Benjamin F. Isherwood: Premier Engineer of the US Navy

Benjamin Franklin Isherwood (1822-1915) was a human dynamo. Before he joined the Navy in 1844, he had already worked as a railroad engineer. He worked on the Croton Aqueduct, the major source for drinking water for the City of New York, still in use today. He had an engineering job on the Erie Canal and designed and constructed lighthouses for the Lighthouse Service. During the Mexican War, he served as engineering officer on two warships supporting US forces in Mexico, where he first encountered David Dixon Porter.

After the war, Isherwood was assigned to the Washington Navy Yard, where he experimented with and designed steam engines for naval vessels. By the outbreak of the US Civil War, Isherwood had published 55 technical and scientific articles on steam engineering and vessel propulsion, as well as a two-volume tome on steam machinery. At age 39, he was appointed Engineer-in-Chief of the US Navy. When the Civil War commenced, the Navy had 28 steam vessels. By the end of the war, the Navy’s steam-powered fleet had grown to 600 under Isherwood’s direction. He organized a curriculum for steam engineering at the Naval Academy, where the engineering building is still named “Isherwood Hall” in his honor. In 1869, he ran afoul of David Dixon Porter, who was now the senior Admiral in the US Navy.

Isherwood wanted to reorganize the Navy to provide engineering officers with more rank and prestige, a concept strongly opposed by Porter, who had Isherwood banished to the Mare Island Navy Yard in San Francisco Bay. While in this “exile”, Isherwood conducted experiments that resulted in a propeller used by the Navy for the next 27 years. Before his retirement in 1884, he designed the Navy’s fast cruisers. Since his death in 1915, three Navy ships have been named for Isherwood. The Rear Admiral Benjamin F. Isherwood Award is presented by the US Navy to recognize “innovation and expertise in the effective assessment, development, execution, or deployment of technological solutions for operational Fleet needs.”