San Francisco County
Biographies
Union
Iron Works.—Ship Building.
– This vast establishment, which ranks among the largest in the world, and is
the most complete ship-building plant in the United States, is the outgrowth of
the pioneer iron foundry on the Pacific coast, started by James and Peter
Donahue – blacksmiths by trade –early in 1849.
This infant industry was of the most primitive order, consisting of a
small, rude furnace, with furnace blast produced by two blacksmith’s bellows,
and very few and inferior tools. At this
rude and simple foundry, sheltered by a tent on the beach at San Francisco, was
made the first piece of casting manufactured west of the Rocky mountains. It
consisted of a spring bearing for the propeller McKim,
the cost being fifty cents a pound. This
piece of work is now preserved as a relic, in the Mechanics’ Institute.
The growing
demand for iron-work necessitated frequent enlargements of this pioneer plant;
and in 1856, Peter Donahue, having bought his brother’s interest, erected a
commodious brick building covering an area of 50,000 square feet, for a foundry
and machine shop, on the site of their roofless foundry of 1849. For some years following Mr. Donahue’s
attention was divided with other matters of a public and private nature, and
his business materially declined.
In 1860 Irving
M. Scott, upon the recommendation of his employers—Messrs Murray and Hazelhurst, of Baltimore—was employed as draughtsman in the
Donahue works, and came to California to enter upon the duties of that
position. In 1863 Mr. Donahue formed a
co-partnership with H. J. Booth and C.S. Higgins, under the firm name of Donahue,
Booth & Co., and the same year Mr. Scott, who had spent a year in the
Miners’ Foundry as draughtsman in order to familiarize himself with every
feature of quartz-mining machinery, accepted the super-intendency
of the works for the new firm.
Notwithstanding
the new members of the firm were men of fine reputation as business men, they
failed to resuscitate the waning business of the concern, and in 1865 another
change was made in the ownership, G. W. Prescott and Irving M Scott taking the
place of Mr. Donahue and Mr. Higgins.
Mr. Prescott and Mr. Booth had been for years associated in the
ownership and management of the Marysville foundry, at that time one of the
largest on the coast. Mr. Scott brought
into the firm those prime elements of success, a very high order of talent as a
mechanical engineer, superior executive ability, unconquerable energy, and that
lofty sense of honor which gave him a reputation above question. Under his excellent management the business
immediately exhibited new life in every department; and larger, improved
machinery, and new and better tools soon became necessary. The working force was increased to 300 men,
and still the order accumulated faster than the work could be executed, so that
as early as 1866 the books of the firm contained unfilled orders for four
railroad locomotives, eight cars, three large hoisting engines, six
quartz-mills with an aggregate capacity of seventy-five stamps, 200 tons of
extra shoes and dies, besides many small jobs, amounting in all to some $180,000.
The Union Iron
Works constructed the first locomotive built on the Pacific coast, for the San
Francisco & San Jose railroad company.
It made its trial trip over the road between those two cities, August
30, 1865, conveying over 200 invited guests, among them a number of noted
personages. The locomotive was an
elegant machine, embodying several improved features, originated by the
builders. A portion of the run it attained
a speed of sixty-six miles an hour. This
trial was an event in the mechanical history of California. The Union Iron Works made the engines for the
sloop of war Saginaw, the first Government ship built on this coast, in
1859-60. The hull was built at Mare
Island, of California laurel wood.
Previous to
building the company’s new works on Potrero Point,
their manufactory was situated on the site of the present Union Foundry block,
between Market and Mission and First and Fremont
Streets. The building was of brick, part three stories
in hight, with a frontage of 187 ½ feet on First, 120
feet on Mission, and 275 feet on Fremont street.
Conceiving the
idea of creating an extensive ship-building industry on the Pacific coast for
the construction of iron and steel vessels, the company decided to erect a plant
in San Francisco that should rival in its completeness and capacity the great
ship yards of the eastern shore of the continent. Irving M. Scott, in 1880, made a tour of the
world, consuming eleven months, during which time he visited and carefully inspected
all the large ship-building establishments on the Atlantic coast and those of
Europe, noting their respective features of superiority. Having previously purchased nine blocks (22
acres) of land on Potrero Point, fronting on San
Francisco bay, the proprietors of the Union Iron Works began in April, 1883 the
erection of the buildings for their gigantic establishment. Years of time and millions of dollars have
been consumed in perfecting Mr. Scott’s ideal ship-building plant, which is not
excelled, if equaled, in the world, in the character and completeness of its
equipments in machinery and tools. The
following brief sketch of the various departments will give the reader an
outline of this gigantic manufactory, which furnishes employment to some 1,200
to1,500 men, and turns out two to four million dollars
value of product annually.
