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The Rise and Fall of the Fore River Shipyard

The Fore River Shipyard started out as a farm in East Braintree, Mass., when Thomas Watson bought it.

Watson had loaned money to his boss, Alexander Graham Bell, to help him develop the telephone. He was the same Watson who Bell had summoned through the phone with the words, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.”

Thomas Watson

Bell repaid his assistant with a 10 percent share in what would become the Bell Telephone Co. Watson sold the shares and bought the farm, where he started work on marine engines. His company, the Fore River Engine Company near the Weymouth Fore River, would give birth to one of the largest shipyards in the country, if not the world.

Fore River Shipyard

Under Watson’s leadership, the company’s reliable, high-quality engine acquired a reputation that spread throughout the Eastern Seaboard.

The depression following the Panic of 1893 turned out to be a godsend for the fledgling yard. The U.S. Navy awarded two contracts to build two destroyers, the USS. Lawrence (DD-8) and the USS Macdonough (DD-9). This boondoggle was augmented with an award to build the U.S. lightship LV-72. These would be the last ships constructed in East Braintree. In 1901, the yard moved to Quincy Point.

USS Rhode Island, ca. 1904

In 1902, the keel was laid for the USS Rhode Island (BB-17). Launched in 1904, the Rhode Island took part in the two- year around-the-world cruise of the Great White Fleet. The USS Vermont (BB-20) was also built there and launched in 1905.

Fore River Submarines

John Philip Holland, an Irish engineer, developed the first submarine officially commissioned by the U.S. Navy. The Navy launched his sub, called the USS Holland, in 1900. However, the boat needed improvement. Its storage batteries gave off toxic fumes that killed the crew.

John Holland in one of his submarines.

Nonetheless, the Imperial Japanese Navy entered into a licensing agreement with Holland and contracted with the shipyard to build five submarines. After completing the subs, the yard then disassembled them to ship to Japan, presumably for use in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05).

Submarines for the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Fore River Shipyard.

Holland worked on improving his first designs, and came up with the USS Octopus (SS-9), launched in 1906.

The Octopus was the first American submarine built in the yard, but not for John Philip Holland. The Electric Boat Company had purchased the Holland Torpedo Boat Company. However, EB didn’t have a yard of its own, so it subcontracted with Fore River to build what turned out to be 69 American subs up until 1922.

Electric Boat, now a subsidiary of General Dynamics, today has a shipyard in Groton, Conn., a fabrication plant in Quonset, R.I. and a design and engineering facility in New London, Conn.

Pre-World War I

We jump ahead to the pre-WW I years. The thriving Fore River Shipyard built and launched destroyers, submarines, merchant ships and four battleships. Bethlehem Steel, the main supplier for the yard, finally bought it to protect its interests in 1913.

Joseph P. Kennedy ca 1914

The yard then began to ramp up production in anticipation of entering World War I. In 1917, a 28-year-old Irish-American named Joseph Kennedy started working as an assistant general manager at the yard now known as Bethlehem Fore River, later Bethlehem Quincy.

In that job, Kennedy got to know Franklin D. Roosevelt, assistant secretary to the Navy. Roosevelt later appointed him ambassador to the United Kingdom.

World War I

In 1918, the Bethlehem Fore River Shipyard built an impressive 18 destroyers, 10 submarines and six merchant ships. Altogether, the yard built 71 destroyers during World War I, more than all the other U.S. shipyards combined.

Bethlehem Fore River even built a destroyer, the USS Reid, in a record-breaking 45.5 days.

The Roar Turns to a Whimper

During the Roaring ‘20’s and then the Depression years, the Quincy yard produced a whole series of naval ships: submarines, destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers, as well as merchant ships. Among them, the “Queen of Flattops,” the USS Lexington (CV-2) in 1927.

“Lady Lex” started out as a battlecruiser, but the Washington Naval treaty of 1922 ended the construction of all new battleships and battlecruisers. So the Navy converted the ship into one of the first aircraft carriers. When a drought in late 1929 caused hydroelectricity shortages in Tacoma, Wash., Lady Lex’s turbo-electric propulsion system supplemented the city’s electricity.

