The Delaware River Iron Ship Building and Engine Works (founded in 1871) was a major late-19th-century American shipyard located on the Delaware River in Chester, Pennsylvania. It was founded by the industrialist John Roach and is often referred to by its parent company name of John Roach & Sons, or just known as the Roach shipyard. For the first fifteen years of its existence, the shipyard was by far the largest and most productive in the United States, building more tonnage of ships than its next two major competitors combined, in addition to being the U.S. Navy's largest contractor. The yard specialized in the production of large passenger freighters, but built every kind of vessel from warships to cargo ships, oil tankers, ferries, barges, tugs and yachts.
Following a protracted dispute over a U.S. Navy contract for the in the early 1880s, the company's founder John Roach placed John Roach & Sons into receivership in 1885. After settlement of the parent company's debts, the Delaware River Iron Ship Building and Engine Works was reopened by Roach's sons and continued in operation until shortly after the death of Roach's eldest son John Baker Roach in 1908, at which point the Roach family retired from the shipbuilding business.
Over the course of its 37-year history, the Roach shipyard had many notable achievements to its credit. In 1874 it built City of Peking and City of Tokio, the two largest gross-tonnage ships ever built in the United States to that date and the second largest in the world after the experimental British behemoth . In 1883 it constructed America's first steamer with a steel-plated hull, .Swann, p. 152. The yard played a key role in the so-called "Birth of the New Navy" when it built the four "ABCD ships"—the U.S. Navy's first steel ships. It also established a reputation for itself as a builder of lavishly outfitted "night boats" for the Long Island Sound trade, and in its last years, built the first three American ships to be powered by steam turbines. In total, the Delaware River Works built 179 ships between 1871 and 1908, including 10 warships for the U.S. Navy.
Following the retirement of the Roach family in 1908, the shipyard remained idle for some years until being reopened as the Chester Shipbuilding Co. by a naval officer, C. P. M. Jack, in 1913. It was subsequently purchased in 1917 by W. Averell Harriman for building merchant ships during World War I, when it was renamed the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation. The yard closed permanently in 1923, and the location repurposed as the Ford Motor Company Chester Assembly factory until 1961.
Background John Roach began his career in the United States in 1832 as a semi-literate Irish immigrant laborer, eventually establishing his own small business with the purchase of the Etna Iron Works. Roach took advantage of the American Civil War to transform the Etna Iron Works into a major manufacturer of marine steam engines, and after the war, with the purchase in 1867 of the Morgan Iron Works, secured a near-monopoly on marine engine building in New York City.Swann, pp. 4, pp. 18–25.
Roach had observed that the British were in the process of replacing their merchant fleet of dated wooden-hulled paddle steamers with modern iron-hulled, screw-propelled vessels, and he anticipated a similar trend in the United States. Since the iron shipbuilding capacity of the U.S. was still modest, he saw an opportunity to fill the anticipated demand with the establishment of an iron shipyard of his own.Swan, pp. 49–50.
Roach carefully selected Chester, Pennsylvania as the site for his new shipyard. The locality had a number of advantages, including cheap and plentiful land along the banks of the Delaware River, proximity to Pennsylvania's iron and coal mining industries, an established river and rail transport network, and a readily available labor force.Swann, p. 51.
Accordingly, he purchased a substantial property in early 1871 on the banks of the Delaware, but around the same time, the shipyard of Reaney, Son & Archbold in the same locality entered receivership, and Roach decided to purchase that shipyard instead of starting his own from scratch. In June 1871, he bought the former Reaney shipyard from the receivers for the sum of $450,000, and renamed it the Delaware River Iron Ship Building and Engine Works.Swann, pp. 51, 56.Heinrich, p. 51.
Development
With the purchase of the Reaney property, Roach found himself in possession of a first-class shipyard. The spacious yard was ideally situated along a stretch of the Delaware where the river was over a mile wide and deep at the shore, allowing for launching of the largest vessels. The riverfront property was extensive enough to allow the construction of up to ten building slipways, as well as three piers capable of docking an additional six ships. The Reaney firm itself had already ploughed more than a million dollars into plant and equipment since opening the yard in 1859.Swann, p. 53.
Roach was not content with the existing plant however. Like his early mentor James P. Allaire, Roach envisaged a vertically integrated shipbuilding empire stretching from control of the raw materials to the finished ships. Accordingly, he established his own iron mill, the Chester Rolling Mill, for the production of iron plates, beams and other parts for his ships. The Mill, located on a lot upriver from the shipyard, began production in July 1875, and had an annual output of 700 tons of pig iron and 300 tons of ship plate.Swann, p. 59.
