Skinner & Eddy

The Skinner & Eddy Corporation was founded in January 1916 by two entrepreneurs, David E. "D.E." Skinner and John W. Eddy, owners of the Port Blakely Mill Company since 1903. Shortly after its establishment on the downtown Seattle waterfront, Skinner & Eddy Corp. began leasing the shipyard of the Seattle Construction and Drydock Company (at the time a subsidiary of Todd Shipbuilding), located a few steps north between Connecticut and Dearborn Street. Seattle Construction & Dry Dock was itself a successor to the Moran Brothers shipyard, which around the start of the 20th century had been one of America's largest shipyards, responsible for building Seattle's first battleship, , in 1906. On April 6, 1917, 15 months after Skinner and Eddy Corp. began leasing the yard, the United States entered World War I. Skinner & Eddy responded to the news by purchasing an additional of Seattle waterfront property from the Seattle Dock Company and the Centennial Flouring Mill for $1,500,000 and $600,000 respectively, which they used to begin building a second shipyard, which became known as Plant No. 2 and lay just south of plant No. 1. After securing lucrative contracts from the Emergency Fleet Corporation for the construction of merchant ships for the war effort, Skinner & Eddy was also able in June 1918 to make an outright purchase of the yard of Seattle Construction and Dry Dock, which was named Plant No. 1. ==Facilities==

When completed, Skinner & Eddy's facilities included ten building slipways—five at each Plant—and four outfitting docks. A five-section, drydock capable of servicing vessels of up to 15,000 tons was also acquired, along with a 50-ton floating crane. Most of the ships built by the company during the war were constructed at Plant No. 1, as Plant No. 2 was still under construction for much of this period. With its two plants, which together covered about of waterfront property, Skinner & Eddy was Seattle's largest shipbuilding company, at its wartime peak employing about 13,500 people. ==World War I==

The first seven ships built by Skinner & Eddy were for private contractors. The company completed its first ship, Niels Nielson, on November 9, 1916, and had completed a further two by the time the United States entered the war in April 1917. These three ships along with four partially completed vessels were then requisitioned for war service by the newly created United States Shipping Board (USSB). Thereafter, Skinner & Eddy was to build ships exclusively for the USSB, through the latter's agency, the Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFT). Skinner & Eddy soon began to distinguish itself by its production speed. Prior to its operations, a cargo ship built and delivered in the United States in under 250 days was considered fast, but as early as June 1917, the company under the capable direction of its general manager, David Rodgers, completed a freighter, Stolt Nielson, in under 150 days. Thereafter, all the company's ships built during the war were each completed in well under 100 days, with a best performance by war's end of 79 days from keel laying to delivery. Good management alone was probably not entirely responsible for the company's outstanding performance however; Skinner & Eddy also paid its employees highly competitive wages, which enabled the company to attract the best and most skilled workers. The company's improved performance over time is also reflected in its total production figures. In 1917, the company produced a total tonnage of 72,800 tons; the following year it raised production more than threefold, to 232,400 tons. In all, Skinner & Eddy delivered 32 ships to the EFT, including 29 freighters and three tankers, over the course of the war—more than that of any other shipyard in the country. ==Postwar history==

Since it was a widely held belief in the United States that a shipbuilding boom would follow the end of hostilities, the USSB declined to cancel many of its wartime shipbuilding contracts at the end of the war. In Skinner & Eddy's case, this meant that the company was to complete a further 43 ships for the USSB in the postwar period. Skinner & Eddy delivered its last ship in February 1920, ==The ships==

, one of the first ships built by Skinner & Eddy. This ship was very similar in design to the USSB Design #1013 ships that would later be built by the company Skinner & Eddy produced a total of 75 ships from 1916 to 1920 (the yard no. sequence ends at 76 as the number 13 was skipped). Most of the ships were freighters, but three 10,000-ton tankers were amongst the seven ships built for private contractors prior to the U.S. entry into World War I. Most of the ships completed by the company during the war were of this type. The Design 1079 was of 9,600 tons deadweight, turbine-powered and oil fired, with dimensions of 409.6 x 54.2 x . Skinner & Eddy was the only company which built this type. A total of 23 were completed. Additionally, eleven 8,800 deadweight-ton freighters, similar if not identical to the Design 1013s were built prior to the manufacture of the USSB types listed above. Only one Skinner & Eddy ship was lost (to enemy action) in World War I. In the interwar period, most of the company's vessels were engaged in commercial service. Three, , Elkton and Nile were lost to maritime accidents in the 1920s, and seven more were scrapped in the 1930s, probably because of the oversupply of shipping. World War II took a heavy toll of Allied merchant vessels, and of the 64 Skinner & Eddy ships that saw service in the war, 31, or almost 50%, were lost to enemy action, most of them to U-boats. Another two were deliberately sunk as breakwaters during the Normandy Campaign. The 31 that survived the war were mostly scrapped in the late 1940s and 1950s, and only four were still in existence by 1960. The last Skinner & Eddy vessel to see service was probably Edray, transferred to the Soviet Union under lend-lease during World War II and scrapped in 1967. ==Fate of the shipyards==

Following the closure of the Skinner & Eddy shipyards in 1923, the company's Plant No. 2 was sold in 1924 to the Pacific Steamship Company, which built a new office and terminus on the site. The site also became the terminus of the Admiral Line, which did considerable trade with Siberia and the Orient. With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, the site became a Hooverville for Seattle's unemployed. During World War II, the Hooverville was razed to make way for a huge supply depot run by the Army Quartermaster Corps, and after the war it became a base for the U.S. Coast Guard. As of 2003, the site was the location for several large container shipping terminals. Skinner & Eddy's Plant No. 1, meanwhile, has become part of Seattle's SoDo district. ==Production history==

The following table represents a complete list of all ships built by the Skinner & Eddy Corporation. Ships marked with an asterisk are those assigned ID numbers by the Navy but never commissioned. Fields marked with a hyphen indicate that the given field is not applicable to this particular ship. Gross tonnage values (GRT) use the nominal GRT for the ship type (identifiable by a "00" in the last two digits) where a more precise GRT is not available for the individual ship. Consult the table legend for additional information about the table. ''LEGEND: Yard No. = yard number; USSB No. = USSB number; Name = name of ship. Two digit field (in superscript) following names in this colum indicates last two digits of year in which ship was renamed. Names followed by a "y" (in superscript) indicate a yard name that was not subsequently used during the ship's service history. Type = type of ship, either freighter or tanker. Design No. = USSB Design number. Ships with no listed number were built prior to the introduction of the system. GRT = gross register tons. Ships for which an exact tonnage is not available are listed here with the nominal GRT of the type, usually recognizable by the last two digits being zero. Deliv. = date of ship's delivery to customer. For some ships the exact date is not known. Fate = fate of ship.'' Sources for this table: Pacific Ports Annual pp. 63–64, 402-405; Jordan; shipbuildinghistory.com; and various individual DANFS ship entries. == See also ==

Footnotes References Sources Books and journals • Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (DANFS), various entries. • McKellar, Norman L. (1963): "Steel Shipbuilding under the U.S. Shipping Board, 1917-1923", The Belgian Shiplover, Issues 87-96, May 1962-December 1963. • Pacific Ports Annual, Fifth Edition, 1919, pp. 64–65, 402-405, Pacific Ports Inc. Websites • "Skinner & Eddy, Seattle WA", shipbuildinghistory.com. • "General Cargo Ships Built in Pacific Coast Shipyards", shipbuildinghistory.com. • Historylink.org.