HAMMS

[anima]

A good friend's widow has a copy of the Historical American Merchant Marine Survey, (HAMMS) in mint condition and still with original wood crate. It weighs ~100 lbs so shipping is a problem, but she is willing to sell if you can pick up in person.  Kansas City area.  She actually had two copies but I bought the other.  Here are some pix of mine... 

Edited May 5, 2022 by anima
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[anima]

Makes a nice coffee table too 😁

[Harvey Golden]

I had the great luxury of baby-sitting a set of these for about a year-- they are incredible beyond belief!  I have tried to find out how many sets were printed, but haven't had any luck. Enjoy your set!

Best, 

Harvey

[anima]

I believe there were 300 copies printed, and yes a crazy cool set of books. 

Edited May 5, 2022 by anima

[anima]

I opened and looked thru volume 7 (west Coast) today and it is by far the most detailed of the volumes... Many of plans could be converted to models straight from the drawings or with just a little modification... Lots of good stuff in there.. 

[Tony Hunt]

Gracie S looks nice!

[allanyed]

What is the price?

Thanks

Allan

[Bob Cleek]

Yes. There were 300 copies printed in this run. Anybody who collects modeling books has surely lusted after one. They originally retailed around $3,000 each, but apparently didn't sell well at all at that price point! The few that were sold primarily went to well-endowed academic libraries, from what I've read. I've seen them offered for as little as a few hundred bucks in later years. I suspect these sets were purchased as investments which disappointed. The ads often tout them has having only having the plastic wrapping on one or two of the seven (I believe) volumes having been removed, which indicates to me the owner never looked at the whole set. I've seen photos of the bound set and have ordered individual HAMMS prints from the Smithsonian, but I've always wondered if the bound set includes all the photographic records on the survey subjects, copies of which the Smithsonian also sells, or just the drawings. This would be one set that cries out to be digitized in CD or thumb drive format for on-screen viewing and printing of plans on a large format printer. I doubt that will ever happen, though. The HAMMS and similar collections are probably big profit generators (relatively speaking) for the Smithsonian Institution. 

Edited May 9, 2022 by Bob Cleek

[Harvey Golden]

The bound sets do have a number of photographs-- not likely all taken by researchers, but they are well-curated. There is also updated (ca. 1980s) information and background on most of the boats included. Another very nice feature of the bound volumes is the introductory sections which include the history of the HAMMS program as well as retrospectives by a number of people involved.  A very nice surprise is the artistic and full-color plates made by some of the researchers-- there's an entire "artwork" appendix in one of the volumes.  I haven't seen sets listed for $3,000 in recent years, but have for around half that; it's actually an incredible bargain when one considers ordering all the plans individually from the Smithsonian. 

 

Here's a jot I wrote about these Volumes recently, for any interested: 

 

The Historic American Merchant Marine Survey

 

In the midst of the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration had many projects designed to employ workers laid off from various trades.  The short-lived Federal Project No. 6 employed shipwrights, marine surveyors, and naval architects to document ships and boats around the United States.  Despite its formal name (Historic American Merchant Marine Survey), many of the vessels surveyed were more common or anonymous than historic; a number of recreational craft and foreign-builds are also included.  During the year-and-a-half they were active (1936-1937), they recorded over 350 vessels.  Some consist of lines lifted from half-models in museums and shipyards, while others were on-site documentation of full-size vessels—some derelict, some still active.  The presentation consists of the common three-view scale drawing of a vessel’s lines, and often numerous pages of construction details, machinery details, and sail and rigging plans. 

 

These drawings, while available individually from the Smithsonian Institution for many years, had not been assembled into publication until 1983, when the Ayer Publishing Co. of New Hampshire turned these into a large seven volume set, complete with an introduction on the project, retrospectives by those involved, and new introductory information on each recorded vessel.  Further, the volumes include photographs of many vessels during documentation, as well as full-color and monochrome watercolor sketches made by the surveyors. The beauty of this edition is astonishing—and every drawing in it was hand inked by gifted experts, each with their own style, precision, and artfulness. The size—23-1/2” x 18-1/2” is a very worthy size for the quality of the illustrations, and many pages are foldouts. Very few libraries hold these volumes; I haven’t been able to find how many were printed.  According to WorldCat, only 11 sets are in U.S. Libraries, only 2 of which are on the West Coast.  

