Lawrence & Foulks

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Lawrence & Foulks was a 19th-century American shipbuilding company based in New York. Established in the early 1850s, the company built 144 vessels of all types over the course of some fifty years, bu

SS De Soto, built by Lawrence & Foulks in 1859. She served as USS De Soto during the Civil War.

A beam-propeller engine. Lawrence & Foulks built a number of ships powered by such engines during the Civil War.

Chauncey Vibbard, built in 1864, was the fastest steamboat on the Hudson

The "remarkably handsome" ferry Sylvan Dell, built by Lawrence & Foulks in 1872

James H. Ward

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James Harmon Ward was the first officer of the United States Navy who was killed during the American Civil War.

Lawrence & Foulks

…at this time was the small sidewheel steamer Thomas Freeborn. In an attack on Mathias Point, Virginia on 27 June 1861, Thomas Freeborn's commander, James H. Ward, became the first U.S. Navy officer killed in action in the war. In 1864, Lawrence & Foulks completed the Hudson River steamboat Chauncey Vibbard. Soon…

James Harman Ward

The steam tug USS Thomas Freeborn [left] at Mathis Point June 27, 1861

The steam tug USS Thomas Freeborn in 1861. The photo shows some of the ship's officers and men demonstrating how her late commanding officer, Commander James H. Ward, was sighting her bow gun when he was mortally wounded on 27 June 1861, during an action with Confederate forces at Mathias Point, Virginia. The gun is a 32-pounder smoothbore of 60 hundredweight, on a "Novelty Carriage". This mounting was developed by Commander Ward before the Civil War