Robert Moran (shipbuilder)

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Robert Moran (January 26, 1857—March 27, 1943) was a prominent Seattle shipbuilder who served as the city's mayor from 1888 to 1890.

A native of New York City, Moran was 18 when, in 1875, he arrived penniless in Seattle, a frontier outpost in the Pacific Northwest, which had been settled less than a quarter-century before, in November 1851, and only incorporated between 1865 and 1869. Through hard work he earned enough money to send for his family and, by 1882, he and his brothers started a marine repair business at Yesler's wharf. The Moran Brothers Company prospered during the Klondike Gold Rush when, among other projects, they built a fleet of 12 175-foot paddlewheel riverboats, which were successfully delivered to the Yukon River.

In 1888, only thirteen years after his impoverished arrival in town, 31-year-old Robert Moran was elected the Republican mayor of Seattle[1]. In those early years, the town's mayors were elected in July for a one-year term. Near the end of his service, on June 6, 1889, the Great Seattle Fire destroyed most of the central business district. Moran's leadership in coordinating the recovery activities won him a second term in the following month's election. Through the period of his mayoralty, he was instrumental in the successful rebuilding of businesses. His political connections were also very helpful in securing government contracts for his shipbuilding company.

In the aftermath of his mayoral service, Robert Moran devoted all his efforts to his shipbuilding business and, in 1904, climaxed his career with his shipyard's launch of the USS Nebraska, Washington State's only battleship. Two years later, he sold the shipbuilding company and spent the remainder of his long life in retirement on Puget Sound's Orcas Island, where he constructed a giant mansion surrounded by 7800 acres of land. In the 2000s, it has thrived as a luxury resort.

Robert Moran was born before the start of the Civil War and he died on Orcas Island two months after his 86th birthday, while the United States was at a midpoint in World War II, with his former shipbuilding concern producing more battleships in 1943 than could have been imagined sixty years earlier, at its founding.