The Seattle Construction and Drydock Company was a
shipbuilding
Shipbuilding is the construction of ships and other floating vessels. It normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a shipyard. Shipbuilders, also called shipwrights, follow a specialized occupation that traces its roots to befor ...
company based in
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
,
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...
. Between 1911 and 1918, it produced a substantial number of ships for both commercial and military uses.
History
Formally established in 1911, the
shipyard
A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance a ...
could trace its history back to 1882, when
Robert Moran
Robert Moran (born January 8, 1937) is an American composer of operas and ballets as well as numerous orchestral, vocal, chamber and dance works.
Life
A native of Denver, Moran studied twelve-tone music privately with Hans Apostel in Vienna an ...
opened a marine repair shop at Yesler's Wharf () and became involved with
Bailey Gatzert
Bailey Gatzert (December 29, 1829 – April 19, 1893) was an American politician and the eighth mayor of Seattle, Washington, serving from 1875 to 1876. He was the first Jewish mayor of Seattle, narrowly missing being the first Jewish mayor of ...
and the Seattle Dry Dock & Ship Building Company. Moran was elected mayor of Seattle in 1888 and while his original shop and the dry dock became a victim of the
Great Seattle Fire of 1889, the business continued to expand and became the Moran Brothers Shipyard, located a few steps further south (). In 1906 the Moran family left the business, but the name persisted and the yard now operated as Moran Company and became the Seattle Construction and Drydock Company at the end of 1911.
Some time in 1916,
William H. Todd
William H. Todd (1864-1932) was a shipbuilder and an avid philanthropist.
He was born on November 27, 1864, the son of a boilermaker in Wilmington, Delaware. He apprenticed to be a shipwright at the Pusey and Jones Shipyard in Wilmington as a yo ...
made one of the first acquisitions for
the corporation that would become a national enterprise later on by buying Seattle Construction and Drydock. Todd's business at that time consisted of facilities in New York harbor along the waterfront of
Red Hook, Brooklyn
Red Hook is a neighborhood in northwestern Brooklyn, New York City, New York, within the area once known as South Brooklyn. It is located on a peninsula projecting into the Upper New York Bay and is bounded by the Gowanus Expressway and the Car ...
and in
Weehawken Cove,
Hoboken. Soon after,
Skinner & Eddy
The Skinner & Eddy Corporation, commonly known as Skinner & Eddy, was a Seattle, Washington-based shipbuilding corporation that existed from 1916 to 1923. The yard is notable for completing more ships for the United States war effort during Worl ...
became a major shipbuilder in Seattle, their facilities built from the ground up
starting in February of 1916 directly adjacent to the Seattle Construction yard. In 1918 Todd moved to the north end of Harbor Island to open a repair dock and Skinner & Eddy took control of both yards on the waterfront. The transfer took place on 11 May 1918, the price was $4,000,000. Skinner & Eddy were to pay the
Emergency Fleet Corporation for the yard at a rate of $125,000 per completed ship. The Seattle Construction and Dry Dock Company was henceforth called Skinner & Eddy Plant No. 2. Todd's facilities on Harbor Island would then be expanded in the winter of 1940 / 1941 and become the "Seattle" in
Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation.
Of the
6 steel shipyards active during that time in Puget Sound, Seattle Construction was the only one that had existed prior to the outbreak of World War I.
J. F. Duthie & Company had built small boats before, but underwent a major expansion of its facilities in 1916.
Clarence Bagley, in his ''History of Seattle from the earliest settlement to the present time, Volume 2'', wrote:
:. . .
The company produced over 90 ships, including a substantial number of battleships and submarines for the
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
,
submarines for the Royal Canadian Navy, as well as commercial oceangoing vessels. By 1917, the plant covered about and employed about 1,500 men. In that year, it had six building slips up to long; two drydocks of 12,000 tons capacity each, one drydock of 3,000 tons capacity, and was equipped to take care of repairs of all kinds.
[Welford Beaton, ''Frank Waterhouse & Company's Pacific ports (1917). p. 273.] The company formally ceased operations in 1918, due in large part to the poaching of its skilled laborers by newly established competitors.
[Walter V. Woehlke, ''Union Labor in Peace and War'' (1918), p. 107.] It ultimately was acquired by
William H. Todd
William H. Todd (1864-1932) was a shipbuilder and an avid philanthropist.
He was born on November 27, 1864, the son of a boilermaker in Wilmington, Delaware. He apprenticed to be a shipwright at the Pusey and Jones Shipyard in Wilmington as a yo ...
, who operated the company as a subsidiary of the
Todd Pacific Shipyards Corporation, which had been founded in 1916 as the William H. Todd Corporation.
["William H. Todd"]
''The Rudder'' (1919), Vol. XXXV, p. 61. It became the "Seattle" in
Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation and operated under that name during World War II as one of the biggest suppliers of escort carriers and destroyers for the United States Navy. Other companies operated by Todd included the Robins Dry Dock & Repair Company of
Erie Basin,
Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, the Tietjen & Long Dry Dock Company of
Hoboken, New Jersey
Hoboken ( ; Unami: ') is a city in Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 60,417. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 58,690 i ...
.
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References
{{Puget Sound shipyards
1911 establishments in Washington (state)
Defunct shipbuilding companies of the United States
Companies based in Seattle
Shipbuilding in Washington (state)