Todd Pacific Shipyards, Los Angeles Division was a

shipyard A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are shipbuilding, built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Compared to shipyards, which are sometimes m ...

San Pedro, Los Angeles San Pedro ( ; ) is a neighborhood located within the South Bay (Los Angeles County), South Bay and Los Angeles Harbor Region, Harbor region of the city of Los Angeles, California, United States. Formerly a separate city, it consolidated with Los ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. Before applying its last corporate name, the shipyard had been called Los Angeles Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company and Todd Shipyards, Los Angeles Division. Under those three names, the San Pedro yard built at least 130 ships from 1917 to 1989. The yard opened during the

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

shipping boom, survived

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the deb ...

in the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

and built

Auxiliary ship An auxiliary ship is a naval ship designed to support combatant ships and other naval operations. Auxiliary ships are not primary combatant vessels, though they may have some limited combat capacity, usually for purposes of self-defense. Auxili ...

s during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. The yard was seized by the Navy in late 1943 and given to Todd Shipyards to manage for the remainder of the war. The yard struggled through the post war period and surged again with commercial work in the 1960s to mid-1970s. The yard peaked again in 1983 during a Navy

frigate A frigate () is a type of warship. In different eras, the roles and capabilities of ships classified as frigates have varied. The name frigate in the 17th to early 18th centuries was given to any full-rigged ship built for speed and maneuvera ...

contract, but was closed in 1989 after failing to secure a DDG-51 contract. The former site was a

container terminal A container port, container terminal, or intermodal terminal is a facility where cargo containers are transshipped between different transport vehicles, for onward transportation. The transshipment may be between container ships and land v ...

in 2015.

Los Angeles Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company (1917–1943)

The Los Angeles Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company was founded in April 1917 for the purpose of establishing a shipbuilding and repair facility in Los Angeles Harbor during

with Fred L. Baker of Baker Iron Works as president. of marsh land on Smiths Island were used for the original construction. The yard received 35 contracts to build

cargo ship A cargo ship or freighter is a merchant ship that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the world's List of seas, seas and Ocean, oceans each year, handling the bulk of international trade. ...

s for the Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC) of the

United States Shipping Board The United States Shipping Board (USSB) was a corporation established as an emergency agency by the 1916 Shipping Act (39 Stat. 729), on September 7, 1916. The United States Shipping Board's task was to increase the number of US ships supporting ...

. 30 of the ships were to be 8,800 DWT

Design 1013 ship The Design 1013 ship (full name Emergency Fleet Corporation Design 1013), also known as the Robert Dollar type, was a steel-hull (watercraft), hulled cargo ship design approved for mass production by the United States Shipping Boards Emergency Flee ...

s and 5 were 11,500 DWT. The first keel was laid 23 July 1917 for SS ''Accomac''.

Triple expansion steam engine A compound steam engine unit is a type of steam engine where steam is expanded in two or more stages. A typical arrangement for a compound engine is that the steam is first expanded in a high-pressure (HP) cylinder, then having given up heat ...

s of 3,500hp were produced on site, but hulls 1 through 8 were powered by Westinghouse steam turbines. By 1920, the yard had a 12,000 ton

floating dry dock A dry dock (sometimes drydock or dry-dock) is a narrow basin or vessel that can be flooded to allow a load to be floated in, then drained to allow that load to come to rest on a dry platform. Dry docks are used for the construction, maintenance, ...

, which cost $1.25 million ($ today) to build. The first four freighters were delivered in July 1918 and another four were delivered before the war ended. Delivered in November 1921, SS ''West Chopaka'' was the 35th and final ship built for the US Shipping Board at San Pedro. In total, the contracts cost $72 million ($ today) for around 320,000 DWT of cargo freighters. This made Los Angeles Shipbuilding the largest of the three steel shipyards in the Ports of Los Angeles and

Long Beach Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...

