Allaire Iron Works
The Allaire Iron Works was a leading 19th-century American marine engineering company based in New York City.
During Vanderbilt's ownership, the Allaire Iron Works made a significant contribution to the Union cause during the American Civil War.
Allaire and Stoudinger built the engine and boiler for the last steamboat contracted for by the Fulton shop, the Chancellor Livingstone, which was completed about a year later.
[4] Stoudinger himself died shortly after completion of Chancellor Livingstone, after which Allaire decided to move Fulton's equipment from its location in New Jersey to his brassworks at Cherry St., New York.
[3][4] In 1817, the Allaire Iron Works supplied the engine cylinder for Savannah, the first steamship to make a transatlantic crossing.
[4] As Allaire's business grew, he found it increasingly difficult to source adequate amounts of quality pig iron from which to manufacture his engines.
In the same year, the Allaire Works also supplied a compound engine for a 200-ton towboat called Post Boy,[8] and another for a small steamer, Linnaeus.
[6] Other vessels equipped with compound engines from the Allaire Works to 1828 included Sun, Commerce, Swiftsure and Pilot Boy.
The Howell Works in New Jersey was producing a surplus of pig iron, enabling Allaire to diversify into the manufacture of household goods in addition to his production of marine engines in New York.
[10] Allaire had up until this point in his career been able to borrow to meet cash shortfalls, but with the recession affecting demand for his products, he was obliged to look elsewhere for working capital.
[4] Shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt and Allaire's brother-in-law John Haggerty were thus able to eventually gain a controlling interest in the company.
Defying the prevailing wisdom, he began powering oceangoing steamships with American walking beam engines, believing that their relative lightness of construction, economy of operation and low maintenance requirements made them preferable to the low center-of-gravity, but more complex, British-designed side-lever and oscillating types.
[18] Other ships fitted with Allaire powerplants in this period include North Star (1853), a transatlantic ocean liner, St. Lawrence (1853), built for operation on the Great Lakes, and the Long Island Sound steamer Plymouth Rock (1854).
Intended to be a very fast ship, Madawaska was fitted with experimental vibrating-lever engines designed by Navy architect John Ericsson.
[24] Shortly after the end of hostilities, the U.S. government dumped more than a million tons of unwanted shipping onto the market, driving down prices and depriving the shipbuilding industry of new orders.
The company soldiered on until 1869 when Cornelius Vanderbilt sold its plant and equipment at auction, which were bought by John Roach at scrap metal prices.
[26] The following table lists merchant ships with engines supplied by the Allaire Iron Works from the company's inception in 1816 until its closure in 1867.
This list is confined to vessels that were designed and built as warships, and does not include merchant ships commissioned into the Navy.
