My Tour to Baltimore

Sham S. Misri

 

(From Baltimore)

Wednesday, 3rd July, 2002

Baltimore's historic ships--everything from Civil War-era tall ship to a World War II submarines --all have a story to tell. Most are floating museums that are open to the public. "…that Baltimore’s monument to George Washington was completed more than fifty years before the Washington Monument in Washington D.C.?"

It was a bright Wednesday morning when we started from Holiday Inn, the place where we were staying. From Washington DC we moved to Baltimore.

Baltimore is a thriving city full of life, culture, entertainment, recreation and education, with a rich history as well. The area constituting the modern city of Baltimore was first settled by David Jones in 1661, his land covering 380 acres (1.5 km2) on the east bank of the Jones Falls River. St. Paul's Church was the first church built in the metro area, erected along the nearby Colgate Creek in 1692.

The Port of Baltimore was created in 1706 for the tobacco trade. The town was founded in 1729 and named after Lord Baltimore, the governor. Baltimore was included by 1745, and over the next two decades it acquired land to become an important and substantial community on the Patapsco River. Through the rest of the century Baltimore filled in marshes, built canals around the falls and through the centre of town, and expanded south-eastward. It then became a large city.

In around 1776-77 Baltimore merchants built the shipbuilding industry which then expanded. There was no major military action near the city. The population had reached 14,000 in 1790. The American Revolution encouraged the domestic market for wheat and iron ore. In Baltimore flour milling increased along the Jones and Gwynn Falls. The transport of iron ore greatly boosted the local economy and freed merchants and traders from British debts. By 1800 Baltimore had become one of the major cities of the new republic.

Baltimore grew rapidly, becoming the largest city in the American South. It dominated the American flour trade after 1800 due to the milling technology of Oliver Evans, the introduction of steam power in processing, and the merchant-millers' development of drying processes which greatly retarded spoilage.

By 1830 New York City's competition was felt keenly. Baltimoreans could not match the more rigorous inspection controls, nor could they match the greater financial resources of their northern rivals.

Alexander Brown, a Protestant immigrant from Ireland, came to the city in 1800 and set up a linen business with his sons. Soon the firm Alex Brown & Sons moved into cotton and, to a lesser extent, shipping. Brown's sons opened branches in Liverpool, Philadelphia, and New York. By 1850, the firm was the leading foreign exchange house in the United States. Brown was a business innovator and observed social conditions carefully. He invested his capital in small-risk ventures and acquiring ships and Bank shares. He monopolized Baltimore's shipping trade with Liverpool by 1822. Brown next expanded into packet ships, extended his lines to Philadelphia, and began financing Baltimore importers, specializing in merchant banking from the late 1820s to his death in 1834. The name lives on as Deutsche Bank Alex Brown, a division of the Germany's Deutsche Bank.

George Peabody rose from humble beginnings to become one of the nation's most powerful businessmen. Based in Baltimore, Peabody developed an extensive network of financial and mercantile institutions that laid the groundwork for J. P. Morgan's financial empire. Peabody moved to London in 1837 and later helped install the first telegraph cables. During the 1860s, Peabody began his charitable career. He laid basis for libraries and museums and aided the poor on both sides of the Atlantic. He founded the Peabody Institute which included a library, an academy of music, and an art gallery and which, he hoped, would aid the moral and intellectual development of the citizens.

Baltimore faced economic stagnation unless it opened routes to the western states. In 1827, twenty-five merchants and bankers build a railroad—one of the first commercial lines in the world. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) became the first railroad in the United States.  Twenty thousand investors purchased $5 million in stock to import the rolling stock and build the line. It was a commercial and financial success, and invented many new managerial methods that became standard practice in railroading and modern business. The B&O became the first company to operate a locomotive built in America. It built the first passenger and freight station (Mount Clare in 1829) and was the first railroad that earned passenger revenues (December 1829), and published a timetable (May 23, 1830). On December 24, 1852, it became the first rail line to reach the Ohio River.

