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Joseph P. Kennedy

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 2024.

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The Brahmin Rough Riders of New England

Some people believe that the Rough Riders were almost all cowboys from out West. After all, it had earned the nickname “The Cowboy Regiment.”

But that wasn’t entirely the case, as you shall see. Brahmins from New England with refined backgrounds also joined the Rough Riders.

Men from every New England state volunteered for Teddy Roosevelt’s U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry, better known as the Rough Riders. Massachusetts had as many as 25. As a matter of fact, the actual commander of the unit, Leonard Wood, hailed from New Hampshire. Frederic Remington featured Woodbury Kane from Rhode Island in his famous painting of the immortal charge up San Juan Hill.

Col. Roosevelt and the Rough Riders on top of San Juan Hill.

Roosevelt had four recruiting stations out West, in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and the Oklahoma/Indian Territories. He had vast experience in the West and knew the cowboys already knew how to ride and shoot. But Roosevelt knew another target-rich area full of ready-for-action men: His wealthy, pedigreed friends throughout New York and New England.

Roosevelt put out the word. They responded in droves from polo clubs, boxing clubs, duck blinds, steeplechase courses, yacht clubs, Ivy League athletic fields and glee clubs. Many had graduated from Harvard.

One Rough Rider, James McClintock, who hailed from California, said they were in it for the adventure.

The Rough Riders are the stuff of legend, having generated a movie, a television show and, of course, a President. They were, however, one of the shortest lived units in American military history. They only existed for four months and 13 days before they disbanded.

Rhode Island Rough Riders

Woodbury Kane, Newport;Joseph S. Stevens, Newport; Norman Maxwell, Newport; Charles Hatch, Newport; Joseph F. Flynn, Cranston.

Rough Rider Woodbury Kane

Woodbury Kane, a classmate of Teddy Roosevelt’s at Harvard, was born in Newport, a cousin of John Jacob Astor IV. A noted yachtsman, he belonged to the New York Yacht Club and served on the crew of the Columbia in the 1899 America’s Cup Race. He was also a noted big game hunter.

After graduation, he lived the life of a bon vivant in Newport and New York. In April 1898 he and other East Coast friends joined the U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry.

After enlistment, he, William Tiffany and other East Coast friends donated two $7,500 Colt machine guns to the unit. When the unit expanded to a thousand men he received a lieutenant’s commission.

While serving in the Rough Riders he was always noted for being dressed to a T, no matter the conditions. While leading K Troop in the charge on San Juan Hill, he was wounded in the forearm. Kane was awarded a citation for gallantry and promoted to captain.

He spent the rest of his life living the life of a dandy until a heart attack cut him down at the age of 46. His obituary noted he left no children, but he did leave his beloved polo pony.

Vermont

Ira A. Hill, Grand Isle; Wallace Batchelder, Chester.

Wallace Batchelder graduated from Chester Academy in Chester, Vt., before enlisting in the Rough Riders. He later fought in the Philippines under General Wood. After his service he returned to Vermont, where he became a lawyer and chaired the state’s committee to elect Roosevelt President of the United States in 1904. He later broke with Roosevelt, who in 1912 sent him a telegram telling him not to support any candidate who didn’t support Roosevelt. Batchelder replied he wouldn’t support Roosevelt.

New Hampshire Rough Riders

Dudley S. Dean, Laconia; Walter F. Hickey, Nashua; Leonard Wood, Winchester.

Leonard Wood was the actual commander of the Rough Riders; Teddy Roosevelt was his second in command.

A descendant of four Mayflower passengers, he trained as a physician at Harvard Medical School. He served as a major general in the Army. When he came to command the U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry in Cuba, he was a seasoned Indian fighter in the West and had already been awarded the Medal of Honor. After the Spanish-American War, he served as Governor-General of the Philippines and contended for the Republican nomination for President in 1920.

Dean was an All American football quarterback for Harvard from 1888 to 1890. He participated in the charge on San Juan Hill. That was not to be his last military adventure. During World War II, he served as a lieutenant colonel In the U.S. Army Air Force. He was the executive producer of the play Winged Victory, which ran from November 1943 to May 1944. He lived until the age of 79, passing away in 1950.

Dudley Dean, football star

Dudley’s son John H. Dean played football for Harvard too. At Harvard, he befriended Joseph P. Kennedy and they spent summers together at Cohassett, Mass.

