned to his own design practice, mostly focusing on commercial vessels but also developing a patented hull form that he called Duoform. Munro, who especially in his earlier years often spelled his name “Munroe”, died in 1967. In 1968 his widow gave his plan files, photographs and models to MIT.
The Gordon Munro Collection consists of plans, archival materials, and models that span Munro’s career. The archives highlight the broad range of Munro's designs, from small daysailers to large self-powered barges, and his imaginative lifelong quest for better designs. The archives include many letters to and from clients and other prominent naval architects, including John Hanna and Olin Stephens. The archives also include photographs, photostats, sketches, plans, calculations, magazine articles by and about Munro and his designs, boat brochures and other material. Models include design half-hulls, demonstrations of Duoform shapes, and towing models. The roughly 300 plans are filed by design number.
Haffenreffer-Herreshoff Collection
Design and manufacturing archive for the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company.
The Herreshoff Manufacturing Company was a highly successful yacht design, boatbuilding, and marine engineering firm in Bristol, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1878 as a partnership between John B. Herreshoff, an established boatbuilder, and his brother, Nathanael G. Herreshoff, an 1870 MIT graduate who was working for the Corliss Steam Engine Company. With Nathanael as the primary designer and John the business manager, the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company became a major, vertically-integrated firm that produced fast steamers and, after about 1890, hundreds of highly successful sailing yachts. These included a string of America’s Cup winners and fast, able racers and daysailers for amateur sailors. The company was sold to Rudolph F. Haffenreffer in 1924, and closed for good in 1945.
The Haffenreffer-Herreshoff collection contains boat and engine plans, technical material, and casting records for vessels built by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company. Drawings and plans are the bulk of the collection, providing a substantially complete design record for Herreshoff boats, engines, hardware, and the shipyard buildings. There are relatively few business records and other written materials; those that survive here include the company’s construction record and books with offsets, which record the shape of most of the Herreshoff designs. For more detailed information on the organization and contents of the collection, please see the Haffenreffer-Herreshoff Collection finding aid.
