Harlan and Hollingsworth - Shipbuilding

Shipbuilding

Harlan & Hollingsworth's experience with railcars and other ironwork led them to become early experimenters in iron shipbuilding. In 1842 the company hired Alexander Kelly to supervise all the millwright work. In 1843, under the encouragement of Samual Harlan, the company started engaging in marine engine building and repair. Their first ship-related project was repairing the cylinder and other machine parts of the steamboat Sun. This small step was the beginning of what would become one of the first iron shipyards in the United States.

Harlan & Hollingsworth's expanded slowly but steadily into iron shipbuilding. Only nine ships were built between 1841 and 1851, with most of the company time taken with railroad car building and general repair work. In 1843 the company leased a launching berth on the banks of the Christiana River. The facilities at this property were limited, so all the work forming iron plates, bars, and fasteners was done at their main shop on Front and West Streets. The launch slipway was 200 feet long and could only accommodate vessels of 600 tons maximum, but this was deemed adequate for the needs of the time.

The first two hulls built by the company, the Ashland and Ocean, were two of the earliest iron steamboats to be constructed in the United States. They were delivered to George Aspinwall of Philadelphia in 1844. That same year the company built the Bangor, which is credited with being the first seagoing iron propellor steamship built in the United States.

By the early 1850s the company began to rely less on wood ship or railcar building for its income. Machine shops, office buildings, wharves, carpenter sheds, boiler shops, blacksmith shops and cranes were added in the first five years of the decade. As the firm's reputation grew, more orders for steamboats came in from across the country. Charles Morgan, a New York shipping magnate, purchased his first ship from Harlan in 1856. Morgan would eventually become one of the largest customers for Harlan & Hollingsworth, ordering over 31 vessels by 1878.