Jacob Aaron Westervelt (January 20, 1800 – February 21, 1879) was a renowned and prolific shipbuilder who constructed 247 vessels of all descriptions during his career of over 50 years. From 1853 until 1855 he was Mayor of New York City.
Together with his partners (Westervelt & MacKay and Westervelt & Sons) he designed some of the fastest and most successful sailing packets, clippers and steamships ever built, among these the screw sloop and the clipper , as well as many vessels for foreign governments and Royal Houses. Westervelt was awarded the Order of Isabella the Catholic by the Queen of Spain for the preparation of models and plans for three Spanish frigates. Westervelt was born in Tenafly, on January 20, 1800, and was baptized at Schraalenburgh on February 16, being the first child to receive that sacrament after the completion of the new church. The Westervelts then resided at the old family homestead on Tenafly Road midway between Englewood and Tenafly. When Ari Westervelt was working on improving the riverfront, he moved, together with his infant son, to New York in 1804, to be nearer his work. It was to his father that Jacob Aaron owed his good education. His father died when Westervelt was only 14. while another states that he was already apprenticed to Christian Bergh in 1814.
Christian Bergh's shipyard (1817–1836)
Westervelt learned the "art, trade and mystery" and was succeeded by his sons Henry and Edwin Bergh, who continued the business until just after their father's death in 1843.
Westervelt & Co. shipyard (1836–1864)
thumb|Engraving of the USS Ottawa under construction at the Westervelt shipyard in 1861
In 1836 Westervelt built at least two ships under his own name, the Baltimore and Mediator, in partnership with the 22-year-old ship chandler Marshall Owen Roberts as Westervelt & Roberts. Soon after Christian Bergh's retirement, Westervelt and Robert Carnley made an extensive tour of Europe, visiting the principal shipbuilding points, where Westervelt gathered information that he subsequently put to good use. at the foot of Gouverneur Street and extending to Water Street and up to Scammel. Other sources state that Westervelt and William MacKay (not to be confused with Canadian shipbuilder Donald McKay) established one of a few new yards at Corlear's Hook (the block bounded by Third, Goerck and Houston Streets) Westervelt may also have designed and built ships in connection with Edward Mills. became prominent and prospered. Together with MacKay and his sons he built 50 steamships, 93 traditional sailing vessels and clippers, 5 barques, 14 schooners, one sloop, two lightships, and 11 pilot boats—a total of 181 vessels of 150,624 tons. (Under the pressure of competition, packet schedules were tightened and sailings reorganized due to disasters, new launchings, etc. In 1844–1848, several ships made three-month round trips instead of the traditional four months, calculated from one Liverpool departure to the following one.)
- The , a packet sailing between New York and London on a regular schedule. She was built in 1846 in New York by Westervelt & MacKay and owned by E. E. Morgan. The ship is renowned because of the sea shanty "Clear the track", also called "Clear the track, let the bullgine run" or simply "Margaret Evans". Hornet (1851), N.B. Palmer (1851), Kathay (1853), and . Clipper bows were distinctively narrow and heavily raked forward, allowing them to rapidly clip through the waves. The first archetypal clipper, with sharply raked stem, counter stern and square rig, was Ann McKim, built in Baltimore in 1833 by Kennard & Williamson. For some historians, the Rainbow was the first true "Yankee clipper". She was built in 1845 to a new design by the American naval architect John Willis Griffiths who is said to have based his design on the owner's previous ship Ann McKim. This type of vessel had been in demand for the China trade, but they were rather small. From the experience gained in the service of these first clippers, the builder soon found the changes that were necessary in the design for the building of larger and faster ships demanded in 1850 for the California, China and Australia clipper routes.
thumb|left|Hornet [[Clipper|clipper ship card]]
Westervelt's clippers
The greatest New York clippers took shape in the yards of Westervelt and his friend William H. Webb. The N.B. Palmer was perhaps the most famous clipper built in the Westervelt yard, besides the Sweepstakes. In China she was known as "the Yacht", and with her nettings in the tops, brass guns, gold stripe, and her lavish entertainment on the Fourth of July and Washington's Birthday, she well deserved the title. A full-rigged model of the N.B. Palmer was exhibited at The Crystal Palace, London, in 1851, and attracted much attention as a fine example of the American clipper ship. In 1858–1859 the N.B. Palmer with her 28-year-old Captain Hingham had tied the record of 82 days for the Shanghai to New York run. and for making the trip between New York City and San Francisco in only 106 days.
