W. & A. Fletcher Co. was an American manufacturer of marine boilers and steam engines for steamboats on the Hudson, in the Great Lakes, Long Island Sound, and elsewhere in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The company was founded in 1853 and associated with development of steam powered ships from the original crude efforts. [1]
Originally Fletcher, Harrison & Co., the company was located on Hudson Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. They built engines for many famous Hudson River Day Line steamers and others, in both vertical walking beam and inclined compound types. In some cases the company held the contract for a vessel's construction and sublet the hull and joiner work to other companies as in the case of the large steamer Berkshire for the Hudson Navigation Company in which the hull was sublet to New York Shipbuilding Company of Camden, New Jersey and joiner work to Charles M. Englis. [2] As in the case with PS Washington Irving the company held the engine contract and, as with the J. P. Morgan yacht Corsair III did the installation after the launch of the hull. [3] [4]
Some of the ships they fabricated engines for included the General Slocum , the Hendrick Hudson , the Adirondack and the Shady Side . They also built the engine for the first turbine-propelled commercial ship built in the United States, Governor Cobb in 1906. The Fletcher Yard constructed the turbines under license from Parsons of England.
By 1921 the company had been associated with over 320 vessels ranging from tugs to ocean going ships and had operations to a repair yard with a 440 feet (134.1 m) floating dry dock. [1] Competing with other yards W. & A. Fletcher won the bids for 21 of 56 vessels that were converted to Army transports. [5]
W. & A. Fletcher Co. was merged with five other New York-based shipbuilding/ship repair companies to form United Dry Docks, Inc. in February 1929. [6]
In 1938 the Hoboken Shipyard was sold to Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation. The Hoboken Shipyard closed in 1982. [7]
Vigor Shipyards is the current entity operating the former Todd Shipyards after its acquisition in 2011. Todd Shipyards was founded in 1916, which owned and operated shipyards on the West Coast of the United States, East Coast of the United States and the Gulf. Todd Shipyards were a major part of the Emergency Shipbuilding Program for World War II.
USS Algonquin, completed as El Toro in 1891 for the Southern Pacific Railroad's Morgan Line, was a small harbor tug commissioned by the United States Navy 2 April 1898. Renamed Accomac, after Accomac, Virginia, June 1898, renamed Nottoway in 1918 and, after the Navy adopted alphanumeric hull numbers on 17 July 1920, classified as YT-18, a district tug. On 5 October 1942 the name was cancelled and the tug was simply YT-18 until 1944 when classification was changed to YTL-18, a little harbor tug. Over the years as a Navy tug, from 1898 to 1946, the tug served from Cuba to Boston.
Union Iron Works, located in San Francisco, California, on the southeast waterfront, was a central business within the large industrial zone of Potrero Point, for four decades at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.
The Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Limited was a Scottish shipbuilding company in the Govan area on the Clyde in Glasgow. Fairfields, as it is often known, was a major warship builder, turning out many vessels for the Royal Navy and other navies through the First World War and the Second World War. It also built many transatlantic liners, including record-breaking ships for the Cunard Line and Canadian Pacific, such as the Blue Riband-winning sisters RMS Campania and RMS Lucania. At the other end of the scale, Fairfields built fast cross-channel mail steamers and ferries for locations around the world. These included ships for the Bosporus crossing in Istanbul and some of the early ships used by Thomas Cook for developing tourism on the River Nile.
Toronto Drydock Company is a shipbuilding repair company in Canada and the name of two shipbuilders in the 19th and 20th centuries respectively.
The Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company was a United States shipyard, active from 1917 to 1948. It was founded during World War I to build ships for the United States Shipping Board. During World War II, it built ships as part of the U.S. Government's Emergency Shipbuilding program. Operated by a subsidiary of the United States Steel Corporation, the shipyard was located at Kearny Point where the mouth of the Hackensack River meets Newark Bay in the Port of New York and New Jersey. The shipyard site is now part of River Terminal, a massive distribution facility that is partially a foreign trade zone.
Burrard Dry Dock Ltd. was a Canadian shipbuilding company headquartered in North Vancouver, British Columbia. Together with the neighbouring North Van Ship Repair yard and the Yarrows Ltd. yard in Esquimalt, which were eventually absorbed, Burrard built over 450 ships, including many warships built and refitted for the Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy in the First and Second World Wars.
Neafie, Levy & Co., commonly known as Neafie & Levy, was a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania shipbuilding and engineering firm that existed from the middle of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century. Described as America's "first specialist marine engineers", Neafie & Levy was probably the first company in the United States to combine the building of iron ships with the manufacture of steam engines to power them. The company was also the largest supplier of screw propellers to other North American shipbuilding firms in its early years, and at its peak in the early 1870s was Philadelphia's busiest and most heavily capitalized shipbuilder.
