John William McCormack: A Political

Biography Garrison Nelson

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/john-william-mccormack-a-political-biography-garriso
n-nelson/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Los Angeles: Biography of a City John Walton Caughey

https://ebookmass.com/product/los-angeles-biography-of-a-city-
john-walton-caughey/

Carpetbagger of Conscience: A Biography of John Emory

Bryant Ruth Currie

https://ebookmass.com/product/carpetbagger-of-conscience-a-
biography-of-john-emory-bryant-ruth-currie/

Hitler: A Biography Peter Longerich

https://ebookmass.com/product/hitler-a-biography-peter-longerich/

Delphi Complete Paintings of John William Waterhouse

John William Waterhouse

https://ebookmass.com/product/delphi-complete-paintings-of-john-
william-waterhouse-john-william-waterhouse/
Enlightenment Biopolitics: A History of Race, Eugenics,
and the Making of Citizens William Max Nelson

https://ebookmass.com/product/enlightenment-biopolitics-a-
history-of-race-eugenics-and-the-making-of-citizens-william-max-
nelson/

John Wilkins 1614-1672: An Intellectual Biography

Barbara J. Shapiro

https://ebookmass.com/product/john-wilkins-1614-1672-an-
intellectual-biography-barbara-j-shapiro/

Statecraft and the Political Economy of Capitalism 1st

Edition Scott G. Nelson

https://ebookmass.com/product/statecraft-and-the-political-
economy-of-capitalism-1st-edition-scott-g-nelson/

At Face Value, Second Edition: The Life and Times of

Eliza McCormack/John White Don Akenson

https://ebookmass.com/product/at-face-value-second-edition-the-
life-and-times-of-eliza-mccormack-john-white-don-akenson/

Hitler: A Biography 1st Edition Peter Longerich

https://ebookmass.com/product/hitler-a-biography-1st-edition-
peter-longerich/
John William McCormack
John William McCormack

A Political Biography

Garrison Nelson
 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana

logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published 2017

Paperback edition first published 2020

Copyright © Garrison Nelson, 2017

For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. ix constitute

an extension of this copyright page.

Cover design: David A Gee

Cover image © Boston University’s Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center Archive

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for,
any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given
in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher
regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have
ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

ISBN: HB: 978-1-6289-2516-6

PB: 978-1-3501-4323-4
ePDF: 978-1-6289-2517-3
eBook: 978-1-6289-2518-0

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

To find out more about our authors and books visit

www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.
 Contents

List of Photographs vi
Acknowledgments ix

1 November 27, 1963: The Troubling Public Introduction 1

2 Irish Emigration and the Cauldron of Yankee Boston 23
3 The Reinvention of John McCormack 43
4 The Ascent: Yankee Mentors, Irish Gatekeepers, and Harriet 77
5 From Beacon Hill to Capitol Hill 115
6 The 1928–33 Game Change 145
7 The New Deal and a National Stage 175
8 The Problematic Landslide: Court-Packing and Purges 209
9 FDR’s Third Term, the Austin-Boston Connection, and the Brink of War 245
10 War Transforms the Nation 281
11 FDR’s Death and the Politics of Postwar America 321
12 The Unhealed Early Wounds: McCormack and Kennedy in the House 349
13 A Republican Congress, a Vice Presidential Bid, and the Four-Way
Election of 1948 377
14 The Lost Peace, Korea, and Anti-Communism 411
15 Rabbi John Rescues Kennedy and a Transformed Delegation 449
16 Ike’s Presidency, John’s Partial Eclipse, and the Anti-Communism
Crusade Fizzles 483
17 Political Positioning, 1956–60 509
18 Transitions, 1960–61 553
19 The Tenuous Partnership, 1962 599
20 The Fateful Year of 1963 635
21 A Legislative Legacy Built upon a Tragedy 655
22 The Unraveling, 1967–68 709
23 It’s Time, Mr. Speaker 739
Epilogue: Closing the Book 773

Sources 795
Index 867
 List of Photographs

Cover: John William McCormack (Gotlieb Archival Research Center,

Boston University)
Figure 1.1 President Lyndon Johnson’s First Address to Congress
on November 27, 1963 with U.S. House Speaker John
McCormack and Senate President pro tem Carl Hayden (U.S.
House Historian’s Office) 2
Figure 2.1 The Gatekeepers of Irish Boston (Wikipedia.com portraits) 33
Figure 4.1 John W. McCormack: A Delegate to the 1917–19
Constitutional Convention (Gerry Burke Family Photographs) 96
Figure 4.2 The Marriage of John W. McCormack and M. Harriet Joyce,
1920 (Edward J. McCormack, Jr. Family Papers) 106
Figure 5.1 The Hon. John W. McCormack: The Logical candidate for
Congress, 1928 (Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston
University) 135
Figure 7.1 Newly inaugurated President Franklin D. Roosevelt meets
with young U.S. Representatives, 1933 (Boston University,
Gotlieb Archives) 179
Figure 7.2 McCormack-Dickstein House Select Committee to
investigate Nazi Propaganda 1934, Samuel Dickstein, Ulysses
S. Guyer, John McCormack, and Charles Kramer (Bettman,
McCormack-Dickstein Committee, Photograph. Getty
Images, Bettman Collection) 187
Figure 9.1 John and Harriet return to Boston after his 1940 election
as House Majority Floor Leader (Edward J. McCormack, Jr.
Family Papers) 254
Figure 9.2 McCormack and Rayburn confer, 1941 (House Historian’s Office) 272
Figure 10.1 FDR signs Declaration of War against Japan, Sam Rayburn
and John McCormack in the background (F.D. Roosevelt
Library and Museum) 282
Figure 10.2 FDR meets with congressional leaders to discuss Tehran
meeting with British Prime Minister Churchill and Soviet
 List of Photographs vii

Premier Stalin, December 1943 (F.D. Roosevelt Library and

Museum) 297
Figure 10.3 U.S. Senator Harry Truman (Dem-Mo.) and House Majority
Leader John McCormack discussing the 1944 Democratic
vice presidential nomination (Truman Presidential Library
and Museum) 308
Figure 11.1 Vice President Harry Truman sworn in as president, April 12,
1945, with the Cabinet arrayed on the left and House Leaders
on the right (Truman Presidential Library and Museum) 324
Figure 12.1 Newly released from prison, Mayor James Michael Curley
rides triumphantly through Boston with Edward J. (Knocko)
McCormack, 1947 (Boston Globe). 369
Figure 13.1 President Truman presenting the medal for merit to Special
Assistant David K. Niles, 1947 (Truman Presidential Library
and Museum) 388
Figure 13.2 President Harry Truman with U.S. Representative John
McCormack and U.S. Senator Carl Hayden, Inaugural Parade,
January 20, 1949 (Truman Presidential Library and Museum) 402
Figure 14.1 U.S. Representative William L. Dawson (Dem-Ill.) (Wikimedia) 415
Figure 14.2 U.S. Representative William Colmer (Dem-Miss.) (Wikimedia) 417
Figure 14.3 President Truman with Senate Majority Leader Ernest
McFarland (Dem-Ariz.), Senate Democratic Whip Lyndon
Johnson (Dem-Tex.), House Democratic Whip J. Percy Priest
(Dem-Ky.), and House Majority Leader John W. McCormack
(Dem-Mass.), 1951 (Truman Presidential Library and Museum) 436
Figure 17.1 Resolutions Committee, Democratic National Convention,
Chicago, 1956, r-l: Chair John McCormack (Mass.), William
L. Dawson (ill.), and unidentified (House Historian’s Office) 520
Figure 18.1 An ailing Sam Rayburn leaves a meeting with President
Kennedy and the congressional leadership with John
McCormack (back row) (JF Kennedy Library) 586
Figure 19.1 U.S. House Democratic Leaders: Majority Whip T. Hale
Boggs, Floor Leader Carl Albert, and Speaker John
McCormack (Carl Albert Congressional Research Center,
University of Oklahoma) 607
Figure 19.2 U.S. Senate primary debate between Edward M. Kennedy and
Attorney General Edward J. McCormack, Jr., September 1962
(Getty Images) 619
viii List of Photographs

Figure 19.3 Post-primary meeting; President John Kennedy and U.S.

