Background
Theodore D. Wilson was born on May 11, 1840, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Charles Wilson, a shipwright, and Ann Elizabeth Cock.
https://www.amazon.com/outline-ship-building-theoretical-practical/dp/1418143405?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1418143405
Theodore D. Wilson was born on May 11, 1840, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Charles Wilson, a shipwright, and Ann Elizabeth Cock.
Wilson attended the Brooklyn public schools.
Then he was employed at the New York Navy Yard, and at the outbreak of the Civil War had served his full term as an apprentice shipwright. He then volunteered for the army and became a non-commissioned officer in the New York state militia, but upon the return of his regiment after three months at the front he joined the navy as a ship's carpenter on August 3, 1861, and served in the Cambridge, North Atlantic Squadron, until December 1863. Thereafter until the close of the war he had duty of increasing responsibility in construction and repair work at the New York Navy Yard.
He was made assistant naval constructor on May 17, 1866, and was stationed in charge of the construction department at the Pensacola Navy Yard and later at Philadelphia. In 1869 he went to the United States Naval Academy as an instructor in ship construction. Here he remained four years, aside from a tour of European yards in 1870, and published An Outline of Shipbuilding, Theoretical and Practical (1873), in part a compilation from various sources. This book was used as a textbook in the Academy. He also published a brief pamphlet, The Center of Gravity of the U. S. Steamer Shawmut (1874), and invented in 1870 a new type of air-port and in 1880 a bolt extractor.
On July 11, 1873, he was promoted to the rank of naval constructor. After several years at the Portsmouth Navy Yard he served on the first Naval Advisory Board, created in 1881 to formulate plans for the new steel navy, and on March 1, 1882, he was made chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair. In this highly responsible post, carrying with it seniority in the Construction Corps and rank equivalent to commodore, he remained during the next eleven years, a period in which the navy in large part was transformed from wood to steel. Innumerable problems were surmounted which arose from the undeveloped state of the American steel industry and the revolutionary changes in design. Under his supervision forty-five ships were built or laid down, including most of the new "White Squadron, " at a cost of $52, 000, 000. In the words of his assistant and successor, Philip Hichborn, the result of this program was "a monument to the skill, fidelity, and zeal of the late Chief of Bureau . "
He was detached on July 13, 1893, but for some time before had been partly relieved because of ill health. After two years' leave of absence he was assigned to the Boston Navy Yard, where he died suddenly on June 29, 1896, from heart failure while supervising the release from drydock of the monitor Passaic.
Theodore D. Wilson was a noted naval ship designer, constructor and instructor, who was in charge of all new warship design for the United States Navy from 1882 to 1892. Through his efforts, the Navy began its transition out of a post–Civil War slump to become a modern naval power. Warships he designed include the pre-dreadnought battleship USS Maine, whose destruction in Havana, Cuba in 1898 precipitated the Spanish–American War.
Theodore D. Wilson was an honorary member of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects in Great Britain. He was the first American to be elected to this organization. He was also a member of several scientific societies, the Loyal Legion, the Grand Army of the Republic and the Naval Order of the United States.
Theodore D. Wilson was married prior to 1867 to Sarah E. Stults, and had two daughters and two sons.
