Ebenezer Moseley (February 14, 1813 – June 18, 1903) was a Boston-born
ship builder
Shipbuilding is the construction of ships and other floating vessels. It normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a shipyard. Shipbuilders, also called shipwrights, follow a specialized occupation that traces its roots to befor ...
in 19th century
Nova Scotia. His best known ship is the barque ''
Stag
Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the reindeer ...
''.
Early life
Ebenezer Moseley was born in
Dorchester, Massachusetts
Dorchester (colloquially referred to as Dot) is a Boston neighborhood comprising more than in the City of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Originally, Dorchester was a separate town, founded by Puritans who emigrated in 1630 from Dorchester ...
to shipbuilder Phineas Moseley and his wife Sarah (née Tilton). When Ebenezer, known as Eben, was five years old, the family moved to
Halifax, Nova Scotia and set up a
shipyard
A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance a ...
in
Richmond
Richmond most often refers to:
* Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States
* Richmond, London, a part of London
* Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England
* Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada
* Richmond, California, ...
in the north of Halifax. After attending school, Moseley worked at his father's ship yard. One of his first ships, ''Falcon'' won the Halifax Harbour regatta prize for first class yachts in 1837. In 1839, Moseley's father died.
La Have Shipyard
16 May 1840, Ebenezer married Anne Jane Cummings. Their first son,
Ebenezer Tilton Moseley, was born in 1844. In 1853, the Richmond shipyard was sold to the provincial government and Eben and Henry decided to sail to Australia. After leaving Halifax, bad weather forced them to land near the
LaHave river, and the quality of trees there convinced the Moseley's to abandon their trip to Australia and open a shipyard on the spot. It was here that Moseley built the barque ''Stag'' for a Halifax merchant. The yard operated until Henry's death in 1864, whereupon Eben and his family returned to Halifax and settled in
Dartmouth Dartmouth may refer to:
Places
* Dartmouth, Devon, England
** Dartmouth Harbour
* Dartmouth, Massachusetts, United States
* Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada
* Dartmouth, Victoria, Australia
Institutions
* Dartmouth College, Ivy League university i ...
.
Dartmouth Shipyard
In Dartmouth, Moseley continued to build ships in a yard in Dartmouth Cove, including the military transport steamer, ''Lily''. He also built the racing yacht ''Whisper'', which would capture the Prince of Wales Cup of the Halifax yacht Club two years in a row, in 1865 and 1866. Moseley left the club in a dispute over his loss of the cup in 1867.
As the golden age of sail began its decline, Moseley diversified his operations and began marketing an anti-fouling paint to protect wooden hulls from rot. The product was marketed locally under the Dominion Copper Paint company. Moseley was known as an innovator in ship design, both for his use of blueprints in a time when wooden half-models were the norm, and for testing the hydrodynamics of models of his designs in a tub. He submitted designs to the Paris Exhibition of 1867 and the Columbian Exposition of 1893, winning a prize for his submissions to the latter. Moseley's shipyard in Dartmouth was destroyed by fire in 1890, and Moseley died in his home in Dartmouth in 1903 at the age of 90.
Ships built
The following is a partial list of ships designed by Moseley.
* ''Falcon''
* ''Sir Peter Hachett''
* ''Stag''
* ''Whisper''
* ''Lilly''
* ''Nymphia''
* ''Blanche''
References
Selected books
*Chapman, Harry. ''The Dartmouthians: Footprints in the Sands of Time''. Dartmouth Historical Association, 2005.
*Erhard, Nancie. ''First in its class: the story of the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron''. Halifax, 1986.
*N.S., Provincial Museum and Science Library, Report, Halifax, 1928–29.
External links
Ebenezer Moseley in the Canadian Dictionary of Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moseley, Ebenzer
1813 births
1903 deaths
American yacht designers
Boat and ship designers
Businesspeople from Boston
19th-century American businesspeople