Neafie & Levy
| Neafie, Levy & Co. | |
|---|---|
| legal form | extinguished (bankrupt 1907) |
| founding | 1844 |
| resolution | 1907 |
| Reason for dissolution | bankrupt |
| Seat | Kensington , Philadelphia , USA |
| Number of employees | 300 (1870) |
| sales | 1,000,000 US $ (1870) |
| Branch | Shipbuilding |
Neafie & Levy Ship & Engine Building Company , commonly known as Neafie & Levy , was an American ship and mechanical engineering company from Philadelphia that existed of the 19th from the middle to the early 20th century. Neafie & Levy is known as the "first specialized shipbuilder" in the United States and was probably the first company in the country to combine the construction of iron ships with the manufacture of steam engines for their propulsion. The company also acted as the largest supplier of screw propellers to other North American shipbuilding companies in its early years . It peaked in the early 1870s and was Philadelphia's busiest and most capitalized shipbuilder.
After the death of one of its owners, John P. Levy, in 1867, the company grew rather conservatively and developed into a niche shipbuilder for smaller, high-quality ships such as steam yachts and tugs . A few years after the retirement and the death of founder and long-time managing director Jacob Neafie in 1898, the company continued to decline due to a series of mediocre corporate governance, poor public image and unprofitable US Navy contracts.
The most notable ships built by the company included the first U.S. Navy submarine , the USS Alligator , and the first destroyer USS Bainbridge from 1899. Several of the ships built, such as the tugs Jupiter and Tuff-E-Nuff (until 2007 ) and the Yankee Ferry are still in service today, over 100 years after it was commissioned. In total, the company has built more than 300 ships and 1,100 steam engines for seafaring in its 63-year history, in addition to non-marine production, which included cooling systems and equipment for sugar production .
literature
- Thomas R. Heinrich: Ships for the Seven Seas: Philadelphia Shipbuilding in the Age of Industrial Capitalism. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-8018-5387-7 .
- David B. Tyler: The American Clyde: A History of Iron and Steel Shipbuilding on the Delaware from 1840 to World War I. University of Delaware Press, 1958 (Reprint 1992, ISBN 978-0-87413-101-7 ).
Web links
- Neafie & Levy , Navy and Marine Living History Association. (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Andrew Dawson: Lives of the Philadelphia Engineers: Capital, Class, and Revolution, 1830-1890. , Ashgate Publishing, 2004, ISBN 978-0-7546-3396-9 , p. 36.
- ^ David B. Tyler: The American Clyde. , 1958, p. 7.
- ^ USS Bainbridge (DD-1). Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, accessed January 5, 2013 .
- ^ Thomas R. Heinrich: Ships for the Seven Seas. 1997, p. 151.