The launch of Lady Lex.

During the Great Depression, the yard built the USS Wasp (CV-7) and a few other ships. But business slowed, and employment dwindled to 812 by 1931.

World War II

The specter of World War II brought a surge of construction that started in 1938.

Employment reached 17,000 in 1941. By 1943, the payroll at the Fore River Shipyard reached–in today’s dollars– $1.63 billion.

James J. Kilroy worked as an inspector at the Fore River Shipyard during World War II. He said he used the famous phrase, “Kilroy was here,” to mark rivets he had inspected as ships were built. Later, sailors would find the phrase in places like sealed hull spaces. Kilroy later won election as a Massachusetts state representative, and the phrase was engraved on the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Another interesting employee joined the shipyard as a welder in 1942: 20-year-old Florence “Woo Woo” DiTullio. The nickname Woo Woo developed because groups of men would holler out “Woo Woo!” when she walked by. She paved the way for 2,000 women who would work at the yard during the war. She came to be known as Winnie the Welder.

Over the course of the war, some 32,000 people worked at the Fore River Shipyard. They built and launched many destroyer escorts and landing ships from the yard.

They built a second USS Lexington (CV-16) to replace the first, sunk early in World War II.

Fore River Shipyard workers eventually built 71 destroyers during the war, more than any shipyard in the country. To support this output they built a boiler plant at Fields Point in Providence, R.I.

USS Massachusetts in Battleship Cove.

They completed and launched the USS Massachusetts (BB-59) in 1941. Her crew called her “Big Mamie.” She can still be toured today at Battleship Cove, at Fall River, Mass., a testament to the quality of the work at Fore River. One of the welders who worked on the Massachusetts and the aircraft carrier Lexington came from Barrington, R.I.–Leo Caisse, my father, who learned his trade while serving in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Fore River Postwar Years

The postwar years were not kind to the Fore River Shipyard. The world had too many ships. In 1954, the yard did win orders for five destroyers, five tankers and a fleet oiler.

However, in 1955 the shipyard bid on some of the Forrestal-class aircraft carriers, but lost them to the Newport News and New York naval yards. The navy, however, awarded Fore River contracts for the building of four frigates as a consolation prize.

After the war, shipbuilding continued and included some noteworthy ships, including the USS Bainbridge (DLGN 25) and the USS Long Beach (CGN 9), both nuclear-powered guided missile ships. Fore River also built destroyers, frigates, the liner Independence and the supertanker Manhattan, among the first ships to traverse the Northwest Passage.

A Texas Tower

Interestingly, the Fore River Shipyard built two radar towers in the 1950’s, Texas Tower 2 and Texas Tower 3. These were U.S. Air Force Air Defense Command platforms, similar to oil drilling platforms, placed along the East Coast to detect Soviet bombers. Texas Tower 4, built in Maine, tragically collapsed in a winter storm in 1961, killing all 28 men off the coast of Long Island.

Sister Yard

In 1964, the General Dynamics Corporation purchased the Fore River Shipyard. It became the sibling shipyard to Electric Boat. General Dynamics invested heavily in the yard, including a 1,200 ton crane nicknamed Goliath capable of lifting up to a thousand tons.

During its tenure in Quincy, General Dynamics built all kinds of naval support vessels and civilian merchant ships as well as several nuclear submarines. Then it shifted all that work to Electric Boat. From the 70’s to the 80’s, 10 liquefied natural gas tankers were built in the yard. Many of them are still in service today.

The yard built and delivered five (MPS) Maritime pre-positioning ships to the U.S. Navy between the years 1985-86. From two miles at sea, these vessels could deliver and support, with all their supplies, 4,000 Marines for 30 days.

Return of the Salem

By the 1980s, the U.S. simply had too many shipyards, and Quincy failed to win any contracts. That led to the closure of the Fore River Shipyard that year.

