West Point Chain.
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The Hudson Valley Regional Review
The Great Chain Hoax
by Lincoln Diamant
alfway through the Revolution on April 30, 1778, the
American forces succeeded in stringing a massive iron
chain across the Hudson River at West Point. The chain's
800 links were hastily forged at nearby Sterling Furnace
in the Ramapo Mountains. Each two-foot-Iong link weighed more
than a hundred pounds. Swiftly dubbed "General Washington's Watch
Chain" by the revolutionary soldiers, the unique obstruction blocked
the strategic waterway for the remainder of the war.
Installation of the chain was supervised by 33-year-old Continental
Army engineer Captain Thomas Machin of Boston, who had also "gone
out with the Tea Party" in 1773. Machin was an English immigrant with
no formal education, but wide-ranging practical engineering experience. In 1777, he had managed to stretch a lighter chain across the
Hudson near Bear Mountain. But within six months that obstruction
was outflanked and destroyed in a surprise land attack by the British.
Machin's new and heavier chain at West Point was supported by many
individual rafts oflarge pine logs that floated 1,500 feet across the river
between the west shore and Constitution Island. Early each winter for
the next four years, the West Point garrison hauled the 35 tons of iron
and log floats out of the clutches of tidal river ice-and restrung it
again the following spring. It was always a backbreaking, freezingjob.
The chain survived an unsuccessful sabotage attempt by Benedict
Arnold in 1780. More important, it was never challenged by the
Royal Navy. When the war ended, however, the chain represented
too much valuable scrap iron to simply rust in peace. Twenty-four
links were saved (13 are still on display at West Point) but all the rest
were melted down in a local furnace.
Now, two centuries later, refreshed from time to time with a coat
of shiny black enamel, the rugged section of original chain that was
preserved, one link for each of the 13 original states, continues to
intrigue tens of thousands of visitors to West Point each year.
H
The Hudson Valley Regional Review, March 1990, Volume 7, Number 1
45
"The Great Chain " at West Point.
Link of the West Point Chain, 1778.
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The Hudson Valley Regional Review
Considering that whatever is left of Captain Machin's iron barrier
across the Hudson at West Point represents one of the country's
most famous Revolutionary relics, it is not surprising that a century
later a pair of enterprising scalawags successfully foisted a spurious
version on the American public.
John C. Abbey was a 35-year-old New York "odds-and-ends man"
with an indisputable sense of American history. This Manhattan junk
dealer customarily went under the more colorful Christian appellation of "Westminster." "For 50 years," said The New York Times, "it was
a byword along the waterfront that you could get anything from a
nail to a cannon at Westminster Abbey's old place." Including, it
appeared, fully authenticated links of the "West Point Chain." In the
1880's, Abbey obtained, presumably from the innermost recesses of
the 300-acre Brooklyn Navy Yard, 86 links of a heavy contemporary
rolled-iron ground anchor chain. This type of chain, manufactured
exclusively in Great Britain, was used to anchor large steamship mooring buoys in ports around the world that possessed no pier facilities.
Despite the fuct that genuine links of the West Point Chain were easily
available for comparison only fifty miles up the Hudson River at the
U.S. Military Academy, the junk dealer began to represent his dramaticlooking scrap metal as links of the famous Revolutionary barrier,
and succeeded in peddling them to gullible buyers allover the country.
It was a startling parody of what Van Wyck Brooks once characterized as America's "search for a useable past," or as a more recent
writer suggests in a hagiographic study of George Washington, it
answers "a specific human need to achieve a measure of material
intimacy with great events."
In
the early 1900's, Abbey's spurious chain enterprise was taken over
by his neighbor Francis Bannerman.* Born in Scotland in 1851 and
brought to America as a child, Bannerman had become one of the
country's major surplus arms dealers. As the new and better organized
proprietor of the spurious "West Point Chain," Bannerman celebrated
the event by issuing a pamphlet-History of the Great Iron Chain Laid
Across the Hudson River.in 1788, by Order of General George Washington.
*For more information on Francis Bannerman, and photographs of
his famous armory, see The Hudson Valley Regional Review Volume 6,
Number 2, p. 43, in an article entitled "Fortresses of the Hudson
Valley" by F. Daniel Larkin with photography by Judith A. Rhein.
The Great Chain Hoax
47
Actual source of the SPUriOU5 chain: Brown, Lenox & Co. Ltd. sNewbridge
Chain Works, Pontypridd, Wales.
Battleship ground mooring chain and shackle.
48
The Hudson Valley Regional Review
It spun a fascinating story, still naively cited by a handful of histori-
ans, of how the "West Point Chain" finally ended up in the Brooklyn
Navy Yard.
