Establishment thumb | left | upright | Thomas F. Rowland</a> In 1851,
New York shipbuilder Samuel Sneden relocated his shipyard from
Manhattan to
Greenpoint, becoming one of the first in his industry to do so. His new yard was located at the foot of West and Calyer Streets, just north of
Bushwick Inlet. Over the next decade, Sneden would produce a substantial number of wooden-
hulled steamboats and other vessels at this yard, both under his own name and, during the mid-1850s, in partnership with a young shipbuilder named E. S. Whitlock. In 1859, James L. Day, agent of the New Orleans & Mobile Mail Line and a repeat customer of Sneden's, requested that the shipbuilder construct an iron-hulled steamer for his company. Having no experience in the construction of iron hulls, Sneden took a young engineer named
Thomas F. Rowland into temporary partnership in his firm, Samuel Sneden & Co., to assist in the project. Some basic ironworking facilities, including a
forge, punch and shears, were acquired by the firm, Sneden & Co. won the contract with a bid of $49,000 ()—almost $20,000 () less than the next lowest bid. A month after signing the contract, Sneden requested its voiding on the grounds of the intervening delay, but was refused on the basis that the wait had not been excessive. Having gained control of the shipyard, Rowland renamed it the Continental Iron Works. The waterworks contract would later be successfully completed by the new company.
American Civil War thumb|Puritan on the ways at the Continental Iron Works The establishment of the Continental Iron Works in early 1861 coincided with the outbreak of the
American Civil War, which began in April of that year. In May, Rowland traveled to
Washington, D.C., to present the Navy Department with conceptual plans for a screw-propelled
ironclad with revolving
gun turrets. His proposal was rejected as unfeasible, but he did manage to secure contracts for the manufacture of
gun carriages, which would later see action in the
Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip. In September, New York engineer
John Ericsson presented the Navy with a proposal to build a radically new type of ironclad warship with a low
freeboard and revolving gun turret. On 4 October, he signed a contract with the Navy for construction of the new vessel, on the basis that Ericsson and his backers would assume all financial risk for the project and that the ship would be launched within 100 days. As Ericsson wanted to closely supervise the project, he turned to local New York companies for the ship's construction.
thumb|left | A double planer invented by Rowland for fast planing of armor plate The new ironclad, named , was launched at the Continental Works in just 101 days (although
Monitor was delivered a day later than the term specified in the contract, the Navy chose to waive any penalty). The ironclad was dispatched immediately after completion to
Hampton Roads,
Virginia, where the
Confederate ironclad
CSS Virginia was threatening the
Union fleet.
Monitors success in neutralizing the threat from
Virginia in the ensuing
Battle of Hampton Roads—the world's first battle between ironclads—sparked a "monitor fever" in Washington, and contracts for many more of the same ship type, dubbed
monitors after the original, were quickly signed. Ericsson would eventually subcontract with Continental for the construction of another six monitors during the war—four of the single-turret type like the original, and the two larger, double-turreted monitors and . In the course of building the monitors, Continental's proprietor, Thomas Rowland, invented a number of new
machine tools to expedite the work, one of which is said to have reduced the required workforce for a particular task by 75 men. He also developed new working methods, such as heating armor plates before bending them.
thumb | Continental Iron Works advertisement for gas holder</a>s Shipbuilding contracts for the Continental Works also declined sharply, but the firm had done better during the war than some other Naval contractors, and was evidently in a more sound financial position. More importantly, while the company continued to accept shipbuilding contracts when available, it began to diversify its business into other areas. The most important of these initially was the burgeoning
gasworks industry, driven by the growing demand for gas lighting. A wide variety of other metal products was also produced by the Continental Works through the 1870s, such as giant
cauldrons and
vats, machine tools,
lifecars for lifesaving clubs, In 1869, the company accepted a contract to build a
swing bridge, of the
bowstring girder type, across Bushwick Inlet. was completed by 1872.
Postwar shipbuilding thumb|Hull of after reassembly in California at the Burgess yard, c. 1880 While the company secured only a handful of shipbuilding contracts after the Civil War, it nonetheless built a number of notable vessels during this period. In 1871 for example, the company built the composite
steam yacht Day Dream for
Pacific Mail founder
William Henry Aspinwall. Designed by Continental employee Lucius A. Smith, it was one of the first steam yachts built in the United States. Shortly thereafter, however, New York engineer Phineas Burgess took the contract for the new
Amphitrite-class monitor , and Continental then accepted a subcontract from him to build the ship's hull. It was duly constructed by Continental at Greenpoint, before being knocked down into sections for transportation overland to
Vallejo, California, to be reassembled by Burgess. Construction of the vessel was subsequently suspended by government indecision—and was only finally completed in 1896 at the
Mare Island Navy Yard.
Welding pioneer In 1876, the Continental Iron Works became a pioneer in
welding technology when it successfully applied plate-welding techniques to the
boiler furnaces of the monitor USS
Monadnock. Another early application of the company's welding techniques was the manufacture of gas reservoirs used to store highly pressurized gas in self-propelled torpedoes, a weapon type that at the time was the subject of increasing experimentation by the
Russian and other European governments. By the 1890s, the company had become the nation's sole producer of welded, corrugated boiler furnaces, which were used in both marine and stationary boilers. The advantage of corrugation was that it could provide the same strength as a conventional furnace but with thinner walls, increasing the transfer of heat and thus efficiency. These corrugated furnaces were a popular product and were adopted on many merchant ships, as well as US Navy
torpedo boats and other warships, such as the battleship . The company built the first
Thornycroft boilers in the United States—for the Navy's first
torpedo boat, Other popular welded products produced by the company through to the beginning of
World War I included gas-illuminated
buoys, and steel
digesters used to convert wood to pulp for paper-making.
World War I and after During World War I, the Continental Iron Works manufactured welded
depth charge casings and other munitions for the war effort. After the war, the company continued to produce buoys and furnaces, but increasingly turned to the manufacture of gas mains and large-diameter welded water pipes for the bulk of its business. In 1907, Thomas F. Rowland, the company's founder and president since its inception in 1861, died, the presidency of the firm passing to vice-president Warren E. Hill. Hill died in 1908, and Rowland's son, Thomas F. Rowland Jr., became president. Rowland Jr. retired in 1928, at which time the business was liquidated. The company's machine tools for the manufacture of corrugated boiler furnaces were purchased by the American Welding Company, after which, the defunct firm's site lay idle for some years. It was later partly occupied by a lumber yard and a fuel company. As of 2020, the site was again idle. == Shipbuilding record ==