USS Salem

Eventually, General Dynamics sold off the equipment, and none of the efforts to reopen Quincy as a shipyard succeeded. On a brighter note, the USS Salem (CA-139) returned to its birthplace to become the main attraction for the United States Naval Shipbuilding Museum at the former Quincy yard in 1994.

With thanks to the Haze Gray and Underway Naval History Information Center, http://www.hazegray.org/navhist/.

About the author of this story: Leo Caisse of East Providence, R.I., passed away in 2020. He published the book, The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. Leo earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College.

This story was updated in 2022.

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How the Quahog Became a Rhode Island Icon

If you know anything about Rhode Island, you know the quahog is sacred and peculiar to America’s smallest and wateriest state.

But it wasn’t always so.

Another mollusk harvested from Narragansett Bay dominated Rhode Island cuisine for centuries. We know that because Roger Williams in 1643 described the Narragansett Indians fishing for oysters.

But World War II, pollution and hurricanes wiped out the Narragansett Bay oyster industry.

The quahog then took center stage.

The Oyster

Oystering in Narragansett Bay, like most fisheries, went through a series of ups and downs over the years.

In 1700, oyster fishermen harvested the mollusks – but for their shells, to make lime. The Rhode Island legislature banned the practice in 1734 as a waste of good oyster meat.

More oyster regulations followed as circumstances dictated.

In 1766, the legislature tried to prevent overfishing by requiring oysters to be harvested with tongs. Three decades later, the state started closing oyster beds for the same reason.

Then during the 19th century, the General Assembly passed legislation to encourage oyster fishing and aquaculture.

But by 1896, the oyster beds started to diminish because of industrial pollution. The Providence Gas Co. got itself sued in 1905 for polluting the Narragansett Bay.

Boats dredging for oysters, around 1875. The vessel tows the dredge along the bottom of the sea collecting the bottom-dwelling oysters.

The Great Hurricane of 1938

Oyster harvesters had a banner year in 1911, landing 1.4 million bushels of oysters. But things went downhill from there, as pollution continued to harm the oyster beds. Then in 1938 came the Great New England hurricane, which pretty much wiped out the oyster industry.

The devastating hurricane of 1938 dealt a near-fatal blow to Narragansett Bay’s oyster industry. It wiped out shucking houses, shipping wharves and oyster boats. Then World War II came along, depriving the remaining oyster companies of strong backs and willing hands to harvest oysters.

Fortunately for Rhode Island stomachs, the quahog stepped in. Literally. A quahog moves through the mud with a muscular little foot.

Enter the Quahog

A quahog (pronounced KO-hog) is a large, hard-shelled clam.. ‘Quahog’ comes from the Narragansett word, ‘poquauhock.’ The Narragansett people had used their shells for wampum. New Englanders are really the only ones who call them quahogs. Others call them chowder clams.

Though quahogs are native to the Atlantic coast from Prince Edward Island to the Yucatan, they are most abundant from Cape Cod to New Jersey. You’ll find Rhode Island smack in the center of quahog country.

Population growth along Narragansett Bay has actually helped the quahog population. Quahogs feed on plankton, and plankton feeds on nitrates, which water treatment plants can’t filter out. One of the nice things about quahogs (in addition to their flavor) is that they filter impurities out of the water.

Quahogs burrow into mud in the intertidal zone and below the tidewaters. Digging them requires a strong back and a stronger work ethic.

Nelson Blount

Nelson Blount claimed credit for making the quahog a Rhode Island staple after the 1938 hurricane, one of the deadliest and most destructive ever to strike New England. His family had an oyster-harvesting-and-shucking business in Barrington, R.I., since the 1880s. It didn’t take much for Blount to realize the storm had wiped out his family business, unless he could find another shellfish to sell.

F. Nelson Blount in the cab of Rahway Valley Railroad #15 at North Walpole, New Hampshire, 1963.

So Blount began to sell the Narragansett Bay quahog as a tasty alternative to the oyster. Formally known as F. Nelson Blount, he was a terrific salesman. His sales pitch worked.

