Crisis, Disease, Shortage, and Strike: Shipbuilding on Staten Island in World War I

By Faith D’Alessandro

On April 6th 1917 the United States officially joined the First World War. The casus belli was the sinking of three US ships by German U-boats on March 18th. However, the U-boat issue and its devastating consequences had been under way for far longer, and would fuel a shipping crisis throughout the remainder of the war. In February 1917 U-boats had sunk almost 540,000 gross tons of shipping, and in March another 600,000, creating an enormous need to increase merchant ship construction.[1] However, the Navy also needed to respond to the threat of the submarine. Prior to the war the US Navy had been focused on building huge battleships and cruisers, but now it needed smaller, faster destroyers and sub chasers. These and other factors contributed to a nearly insurmountable shipbuilding crisis. By late 1917 the Navy had put in orders for more than 200 destroyers, and by early 1918 they had also ordered over one million tons of troop ships, two million tons of cargo shipping, tankers, colliers, refrigeration ships, and hospital ships,[2] but where were all these ships to be built? The urgency of mobilization and defense affected ship manufacturing centers across the country, including the huge shipbuilding industry in New York Harbor, which was centered around three major areas: Greenpoint, Brooklyn, including the Brooklyn Navy Yard; the Camden-Bayonne area of New Jersey; and the North Shore of Staten Island. The crisis would push Staten Island’s existing shipbuilding firms to expand both materially and fiscally in order to respond to the need for more vessels, which brought an increase in workforce and wages to the North Shore. This, in turn, enhanced the importance of Staten Island to the city’s shipbuilding industry and its response to the wartime mobilization in spite of serious challenges, such as disease, shortages, and strikes.

Paul Thompson photograph of Staten Island Shipbuilding Company interior view, early 1900s, PK 4119, Staten Island Museum Photo Collection, Staten Island Museum, Staten Island, New York.

Staten Island has a long and varied history of shipbuilding. It spans everything from John Van Deventer, whose 1748 ship the Irene carried Moravian settlers on fourteen round trips across the Atlantic,[3] to the behemoth that was Bethlehem Steel during World War II – the largest private yard in New York City at that time.[4] Prior to the First World War, Staten Island companies, such as Downey Shipbuilding Company, were making everything from pleasure yachts for Kaiser Willhelm II, launched in 1902, to oil barges and various size merchant ships.[5] However, with the war came a drastic increase in activity and importance for the major firms centered on Staten Island’s shores. The four largest firms at the time were Downey Shipbuilding Company, Johnson Shipyard Co, Standard Shipbuilding Company, and Staten Island Shipbuilding Company (SISCO). The Downey and Johnson Shipyards built merchant ships and by early 1918 were contracted for ten ships (75,000 tons) and three ships (10,500 tons) respectively.[6] However, both Standard and SISCO had the facilities to build Navy ships and were therefore contracted to build both merchant and Navy shipping. The pressure on these companies created by the shipbuilding crisis was intense, and were exacerbated throughout 1918 by several other crises.

As naval and merchant shipping contracts flew out to companies across the country and the building crisis intensified, a secondary crisis reared its head: shortages. Coal and iron were in short supply, and were needed by the Army and the railroads as well as the Navy. However, the primary shortage on Staten Island proved to be labor, and the related problems of transporting and housing that labor. An investigation in early January 1918 found “the four shipyards on Staten Island are confronted by a shortage of 10,000 men.”[7] At the same time there was a “vital lack of transportation for carrying work-men from their homes to the shipyards.”[8] A month later this crisis had not eased; as one New York paper stated, “the Government will blunder again in its shipbuilding programme unless it acts immediately to relieve congested housing conditions for the workmen at eighteen shipbuilding plants near New York city.”[9] A Staten Island committee was established and sought to construct housing at a one-mile square area in Bull’s Head and Mariner’s Harbor due to its direct trolley line to the water’s edge, but the housing was needed even more immediately. In addition to the housing crunch, the four large shipbuilding companies on Staten Island were all short of men: SISCO had 2,100 but needed 5,000, Johnson had 180 and needed 500, Downey had 900 but needed 3,500, and Standard had 2,500 but needed 2,500 more. The New York Herald wrote that the “loss of efficiency and productive capacity, the direct cost to the plant, and therefore to the nation, is staggering.”[10] Then in late February 1918 these labor shortages were exacerbated by the next crisis to trouble the shipyards.