 

The range of documented watercraft is astounding.  Some of the older recorded vessels are from the 1820s, while others were just a few years old.  The survey includes dugout canoes from Nicaragua, a U.S. Revenue Cutter, sharpies, scows, schooners, barks, full-rigged iron ships, sponge fishing craft, tug boats, steamships, stern- and side-wheelers, and even two Polar exploration vessels (Peary’s S.S. Roosevelt, and what may be the only larger vessel from the survey still in existence: Roald Amundsen’s Gjöa).  Small inshore fishing craft of many designs and lineages are also represented.  

 

The West Coast is well represented for some areas, but in the Retrospective, a contributor expresses regret at not getting the program into and up the Columbia River.  Columbia River watercraft have since received attention and documentation, courtesy of the Historic American Engineering Record, established by the National Park Service in 1969.  The closest-to-Astoria vessel in the HAMMS set is the Steam Schooner Willapa, built in Raymond, Washington in 1908. The Willapa is masterfully recorded in over 17 sheets of drawings.  The volumes include a number of vessels of this type as well as other lumber carriers, including sailing vessels built in the Puget Sound—no doubt many serviced ports on the Columbia River. 

 

That this project was ever created is a bit of a miracle; its success is perhaps even more miraculous given the necessary organization and its brief existence.  At one point, the director of the project (Eric J. Steinlein) was faced with an overwhelming backlog of work the very day before the official termination of the project.  He penned a letter that afternoon beginning “Dear Mr. Roosevelt…” which bought them six more months to work. 

 

That this was the right project at the right time cannot be understated. A collapsed economy and widespread poverty spelled a quick end to many already aged wooden vessels. The age of working sail was effectively over, and steel was becoming the material of choice for smaller and smaller craft—eventually fiberglass would replace the smallest of wooden work boats. During the Great Depression, the older relics had not yet rotted completely away, and they were ripe for documentation.  These volumes provide a glimpse of what was—a diverse fleet no longer in existence, captured in its twilight. Also captured in these volumes are the mastery of draftsmen trained by hand, shipbuilders trained by eye, and the ever-pressing urgency of historical documentation. 

 

 

[anima]

That's a great summation Harvey. 

[anima]

5 hours ago, allanyed said:

What is the price?

Thanks

Allan

Check your PMs Allan. 

[anima]

This set is still available for purchase if anyone is interested... They don't come up very often. 

[TBlack]

Anima,

What is the price?

Tom

[anima]

$1000 usd, but shipping will set you back another $3-400 or so if you can't pick it up... It's in a 90 lb wooden crate

[TBlack]

Is it Missouri, or Kansas?

[anima]

Kansas city area. (MO) 

[Andreas]

Just because there are only 50 miles to go for TBlack:

 

There is a set at tenpound Books

 

 

Greating,

Andreas

[Bob Cleek]

1 hour ago, Andreas said:

Just because there are only 50 miles to go for TBlack:

 

There is a set at tenpound Books

 

 

Greating,

Andreas

I corresponded with Ten Pound Island books about that set some time ago and they told me it was no longer in stock, explaining that they hadn't had time to update their catalog listings. Being a book collector (or hoarder, according to my Dearly Beloved,) I've tracked on line the availability of this set of HAAMS drawings for years. They do come up now and again but seem to take a long time to sell, if at all. As the material they contain is readily available to researchers directly from the Smithsonian, libraries don't seem to consider them worth acquiring due to the initial cost and shelf space required for a secondary-source reference work. (They are also exactly the sort of books from which vandals rip pages!) The 90 pound weight and large size of the volumes adds hundreds of dollars in packing and shipping costs to the base cost of the set, as well. (I believe the size of the volumes precludes application of the USPS "book rate" postage.) Given the broad scope of the HAAMS project, covering the entire United States geographically, much of the content is surplus to the interests of any given reader. (It's very common for sets coming on the market to include their original wooden packing crate and have all but one or two volumes still unopened in their original cellophane wrappers.) This limited edition printing of 300 copies (at $3,000 a pop, as I recall) was advertised at the time as a "great investment," but from the sets which have appeared on the secondary market (sometimes in multiple copies "still in the packing crate" offered by apparent "investors,") such has not proven to be the case. It's a set that anyone interested in American vessels would love to own, but it seems very few have found the expense of acquiring it justified and the attendant packing and shipping costs limit the geographic marketing area significantly. I'd drop two or maybe even three hundred bucks for a set if one were to come along within reasonable driving distance, but I don't think there are all that many nuts like me around!  

