It was founded in 1899 by Henry G. Morse (1850–2 June 1903), an engineer noted in connection with bridge design and construction and senior partner of
Morse Bridge Company. The original plan was to build a shipyard on
Staten Island, thus the name of the company, but plans to acquire a site there failed. The company then explored other potential sites as far south as Virginia, particularly in the
Delaware River area, and ultimately chose a location in the southern part of
Camden, New Jersey. Site selection considered the needs of the planned application of bridge-building practices of prefabrication and assembly-line production of ships in covered ways. Construction of the plant began in July 1899; the keel of the first ship was laid in November 1900. That ship, contract number 1, was
M. S. Dollar, which was later modified as an oil tanker and renamed
J. M. Guffey. Two of the first contracts were for passenger ships that were among the largest then being built in the United States: #5 for and #6 for . Morse died after securing contracts for 20 ships. He was followed as president by De Coursey May. On November 27, 1916, a special meeting of the company's stockholders ratified sale of the "fifteen million dollar plant" to a group of companies composed of
American International Corporation,
International Mercantile Marine Co.,
W. R. Grace and Company and the
Pacific Mail Steamship Company. From about 1933 to 1937 the shipyard was part of
Errett Lobban Cord's business empire. New York Ship's unusual covered ways produced everything from
aircraft carriers,
battleships, and
luxury liners to
barges and
car floats. During
World War I, New York Ship expanded rapidly to fill orders from the U.S. Navy and the
Emergency Fleet Corporation. A critical shortage of worker housing led to the construction of
Yorkship Village, a
planned community of 1,000 brick homes designed by
Electus Darwin Litchfield and financed by the
War Department. Yorkship Village is now the Fairview section of the City of Camden. New York Ship's
World War II production included all nine
light carriers (CVL), built on light cruiser hulls; the 40,000-ton
battleship ; all three of the six 30,000-ton
Alaska-class cruisers that were built (, , and ), four 15,000-ton
Baltimore-class heavy cruisers, and 98 LCTs (
Landing Craft, Tank), many of which took part in the D-Day landings at Normandy. After World War II, a much-diminished New York Ship subsisted on a trickle of contracts from the
United States Maritime Administration and the U.S. Navy. In 1959, the yard launched the
NS Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered merchant ship. The yard launched its last civilian vessel () in 1960, and its last naval vessel, , was ordered in 1967. The company's final completed submarine was , which had been ordered in the early 1960s, but construction was halted from 1963 to 1965 because of the loss of the .
Guardfish was commissioned in December 1967. In 1968, lacking new naval orders, NYS ceased operations. , then under construction, was towed to
Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, for completion. The yard's site is now part of the
Port of Camden. The
caisson previously used in NYS's
graving dock is still in use today in the former
Philadelphia Navy Yard's dry dock number 3. ==World War II Slipways==