House Speaker John McCormack, September 1962 (J.F.
Kennedy Library and Museum) 620
Figure 19.4 President Kennedy, Vice President Johnson, and the
Congressional Leadership. Senate Majority Leader Mike
Mansfield, Senate Majority Whip Hubert Humphrey, House
Majority Whip Hale Boggs, House Majority Leader Carl
Albert, Vice President Johnson, and House Speaker John
McCormack, September 25, 1962 (JFK Presidential Library). 625
Figure 21.1 LBJ aide Larry O’Brien with House leadership, 1964 (Carl
Albert Congressional Research Center) 664
Figure 21.2 President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law
(Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum) 671
Figure 21.3 Congressional leaders at the White House, July 27, 1965
(Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum) 687
Figure 22.1 Herblock cartoon critical of McCormack (Herblock Foundation) 720
Figure 22.2 McCormack and Johnson in the Cabinet Room, April 3, 1968
(Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum) 724
Figure 23.1 Speaker John McCormack with U.S. Representative Morris
Udall (Dem-Ariz.) (The University of Arizona Libraries
Digital Collections) 741
Figure 23.2 John McCormack announces his retirement, May 20, 1970
(Carl Albert Congressional Research Center, University of
Oklahoma) 754
Figure E.1 Austin-Boston continues: John McCormack returns to the
House with Speaker Carl Albert and Majority Leader Thomas
P. O’Neill in 1973 (Carl Albert Congressional Research
Center, University of Oklahoma) 775
Figure E.2 Ideological Difference Between House Party
Leaders, 1899–2000 779
 Acknowledgments

In 1968, I left graduate school at the University of Iowa and was hired by the University
of Vermont (UVM) shortly after the birth of my daughter, Shyla. UVM has been
my academic home for close to five decades. In September that year, I attended my
first national meeting of the American Political Science Association in Washington,
DC. On Friday of the Labor Day weekend, I went to the U.S. Capitol in hopes of
arranging meetings with congressional leaders who were the subjects of my doctoral
dissertation. In a surprisingly fortuitous circumstance, Speaker of the U.S. House John
W. McCormack was not only in his office but I was granted an hour-long meeting with
him. As we sat in his office, I rattled off the names of prominent members with whom
he served—Cactus Jack Garner, Will Bankhead, Sam Rayburn, and Billy Connery
from my hometown of Lynn, Massachusetts, who had been McCormack’s closest
friend in the state delegation. He was delighted to be asked about these people and as
he reminisced, he offered me a cigar. It was a wonderful hour for this 26-year-old new
college instructor to enjoy a good smoke with the 76-year-old House Speaker in the
U.S. Capitol. This remarkable experience was the inspiration for this particular book as
well as for most of my published research on the U.S. Congress.
This book is the first ever full-length biography of John W. McCormack, 1891–1980,
who at the time of his death weeks from his 89th birthday was then the second longest-
lived Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. McCormack was one of the very
few political leaders who openly resisted a biography written about him even going so
far as to repeatedly warn his office staff about preparing a manuscript of their service
with him. As Dr. Martin Sweig, his longtime assistant once contended to me, “John
McCormack was the most secretive man I ever met.” Consequently, the search for
sources documenting his life and political career had to go well beyond his apparently
sanitized congressional papers located at Boston University’s Howard Gotlieb Archival
Research Center. Also presenting a problem was trying to interview McCormack’s key
constituents, the South Boston Irish, who honored the code most succinctly stated
by Martin Lomasney, the political boss of Boston’s polyglot West End: “Never write
what you can speak; never speak what you can nod.” During the many months that
I lived in South Boston and on my frequent trips to that unique peninsula as well
as the Prince Edward Island birthplace of John’s Canadian Scottish father, I learned
many McCormack family stories whose sources refused to let me name them in print.
Most of the stories were benign but they were too good to leave out of the book and so
they are included in spite of many not being fully fact-checked. Without sounding too
ominous, there is no one more wholly disdained among the Irish than the informer.
The two people who most encouraged my work on John McCormack were Edward
J. “Eddie” McCormack, Jr., the Speaker’s nephew and onetime attorney general of
x Acknowledgments

Massachusetts, and Dr. Howard Gotlieb, the founder-director of Boston University’s

renowned Gotlieb Archival Research Center, where John McCormack’s Papers were
stored. Howard was a friend of my father’s and was delighted that I had chosen to
write about McCormack. Howard’s staff associates Charles Niles, Vita Paladino, and
Sean Noel were unstintingly supportive of my efforts to wade through the thousands
of McCormack documents in their collection. Also, Eddie McCormack gave me six
boxes of material—family photographs, personal letters, news clippings, and gavels—
that were not included in the BU files. It was there I found documents and letters that
unlocked John McCormack’s hidden past. It was the successful reinvention of his family
history that made it possible for John to escape the twin cruelties of abject childhood
poverty and deadly disease that shortened the lives of five siblings and his beloved
mother enabling him to ascend politically to the Speakership of the U.S. House just
one heartbeat away from the presidency between November 1963 and January 1965.
Two other researchers whose prior work has been invaluable were Dr. Lester
Gordon, whose BU dissertation John McCormack and the Roosevelt Era was distilled
from hours of taped interviews with McCormack, and Mr. Paul Wright of the University
of Massachusetts-Boston, whose copious notes and interviews with McCormack
relatives and South Boston associates provided much context for this narrative. Close
McCormack friends Mr. Bill McSweeny and his wife Dorothy also interviewed John
and their tapes are at the Gotlieb Center. Eileen Hanerfeld Crosby ably prepared the
transcripts from the Lester Gordon and McSweeny tapes. John was both very voluble
and concealing in his interviews. He could talk at length about a topic yet reveal very
little about it. Noticing this tendency was none other than his favorite protégé Thomas
P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr. who described John as “a windbag” after their initial meeting. John
mentored Tip’s career and was pleased when Tip joined the House leadership in 1971
upon John’s retirement and eventually became House Majority Leader, 1973–77, and
Speaker, 1977–87. John McCormack’s unique self-effacing personality allowed him to
hide “in plain sight,” avoiding public scrutiny as he attended to the nation’s business.
In the course of researching the book, I was aided by the highly competent staffs
of four Presidential Libraries and Museums: the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in
Hyde Park, NY; the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri; the John F.
Kennedy Library in Dorchester, Massachusetts; and the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in
Austin, Texas. Congressional libraries that were especially valuable were the Carl Albert
Congressional Research Center at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma,
and the Richard W. Bolling Papers at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. I also
visited the Joseph W. Martin Papers at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, and
Tip O’Neill’s Papers at Boston College. Knowledgeable archivists are the salvation of a
biographer without whose assistance any researcher would drown in the enormity of
the papers contained in these collections. Three in particular deserve special mention,
Bob Clark at the Roosevelt Library, Steven Plotkin at the Kennedy Library, and Carolyn
G. Hanneman at the Albert Center. The able staffs of the U.S. Senate Historical Office,
the U.S. House Historical Office, as well as longtime friends at the Congressional
Research Service of the Library of Congress helped fill in missing details about a man
whose congressional career spanned 42 years. Special mention should be made of
 Acknowledgments xi