Edited December 22, 2022 by Bob Cleek

[Gregory]

On 12/12/2022 at 8:43 PM, TBlack said:

Is it Missouri, or Kansas?

Just curious why it makes a difference..  Are you banned in one of those states?  😁

[TBlack]

14 minutes ago, Gregory said:

Just curious why it makes a difference..  Are you banned in one of those states?  😁

I don’t know; I may be. Yikes! Does the MSW have a legal department that might have to bail me out?

Tom

[Keith Black]

2 hours ago, TBlack said:

Does the MSW have a legal department that might have to bail me out?

 Bail you out, in your dreams! 

[TBlack]

7 hours ago, Keith Black said:

 Bail you out, in your dreams! 

So I might be spending my days incarcerated? But I’d have the 7 volumes to keep me busy!

[Roger Pellett]

I have wanted this set of books ever since they were published.  Unfortunately now that a set is available, I realize that without them I still have enough reliable modeling information to last me several lifetimes.  And, instead of adding this massive set to by library, what am I eventually going to do with the stuff that I already have.

 

The Superior branch of the University of Wisconsin has a great collection of Great Lakes maritime history materials.  I suggested that they should purchase this HAMMS set.  The librarian told me that they already owned the volumes dealing with the Great Lakes and the others didn’t fit their charter.

 

Roger

[Harvey Golden]

The local museum here has a full set: The Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, Oregon. If anyone is in the area, it's a first-rate museum and has a shockingly good library and archives. If you want to see the HAMMS, add an extra day (or two)!

Harvey

[Bob Cleek]

2 hours ago, Harvey Golden said:

The local museum here has a full set: The Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, Oregon. If anyone is in the area, it's a first-rate museum and has a shockingly good library and archives. If you want to see the HAMMS, add an extra day (or two)!

Harvey

Not many maritime museums have a full-sized real-life USCG surf boat in the lobby and at the same time a number of Lloyd McCafferty's miniature ship models, all under the same roof! Quite a range of subject matter. Out of the way, but as Harvey said, definitely worth the side trip. It deserves to be on every modeler's bucket list!

 

[mtaylor]

7 hours ago, Harvey Golden said:

The local museum here has a full set: The Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, Oregon. If anyone is in the area, it's a first-rate museum and has a shockingly good library and archives. If you want to see the HAMMS, add an extra day (or two)!

Harvey

I haven't been there in probably 20 years or so but it is indeed well worth the time to visit.  I'm giving thought to doing a road trip up north this summer (conditions permitting) and this would definitely be on my "must see/do" list.

[TBlack]

Just to close out this discussion, I've agreed (and sent the check) to acquire this set. After a little searching, I'm donating them to the library at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in New York. Now the logistics are such that I'll wait out winter before going to pick them up.

Tom

[Keith Black]

 Tom, how very kind of you. Now I know why mom liked you best. 

[Bob Cleek]

1 hour ago, Keith Black said:

 Tom, how very kind of you. Now I know why mom liked you best. 

Wow! What a prince!  I'm impressed.

 

Looks like your mom had an heir and a spare and you're it. I suppose there's nothing for it but for you to tattle to the tabloids and cable news. Not to worry. The last "spare" to do that got $100,000,000 for his tell-all TV special!  

[TBlack]

Of course, my first idea was to donate the books to the NRG library only to discover that we had dissolved the library several years ago (I'm not really up on current events).

In terms of an heir; it's actually my mom's dad who has given me the ability to do this.

 

Also, I need to thank "anima" (Jeff Wall) who actually made all of this happen.

Tom