$20.00 CAD
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RPPC photo postcard of shop at dock, crane and scaffolding. In background industrial buildings, another ship to the right.
Written on back: “This view shows a ship being built at Bristol Ship Yard Penna. I took this from the deck of another boat”.
Undated, but shipyard operated from ~1917-1921.
Creases LL and LR corners.
(Red text is an electronic watermark that is not physically part of the photo for sale)
The Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation was an American corporation established in 1917 by railroad heir W. Averell Harriman to build merchant ships for the Allied war effort in World War I. The MSC operated two shipyards: the former shipyard of John Roach & Sons at Chester, Pennsylvania, and a second, newly established emergency yard at Bristol, Pennsylvania...
…Both Harriman and the USSB were completely incorrect in their anticipation of a postwar shipbuilding boom...With no market for its services, Harriman wound up the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation in 1923.
Bristol yard
…Harriman chose as the location for the new yard the city of Bristol, Pennsylvania, 25 miles north of Philadelphia and 100 miles upriver from the coast…He purchased a 260-acre block of property along the river, and built a yard containing a dozen slipways.
In addition to the yard itself, an entire township was built to provide housing for the shipyard's 3,000 workers and their families, estimated at 15,000 people in total. The township, which was given the name of "Harriman", was composed of 206 group houses, 26 single houses, 25 duplex houses and 212 apartments plus boarding houses and bachelor quarters, as well as a post office, hotel, hospital and other facilities... Construction of the township was the largest single housing project undertaken by the EFC during the First World War.
WIKIPEDIA