Rhode Island embraced the hard-shelled bivalve. It made its way into important Rhode Island dishes like stuffies (stuffed clams), clams casino (a version of stuffies) and the controversial tomato-based clam chowder.

Blount did well, too, growing his company into the Blount Seafood Corporation, which sold the clams that went into Campbell’s Soup clam chowder.

By 1987, Rhode Island’s Legislature declared the quahog the Rhode Island State Shell.

Devotees of popular culture will recognize the quahog from the adult cartoon series, Family Guy. The protagonist (you can’t really call him a star) lives in Quahog, R.I., a fictional town modeled on Cranston, R.I.

This story was updated in 2023. Images: Nelson Blount By RickKfoury – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.hp?curid=105312758.

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Russian Dressing Invented in … New Hampshire?

The news media delved deep (well, deepish) into the history of Russian dressing in 2017 after White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer mentioned the condiment in a news conference.

Sean Spicer

“If the president puts Russian dressing on his salad tonight, somehow that’s a Russia connection,” said Spicer (who, by the way, is from Barrington, R.I.) on March 28.

The Washington Post had already covered the story two years earlier, but not in the context of statecraft. “A Nashua grocer named James E. Colburn invented the spread in 1924,” reported the Post. The newspaper cited the 1927 text from the book New Hampshire Resources, Attractions and Its People, a History, by Hobart Pillsbury.

Colburn sold the salad dressing to “retailers and hotels across the country,” earning “wealth on which he was enabled to retire.”

Today, Russian dressing has given way to its milder cousin, Thousand Island dressing, and has largely disappeared, the Post reported.

Russian Dressing

It was actually around long before James Colburn had his brainstorm.

Food historians agree it is a creamy vinaigrette, but they don’t agree on much else. Some evidence shows Russians knew about creamy vinaigrettes in the 19th century, but they got it from the French.

Mixed green salads go back as far as the ancient Greeks. Dinner salads were popular in the Renaissance. What we now call chef’s salads — composed salads with layers of ingredients — appeared in the 18th century. Then they were called Salmagundi.

Russian dressing on a cheeseburger with grilled onions at Bill’s Place in San Francisco.

The earliest reference to Russian dressing, according to the Food Timeline, is from a 1911 menu for the Gridiron Club. Salads with Russian dressing were fashionable before World War I.

But what was in Russian dressing?

An early version of Larousse Gastronomique claims it consisted of mayonnaise, tinted pink with poached coral and the pulverized shell of a lobster, and seasoned with salt and caviar. According to restaurant critic Craig Claiborne, it contained mayonnaise, chili sauce, horseradish, grated onion and caviar.

But according to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink, caviar is an unlikely ingredient. It probably got its name because of the Russian love of pickles, the encyclopedia says.

Today, Russian dressing generally consists of mayonnaise, chili sauce or ketchup, relish, horseradish and paprika.

Nashua Roots

It’s quite certain Nashua’s James Colburn didn’t put caviar in the salad dressing he bottled and sold under the name “Russian.”

He worked in a meat market until he opened his own wholesale grocery and meat business in 1906. While running that business he hit upon the idea of a Russian salad dressing. He was able to retire on the proceeds.

His biographer wrote, “As he rests on his laurels, he is conscious of having done his part well in conferring a blessing upon the people who have learned the art of eating well.”

The Boston Globe’s Household Department provided the following recipe for the condiment on Jan. 25, 1914:

Get a large bowl and mixer, then beat yolk of three eggs, one teaspoon of mustard and one of salt, a dash of paprika and 1/2 cup of vinegar. Mix up well and, while mixing, add 1 pinch olive oil and continue mixing until thick. Strain one-half bottle of chili sauce through a cloth and mix what remains with the dressing. Add some chopped chives and a dash of Worcestershire sauce and the dressing is complete.

Image: By rick – Flickr: Bill’s Place burger with grilled onions, cheese and russian dressing, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19068595.

This story last updated in 2022.

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