Lewis Nixon (naval architect)

Lewis Nixon (April 7, 1861 – September 23, 1940) was a naval architect, shipbuilding executive, public servant, and political activist. He designed the United States' first modern battleships, and supervised the construction of its first modern submarines, all before his 40th birthday. He was briefly the leader of Tammany Hall. He started an ill-fated effort to run seven major American shipyards under common ownership as the United States Shipbuilding Company, and he was the chair of the New York City commission building the Williamsburg Bridge. Nixon was born on the eve of the American Civil War, in Leesburg, Virginia, to Colonel Joel Lewis Nixon and Mary Jane Turner. Leesburg, only three miles into the Confederacy, changed hands several times over the course of the War. His brother George H. Nixon fought in the Virginia Cavalry as a member of "Mosby's Raiders." Nixon graduated first in his class from the United States Naval Academy in 1882 and was sent to study naval architecture at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, where, in 1885, he again graduated first in the class. On Nixon's return to the United States, he was assigned to the John Roach & Sons shipyard in Chester, Pennsylvania, which the United States Navy had commandeered in order to finish three protected cruisers of the new steel navy: , , and . In 1890, with help from assistant naval constructor David W. Taylor, he designed the three s - , and . While in Pennsylvania, he earned a Doctor of Science degree from Villanova University. Soon after the contracts for the battleships were awarded, he resigned from the Navy to work as Superintendent of Construction for William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company, the shipyard that won the lead contract. In 1891, Nixon married Sally Lewis Wood of Washington, D.C., a descendant of General Andrew Lewis of Colonial Virginia. Their son was Stanhope Wood Nixon, whom Adolfo Müller-Ury painted full-length in Scottish costume in 1902-1903. She would die on June 15, 1937, three years before Nixon himself.