Christian Bergh was an American shipbuilder who built the famous frigate, the President.
Background
Christian Bergh was born on April 30, 1763, near Rhinebeck, New York, United States where his family had lived since the beginning of the eighteenth century. As a thirteen-year-old lad he experienced some of the harsh realities of civil war; for at the outbreak of the Revolution his father was penalized for Loyalist leanings by confiscation of his farm and homestead. The family took refuge within the British lines at New York City and at the end of the war migrated with thousands of other Loyalists to the Canadian provinces. The Berghs were among those who joined the new settlement at Shelburne, Nova Scotia, a community made up almost entirely of immigrants from the United States and numbering within three years after its founding, in 1783, about 10, 000 persons.
Career
Fishing and shipbuilding were leading industries in the new town almost from the first and young Bergh, who was nearing his majority, had a good opportunity to master the shipwright's trade. After a few years, when Shelburne's first prosperity had declined and the Berghs returned to New York, Christian opened a shipyard on the East River and began to build merchant vessels. Through the first third of the nineteenth century he continued that industry with marked success. The United States frigate President, one of the men-of-war that achieved fame in the War of 1812, was a product of the Bergh yards. When she was badly crippled in a sea fight with four British ships and compelled to surrender, her captors considered her a model of naval architecture and recommended the method of her construction to British shipbuilders.
Bergh's only absence from New York was the period from 1812 to 1815, during which he was engaged in building war vessels for the United States on Lake Ontario. During those years work at the New York yards was suspended, but was resumed after peace, when many packet ships were built there and one war vessel, the Hellas, for the Greek government. Until 1837, when Bergh retired, the sailing ships built at his yards were unsurpassed in design or construction and won wide repute. One of his London packets made the Atlantic passage to England in fourteen days and ten hours, leading the Great Western (which was under steam) to Cape Clear. The "close rudder" was early a feature of the Bergh ships. Some of the swiftest of pilot boats used in that period were products of the Bergh yards.
In 1837 Bergh retired from active work, but the business was continued by his sons under the name of Bergh & Co. Bergh.
Achievements
Politics
Bergh sometimes presided at political rallies in Tammany Hall. In politics he was a Jackson Democrat.
Personality
Bergh was six feet four inches in height and in his latter years was a well-known figure in the Corlears Hook section of New York, where his yards were located.
Connections
Christian Bergh was married to Elizabeth Ivers of Connecticut. He had two sons, one of whom, Henry, was the founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.