Ames Shipbuilding & Drydock Company

Edgar Ames founded the Ames Shipbuilding & Drydock Company in Seattle in 1916, with a modern plant on West Waterway and 26th Avenue SW on Harbor Island. With a floating drydock, this large wartime shipbuilding yard produced 25 steel tankers and cargo steamships for the US Shipping Board in the World War I period, and fabricated the boilers, engines, and much of the equipment for these vessels as well. Employing over 5000 men, the shipyard covered an area of about 20 acres and was equipped with a machine shop, blacksmith shop, boiler shop, plate and pattern shops, carpenter and coppersmith shops, and other facilities, including a large dining hall and hospital for its employees. Ames opened his new Ames Terminal Company, a cargo-handling facility, in Seattle in 1922, at the site of the shipyard. The terminal was a center of salmon shipping activity, handling the entire pack of the large Libby, McNeil and Libby Company fisheries. City directory entries for the Ames Shipbuilding & Drydock Company end in the 1956, and for the Ames Terminal Company in the early 1960s.

From the description of Ames Shipbuilding & Drydock Company record books, 1916-1953. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 232567647

Edgar Ames founded the Ames Shipbuilding & Drydock Company in Seattle in 1916, with a modern plant on West Waterway and 26th Avenue SW on Harbor Island. With a floating drydock, this large wartime shipbuilding yard produced 25 steel tankers and cargo steamships for the US Shipping Board in the World War I period, and fabricated the boilers, engines and much of the equipment for these vessels as well. Employing over 5000 men, the shipyard covered an area of about 20 acres and was equipped with a machine shop, blacksmith shop, boiler shop, plate and pattern shops, carpenter and coppersmith shops, and other facilities, including a large dining hall and hospital for its employees. Ames opened his new Ames Terminal Company, a cargo-handling facility, in Seattle in 1922, at the site of the shipyard. The terminal was a center of salmon shipping activity, handling the entire pack of the large Libby, McNeil and Libby Company fisheries.

City directory entries for the Ames Shipbuilding & Drydock Company end in the 1956, and for the Ames Terminal Company in the early 1960s.

From the guide to the Ames Shipbuilding & Drydock Company Record Books, 1916-1953, (Museum of History & Industry Sophie Frye Bass Library)