Background
John English was born in New York City, the son of John Englis, who had migrated from Scotland in 1795.
John English was born in New York City, the son of John Englis, who had migrated from Scotland in 1795.
His formal schooling must have been slight.
At seventeen he was apprenticed to the ship-building firm of Smith & Dimon.
After his term of apprenticeship expired, Englis was made foreman in the shipyard of Bishoft & Simonson, where he remained eight years, on duty from sunrise to sunset, summer and winter.
His work had been chiefly, if not altogether, on sailing ships turned out from the New York yards; but in 1837, when he made a start for himself as a master ship-builder, he decided to center his efforts on steam vessels.
There was a demand for these on the inland waters of the country.
Englis went to Buffalo, New York, then in the period of its first rapid growth after the completion of the Erie Canal, and there built the Milwaukie, Red Jacket, and Empire City, for service on the Great Lakes.
These steamboats were from 210 to 230 feet in length, with a beam of 38 or 39 feet, and 12 feet depth of hold.
For speed and grace of line they were a great advance on any of the earlier lake craft.
Their wide repute brought their builder orders from New York.
He returned to that city and produced from his yards the most famous of the Hudson River and Long Island Sound steamers of that period—the Albany, Hendrik Hudson, Troy, Knickerbocker, Charter Oak, and others.
The largest of these was the Hendrik Hudson, 300 feet long, built in 1845.
The Hudson River boat Isaac Newton (1855) was the largest of the series, being 405 feet in length.
In 1857-58 his yards launched three Spanish gunboats for service in Cuban waters.
Englis was not merely a builder of vessels; he was a self-taught naval architect and designer.
He did not, however, make a practise of designing ships; those built in his yards were usually planned by others.
In 1861, when the government at Washington was unable to build at its own navy yards the gunboats needed to maintain the blockade of Southern ports, Englis completed the Unadilla and delivered it to the Navy Department within eighty-two days.
During the war years (186165), he built for the government a revenue cutter and for private corporations a number of vessels to be used in Chinese waters.
In 1863 he sent out the largest boat in his Hudson River fleet, the St. John (417 feet over all).
At the time of its launching, this vessel was described as the longest steamship in the world, with the sole exception of the Great Eastern, After the war Englis took into partnership his only son, John Englis, and in 1882 two grandsons, William F. and Charles M. Englis, became members of the firm.
They continued the building of a variety of steam craft, including ferryboats.
The average burden of their ships was 1500 tons, and, with the exception of a few iron ships, wood was the material used throughout the lifetime of the elder Englis.
It was the only one of the great New York ship-building firms of the early nineteenth century that kept at work through the first decade of the twentieth.
Member General Society Mechanics and Tradesmen.
In 1832 he married Mary Quackenbush, a member of a colonial Dutch family.