Fore River Shipyard
The Fore River Shipyard was an American shipyard in Massachusetts south of Boston .
It was founded by Thomas A. Watson in 1884 on the Fore River near the town of East Braintree as the Fore River Ship and Engine Building Company . In 1901 she moved to the city of Quincy .
Five submarines were built for Japan, which were used in the Russo-Japanese War . From 1907 to 1924, submarines were built for the Electric Boat Corporation in the Fore River Ship Yard .
The shipyard was bought by Bethlehem Steel in 1913 and renamed "Fore River Shipyard". In 1964 the complex was bought by General Dynamics . The shipyard was closed in 1986.
Several well-known warships were built at the shipyard, including the USS Lexington (CV-2) , the first aircraft carrier in the United States Navy ; the cruiser USS Salem (CA-139) or the first nuclear cruiser , the USS Long Beach (CGN-9) . The world's largest (gaff) schooner and the only seven-master in the world merchant fleet, the Thomas W. Lawson , also came from this shipyard.
The well-known Kilroy drawing with the sentence " Kilroy was here " originated at the Fore River shipyard. It was created during the Second World War as a kind of control mark of the weld seam inspector John J. Kilroy.
After the shipyard was closed, the Salem returned in 1994 and is an exhibit of the United States Naval Shipbuilding Museum located there . Some parts of the shipyard were bought in 2004 by a car dealer for storage; other parts serve as a dock for Boston commuter boats . Part of the shipyard's large gantry crane built in 1975 (called the Goliath crane and at times the second largest of its kind in the world) collapsed when it was dismantled in August 2008, killing one worker. The lake pontoon, with which the crane, which was only dismantled months later, was transported to the Daewoo-Mangalia Heavy Industries shipyard in Romania, was named Harvey in memory of the worker who had died . The Fore River shipyard's large floating crane was finally demolished in Boston in July / August 2009.
Web links
- Newspaper article from 1902 (Engl.)
- A History of Shipbuilding at Fore River
- United States Naval Shipbuilding Museum (Engl.)
Coordinates: 42 ° 14 ′ 28.5 ″ N , 70 ° 58 ′ 18.1 ″ W.