Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
August 25, 1866 Shipbuilder and naval architect Fop Smit died in the town of Niewe Leckerland (now known as Nieuw Lekkerland) in the Netherlands. He was 88. Smit had been born on October 11, 1777, in the Dutch town and municipality of Alblassderdam. His father Jan Foppe Smith (1742-1807) and uncle Jacques Foppe Smit (1756-1820)... Continue Reading →
August 23, 1980 U.S. Army Vessel (USAV) Yaquina was launched at the shipyard of the Norfolk Shipbuilding and Drydock Corporation in Norfolk, Virginia. This ship serves the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) as one of its hopper dredges. A hopper dredge, equipped with powerful engines and pumps, is used to keep waterways navigable by... Continue Reading →
July 18, 1931 The Matson Navigation Company ocean liner SS Mariposa was launched at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts. (That facility served as part of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation’s shipbuilding division.) Mariposa was built for service on a Pacific Ocean route between San Francisco, California, and Sydney, Australia. This ship was the largest passenger... Continue Reading →
In the early part of 1942 – not long after the United States entered World War II on the side of the Allies -- the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company established an emergency shipyard along the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington, to construct vessels for the global fight against the Axis powers. The Vancouver Shipyard started out... Continue Reading →
February 28, 1900 The U.S. Navy vessel USS Dart (YFB-308) was launched at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard (MINSY) at the waterfront city of Vallejo, California. MINSY, which is located 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco, had been built during the 1850s and was the first U.S. Navy base established on the Pacific... Continue Reading →
July 20, 1894 Errett Lobban Cord, industrialist and trend-setting automobile manufacturer, was born in the city of Warrensburg, Missouri. Cord, knowing a profitable thing when he saw it, immersed himself in the ever-burgeoning world of automobile development and did much to help that mode of transportation come of age. The Auburn, Cord, and Duesenberg automobiles... Continue Reading →
A shipyard owned and operated by African-Americans opened for business in Baltimore. A major force behind this new facility was Isaac Myers (1835-1891), who had been born in Baltimore. While Maryland was a slave state, Myers’ parents were free-born African-Americans. When he was 16, Myers began an apprenticeship as a caulker for ships coming into... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 