John H. Dialogue Jr.

John H. Dialogue Jr. was born in Camden in 1862 to John H. and Mary Dialogue. His father, John H. Dialogue Sr. founded the Dialogue shipyards and was one of Camden’s leading citizens for many years. John H. Dialogue Jr. took over the shipyard upon the death of his father in October of 1898.

In 1907 the Dialogue yard built two ocean-going tugs for use on the west coast, the Goliah and the Hercules. Hercules is still in use today, 99 years after her launch.

The Dialogue company was forced into bankruptcy in 1912, and the yard was sold to the Reading Railroad for a fraction of its value. The Reading built a large terminal and ferry facility, which was obsolete almost as soon as it was completed due to the opening of the Delaware River Bridge in 1926.

After the shipyard closed, John H. Dialogue Jr. took a position with the Luckenbach Steamship Lines. He died in New York in 1924. John H. Dialogue Jr. was brought home and rests in Harleigh Cemetery.

Prominent among the shipbuilding concerns of the United States is that of John H. Dialogue and Son, located at Camden. N.J.

John H. Dialogue, the founder of the works, was born in Philadelphia, May 13, 1828, and started a small shop at Second Street and Bridge Avenue, Camden, where he did repair work for the Camden and Amboy Railroad and the Camden and Philadelphia and West Jersey Ferry Companies. The business grew rapidly and when in 1856 Mr. Dialogue commenced the construction of Corliss engines under a special license from the inventor he found larger works necessary, and two years later erected the present large establishment at Kaighn’s Point.

In 1870 the name of the concern was changed to the River Iron Works, with Dialogue and Wood as proprietors, and the iron shipbuilding business was engaged in with constantly increasing success. During the ensuing twenty-five years every conceivable form of river, coast and ocean-going steamer was built, and several contracts were executed for the government.

The vessels built by the firm are to be found in every part of the United States and many foreign countries.

The shipyards at Kaighn’s Point cover an area of thirty-four acres, with a frontage on the Delaware River of two thousand feet, and a water depth of twenty-eight feet, making an admirable location for the business.

The plant, which is equipped with every modern appliance, gives employment, in seasons, of from two hundred to eight hundred men.

John H. Dialogue, founder of the firm, after an eventful life, in which he took active part in the civic and political history of his adopted city, died Sunday, October 3, 1898, and the business descended to his son, who had been made a partner in the firm upon the retirement of Mr. Wood, when the title of the firm was changed from the River Iron Works to John H. Dialogue & Son. Mr. Dialogue, Jr., present owner of the works, received a practical education with his father, and since his proprietorship has materially advanced the operations of this large industry.

An ocean-going tug, the John H. Dialogue and Son Company built Hercules in 1907. When completed, Hercules towed her sister ship, the Goliah, through the Strait of Magellan to San Francisco. Both vessels were oil-burners; Goliah carried fuel, water and supplies for her sister. After a long career ending in 1962, she avoided the scrap yard, but languished until the California State Park Foundation acquired her for the San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park, in 1975. The National Park Service took over the task of her restoration in 1977. Today, after a thirty-year lay-up, she is operable again, and regularly steams San Francisco Bay with a highly-trained volunteer crew.

Two vessels left the Delaware River last week on what promises to be a memorable as well as record-breaking voyage. They were the new sea-going tugboats Hercules and Goliah, built at the shipyard of John H. Dialogue & Son, ship and engine builders, Camden, N. J., for the Shipowners & Merchants’ Tugboat Co., of San Francisco. They are bound for San Francisco, via the Straits of Magellan, and what is unusual, the Goliah is being towed by the Hercules. Both boats were built to burn oil as fuel, and with tanks well filled on either boat, it is said there will be sufficient fuel for the Hercules’s boilers for the entire trip of about 14,000 miles with a good margin to spare, the towing steamer replenishing her tanks from those of the Goliah when her fuel is exhausted.

Our illustration shows the Hercules as she appeared a few days before leaving the Shipyard. The Goliah lies under the shears at the end of the pier. As will be noticed the tugs have two masts, the foremast being placed just forward of the main deck house, and the main mast about equidistant between the smoke-stack and after end of the deck house. During the voyage a large square sail on the foremast may be used on both boats for raising in order to take advantage of any favorable wind.

The company for whom the tugboats have been built is best known on the Pacific Coast as the “Red Stack Line,” and in addition to the Hercules and Goliah are the owners of the tugs Sea Rover, Sea Lion, Sea King, Sea Queen, Sea Witch, Sea Prince, Sea Fox, Sea Lark, Monarch, Rescue and Liberty. The Sea Lion was built by John H. Dialogue & Son for the same owners in the latter part of 1884. The original boiler is still in her and in good order, and the boat is still doing good service. The new Hercules and Goliah were built under the direction of Capt. W. J. Gray, and under the personal supervision of Chief Engineer W. Hanell, both of San Francisco.

