Seattle Construction and Drydock Company

The Seattle Construction and Drydock Company (also known as the Seattle Dry Dock & Ship Building Company) was a shipbuilding company based in Seattle, Washington. Formally established in 1911, the shipyard could trace its history back to 1882, when Robert Moran opened a marine repair shop at Yesler's Wharf. This shop became the Moran Brothers Shipyard in 1906 and the Seattle Construction and Drydock Company at the end of 1911.

The plant of the Moran company, together with that of the Seattle Dry Dock & Ship Building Company, which had been organized in 1887 and was under the control of the Morans, was at this time the most complete on the Pacific Coast, outside of San Francisco. It had grown to such immense proportions that even while the construction of its masterpiece, the (USS) Nebraska, was underway, other work was being handled in the same efficient manner as before the big contract had been secured. Some of the notable work turned out during the period was the building of the steel tugs Bahada and Wyadda, the lighthouse tender Heather and the rebuilding of the steamships Cutch and Willamette.[1]

. . .

When the Nebraska was finished and given her official trial trip in the waters of the Straits of Fuca, Captain Perkins, senior member of the trial board, pronounced her one of the best vessels in the United States navy. Notwithstanding bad weather, the ship fully met the requirements of the Government and proved that Seattle had a construction company capable of building the largest kind of ship. In March, 1906, the Moran Brothers Company was sold to Eastern capitalists, who reorganized the business under the name of The Moran Company, which, in 1912, became the Seattle Construction & Dry Dock Company. During the year 1911 the company began building the first of six submarine boats for the United States navy. About the same time five steel whalers were built for companies operating in the northern whaling waters, and in 1913 the $500,000 dry dock was completed. This dry dock was 468 feet long and 110 feet wide and the steamship Admiral Farragut was the first vessel to enter it for repairs.[1]

WH Seward being launched at Moran Brothers Shipyard April 16, 1900

The company produced over 90 ships, including a substantial number of battleships and submarines for the United States Navy, submarines for the Royal Canadian Navy, as well as commercial oceangoing vessels. By 1917, the plant covered about 27 acres (110,000 m2) and employed about 1,500 men. In that year, it had six building slips up to 600 feet (180 m) 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.[2] The company formally ceased operations in 1918, due in large part to the poaching of its skilled laborers by newly established competitors.[3] It ultimately was acquired by William H. Todd, 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.[4] Other companies operated by Todd included the Robins Dry Dock & Repair Company of Erie Basin, Brooklyn, New York, the Tietjen & Long Dry Dock Company of Hoboken, New Jersey.[4]

References
  1. Clarence Bagley, History of Seattle from the earliest settlement to the present time, Volume 2 (1916), p. 609.
  2. Welford Beaton, Frank Waterhouse & Company's Pacific ports (1917). p. 273.
  3. Walter V. Woehlke, Union Labor in Peace and War (1918), p. 107.
  4. "William H. Todd", The Rudder (1919), Vol. XXXV, p. 61.
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