Ericsson threw his hands into the air, exasperated beyond belief.
“This has nothing to do with me, I tell you. I am an engineer and my job is to build machines. I have never heard of these new laws nor do I care about them in the slightest.” He turned to his dockyard manager. “Davis — do you know anything about this?”
“I do, sir. I have the figures here.” He took a grubby piece of paper from his pocket. “As yet there are only forty-three men who have entered this program. But there will be one hundred and eighty apprentices in all when recruitment is finished.”
“And how many of them will be Negroes?” The question boomed out into the sudden silence. Davis mopped at his streaming face, looked around helplessly. “Tell me!” Douglass insisted.
The dockyard manager looked at the piece of paper again, then crumpled it in his sweaty palm. Finally, almost in a whisper, he said, “I believe… that there are no Negroes enrolled at the present time. To the best of my knowledge, that is.”
“I thought so!” Douglass’s words were like thunder. “When this dockyard agreed to accept Federal funding — it also agreed that one quarter of all apprentices were to be of the Negro race. That means you will enlist forty-five of them at once.” He took a thick envelope from his inside jacket pocket and passed it over to the hapless manager. “Before coming here I took the precaution of stopping at the local office of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Their address is on this envelope. Inside is a list of names of fit and able men who are available and desirous of work. Consult them. You have one week to get a list of these forty-five individuals to Mr. Litwack here. If they are not on his desk at that time all funding for this shipyard will be halted until that information is supplied.”
“Can he do this?” Ericsson shouted at the quavering Davis.
“Y-yes…”
“Then I see no problem. Do it at once. My building program shall not be delayed for a single instant.”
“But, Mr. Ericsson, there are… problems.”
“Problems? I don’t want any problems. Hire the men as has been agreed.”
“But, sir, it is the other trainees. They refuse to work side by side with niggers.”
“That is not a problem,” Ericsson said. “Make all of the apprentices black men. Surely the artificers of the North will be happy to train them.”
“I’ll see… what I can do.”
“One week,” Douglass said ominously. Then a sudden smile flickered briefly across his severe features. “I like your style, Mr. Ericsson. You are a man of uncommon good sense.”
“I am a man who builds ships, Mr. Douglass. I have never understood the American preoccupation with the color of a man’s skin. If a workman does his job I don’t care if he is even a…” He groped for an apt comparison. “Even a Norwegian — and I will still employ him.”
The wail of a steam whistle interrupted him. “Ahh, you must excuse me,” he said. Turning and leaving abruptly, heading towards the puffing sound of a locomotive. He had insisted that a spur track of the Chesapeake Ohio railroad be built, coming right into the shipyard. It was already proving its worth, bringing iron plating right to the dockside.
But this was no ordinary cargo of iron. The train consisted of a single passenger coach behind the engine, with a heavily laden flatcar behind that. A stubby man in a frockcoat, wearing a black stovepipe hat, climbed down from the coach as Ericsson came up.
“Could you possibly be Mr. Ericsson?” he said, extending his hand. “My name is Parrott, William Parker Parrott.”
“The gunsmith! This is a great pleasure. I have designed guns myself so know of what I speak. And this is the 12-inch cannon that you wrote me about.”
“It is.”
“Beautiful,” Ericsson said as they both stepped back to admire the bulk of the long, black gun. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder for this was a hulking black engine of destruction. “Your locking breech, this I must see at once.”
They both clambered up onto the flatcar, in their enthusiasm not noticing the soot that smeared onto them.
“The gas seal,” Parrott said, “that is the heart of a breechloading gun. I have examined closely the British Armstrong cannon, have even built one of them. Its breech is complex and when firing begins it soon becomes unusable. A sliding metal plate is secured in place by large locking screws. But the seal is incomplete. After a few rounds the heated metal expands and leaks hot gas and threatens the very safety of the crew should the breech explode — as has happened more than once. But I believe that I have now solved that problem.”
“You must tell me — show me!”
“I shall. The principle is a simple one. Imagine, if you will, a heavy threaded breach, into which a threaded bolt can be screwed into place.”
“The gas seal would be complete. But it would be the devil’s own job — and a slow one at that — to screw a long bolt in and out between each shot.”
“Of course. So let me show you…”
Parrott went to the rear of the gun and reached up to strain at a long lever. He could barely reach it, nor was he able to pull it down. The taller Swede who, despite his advanced age, was immensely strong, reached past the small gunsmith and pulled the bar down with a mighty heave. The breech-block rotated — then swung aside on a large pinned hinge. Ericsson ran his fingers over the threads on block and barrel.
“It is an interrupted screw,” Parrott said proudly. “The theory is a simple one — but getting the machining right was very difficult. As you can see, after the breach and the breechblock have been threaded, channels are cut in each of them. The block then slides forward into place. And with a twist it locks. A perfect gas seal has been accomplished by the threading. After firing the process is reversed.”
“You are indeed a genius,” Ericsson said, running his fingers over the thick iron screw threads. Possibly the only time in his life that he had praised another man.
“If you will show me the ship on which it will be mounted…”
“Difficult to do,” Ericsson said, smiling as he tapped his head. “Most of it is inside here. But I can show you the drawings I have made. If you will step inside my office.”
Ericsson had not stinted himself with the government’s money when he had designed a workplace for himself. He had labored for too many years in the past in drafty drawing rooms, sometimes only feebly lit by sooty lanterns. Now large windows — as well as a skylight — illuminated his handsome mahogany-framed drafting table. Shelves beside it contained models of the various ships he had designed, other inventions as well. The drawing of Virginia was spread across the table. He tapped it proudly with his finger.
“There will be a turret here on the forelock, another aft. Each will mount two of your guns.”
Parrott listened intently as the Swedish engineer proudly pointed out the details that would be incorporated into his latest design. But his eyes kept wandering to a chunky metal device that stood on the floor. It had pipes sticking out from it and what appeared to be a rotating shaft projecting from one side. At last he could control his curiosity no longer. He tried to interrupt, but Ericsson was in full spate.
“These turrets will be far smaller than those I have built before because there will be no need to pull the gun back into the turret after firing to reload through the muzzle. Being smaller the turret will be lighter, and that much easier to rotate. And without the need of pulling the guns in and out after each shot the rate of fire will be faster.”