Mr. Waldron Leard of Joe McCormack’s hometown of Souris, PEI, whose encyclopedic
knowledge of Canada’s smallest province was invaluable to my understanding of the
unique relationship between the Canadian Maritimes and New England.
I learned of the importance of mentorship as an undergraduate at Boston University
where I was mentored by Professor Murray B. Levin and in graduate school at the
University of Iowa by Professors Sam Patterson and John C. Wahlke. It is a central
tenet of a successful life as well as an academic career. My research was facilitated by
an extraordinary cadre of UVM undergraduate mentees. Among them, I would list
Alana Chain, Brad Carlson, and Heather Purdie, who provided assistance at critical
points in the research. Seven students in particular stand out: Maggie Taylor Steakley,
who mined the Kennedy Library for thousands of pages of oral history documents;
Alexandra Gero, who photocopied thousands of pages of the Congressional Record in
search of relevant John McCormack remarks; Jade Harberg, whose careful reading
of documents could find the most illuminating quotes; Lindsey Nelson, who created
the photo record of McCormack’s life and career that has been invaluable in public
presentations of this research; Liz Kane, whose organizational skills produced order
from the disorder of multiple hundreds of file folders of 20-plus years of research;
and Katie Alexander, who read through thousands of pages of newspaper accounts
to provide the contemporaneous scaffolding for the book’s narrative. This past year,
the book was completed thanks to the determination of Sophie Scharlin-Pettee, who
oversaw the book’s final rewrite with clarity and insight, and Brenna Marie Rosen,
who helped tighten the final editing and prepared the book’s mammoth bibliography.
The wonderful intelligence and good humor of Sophie and Brenna were essential to
the completion of the manuscript as I tried to juggle my multiple responsibilities of
classroom instruction and political commentary.
While I funded most of the book personally, I was aided by timely grants from
the Earhart Foundation in Michigan, the Carl Albert Center at the University of
Oklahoma, and the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. The most recent source of
funding came this past year from the generous endowment of UVM alumnus Elliott
A. Brown, whose memories of the wonderful mentoring that he received from many
of the UVM colleagues with whom I taught in my early years on campus enabled us to
establish an intergenerational bridge of mentoring that I have been able to extend into
this present generation of UVM students.
Any research project that extends beyond 20 years could not be completed had it not
been for the information and sage counsel of multiple individuals. Listed here are many
of the individuals with whom I spoke during the two decades that I worked irregularly
on this book regarding John McCormack’s life and political career as well as those
who provided information and advice on how best to present the relevant materials.
Undoubtedly, there are many others who provided valuable insights for the book but
whose names have been lost to memory. A number of the interviews were formal,
but most of the others, especially those at professional meetings or in telephone calls
and e-mails, were more conversational. Among those with whom I spoke were: Tyler
Abell, Professor Scott Adler, Jack Anderson, Professor Samuel Beer, Dr. Richard Baker,
Professor Edmund Beard, Hon. Francis X. Bellotti, Richard Ben-Veniste, Professor
xii Acknowledgments

Steven D. Berkowitz, Gerald A. Berlin, Hon. Richard W. Bolling, Professor David W.

Brady, Dr. W. Ross Brewer, Professor Frank Bryan, Gerry Burke, Hon. William M. Bulger,
Professor James McGregor Burns, Canadian Consulate—Boston, Cecelia Cancellaro,
Robert A. Caro, Professor Anthony Champagne, Christine Chinlund, Robert (Bob)
Clark, Adam Clymer, Ellen Coffey, Hon. Tom Costin, Professor R. Bruce Craig,
Professor William Crotty, Maryann McLeod Crush, Professor Maurice Cunningham,
Professor Robert Dallek, Professor Roger Davidson, Terry Dean, Professor Bruce J.
Dierenfield, Hon. Gerard F. Doherty, Hon. Michael S. Dukakis, Professor Susan Dunn,
Hon. Thomas H. Eliot, Michael Esslinger, Professor Richard Fenno, Finn Galloway-
Kane, Professor Gregory Gause, Hon. Newton L. Gingrich, Dr. Howard Gotlieb,
Professor Matthew Green, Hon. Harry F. Greene, Professor Samuel B. Hand, D. B.
Hardeman, Professor Douglas B. Harris, Robert (Bob) Healy, Professor Raul Hilberg,
Professor Richard Hogarty, Gary Hymel, Ira Jackson, Ambrose Joyce, Professor Morton
Keller, Professor David King, Dr. Betty Koed, Hon. Thomas Kuchel, Albert LaFarge,
John C. Lally, Waldron Leard, Hon. Patrick J. Leahy, Scott Lehigh, Professor Burdett
Loomis, Scot MacKay, Ralph G. Martin, Harvey Matusow, Professor David Mayhew,
Hon. Edward J. McCormack Jr., Edward J. McCormack III, Hon. John W. McCormack,
Sean McCormack, Marlaine McLean, William (Bill) McSweeny, Bruce Meredith,
Metropolitan Opera Company in New York City, Mary Ellen McWalters Melder, Hon.
Wilbur D. Mills, John Monahan, Ken Moody, Anna Murphy, Charles Niles, Sean
Noel, Professor Thomas H. O’Connor, Padraig O’Malley, Hon. Thomas P. O’Neill, III,
Dr. Norman Ornstein, Rev. Art O’Shea, Vita Paladino, Professor Samuel C. Patterson,
Professor Robert L. Peabody, Professor Ronald M. Peters, Jr., Andrew Pierce, Professor
Nelson Polsby, Professor James Riddlesperger, Jr., Clay Risen, Dr. Donald Ritchie, W.
R. Rohrbaugh, Paul Rundquist, Professor Larry Sabato, Dr. David B. Sacher, Professor
Howard Sacher, Hon. Thomas P. Salmon, John Sears, Professor Charles Stewart III,
Professor Mark Stoler, James Sundquist, Dr. Martin Sweig, Dr. Raymond Smock,
Professor Benn Steil, Carol Tank-Day, Sharon Tomasello, Celeste Walsh, Professor
Thomas Whalen, Dr. George Abbott White, Professor Robert C. Wood, Dr. Robert
Woodbury, Hon. Jim Wright, Paul Wright, and Professor Julian Zelizer.
Special thanks are extended to Matthew Kopel who signed my prior book, Pathways
to the U.S. Supreme Court: From the Arena to the Monastery (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
and as an acquisitions editor for Bloomsbury obtained a contract for this manuscript.
He never lost faith in the book even when I felt overwhelmed by its enormity and
wished to walk from it.
To my longtime partner and extraordinary companion Rosemary Malone, my
beloved children, Shyla and Ethan, and my adored grandchildren Emily, Sophia,
Addie, and Chase, I offer this book in heartfelt thanks for your loving support.
 1

November 27, 1963: The Troubling

Public Introduction

Three dates are embedded deep in the memory of Americans. Two led to the
enormous loss of American lives: December 7, 1941, “the day of infamy,” when
Japanese warplanes attacked the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, ending the
lives of 2,400 Americans and wounding another 1,100; and September 11, 2001, when
nineteen Islamic terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and flew three of them
into the World Trade Center Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington,
Virginia, with a total death toll of 3,000. The Pearl Harbor attack led to World War II.
The 9/11 attack prompted the international “war on terrorism.”
The third date, November 22, 1963, did not claim thousands of lives, nor did it lead
to armed conflict. It did, however, have an equally devastating impact. On that date in
Dallas, Texas, 46-year-old President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the nation’s youngest
elected president, became the fourth American president to be murdered in less than
a century. Fifty years after his death, conspiracy theories abound as many Americans
continue to be confounded as to how this young, vibrant leader of the world’s most
powerful nation could have been felled by a single misfit loner with a mail-order rifle.
Much American innocence was lost as a result of the Kennedy assassination; the
emotional damage to the nation remains incalculable. But the nation would go on.
The Founding Fathers had prepared for these circumstances with the vice presidency.
And for the eighth time in American history, a vice president assumed the presidential
mantle following the death of a predecessor. President Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon
B. Johnson, with 27 combined years as a U.S. Representative, a U.S. Senator, and
Vice President, was the most politically experienced of the successor presidents. The
nation was only thirteen months away from the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis
that placed millions of Americans at risk of nuclear annihilation. The hope was that
President Johnson would assuage those fears and bring a calming presence to the
anxious American people.
When President Johnson addressed Congress on November 27, five days after the
murder and a day after the burial, a disquieting picture emerged. Seated behind Johnson
were two very old white men. To the President’s left was seated the 86-year-old U.S.
Senator Carl Hayden (Dem-Ariz.), the President pro tempore of the Senate and second
in line to President Johnson. To his right was U.S. Representative John W. McCormack
(Dem-Mass.), the Speaker of the U.S. House and next in line to President Johnson with
2 John William McCormack

