Marine Log - March 2009 - (Page 48) SHIPBUILDINGHISTORY March 2009 Vol. 114 No. 3 B Y T I M C O LT O N DEFOE SHIPBUILDING: THE ROLL-OVER YARD D efoe Shipbuilding began life in Bay City, Michigan, in 1905 as Defoe Boat & Motor Works. It was created by the unlikely team of public school principal Harry J. Defoe, his brother, a New York lawyer, Frederick W. Defoe, and his brother-in-law, George H. Whitehouse, who was in the wholesale fish business. They started out building trap-net skiffs for the fishing industry but soon expanded into manufacturing knockdown boats and yachts. In a few years, however, their property was taken over by the city for the creation of Wenonah Park. Forced to move, they acquired the site of American Ship Building’s West Bay City shipyard, near the Third Street Bridge, which had closed in 1908. World War I changed their business dramatically, as it did for so many small builders. They built five torpedo retrievers for the Navy and then won a contract for eight 100 ft steel mine planters for the Army. Suddenly the West Bay City yard was too small, so they swapped properties with the New York Central Railroad and established a new facility on the Bay City side of the river, just north of Woodside Avenue. This is where they remained until the yard closed in 1976. By the time the first war ended, they were an established builder of high-complexity steel ships and could transition between custom yachts, commercial ships and naval vessels. In the inter-war www.shipbuildinghistory.com years, they built 36 vessels for the Coast Guard—fifteen 75 ft patrol boats, thirteen 100 ft patrol boats, three 165 ft gunboats, two tugs, two tenders and a lightship—as well as more than 60 yachts and commercial vessels, making them one of the few yards that stayed busy throughout what were generally lean times for shipbuilders. One of the best known boats that Defoe built during this period was the yacht Barbara Ann, which later became the Presidential Yacht Honey Fitz. Because the yard was fully operational as World War II approached, Defoe was quickly loaded up with work by the Navy. In the course of the war, they built 58 subchasers (PC), 42 destroyer escorts (DE), 47 large landing craft (LCI(L)), four ocean tugs (AT), four minesweepers (AM), three yard tugs (YT), and six yard freighters (YF). They were the design agent and lead yard for the subchaser program, a measure of the quality of their operation. Their workforce grew to more than 4,000. It was for this workload that Defoe developed the roll-over method of shipbuilding, a technique which has been much copied and for the creation of which several other yards later attempted to take credit. It is nothing startling by today’s standards but was quite radical at the time. In essence, each hull was built to the main deck upside down, resulting in considerable savings in welding manhours, rework and staging. Once the hull was complete, its weight was transferred from the supporting cra- dle to two large wheels, which were then rotated 180°, turning the hull upright. Its weight was then transferred to a new cradle for the remainder of the construction process. After the war ended, Defoe kept going with a variety of vessels, ranging from yachts to lakers, plus a mixed bag of conversion, repair and industrial fabrication work. In the mid-50s, however, the Navy came back and over the next 15 years, the yard built two DEs, seven DDGs–three of which were for the Australian Navy, three more DEs, two AGORs, three AGSs and, finally, 21 LCUs. All this came to an end in 1971, the final blow probably being their failure to win one of the contracts for construction of the 46-ship Knox class of DEs. Defoe hung in for five more years, in which time their output amounted to the forebody of a dry bulk barge and a single tank barge. The company closed in 1976 and the facility, like many old shipyards, was converted to a scrap yard. ML MARINELOG ISSN 08970491 A Simmons-Boardman Publication 345 Hudson Street, New York, N.Y. 10014 Tel: (212) 620-7200 Fax: (212) 633-1165 Website: http://www.marinelog.com Advertising Sales UNITED STATES New York Sales Office 345 Hudson St., 12th floor New York, NY 10014 Roland Espinosa Sales Director Tel (212) 620-7225 Fax (212) 633-1165 E-mail: respinosa@sbpub.com U.S. GULF COAST Jeff Sutley Tel (212) 620-7233 Fax (212) 633-1165 E-mail: jsutley@sbpub.com WORLDWIDE Donna Edwards, International Sales Manager e-mail: dedwards@sbpub.com Marine Log (UK) Suite K5 & K6, The Priory Syresham Gardens Haywards Heath RH16 3LB UNITED KINGDOM Tel: +44 1444 416368 Fax: +44 1444 458185 Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore Representattive Benn Wood Tel:+44 1444 416908 Fax: +44 1444 458185 E-mail: bw@railjournal.co.uk Korea Young-Seoh Chinn JES Media International 2nd Fl. ANA Bldg. 257-1, Myungil Dong, Kangdong-Gu Seoul 134-070, Korea Tel: +822-481-3411 Fax: +822-481-3414 e-mail: jesmedia@unitel.co.kr CLASSIFIED SALES Diane Okon Classified Advertising Sales 20 South Clark St., Suite 2450 Chicago, IL 60603 Tel: (312) 683-5022 Fax: (312) 683-0131 E-mail: dokon@sbpub-chicago.com USPS 576-910 48 MARINE LOG MARCH 2009 www.marinelog.com http://www.shipbuildinghistory.com http://www.marinelog.com http://www.marinelog.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.