Harry Harwood Rousseau

Background

Harry Harwood Rousseau was born at Troy, N. Y. , the son of William White and Jeanette (Parker) Rousseau.

Education

After graduating as valedictorian from the Troy High School he entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and completed the civil engineering course in 1891.

Career

During the next seven years Rousseau engaged in structural engineering work in Albany, in Brooklyn, and with the Pittsburgh Bridge Company. In October 1898, he entered the civil engineer corps of the navy as lieutenant, serving in the Bureau of Yards and Docks, 1899-1903, and subsequently at the Mare Island Navy Yard, California.

Being personally known by Secretary of the Navy Metcalf, a Californian, and by President Roosevelt, under whom he had occasionally served as aide, he was appointed chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks in January 1907, with the temporary rank of rear admiral. That same year the President made him a member of the new Isthmian Canal Commission headed by Lieut. -Col. George W. Goethals. On this commission he served until it went out of existence in 1914, after 1908 being in charge of the second division of the chief engineer's office with the title of assistant to the chief engineer. In this capacity he had special supervision of the "design and construction of canal terminals, including dry-docks, ship repair shops, piers, coaling plants, fuel oil plants, breakwaters, and floating cranes. "

Goethals, with whom he worked in perfect harmony, placed a high value upon his technical training, experience, and administrative ability, and considered him, together with Col. Harry F. Hodges, one of his "indispensable" subordinates. The Navy Department "desired his return to duty at Washington, and on one occasion the Secretary of the Navy especially requested his relief from duty on the Isthmus in order that the Navy Department might avail itself of his services" (J. B. Bishop, The Panama Gateway, 1913, p. 182), but he remained at Panama until the terminal works were completed in 1916, within the estimated cost and time.

Congress by special act, March 4, 1915, authorized his advancement from lieutenant commander to rear admiral. After his return from Panama he was a member of the commission on navy yards and naval stations, 1916-20, that made a study of the coasts of the United States with a view to locating naval and aviation bases. Goethals also secured his services for the Shipping Board, during the World War, and he was assistant general manager and head of the shipyard plants division of the Emergency Fleet Corporation from 1917 to 1919, with many additional naval duties as project manager in charge of expenditure of naval funds for improvements in shipyards, member of the government Munitions Board, and a member of the Port Facilities Commission.

His chief post-war duty was as government receiver, 1924-27, during litigation over Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 1 (the Elk Hills suit), and subsequently as director of naval petroleum and oil shale reserves until his death. In this later period he was also chief coordinator of the budget, administering, under the director of the budget, all federal co-ordinating agencies, a duty which required great application and labor and is thought to have broken his strength. His death occurred on the steamship Cristobal en route to Panama for an inspection of the Panama Railway, of which he had been a director since 1907. His funeral services were held in St. Thomas' Episcopal Church, Washington, of which he was a vestryman, and he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Achievements

• Rousseau was known as an outstanding engineer acting on many important naval and other government boards. He was the youngest man ever to attain the rank of rear admiral in the U. S. Navy, and the first CEC officer to be depicted on a postage stamp. His greatest achievement was his assistance with the construction of the Panama Canal. He was awarded the Navy Cross for "exceptionally meritorious service in a duty of great responsibility. " During his canal service he published two articles on engineering work there: "The Isthmian Canal" (Government Printing Office, 1909), a paper presented at the twentieth annual session of the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress, and "Terminal Works, Dry docks, and Wharves of the Panama Canal" (Transactions of the International Engineering Congress, 1915, vol. I, pt. 2, pp. 371-432).

Personality

Of undoubted engineering ability, Rousseau has been characterized personally as a man of reserved yet kindly nature, keen sense of humor, and unusual social charm.

Connections

Rousseau was married at Panama in 1908 to Gladys Fargo Squiers, daughter of Herbert G. Squiers, United States minister to Panama, and was survived by his widow and three sons.

Father:

William White Rousseau

Mother:

Jeanette (Parker) Rousseau

Spouse:

Gladys Fargo Squiers