In 1850 the United States was just beginning to emerge as a major industrial power. The vast, mechanized economy and feats of engineering that would dazzle and terrify the world later in the century were still several decades in the future; yet in one field Americans were already seen --- at home and abroad --- as competing with the best in the world — namely, shipbuilding. This only made sense, for the United States began as a maritime nation, and the early country were clustered around a string of Atlantic seaports. American shipwrights, or, as they began to style themselves, naval architects, quickly mastered the art of building fast, responsive, and resilient wooden vessels from the timbers harvested from vast forests of North America. The transatlantic trade, and, beginning in 1849, the rush to the gold fields in California, encouraged shipwrights to design ever slimmer and faster ships. These so-called “clippers” marked a significant change in marine architecture, with sharper bows and sleeker profiles than any of their predecessors. These ships were built specifically for speed, and they immediately captured a fistful of records for fast passages.

John W. Griffiths, of New York, was one of the leading builders of the day, as well as one of the very few to put his ideas about ship design down on paper. His Treatise, which was published in twelve monthly parts during 1850, is the most comprehensive view into the emerging science of ship design from the period. The text is a strange mélange of scientific observation and odd polemics, and it provides vivid insight into a branch of engineering that was just beginning to transform from craft to science. The elegant illustrations, in white-line wood engravings, evoke the sleek essence of the ships in a way that paintings of the vessels never quite captured.

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