The Fore River Shipyard of Quincy, Massachusetts, more formally known as the Fore River Ship and Engine Building Company, was a shipyard in the United States from 1883 until 1986. Located on the Weymouth Fore River, the yard began operations in 1883 in Braintree, Massachusetts before being moved downstream to its permanent location in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1901. The shipyard helped build early U.S. submarines and many ships commissioned by the United States Navy, including the World War II battleship USS Massachusetts (BB-59) and aircraft carriers USS Wasp (CV-7) and USS Bunker Hill (CV-17). In the 1960s, the yard was purchased by General Dynamics. It continued to produce ships for the navy until being converted to LNG tanker production before finally closing in 1986.
The yard built the Thomas W. Lawson, the largest pure sailing ship ever built and ARA Rivadavia, one of two foreign battleships built in the United States. It was home to the "Goliath" crane, for a time the second-largest shipbuilding crane in the world. It is also the likely origin of the World War II "Kilroy was here" graffiti character.
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Famous quotes containing the words fore and/or river:
“It was the most wild and desolate region we had camped in, where, if anywhere, one might expect to meet with befitting inhabitants, but I heard only the squeak of a nighthawk flitting over. The moon in her first quarter, in the fore part of the night, setting over the bare rocky hills garnished with tall, charred, and hollow stumps or shells of trees, served to reveal the desolation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Cole Thornton: Just a minute, son.
Mississippi: I am not your son. My name is Alan Bourdillon Traherne.
Cole: Lord almighty.
Mississippi: Yeah, well, that’s why most people call me Mississippi. I was born on the river in a flatboat.”
—Leigh Brackett (1915–1978)