Figure 1.1 President Lyndon Johnson’s first address to Congress on November 27, 1963,
with U.S. House Speaker John McCormack (Dem-Mass.) on the president’s right and Senate
President pro tem Carl Hayden (Dem-Ariz.) on his left (U.S. House Historian’s Office).

only two weeks to his 72nd birthday (Figure 1.1). Their places in the line of succession
had been established in the Presidential Succession Act of 1947,1 a measure for which
both had voted 16 years earlier, but neither hoped would ever be used.
Senator Hayden entered the Congress during the Taft Administration as Arizona’s
first elected U.S. Representative in 1912, the year it joined the Union. Hayden left the
House for the Senate in 1927 and served in that chamber until 1969, when he retired
at the age of 91. Speaker McCormack was first elected to the House in 1928 during the
closing days of the Coolidge Administration and served until 1971 when he retired at
the midpoint of President Richard Nixon’s first term at the age of 79.
Standing before them was Lyndon Johnson, who had served with both men in their
respective chambers—12 years for each. Although only 55, President Johnson suffered
from a well-known heart condition which had kept him out of the 1956 presidential
nominating contest. It was a condition that would end his life in 1973 at 64. The
widely circulated photograph of Speaker McCormack and Senator Hayden seemed to
represent the ghosts of “Congress Past.” But they were now the ghosts of Congress
Present and, most likely, Congress Yet-to-Come. In an effort to diminish the likelihood
of either of these two gaining the presidency through the legislated line of succession,
a constitutional amendment was proposed by Senator Birch Bayh (Dem-Ind.), entitled
the “Presidential Succession and Disability Amendment.” This amendment would
allow the Congress to fill the vice presidency if it became vacant and to limit the
operation of the 1947 Presidential Succession Act which placed the Speaker and the
Senate’s President pro tempore right behind the Vice President. To hammer home his
point about the necessity of the amendment, the fateful 1963 photograph graced the
cover of Senator Bayh’s book One Heartbeat Away.2
 November 27, 1963: The Troubling Public Introduction 3

Senator Bayh’s proposal was successful and the 25th Amendment was ratified on
February 23, 1967, one year and ten months after Congress had approved it and sent it
to the states for ratification. The time it took to move through the state legislatures was
close to the median of other constitutional amendments. The photograph had alerted
the nation, but it had not panicked it.
With the solution approved, Senator Hayden was spared further speculation about
his fitness for the presidency; however, Speaker McCormack was not so fortunate.
Questions about his fitness continued to dog his speakership and he had to defend
himself for much of his time in the chair as efforts to oust him surfaced during his
years as Speaker.3

A private man in public life

From 1962 through 1970, Boston’s John W. McCormack served as the 44th Speaker of
the U.S. House of Representatives. He was a major legislative architect of both the New
Deal and the Great Society. Forty-six years have passed since he left the House in 1971
and more than 30 years since his death in 1980. If he remains relatively unknown, that
was his plan.
John McCormack was a very private man in a public office. In the words of his
longtime Administrative Assistant Dr. Martin Sweig, “John McCormack was the most
secretive man I have ever met.”4 Why?
The Austin-Boston Speakers: From 1940 through 1989, the U.S. House of
Representatives had only six Speakers—Sam Rayburn, Joe Martin, John McCormack,
Carl Albert, Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr., and Jim Wright. Five were Democrats; only
Joe Martin was a Republican. Three came from Massachusetts, two from Texas, and
Carl Albert came from an Oklahoma district just across the Red River from Rayburn’s.5
During this same half-century, there were ten presidents and six Chief Justices of the
Supreme Court. The presidents were born in eight different states and elected from
nine of them. The Chief Justices were born in six different ones and chosen from five.
The Speakers were born in four states and elected from only three. That an elected
political institution with the shortest fixed term of any national legislature would have
so few presiding officers is not the least of the House leadership’s many ironies. That
a national political institution with a constitutionally mandated requirement that its
membership reflect population shifts in that nation should have been presided over
by members from only three of the nation’s fifty states enriches the irony. And that the
one Speaker, John W. McCormack of Massachusetts, whose leadership in that body
spanned over 30 years during that half-century remains unknown to the American
public turns irony to mystery.
In the years between 1940, when John McCormack was first elected House Majority
Leader, and 2016, twelve different individuals have held the office of Speaker of the
U.S. House of Representatives. As the first public officer listed in the Constitution, the
Speaker matters. Thus, it is not surprising that multiple books have been written about
the occupants of the Speaker’s chair. Eleven of the last twelve Speakers from Democrat
4 John William McCormack

Sam Rayburn of Texas to Republican Paul Ryan of Wisconsin have been the subjects of
biographies and autobiographies. Twenty-four biographies and autobiographies alone
cover the lives and public careers of five Austin-Boston Speakers with nine on Sam
Rayburn,6 seven on Jim Wright,7 five on Tip O’Neill,8 two on Joe Martin,9 and one on
Carl Albert.10 But there are none on John McCormack.

The forgotten speakership

John McCormack, who held the speakership for nine years, is the lone exception. Is it
because he was unimportant and irrelevant to the politics of his time? No. It is because
he chose not to share the full dimensions of his life that we know so little. Four reasons
would seem to account for his lack of public attention.

1. He did not want to be Speaker: In an April 1977 interview, McCormack told me that
he preferred being Majority Leader working the floor and assembling voting coalitions
than presiding at a distance from the Speaker’s chair.11 In a postscript to a letter to H.
G. Dulaney, Sam Rayburn’s former secretary, McCormack wrote in 1967, six years after
Sam’s death, “I miss very much our late friend, Speaker Sam Rayburn. I wish he was
here—he as Speaker and I as Majority Leader.”12

2. He was too deferential to the presidency: McCormack’s relationship to the presidency

was reactive, not proactive. He saw his speakership as providing support for presidential
initiatives. Presidential support scores on House floor votes during the nine years of
John’s speakership are the highest among the eleven Speakers who have served in the
60-plus years since 1953 when Congressional Quarterly began calculating that factor.
The House’s average presidential support score during John’s nine years as Speaker was
84.2%–84.0% for his two years with Kennedy (1962–63); 86.5% for his five years with
Johnson (1964–68); and 78.4% for his two years with Republican Nixon (1969–70).13
Johnson’s success rate in the House was so high that conservative columnist Robert
Novak contended that Speaker McCormack was virtually on Johnson’s staff.14
Washington State’s Tom Foley, who served as Majority Whip, 1981–87, and became
the first post–Austin-Boston Speaker in 1989, recalled that “Speaker John McCormack
made only marginally more use of the Whip [than Rayburn] and the White House
congressional liaison staff performed most of the vote-counting function during the
Kennedy and Johnson Administrations.”15
That may account for the high regard that John received from Democratic Presidents
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson. However, it placed the
House in a subordinate role and not the coequal one envisioned by the framers of the
Constitution, who gave the all-important taxing power to the House.