Much of the chain, according to Bannerman, actually escaped the
scrap furnace and lay stored at West Point for almost a century.
Then in March 1864, near the end of the Civil War, almost a hundred links were barged down the Hudson for display at the famous
New York Metropolitan Fair. The fair was a great success, raising
over $1 million for the Union wounded. At its conclusion (Bannerman
said) the Great Chain links were not returned to the West Point
Military Academy, but hauled across the East River to the Brooklyn
Navy Yard.
Bannerman's pamphlet now leaps ahead two decades, to the time
when his "Revolutionary relics" could be properly exhumed. During
Grover Cleveland's first administration-says Bannerman-the Navy
Department moved to consolidate all its various quartermaster installations into one General Storekeepers Department. "In time,"
Bannerman continues, the Navy "found this old chain and without
either knowing the history or having any appreciation for such
a valuable relic, ordered it sold at auction, September 4, 1887."
Bannerman tells how, 22 years after the end of the Civil War, the
unusual links were bid on by his own father, Francis Sr.-from whom
they were subsequently purchased by Westminster Abbey.
Abbey, relates Bannerman, then sold sections of his "West Point
Chain" to the public "for about 10 years." The links actually received
wide distribution from both Abbey and Bannerman. Now scattered
all over the United States from Vermont to California, the spurious
links in no way resemble the authentic, chunky, slightly twisted Great
Chain links at West Point.
In
1900, before Bannerman took over the chain from Abbey, a
former New York City mayor named Abram Hewitt decided to buy
some of the links. Twenty-six of them still grace the front lawn of the
former Hewitt estate at Ringwood Manor, now a state park in northwestern New Jersey. Typical of all the Abbey/Bannerman links, those
at Ringwood are the wrong size and weight compared to the real
West Point chain. Ringwood's smooth, neatly chamfered links are
not only three times heavier than the rugged links hurriedly forged
in 1778 at Sterling Furnace; they are also on average 65% longer,
plus an additional 3=¥4 inches greater in circumference.
The Grea t Chain Hoax
49
Spurious chain links at Museum Village, Orange County, Monroe NY.
Hewitt, an experienced ironmaster who lived only a few hours'
carriage ride from West Point, eventually got around to comparing his links with those at the Academy, and was soon loudly
complaining that Abbey had "sold the chain to me on false representation." Some of Hewitt's links eventually found their way to
Orange County's Museum Village, a local historic restoration at
Monroe, New York, where they are still displayed (unlabled) on the
"village green."
Almost a half century later, Hewitt's son Edward wrote in a private
memoir for family consumption how a visiting "English iron manufacturer recognized (the Abbey chain) as one of the Admiralty buoy
chains made by his firm, which had been used in New York harbor."
(An "Admiralty" chain had to pass prescribed strength tests at a British
naval testing station.) The younger Hewitt also related how he had
quietly "analyzed the iron of the links and found it to be Lowmoor
iron from England."
For several decades, Edward Hewitt kept those embarassing identifications to himself Contemporary evidence now supports his assertion that Westminster Abbey's so-called "West Point Chain" was never
made at Sterling Furnace in 1778, but was manufactured more than
50
The Hudson Valley Regional Review
a century later at Brown, Lenox & Co.'s Newbridge Chain and Anchor
Works at Pontypridd, 15 miles north of Cardiff, Wales along the
Glamorganshire Canal.
Having bought Abbey's chain, Bannerman continued to peddle
it on a much wider scale. Two links, his pamphlet notes, were sold to
Colonel Robert Townsend of Oyster Bay, New York, an unsuspecting
great-grandson of the original Sterling Furnace iron master. Three
others went to Townsend descendants in Danbury, Connecticut and
Allegheny, Pennsylvania.
Another of Bannerman's spurious links, sold to Daniel Jackson
Townsend, a descendent in Niagara Falls, was subsequently presented by his heirs to the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society,
which currently describes it as "one of the most 'historic' articles in
our museum."
During the United States Coast Guard Academy's 1933 commencement exercises at New London, six links Bannerman sold
many years earlier to still another Townsend descendant were
presented to the Academy by the ironmaster's great-granddaughter.
Originally mounted on the stone wall of the Academy's athletic field,
the links now lie on the floor inside the front entrance to the training school's museum.
Thirteen of Bannerman's remaining links were sold to millionaire
Edward F. Searles, a former Massachusetts interior decorator who
married Mark Hopkin's widow, thereby gaining control of the Central Pacific Railroad fortune. Searles came to Bannerman seeking
additional decoration for an elaborate statue of George Washington
that already graced a corner of Searles's Methuen, Massachusetts
estate. The rear of the already overladen marble and bronze monument was soon bedecked with 13 Bannerman links-again, one for
each original state.