Roach also founded a number of other firms to meet the material needs of his shipyard. He established the nearby Chester Pipe and Tube Company, from which he could source the large amount of iron piping and quality boiler tubes required for his ships. With the purchase of a patent for an asbestos compound, he founded the Chalmers-Spence Company to provide pipe insulation. He also secured exclusive patent rights in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware for the Hirsch propeller, a European design which lessened vibration, and he founded the Hirsch Propeller Company to manufacture it. The result of these efforts was a network of companies that made the Roach shipyard largely independent of third-party suppliers, enabling Roach to minimize costs and undercut his competitors.Swann, p. 60.
Roach was also a keen proponent of labor-saving devices and continually looked for ways to cut down on costs by the use of machinery. He installed steam cranes, power punches, and a small railroad network to move materials within his plant—enough power equipment in total to require a dozen steam engines with a collective output of . By such means he ensured that his shipyard remained one of the most modern and efficient in the country.Swann, pp. 58–59.
Management structure Roach helped secure his business position in Chester by going into partnership with two prominent Chester families, the Houstons and Crozers. He made Charles B. Houston general manager of the Chester Rolling Mill and Charles' brother David paymaster, while a third brother, Thomas, was also given a management position. The Houstons had investments in Pennsylvania's iron and coal mines, and they also controlled Chester's only newspaper, the Chester Times. The Houstons in turn shared business interests with Samuel A. Crozer, son of John Price Crozer, whose extended family—the wealthiest in Chester—owned the city's largest textile mills. Collectively, the Roach, Houston and Crozer families employed 25% of Chester's working population and accounted for 35% of its payroll, their partnership virtually ensuring dominance of the city's politics.Swann, pp. 59–60.
After taking over the Reaney yard, Roach initially attempted to retain its former managers William B. Reaney and Henry Steers by selling each of them $40,000 worth of shares in the company for $10,000 apiece, with the difference to be made up over time by payment of dividends. Roach hoped that by giving the men a stake in the business he would cement their loyalty, but in the yard's second year of operations, both resold their shares to Roach and resigned, fearing the yard was about to become bankrupt.
After their departure, Roach elevated his eldest son, John Baker Roach, to management of the yard. Because John B.'s management experience was mostly in farming rather than shipbuilding however, Roach senior made a point of traveling from New York to Chester every Saturday, where he would conduct a thorough tour of every department, checking the workmanship, and ordering modifications and adjustments where required. This management arrangement persisted for almost the whole of John Roach senior's presidency of the company.Swann, pp. 55–57.
Labor relations Like most industrialists of his era, Roach was staunchly anti-union, and insisted his employees negotiate on an individual basis for their wages. Roach however, took the concept of individual negotiation much further than most of his contemporaries. Instead of paying a set wage to workers based on their qualifications or skill, he organized a sliding scale of wages for each group, based on a set of criteria Roach himself deemed important. A worker who met all the criteria would receive the top rate, while those who did not would have their wages progressively reduced, depending on the number of criteria they failed. Criteria for payment included not only a worker's skill level, but his punctuality, dependability, eagerness and quality of work, in addition to which his moral character was subject to assessment. Workers who spent too much on alcohol, who paid their rent erratically, whose families were poorly clothed, or whose children did not attend church or school, could expect to have their wages reduced still further.Swann, pp. 62–66.
There could thus be spectacular differences in pay within a particular group, with the most valued workers sometimes receiving as much as fives times more than the least valued. Even Roach's best paid workers, however, were usually paid little better, and sometimes worse, than comparable tradesmen at other yards, and Roach's overall wage rates were on average lower than his competitors. His business though did not suffer more industrial action, which Roach, who had spent many years as a tradesman himself, attributed to his rapport with his employees. A more concrete reason may have been the fact that Roach still operated his old New York shipyard, the Morgan Iron Works, so that when there was a strike at one plant he could readily defeat it by simply transferring his operations to the other.Swann, pp. 67–69.
Roach was also not above reducing the overall wages of his workforce in lean times, by as much as 15%, but when doing so would also reduce the rents by a corresponding degree for those workers living in housing provided by him. Roach was never able to supply housing for his entire workforce, but he did own about 100 houses in Chester, which were mostly rented by his foremen and other key personnel.
John Roach Presidency, 1871–1887 The first ship built by the Delaware Works was a 1,605-ton cargo ship, City of San Antonio—fittingly built for C. H. Mallory and Co., whose proprietor Charles Mallory would eventually become a business partner of Roach and one of his major customers.Swann, p. 78.
Pacific Mail contracts
In 1872, the U.S. Congress awarded the Pacific Mail Steamship Company a $500,000 annual subsidy to operate a steam packet service between the United States and the Far East. Pacific Mail thereupon decided to upgrade its entire fleet of aging, wood-hulled sidewheel steamers by replacing them with modern iron-hulled screw steamships. The Roach yard received a major boost when it won contracts to build nine of these new vessels for the company.Swann, pp. 78–80.