Isaac C. Smith

Isaac C. Smith was born in 1797 in Sing Sing, New York, (modern day Ossining), one of a large number of children of Caleb Smith and his wife Elizabeth (née Sherwood). and worked as a tenant and later owned a farm on the Manor of Phillipsburg. Smith began his career at an early age, working aboard market sloops on the Hudson River. He sailed the sloop Volunteer for some 23 years, and later became captain of the sloop General Ward. He also "carried on the ship and spar building business." thumb|Telegraph, built for Smiths steamboat line in 1836. In the mid-1830s, Smith proposed the establishment of a steamboat line to run from Sing Sing to New York City. After completion of the vessel, Smith was appointed her captain. Shortly after, Smith and two partners, Thomas Hulse and Jonathan Odell, organized the construction of a second steamboat, Telegraph, built in New York in 1836 by Lawrence & Sneden, with Smith again supervising construction. In 1849, Smith opened a shipyard in Hoboken, New Jersey under his own name. Over the next six years, Smith would build a wide variety of vessels at this yard, from sloops to steamboats to large, full-rigged ships. In 1853, Smiths son, J. Malcolm Smith, who had been advised for his health to pursue an open-air profession, the firm then being named Isaac C. Smith & Son. Smiths Hoboken shipyard produced about thirty ships in its relatively brief existence, and for the year 1853 was the fourth most prolific New York shipyard by number of vessels built. In 1854–55 however, a deepening nationwide shipbuilding slump persuaded the Smiths to leave the business, the yards last known ship, "a beautiful clipper schooner" Isaacs second marriage, which took place on 15 March 1854, was to Catharine McCord, widow of James McCord; daughter of James Trowbridge, a captain in the Revolutionary War; and mother of Smith's daughter-in-law Hannah, the wife of J. Malcolm Smith. Smith and his son J. Malcolm took an extended trip by ship and train via the Panama route to California, returning three months later. Isaac C. Smith was "greatly respected as an honorable citizen" in his native Sing Sing. In the last year of his life, he began to have attacks of paralysis, until eventually, "convinced the end was approaching", he joined the household of his son J. Malcolm in White Plains, where he died two months later on March 15, 1877, at the age of 79. His remains were interred in Dale Cemetery, Ossining. == Ships of note ==

thumb|Smiths best-known ship, the extreme clipper The largest and best-known ship built by Isaac C. Smith was the 1600-ton extreme clipper , said by some authorities to have been "the sharpest sailing ship ever constructed by any builder". Hurricane proved a very fast vessel, capable in ideal conditions of speeds of up to . On an 1854 voyage from New York to San Francisco, Hurricane was on track to challenge Flying Clouds all-time record passage of 89 days, until adverse conditions over the last 1000 miles lengthened her passage to a still outstanding 100 days. On another voyage, from Portsmouth, England to Calcutta, India, in 1855, Hurricane set a record of 82 1/4 days from The Needles to the mouth of the Hooghly River that remained unbeaten for many years. Smith built two other clippers, the 820-ton , built in 1853, Less than a year later however, she foundered in a hurricane, the majority of her crew being rescued by a daring maneouvre of the ship Excelsior, for which Excelsiors captain later received an award for heroism. Smith also built a substantial number of steam vessels, including steamboats, towboats and tugs. The largest of these was the 800-ton freight steamboat Atlas, built in 1852, which had the unusual design feature of external iron strapping for strengthening of her exceptionally broad-beamed hull. == Shipbuilding record ==

Isaac C. Smith, both alone and in partnership with his son J. Malcolm Smith, is known to have built about thirty ships at Hoboken. Given that Smith is said to have built more than 100 ships in the course of his career, another 60 or more were presumably built by him at Ossining. As scant record of these latter vessels has been found, probably they were mostly small watercraft of little individual historic interest such as Hudson River sloops. == Footnotes ==