Sixty years later in 1958, a Searles descendant sold that huge statue
plus seven of the "West Point" links to Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in
California, where they are now a "cemetery feature." The chain links,
separated from the Ball statue, are installed in a special niche of
Forest Lawn's Glendale "Court of Freedom, beyond the Mystery of
Life Garden, where Cathedral Drive becomes High Road."
At the time of Searles's purchase, Bannerman also sold four links
to Westchester executive John H. Starin, who then donated them to
the Glen Island Museum in Pelham, New York. When the museum
The Great Chain Hoax
51
GRfAT REVOLUTIONARY
THE HUDSON TO
20 LINKS -EACH
C.F. GUN11iER
was demolished in 1921 by the Westchester County Park Commission to make way for a casino and recreational park, the four links
were auctioned for $500. Successful bidder was the British businessman Sir Henry S. Wellcome, who outbid the New York Historical
Society. Within a year, Wellcome donated his prize to the Smithsonian
Institution. By then, the Historical Society'S secretary had grown somewhat suspicious of the Bannerman links, and so informed the
Smithsonian secretary-who did not reply. Today those Smithsonian
links have been stashed in a Maryland warehouse.
52
The Hudson Valley Regional Review
Gunlhers spurious chain links in 1M 1921 Chicago Memorial Day Parade.
Twenty additional links were passed-through a collector-to the
Chicago Historical Society, where today they have been unceremoniously dumped like a giant monkey-puzzle outside the Society's
back door.
To close out his inventory of "Great West Point Chain Links,"
Bannerman came up with an even more ingenious and lucrative idea.
It neatly disposed of all the "damaged" opened links left behind
when past chain sections were sold. Perhaps inspired by those sawnout chunks, Bannerman began to carve up all the leftovers into tiny
The Great Chain Hoax
53
,
v
" :~:..
OF Tllb:
GREAT
IRON CHAIN,
,i
1 .111) .1 '." " <.1S'; TilE HUDSON RIVER
AT IITS l' I'OINT I N 1778, ll¥ ORDER O~'
... (;E;\;EI<.-\I. , ;EOf{GE WASHINGTON ....
-', .
t)u ~· .\ h i lojli,HI
<It t h l.!
.\lilit;lry \\' ar ~Iu se uol. 579 Broadway, New \ ·orL:.
.~
Ff{A:-.'C1S H.,\NNERMAN.
.... ..
'~ ;;Jj
Bannermans promotional booklet on the spurious chain, showing "dRsk weight. "
54
The Hudson Valley Regional Review
"handsome souvenir desk weights." Each link yielded several hundred
blanks; the pieces were machined, polished and engraved "SECTION
OF CHAIN / USED BY GENL GEO. WASHINGTON, / WEST POINT, N.Y. 1778." A round
"handle," actually a surplus l1!4" Civil War canister shot, was welded
to the desk weight. Bannerman charged $2.75 for the finished paperweight, and threw in his eight-page pamphlet. Chopped into such
tiny pieces, each chain link brought Bannerman a total of almost
$350, a considerable improvement over Abbey's original wholesale
price of "five (5) cents net cash per pound."
'Without exception, all previous writers on the West Point chain
have swallowed their misgivings regarding the illogical size, shape
and appearance of the Abbey/Bannerman links. A few researchers
have been willing to acknowledge some problems with certain details,
but no one has cared to sail into the wind of "received historic fact."
One of the country's most respected civil engineers wrote shortly
after World War II: "The appearance of some of the large links is
certainly a bit suspicious," but he still refused to acknowledge use of
a 19th-century rolling mill. He even went so far as to assert that in
the midst of a desperate revolution, the neat "chamfers on the 31/2"
bar [almost 40 feet of chamfering to each of several hundred links]
were done with a hand hammer."
A decade earlier a Columbia University engineering instructor
requested permission from the Hewitt family to conduct metallurgical experiments on one of those Ringwood Manor links. Approval
was refused, but the instructor machined and polished a Bannerman
paperweight instead, and published eight photomicrographs in an
iron-trades magazine. Ken Holloway, retired Chain and Smiths
Manager of the Welsh Pontypridd works, helped the present writer
interpret those photomicrographs by describing the traditional 19thcentury Brown, Lenox processes for manufacturing ground mooring
chain links: "Iron 'scrap' of known quality was piled into 'box piles,'
risen to welding temperature and forged into slabs under the steam
hammer. Those slabs were again raised to welding temperature and
forged into a larger slab, which is passed through rolls to reduce it
to bar size and shape. I was able," Holloway noted, "to watch this
process of making square chain right up to the second World War."
