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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of Geography DISPUTING THE NEW NAVY: GREATER DELAWARE PRODUCERS, EMERGING WASHINGTON BUREAUCRACIES, AND CHANGING GEOGRAPHIES OF EXPERTISE AND LAW A Dissertation in Geography by Andrew Thomas Jobbitt Marshall © 2018 Andrew Thomas Jobbitt Marshall Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2018 ii The dissertation of Andrew Thomas Jobbitt Marshall was reviewed and approved* by the following: Deryck William Holdsworth Professor Emeritus of Geography Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Lorraine Dowler Associate Professor of Geography and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Melissa W. Wright Professor of Geography; Head of the Department, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Amy S. Greenberg Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Cynthia A. Brewer Professor of Geography Head of the Department *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT In 1883, the U.S. Navy was in a dilapidated state, but in twenty-four years, it would circumnavigate the globe to great fanfare. For the first twenty years of this naval rebuilding program, dubbed the New Navy, the United States relied overwhelmingly on private firms in the Greater Delaware region. Modern public contracts came into being with the Civil War, but New Navy contracts tested the public-private relationships in peacetime as never before. Fleets could no longer expand and shrink because of bellicose exigencies; they had to be ready always. The relational and legalistic frameworks the New Navy established laid the groundwork for modern- day military contracting, which now transacts $455 million worth of contracts every day. The origins of these new relationships are examined through ships constructed by two leading shipbuilders, as well as armor plating manufacturers, and their respective disputes with an increasingly bureaucratized Department of the Navy and federal government. The shipbuilders, John Roach and Charles H. Cramp, pursued extensive claims against the federal government in Congress and the United States Court of Claims, the latter of which remains under-studied in legal history and geography. The Washington-based court, Congress, and Navy Department were part of an increasingly centralized, far-reaching federal government. Interrogating these public- private disputes in courthouses and Congress addresses a lacuna in legal geography—disputes between a powerful government and equally powerful private firms. In addition, it provides insight into fighting ships, the major government capital and technological investments of their day. Keywords: navy, military geographies, legal geographies, New Navy, shipbuilding, public contracts, armor, armor plate, John Roach, Charles H. Cramp, Court of Claims iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................. vii LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................... viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1 The Need for a Modern Navy .......................................................................................... 3 The Greater Delaware Region .......................................................................................... 7 The Woeful Navy’s Policy Problem ................................................................................ 10 The Blurred Line Between the U.S. Navy and Merchant Marine .................................... 13 Expected Contributions .................................................................................................... 15 A Naval-Historical Geopolitics ................................................................................ 15 Legal Geography: The Spatial Implications of Contracts and a Subject-Specific Court ................................................................................................................. 23 Sources, Methodology, and the Archives ........................................................................ 27 Historical Geography and the Archives ................................................................... 28 Legal History and the Archives ................................................................................ 31 Conclusion: Geographies of Expertise and Bureaucratic Power...................................... 32 Chapter Outline ................................................................................................................ 36 Chapter 2 Chapter 2: Government Contracts, Government Contracting, and the New Navy ................................................................................................................................. 41 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 41 The Nature of a Government Contract ............................................................................. 45 A Brief History of Naval Contracting up until the Civil War .......................................... 46 The Role of the Agent ...................................................................................................... 54 The Civil War, the Changes Clause, and the Formalization of the Contracting Relationship .............................................................................................................. 55 The False Claims Act and Courts Martial ................................................................ 59 Contracts and the United States: Sovereign Immunity and Treating the Government as a Private Citizen ................................................................................................... 60 The New Navy Contracting Process ................................................................................ 64 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 66 Chapter 3 Competing Sites of Expertise: Spaces of Corporate Control, Bureaucracy, and Education in the New Navy Era ....................................................................................... 68 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 68 The Business and Legal Environment of the New Navy: The Rise of Cramp Corporate .................................................................................................................. 70 The 1902 Slow-Down and Consolidation ........................................................................ 79 Changes in the Naval Officer Corps ................................................................................ 86 Personnel Reform in the New Navy ......................................................................... 92 v Towards a Navy Run from Washington ........................................................................... 94 The Washington, D.C. Model Basin ........................................................................ 103 Officers or Engineers?: Technical Change and Personnel ............................................... 107 Learning Away from the Mast: Stephen B. Luce and Naval Education .......................... 108 Understanding Iron Shipbuilding: The Role and Place of Naval Architecture and Marine Education in the New Navy ......................................................................... 120 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 125 Chapter 4 Institutional and Legal Geographies of Private Claims against the U.S. Government ...................................................................................................................... 128 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 128 Fitting into the Broader Legal Geography Field .............................................................. 130 Legal Geography and War ....................................................................................... 137 The History and Procedural Geography of the Court of Claims ...................................... 140 A War-Tinged History ............................................................................................. 143 The Court of Claims’ Procedural Geography ........................................................... 145 Cramp’s Lawyers and the Court of Claims ...................................................................... 146 McCammon & Hayden in Washington .................................................................... 151 John Roach and the ABCD Battleships ........................................................................... 154 The Cramp Firm and the Four Delayed Battleships ......................................................... 160 The Arguments Before the Supreme Court ...................................................................... 160 The Armor Delays .................................................................................................... 162 Possible