Union Iron Works
The Donahue Brothers Peter and James, Scots-Irish immigrants, founded Union Iron Works in the south of Market area of San Francisco in 1849.
After years as the premiere producer of mining, railroad, agricultural and locomotive machinery in California, Union Iron Works, led by I.M. Scott, entered the ship building business and relocated to an area known as Scotch Hill (now Portrero Hill) in the 1800s due to the Scottish boat builders and iron workers who lived above the Union Iron Works.
The first U.S.S. San Francisco was a cruiser built at the Union Iron Works. She was commissioned in 1890 and later converted to a mine layer called the Yosemite.
In 1885, the Union Iron Works launched the first steel hulled ship on the west coast, the Arago, built with steel from the Pacific Rolling Mills. In 1886, UIW was awarded a one million dollar contract to build a Naval cruiser, the Charleston, which they completed in eighteen months. From the completion of the Arago in 1884 to 1902, UIW built seventy-five marine vessels, including two of the most famous vessels of the Spanish American war, the Olympia and the Oregon.
Oakland Tribune, December 10, 1895
Oakland, California
The Washington correspondent of the New York Sun admits that the contract for one of the battleships for which bids were recently opened will go to the Union Iron Works in San Francisco: "But the provision provision of Congress is that one of the battle ships shall be built on the Pacific coast, provided this can be done at a fair cost. Paying $300,000 would indeed be unreasonable for the privilege of building a vessel on the Pacific. But in the case of the Indiana and her mates, with a similar provision in the act of Congress, when the Union Iron Works in San Francisco bid $10,000 more for one vessel than the Cramps, the department proposed that this excess should be reduced one-half, and the Union Iron Works on assenting thereto, received the contract. Secretary Tracy explained In his report that the additional sum of $60.000 paid to the Union Iron Works for the Oregon over the Indiana "was considered reasonable in view of the increased cost, estimated by actual calculation of the transportation of material necessarily obtained at the East."
Industrializing American Shipbuilding: The Transformation of Ship Design and Construction, 1820-1920
William H. Thiesen, James C. Bradford, Gene A. Smith
University Press of Florida.
Throughout the 19th century, the shipbuilding industry in America was both art and craft, one based on tradition, instinct, hand tools, and handmade ship models. Even as mechanization was introduced, the trade supported a system of apprenticeship, master builders, and family dynasties, and aesthetics remained the basis for design. Spanning the transition from wood to iron shipbuilding in America, Thiesen's history tells how practical and nontheoretical methods of shipbuilding began to be discarded by the 1880s in favor of technical and scientific methods. Perceiving that British warships were superior to its own, the United States Navy set out to adopt British design principles and methods. American shipbuilders wanted only to build better warships, but embracing British practices exposed them to new methods and technologies that aided in the transformation of American shipbuilding into an engineering-based industry.
Claims of Wooden Ship Builders: Hearings Before the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, Sixty-Sixth Congress, Second Session on H.R. 10838. January 14 and 15, 1920.
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. Alibris believes this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print
A Historical Survey of the Boiler Makers' and Iron and Steel Ship Builders' Society,
August, 1834, to August, 1904
(OCR Reprint: Typos, etc.)