The Shipyard of the World

The superior facilities of Puget Sound for ship building are already, perhaps, sufficiently understood. The interest is now largely on the increase, and prominent Eastern ship-builders are prospecting the field with a view to settlement. The simple fact that in the single item of timber required for building a twelve hundred ton ship, over $20,000, or nearly 50 per cent, of the whole item, can be saved on Puget Sound over the cost at Bath, Maine, is sufficient to ensure the fulfillment of Seward's prediction that Puget Sound will become the ship-yard of the world. The question really is not whether this industry shall be established on the Sound, or when, so much as at what point it shall be established. A large ship-building interest appurtenant to a city would prove a support to its business and a source of prosperity not inferior in magnitude to the coal mines or lumber mills. These remarks are suggested by the fact that a prominent shipbuilder from Maine has recently come out to the Sound with a view to the establishment of a yard. Olympia, Steilacoom, and Port Townsend, we hear, have made liberal overtures to secure it, but the location yet remains open. Our city front proprietors would find it to their interest to secure this and all similar offerings to the city's development by extending a reasonable subsidy in the way of lots. It is a heavy undertaking for the Eastern artisan to break up his business on the other side of the continent and re-establish himself here, and it is not unfair that some encouragement should be extended on our part to offset the expense of removal.