The Union Iron
Works occupy a strip of land 1,488 feet long, from north to south, with a
frontage on Central Basin of 1,040 feet.
The machine shop is a brick building 200 x 215 feet, with a gallery 150
feet long and fifty feet wide, all under one iron
roof, the entire floor and gallery space occupying an area of 46,400 square
feet. This building is furnished with
all the latest and best improved machinery and appliances in use for erecting
the largest iron and steel merchant ships and war vessels. It contains one planer that will plane a
surface twelve feet wide and twenty-six feet long, fitted with cutting tools
suited for planning any kind of metal.
Another planer will cut ten feet square, besides a number of other
adapted to smaller work.
The lath
department is also perfect, including special lathers for ship-work. One is capable of turning a shaft forty-nine
feet long, or a crank shaft for a compound marine engine. It is the most complete tool in the United
States. The boring-mill will turn thirty
feet long by ten feet wide. The machine
will perform boring, planing, slotting, drilling and
key-setting. It occupies a space fifty
feet square and is forty-three feet high, and is said not to be excelled by any
similar machine in the world. Among the
other boring-mills are those of twelve, eight and five feet in diameter, and
one for boring engine and cylinder frames, which will bore a cylinder ten feet
in diameter and twenty feet long. This
shop contains one of the largest hydraulic presses in the world for pressing in
crank plates and pins; also erecting pits and all small tools essential to the
work. Engines of any size can be put
together completely in this shop and then picked up by one of the great
over-head traveling cranes, capable of lifting sixty tons each placed upon a
car and taken to the wharf, where a set of steam shears, with a capacity of 100
tons, again picks it up and places it in the vessel in the required position.
The engine house
is a brick structure 40x 80 feet, and contains a powerful compound engine with
all the latest improvements. In this
building is also situated the air compressor, which supplies the motive power
for the overhead traveling cranes and the hydraulic pumps in the different
shops; also pumps for the accumulator for supplying hydraulic power throughout
the works under a pressure of 1,200 pounds to the square inch. In this compartment are also the electric
dynamos used for lighting the establishment with electricity, for which both
there are and incandescent systems are employed.
The boiler house
contains the latest improved fire and water tube boiler internally fired, with
steam capacity to run a 250-horse-power engine.
The tool room is
also a brick structure with 1,520 feet floor space, supplied with every
appliance devised by inventive genius for making all small tools, with
machinery for fitting lathes, planes, drills, steam hammers, grinding machines,
tempering apparatus, blowers, etc.
Adjoining this is the brass and copper shop fitted with a most complete
foundry and tools for the manufacture of every kind of brass and copper work,
including hardening furnaces, tempering and babbiting
furnace for annealing steel castings and forgings in accordance with the latest
scientific developments in handling steel.
This furnace will anneal a piece of metal sixteen feet long, ten feet
wide and three feet thick; also the thinnest steel plates or the thickest steel
castings.
The iron foundry
is a brick building 100 x 200 feet, with a floor space of 20,000 square
feet. The molding pit is fourteen feet
in diameter and fourteen feet deep, with capacity for making the largest
castings. The second pit is nine feet in
diameter and ten feet deep. There are
four core ovens with the most approved apparatus for heating and lifting cores,
the largest of which is eighteen feet square, capable of drying a core weighing
twenty tons in a short time. Two
overhead traveling cranes, capable of lifting sixty tons, travel the whole
length of the building and command the entire floor space of the foundry,
besides twenty-two wall or post cranes, all operated by hydraulic power. The three cupolas of the foundry are of the
latest improved construction, and have a capacity for making a casting weighing
sixty tons in three hours. The tracks of
the Southern Pacific Railroad system enter the foundry at two points,
delivering iron or coke, or taking material from the cupolas without any extra
cost for transportation.
The pattern-shop
is a brick building 50 x 150 feet, four stories in height. The lower story is devoted to making
patterns; the upper three to the storage of patterns. This shop is furnished with the best
wood-working machinery, operated by a wire rope from the boiler shop. A perfect system of registering is here
carried out, so that any pattern made can be found at a moment’s notice.