Port Weller Dry Docks was a shipbuilder located on the Welland Canal at the Lake Ontario entrance. The shipbuilder was founded in 1946 and the site was initially owned by the Government of Canada for storage purchases. The shipyard expanded to include ship repair, and reconstruction work. In 1956, the drydock was sold to the Upper Lakes Shipping Company, which began the construction of vessels at the site. The shipyard twice went insolvent, most recently in 2015. Port Weller Dry Docks was used to build, refit and repair cargo vessels.
The Morse Dry Dock and Repair Company was a major late 19th/early 20th century ship repair and conversion facility located in New York City. Begun in the 1880s as a small shipsmithing business known as the Morse Iron Works, the company grew to be one of America's largest ship repair and refit facilities, at one time owning the world's largest floating dry dock.
The Western Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company was a shipyard that operated at Port Arthur, Ontario, now part of Thunder Bay, on Lake Superior from 1911 to 1993. The shipyard was established in 1909 and renamed in 1916 as the Port Arthur Shipbuilding Company. The yard closed in 1993. It reopened as a repair yard Lakehead Marine and Industrial, however that venture failed in 2014. As of 2016, the shipyard was purchased by Heddle Marine. It is operated by Heddle Marine in partnership with Fabmar Metals Inc, of Thunder Bay. The venture focuses on ship repair services and winter layup options.
The Delaware River Iron Ship Building and Engine Works, was a major late-19th-century American shipyard located on the Delaware River in Chester, Pennsylvania. It was founded by the industrialist John Roach and is often referred to by its parent company name of John Roach & Sons, or just known as the Roach shipyard. For the first fifteen years of its existence, the shipyard was by far the largest and most productive in the United States, building more tonnage of ships than its next two major competitors combined, in addition to being the U.S. Navy's largest contractor. The yard specialized in the production of large passenger freighters, but built every kind of vessel from warships to cargo ships, oil tankers, ferries, barges, tugs and yachts.
The Ocean ships were a class of sixty cargo ships built in the United States by Todd Shipyards Corporation during the Second World War for the British Ministry of War Transport under contracts let by the British Purchasing Commission. Eighteen were lost to enemy action and eight to accidents; survivors were sold postwar into merchant service.
Lawrence & Foulks was a 19th-century American shipbuilding company based in New York. Established in the early 1850s, the company built 144 vessels of all types over the course of some fifty years, but is best known for its production of high-speed wooden-hulled steamboats and steamships. Notable vessels built by the company include the record-breaking Hudson River steamboat Chauncey Vibbard, the luxury Long Island Sound steamer Commonwealth, and the fast oceangoing steamships—later U.S. Navy gunboats—Bienville and De Soto. In addition to the domestic market, the company also built ships for service as far afield as South America and China.
Horace See was an American mechanical engineer, marine engineer, naval architect, inventor, and superintendent. He is known as principal naval architect at the William Cramp & Sons shipyard in Philadelphia, and as president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in the year 1888–89.
Aktiebolaget Sandvikens Skeppsdocka och Mekaniska Verkstad was a Finnish shipbuilding and engineering company that operated in Helsinki in 1895–1938. The company was set up to continue shipbuilding at Hietalahti shipyard, after its predecessor Helsingfors Skeppsdocka, which operated the yard in 1865–1895, had bankrupted.
Isaac C. Smith was an American sail and steamboat captain, shipbuilder, sparmaker and entrepreneur.
Bethlehem Key Highway Shipyard started as William Skinner & Sons in downtown Baltimore, Maryland in 1815. In 1899 the shipyard was renamed Skinner Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company. Also at the site was Malster & Reanie started in 1870 by William T. Malster (1843–1907). In 1879 Malster partnered with William B. Reaney (1808-1883). In 1880 Malster & Reanie was sold and renamed Columbian Iron Works & Dry Dock Company. Malster & Reanie and Skinner Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company merged in 1906, but remained as Skinner Shipbuilding. In 1914 the company was renamed Baltimore Dry Dock & Shipbuilding Company. Baltimore Dry Dock & Shipbuilding Company sold to Bethlehem Steel in 1922, becoming part of Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation. Bethlehem Steel operated the shipyard for ship repair, conversion and some ship construction. Bethlehem main ship construction site was across the harbor at Bethlehem Sparrows Point. Bethlehem Key Highway Shipyard was known as the Bethlehem Upper Yard located north-east side of Federal Hill. Bethlehem Fort McHenry Shipyard located on the west side of Locust Point peninsula was known as the Lower Yard, near Fort McHenry.
Hoboken Shipyard or Hoboken Yard or Beth Steel Hoboken was a Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation shipyard that operated from 1938 to 1982 in Hoboken, New Jersey. Bethlehem Steel purchased the shipyard in 1938. The shipyard was founded in 1890 by the W. & A. Fletcher Company. In 1928 Fletcher sold the yard to United Dry Dock Company, called the Fletcher Plant. W. & A. Fletcher Co. was merged with five other New York-based shipbuilding/ship repair companies to form United Dry Docks, Inc. in February 1929. The yard has United States Navy contracts for ship repair.