BATH IRON WORKS

'Bath Iron Works' (BIW) is a shipyard located on the Kennebec River in Bath, Maine. Since its foundation in 1884 by Thomas W. Hyde, Bath Iron Works has built private, commercial and military vessels. Its largest customer has historically been the United States Navy, for which the shipyard has built and sometimes designed battleships, frigates, cruisers and destroyers. Among the latest is the ''Arleigh Burke'' class, which is among the most advanced surface warships in the world. BIW was purchased in 1995 by General Dynamics and may be the largest private employer in Maine, with the possible exception of the Hannaford Bros. Co. supermarket chain.
In World War II, the toughness of warships launched by Maine workers gave rise to the saying ''"Bath-built is best-built."'' ^[1]

Contents

History

Ships built

External links

Further reading

References

History

Bath Iron Works was incorporated in 1884 by General Hyde, a native of Bath who served under General Philip Sheridan in the American Civil War. After the war, Hyde had acquired a local shop involved in the manufacture of windlasses and other iron hardware used on the decks of the many wooden ships built in Bath's many shipyards. Hyde expanded the business by improving existing practices, entering new markets, and sometimes by acquiring other existing businesses in town.
By 1882, Hyde Windlass was expanding with an eye to entering the new and growing business of iron shipbuilding, and on February 28, 1890 the recently-incorporated Bath Iron Works won its first contract for complete vessels, two iron gunboats for the U.S. Navy. The ''Machias'', one of these 190-foot gunboats, was the first ship actually launched by the company. (Historian Snow (see "Further Reading") says the gunboat was commanded during World War I by Chester Nimitz, an assertion that is not supported by Nimitz's biographers.)
In 1892, the yard won its first commercial contract for a steel vessel, the 2,500-ton steel passenger steamer ''City of Lowell''. In the 1890s, the company built several yachts for wealthy sailors.
In 1899, General Hyde, suffering from the Bright's Disease that would kill him later that year, resigned from management of the shipyard, leaving his sons Edward and John in charge.
That year the shipyard began construction of the ''Georgia'', the only battleship to be built in Bath. The ship dominated the yard for five years until its launching in 1904, and was at times the only ship under construction. The yard faced numerous challenges because of the weight of armor and weapons. In sea trials, the ''Georgia'' averaged 19.26 knots (35.67 km/h) for four hours, making her the fastest ship in her class and the fastest battleship in the Navy.
The company continued to rely on Navy contracts, which provided 86% of the value of new contracts between 1905 and 1917. The yard also produced fishing trawlers, freighters, and yachts throughout the first half of the century.
At peak production during World War II (1943–1944), the shipyard launched a destroyer every 17 days.
In 1981, Falcon Transport ordered two tankers, the last commercial vessels built by BIW.
In 1988, the USS ''Samuel B. Roberts'' (FFG-58), commissioned two years earlier at Bath, survived a mine explosion that tore a hole in its engine room and flooded two compartments. Over the next two years, BIW repaired the ''Roberts'' in unique fashion. The guided missile frigate was towed to the company's dry dock in Portland, Maine, and put up on blocks, where its damaged engine room was cut out of the ship. Meanwhile, workers in Bath built a 315-ton replacement. When it was ready, the module was floated south to Portland, placed on the dry dock, slid into place under the ''Roberts,'' jacked up, and welded into place.[1] By surviving a hit that Naval Sea Systems Command engineers thought should have sunk her, the ''Roberts'' validated the penny-pinching design of the ''Oliver Hazard Perry'' class, the U.S. Navy's largest post-WWII class until the ''Burkes'' — and validated the Navy's against-the-odds decision to have picked BIW to design it.

Ships built

★ ''Virginia''-class battleship

★
★ USS ''Georgia'' (BB-15),

★ ''Oliver Hazard Perry''-class frigates

★
★ USS ''Samuel B. Roberts'' (FFG-58), launched in 1984 and repaired after being punctured by a mine in 1988

★
★ USS ''Simpson'' (FFG-56), launched August 31,1984. One of two U.S. Navy ships in commission to have sunk an enemy vessel with shipboard weaponry, the other being the USS ''Constitution''

★ ''Arleigh Burke'' class destroyers

★
★ USS ''Arleigh Burke'' (DDG-51), commissioned July 4, 1991.

★
★ USS ''Bainbridge'' (DDG-96),

★
★ USS ''Gridley'' (DDG-101),

External links

★ Bath Iron Works website

★ USS ''Samuel B. Roberts'' (FFG-58) under repair at BIW's Portland dry dock

Further reading

★ Cradle of Ships, Eskew, Garnett Laidlaw, , , Putnam, 1958, ASIN B0007E5VY4 (First general history of BIW.)

★ No Higher Honor: Saving the USS Samuel B. Roberts in the Persian Gulf, Peniston, Bradley, , , Naval Institute Press, 2006, ISBN 1-59114-661-5 (Describes the construction of a ''Perry''-class guided missile frigate, the training of its precommissioning crew at BIW, and the complex repair job that returned it to duty.)

★ The Yard: Building a Destroyer at the Bath Iron Works, Sanders, Michael S., , , HarperCollins, 1999, ISBN 0-06-019246-1 (Describes the construction of USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) at BIW.)

★ Bath Iron Works: The First Hundred Years, Snow, Ralph L., , , Maine Maritime Museum, 1987, ISBN 0-9619449-0-0 (The definitive work on BIW from 1884-1987.)

★ Bath Iron Works (Images of America: Maine), Toppan, Andrew, , , Arcadia Publishing, 2002, ISBN 0-7385-1059-9 (Historic and contemporary photos of BIW.)

References

1. See Peniston, Sanders, Snow.