A Man and His Ship: America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States

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		A Man and His Ship: America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States
		A Man and His Ship: America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States

“A fascinating historical account…A snapshot of the American Dream culminating with this country’s mid-century greatness” (The Wall Street Journal).

THE STORY OF A GREAT AMERICAN BUILDER AT the peak of his power, in the 1940s and 1950s, William Francis Gibbs was considered America’s best naval architect. His quest to build the finest, fastest, most beautiful ocean liner of his time, the S.S. United States, was a topic of national fascination. When completed in 1952, the ship was hailed as a technological masterpiece at a time when “made in America” meant the best. Gibbs was an American original, on par with John Roebling of the Brooklyn Bridge and Frank Lloyd Wright of Fallingwater. Forced to drop out of Harvard following his family’s sudden financial ruin, he overcame debilitating shyness and lack of formal training to become the visionary creator of some of the finest ships in history. He spent forty years dreaming of the ship that became the S.S. United States. William Francis Gibbs was driven, relentless, and committed to excellence. He loved his ship, the idea of it, and the realization of it, and he devoted himself to making it the epitome of luxury travel during the triumphant post–World War II era. Biographer Steven Ujifusa brilliantly describes the way Gibbs worked and how his vision transformed an industry. A Man and His Ship is a tale of ingenuity and enterprise, a truly remarkable journey on land and sea.

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A terrific book! By turns entertaining, informing and ultimately inspiring, A Man and His Ship transforms its readers into passengers traveling across an ocean and through time. A skilled verbal navigator, Steven Ujifusa has charted an efficient and yet immensely satisfying course through a sea of facts, images and stories. (David Macauley, author of The Way Things Work and Unbuilding)

"A delightful account of the era of grand ocean liners and the brilliant, single-minded designer who yearned to build the greatest ocean liner of all."—Kirkus

"In his debut, Ujifusa harks back to a time when men were men, and transatlantic ships were serious business...Written with passion and thoroughness, this is a love letter to a bygone time and the ships that once ruled the seas."—Publishers Weekly starred review

"Ujifusa describes the construction of the ship in engrossing detail and provides informative digressions on the golden age of ocean travel, when liners carried millionaires, celebrities, and desperate refugees."—Booklist

“Few of man's creations possess even half the romance of the passenger ships that once steamed across the world's oceans, especially the North Atlantic. That is why Steven Ujifusa's ‘A Man and His Ship’ is such a compelling work.” (The Wall Street Journal)

Steven Ujifusa has done something remarkable in his book, A Man and His Ship: he has brought back an era of American dominance in shipbuilding through the life of one of its giants: William Francis Gibbs. In some ways, Gibbs was the Steve Jobs of his era – a perfectionist with few people skills who nevertheless was single-handedly able to change his industry by the power of his vision and overwhelming professional competence. We need more public historians like Ujifusa working in business history. Using the highest research standards, he has written a great book that tells great story. (G. Richard Shell, Thomas Gerrity Professor, The Wharton School of Business and author, Bargaining for Advantage:)

作者简介

Steven Ujifusa serves on the Advisory Council of the S.S. United States Conservancy. He received his master’s degree in historic preservation and real estate from the University of Pennsylvania and his BA in history from Harvard University.

网友对A Man and His Ship: America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States的评论

Anyone with doubts about America's future should read this book. It's not political tract, but an enthralling story about teamwork, ingenuity, persistence, and one of those quirky American individuals, William Francis Gibbs, who built the S.S. United States, the fastest and most beautiful ocean liner in the world. Along the way, Gibbs also designed and organized production of 70 percent of the U.S. naval ships in World War II. This is a true story and it happened not too long ago.

William Francis Gibbs was an introverted boy from a newly rich Philadelphia family that lost most of its wealth in the first decade of the last century. Young Willy fell in love with ships at age eight when he stood on the banks of the Delaware River and saw the gleaming new steamship, St.Louis. He is a protagonist you admire and care about. Among his more endearing qualities is that he became a Harvard drop-out. Gibbs would lock himself in his room to study engineering drawings of ships, ignoring his coursework and not mingling with his rich, more social classmates.

Throughout his life Gibbs remained an oddball, but became a central figure in the American achievement in the first half of the 20th century (his picture was on the cover of TIME in 1942). Ujifusa's book is worth reading simply for its portrait of that period. There are priceless vignettes. Gibbs and his brother, both in their late 20s, meeting with J.P. Morgan Jr. in his Wall Street office to show him their drawings and get money for the ships they wanted to build. A young army captain from Kansas, Dwight D. Eisenhower, sipping tea in a fancy New York apartment, lobbying the head of the U.S. shipping commission for space on a converted ocean liner in order to get his tank battalion over to the European front. Gibbs hauled before a Congressional committee during World War II, accused of war profiteering and, with complete vindication, getting the committee to back down.

Ujifusa wonderfully captures not just Gibbs and his place in history, but the ship itself. He rightfully calls the S.S. United States a masterpiece, and describes in lucid, beautifully-written detail all that went into it. To this day, it stands as a tribute not just to the genius of Gibbs, but to American technology, organization and competitive will. Early in his career, Gibbs had come to believe in the superiority of the smaller, higher speed turbines developed by GE and Westinghouse. He had applied American mass-production techniques, including a wide range of off-site suppliers, to quickly and inexpensively churn out cargo ships in World War II. The S.S. United States could only have been produced in America. Ujifusa's account of the ship's maiden voyage in 1952, when it shattered the Queen Mary's trans-Atlantic record by 10 hours (in a three and a half day voyage), is one of the most thrilling in the annals of competition.

As in the best of stories, A Man and His Ship is about more than inevitable triumph. There is the financial failure of Gibb's father. Going to sea has always involved risk, and often tragedy. Mr. Ujifusa's narrative includes the impact of the Titanic disaster, and he describes the horrific fire on the ocean liner Morro Castle off the New Jersey coast in 1934 that killed 136 people. Commerce and shipbuilding went into decline during the Great Depression. Gibbs had fierce battles with Washington throughout his career.

He was a difficult personality. In the late 1990s I had the privilege--and pain--of working with Steve Jobs. In reading Ujifusa's portrait of William Francis Gibbs, I thought, "He's like Steve." Gibbs hired a talented team of New York designers for the elegant interior of the S.S. United States, but he insisted on okaying "every piece of furniture, bolt of drapery and square foot of carpet." He would go to the New Jersey Meadowlands with a tuning fork to make sure he had just the right pitch for the ship's whistles. Thank goodness America produces people like that and provides them freedom and resources to do great things.

Almost all the reviews of this book are raves and well they should be; this is a first-rate effort.
I live in the Rocky Mountains and have only seen a few ocean liners in my life, but even as a young boy I was fascinated by these huge ships and, especially, the S. S. United States. And when reading Ujifusa's book about the United States and its predecessors, and the remarkable William Gibbs, I satisfied an immense curiousity to know more about this wonderful historical era.
Ujifusa's methodology is just superb here. He starts with Gibbs, a fascinating personality, and uses Gibbs's life story to present the whole historical sweep of the great trans-Atlantic ocean liners.
Ujifusa's writing is also excellent. Like so many good non-fiction writers these days, Ujifusa borrows methods from fiction writers to tell an exciting story. Some of the technical discussions of the design of large ships could have been dry and dull, but Ujifusa's writing skills keep a reader involved and interested.
A fine effort and a read I can endorse for anyone, whether from the high Rockies or an ocean shore.
John W. Davis, Worland, Wyoming

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