John Israel Merritt

Background

Israel John Merritt was the eldest child of Hamilton and Elizabeth Merritt. He was born on 23 August 1829, in New York City.

Education

Merritt's father, seventh in descent from Thomas Merritt who came to America in the seventeenth century, was a merchant in moderate circumstances and had every intention of giving his son a good education, but in 1841 he was lost at sea and the boy was compelled to find work in order to help support his widowed mother and her family of children.

Career

After doing a number of odd jobs, including driving mules on a canal, Merritt went to sea until he was fifteen, then became associated with Capt. Thomas Bell salvaging wreckage from Long Island Sound and the waters about Manhattan Island. At the age of twenty, he obtained command of a coasting schooner and some four years afterward was appointed an agent for the Board of Marine Underwriters. Making possible the recovery of large vessels sunk with all decks submerged, it completely revolutionized the salvage business. Merritt continued with the Coast Wrecking Company until 1880, when he organized the Merritt Wrecking Organization, with his eldest son as partner. The new company's operations quickly assumed immense proportions. Offices were established in New York with storehouses and docks on Staten Island, and a similar establishment was set up at Norfolk, Virginia. In 1897 Merritt's organization and the Chapman Company, engaged in derrick and lighterage business about New York, united as the Merritt & Chapman Derrick & Wrecking Company, with Merritt as president and his son as treasurer. Merritt was active at the head of the combined organizations until his death. During the Civil War, he took charge of the fitting out of many expeditions with surf boats and served under the secretary of the navy in an advisory capacity. He died in New York, survived by his widow and four children of his former marriage.

Achievements

• In 1860, Merritt became the general agent of the Coast Wrecking Company and from that time on his whole attention was given to salvage. In connection with this work Captain Merritt, as he came to be known, originated and employed many novel ideas and methods which to this day are successfully used by the company which bears his name. His greatest contribution probably was the pontoon patented by him in 1865. This was a specially constructed device for raising sunken vessels by displacement. In its various forms, the pontoon is still an important and useful adjunct of modern salvage equipment. Its fleet was one of the largest of the kind in the world, doing practically all the marine salvage on the Atlantic Coast.

Personality

Merritt was for years an active volunteer fireman in New York City, and for many years foreman of Engine No. 17.

Connections

Merritt was married in March 1853 to Sarah L. Nichols of New York, who died on June 11, 1879. In 1890 he married Caroline Elizabeth Bull.

Father:

Hamilton Merritt

Mother:

Elizabeth Lambert Merritt

1806 - 17 March 1858

Brother:

Isaac B Merritt

3 March 1832 - 17 September 1903

Wife:

Sarah L. Nicholson Merritt

9 February 1833 - 11 June 1879

Daughter:

Sarah E. Merritt

14 April 1857 - 3 October 1858

Daughter:

Imagene M. Merritt Clark

30 June 1855 - 31 March 1930

Daughter:

Ida Bell Merritt Hulse

28 October 1861 - 22 August 1935

Son:

Israel John Merritt

12 September 1853 - 24 December 1936

Son:

Albert B. Merritt

29 November 1870 - 8 August 1871

References

• Revised Merritt records
• America's Successful Men of Affairs, Vol. 1: An Encyclopedia of Contemporaneous Biography (Classic Reprint)