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Thomas A. Watson: Braintree’s Ship and Engine Builder
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Click on above image and listen to a recording of Thomas Watson
explain how on March 10, 1876 Bell and Watson had their first actual
conversation by telephone between two stations on an outdoor wire.
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Thomas Watson (1854-1934) is probably most
famous for co-inventing the telephone with Alexander Graham Bell, but did you
know that this Salem-born inventor and businessman also founded what was to
become one of the largest shipbuilding
establishments in the country on his land in East Braintree? Watson’s
shipbuilding business, which began as the Fore River Engine Company, provided
employment to hundreds of local people and put Massachusetts back on the map as
an important center of the shipbuilding industry in America.
Establishing and running another company,
however, couldn’t have been further from Watson’s mind when he resigned his
position as Head of Research and Development at the National Bell Telephone
Company in the spring of 1881. Between 1875 & 1881, Watson had worked tirelessly
to improve the telephone, and had been the driving force behind the
establishment of the Bell Telephone Company in 1877. The years Watson spent in
the business had made him a wealthy man, and after he resigned to pursue other
interests, he decided to take an extended vacation to relax and explore
 Europe.
Early in June 1881, Watson sailed out of East Boston for Liverpool, England, on
the Batavia and traveled extensively throughout Europe, visiting London,
Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, France, and Italy before finally
returning to the United States in May 1882. A few months later on September 5,
1882, Watson married Elizabeth Seaver Kimball of Cohasset and the couple went to
California for their honeymoon. The Watsons had initially planned to settle in
California, but decided to return to Massachusetts in March 1883. Watson then
purchased a house and sixty acres of land along the Weymouth Fore River in East
Braintree and he and Elizabeth moved there in June 1883.
When he first settled in Braintree, Watson
had intended to become a scientific farmer, but soon found that farming did not
suit him and abandoned the idea. As he was casting about for a new interest,
Watson found that he missed the machine shop work of his early telephone days
and soon longed to return to it. He got the chance to do so in the summer of
1883 when an old friend, Joseph Dennett, brought Watson some drawings of a new
kind of rotary steam engine that had recently been invented by L.J. Wing of
Lexington, Massachusetts. Watson was fascinated by the drawings and, during the
winter of that year, visited the Boston shop where the first of these new
engines was being built so that he could study the design. When the machine was
tested in the spring of 1884, it had several major design flaws that Watson
thought he might be able to fix. Watson then offered to build and try to
improve the new engine, and, on October 11, 1884, he drew up an agreement to
this effect with The Wing Rotary Engine Company. Watson lost no time in fitting
up one of his old farm buildings as a machine shop and hired a young machinist,
Frank O.Wellington, to help him build the engine. Watson and Wellington worked
for several months to try to improve Wing’s steam engine but finally gave up in
the spring of 1885, when Watson decided that the defects in the design were too
great to be remedied.
Although the Wing engine had been a failure,
Watson once again found himself in the machine shop environment he loved, and
now had a capable assistant that he wanted to keep, so he set about looking for
something that he and Wellington could manufacture in their shop. Watson toyed
with the idea of manufacturing automobiles, but eventually decided to produce
marine engines for yachts and tug boats. Watson made Wellington a partner in
the business he now called the Fore River Engine Company. The company, which
had started out with just Watson and Wellington, quickly built up a sterling
reputation for innovative design and precise workmanship, and the business grew
so rapidly that Watson had to build a larger building to accommodate up to
thirty employees and all the necessary equipment. Watson had initially wanted
to keep the business small so that he could work in the shop himself, but as his
business prospered he once again found himself back in a supervisory position
and in charge of bookkeeping.
Several years later during the late 1890s,
Watson made the momentous decision to increase the workload of his engine
business by taking on contracts to build ships. Curiously, Watson's decision to
build ships seems to have been motivated more by humanitarian concern than
profit, which was rather unusual for a turn-of-the-century businessman. Watson
sheds some light on his motivations on page 212 of his autobiography
Exploring Life:
The contrast
between my lot in life and that of many of my neighbors had troubled me ever
since I had lived [in Braintree] and in these times of general unemployment,
the difference was more painful than ever. I tried to ease my conscience with
gifts of money, coal, groceries, etc. to the sick and unfortunate of the
vicinity but it seemed better to help by giving employment in our shop to as
much of the unskilled labor of the region as we could use.
The Fore River Engine Company got its first
contract with the U.S. Navy in 1897 to build two
destroyers, the Lawrence and the Macdonough. This contract for
$562,000 was completed in 1900 and represented a crucial turning point in the
life of the company. Watson had to drastically increase the size of the East
Braintree plant with the addition of several new buildings, which he fitted up
with all the necessary heavy machinery. The ships were delivered to the Navy in
1903 and Watson’s company was well on its way to becoming a major center of the
shipbuilding industry.
