Moore Dry Dock Company

Moore Dry Dock Company was a ship repair and shipbuilding company in Oakland, California. It was started in San Francisco in 1905 as the Moore & Scott Iron Works, but was soon destroyed by fire resulting from the San Francisco earthquake in 1906. It was reopened and in 1909 purchased the Boole Shipyard in Oakland. In 1917, Moore bought out Scott and the name changed to Moore Shipbuilding. In 1922, the company was renamed again as Moore Dry Dock Company. It operated primarily as a repair yard. Its shipbuilding capabilities were expanded in the World War II era, building over 100 ships for the U.S. Navy and merchant marine.^[1] Moore ranked 82nd among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.^[2] With the end of the war, shipbuilding ceased, but repair operations continued. Moore Dry Dock Company finally closed in 1961.

The yard was notable for its employment of several thousand African Americans, in both skilled and unskilled positions, at a time when they confronted major racial discrimination on the job.

At the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park an inscription honoring the wartime contributions made by the Bay Area Shipyards during World War II states that "Moore Dry Dock handled the difficult jobs of production, repair and conversion that slowed overall output in other yards."

In 1950, the Moore facility was the target of a union picket when sailors were having a dispute with a ship owner whose ship was in Moore's dry dock at the time. The court battle which ensued eventually lead to the Moore Dry Dock Standards for Primary Picketing at a Secondary Site (Sailors' Union of the Pacific (Moore Dry Dock Co.), 92 NLRB 547, 27 LRRM 1108 (1950)).^[3]

Moore Dry Dock Company ceased operations in 1961. Its former site, at the foot of Adeline Street, on the Oakland Estuary, is now occupied by Schnitzer Steel Industries, a large scrap metal recycling concern, based in Portland, Oregon.^[4]

See also

• Emergency Shipbuilding program
• List of shipbuilders and shipyards

References

• Lane, Frederic C. Ships for Victory. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8018-6752-5
• Arroyo, Cuahutémoc (Faculty Mentor: Professor Leon F. Litwack). "Jim Crow" Shipyards: Black Labor and Race Relations in East Bay Shipyards During World War II. The Berkeley McNair Journal, The UC Berkeley McNair Scholars Program. - downloaded from Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University on August 19, 2007
• Veronico, Nicholas A. World War II Shipyards by the Bay. San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing, 2007. Ch. 5 Peninsula and East Bay Shipbuilding. ISBN 978-0-7385-4717-6
• World War II Shipbuilding in the San Francisco Bay Area. Excerpt from Bonnett, Wayne. Build Ships!: San Francisco Bay Wartime Shipbuilding Photographs, 1940-1945. Sausalito, Calif.:Windgate Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0-915269-20-4. Access from National Park Service website August 20, 2007.
• Moore, James R. The Story of Moore Dry Dock Company: A Picture History. Sausalito, Calif.:Windgate Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0-915269-14-3
• Moore Dry Dock Company. Progress. Oakland, 1920 (OCLC 47048256)

External links

• Moore Dry Dock Company from Shipbuilding under the United States Maritime Commission 1936 to 1950. Accessed August 23, 2007.
• List of ships built at Moore Dry Dock Company
• Photo: Oakland Estuary westward: Moore-Scott shipyard in foreground
• Oil painting entitled "Wartime" - a view of the Moore Shipyards painted by William A. Coulter in 1919. Accessed March 1, 2013.
• The Moore Shipbuilding Company, Pacific Marine Review, Volume 17 (1920), pp. 59–62. Accessed March 1, 2013.