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, but is best known for its production of high-speed wooden-hulled steamboats and steamships. Notable vessels built by the company include the record-breaking Hudson River steamboat Chauncey Vibbard, the luxury Long Island Sound steamer Commonwealth, and the fast oceangoing steamships—later U.S. Navy gunboats—Bienville and De Soto. In addition to the domestic market, the company also built ships for service as far afield as South America and China.
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
Commonwealth was a large sidewheel steamboat built in 1854–55 for passenger service on Long Island Sound. The most celebrated Sound steamer of her day, Commonwealth was especially noted for the elegance and comfort of her passenger accommodations, which included gas lighting, steam heating, and an "enchantingly beautiful" domed roof in her upper saloon. Her stability of motion led her captain to describe Commonwealth as the finest rough weather steamboat ever built in the United States.
Contemporary painting of Commonwealth by the amateur artist James Bard, c. 1860
An 1859 advertisement for the Norwich & Worcester Railroad, showing Commonwealth's route from New York to Allyn's Point, Connecticut
SS Great Eastern in New York Harbor, 1860. Union troops aboard Commonwealth in late 1862 had excellent views of the mammoth steamship.
Stern view of Commonwealth; illustration by Stanton