3. He was overshadowed in Boston: John McCormack’s career was intertwined for

years with fellow Boston Irish-descended political leaders, all of whom were far
more colorful than he, most notably his semi-mentor, Boston Mayor James Michael
 November 27, 1963: The Troubling Public Introduction 5

Curley, his protégé Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr., and the powerful and glamorous
Fitzgerald-Kennedy clan of Mayor John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, Ambassador
Joseph P. Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy, and U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
All cast huge shadows over both the Boston and national landscapes. The most succinct
depiction of the relationship appeared as an aside in Rose Kennedy’s memoirs, “The
Fitzgeralds, Kennedys, and McCormacks had had many encounters in Massachusetts’
political life: usually as friends, sometimes as foes, sometimes friendly enemies.”16
Jack Kennedy’s assassination created a martyrdom that has elevated his presidential
reputation high in the estimation of both historians and the general public. In Boston,
he was a secular saint. Consequently, any criticism of Jack Kennedy, no matter how
mild or innocuous, was seen as dishonoring the memory of this beloved president and
would lead to vehement denunciations from the Boston Irish, the very people who
John McCormack had been elected to represent.
McCormack was very reluctant to discuss the complex relationship he had with
John Kennedy. Two instances stand out. In Herbert S. Parmet’s second biographical
volume about Kennedy, JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy, he quotes an unnamed
historian as a “confidential source” who recounted17:

One historian who interviewed McCormack shortly before his death in 1981
[sic] came away from that meeting and immediately recorded his observation
that “when I turned to his relationship with John Kennedy . . . the change in
atmosphere was quite dramatic. The speaker stiffened in his chair, his voice
changed, and he became quite formal and quite strained. I knew at once that
it would not be possible to probe realistically into the Kennedy-McCormack
relationship. The speaker refused to discuss or even admit that any differences
existed and repeatedly insisted that his ties to Kennedy were very positive. . . .
It is my considered view as an historian that Speaker McCormack’s response
demonstrated that his relationship with John Kennedy was charged with tension,
which, for personal and other reasons, the speaker does not intend to discuss or
document.”

Similarly, Lester Gordon, a Boston University graduate student hired by the university
in 1972 to conduct a series of hour-long oral history interviews with McCormack,
had the following exchange on his Tape 15. After John had provided an extensive and
detailed answer describing the role of the relatively unimportant General Services
Administration, Gordon prefaced his next question with, “The next time we meet in a
couple of weeks, we’ll talk about Kennedy’s administration.”18
McCormack responded, “Who?”
The interview ended and there was never another one.

4. He did not want a biography: John McCormack limited the number of his papers
donated to the Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. Only the post-
1950 papers have any completeness about them. The inference is that John’s nephew
and former Massachusetts Attorney General Eddie McCormack, an alumnus of BU
6 John William McCormack

Law, and Dr. Martin Sweig, his chief of staff who spent time in prison for perjury,
“sanitized” the files. The remaining papers are well catalogued but bereft of the
extensive and candid correspondence found in the papers of other congressional
luminaries with whom he served, like his allies Sam Rayburn (at the Rayburn Library
in Bonham, Texas) and Carl Albert (at the University of Oklahoma), and his longtime
liberal adversary Richard W. Bolling (at the University of Missouri-Kansas City).
Furthermore, John’s oral histories tend to be overlong and dissembling. He preferred
to talk around questions rather than address them directly.
It was during the early 1970s while BU was completing John’s documentary record
that his beloved South Boston erupted in nationally publicized white opposition to
the racial integration of its public schools. Leaders of the vocal opposition were two
of South Boston’s most powerful politicians: Boston School Committee member
Louise Day Hicks, who would succeed John as the U.S. Representative of the 9th
Massachusetts District, and State Senator William M. “Billy” Bulger, a protégé of John’s
brother Edward, best known as “Knocko” McCormack. South Boston, then the city’s
least diverse and most defensive of its ethnic enclaves, wanted no further scrutiny.
Lastly, John McCormack, who had successfully reinvented himself as the oldest son
of a poor, widowed Irish mother, knew that his backstory might be revealed so he chose
to hide in plain sight, with a conscious effort to be the least interesting major political
figure of his time. There were serious personal reasons why he chose to operate in this
self-effacing manner and these will be explored in this book, but his life and career are
far too important to remain in the shadows of history.

John McCormack “in the room”

For almost 40 years, McCormack was near the epicenter of political power in the
nation. The most fascinating aspect of his life is not his oft-told “rags-to-riches,”
Horatio Alger–like rise from the South Boston Irish tenements to the Speaker’s chair
on Capitol Hill,19 but the fact that he was “in the room” for so many major political
events which altered the course of American life.

—1928: McCormack was elected to the House to fill the unexpired term of the late
Representative James A. Gallivan (Dem-Mass.) and to the subsequent term. He would
win 22 consecutive elections to Congress.

—1931: With the support of newly installed Speaker John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner
of Texas, McCormack was elected to the Ways and Means Committee. At this time, the
Democratic members of Ways and Means served as “the committee on committees”
for other Democrats. McCormack finished second among the members elected to the
new vacancies, ahead of Fred Vinson (Dem-Ky.), who would later become Secretary
of the Treasury and Chief Justice of the United States. Fred Vinson was a “poker pal”
of McCormack.20
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
being used, of which her bunkers can take seventy-three tons. The
Tartar’s record was broken by the destroyer Swift, 345 feet in length
with a displacement of 1800 tons, and having quadruple turbine
engines giving her a speed of 36 knots.
The cruiser Invincible, launched by Armstrongs at Elswick in April
1907, is a first-class armoured cruiser 530 feet in length and of
17,250 tons displacement, and has turbine engines of an equivalent
horse-power of 40,000 and a speed of 25 knots.

Photo. G. West & Son.

H.M.S. “Lord Nelson.”

 Photo. G. West & Son.

H.M.S. “Invincible,” Armoured Cruiser.

The construction of warships has resolved itself into a struggle to

attain an ever-increasing speed combined with offensive power and
great range of action, and warships of varying types have been
produced with startling rapidity, so that one powerful vessel after
another has been evolved, each superseding its predecessor in
some degree, until there are “Dreadnoughts” and “Super-
Dreadnoughts” carrying guns and armour and possessing a speed
undreamt of a few years ago. Among smaller vessels, torpedo-boats,
destroyers, scouts, cruisers of various classes, commerce
destroyers, cruiser-battleships, and submarines now take their
places in the nation’s fleet. There is no telling in what direction the
next development will be. The battle of the boilers has played an
important part in the development of the warship, and it is safe to say
that had this struggle not taken place to produce a boiler which
should give a great pressure of steam quickly, the speed of the
warship as now known would not have been attainable. Twin screws
are succeeded by triple screws, and these are to be followed by
quadruple screws.
The second-class protected cruiser Bristol, launched at Messrs.
John Brown and Co.’s Clydebank establishment in February last, is
of special interest as she embodies the introduction of yet another
method of propulsion. When it became known that an experiment
was to be made there was some speculation as to whether the gas
system was to be tried, as the experiments in the gunboat Rattler are
understood to have been successful, and it is well known that more
than one engineering firm has been giving attention to the subject.
The Rattler experiments did not prove that the requisite power could
be developed by the method, and the Bristol experiment is an
installation of the “Brown-Curtis” turbine, this vessel being the first of
recent years for the British Navy in which Parsons turbines have not
been placed. She is of 4850 tons displacement and is to have a
speed of 25 knots. Four sister ships, also building, are fitted with
Parsons turbines. The Bristol will have twelve Yarrow water-tube
boilers, and the furnaces will use either coal or oil. Two other British
warships, one an improved Bristol, are to be fitted with Curtis
turbines, besides vessels for other Powers, and another experiment
which will be watched with considerable interest is the combination
of Parsons and Curtis turbines proposed to be placed in the 32-knot
destroyers under construction for the Argentine Government by
Cammell, Laird and Co.
Foreign Governments, the French especially, have made many
experiments in warship building and designing, for the attempts to
develop fixed types have failed in this country as elsewhere, as the
type has been generally superseded almost before the specimen
vessel has been completed. This was particularly the case with the
turrets when first introduced. The barbette system has descended
from it, and in turn has been subjected to numerous changes. The
amount of sail carried by modern gunboats and cruisers, if any, is
reduced to the smallest quantity, the masts being little else than
signalling poles; while in the big battleships and cruisers the masts,
which were at one time of the “military” pattern and were used as
hoists for ammunition, being made hollow and of large diameter for
the purpose, have in their turn given way to skeleton masts and
tripods, and combinations of the two, of a strictly utilitarian character.
The bringing down of a mast, fitted for wireless telegraphy, at the first
round in some firing practice recently, showed that naval architects
have not yet reached the last word in the development, or
diminution, of the masts.
Some exceedingly powerful battleships have been built in this
country for foreign nations, among the latest being the Minas
Geraes, by Armstrongs on the Tyne, for Brazil, which represents all
that is most modern in the construction of a warship, this vessel and
her sister being two of the most powerful battleships ever designed.
They show, too, what private yards can accomplish.