Paul Thompson photograph of Staten Island Shipbuilding Company shipbuilding team gathered together, early 1900s, PK 4107, Staten Island Museum Photo Collection, Staten Island Museum, Staten Island, New York.

The struggle over union recognition, fair wages, and many other labor issues rumbled on throughout the First World War. In mid to late February 1918, East Coast marine carpenters fought for wage parity with workers on the Pacific coast and struggled under increasing living costs. There were already 400 carpenters striking at shipyards on Staten Island when reports of a general strike across the entire Atlantic seaboard began to circulate. John Stuart, secretary of the Marine Woodworkers District Council, declared the “strike would start unless carpenters get $6.40 for an eight-hour day, instead of $4.80,” a general strike like that would have crippled government shipbuilding.[11]  The calls for a general strike created a firestorm in the press with equal vehemence on both sides. Striking workers at Downey Shipbuilding Company claimed they were not unpatriotic; many had sons fighting in Europe, but they wanted fair wages for their work.[12] The potential impact on mobilization was so serious that President Wilson sent a telegram to William L. Hutcheson, the General President of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, stating that

ships are absolutely necessary for the winning of the war. No one can strike a deadlier blow at the safety of the nation and of its forces on the other side than by interfering with or obstructing the shipbuilding program…. no body of men have the moral right in the present circumstance of the nation to strike… If you do not act upon this principle, you are undoubtedly giving aid and comfort to the enemy… Will you co-operate or will you obstruct?[13]

With this telegram in hand, Hutcheson persuaded the workers to back down. At this point, sixty men already on strike from the Staten Island Shipbuilding Company returned to work. However, problems persisted at Downey Shipbuilding Company as returning workers discovered they had to reapply for their jobs. According to their union representative, John Rice, these men had been told to reapply for work at the same or a lower wage since the plant’s Vice-President, William Bowers, claimed they only needed unskilled, not skilled workers.[14] Through the spring and summer Staten Island shipbuilders forged ahead, increasing production and delivering ships to the Navy and merchant seamen, but before long shipbuilders were rocked by a new crisis: a pandemic.

In a letter to the Commissioner of Health in Manhattan, the Staten Island Borough President, Calvin D. Van Name, graphically described what was happening to the Staten Island shipbuilding industry, and to Staten Island itself. In words so utterly recognizable today he begged for permission to close theaters, soda fountains, saloons, and dance halls to slow the spread. Regarding the Staten Island shipbuilding industry, Van Name noted that Standard, Downey, and SISCO employed approximately 13,000 men, and “about 15% are actually laid up sick, aggregating from 2,000 to 2,500 shipyard mechanics actually away.”[15] Van Name “believed that the epidemic has reduced working efficiency about 40%,” and went on to say, “this is a National disaster and nothing must be left undone to curb the ravages of the disease on Staten Island.”[16] Van Name also wrote that the shipping companies were desperately in need of medical help, noting that hospitals and nurses serving the shipyards were “completely overwhelmed.”[17] Further investigation by the major shipbuilding corporations revealed that all other doctors and hospitals on Staten Island were similarly in trouble, and the companies urged the Borough President to “take steps with the United States Government to permit the use of the new Base Hospital at Fox Hills.”[18] The Borough President’s heartfelt plea was sent just weeks before Germany signed the armistice and the war was over. The armistice altered the dynamic between the epidemic and the shipbuilding companies as the pressure to deliver new ships eased. Additionally, the epidemic slowed in the last months of 1918, allowing many to return to work.