The Columbia instructor independently determined that the "iron
was forged first in several pieces, then bundled together and welded
into one large piece." Such an analysis in no way describes the origiThe Great Chain Hoax
55
nal Sterling West Point Chain raw materials, or any forging process
known in 1778. The instructor, however, still failed to draw the
obvious conclusion.
Bannerman died in November 1918 at the end of World War I,
exhausted, said The New York Times, from his dedicated efforts to
supply the British government with second-hand armaments "worth
almost three million dollars." The Times added somewhat uncharitably
for an obituary:, "It was charged in Congress last summer that Mr.
Bannerman was trying to sell the United States Government for
$450,000, thirty six-inch guns bought by him from the Navy for about
$78 apiece."
Westminster Abbey outlived his more enterprising associate by
four years. "WESTMINSTER ABBEY DEAD," read the headline over his obituary in The New York Times onJune 11, 1922. The sub-headline read:
"Old Front Street Ship Chandler Whose Warehouse was Famous."
But it still took six more decades for truth to overtake the spurious
links, and for the entire Abbey/Bannerman chain myth to unravel.
So today, if you want to look upon Captain Machin's wonderful West
Point Chain, skip all those curious sections of Welsh buoy links at
Forest Lawn, Ringwood Manor, Museum Village, Oyster Bay, the
Coast Guard Academy, the Smithsonian warehouse, and the Chicago,
Buffalo-and-Erie-County, and Methuen Historical Societies.
Go to West Point. Enjoy the real thing. D
Notes
Van Wyck Brooks's seminal essay On Creating a Useable Past appeared in The Dial a
year after the United States entered World War I. Karal Ann Mading's recent comment on the "need for material intimacy" is in George Washington Slept Here (Cambridge, 1988).
The site of Westminster Abbey's lower Manhattan warehouse at No. 61 Front
Street-as well as two entire blocks of Front Street itself-has now been eradicated
by a huge glass-faced Water Street financial office tower. The new 52-story building
also looms over the erstwhile location of Bannerman's arms depot at No. 27 Front
Street, near Coenties Slip, now the site of a tiny, treeless park containing New York
City's Vietnam War Memorial.
The U.S. Navy's inability to locate any Brooklyn Navy Yard records on authentic
or spurious West Point chain links is recorded in an 1895 letter to Westminster
Abbey from the Yard's Equipment officer Commander Edwin White, and in a 1932
letter from Captain P. B. Dungan to Roscoe W. Smith.
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The Hudson Valley Regional Review
Related coverage from The New York Times and New York Sun for 1887 and
thereaftel,"-as well as the earlier 1864 Metropolitan Fair coverage by The New York
Times, New York Tribune, Harper's Weekly, and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper-is
available on microfilm in major libraries.
Abram S. Hewitt's letter of complaint to Westminster Abbey is among his papers
at the Cooper Union (N.Y.C.) Library. His son Edward Ringwood Hewitt privately
laid the Abbey fraud bare in his work on early Hewitt family life, Ringwood Manor,
The Home of the Hewitts (Trenton, 1946).
The Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society published a brief description
of their severed link in a 1925 booklet entitled The Book of the Museum; Mrs. Charles
A. Sackett's 1933 gift to the Coast Guard Academy of six of her father's links
was reported in the June and September 1933 issues of U.S. Coast Guard magazine (Annapolis).
Edward Francis Searles, purchaser of thirteen Bannerman links, was a turn-ofthe-century Massachusetts interior decorator with an irrepressible penchant for adolescent Greek catamites. In 1958, when Searles's grand-nephew sold Ball's ornate
George Washington statue and chain to Hollywood's Forest Lawn Cemetery, six of
the spurious links remained behind in New England. The Searles Saga by Sister St.
Martina Flinton of the Presentation of Mary (Methuen, Massachusetts, 1976) tells
the entire strange story.
Charles Rufus Harte was a Connecticut civil engineer who published several
papers on early iron mining and manufacturing in the northwestern comer of that
state. His comment on "hand chamfering" the Abbey/Bannerman links is in his
monograph River Obstructions of the Revolutionary War published in the 62nd Annual
Report of the Connecticut Society of Civil Engineers (Hartford, 1946). Professor
C.B.F. Young's photomicrographs of the polished Bannerman paperweight appeared
in the metal trades magazine Iron Age (New York, June 3, 1937).
Bannerman's obituary is in The New York Times, November 28, 1918.
In a 1985 letter to this writer, the Department of the Navy's Historical Center at
the Washington Navy Yard noted its failure to find any reference to either production or use of the Abbey/Bannerman chain at the Brooklyn Yard. This led directly
to the author's further research in Great Britain, based largely on comments in
Charles Wilkins's History of the Iron, Steel, Tinplate, and Other Trades of Wales (Methyr
Tydfil, 1903).
.
The Great Chain Hoax
57