Early Naval Career
At the age of 22, Isherwood was appointed First Assistant Engineer in the Navy May 23, 1844, serving aboard General Taylor in 1846–47. During the Mexican–American War, he served in the steam warship Princeton, and later was senior engineer of the gunboat Spitfire.
When the Mexican–American War ended, Isherwood was assigned to the Washington Navy Yard, where he assisted Charles Stuart in designing engines and experiments with steam as a source of power for propelling ships. Throughout the 1850s, Isherwood compiled operational and performance data from steam engines in U.S. and foreign commercial vessels and warships. He used these empirical data to analyze the efficiency of engine types then in use.
In the twelve years between the Mexican–American War and the Civil War, Isherwood published 55 technical and scientific articles on steam engineering and vessel propulsion in the prestigious Journal of the Franklin Institute. In 1859 the engineer published the results of his own original thermodynamic experiments in the two-volume Engineering Precedents for Steam Machinery. Isherwood was the nation's most prolific antebellum technical writer.
Isherwood went to sea during the period between the wars, serving as Chief Engineer of the steam frigate San Jacinto on a cruise of more than three years on the Asiatic Station. During this cruise he was stricken with dysentery, prompting his return to the United States.
Read more about this topic: Benjamin F. Isherwood
Famous quotes containing the words early, naval and/or career:
“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941Ma date that will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)