The “Minas Geraes,” Brazilian Navy.

 Many of the vessels which defeated the Russians at the battle of
Tsushima were built in this country. Both Germany and Japan, which
were among Britain’s best customers for warships, now depend,
entirely in the case of Germany and almost entirely in that of Japan,
upon their own shipbuilding yards. The Germans have been building
warships of the “Dreadnought” class and making such improvements
as they thought suited to their needs, and of late years have been
producing a number of vessels equal in power and speed to the
British ships, and, if some people are right, of even greater fighting
capacity in every way. The rise of Germany to the position of a first-
rate Naval Power has been rapid, and the sacrifices the country has
made to obtain its magnificent Navy have been great.
The American Navy has developed in its own way. The naval
architects of the United States have been unfettered by the traditions
of the navies of other countries and their products have been
remarkable for the number of vessels designed to meet special
circumstances. This was particularly the case during the Civil War,
when all sorts of steamers, from excursion boats to tugs, were
pressed into service, and many gave an exceedingly good account
of themselves. A remarkable vessel which was expected to
revolutionise naval warfare was the Destroyer, in which a special
make of dynamite gun was fixed, but it was hopelessly outranged by
other guns. The opposition to steam in the Navy was as bitter in
America as in this country when the innovation was first proposed.
James Kirke Paulding, a member of Van Buren’s Cabinet in 1837,
disliked steamers so much that he wrote that he would “never
consent to see our grand old ships supplanted by these new and
ugly sea-monsters”; and elsewhere he wrote “I am steamed to
death.”
In 1858 the American naval architect, John Willis Griffiths, built to
the order of the American Government the gunboat Pawnee, which
was fitted with twin screws and a drop bilge to increase the stability
at the least expenditure of engine-power. The Pawnee carried a
frigate’s battery, but it is stated to have drawn only ten feet of water.
He also, in 1866, designed and constructed triple screws for great
speed.
 The United States decided upon a very powerful Navy a few years
ago, and sent a splendid fleet on a tour round the world as an object-
lesson. As it is contended that the life of a battleship as a fighting
unit of the first class is only fifteen years, an extensive modernising
process has been going on. The sister ships Kentucky and
Kearsarge were constructed with superimposed turrets, two fore and
two aft, the lower turrets having two 13-inch guns and the upper
turrets two 8-inch guns each, but this method of placing the turrets
has not commended itself to naval architects of other countries, and
has not been repeated in the American Navy.
The warships Wilmington, Kearsarge, Missouri, Arkansas, West
Virginia, Charleston, Virginia, North Carolina, and Delaware are
among those built by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock
Company, and several have been constructed by Messrs. Cramp at
Philadelphia and by the Union Iron Works at San Francisco.
The battleship of the future, in the opinion of one eminent
shipbuilder at least, will be very different from existing types. Messrs.
Vickers, Sons, and Maxim, who are no mean authorities on warship
construction, were stated recently to have been engaged in
elaborating plans for a mastless vessel, propelled by a system of gas
machinery, without funnels or other deck obstructions, of a greater
speed than any warship afloat, and able to fire ten 12-inch guns on
either broadside and six of them either right ahead or astern, without
counting a number of smaller guns. Such a vessel would be
propelled by four screws.
 Photo. G. West & Son.

The “Kearsarge,” U.S. Navy.

 Photo. G. West & Son.

The “San Francisco,” U.S. Navy.

 CHAPTER XII
MISCELLANEOUS APPLICATION OF STEAM-POWER
Tugs — Cargo-boats — Floating Docks — Ferries — Icebreakers — Yachts —
Eccentricities of Design — Conclusion

