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Todd Shipyards
Todd Shipyards Corporation was started in June 1916 with the backing of the three financiers: Bertron, Grecisms & Company; White, Weld & Company; and William H. Todd. The organization itself was a product of the incorporation of three established companies: Robins Dry Dock & Repair Company, Tietjen & Long Dry Dock Company, and the Seattle Construction & Dry Dock Company. The namesake of the company is the late William Henry Todd.
William H. Todd joined the primary Erie Basin shipbuilding operators, the John N. Robins Company, in 1895 as the boilermaker. Todd's diligence and business prowess landed him in the president's seat of the company on December 31, 1909.
With the help of loyal supporters, Todd purchased the Erie Basin yard from Thomas Clyde family, the owners of Robins Dry Dock & Repair Company, to keep the yard from traveling into the hands of the British suitors. Todd intended to expand his newly formed William H. Todd Corporation, and in 1916 the corporation gained two more yards. Todd took a strategic step with the incorporation of Eric Basin's biggest competitor in the New York Harbor: Tietjen & Lang Dry Dock Company. The other addition was on the western coast, a strong iron and steel shipbuilding-company, Seattle Construction & Dry Dock Company. This new corporation would grow and merge many more yards at each American coast and even yards abroad. These yards were located in Washington, California, Texas, Alabama, Maine, Louisiana, London and many other water-driven industrial locations.
Todd Corporation has experienced much success over the years. However, being in the shipbuilding industries many of its yards have encountered the ebb and flow of maritime and naval demands. The war times always brought much action to Todd shipyards usually calling for expansion. This expansion and incorporation of new yards somewhat decreased the family aura that William H. Todd encouraged and worked so hard to maintain. In flourishing years Todd Corporation put out publications about the shipyard including the magazine The Keel which, between 1918 and 1944, was in print for over twelve years. The Todd Daily Maritime and The Bridge are other such publications that Todd distributed over the years and that during the bad times Todd abandoned to cut costs. In the early years there were many celebrations embracing the whole "family" with parades and social events to honor long-time employees among other celebrations.
William H. Todd died in 1932, leaving behind a strong company in financial strain due to the stock market crash. The company did not go under after the crash; though the Depression was one of the most trying times in the company's history, Todd was rescued by repair work and eventually massive orders on the onset of thhe Second World War. Between December 7, 1941 and August 31, 1945 Todd yards were busy with building, converting, or repairing ships: 23,450 ships were handled among the five shipyards and five repair yards. Of the many ships that saw the docks of Todd, there were large and small and over forty military and commercial types. The most impressive statistic was the aggregate tonnage, measured at 117,500,000. John D. Reilly followed William H. Todd, after his death, as a second president. During Reilly's term the corporation grew and flourished immensely. In the mid-1940's there were in-plant schools established to train and instruct the inexperienced employees. The corporation experienced diversification into non-shipbuilding industries including examples such as Todd Insectisidal Fog Applicator (TIFA).
Further diversification took place under the third president Joseph Haag, Jr. who came into the head office in 1953. Haag's term saw a peacetime lull in shipbuilding. Yards, starving for work, looked into other building projects to keep up revenue. An upswing in Todd ship repair resulted from the navy's policy of assigning work to private yards. Conversations and repair became the main business in the 50's. At the end of the decade, 1958, John T. Gilbride became the fourth president of Todd Corporation. Todd celebrated its 50th anniversary on February 17, 1966 in the middle of a decade where Todd was making contributions to the space program along with continuing the thriving conversation and repair business. During peacetime, the government was a crucial component with maritime and naval repairs and with governmental orders such as the Merchant-Marine Act of 1970 and the Patrol Flight program in 1972. However, in 1975 Todd Corporation saw some of the hardest time since the Depression. These dire straits were mainly contributed to inflation in addition to bad luck in its diversification investments. In that same year Arthur W. Stout, Jr. was named president. With refinancing, the corporation was set back on its feet.1 Today Stephen G Welch, president and CEO, presides over Todd Shipbuilding Corporation as it continues to strive on in a narrowing industry.2
Todd San Francisco Division
A new addition to Todd in 1948 included a yard inside the Golden Gate of San Francisco. This shipyard came to Todd, initially in the form of a ten-year lease, as an asset for its capacity to build the larger passenger and cargo vessels as well as tankers. This yard, located at Alameda, California, contributed immensely to Todd and has become one of the main shipbuilding yards. The San Francisco Division, as a high-tech and versatile yard, was well implemented with dam- and lock gate-producing equipment as seen in the Stanislaus River project where the yard constructed flood-control and irrigation dam radical gates. The San Francisco yard also contributed to the space technology with huge compressor stator for a supersonic wind tunnel among various other space-related projects.
