It took 134 years, but a heroic New Yorker is finally getting some overdue recognition: On Saturday, the National Maritime Historical Society will unveil a headstone at the grave of John Willis Griffiths.
If you’ve never heard of Griffiths, you’re not alone. But the 19th-century naval architect played a major role in boosting US shipping — much of it from New York — and setting the then-still-young nation on a course toward maritime and commercial supremacy.
He deserves a headstone, to say the least.
Griffiths is the father of the grand clipper ships of the mid-1800s. These fast, majestic sailing vessels were at the heart of the China tea, spice and opium trade and were also used to ferry gold-seekers to San Francisco and Australia.
The two clippers Griffiths built here in the city — at a time when ship production was a pillar of New York’s economy — introduced a radical new design to large sailing vessels: a V-shaped bow and concave hull that let a ship slice through the water with hardly a ripple. The concept revolutionized the industry when Griffiths’ ships shattered speed records around the globe.
Griffiths’ first clipper, Rainbow, was launched in 1845 in the face of considerable skepticism, but it cut the round-trip time to China from a year to just seven months. A year later, he launched Sea Witch; it did even better: In 1849, Sea Witch set a stunning record for its Hong Kong-to-New York run — 74 days, 14 hours. To this day, no single-hulled sailing vessel has beaten that.
Critics quickly became believers. Other designers — including Boston’s Donald McKay, one of the nation’s most prolific clipper-builders — copied the shape, with similar success. America soon gained immense respect for its shipping prowess.
Maritime historian William H. Thiesen wrote that Griffiths “did more than any other builder” in the 19th century to “champion American shipbuilding methods.” McKay said he had “no superior.” Naval architect and historian Larrie D. Ferreiro says Griffiths had an impact on “generations of shipbuilders on both sides of the Atlantic.”
Griffiths himself, who later wrote, edited and published nautical journals, argued that the model for Sea Witch had more “influence upon the subsequent configuration of fast vessels than any other ship ever built in the United States.”
All this helped New York and Boston become America’s hubs for clipper-ship production — and helped the nation establish its commercial might.
Griffiths also shared his hull-shape ideas with his lifelong friend and fellow shipbuilder George Steers.
Steers used them to build yachts, one of which, America, wound up besting 14 British boats in the Hundred Sovereigns Cup regatta around the Isle of Wight in 1851. That victory not only earned the United States enormous sailing glory; it also led to the race being renamed the America’s Cup.
Besides clippers, Griffiths designed steamships and naval vessels and patented numerous inventions. Still, he died a poor man in 1882, and his grave has lacked a headstone. Until now.
A few years ago, Griffiths’ fans tracked down his gravesite at the Linden Hill United Methodist Cemetery in Queens and were horror-struck to see it had no monument identifying the important remains below. Their discovery triggered a research project and fundraising by the National Maritime Historical Society worthy of the man himself.
That includes a seven-minute video about Griffiths for a Kickstarter campaign (check it out on YouTube) and a detailed family tree of his progeny spanning five generations. The group even managed to track down Griffiths’ living descendants to inform them of the project.
Meanwhile, Ferreiro and Alexander Pollara, a doctoral student at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, were researching the evolution of the designs Griffiths used. Turns out, the radical concave hull likely wasn’t dreamed up by Griffiths himself but was based on the ideas of British shipbuilder John Scott Russell.
Russell’s bow and hull shape had been used for some small steamships, but it was Griffiths’ Rainbow and Sea Witch that made it standard for large sailing vessels.
Moreover, by the 20th century, the researchers note, the science of shipbuilding had actually come to discount the importance of Russell’s design, particularly at the higher speeds that newer steam and diesel engines could generate.
The concave hulls were fast, but bulbous-shaped bows proved even more efficient and eventually replaced the clippers’ shape. Griffiths and his followers, it seems, owed much of their success to simple luck.
Still, results count: Griffiths’ clippers gave American shippers an edge and paved the way for a boom in America’s global trade.
At 10:30 Saturday morning, at the Linden Hill Cemetery in Ridgewood, a great New Yorker will finally receive a small token of appreciation for his huge accomplishments: a simple headstone to mark his grave.