The Fore River Engine Company soon got more
contracts: In June 1899 they were awarded the contract for a lightship, the
Diamond Shoals, which was launched on September 7, 1900 and became the first
steel-hulled vessel to be built on the South Shore. In November 1899, they were
awarded another naval contract for an
unarmoured cruiser, the Des Moines (launched September 20, 1902).
Although the company was growing and prospering, the work for the naval
contracts was extremely precise and difficult, and needed to be inspected by the
Navy at every stage. Watson’s financial resources were also stretched to the
limit because, as both President and Treasurer of the company, he found himself
constantly being called upon to contribute his own money in order to keep
construction going until government payments came through. In addition, Watson
was also constantly devising new methods of bookkeeping to keep pace with his
growing and changing business.
Watson soon found that his business had
grown beyond the limits of his East Braintree plant and, in 1899, he purchased a
hundred acres of land at Quincy Point with the intention of building an even
bigger shipyard that could compete nationally. While the new shipyard was under
construction, ships were sent between the two yards as necessary. Construction
plans for the new shipyard also included a connection between the shipyard and
the East Braintree stop on the New York, New Haven, and Hartford railway. Work
on the new railway line began in 1902 and it became operational in June 1903.
By February 1901, the Fore River Engine
Company had grown beyond Watson’s wildest expectations and the Navy demanded
that the company go public before further contracts could become available. The
company incorporated on February 15, 1901 and changed its name to the Fore River
Ship and Engine Company. After this, naval contracts for two more battleships,
the Rhode Island and the New Jersey, were signed. The Fore River
Ship and Engine Company published its first prospectus on April 2, 1902 and
shares sold at $100.00 per share. The Fore River Ship and Engine Company also
built merchant ships in addition to its work for the Navy. These included the
schooner Thomas W. Lawson (the largest schooner ever built at the time
and the only one equipped with seven masts and twenty-five different sails), the
William L. Douglas, and two Fall River liners, the passenger steamer
Providence and the freighter Boston. Watson’s company also built a
new bridge over Quincy Point for the county in 1901.
The early 1900s were important years for
Watson’s company, but extremely difficult and stressful for him personally. The
shipyard required a great deal of money to keep it operating, and, as he waited
to receive payment for completed contracts, Watson found that his own financial
resources were constantly being stretched to the limit by its demands. Although
Watson had hired a treasurer to take over the bookkeeping part of the company’s
operations, the man had a nervous breakdown from the stress of the job, forcing
Watson back to being both President and Treasurer.
In addition to the job stress, Watson also
lost two of his four children. His oldest son, Thomas Bell Watson, died in 1901
after a lingering illness (probably tuberculosis), followed two years later by
his other son, Ralph Kimball Watson. Despite his personal difficulties, Watson
pressed on but by 1902 he was unable to come up with any more of his own money
to pump into the shipyard. 
Hemanaged to secure a loan for $1.25 million dollars from the Adams Trust
Company of Boston, but, as part of the deal, was forced to turn over a large
bonus in preferred stock, surrender majority control of the Board of Directors,
and agree to step down as President at any time. Watson accepted these terms to
keep the shipyard going and, in June 1903, the Fore River Ship and Engine
Company was awarded another naval contract to build the battleship Vermont.
This would be the last contract that Watson would negotiate for the shipyard.
Watson’s days as President finally came to
an end in October 1903, when the company was reorganized and he was replaced by
retired naval officer, Admiral Francis T. Bowles. Although Watson was elected
Chairman of the Board of Directors, he resigned two months later and exited the
ship and engine building business for good. Despite his somewhat unceremonious
replacement after many years of dedication and financial sacrifice, Watson does
not seem to have been bitter. With his characteristic optimism, he recalled
being “pleased with their choice of president and felt that the Company was
lucky to get such a man for the colossal task.” In his autobiography, Watson
also tried in his characteristic way to downplay the difficulties associated
with the Herculean task of running a huge and busy shipyard; trying instead to
take the best from the experience and look upon it as something to be remembered
in a positive light:
Looking at these
tremendous structures representing the highest skill of mankind, I felt that in
the entire list of human industries there is none comparable in grandeur with
the building of a ship[…] And, as I look back twenty-five years later, on my
shipbuilding days, its poetry is still so superb in my memory that, in spite of
the tragic elements mingling with it - anxieties, losses, deaths - I cannot
regret that this great experience was mine.
Freed from the stress of running the
shipyard, Watson soon rebounded from his troubles and disappointments. He and
his wife began studying geology at M.I.T. and eventually received degrees in the
subject. Watson also devoted his later years to other passions, including
music, public speaking, acting, writing, and painting, and he continued to lead
a fulfilling and active life until his death on December 13, 1934 at the age of
eighty. With his shipyard, Watson left the city of Quincy a rich economic
legacy that long outlived him. The yard continued to produce quality ships and
submarines under the leadership of the Bethlehem Steel Company and later General
Dynamics Corporation, which launched the last ship in 1986. Although Watson’s
shipyard has now passed into history, its memory endures as a tribute to the
ingenuity and dedication of its founder.
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