Archives West Finding Aid

The Lake Washington Shipyard began in the 1870s as a small boat landing in Houghton, WA on the eastern shore of Lake Washington. Owned by boatbuilder Frank Curtis, the boat landing benefitted from the prominent lumber industry and produced its first steamship, the Peerless , in 1901. It was then bought by Captains George Bartsch and Harry Tompkins, who later partnered with investor John Anderson and began a successful business manufacturing passenger steam ships under the name Anderson Steamboat Company. In 1923, the Anderson Shipyard was bought by Alaska Consolidated Canneries, Inc, which renamed the area as Lake Washington Shipyard (LWS) and utilized the area as a winter lay-up for fishing vessels. After the great depression, the shipyard struggled to compete with other maritime construction companies, but maintained its reputation as a formidable shipbuilding enterprise with a highly skilled workforce. It gained notoriety in 1935 as the shipyard that took the burned-out hull of the Peralta and built the famous streamlined ferry MV Kalakala , which later led to important contracts with fishery owners, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.

With the onset of World War II in the early 1940s, the Lake Washington Shipyard entered into a partnership with the U.S. Navy and the Defense Plant Corporation, which was a federally funded agency that assisted in construction and expansion of private manufacturing industries. Over the course of the war, the LWS employed over 9,000 workers. Many of the workers were recruited based on their previous shipbuilding experience, but the LWS also had an efficient method of training thousands unskilled workers. The designs of the ships were strictly standardized, under intense supervision, and specific, simplified tasks were delegated to workers in an assembly-line fashion. The LWS also employed a sizable amount of women and African-Americans, both of which experienced some resistance and at times harassment from the predominantly white male workforce. Many of the men had shipbuilding experience and were often assigned to heavy work as painters or scalers. Women were typically employed with clerical work, but many worked alongside men as sheet metal workers or welders. The substantial population of shipyard workers read and were often featured in the LWS’s weekly newspaper, On the Ways, which published news on current events in the war overseas and celebrated the importance of the role of the LWS workers in the overall war effort.

The LWS had a contract with the U.S. Navy for the construction of a variety of ship types. First of all, the LWS produced 25 seaplane tenders, 19 artillery lighters, four net tenders, and over five thousand tanks. It also provided prefabrication and repair services for destroyers and destroyer tenders. The most extensive and substantial shipbuilding at the LWS involved the construction of the seaplane tenders. A seaplane tender is a ship that has facilities to carry and operate seaplanes. First appearing in World War I, seaplane tenders were typically converted destroyers or merchant vessels equipped with a crane capable of lowering a seaplane from the deck onto the sea. During World War II, shipyards like the LWS began building seaplane tenders from a standardized design. The seaplane tenders built by the LWS were extensively used in the Pacific theater for reconnaissance, patrols and rescue missions. There are five seaplane tenders that appear in this collection, each possesses a service record in the Pacific in World War II: the USS Shelikof , USS Barataria , USS Suisun , USS Castle Rock and USS Floyds Bay . After the war, seaplane tenders were commonly acquired and commissioned by the U.S. Coast Guard. Some seaplane tenders were commissioned for Foreign Service, such as the USS Castle Rock that served as a patrol vessel in the South Vietnamese Navy during the Vietnam War and later as a frigate in the Philippines Navy.

The shipyard proved to be an advantage for the Houghton economy during the war. However, the LWS had expanded at an intense rate and was unable to compete and sustain itself when the war ended. It was sold on December 31, 1947 following the dissolution of the LWS board of trustees. The Alaska Terminal and Stevedoring Company of Seattle, owned by G.W. Skinner, purchased the shipyard for about $100,000 for use as a storage area and winter tie-up moorage. In 1976, it was leased by the Seattle Seahawks football franchise for team offices and practice fields. In 1986, the lease ended and the Skinner Corporation began developing the area into a district known as The Shipyard with office buildings, a public marina, hotels, condominiums, restaurants, and retail shops.