Shipbuilding History

New York NY

Most recent update: January 23, 2013.

Jakob Westervelt was the son of a successful builder. He began his career in 1814 as an apprentice in Christian Bergh's shipyard at the foot of Gouverneur Street, leaving in 1835 to start his own operation. The original yard was at Corlear's Hook, but he moved to Lewis and Seventh Streets in 1844, where the soccer field and running track in East River Park are today. Over the course of its 30-year existence, Westervelt built 243 ships, the early ones being sailing ships, the later being steamships, but he never converted to iron shipbuilding. In the later years, Westervelt owned many of the ships he built, with the result that the war losses and the post-war collapse essentially bankrupted him and the yard closed in 1868. The table below is clearly incomplete:

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