Charles Alfred Ward

Background

Charles Alfred Ward was born in Elyria, Ohio, the son of Charles Alfred and Alma Phipps Ward. The family moved to Brooklyn, N. Y. , soon thereafter.

Education

Ward attended Webb's Academy and Home for Shipbuilders (now the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture) in Garden City, L. I. , and graduated in 1904.

Career

He joined the Lake Torpedo Boat Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which had been founded by Simon Lake, a nineteenth-century submarine pioneer. For three years Ward represented the company in Great Britain, Germany, and Russia, where he supervised the design and construction of undersea naval craft. In 1909 Ward joined the hull scientific department of William Cramp and Sons shipyards in Philadelphia as a submarine expert. He supervised the design and construction of the G-4, an Italian Laurenti-type submarine and one of the first double-hull submarines constructed in the United States. In 1915 Ward returned to Lake Torpedo as a naval architect. Two years later he joined the Merchant Shipbuilding Company as a marine architect and subsequently worked for the Chester Shipbuilding Company and then the United American Lines Company. In 1924 Ward joined Gibbs Brothers, a leading New York City marine-architecture firm (now Gibbs and Cox). In more than a quarter century with that company he originated a number of improvements in hull design for passenger and naval vessels and pioneered new construction techniques. Ward was the principal marine architect for several transatlantic passenger liners including the Matson Line's Malolo, the Grace Line's Santa Rosa class, and the United States Lines's America. When the America was launched at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in 1938, it was the largest and fastest passenger vessel ever built in an American shipyard. Because of World War II, however, the vessel was unable to enter transatlantic passenger service until 1945. After the war he was the principal architect of the United States, his best-known vessel. This liner was under construction for the United States Lines Company at the time of Ward's death and was launched in 1952. With a maximum speed of 41. 75 knots, it holds the record for the fastest transatlantic crossing (three days, ten hours, forty minutes). Ward was the chief naval architect and a member of the executive committee of Gibbs and Cox. He died in New York City.

Achievements

• Ward made important contributions to the war effort, and his improved designs for destroyers and landing craft facilitated their rapid construction. He also purchased huge quantities of steel for various shipbuilding projects in the midst of severe wartime shortages. In an era of significant progress in the field of naval architecture he was widely regarded by his peers as being among the most innovative and able American naval architects.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Twentieth-century literature, 1901-1940 (Essay index in reprint)

Connections

On March 26, 1914, he married Elizabeth Curtiss, the daughter of a Philadelphia physician.

Father:

Charles Alfred Ward

Mother:

Alma Phipps Ward

Spouse:

Elizabeth Curtiss