The Alameda yard first came on board as part of the Todd Pacific Shipyards Corporation. The name changed in 1949 to the San Francisco Division when it merged with the main Todd Shipyard Corporation. The San Francisco Division has been a shipbuilding yard and a repair yard and as times required a ship conversion yard. In 1954 the yard teamed up with the Los Angeles Division to repair a defective diesel engine in the Swedish tanker Atlantic Queen using the newly established Todd policy of the "forward pass" method of repair to save the ship lost time at sea. A major reconstruction conversion project came to the Alameda yard in 1958 to alter three Matson refrigerated C-3 Freighters to carry cargo vans. This reconstruction called for strengthening of the ship, mainly the decks and hatch covers, and for installations of precise positioning, locking, and lashing devices up to 75 24-foot containers stowed two high. In 1959 the ten-year lease was up and Todd purchased the yard from Matson for $1,650,000 in hopes to continue benefiting from the yard's success.
This anticipated success was seen in 1962 when the yard completed ahead of schedule, the repair of the Norwegian freighter Hoegh Cape. The sixties brought to San Francisco many jumboizing undertaking including four Keystone T-2 tankers: Perryville, Tullahoma, Northfield, and Chancellorsville. A major accomplishment for the yard was the production of the largest drilling boat yet put afloat, Wodeco IV. To achieve such an enormous size, the boat was put together by welding together two T-2 midbodies abreast; this body allowed the rig to set an oil drilling record by drilling in 994 feet of water off of the California coast. Later on, in 1975 after a large push for more Navy repair work in private yards, the San Francisco Division performed extensive repair in the overhaul and alteration on the nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise. Like the other Todd yards, the San Francisco Division continued to thrive on steady naval and merchant orders for shipbuilding, ship repair, and conversations.3 However, Todd had to downsize the corporation; and, presently, the old Todd site is leased to private developers where it serves for industrial and warehouse purposes.4
Types of ships constructed, repaired, and converted at Todd's Shipyards (1930s-1970s):
- 12,400-dwt. cargo liner
- 25,000-dwt. tanker
- 29,000-dwt. tanker
- 32,000-dwt. tanker
- 35,000-dwt. tanker
- 35,500-dwt. tanker
- Armed merchant cruiser
- Attack transport
- British steamer
- C-3 freighter
- C-4 freighter
- C-4 trooper
- Destroyer escort
- DLG
- Flag freighter
- Flag ship
- Fleet oiler
- Frigate
- Fruit steamer
- Heavy drilling barge
- Japanese freighter
- Large cargo vessel
- LCI (L)
- Liberty coiler
- Liberty ship
- Liners-Munson, Unitet States
- Liquefied petroleum gas tanker
- LSM
- LST-528
- Mariner-class cargo ship
- Mariner-class freighter
- Merchant Hull
- Monster hulk
- Navy repair ship
- Nuclear aircraft carrier
- Oil rig
- Passenger motor ship
- Reserve fleet freighter
- Sabine tanker
- T-2 tanker
- Troopship
- US transport
Sources:
- 1 Mitchell, Bradford C.Every Kind of Shipwork: A History of Todd Shipyards Corporation, 1916-1981.. Todd Shipyard Corporation: New York. 1981.
- 2 "Market Guide-Snapshot Report." http://www.marketguide.com/mgi/snap/8884N.html. July 29, 1999.
- 3 Mitchell, Bradford C.Every Kind of Shipwork: A History of Todd Shipyards Corporation, 1916-1981.. Todd Shipyard Corporation: New York. 1981.
- 4 "FAS: Military Analysis Network." http://www.fas.org/man/compnay/shipyard/todd.htm July 29, 1999.