Adjoining this
building is the brick store room, fifty feet square and four stories in height,
where all materials are kept. It is
supplied with elevator and complete system of fire alarms.
The boiler shop
occupies 150 x 200 feet, and is fitted with hydraulic traveling cranes such as
before described.
There are in this shop three hydraulic machines capable of riveting a
rivet two inches in diameter, or one three-eights of an inch in diameter, with
equal facility. This shop is also
supplied with hydraulic shears capable of shearing a steel plate an inch and a
half thick and fourteen feet long; or, by changing the dies, bending the
water-leg for a fire-box boiler, or of flanging a boiler-head of a boiler
sixteen inches in diameter and an inch and a quarter thick, with a nine-inch
flange; or of stamping out the flange for a corrugated furnace forty-five inches
in diameter at a single blow, or of flanging wrought-iron doors, man-hole
plates, etc. The shop contains three
most completely designed boiler drills for drilling rivet holes in the shells
and heads of marine boilers; also flexible tubes for drilling the interior
parts of boilers, all arranged for doing the highest class of boiler work in
the cheapest manner.
The shop is also
supplied with bending machine for bending channel iron and shaping flat plate
into any desired form; also planning machines capable of planning pieces
twenty-five feet long and armor plate eighteen inches thick, the tool cutting
forward and backward, and propelled by hydraulic power. In this excellently equipped boiler shop are
rollers for rolling iron or steel plates an inch and a half thick, twelve feet
wide, and of any length. This shop has
facilities for manufacturing the largest and most intricate boiler made in the
world. Here the boilers are made for the
great Government war ships built by the Union Iron Works, the plates being
steel one and a half inches thick, and the boilers ten feet in diameter, and
intended to carry a pressure of 160 pounds of steam and weighing seventy-eight
tons each.
The blacksmith
shop is 50 x 200 feet, and is fitted up with three steam hammers, a system of
hydraulic cranes, and all the best designs of improved tools requisite for
forging and other work.
The buildings
are all well lighted, the majority of the windows being 12 feet wide and twenty
feet in height, glazed with corrugated wrought glass, besides skylights and
ventilation. The extensive use of
hydraulic power is an exceptional feature in these shops.
The ship-yard
and wharf are situated across Napa street and north
from the workshops. The car track on the
wharf is of standard gauge, and the wharf is strong enough to sustain a car
loaded with 100 tons and carry it to the lifting shears, which are capable of
lifting a hundred tons at a single lift, operated by steam power. There are two sets of shears, one on the
wharf east of the dry dock, which will lift sixteen tons, the other on the
wharf west of the dry dock, the largest of their kind on this continent. They will lift a single piece of 120 tons’
weight to the height of sixty feet, and will move it horizontally thirty-five
feet. They are used for handling the
immense boilers and engines now required in ships, and the whole system is
easily and successfully operated by a man running the engine on the dock. Along the wharf is a dry dock, capable of
taking a vessel 400 feet in length, equipped with all the latest
improvements. On the west side of the
wharf is the ship slip, with sufficient depth of water to float the largest
vessel, and where they can come under the shears and have their boilers or
engines lifted out or put in bodily.
The ships’ ways
are to the west of the ship slip, with every convenience and appliance for
plating and handling a vessel in process of construction. These ways are furnished with overhead
traveling cranes which will take any part of the ship’s material from the dock
and place it in any portion of the vessel.
On these ways have been built the cruisers
“Charleston” and “San Francisco.” The “Monterey” and “No. 6,” and the
great iron caissoa for the Government dock at Mare
Island, and thirteen other ships for the merchant marine. A pickling tank is connected with the works,
of sufficient size to take in sheets of metal twenty-five feet long, six feet
wide and of any thickness, supplied with cranes for handling them, and steel
brushes, propelled by machinery, for polishing these plates for galvanizing.
At the head of
the ships’ ways is the shop for handling, rolling, planing,
drilling, countersinking, punching, shearing and fitting the plates and ribs of
the ship. The works contain a larger set
of bending rolls in use than in any other ship-yard in the United States. They are twenty-six inches in diameter,
twenty feet between housings, and will roll a plate two inches thick. There are four planers for planing the edges of heavy steel plates, the largest of which
will plane the edge of a plate twenty-five feet long, eight feet wide and
thirteen inches thick. Adjoining this is
the drawing board, fifty feet square, of Port Oxford four-inch cedar, for
transferring the lines of the ships from the molding loft to the place where
the actual work is done. Here is also an
immense hydraulic machine capable of bending steel plates three inches thick,
twelve feet wide and of any length.