ot the least important of the types of steamers which

throng the ports of the world—or which used to do
so, for their number is decreasing—is the tugboat. Up
to a few years ago it played a most important part in
the work of a port; every sailing ship entering port
usually engaged the services of a tug; many ports,
like that of London, could not be entered at all by a
large sailing ship without the services of “a fair wind ahead,” as
sailors often call the tug, and in the waters outside the Port of
London the tugboats found one of the best “pitches” in their
business. To be towed safely into port might mean a saving of many
days in avoiding the waiting for a wind. The tug was equally useful to
a ship leaving port, as she might not only tow her into the open sea,
but might even take her right out of sight of land altogether, in
helping her along until a favourable slant of wind was met. At ports
like Liverpool sailing-ship masters often, when wind and tide were
favourable, brought their ships into port under full sail without a tug,
though probably three or four of them kept her company in the hope
that their services would be required, as they generally were when
the time came to enter dock.
Nowadays sailing ships are few in number and are becoming
fewer, and steamers seldom require aid. They enter and leave port
under their own steam and even at times dispense with a tug when
passing through the dock entrance, their own steam or a steam
capstan ashore being found sufficient.
But a certain amount of towing has still to be done, and the tug is
then able to prove herself indispensable. She has often to tow a ship
from one coast port to another, while for rescue work on the coast
their services mean all the difference between success and failure. A
lifeboat is towed to a wreck or vessel in danger. The tug, which has
perhaps been several hours fighting her way forward against a
howling gale and a terrific sea which threatens to overwhelm her,
then stands by, and a paragraph in the papers to that effect is about
all the recognition she gets, yet the perils undergone by the men on
the tug are no less real than those of the lifeboatmen. Year in and
year out the tugs pursue their calling, and it must indeed be bad
weather that will induce a tugboat captain to seek the shelter of a
harbour if his bunkers are fairly full and he sees a chance of doing
business.
The feats performed by some tugs are extraordinary. They will
undertake a voyage of a few thousand miles as serenely as one of
as many yards. Cleopatra’s needle, in its strange cylinder ship, was
towed to this country, after being lost adrift in the Bay of Biscay, by a
well-known London tug. Among the most remarkable recent feats
are the towing of immense unwieldy floating docks from this country
to South American west-coast ports; it is not too much to say that a
tug-owner will cheerfully undertake to tow anything that will float from
any one seaport to any other.
The cargo steamer until ten or fifteen years ago possessed no
special features. It was simply a big box carrying propelling
machinery and as much cargo as possible on the smallest attainable
registered tonnage. Such vessels were usually loaded and
discharged by the necessary machinery on the quay side, while if the
transfer of cargo had to be to or from barges alongside, the
operation was likely to be tediously performed by means of a derrick
or two, or a gaff with tackle that might or might not be worked by a
steam-winch. The increasing size of vessels and the use of steel for
steamer building rendered imperative the adoption of faster
methods, and the demands for special steamers adapted for
particular trades brought about the development in cargo steamers
of special types. These types have to a very large extent taken the
trade away from the steamer of the “tramp” class, which wandered
from port to port taking cargoes of anything or everything from
anywhere to anywhere. They were usually slow and uncomfortable
boats and the complaints made as to the condition of some of them
were fully justified. The demand for better cargo accommodation was
met by the supply of vessels of various types which are a
tremendous advance upon the old “tramp,” and their advent
compelled the builders of ordinary cargo carriers to produce a better
and larger steamer in every way, and fitted with modern appliances
for the rapid and satisfactory handling of cargo.
The cargo “tramps,” built about 1902, were on an average about
350 feet long, 2800 tons gross and 4000 tons dead weight. In build
they were of the poop, bridge, and forecastle deck type with main
deck below the upper deck, and fitted with double bottoms. The
appliances for working cargo are extraordinarily complete and
effective. To each hatch there are usually two winches and two
derricks, having 5 tons lift each, with, as a rule, a heavy derrick
capable of lifting from 20 to 30 tons; the last is portable, so that it can
be used at either of the two main hatches. Cathead davits have been
dispensed with as, with stockless anchors, they are not required
owing to the anchors stowing up the hawse pipes. Officers, &c., are
berthed in deckhouses built on the bridge deck, leaving the bridge
’tween deck clear for cargo. Electric light and steam-heating are
fitted to all rooms, advantages not enjoyed by older boats.
About the year 1904 the shelter-deck type reached its present
stage of perfection, the advantage of this type being increased cargo
capacity on a small net tonnage. The accommodation of officers and
engineers is fitted in midship deckhouses and side houses. Much
more attention is now paid to the ventilation of the holds and ’tween
decks, more especially in coal-carriers, where efficient ventilation is
of the highest importance. The adoption, within very recent years, of
wide-spaced pillars in holds and ’tween decks has greatly improved
the facilities for stowage of large cargo.
The four desiderata of a modern cargo-boat are that she should
have a low registered tonnage in comparison with her capacity,
ample water-ballast tanks, large hatchways, and holds as free from
obstruction as possible. Three or four methods are practised by
builders for attaining these objects, and every builder has made
modifications of them as time has shown the necessity of the
changes to meet varying trade conditions.
 The principal types of cargo vessels are the turret, trunk,
cantilever, and side tank.
The earlier modern ocean-going steamers were usually flush-
decked. This left the machinery openings bare in the deck, so a
bridge was added for their protection, and the flush deck was further
encroached upon by the addition of a forecastle and poop. In some
cases the quarter deck was raised, which was an awkward
arrangement on account of the change it necessitated in the
structure and framing, and in others the bridge and poop were
joined. What is sometimes called the “three island” type, a very
appropriate name in rough weather when the steamer takes a sea
on board, came into great favour; it consists of a forecastle, bridge,
and poop, and many vessels of considerable size have been built in
that style. The cattle trade was responsible for some important
changes in design, the “wells” where the cattle are carried being
given iron and steel shelters, which thus form the shelter decks, a
type of light deck introduced into the superstructure of most ocean-
going steamers.
The secret of the turret steamer is strength without unnecessary
weight. Every ton of steel that can be kept out of a ship without
reducing her strength adds a ton to her carrying capacity. This object
is partly achieved in the turret steamer by the large amount of
flanging adopted in the construction of these vessels. This is shown
in the whole of the sheer strake and stringer plates, in the deck and
frames of the cellular bottom work, and with great success in the
joggled plating of the hull. Since 1895, when the Doxfords introduced
a new method of rolling ships’ plates with joggled edges, they have
built all their vessels under this system, making “packing”
unnecessary. The turret gives longitudinal strength in the hull and
leaves the hold clear. The strength is so great that in a steamer in
which, by the substitution of deep for ordinary frames, all internal
supports, beams, and girders are dispensed with, a clear hold is
obtained. The firm claims that 58 cubic feet per ton dead weight
under hatches is secured against 52 to 54 cubic feet per ton in the
ordinary type. Thus the turret carries more on a given displacement,
and having a lower registered tonnage, can earn more freight and
save expenses. There are several designs of turret steamers
adapted to different trades. Their suitability for bulk cargo, such as
coal, or for large and heavy packages, is evident, while other types
are equally suitable as passenger steamers, not a few lines having
adopted them. Another advantage is that deck cargoes of wood can
be carried with perfect safety on the turrets. Some of the cargo-boats
designed for the ore and coal trade have their machinery right aft,
and their holds are absolutely clear of obstruction of any kind
whatever. Many of these are mastless but are fitted with twin
derricks, a 10,000-ton boat carrying as many as seven pairs. The
first of the mastless type was the Teucer. Convention fixed the depth
of hold at about 15 feet, but now a depth of 26 feet and more is
becoming fairly common. All cargo vessels are built on the box-
girder system, which ensures great strength and capacity, and
permits of enormous hatchways, and marine engineers have solved
the problem of providing greater speed without additional expense.
Messrs. Doxford, in their latest attempt to solve the problem of the
easily-shifting cargo in bulk, proposed that vessels intended for this
trade should have inner upright walls fitted some distance from the
hull, and so arranged that when the vessel is heeled over within the
usual range of inclinations of a vessel at sea, the weight of the cargo
and the buoyancy create a restoring couple in all conditions of
loading. The spaces between the cargo-hold and the outer shell may
be left empty or used for water-ballast as required. In some
instances the bottom is reduced in depth as much as the loading
regulations will allow.
Among the more notable features of recent years in cargo-boats
specially adapted for the coal, iron ore, and other dead-weight trades
is the patent cantilever framed type of steamer built by Sir Raylton
Dixon and Co., Ltd., Cleveland Dockyard, Middlesbrough, on the
Harroway and Dixon patents. This type of boat has the advantage of
having totally unobstructed holds with very large hatchways and an
additional 75 per cent. water-ballast, which is placed in the tanks
inside the cantilever construction at the top of the holds under the
deck. In these steamers the space on either side and under the
decks is used for water-ballast, which is carried in triangular tanks at
either side of the vessel, immediately beneath the main deck. The
tanks extend from the coamings to the sides of the ship, the greatest
side of the triangle being towards the cargo and supported by the
cantilever framing; the tank framing and plating increase the strength
of the hull materially. The sloping topsides thus formed prevent bulk
cargo shifting. An advantage to the owner is that the tanks are
exempt from tonnage measurement. When these tanks are filled with
water and also the lower and peak tanks the vessel is seaworthy
even if the cargo-space is empty.
This additional water-ballast has the special merit of immersing the
ship deeper when in ballast only, consequently giving more power to
the propeller and rendering the ship more manageable when light, as
well as supplying unique security in case of damage, for when one of
these boats is loaded and the topside tanks are empty, they
correspond to the air tanks of a lifeboat and thus prevent the ship
from sinking.
These vessels in some cases have been fitted with shelter decks
right fore and aft for the carriage of cattle and horses, and indeed
would be suitable for passenger service, for which the very easy
rolling movement would be a great recommendation.
This type of vessel has been on the market for about four years
and already some 200,000 tons have been built. One of the largest
steamers built on this plan is the Echunga, 405 feet long, 56 feet
beam, and 28 feet 8 inches moulded depth. She was built in 1908 for
the Adelaide Steamship Company. Her net register is 2245 tons, her
dead-weight capacity 8400 tons, and her measurement 11,000 tons.
Her topside tanks contain 1350 tons, and her total water-ballast is
3200 tons.
In the steamers built by Messrs. William Gray and Co., Ltd., of
West Hartlepool, water-ballast is carried not only in the double
bottoms but in side tanks, the inner skin of the double bottoms being
carried a considerable distance up the sides. A hull within a hull is
thus formed, the intervening space being used as water-ballast
tanks. Not the least advantage is the great additional strength the
ship is given. The trunk system of shipbuilding adopted by Messrs.
Ropner and Sons, Ltd., of Stockton-on-Tees, differs from the turret
by having a double wall on each side, and has not the rounded turret
base. The steamer Thor, built for a Norwegian owner, has only one
hold, no less than 250 feet in length, the engines being placed aft.
 Messrs. R. Craggs and Sons, Ltd., of Middlesbrough, have made
a speciality of building tankers, and were the designers and
contractors for the first ocean steamer to load oil in bulk. Their
stringerless system of construction is, they claim, the last word in
transverse framing, and has numerous advantages for single-deck
vessels.
During the last three years three distinct innovations in steam-ship
construction have been made. All three are of a revolutionary
character, and two are likely to have no small influence upon the
construction of both passenger and cargo steamers, while the third is
of great importance for the rapid loading and discharging of coal and
ore cargoes. The first of these is the Isherwood system of
longitudinal ship construction, in which the transverse frame as
ordinarily understood is dispensed with, but deep transverse web
frames are placed at intervals of 15 to 18 feet apart and extending
right round the ship, forming both frame and beam together. These
frames are intersected by longitudinal frames consisting of sections
of convenient form, preferably bulb angles, spaced about 20 to 30
inches apart, just as transverse frames are under the ordinary
system. The fore and aft frames are fitted beneath the deck also,
and are spaced from 30 to 50 inches apart. In the double bottom the
fore and aft girders are formed of plates and angles.
The first general cargo vessel on this plan was the Craster Hall,
launched in February 1908 by Messrs. William Hamilton and Co.,
Ltd., Port Glasgow. Her length is 392 feet 6 inches; breadth, 50 feet;
depth, 29 feet to the upper deck; dead weight, 7300 tons.

