Saint John Shipbuilding - History

History

Numerous shipyards were located on the shores of Courtney Bay in the east end of Saint John Harbour where extensive mud flats dried at low tide.

In 1918 it was announced that the St. John Drydock & Shipbuilding Co. would be established as a subsidiary of the Canada Dredging Co., Ltd. of Midland, Ontario and would construct the largest drydock in the world.

St. John to Have Biggest Drydock.

The drydock to be erected at the City of St. John, N.B., will be one of the largest in the world. The contract has already been let to the St. John Drydock and Shipbuilding Company by the Department of Public Works, Ottawa. The length of the new dock will be 1,150 feet and its width at the bottom 125 feet. It will accommodate the largest vessel, naval or mercantile, which is now afloat or planned. The St. John Drydock and Shipbuilding Company is controlled by the Canada Dredging Company, Limited of Midland, Ont. Among those connected with the organization are James Playfair, General Manager of the Great Lakes Transportation Company, Ltd.; W.H. Robertson, D.L. White, Jr., W.J. Sheppard, W.E.Phin, D.S. Pratt, George Y. Chown, R. Hobson, Colonel Thomas A. Duff, J.A. Paisley, and J.B. Craven.

— August 11, 1918, The New York Times

The new shipyard with its massive drydock opened in 1923 at a location on the eastern shore of Courtney Bay. The first of its long list of vessels, the ferry MV Kipawo, which still exists, was launched on December 5, 1924. After fit-up, it went into service in 1926.

The shipyard was sold in the 1950s to the industrialist K.C. Irving. The ensuing corporate restructuring saw the company renamed Saint John Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., Ltd.. By the 1980s, it came to be known simply as Saint John Shipbuilding and was the flagship of a collection of eastern Canadian shipyards operated by Irving Shipbuilding.

The shipyard was used to construct oil tankers for Irving Oil and freighters and other cargo vessels for Kent Lines, a shipping company owned by K.C. Irving. The facility also received a contract from Canadian Pacific Railway in 1969 to build a passenger-vehicle ferry for its Bay of Fundy service from Saint John to Digby. Similarly, the government-owned ferry operator CN Marine placed an order in the early 1980s for a passenger-vehicle ferry for its Northumberland Strait service to Prince Edward Island.