Eight-year-old Willie Gibbs stared out the window of the horse-drawn coach as it rumbled down Philadelphia’s cobblestone streets toward the banks of the Delaware River. It was 12 November 1894, and the Gibbs family was heading to the William Cramp & Sons shipyard to watch the launch of SS St. Louis, billed as the largest and most spectacular ship ever built in America.
Sea History: Naval Architect William Francis Gibbs, “A Dream Deferred Never Died”