The Dry Dock Deal That Promised 300 Jobs in Ten Days
A revised Navy contract at Port Orchard promised hundreds of jobs and a permanent naval station—and contractors insisted their work had been vindicated.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
J. E. Blackwell, of the firm of Byron Barlow & Co., contractors for the Port Orchard dry dock, has just returned from Washington City and brings the news that an additional contract made necessary by a change in plans has been let to his firm, and that work will go on with renewed vigor. While the expenditure already provided for reaches $600,000, Blackwell says three times that amount will have been spent before the naval station at Port Orchard is fully equipped.
A board of engineers appointed by the Secretary of the Navy—P. C. Assersin, A. O. Menocal and F. C. Prindle—visited the dry dock and recommended a change in the line by constructing a sub-concrete wall instead of sheet piling near the gateway. Messrs. Barlow, Doagan and Blackwell went to Washington. The board was reconvened, and a supplemental contract for $60,000 was made with the government.
“I see that it has been stated by some of the trailers that the government had disapproved of some of the work done by our firm,” Blackwell said. “The board of engineers sent here to examine the work has thoroughly vindicated us. It was alleged that we should have driven the piles by the water jet. At the department our method of driving piles was approved of. At the department, too, we were complimented on the progress we were making with the work. It was said that we were doing quicker work than any other contractor on a government dry dock.”
“We will start the work on the dry dock just as soon as possible. We expect to have 300 men at work inside of the next ten days, and will finish the dock in sixteen months. The entire contract amounts to over $630,000. It will cost three times $630,000 before the work is finished. Large machine shops, barracks and other buildings will have to be erected, and when they are finished there will be many years' work for hundreds of men, as it is to be a regular naval station. All this will be of great help to Seattle, as we buy all our supplies for the dry dock here.”
Senator Squire and the Washington congressman did all they could for the firm, and at the Navy Department, once matters had been explained, the contractors were shown the utmost consideration.
“We expect to have 300 men at work inside of the next ten days, and will finish the dock in sixteen months.”
The “Port Orchard dry dock” became the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, and federal shipyard money has been a pillar of Bremerton's economy ever since. The 1894 promise of 300 jobs in ten days sounds familiar in a region still organized around naval contracts and defense spending.
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