Adjoining this is the blacksmith shop with steam hammers, cranes and all
the appliances necessary for a ship yard.
The second story of this building is occupied as a molding loft and
drawing room, where the lines of the ships are laid down.
The joiner shop
is 60 x 100 feet, and contains all the best improved devices for making
interior finish and work for the complete furnishing and equipping of modern
passenger ships or Government war vessels.
The planing mill is of the same dimensions as
the joiner shop, and is supplied with the finest machinery for preparing the
decking and the heavier parts of the wood work.
A complete finishing shop, 40 x 90 feet, is situated on the windward
side of the works—so as to avoid danger of fire—in which all the finer
cabinetwork and furniture are finished and polished before going on board
ship. The lumber shed is 40 x 120 feet,
and is filled with a complete assortment of ornamental woods, hard woods, pines
and deck planking, etc.
The galvanizing
room is a brick building 30 x 60 feet, containing a perfect galvanizing plant
capable of galvanizing sheets twenty-five feet long and six feet wide. The copper shop, which adjoins the blacksmith
shop, is 40 x 100 feet, furnished with all the best appliances for making
copper pipes, galley fittings and other marine work.
The tin shop is
fitted with all the various tools requisite for making the galley furniture,
tanks, etc.
The immense
plant, which, including the increment, is valued at some $3,000,000, and the
creation of which has made it possible for the Union Iron Works to successfully
compete with the largest and best ship yards of the world in building great
iron and steel merchant and war ships, owes it existence and achievements
mainly to the brain and energy of one man, Irving M. Scott, as the managing
head of the company. Determined to make
the Union Iron Works a navy yard for building Government battleships, Mr. Scott
went to Washington in 1886, when the contract for building several cruisers
were to be let, and through his persistent, arduous efforts and business
shrewdness secured on December 16 of that year the contract for building the
United States steel cruiser Charleston, for $1,017,500. This most portentous and important event in
the maritime history of the Pacific coast, was achieved almost entirely through
Irving M. Scott’s personal labors and in the face of positive convictions on
the part of the government officials that the work could not be done on the
coast, and the most strenuous opposition on the part of ship yard owners in the
Atlantic States. In spite of the
predicted failure the Charleston was completed according to contract and
specifications by May 5, 1889. The
alterations authorized by the Government were made and the cruiser accepted in
November of that year. The dimensions of
the Charleston are, length, 318 feet; breadth of beam,
forty-six feet; speed, 18.9 knots; induced horse-power natural draught,
7650. The successful launching of this
huge war ship was an occasion of great public demonstration and rejoicing at
the Pacific metropolis, as it was looked upon as the initiatory step in a new
mammoth industry which has already bee worth many millions of dollars to the
laboring classes of the Pacific coast.
The capabilities of the Union Iron Works to construct great ships of war
were now no longer questioned, and contracts for several other steel cruisers
and battle-ships have been awarded by the Government to Mr. Scott on competing
bids with the Eastern ship yards.
The steel
cruiser San Francisco, --contract price, $1,428,000’ length, 323.9 feet;
breadth, 49.2’ depth 31.8 feet; displacement, 4,082 tons; induced horse-power,
natural draught, 7,500’ speed, 20.6 knots, -- has been finished and accepted by
the Government. The Monterey, a
steel-armored ship for coast defense, costing $1,628,950, is now (February,
1891) approaching completion at these works; and the steel cruiser, No. 6, for
which Mr. Scott was awarded the contract June 16, 1890, for $1,796,000, is
under process of construction. It is to
be 344.2 feet, and be fitted with triple expansion engines of 13,500 horse-power. Her
contract speed is twenty knots.
In 1891, also,
Mr. Scott secured the contract for building a steel line-of-battle-ship.
In addition to
these war vessels the Union Iron Works have built some ten merchant ships
entire, besides rebuilding some thirty other during the past eight years.
Irving Murray
Scott, the General Manager of the Union Iron Works, was born, of Quaker
parents, at Hebron Mills, Baltimore county, Maryland,
December 25, 1837. His father, who was a
clergyman in the Society of Friends, married Miss Elizabeth Leittig,
a native of Baltimore county. Irving M. Scott is one of their family of eleven children.
