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David Stodder

David Stodder (June 23, 1748 – September 30, 1806) was a Baltimore master shipwright who built one of the United States Navy’s first armed frigates, Constellation, and who was a spokesman for and organizer of the Baltimore community of manufacturers in the years immediately following the Revolution.

Contents
• 1 Biography
• 2 Shipbuilding activities
• 3 Building Constellation
• 4 Political and organizational involvement
• 5 Documented ships
• 6 References

Biography

David Stodder was born in Hingham, Massachusetts, the fifth generation of Stodders to live on Bare Cove after the first, John, arrived in 1638. The home of his birth and upbringing still stands as a private residence on Hingham’s Main Street, several blocks from the First Parish Church (now popularly known as the “Old Ship Church”) where he was baptized.

Stodder probably learned his trade from his cousin, Jeremiah Stodder, who owned two shipyards in the Hingham area. On March 28, 1775 he married Marcia Dodge Andre, the widow of Captain Amero Andre who was lost at sea. Stodder’s father-in-law, Jeremiah Dodge, owned a shipyard in lower Manhattan and it is likely that Stodder was employed there prior to the marriage.

When hostilities between Great Britain and her American colonies exploded into war, Stodder was sent to Gosport, Virginia, near Norfolk, to build two frigates for the Continental Congress. His appointment was announced on November 30, 1776 by Richard Henry Lee, a Virginia congressman who was responsible for building a navy quickly and virtually from scratch. Neither frigate ever put to sea, for the British army captured Gosport without a fight in May, 1779 and both of Stodder’s ships were burned in their stocks.

By 1781, Stodder had moved to Baltimore and become established as a shipwright. That January he placed an ad in a Baltimore newspaper for two runaway slaves, and in August, in partnership with another local shipbuilder, Brittingham Dickison, he invoiced the Continental Congress for extensive repairs made to the Continental armed schooner Plater. The Stodders set up housekeeping, and David opened his first Baltimore shipyard, in Fell’s Point, a burgeoning maritime community just east of Baltimore.

A thirty-year long career of shipbuilding and political activism followed, highlighted by the launch of the frigate Constellation in 1797. Stodder established a much larger yard near the mouth of Harris’s Creek and he and Marcia (they had no children) later moved from Fell’s Point to the creek. The majority of Stodder’s output was schooners in the Baltimore clipper style, fast and low-slung ships that made their names as privateers.

In addition to building ships, Stodder served as an officer in the Maryland Militia, rising to the rank of Major and leading a troop of artillery during the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. He was among the early leaders in the Association of Tradesmen and Manufacturers of Baltimore, a committee formed in 1785 to promote “the mechanical arts” and to lobby for protective tariffs which would enable the growth of manufacturing in the new nation.

Stodder died as one of Baltimore’s wealthiest tradesmen. In 1790 he was the second largest slaveowner in Baltimore and he owned slaves until his death. He amassed large real estate holdings and his will and subsequent estate documents reveal that his Harris’s Creek shipyard, though its production slowed dramatically after 1800, was still capable of building large ships.

Though the launch of Constellation is perhaps the second most significant event in Baltimore history (the first being the bombardment of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812, which inspired Francis Scott Key to write the National Anthem) little has been written about Stodder’s activities as either a shipbuilder or an activist. Maritime historians have virtually ignored him, even though a ship named Constellation graces the modern Baltimore waterfront and has spawned a decades-long debate about the fate of the original.

Building Constellation

In 1794, the U.S. Congress passed legislation calling for the construction of six frigates, the first fighting vessels for a new navy. President Washington insisted that they be built in six different locales, and Baltimore was chosen as the site for a 36-gun ship to be named Constellation. Thomas Truxtun, the Revolutionary War veteran who was named at Constellation’s first commander, reluctantly chose David Stodder as her builder. Truxtun had publicly stated that all of the frigates should be built in his hometown of Philadelphia, also the home of the ships’ designer, Joshua Humphreys. Washintgon, however, prevailed and by November, 1794 materials began to arrive at Stodder’s yard.