, accounting for 55% of the tonnage built there during the World War I shipbuilding boom for the

. Around 5 May 1919, 6,000 workers at Los Angeles SB&DDC went on strike after demands for a

closed shop A pre-entry closed shop (or simply closed shop) is a form of union security agreement under which the employer agrees to hire union members only, and employees must remain members of the union at all times to remain employed. This is different fr ...

were not met. On 31 May 1919, federal mediation was sought with mediator Captain Charles T. Connell listed as a potential mediator. The yard was reopened on 10 July 1919, without resolving the dispute, Many of the workers did not return and had found other work elsewhere. Around 70 of the 6,000 returned in the first days with about 1,500 back by the end of July 1919. For the remainder of the 1920s, after the US Shipping Board projects finished, Los Angeles SB&DDC built a number of tank

barge A barge is typically a flat-bottomed boat, flat-bottomed vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. Original use was on inland waterways, while modern use is on both inland and ocean, marine water environments. The firs ...

s. Additionally, the yard built in 1924 and in 1925, Los Angeles City #2

fireboat A fireboat or Fire-float Pyronaut, fire-float is a specialized watercraft with pumps and nozzles designed for fighting shoreline and shipboard fires. The first fireboats, dating to the late 18th century, were tugboats, retrofitted with ...

, which later was known as ''Ralph J. Scott''. Los Angeles SB&DDC mainly did ship repairs in the 1930s until the yard received Navy contracts for several

auxiliary ship An auxiliary ship is a naval ship designed to support combatant ships and other naval operations. Auxiliary ships are not primary combatant vessels, though they may have some limited combat capacity, usually for purposes of self-defense. Auxili ...

s in the lead up to World War II. By the time the war broke out, management had changed a number of times at the yard. Los Angeles SB&DDC had entered

during the

and several corporate reorganizations resulted in several changes in management. The original shareholders of Los Angeles SB&DDC were also frozen out by a Supreme Court decision that gave precedence to bondholders over the shareholders. Los Angeles SB&DDC had become a wholly owned subsidiary of Los Angeles Lumber Products, which was a party in ''Case v. Los Angeles Lumber Products''. That case was decided in 1939 and became a landmark decision in corporate bankruptcy law. In the 1930s, the yard made some attempts to get oil tanker contracts and a Navy destroyer contract, but lost bids to east coast shipyards. Beginning 14 November 1936, there was an 87-day labor strike by 500 workers at several Los Angeles area yards, including Los Angeles SB&DDC. The strike ended 9 February 1937 with a $.06 raise, making the top hourly rate $0.95 an hour. In 1939, the company submitted bids for C1-B cargo ships of the

United States Maritime Commission The United States Maritime Commission was an independent executive agency of the U.S. federal government that was created by the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, which was passed by Congress on June 29, 1936, and was abolished on May 24, 1950. The co ...

's Long Range Shipbuilding Program, but was unsuccessful.

Navy seizure and operation by Todd Shipyards (1943–1946)

Todd Pacific Shipyards Los Angeles Div 1983 MARAD

On 27 September 1943 a special Naval Board of Investigation was convened in San Pedro to look into the conditions at Los Angeles SB&DDC. The Navy had invested around $64 million in equipment and construction contracts at the company and had a number of concerns regarding management of those assets. According to Admiral Harold G. Bowen, Sr. the yard had no

cost accounting Cost accounting is defined by the Institute of Management Accountants as "a systematic set of procedures for recording and reporting measurements of the cost of manufacturing goods and performing services in the aggregate and in detail. It includ ...

system other than a system set up to bill and receive funds from the Navy. There were no modern industrial lines to increase production efficiency. The committee found that between $5 and $7 million were unaccounted for on the repair ship ''Ajax'' which was under construction at the yard. They attributed it to "inefficient management and a poorly organized labor union" rather than fraud. The Navy made attempts to get management to correct the problems, but negotiations failed. On 8 December 1943, the US Navy seized control of Los Angeles SB&DDC under an executive order signed by President

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...

. Bowen found the yard to be in worse condition than the investigating board realized. Management was turned over to Todd Shipyards, which operated a number of other shipyards around the country. Todd would manage the yard for the Navy until the war ended after which Todd purchased the yard outright. Admiral Bowen described the situation at the yard in detail in his 1954 memoir, ''Ships, Machinery and Mossbacks''. According to Bowen, the seizure saved the government over $13 million. For example, , built in San Pedro, cost $24.8 million, but sister ship , constructed in Camden, cost only $12.8 million. It also took nearly a year longer to construct ''Ajax''. During the war, the yard built three of the four s, three of the four s and all four s. According to ''The American West: The Reader'', under Todd's management, the yard converted 2,376 ships in the final years of the war.