Guided by his innate genius for mechanics in the selection of his
calling, at the age of seventeen he entered the manufactory of Obed Hussey, inventor of the reaping machine, and soon
gained a complete knowledge of the wood and iron work of the
establishment. In response to his
craving for larger opportunities, he, by the aid of Mr. Hussey, secured a
position, in the fall of 1857, in the extensive iron works of Murray & Hazelhurst, in Baltimore.
Determined to master the business, young Scott devoted his spare hours
to the study of mechanical drawing, in which he made such rapid progress and
attained such proficiency that his employers transferred him to the drawing
department, placing him in charge of the construction of stationary and fire
engines. He entered this new field with
enthusiasm, spending his evenings in diligent study of text-books and in
attending lectures on mechanics, and classes in German. In 1860 the way opened for the rising young
artisan to gratify his ambition and love of adventure. He accepted a position in the Union Iron
Works here in San Francisco. After two
years of service in that capacity, perceiving the growing importance of quartz
mining on the Pacific coast, and wishing to perfect himself in the knowledge of
mining machinery, he resigned his connection with the Union Iron Works in 1862
and took charge of the drafting department of the Miners’ Foundry, which at
that time offered superior advantages for obtaining the desired
information. In 1863 he again resumed
connection with the Union Iron Works as superintendent, in the employ of
Messrs. Donahue, Booth & Higgins, then proprietors. Two years later Mr. Scott became a partner in
the concern, Colonel Donahue retiring.
From this time he has been the master-controlling spirit who has shaped
the proud career of this mammoth manufactory.
In 1875 another
change took place in the proprietorship, Mr. Henry T. Scott, a younger brother,
succeeding J. H. Booth, the firm then, as now, consisting of George W.
Prescott, Irving M Scott and Henry T. Scott, the three being equal
partners. The business had already grown
to be the largest of its class west of the Rocky Mountains, and gave employment
to 600 men. The subsequent expansion of
the business and works was steady and progressive until the great ship-building
plant, before described in this article, was erected on the Potrero.
Great as have
been the labor and responsibilities attendant upon his position at the head of
this gigantic establishment, they have not been sufficient to fully occupy the
attention and exhaust the energies of his versatile mind, for he has been a
zealous student of science, art and literature, and has kept abreast with the
most advanced thought of the age on all live questions. His characteristic habit of thoroughness has
become interested in, so so that his brain is a
well-filled storehouse of garnered knowledge from which he draws at pleasure. As a converser he is highly entertaining and
instructive, and as a lecturer or public speaker he has few equals on the
Pacific side of the continent. His
published addresses delivered on various themes and occasions before large and
critical audiences attest his remarkable powers as a thinker and orator. His addresses on “Trades Unions,” treating
the labor question from a manufacturer’s standpoint, his oration on the
“Development of Science,” delivered at the laying of the corner stone of the
California Academy of Sciences, and his lecture on “Evolution” before the
California Scientific Association, are masterpieces of compact thought and
logic clad in the garb of true eloquence.
His contributions to the current magazines on economic questions, including
his articles on “Protection to American Labor” and “The Mission of the Knights
of Labor” are papers of exceptional merit, and demonstrate the writer’s ability
to deal with those current topics.
Like all loyal
men of great force of character, he has also taken an active interest, and is a
recognized power in local and State politics.
In principle he is a Republican, and is a zealous advocate and supporter
of the party of Lincoln and Grant. He
was once nominated for the State Senate, and though he ran ahead of his ticket,
failed to overcome the large Democratic majority of his district. In the numerous societies of which Mr. Scott
is a member, he has served officially as President of the Howard Literary Society,
Addison Literary Society, San Francisco Art Association and the Mechanics’
Institute. He has also served on the
board of Regents of the State University, and is one of the Board of Trustees
of the Leland Stanford University.
Possessing a
very active receptive and retentive mind, inordinate energy and industry,
coupled with a high order of inventive talent and rare comprehensive
intellectual grasp, Irving Murray Scott, whether considered from what he has
achieved or what he is, ranks among the great characters of the nineteenth
century, and as one who has stamped his impress upon the history of the Pacific
coast.
October 7, 1863,
Mr. Scott married Miss Laura, daughter of John R. Horde, of Covington,
Kentucky, a lady of culture. Their children
are Alice Webb Scott and Lawrence Irving Scott.
Transcribed
Karen L. Pratt.
Source:
"The Bay of San Francisco," Vol. 1, pages 660-668, Lewis Publishing
Co, 1892.
©
2005 Karen L. Pratt.