Qualla: The Submarine Boat Company: Newark's Wartime Shipyard That Never Built a Submarine

The Submarine Boat Company: Newark's Wartime Shipyard That Never Built a Submarine: Introduction

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The name is the first thing that catches you. The Submarine Boat Company built no submarines. Not one. The name came from its parent company, Electric Boat, which had been building submarines since 1899 based on John Philip Holland's designs. When Electric Boat needed a subsidiary to mass-produce cargo ships for the war effort in 1915, it kept the family name. The distinction mattered little to the 25,000 workers who, at the shipyard's peak, were riveting steel hulls together at the Port of Newark, racing to replace merchant vessels faster than German U-boats could sink them.

The Submarine Boat Company: Newark's Wartime Shipyard That Never Built a Submarine: An Assembly Line on the Water

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Founded in April 1915, the Submarine Boat Company operated on a principle borrowed from Henry Ford: break the work into pieces and distribute it. Rather than building each ship from scratch, the company had other shipyards prefabricate roughly eighty percent of the hull sections....

The Submarine Boat Company: Newark's Wartime Shipyard That Never Built a Submarine: One Hundred and Eighteen Ships

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Of the 150 contracted ships, 118 were completed before the armistice rendered the contract unnecessary and it was canceled. The remaining 32 hulls did not go to waste. The company finished them on its own account and sold them to the Transmarine Corporation, a shipping line it al...

The Submarine Boat Company: Newark's Wartime Shipyard That Never Built a Submarine: Steel for a Stadium, Then Silence

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Shipbuilding ended in 1922, but the company's expertise with steel earned it one final project: in 1923, the Newton Amusement Corporation contracted the Submarine Boat Company to supply fifty tons of steel columns for a 1,000-seat stadium theater. It was the last job before the y...

The Submarine Boat Company: Newark's Wartime Shipyard That Never Built a Submarine: From Hulls to Automobiles

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Today, the site where thousands of workers once assembled cargo ships for the Atlantic convoys is a Toyota Logistics Services automobile terminal at 390 East Port Street, Newark, just south of Interstate 78. The transformation is total. No plaques mark the spot. No remnant of a s...