Maine

Guy Muncie, Calais; Harrison J. Holt, Portland; Frederick C. Wesley, Bangor.

Harrison Holt graduated from Phillips Andover and Harvard. Upon his Harvard graduation in 1898 he enlisted with Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. After the war and some business ventures in Mexico he joined the New York Globe and Commercial Advertiser as a reporter. Later in life he wrote novels and detective stories, including The Calendared Isles, a Romance of Casco Bay (read it here) and Midnight at Mears House.

Connecticut

Edward C. Hall, Wallingford.

Unlike most of the Ivy League Rough Riders, Edward Hall graduated from Yale, not Harvard. Upon graduation in 1894, he went to work for Westinghouse and did a brief stint at a North Dakota ranch before enlisting with the Rough Riders. After the war he joined General Electric in Lynn, Mass., then transferred to the Schenectady office, where he died in 1912.

Massachusetts

Harry A. Curtis, Boston; Prescott H. Belknap, Brookline; John D. Hubbell, Boston; Rufus K. Thomas, Boston; Wellman H. Saunders, Salem; John P. Gardner, Boston; Guy H. Scull, Boston; Harry A. Davis, Boston; Francis B. Crowninshield, Marblehead; William H. Mitchell, Salem; Winslow Clark, Milton; Edward F. Donnelly, Boston; Michael F. Hogan; William T. James, Fitchburg; Arthur M. Leroy, Boston; Raymond Morse, Springfield; Edward A. O’Brien, Charlestown; William J. Tudor, Boston; Harry C. White, Somerville.

Francis Boardman Crowninshield, another Harvard graduate, went on to become a noted international yachtsman. He fought with Troop K of the Rough Riders and took part in the charge up San Juan Hill. In 1900, he married Louise DuPont from the famous chemical family. In 1911, he won the King of Spain’s Cup in Spain, now among his many trophies at the Eastern Yacht Club in Marblehead, Mass.

Rough Riders. Image courtesy New York Public Library.

This story updated in 2022.

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Boston’s Miracle 1914 Braves Most Improbable Comeback Ever

On July 18, 1914, the Boston Braves were in last place as usual. But that season the madmen from Boston made the most stunning comeback in baseball history after a humiliating 10-2 loss to a Buffalo farm team.

The team went from last place to first in two months and then swept the heavily favored Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series. Their last-to-first rally still stands as one of the greatest reversals in baseball history.

Boston Braves, 1914 World Series at Fenway Park. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

The 1914 Braves

The Braves had languished in the cellar for a decade, averaging 100 losses a year. They played in a rickety little ballpark that seated 5,800, not that they needed that many seats. The team was sold in 1912 to former pitcher John Montgomery Ward, and John Gaffney, a Tammany Hall alderman. Until then they’d been known as the “Beaneaters,” the “Doves” or the “Rustlers,” but Gaffney named them the Braves after the New York political machine’s symbol, Chief Tammanend.

George Stallings. in 1914. Courtesy Library of Congress.

The new owners hired George Stallings, a crusty, some said sadistic, plantation owner from Georgia. Stallings could fly into a schizophrenic rage over a dropped fly ball. Even by baseball standards Stallings was extremely superstitious. He hated yellow signs and yellow clothing. Yellow ballpark advertisements had to be painted over before he’d let the team play. He would freeze in position when his team started a rally. Once, the Braves rallied as he picked up a pebble in the dugout. When the rally ended he had to be helped off the field.

But he knew baseball.

In 1913, Stallings’ first season, he managed the hapless Braves to only 82 losses and 69 wins. By the start of 1914, though, Stallings had begun to assemble his unlikely champions. He later described the team as having “one .300 hitter, the worst outfield that ever flirted with sudden death, three pitchers and a good working combination around second base.”

They also had game, and they would do anything to win. Once, shortstop Rabbit Maranville let himself get hit in the head by a fastball so he could walk in the winning run. In that tough, raw era of the game, Stallings’ 1914 Braves were the toughest, rawest team in baseball.

“Don’t end up in jail”

Stallings told his players “Do what you want but don’t end up in jail and come to play every day.” They did exactly what they wanted. Maranville once dove into a hotel fountain after a few cocktails and emerged with a goldfish between his teeth.

Rabbit Maranville famously swam with the fishes in a hotel fountain. (Courtesy Boston Public Library)

Stallings’ most astute move was to buy the contract of Chicago Cubs player-manager and Hall of Famer Johnny Evers before the 1914 season. Evers, the best second baseman in the National League, had an almost psychic ability to position himself right where the ball would be hit. Stallings also chucked a few veterans. Five rookies on the 26-man roster hadn’t played a day in the majors.