The armistice caught the shipbuilding industry just as it was more effectively responding to the demands and pressures coming from both the Navy and merchant businesses and increasing production of vessels. On Staten Island, 1918 had been a rollercoaster ride for the industry, and provides an informative picture of what was likely experienced up and down the Atlantic seaboard in shipbuilding centers. Companies on the island had received countless contracts for merchant and naval shipping, operating under tremendous pressure to deliver, only to be plagued by shortages and strikes, and then an actual plague. Despite these many obstacles, the yards did produce both cargo and fighting vessels that were sent to war, and this wartime work helped solidify shipbuilding as a principal industry on Staten Island through the rapid growth of many previously smaller firms. These firms had expanded physically and financially, delivering an increase in workers and wealth to the North Shore. By mid-1918, Standard had launched six 7,500-ton cargo ships. In addition, “two sea-going minesweepers have been launched, while there are at present six large cargo vessels on the way, and four ships in the water being fitted out: two minesweepers and two cargo vessels.”[19] Meanwhile SISCO built six war-class freighters for Britain, and eight minesweepers and six ocean tugs for the US Navy.[20] Although not every company survived the interwar years, some companies, such as Caddell Brothers Dry Dock, still exist today, and others, while no longer operating, played a major role in World War II. In 1931, SISCO became United Dry Docks, which in 1938 was purchased by Bethlehem Steel. The Bethlehem Steel plant on Staten Island went on to produce forty-four destroyers during WWII, the most of any private yard in the nation, and the seeds of that staggering production were laid by companies like SISCO, Standard, and Downey during 1918 when, against steep odds, Staten Island shipbuilders worked through crisis, disease, shortage, and strike.[21]

Faith D'Alessandro graduated with a MA in History from the College of Staten Island in 2016, producing a thesis titled, “Sailing into Darkness: The Introduction of Ironclads in the Early Civil War as a Precursor to the Postwar Backlash Against Technology, and the Intensified Line-Staff Conflict.” Faith has worked as a researcher for Dr. Martin Melosi’s book, Fresh Kills: A History of Consuming and Discarding in New York City, and for the Staten Island Museum exhibit “Women of the Nation Arise!”, and helped to create the Staten Island African American Heritage Tour app.

[1] William J. Williams, “Josephus Daniels and the U.S. Shipbuilding Program During World War 1,” The Journal of Military History Vol. 60 (January 1996): 15.

[2] Robert Hessen, “Charles Schwab and the Shipbuilding Crisis of 1918,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies Vol. 38, No. 4 (Oct. 1971): 390.

[3] Jean B. Gleisner, “A Cultural Landscape Report for Battery Weed Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island, NY,” (MS Thesis, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, 2008), 26-27.

[4] Tim Colton, “Staten Island Shipbuilding: Ferries and Destroyers,” Shipbuilding History Vol. 115, No. 4 (April 2010): 40.

[5] Norman J. Brouwer, “Survey of Cultural Resources in the Form of Derelict Ships and Barges,” 22 February 1983, Business and Industry Collection Box 10 Folder 46, Staten Island Museum, Staten Island, New York.

[6] “Shipyards, Months Behind, Hit by Labor, Coal, Iron Shortage,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 4 Jan, 1918, 1.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] “Shipyard Workers Need Houses Badly,” New York Herald, 4 Feb, 1918, 4.

[10] Ibid.

[11] “Shipyards Strike May Cripple U.S. Work,” The Standard Union, 14 Feb, 1918, 4.

[12] “Shipyard Strikers on Staten Island Return to Plants,” New York Tribune, 20 Feb, 1918, 9.

[13] “President Wilson’s Message to Hutcheson,” New York Times, 18 Feb, 1918, 1.

[14] “Shipyard Strikers on Staten Island Return to Plants,” New York Tribune, 20 Feb, 1918, 9.

[15] Letter to Dr. Royal S. Copeland Commissioner of Health: from Borough President Calvin D. Van Name, October 18, 1918, Borough President’s Copy Book #45 Oct 14, 1918 – Sept 29, 1919, Richmond Borough Collection, Staten Island Museum, Staten Island, New York.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] “Ship Galesburg is Set Afloat From Standard,” The Daily Advance, Jun 24, 1918, 1.

[20] Colton, “Staten Island Shipbuilding,” 40.

[21] Colton, “Staten Island Shipbuilding,” 40.