Operating as Todd Shipyards, Los Angeles Division (1946–1977)

Todd Shipyards purchased the Los Angeles SB&DDC after World War II and began to operate this shipyard as the Todd Shipyards, Los Angeles Division beginning in November 1946. Wartime labor at the LA division peaked at around 20,000 workers. LosAngelesShipbuilding

After the war ended the LA division turned to ship repair and conversions, and to machine work and fabrication for other industries. Business volume declined until the

Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...

, but then dropped even lower after it ended in 1953. The LA division had projects in the early 1950s for

Disneyland Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. It was the first theme park opened by the Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney, ...

as well. They built the replica of the sternwheel riverboat ''Mark Twain''. Todd's Hoboken,

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

, operation built two sternwheel riverboats for Freedomland U.S.A., a theme park in New York City that existed from 1960 to 1964. Todd's contributions to the park and the sternwheelers are documented in ''Freedomland U.S.A.: The Definitive History'' published by Theme Park Press (2019). One boat was destroyed during 2005 and the other during 2018. The LA division also constructed eight 52-foot tourist submarines and the masts, rigging, spars and sails of Sailing Ship ''Columbia'' after the Korean War. According to their long range facilities plan, Todd reported that no major ships were built in California following World War II until the state property tax structure was changed in 1958. Todd invested heavily into the LA division in the years following the 1958 tax changes and built a number of cargo ships for various companies. The LA division built two cruisers, ''England'' and ''Fox'' in the 1960s and seven s in the late 1960s. It also converted and . The LA division manufactured "thousands of feet of special piping for the Atomic Energy Commission." They also did work fabricating test missiles for the

Polaris missile The UGM-27 Polaris missile was a two-stage solid-fuel rocket, solid-fueled nuclear warhead, nuclear-armed submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). As the United States Navy's first SLBM, it served from 1961 to 1980. In the mid-1950s the Navy ...

program and a base for a tracking antenna used by NASA. In the early 1970s, the LA division built four

handysize Handysize is a naval architecture term for smaller bulk carriers or oil tanker with deadweight of up to 50,000 tonnes, although there is no official definition in terms of exact tonnages. Handysize is also sometimes used to refer to the span of ...

25,000 DWT tankers for Marine Transport Lines and four 35,000 DWT tankers for Zapata Marine, but contracts for eight 90,000 DWT tankers were cancelled in 1975 during the

1970s energy crisis The 1970s energy crisis occurred when the Western world, particularly the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, faced substantial petroleum shortages as well as elevated prices. The two worst crises of this period wer ...

and in the wake of the

1973 oil crisis In October 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) announced that it was implementing a total oil embargo against countries that had supported Israel at any point during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which began after Eg ...

Operating as Todd Pacific Shipyards, Los Angeles Division (1977–1989)

On 1 October 1977, Todd Pacific Shipyards Corporation was formed as a wholly owned subsidiary of Todd Shipyards Corporation. Todd's Seattle and Los Angeles divisions were spun off into Todd Pacific Shipyards. Eighteen s were built at the San Pedro yard. In 1983 the yard employed 5,600, by 1989 it employed only 400. The yard occupied of land, leased from the Port of Los Angeles, at its close in 1989. Parent company Todd Shipyards entered

Chapter 11 Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, w ...

in August 1987. The LA division closed in 1989 following completion of its last , . Todd had failed to win an contract. The property where at least 130 ships were built in just over 70 years was returned to the

Port of Los Angeles The Port of Los Angeles is a seaport managed by the Los Angeles Harbor Department, a unit of the Los Angeles, City of Los Angeles. It occupies of land and water with of waterfront and adjoins the separate Port of Long Beach. Promoted as "Amer ...

. As of 2015, it was known as Berth 100 / West Basin Container Terminal.

References

External links

* * * Includes production list {{Los Angeles SB&DDC and Todd, Los Angeles ships Shipbuilding companies of California Defunct shipbuilding companies of the United States Maritime history of California 1917 establishments in California 1989 disestablishments in California Defunct manufacturing companies based in Greater Los Angeles Shipyards in California Vigor Shipyards