Concrete Ship - History

History

The oldest known ferrocement watercraft was a dinghy built by Joseph-Louis Lambot in Southern France in 1848. Lambot's boat was featured in the Exposition Universelle held in Paris in 1855.

Beginning in the 1860s, ferrocement barges were built in Europe for use on canals, and around 1896, an Italian engineer, Carlo Gabellini, began building small ships out of ferrocement. The most famous of his ships was the Liguria.

Between 1908 and 1914, larger ferrocement barges began to be made in Germany, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway, and California. The remains of a British ship of this type, the auxiliary coaster Violette (built 1919), can be seen at Hoo, Kent, England.

On August 2, 1917, Nicolay Fougner of Norway launched the first self-propelled ferrocement ship intended for ocean travel. This was an 84-foot vessel of 400 tons named Namsenfjord. With the success of this ship, additional ferrocement vessels were ordered, and in October 1917, the U.S. government invited Fougner to head a study into the feasibility of building ferrocement ships in the United States.

About the same time, the California businessman W. Leslie Comyn took the initiative to build ferrocement ships on his own. He formed the San Francisco Ship Building Company (in Oakland, California), and hired Alan Macdonald and Victor Poss to design the first American ferrocement ship, a 6,125-ton steamer named the SS Faith. Faith was launched March 18, 1918. She cost $750,000 to build. She was used to carry bulk cargo for trade until 1921, when she was sold and scrapped as a breakwater in Cuba.

On April 12, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson approved the Emergency Fleet Corporation program which oversaw the construction of 24 ferrocement ships for the war. However, when the war ended in November 1918, only 12 ferrocement ships were under construction and none of them had been completed. These 12 ships were eventually completed, but soon sold to private companies who used them for light-trading, storage, and scrap.

Other countries that looked into ferrocement ship construction during this period included Canada, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Between the world wars, there was little commercial or military interest in concrete ship construction. The reason was that other shipbuilding methods were cheaper and less labor intensive, and other kinds of ships were cheaper to operate. However, in 1942, after the U.S. entered World War II, the U.S. military found that its contractors had steel shortages. Consequently, the U.S. government contracted McCloskey & Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to build 24 self-propelled concrete ships. Construction started in July 1943. The shipyard was at Hookers Point in Tampa, Florida, and at its peak, it employed 6,000 workers. The U.S. government also contracted with two companies in California for the construction of concrete barge ships. Barge ships were large vessels that lacked engines to propel them. Instead, they were towed by tugs.

In Europe, ferro cement barges (FCBs) played a crucial role in World War II operations, particularly in the D-Day Normandy landings, where they were used as part of the Mulberry harbour defenses, for fuel and munitions transportation, and as floating pontoons. Some were fitted with engines and used as mobile canteens and troop carriers. Some of these vessels survive as abandoned wrecks in the Thames Estuary; two remain in civil use as moorings at Westminster. One notable wartime FCB, previously beached at Canvey Island, was destroyed by vandals on May 22, 2003.

In 1944 a concrete firm in California purposed a submarine shaped freighter which they claimed could achieve speeds of 75 knots. The war ended any more research into the project. In retrospect many believe the claims were greatly overstated.

Concrete barges also served in the Pacific during 1944 and 1945. From the Charleroi, Pennsylvania, Mail, February 5, 1945:

Largest unit of the Army's fleet is a BRL, (Barge, Refrigerated, Large) which is going to the South Pacific to serve fresh frozen foods – even ice cream – to troops weary of dry rations. The vessel can keep 64 carloads of frozen meats and 500 tons of fresh produce indefinitely at 12F. Equipment on board includes an ice machine of five-ton daily capacity and a freezer that turns out more than a gallon of ice cream a minute. Three of the floating warehouses, designed for tropical warfare, have been built of concrete at National City, Calif., and cost $1,120,000 each. In the crew of the 265-ft. barges are 23 Army men.

One concrete barge under tow by Jicarilla (ATF-104) was lost off Saipan during a typhoon, and another knocked out a light house in Brisbane but the rest served admirably.