The “Monitoria.”
 The “Iroquois” and the “Navahoe.”

Two oil-tankers, the Paul Paix and Gascony, have been built by
Messrs. Craggs and Sons on this system. One of them grounded off
Calais with a cargo of oil or benzine on board, and on being dry-
docked for examination was found to have no damage to her plates
whatever. All the steamers built on the Isherwood plan have a
marked absence of vibration even when running light.
The corrugated steam-ship Monitoria, launched in the summer of
1909 by Messrs. Osbourne Graham and Co., Sunderland, to the
order of the Ericsson Shipping Company of Newcastle-on-Tyne, is
another departure from accepted ideas. She is an ordinary “tramp”
steamer so far as dimensions and engine-power go; her only
difference, and it is an important one, is that she has two
corrugations running along each side between bilge and load water-
line, and extending from the turn of the bow to the turn of the quarter.
These corrugations do not project very greatly, but according to the
inventor, they so affect the stream and wave action around and
under the vessel that a source of wasted energy is prevented, and
more power becomes available for propulsion. The Monitoria’s
dimensions are: length, 288 feet 6 inches over all; breadth, 39 feet
10¹⁄₂ inches; the breadth over the corrugations is nearly 42 feet. The
space for bulk cargoes is greater than on her sister ships by the
cubic contents of the corrugations, but the tonnages remain
unaltered. As a sea-going ship it was found that the corrugations
made her much steadier, acting as though they were bilge keels, and
that the coal consumption was less, notwithstanding that she made
faster time than her sister vessels under precisely similar conditions.

The “Monitoria”: Transverse Section.

The third innovation is the application of the belt-conveyor

principle to a collier. The steamer Pallion, in which the machinery is
installed, is equipped throughout with twin belt conveyors which,
travelling fore and aft the vessel in a space under the cargo, carry
the cargo towards the stern, whence it is carried on other belts at the
front of the poop for delivery. The latter belts are carried on swivel
booms which can be raised or lowered or moved sideways, so that
the cargo is delivered direct by the belts into railway trucks on the
quay or into barges, and the operation can be conducted at the rate
of 250 tons an hour on each side of the vessel simultaneously.
Under this system no shoots are used, and there is no handling of
the coal. The Pallion requires only about six hours to discharge a full
cargo with six men, as against over a hundred men and eleven
hours in the ordinary way. Her water-ballast tanks can be emptied or
filled as fast as the cargo is placed in her or taken out. She was built
by the Doxford firm at Sunderland for a Newcastle Shipping
Company.
The carrying of petroleum in bulk has spread enormously of late
years in both steamers and sailing vessels specially designed for the
purpose. In all such vessels the method of the subdivision of the
holds into tanks is of the greatest importance, together with that of
ventilation, and every builder and owner of such vessels has his own
theories as to the best means to be adopted. A later type of tanker
has the engines astern. A further innovation in this class of steamer
is to fit them for burning oil fuel, the two big tankers Oberon and
Trinculo having had the necessary installation placed in them last
year at Smith’s Dock, North Shields, sometimes called “the home of
tank-steamer repairing work.”
An economical method of transporting oil in bulk across the
Atlantic is adopted in the case of the steamer Iroquois, which herself
carries about 10,000 tons of oil in bulk, and also tows with her the
sailing barge Navahoe, carrying an equal quantity, one set of
engines thus doing duty for both cargoes. The Navahoe is the
largest sailing ship in the world, is schooner-rigged on all her six
masts, and is able to make her way to port in case she becomes
separated from her consort.
The floating dock is one of the most interesting of the many
developments in connection with the naval and mercantile marine of
the second half of the nineteenth century. Like all innovations,
floating docks were received with derision.
Now they have proved their worth, but circumstances are easily
conceivable in which all the marvels they have already accomplished
will be far eclipsed by what they may be called upon to do. In the
case of a naval battle, for instance, it may be a matter of impossibility
for a crippled warship to enter a dry dock, or even to get to one; but
a floating dock can be sent to meet the injured warrior and possibly
save it from going to the bottom altogether.
 The floating dock is a sort of raft, and the first man who ever
hauled a boat from the water upon another boat or raft to repair, it
started the idea of the floating dock. The first real floating dock, as
the term is now understood, was probably that which was improvised
in the Baltic Sea, so tradition says, by the skipper of a vessel which
had sustained some damage in those waters. He bought an old hulk,
removed the stern, and in its place constructed a flap gate. His
vessel was then floated into the hulk, the flap gate was closed and
the water pumped out. Floating docks of this type were almost the
only kind known up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, and
are in use to-day at some ports for small yachts, fishing-boats, and
vessels of similar dimensions.
With the growing size of vessels, greater docking facilities became
necessary, and, as the commerce of the world increased and ports
were developed, demands arose for docking accommodation which
could not always be met, owing in some cases to financial
difficulties, and in others to the engineering difficulties connected
with the localities. As a solution of the problem, the floating dock, as
it is known to-day, was invented. In spite of the opposition with which
it was greeted, the new contrivance held its own, and its merits
became generally recognised.
The difficulties and the cost of constructing dry docks are very
great, and the time taken in the work may run into years; one dock,
indeed, is stated to have taken fifteen years to complete.
As an instance of rapidity of floating-dock construction, the Vulcan
Company of Stettin required a dock 510 feet long and of 11,000 tons
lifting power at short notice. The complete dock with all machinery
and fittings was launched within seven and a half months, and within
eight months and thirteen days of the inception of the project, the
dock, after being towed across the North Sea and moored in place at
its site, was sunk ready to receive its first ship. The Havana dock
was delivered at Havana within eleven months after the signing of
the contract for its construction; the actual time expended on it,
dating from the day the first plate was laid until the complete dock
was launched, was six months and a day. Both these docks are of
over 10,000 tons lifting power. How long would it have taken to
excavate and build graving docks capable of receiving vessels of the
size that these docks can accommodate?
No dry dock can take a vessel larger than itself, and in reckoning
the dimensions of a dock for receiving purposes it must be
remembered that its cill is a fixture, that the width of the entrance at
the cill must not be made greater than the strength of the structure
will permit, and that though a dock may in other respects be able to
receive a vessel it cannot do so if that vessel through any mishap
should draw as much water as that at depth of cill, or if in heeling
over, its bilges should be wider than the width of the dock entrance.
None of these drawbacks apply to the floating dock. These immense
modern structures of steel and iron can receive vessels longer than
themselves, and in the case of the off-shore docks, can receive
vessels wider than themselves.
Should a vessel be heavily down by the head or stern, a floating
dock can be tilted to lift it, and should the vessel be heeling over, the
dock itself can be inclined so that it shall receive it without difficulty.
Yet another advantage is that the floating dock can be used in any
kind of ordinary weather. Lying at its moorings it is head on to wind
and sea. The amount of surface it opposes to the direct action of
wind and sea is comparatively slight. The very massiveness of its
structure reduces longitudinal and lateral motion to a minimum,
especially when submerged. Even with a fairly heavy sea running, a
damaged and leaking vessel can be brought upon the dock where its
weight, added to that of the dock itself, makes the combined
structure additionally stiff, so that the necessary repairs can be
undertaken in safety as soon as the vessel is lifted, and with as
much ease as if the dock and its burden were in still water. Floating
docks also can be used at any state of the tide, but he would be a
rash man who attempted to warp a vessel into an ordinary dry dock
with the tide running past the entrance with any degree of strength.