Qualla: Everett-Pacific Shipbuilding: The Yard That Built a Floating Navy

Everett-Pacific Shipbuilding: The Yard That Built a Floating Navy: Introduction

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On March 1, 1942, barely three months after Pearl Harbor, construction crews broke ground on empty waterfront at Port Gardner Bay in Everett, Washington. Brothers William and Paul Pigott - Seattle businessmen whose family company already built railcars and trucks - had pitched the US Navy on a new shipyard. The Navy, desperate for repair and support vessels, said yes and helped fund it. What rose from the mud of that bay was Everett-Pacific Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company, a yard that would spend the next three years launching an astonishing variety of craft: massive floating dry docks capable of lifting 100,000 tons, net-laying ships that strung steel barriers against torpedoes, harbor tugs so small their crews numbered just four, and barracks barges that housed sailors at remote Pacific bases. The yard operated for only seven years, but the vessels it produced served across the Pacific theater and beyond - some for decades after the war ended.

Everett-Pacific Shipbuilding: The Yard That Built a Floating Navy: Floating Fortresses for a Scattered War

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Pacific war was fought across thousands of miles of ocean, far from any established shipyard. Damaged warships needed repair where they fought, not back in San Francisco or Puget Sound. Everett-Pacific's answer was the Advance Base Sectional Dock - massive floating dry docks ...

Everett-Pacific Shipbuilding: The Yard That Built a Floating Navy: Steel Nets and Small Boats

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Not everything Everett-Pacific built was enormous. The yard produced ten net-laying ships - 1,100-ton, 194-foot vessels whose primary job was stringing steel anti-torpedo and anti-submarine nets around harbors and anchored ships. It was unglamorous, essential work. As the war gro...

Everett-Pacific Shipbuilding: The Yard That Built a Floating Navy: The Pigott Legacy

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Pigott brothers came to shipbuilding sideways. Their family company, Pacific Car and Foundry, was a major manufacturer of railcars and trucks with plants in Renton, Seattle, and Tacoma already building barges for the Navy. William Pigott Jr., born in Pueblo, Colorado, in 1895...

Everett-Pacific Shipbuilding: The Yard That Built a Floating Navy: From Shipyard to Naval Station

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After Everett-Pacific closed, the waterfront site passed through other hands. Western Gear, a heavy machinery manufacturer, operated there for years. But the land's naval destiny was not finished. Beginning in 1987, the old shipyard was rebuilt over five years to become Naval Sta...