The end of the clipper ship era
thumb|Clipper ship Sweepstakes, built by Westervelt & Sons in 1853
The economic boom spurred on by the California Gold Rush that had brought on the era of the clipper ships had turned to bust. All the secrets of building lofty clippers had been discovered and there were too many of them in existence. The dropping freight rates now gave no incentive to build any more. The San Francisco market was so saturated that many a disgusted ship captain dumped unwanted cargo overboard in the bay before sailing on to other ports. take the view that Westervelt built the first true American steamship that crossed the Atlantic to Europe. The Marquis Claude de Jouffroy d'Abbans from France invented and constructed the first steamboat, the so-called Palmipède, in 1774, and a second one, the steamboat , in 1783. Robert Fulton built the first commercially successful steam paddleship in the US, the (also known as Clermont) in 1807, using a Boulton and Watt engine.
The is usually said to be the first steamship to cross the Atlantic (in 1819). She was originally planned as a sailing ship but was changed into a steamer. Because she did not make the entire passage under steam, some dispute the Savannahs claim as the pioneering ocean steamer of the Atlantic. The British steamer City of Kingston and the , a Quebec-built craft, and at about the same time the Kamschatka built by William H. Brown for the Russian navy. After the Savannah, there was no steamship owned or run by an American company that navigated the Atlantic Ocean to a port in Europe until 1847. The company was unable to attract sufficient capital to carry out its original business plan to build four ships and instead ordered two ships from Westervelt & MacKay, Washington and Hermann (1848). This was one of the less successful chapters in the history of the Westervelt shipyard. Both paddle steamers were said to be slow and had insufficient cargo space, and the government soon revoked the Le Havre portion of the mail contract because of the line's poor performance. Westervelt & Sons also built Foong Shuey, afterwards named Plymouth Rock, of 287 feet in length, with an engine from the Lake Erie steamer Plymouth Rock. This vessel made the voyage from New York to Singapore in 51 days. (The all-time record for a sailing vessel on that route is 78 days.) The SS Winfield Scott built in 1850 by Westervelt & MacKay, wrecked on Middle Anacapa Island in 1853, and has been the object of numerous salvage operations since; she currently rests underwater as part of the Channel Islands National Park and Marine Sanctuary. The wreck site of the Winfield Scott is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Warships and ships for governments
thumb|The screw sloop USS Brooklyn
By 1855, the gold rush was over and Westervelt, like other shipbuilders, began looking for new markets to keep his yard busy, as the shipping lines that had carried almost 2.7 million emigrants across the Atlantic by sailing vessels between 1846 and 1855,were ordering fewer ships than before. The declining trend continued because of the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. Between 1855 and the end of the war in 1865, only 1.4 million emigrants were conveyed from Europe to the United States.
On March 3, 1857, the U.S. Congress authorized five screw sloops of war, one of them the (the first ship so named by the U.S. Navy). It was laid down later that year by Westervelt and his sons, launched in 1858, and commissioned on January 26, 1859, with Captain (later Admiral) David G. Farragut in command. USS Brooklyn was active in Caribbean operations until the start of the American Civil War. In 1861 she was an active participant in the Union blockade of the Confederate States of America. She received orders for many different missions: she was one of the ships that attacked the Forts St. Philip and Jackson, and under the command of Captain James Alden, Jr. she was part of the fleet that helped to blockade Mobile Bay. During the battle of Mobile Bay, which lasted a little more than three hours, 54 of Brooklyns crew were killed and 43 wounded while firing 183 projectiles. After spending the next few weeks helping reduce the Confederate land works guarding the entrance, Brooklyn departed Mobile Bay on September 6, 1864, and headed for Hampton Roads for service in the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Soon thereafter, Brooklyn was in the task force that arrived off Fort Fisher on January 13, 1865, and her guns supported the attack until the fort surrendered on January 15. Since this victory completed the last major task of the Union Navy during the Civil War, Brooklyn sailed north and was decommissioned at the New York Navy Yard on January 31, 1865. Admiral Farragut declared Brooklyn to have been the most efficient man-of-war in the American navy. (which position he also held at the time of his death), and his secretary General was Louis Fitzgerald.
