In a recent IT journal it was asserted that "out-sourcing" built the U.S.S. Monitor, eight different firms supplying different parts from different places to be built in NYC. Interestingly. in the vicinity of Cold Spring, NY, where the West Point Foundry was, location of the first production of the U.S. Navy's ordnance after the American Revolution, a sub-river structure was found recently according to the NY Times I think, sort of a "pen" for perhaps a boat or submarine. As a researcher and field tech on the EPA's remediation of the Marathon Battery Site, I had the opportunity to read an older map that claimed boats were "beached" for bottom work in the location of Foundry Cove, before the railroad came through in the 1840's that Washington Irving was against. The railroad stopped for a few years just above Cold Spring, NY at about Pollepel Island, or Bannerman Castle NYS Parks, until a tunnel was blasted through the rock, near where this "pen" is in the Hudson River. Perhaps the origin of the "out sourced" U.S.S. Alligator, the U.S.'s first submarine?

George Myers