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    Electric Boat Corporation
    Electric Boat Corporation
    Electric Boat Corporation
    Ebook191 pages55 minutes

    Electric Boat Corporation

    By James S. Reyburn

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    About this ebook

    Electric Boat Corporation has been a world leader in submarine development, design, and construction for more than a century. In 1900, the company delivered the Holland, the first submarine accepted by the United States Navy. Fifty-five years later, it turned fantasy into fact by sending the world s first nuclear-powered ship, the submarine Nautilus, off on its maiden voyage. It later built the world s first ballistic
    missile firing submarine, the George Washington, and most of the nation s current underseas fleet. Between those years, it pioneered standardized construction of merchant ships, submarine chasers, torpedo boats, and yachts and also produced airplanes, fishing trawlers, diesel engines, and electric motors. This collection of more than 200 archival photographs traces the company s sometimes roller-coaster existence through 10 historic decades when America and Electric Boat Corporation grew into an industrial giant. It is an engaging collective portrait of American ingenuity, know-how, and persistence driving technology to new heights.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateAug 7, 2006
    ISBN9781439618042
    Electric Boat Corporation
    Author

    James S. Reyburn

    James S. Reyburn, a journalist for more than 40 years, was a member of the public affairs department at Electric Boat Corporation for 16 years. He was a writer for General Dynamics, served as a company spokesman, and handled press operations for 33 nuclear submarine launchings. Reyburn is a life member and former board member of the New London County Historical Society and a member of the Submarine Force Library and Museum, among various other maritime and military organizations.

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      Electric Boat Corporation - James S. Reyburn

      invaluable.

      INTRODUCTION

      When Philadelphia entrepreneur Isaac Rice merged two little-known companies on February 7, 1899, to form the Electric Boat Company, many people undoubtedly thought he had finally found a hobby. After all, Rice had already made a sizeable fortune in the electric storage battery field.

      But close friends and associates knew better. They were well aware that Rice’s only passionate pastime was playing chess and that business was strictly business to him. A brilliant and driven man, he continually sought new challenges. Bringing together the John P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company, which had designed a submarine, and the Electric Launch Company, which built stylish electrically powered launches, offered an excellent opportunity to widen his horizons.

      What prompted Rice’s decision was a ride he took on July 4, 1898, on the Holland company’s submarine Holland, which ran submerged on his batteries. While other people were enjoying picnics, parades, and fireworks, Rice was cruising the depths of New York Harbor aboard the cramped and stuffy 53-foot craft. The trip so impressed him that when the small submarine surfaced, Rice resolved to refinance the nearly bankrupt company and build it into profitability.

      Rice lost no time in pressing forward with his new venture. In a clever marketing move, he sent the Holland to the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., to demonstrate it for U.S. Navy and government officials. Largely as a result of these efforts, the U.S. Navy accepted the Holland on April 11, 1900, and ordered more submarines from Electric Boat.

      Electric Launch Company’s launch business thrived using a method known as standardized construction that it had pioneered eight years before building 54 electric-powered launches for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The technique called for stockpiling prefabricated sections and parts for later assembly. The company eventually started producing gasoline engine-powered cabin cruisers in the same manner.

      Meanwhile, Rice added to the fold the Electro Dynamic Company, which produced small electric motors and generators. Electric Boat prospered. In 1910, the company built a fourth subsidiary, the New London Ship and Engine Company (Nelseco), in Groton, Connecticut, to produce diesel engines for submarines. When Rice died in 1914, he left behind the one of the country’s first industrial conglomerates and the now-famous chess opening move the Rice gambit.

      During World War I, Electric Boat built 88 submarines for the U. S. Navy and a number for Britain. Electric Launch Company turned out 722 submarine chasers for Britain, the United States, and several other countries. Electro Dynamic produced thousands of auxiliary electric motors and generators for merchant ships, surface warships, and submarines. By that time, the company had acquired a fourth subsidiary, the Submarine Boat Company, at Port Newark, New Jersey, which produced 118 merchant vessels, the famous Liberty ships.

      When World War I ended, Submarine Boat, which finished the remaining 32 ships of the 150-ship contract on its own and began operating them, ran head-on into a postwar shipping slump, and went bankrupt, leaving Electric Boat with a tremendous debt. With no contracts forthcoming for new submarines, the company looked outside the country for work and received a contract for four submarines from Peru. To build those submarines, Electric Boat, which until then had farmed out construction work, enlarged its Nelseco plant at Groton into a shipyard, absorbed Nelseco, and made Electric Launch (renamed Elco) and Electro Dynamic Divisions. In addition, it took on all the commercial work it could get, building yachts, fishing trawlers, ferryboats, tugboats, gunboats, and lighthouse tenders. It also repaired and overhauled vessels.

      This work kept the company alive until 1931, when it received the first submarine contract from the U.S. Navy since 1918. The contract was for the Cuttlefish, the first partially welded rather than completely riveted submarine and the prototype for the World War II fleet-type submarines. Other orders followed. In 1939, the workforce numbered 2,300. Then the world again went to war. By 1944, the peak year of wartime production, the yard employed more than 12,000 people and was launching a submarine every two weeks. Elco produced 398 motor torpedo boats for the U.S. Navy and Electro Dynamic repeated its World War I performance with its motors and generators.

      When World War II ended in 1945, Elco and Electro Dynamic simply resumed their peacetime pursuits. But at Electric Boat’s Groton shipyard, the mood was grim. Employment plummeted to 1,200 people. Scrambling to survive, Electric Boat again took on commercial work—fabricating steel for bridges, building fishing trawlers, repairing and overhauling yachts.

      But better times were ahead. Lawyer and businessman John Jay Hopkins, the Harvard-educated son of a Fullerton, California, minister, became president of Electric Boat in 1946. That same year, Hopkins engineered the acquisition of Canadair Ltd., Canada’s largest aircraft manufacturer, as an Electric Boat subsidiary. Canadair’s steady production of aircraft for the Royal Canadian Air Force and a number of commercial airlines helped Electric Boat survive financially until 1951, when the company received the most notable contract in its history—for construction of the world’s first nuclear-powered ship, the submarine Nautilus. With that contract, Electric Boat became the founding division of General Dynamics Corporation, which in a few years grew into one of the country’s largest companies. The one casualty during that time was Elco, which was closed in 1948 when Electric Boat decided to concentrate on submarine construction.

      Employment soared at the Groton shipyard to beyond World War II levels. The construction of the early nuclear submarines once again put Electric Boat back on a sound financial footing. During those years, the company became the world’s foremost authority on nuclear submarine technology and nuclear propulsion.

      In the late 1960s, the company received the contract for the design and construction of the next generation of missile-firing submarines, the Tridents, and received orders to build some ships in the Los Angeles class, the latest fast-attack submarines. Building all 18 Tridents and 33 of the 61 fast-attack submarines kept the shipyard busy until the mid-1990s. In 1993, the company changed its name to the Electric Boat Corporation. After that, it built all three ships in the Seawolf fast-attack class. Today the company produces the Virginia class of fast-attack submarine, the most sophisticated in the world.

      Through the years, Electric Boat has provided a livelihood for tens of thousands

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