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Born a slave in 1805, John Mashow died a free man in New Bedford. Fourteen whaleships of his design were built in Padanaram.
Fame eludes local black boatbuilder - until now
He was born in obscurity and died in obscurity, though he left a valuable legacy.
His name was John Mashow and he was the most important African-American involved in U.S. maritime history, according to Richard C. Kugler, curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
Born a slave in 1805, he died a free man in New Bedford in 1893 and was buried in South Dartmouth where 14 whaleships and innumerable other vessels of his design were built at his yard in Padanaram.
John Mashow is also one of the least-known African-Americans.
That obscurity will end tomorrow when a new exhibition, “John Mashow, Master Shipbuilder,” opens at the Whaling Museum. The exhibit, which will continue through April 7, is the museum’s contribution to Black History Month, observed annually in February.
The most eloquent proof of Mr. Kugler’s assessment of Mr. Mashow’s place in U.S. maritime history is a testimonial given to Mr. Mashow when he closed his Padanaram shipyard in 1860 and went out to work for others.
The original testimonial, written in a handsome copperplate hand, is one of the items in the exhibits at the museum; its signatures are a “Who’s Who” of New Bedford’s most prominent whaleship owners and firms:
“Mr. John Mashow of Dartmouth is highly esteemed in this District as a thorough, practical master ship-builder and as a most worthy and respected citizen.
“He has drafted and modeled nearly One Hundred Vessels and of that number superintended the construction of nearly Sixty of various classes, many of them being our First Class Merchant and Whaling Marine and justly prized for their superior speed, sea-going qualities and thorough workmanship.
“As a Draughtsman, skillful Naval Architect and excellent builder, he has no superior in this section of the state and we are gratified thus to certify to the foregoing facts … New Bedford, 30th June 1860.”
The names of those who signed this tribute include New Bedford’s most prominent whaleship owners and firms, among them: J.B. Wood and Company, Tucker Cummings, T. Mandell, Thomas Knowles, Charles H. Gifford, William H. Taylor, C. Howland Jr., I. H. Bartlett, J. and W. R. Wing, Andrew Hicks, Oliver Prescott, William Gifford, Loum Snow, Swift and Allen, David R. Greene and Company, Benjamin Cummings, S. Thomas and Company, William Brownell, James D. Thompson, Frank P. Seabury, Elisha Thornton Jr. and others.
The original copy of the testimonial was given to the Whaling Museum by Mr. Mashow’s granddaughter, Florence Hathaway, who died in 1973.
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Why is the man who earned that praise in the golden age of whaling before the Civil War so little known today?
Mr. Kugler offers one suggestion: John Mashow outlived virtually all his family.
Of his 10 children, many died before him and only one child, a daughter, is known to have married and had children. Mr. Mashow lost four family members to small-pox in one month in 1871, Mr. Kugler said.
His history before he arrived in New Bedford in 1815 at the age of 10 is obscure.
It is known, Mr. Kugler said, that he was born in 1805, the son of a slave woman and a white planter, probably a rice planter, in Georgetown, S.C.
It is quite possible, Mr. Kugler said, that “Mashow” is an Anglicized pronunciation of the French name, Michaux, a name borne by some of the descendents of many Hugenots [sic] (French Protestants) who fled oppression in Catholic France and came to South Carolina in colonial times.
In South Carolina, Mr. Kugler said, the name was often spelled Micheau and there were several families of that name who lived in Georgetown and owned slaves, he has found.
Daniel Ricketson, a prominent New Bedford citizen in the 1800s, knew Mr. Mashow and wrote that when Mashow’s father died in 1815, he set his 10-year old son free in his will.
At that time, Mr. Kugler noted, this was permissible; in later years, it was not — “once a slave, always a slave.”
At that point, the mystery begins. How did a 10-year-old boy, a freed slave in slave-holding South Carolina, make his way to New Bedford? Who in South Carolina cared enough to send him north to a free state?
One possible clue: When he did get to New Bedford, he was apprenticed to Laban Thatcher, a shipwright in South Dartmouth.
“I know that Thatcher had ties to South Carolina,” Mr. Kugler said. “One of his sons was a merchant in Charleston, a few miles down the coast from Georgetown. I think that is the link between South Carolina and South Dartmouth, but I’m not sure.
“But somebody had to have taken an interest in him. I’d like to get down to South Carolina and do more checking.”
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Until 1831, Mr. Mashow worked with Mr. Thatcher and other New Bedford shipwrights. He married a Mashpee Indian woman, Hope Amos.
In 1832, he went out on his own as a shipbuilder. Over the course of his career, he built 25 schooners, many for owners in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, then a major fishing port. He also built two sloops, a ship, a bark and a brig. He built his first whaleship, the Nimrod, in 1842.
“All this time, his reputation as a ship designer and shipbuilder was spreading among the whaling merchants of New Bedford,” Mr. Kugler said.
“In 1851, when he was 46, he went into partnership with Alonzo Matthews under the name of Matthews, Mashow and Company. During the 1850s, the firm became a major builder of whaleships for the New Bedford and Dartmouth fleet. The only larger builder was Wilson Barstow of Mattapoisett.”
The Tropic Bird, launched in 1851, was the first whaler built by the firm. The A.R. Tucker followed. Other whalers the firm built included the George and Mary, the Henry H. Crapo, the Jireh Swift, the Matilda Sears, the Morning Light, the Morning Star, the Sea Queen, and the William Gifford.
All of them were built at the firm’s yard on Elm Street in Padanaram where Concordia Company stands today.
The George and Mary had a long career and a sad end, Mr. Kugler said. She was a relatively small whaler built in 1852 for Westport owners. Forty-five years after her launching, in 1897, she was purchased by the New Bedford Veteran Fireman’s Association which was planning an all-day muster to celebrate its anniversary.
While an estimated 40,000 spectators watched, the George and Mary was set afire off Crow Island, Mr. Kugler said. To make the blaze even more spectacular, gunpowder had been placed in her rigging. “It was supposed to resemble a naval fight,” said Mr. Kugler.
The peak year for New Bedford whaling was 1857, Mr. Kugler noted; from that point on, the industry declined. During the industry’s golden years, Mr. Kugler said, there is some evidence that Mr. Mashow sent his sons to sea on whalers; at least one son was a whaleman. Two of his sons were ship’s carpenters; both died before their father.
In 1860, the firm of Matthews, Mashow and Company was dissolved. It was then that Mr. Mashow received the glowing testimonial from the city’s whaling magnates. He moved into New Bedford and worked as a ship carpenter in various city yards, living on the now-gone Eddy’s Dock, which was south of the current COM/Gas, COM/ELectric [sic] dock.
When Mr. Mashow was designing and building ships, he did not draw plans and work from them; instead, he carved a half-model of the hull. Some of these half-models will be on view at the exhibition… among them, a 6-foot-long half-model of the Jireh Swift, loaned by the Smithsonian Institution, and half-models of the Benjamin Cummings, the Elliot C. Cowdin, and the schooner Mogul.
Among other items to be shown in the exhibit are nameboards, photographs of the ships Mr. Mashow designed and built, paintings, half-models, launch notices, maps and shipbuilding tools from the museum collection.
The only likeness of Mr. Mashow known to exist is an engraving published in the New Bedford Evening Standard in 1904.
Lenders to the exhibition, Mr. Kugler said, include the Cape Cod National Seashore, private collections and the Smithsonian. The exhibition is included in the price of admission to the museum. Museum hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays. The museum will be open tomorrow, a holiday.
Status: OK
Status By: Lenora Robinson
Status Date: 2017-01-07