From the late 18th century into the 1820s Baltimore was a fast-growing boom town attracting thousands of ex-slaves from the surrounding countryside. Baltimore was a "city of refuge," where slave and free black alike found an unusual amount of freedom. Churches, schools, and fraternal and benevolent associations provided a cushion against hardening white attitudes toward free blacks. But a flood of German and Irish immigrants filled Baltimore's labour market after 1840, driving free blacks deeper into poverty.

The dramatic decrease in the slave population during 1850-60 indicates that slavery was no longer profitable in the city. Slaves were still used as expensive house servants. It was cheaper to hire a free worker by the day, with the option of dropping him or replacing him with a better worker, rather than run the expense of maintaining a slave month in and month out with little flexibility. At the time of Civil War, Baltimore had the largest free black community in the nation. Baltimore's black community, was one of the largest and most cohesive in America.

In Baltimore, the white workers, most of them German, opposed slavery. The nativist American (Know-Nothing) Party captured the Baltimore government in 1854.

Baltimore was torn by the Civil War. When Massachusetts troops marched through the city on April 19, 1861, en route to Washington, a rebel mob attacked. Four soldiers and twelve rioters were dead and 36 soldiers and uncounted rioters had been injured. Meanwhile pro-union gangs burned the bridges connecting Baltimore and Washington to the North, and cut the telegraph lines. Lincoln sent in federal troops they seized the city, imposed martial law, and arrested leading union spokesmen. The prisoners were later released and the rail lines reopened, making Baltimore a major Union base during the war.

The end of slavery meant keen racial tensions as free blacks flocked to the city and many armed confrontations erupted between blacks and whites. Rural blacks who flocked to Baltimore created increased competition for skilled jobs and upset the relationship between free blacks and whites. As black migrants were downgraded to unskilled work or no work at all, violent strikes erupted. Denied entry into the regular state militia, armed blacks formed militias of their own. In the midst of this change, white Baltimoreans interpreted black discontent as disrespect for law and order, which justified police cruelty.

Baltimore had more blacks than any northern city. The Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People established schools for blacks that were taken over by the public school system. From 1867 to 1900 black schools grew in number .The enrolment of Blacks also went up.

By 1880 manufacturing replaced trade and made the city a nationally important industrial centre. The port continued to ship increasing amounts of grain, flour, tobacco, and raw cotton to Europe. The new industries of clothing, canning, tin and sheet-iron ware products, foundry and machine shop products, cars, and tobacco manufacture had the largest labour force and largest product value.

The construction of new housing was a major factor in Baltimore's economy. Major builders gained access to building land and capital. Most of the major builders were craftsmen who were entrepreneurs compared with others in the building trades, but were still small businessmen who built a relatively small number of houses during long careers. They worked closely with landowners, and both groups manipulated the city's leasehold system to their own advantage. Builders obtained credit from diverse sources, including sellers of land, building societies, and land companies. The most important source was individual lenders, who lent money in small amounts either on their own account or through lawyers and trustees overseeing funds held in trust. In spite of their important role in shaping the city, the contractors were small businessmen who rarely achieved citywide visibility. Until the 1890s, Baltimore remained a patchwork of nationalities with white natives, Germans, Irish, and blacks scattered throughout in heterogeneous neighbourhoods.

The increase in economic activity brought many immigrants from the countryside and from Europe after the Civil War. Concerns for young, single Protestant women alone in cities led to the growth of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) movement.

Baltimore Maritime Museum (The Historic Ships

The ships of the Baltimore Maritime Museum tell an exciting story of American naval power and enterprise from 1930 to 1986. Each ship is a veteran -- witness to the dangers of war, the challenges and responsibilities of peace. Each has served its country in its own way, close to home or in distant waters, from the Sea of Japan, to the Caribbean, to the Mediterranean. From fighting the slave trade to daring rescues on the Chesapeake; from riding out hurricanes to providing humanitarian aid and defending the freedoms. The Historic Ships in Baltimore provides history.

The three important and historical vessels : The USS Torsk (submarine), the Lightship Chesapeake, and the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Taney -- the last surviving vessel that was at Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked.