Construction was dogged by material shortages and politics. A series of vitriolic letters circulated among Stodder, Truxtun, Secretaries of War Henry Knox and Timothy Pickering, and Humphreys’s ambitious assistant Josiah Fox, each accusing the others for delays and cost overruns. Constellation was launched on September 7, 1797 and put to sea on April 2, 1798. Truxtun, for all his objections and meddling with the sail plan of the frigate, declared her to be “in every situation, the easiest ship I was ever in.”

Constellation sailed on to amass an impressive legacy. She captured the larger French frigate L’Insurgent in 1799 and served proudly in the wars against the Barbary pirates in the early 1800s. Though rendered impotent by a British blockade during the War of 1812, after the conclusion of the war she returned to the Mediterranean and contributed to the final suppression of the Barbary powers.

Between 1820 and 1845 she circumnavigated the world several times and served as flagship for the West India Squadron. Badly deteriorated and well past being seaworthy, Constellation was put into ordinary (taken from active service but still afloat) in Norfolk in 1845 and broken up in 1853 while a new ship of the same name was being built. That ship, after an equally honorable naval career was restored in the 1990s and is displayed in the Baltimore harbor. The origins of the 1853 ship have been hotly debated since she arrived in Baltimore in 1955, though the consensus is that she is not the Stodder ship, but is rather the last remaining American Civil War era sailing warship afloat

Political and Organizational Involvement

Among the earliest appearances of the name David Stodder in Baltimore newspapers was an April, 1781 letter to the governor of Maryland requesting protection for the Baltimore harbor, which Stodder signed as a captain of the militia. His military career spanned nearly twenty years, though his only active duty was at the head of a column of artillery during the Whiskey Rebellion. His company mustered for periodic training and to offer salutes whenever George Washington passed through Baltimore, but otherwise his commission provided him with little else but the title and some important Baltimore business connections.

Stodder’s local connections resulted in several important nominations that advanced his shipbuilding business. In the waning years of the Revolution he served on a Maryland monetary commission that put him in touch with the state’s wealthiest merchants and most influential politicians. After the War he served on a commission to evaluate and distribute property seized from loyalists, and in the process was able to procure a large Baltimore County holding.

In 1785 Stodder, with other leading Baltimore industrialists, organized the Association of Tradesmen and Manufacturers of Baltimore and for a time served as its chairman. A diverse group including maritime tradesmen, shoemakers, brickmakers, metal workers and a host of other manufacturers, the association advocated for protective tariffs that would counter the competition from cheap British goods that flooded the country after the Revolution. As such, Stodder participated in a nationwide effort to establish domestic manufacturing and to insure American economic independence.

The association supported political candidates in local elections and worked toward the ratification of the United States Constitution, believing that a strong national government would be better equipped to pass meaningful trade protection. In a massive parade in Baltimore to celebrate the ratification, Stodder marched at the head of the shipbuilding delegation.

Documented Ships

Stodder is known to have built at least 22 vessels in Baltimore between 1786 and 1800 (documentation from U.S. Customs Registries):

Schooners (Baltimore clipper types):
Betsy, 1787; Active, 1791 (one of the first vessels of the U.S. Revenue Service, now the Coast Guard); Voluptus, 1793; Samson, 1794; Active, 1794 (the second schooner of the same name); Vulpes, 1795; Jupiter, 1795; Punch, 1796; Greyhound, 1799; Fox, 1799; Chance, 1799; Diligent, 1799; Punch, 1799; Young Constellation, 1799; Nonesuch, 1800

Other types:
Goliath, 1787 (600 tons, for the East India trade); Hester (unknown type); Chesapeake, 1789 (unknown type); Samson, 1789 (full-built, 3-masted ship); Prosperity, 1789 (2 decks, 3 masts); Constellation, 1797 (frigate); Dolphin, 1799 (3 masts, 1 deck, possibly a schooner rig)

References

Toni Ahrens, Design Makes a Difference: Shipbuilding in Baltimore, 1795-1835, Heritage Books, Bowie, Maryland, 1998.

Howard I. Chapelle and Leon D. Polland, The Constellation Question, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC, 1970.

Eugene S. Ferguson, Truxtun of the Constellation, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, 1956.

Charles G. Steffen, The Mechanics of Baltimore, Workers and Politics in the Age of Revolution 1763-1812, University of Illinois Press, Urbana IL, 1984.

Ian W. Toll, Six Frigates, The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 2006.