Fore River Shipyard was a shipyard on Weymouth Fore River in Braintree and Quincy, Massachusetts, that built hundreds of ships for military and civilian customers from 1883 to 1986.
The yard was founded in Braintree by Thomas A. Watson and Frank O. Wellington; it moved to Quincy Point in 1901. In 1913, it was purchased by Bethlehem Steel, and later transferred to Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation. It was sold to General Dynamics in 1963 and closed in 1986.
Most of the ships at the yard were built for the United States Navy. Its first government contract, for the destroyer , was followed by many others, including the battleship , the cruisers and ; and the aircraft carrier and its successor . The yard built early submarines for Electric Boat, including and . For foreign navies, Fore River produced five Type 1 submarines for the Imperial Japanese Navy, ten submarines for the Royal Navy, and the battleship for the Argentine Navy.
The yard built several merchant marine ships, including Thomas W. Lawson, the largest pure sailing ship ever built, and , the first ship built to carry refrigerated chemicals. General Dynamics Quincy Shipbuilding Division, as it eventually came to be known, ended its career as a producer of LNG tankers and merchant marine ships.
The yard also built passenger liners, including Matson Line's SS Mariposa, SS Monterey, and SS Lurline and American Export Lines' SS Independence and SS Constitution.
It was home to the second-largest shipbuilding crane in the world. It had two sub-yards: the Victory Destroyer Plant in Quincy during World War I and the Bethlehem Hingham Shipyard in Hingham during World War II. The yard also owned Bethlehem Atlantic Works, a drydock in East Boston.
One theory holds that the yard was the origin of the "Kilroy was here" graffito.
History
thumb|right|Shipyard in 1921
Origins
The shipyard traces its beginnings to 1882, when Thomas A. Watson purchased a farm alongside the Fore River in East Braintree, Massachusetts. In 1884, Watson unsuccessfully attempted to farm the land, but switched his focus to developing a steam engine after he was approached by a local businessman. He gave up that effort the following year, and decided to work with business partner Frank O. Wellington on shipbuilding.
Fore River Engine Company
thumb|alt=Advertisement for the shipyard, advertising the products that it built at the time|1899 advertisement for the Fore River Shipyard
The pair created the Fore River Engine Company after receiving an order from Maine for a 50-horsepower engine. Their first ship, the Barnacle, was fitted with local furnishings. Watson ended up buying a parcel of land after the owner refused to sell him of land for the railroad. The war brought expanded submarine development to the yard, as the Holland Torpedo Boat Company was purchased by the Electric Boat Company. Since Electric Boat had no yard of its own, it subcontracted to Fore River in order to complete orders. The first American submarine built at the yard was , launched in 1906. This arrangement lasted for the next twenty years, until Electric Boat built its own yard in 1924. Fore River would remain the primary builder of Electric Boat-designed submarines through the S-class of 1922, completing a total of 69 submarines for the US Navy during this period.
thumb|alt=The launching of the battleship Rivadavia, which is lacking many of her main armaments and is just a basic hull|Launching of Rivadavia
Another big development in the history of the yard was the receiving of the contract to build the for the Argentine Navy. The ship was one of two foreign battleships ever constructed in the United States, and occurred during the South American dreadnought race. After a long bidding process, the Argentine Naval Commission found that the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company bid was lowest on one battleship, and the Fore River Shipbuilding Company was lowest on the other. Despite some potential setbacks, the upcoming 1910 Pan-American Conference, and a guarantee of American participation in the Argentine centennial celebrations, Fore River secured the battleship contracts on 21 January 1910.