As Dock Commissioner, Westervelt followed in the footsteps of his father by continuing to improve the riverfront.
In 1873 the draughtsmen and engineers in the office of the Engineer-in-Chief were engaged in the preparation of maps and drawings to show the grants of land under water, around, and adjoining the island of Manhattan which had been made by either the state or Municipal governments from 1696 till 1873. They were also engaged in the preparation of plans for a proposed exterior bulkhead wall which was planned to be built all around the city. Westervelt stepped back from active political involvement for a couple of years, but remained a shrewd observer of current affairs and recognized nuisances and the needs of the people of "his" town. He witnessed sharply increasing taxes between 1850 and 1852 and the establishment of a reform movement that began to decry excessive government spending. Grand jury revelations of widespread corruption on the common council heightened such concerns. Reformers mobilized and ran the Democratic incumbents out of office, electing in their place a combination of Whigs and reform Democrats committed to "economy" in government. In November 1852 Westervelt was nominated for Mayor of the city by reformist representatives of the Democratic party. The mayoralty election was held at the same time as the presidential election, and the Democrats were successful in both. to the Community Council he declared the subjects he planned to deal with first, and that according to him, needed the attention of the council: January 7, 1854.]]
Westervelt's term was marked by many reforms of the city's police.
In 1844, New York City's population of 320,000 was served by an archaic police force, consisting of one night watch, one hundred city marshals, thirty-one constables, and fifty-one municipal police officers. On 7 May 1844, the state legislature approved a proposal that authorized creation of a city police force, along with abolition of the nightwatch system. assaulting superior officers, refusing to go on patrol, releasing prisoners from the custody of other policemen, drunkenness, extorting money from prisoners — these are offences of daily occurrence, committed often with impunity. In 1853 an administrative body was created, called the Board of Police Commissioners, consisting of Mayor Westervelt, the recorder and the city judge. Apart from the fact that the chief of police was selected by the Mayor with the Board's approval, the Board had full powers of appointment and dismissal of all members of the force and was charged with general administrative duties.
In nothing was the undisciplined attitude of the police more clearly shown than in their refusal to wear uniforms. "Un-American", "undemocratic", "militarism", "King's livery", "a badge of degradation and servitude"—ideas of this kind formed the basis of opposition against Westervelt's wish to put policemen in uniform, Such early exhibitions were forerunners of the later world's fairs. The Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations opened during the term of Mayor Westervelt on July 14, 1853, in a sparsely developed part of the city. Fortieth and Forty-second streets bounded the fair's four-acre site to the immediate west of the Croton Distributing Reservoir—today's Bryant Park. Within New York's Crystal Palace, designed by Karl Gildemeister, four thousand exhibitors displayed the industrial wares, consumer goods, and artworks of the nation. Westervelt was President of the Exhibition, It was during Westervelt's term as mayor that some of the first Know-Nothing riots occurred. This body of thought was often propagated by street preachers. One of the most ambivalent characters was Reverend Mr. Parsons, who had been in the habit of regularly preaching on the wharves, in shipyards and other "obscure" places along the East and North Rivers. On December 11, 1853, he planted himself upon a pile of timber in the Westervelt & MacKay shipyard. His voice traveled far, and in the course of half an hour there was an assemblage of some ten thousand people. As a result of his speech a serious riot occurred and on the orders of Mayor Westervelt the preacher was taken into custody. Some Know-Nothinger hastened to the station house with the intention of liberating him. Finding no redress there, five thousand excited men marched to 308 East Broadway and surrounded the residence of Mayor Westervelt. Finding that he was absent from home,
The feelings of the members of this movement against the participation of foreign-born citizens in municipal affairs had grown very bitter,
Genealogy of the Westervelt family
Ancestors
thumb|upright|Arms of van Westervelt, as emblazoned on the family tomb, in the nave of the church in Harderwijk, Netherlands
Westervelt, as his name indicates, came from old Dutch stock.
In the middle of the 17th century a few Westervelts lived in Meppel, situated a few miles from the eastern shore of the Zuiderzee, in the province of Drenthe and three miles east of Zwolle. Amongst them were two brothers, Willem and Lubbert Lubbertsen van Westervelt, both farmers and cattle raisers, who with their wives and children decided to move to the New World.