WESTERN PIPE & STEEL: BUILDING A VARIETY OF SHIP TYPES

摘要

Western Pipe & Steel (WPS) was created in Los Angeles in 1906, as a producer of steel pipe and casings. The originators were T. A. Hays and James A. Talbot. Talbot was an interesting man who went on to start Western Air Express, the first U.S. company to offer scheduled airline service, and then to head up Richfield Oil, but he went to jail in 1932 for misappropriating Richfield funds. WPS did well almost immediately, quickly adding operations in Taft, Fresno, San Francisco and Phoenix, Arizona. With the coming of war in 1917, it acquired the Shaw-Batcher shipyard in San Francisco and began to build West-class cargo ships for the U.S. Shipping Board, delivering 18 of these standard-design, 8,600-dwt ships in the space of two years.