The Braves lost their Opening Day game to Brooklyn, then went on to lose some more. Pitchers were wild, or their arms were sore. Maranville came down with tonsillitis, Evers got sick. They lost game after game by one run. They seemed stuck in the cellar, 15-1/2 games behind the first place New York Giants.

Then they lost in Buffalo to what Evers described as “a soap company team.” What happened next isn’t clear. Stallings may have chewed them out. Evers may have inspired them. Stallings may have told them to go out and tie one on. Whatever it was, it worked.

Suddenly, They Got Hot

They won 12 of the next 16 games on the road and rocketed to fourth place. In mid-season. During the streak, Stallings traded for new players.

1914 Braves left fielder, Joey Connolly, the pride of North Smithfield, R.I. Photo courtesy the Library of Congress.

The light-hitting team started to get hits when they needed them and coming from behind to win. Joey Connolly, the 5’7” left fielder from Rhode Island, started to hit, ending the season with a .306 average. Maranville hit a clutch homerun in one game; the Springfield, Mass., native admitted he was so hungover he didn’t see the ball.

They scrapped for every win. The players researched the opposing teams to come up with the best insults. Evers argued with umpires, Maranville mimicked them. More importantly, they transformed the infield into a hitters’ Death Valley.

With first baseman Charlie “Butcher Boy” Schmidt, they turned more double plays than the famed Cubs’ Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance infield.

The pitching solidified. From July 9, sophomore pitcher Bill James went 19-1 with a microscopic 1.51 ERA. The only game he lost was 3-2 to the Pirates in 12 innings. Pitcher Dick Rudolph, a clever curveball-spitball pitcher, went 26-10 that season. He had talked his way onto the team after a chance encounter with the third base coach. Lefty Tyler, a native of Derry, N.H., with a peculiar motion, rounded out the big three pitchers with a 16-13 record. Even George Davis, rarely used as a starter, pitched the National League’s only no-hitter that year in September against the Phillies.

Laying Waste to the League

As the team caught fire, Boston got caught up in the excitement. Their ballpark, the South End Grounds, could only hold 5,800 fans. The Red Sox offered them the use of Fenway Park. On their first home game at Fenway the attendance was 20,000. Among the fans were tavern keeper Michael T. “Nuf Ced” McGreevey’s small army of sports fanatics, the Royal Rooters, who happily transferred their loyalty from the Red Sox. (Nuf Ced got his nickname by pounding his fist on the bar and exclaiming “Nuff Said” when he’d won a sports argument.)

Michael “Nuf Ced” McGreevey

From July 19 to the end of the season, the Braves lay waste to the rest of the National League, winning an incredible 51 of 67 games. On Sept. 29, they clinched the National League pennant.

The team was expected to lose the World Series to the dominant Philadelphia Athletics, who had a Hall of Fame pitching staff and a $100,000 infield. The A’s ace, Chief Bender, called the Braves “bush league.”

The Royal Rooters

The Royal Rooters followed the team to Philadelphia for the first two games. Boston Mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, his daughter Rose and her new husband Joe Kennedy went along. The Braves took the first game, shocking the Athletics with a 7-1 victory. They won the second game, too, 1-0.

Back in Boston, the Royal Rooters paraded to the field in Indian dress. They sang their fight song “Tessie” throughout Game 3, unnerving the A’s pitchers. Braves catcher Hank Gowdy won the game with a 12^th inning walk-off homerun, the only dinger of the series. (Gowdy, by the way, was the only Major League Baseball player to fight in both World War I and World War II.)

The Braves 3-1 victory over the A’s in the fourth and final game of the series inspired the wildest celebration ever. Fans swarmed the dugout, demanding Stallings give a speech on top of it. Maranville was dragged from the shower, and half-dressed he too gave a speech on top of the dugout. The Rooters’ band played “Tessie,” 5,000 fans marched around the park through the Fens and down Huntington Ave. where they serenaded the A’s at the Copley Plaza.

The losing manager, Connie Mack, was gracious in defeat. “A great team,” he said. “One of the greatest. It had great spirit and just wouldn’t be beaten.”

With thanks to The Boston Braves, 1871-1963, by Harold Kaese. Find out more about the Braves at the Boston Braves Historical Association. This story was updated in 2022.

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