The U.S.S. Torsk now stands guard next to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. The historic naval submarine, with its fiercely-painted bow, offers history. In 1940s the submarine was a cramped vessel, where the only way to pass someone in a corridor was to turn sideways.

Those submarine crew members, all volunteers who underwent incredibly arduous testing before they were accepted, represented a tiny fraction of Navy enlistment, but were responsible for sinking more than half of the Japanese tonnage destroyed during World War II, according to the Navy.

The U.S. Navy named its World War II submarines after fish and swimming mammals; the Torsk got its name from a type of pale yellow-and-white codfish found in great numbers in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Initially deployed to the Pacific, where it operated from Pearl Harbour, the Torsk accomplished two patrols off Japan during early and mid-1945, operating with three other U.S. Navy submarines. By this time in the war, there were few targets left to attack, and although the submarines contacted two small Japanese ships, they did not sink them.

It was while patrolling in the Sea of Japan on Aug. 12, 1945 that the Torsk saw her first war action, firing two torpedoes at a small freighter but failing to sink the ship. The next day, the Torsk finally sank her first vessel, a small cargo ship.

And on Aug. 14, 1945, she sank two smaller coastal defence ships, making the Torsk the last combat vessel to fire torpedoes and sink ships in World War II. The order to cease fire was issued to all U.S. forces on Aug. 15, 1945.U.S. Navy Used Torsk for Submarine Training, Patrols. After World War II ended, the U.S.S. Torsk returned to the United States and was assigned as a submarine training ship at the U.S. Navy's Submarine School in New London. There, she made dives several times each day as she trained men and officers for submarine duty.

The Torsk also played a role in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, during which she participated in the blockade of Cuba and sent boarding parties to inspect Soviet merchant ships. The submarine was decommissioned in 1968, and moved to Baltimore to serve as a museum and memorial in 1972.

The Torsk has torpedo rooms, the navigation station, crew mess and berthing areas, and the engine room.

The Navy winnowed its volunteers for the submarine corps. In order to find the volunteers, the Navy locked several dozen submarine volunteers in a small, cramped, can-like space with no windows and no way out, and then turned out the lights. Those who passed the test of an extended stay in that can -- which also could have water pumped into it -- then were able to begin training as submarine crew, he said.

Baltimore was a major war production centre in World War II. The biggest operations were Bethlehem Steel's Fairfield Yard, on the south-eastern edge of the harbour, which built Liberty ships; its work force peaked at 46,700 in late 1943. By late 1943 about 150,000 to 200,000 migrant war workers had arrived. They were predominantly poor white southerners; most came from the hills of Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky.

Heroin usage in Baltimore reveals the explosive rise of illegal drug use in the United States in the 1960s. In the late 1940s there were only a few dozen African-American heroin addicts in the Pennsylvania Avenue area of the city. Heroin use began largely for reasons of prestige within a group that most middle-class blacks looked down on. By the late 1950s young whites were experimenting with the drug and by 1960 there were over one thousand heroin addicts in the police files; this figure doubled in the 1960s. A generation of profiteering young, violent black dealers took over in the 1960s as violence increased and the price of heroin skyrocketed. Increasing drug usage was undoubtedly the primary reason for burglaries rising tenfold and robberies rising thirtyfold from 1950 to 1970. Soaring numbers of broken homes and Baltimore's declining economic status probably exacerbated the drug problem. Adolescents in suburban areas began using drugs in the late 1960s.

Since Baltimore's founding in the early 1700s, the large black population has been making contributions to its growth and development both physically and spiritually. While slavery was legal in Maryland, there were more free blacks in Baltimore than there were slaves. The free blacks established and organized both churches and organizations to aide in the fight against persecution, resulting in an abundant number of black churches still standing in the city today. Baltimore has long been a major centre of the Catholic Church. Baltimore has seen riots, and raids lead to war with Great Britain. They experience the disastrous surrender of the capital in Washington, and the heroic defence of Baltimore.