The Hercules and Goliah are of the following general dimensions:

They are constructed of steel throughout, with complete steel decks, steel bulkheads for oil tanks (with necessary subdivisions), high coamings, and steel deck houses. Both boats have, in addition to the transverse oil-tight bulkheads, longitudinal bulkheads to prevent the movement of the oil, the stern as well as both the forward and after bitts being especially constructed for this particular service. They are fitted with a complete railing around the upper deck as well as around the roof of the pilot house. The deck house is arranged so that it will be possible to go from one end of the boat to the other without going outside. The crew’s accommodations are, as usual, located in the forecastle, with a special dining room for their use, the senior officers being located in the forward end of the deck house, and the junior officers housed just behind the fire room.

As the tugs will use oil for fuel on the Pacific Coast, they have been fitted in the East to use this kind of fuel instead of coal, so that on their arrival at San Francisco it will not be necessary to make any changes in their arrangements, and they may be put to work at once. They have a tank capacity of about 105,000 gallons of fuel each, which will give them a cruising radius of not less than 8,000 miles apiece.

The engines are of the usual vertical, inverted, direct-acting, triple-expansion type, having cylinders 17 in., 24 in., and 41 in., by 30-in. stroke, constructed for a working pressure of 180 lbs. The air and bilge pumps are connected to the main engine, and the circulating, donkey, fire, and sanitary pumps are independent.

All stuffing boxes are fitted with metallic packing.

There is a special pump for circulating water in the boilers while getting steam. Two oil pumps with heaters are also provided for supplying the furnaces, also duplex compressing engines for supplying air for combustion. Steam towing engines suitable for taking care of 1-3/4 inch diameter of wire hawser have been fitted. There is also a complete electric light installation, including searchlight, of 7-1/2 K.W., made by the General Electric Co., all wires being run in iron pipe. A steam steering engine of the Williamson Bros. Co. type has been fitted. Steam windlass, suitable for 1-5/8 inch chain, made by the Hyde Windlass Co., of Bath, Maine, is included. Steam capstans have been supplied by the builders of the vessels, everything in them being of the latest improved type and thoroughly modern throughout.

The boilers are of the Scotch type, 15 ft. diameter by 12 ft. long, each having four furnaces, and constructed for a working pressure of 180 lbs. The furnaces are of the “Fox” type and are arranged for burning oil as fuel.

Each boat is provided with a steel hawser 200 fathoms long. In addition, one of the boats is provided with a manila hawser 200 fathoms long. Both boats are likewise provided with a donkey boiler arranged for burning coal or oil as fuel, as may be required. Capt. Thomsen goes out in command of the Hercules, and Chief Engineer Hanell looks after her machinery. Capt. Hanson commands the Goliah.

Knowing the distance to be traveled, it is considered a remarkable trip for these two boats to undertake the trip from here to San Francisco, without having to take additional fuel on the entire route, and will no doubt be watched with considerable interest by the entire shipping fraternity.

Fifty-eight years ago, or on April 1, 1850, a tugboat named Goliah, built by the late Wm. H. Webb, left the port of New York for San Francisco, going via the Straits of Magellan. She was a sidewheeler and she was just nine months on the passage, turning up in San Francisco on Jan. 1, 1851. During the trip the crew often had to go ashore to cut wood for use in the boiler. The new Goliah, in tow of her sister boat, should not be more than 65 days on the passage.

The voyage of the sister tugs from New Jersey to San Francisco, through the Straits of Magellan, was unique. The Hercules towed the Goliah all the way. The Goliah was outfitted as a supply ship for the passage and carried the extra fuel oil required by the Hercules for such a long distance. The owners chose to carry their own fuel, rather than rely on South American ports along the way for bunkers. Both tugboats were rigged with yards crossed on their masts for setting squaresails to take advantage of fair winds. When they reached the West Coast, the yards were removed.

The Hercules and the Goliah were identical, except that the beam of the Goliah was slightly greater due to last-minute design changes when they were under construction. When the decision came to increase the beam, the Hercules was already plated, so it was too late for an alteration. The Goliah was only in frame, however, so she was widened by heating the frames and bending them outward. Both tugs were 150 feet overall.

The Hercules became a West Coast stalwart engaged in all types of assignments over the years, from towing ships and barges to towing railroad car floats in San Francisco Bay. She is still afloat in San Francisco, undergoing restoration as an exhibit at the San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park.

Captain William J. Grey, construction supervisor for the Hercules and Goliah, said afterwards that the Hercules was hard on men, but that she was always pulling. He often said that the duties of the two tugs when they worked the Pacific Coast should have been reversed—the Goliah was more suited to ship-handling and short hauls out of San Francisco, and the Hercules was ideal for the longer hauls and log-raft work in Puget Sound.

Hercules is an ocean-going steam tug—a hardworking type of craft that reached peak development around the turn of the century. Her deep, narrow hull and her 1,000 horsepower triple-expansion engine were designed to provide sure steering and steady pulling ability, even in high seas. Hercules represents the finest of American-built steam tugs, and is today one of the last of her kind afloat. Captain Fred Klebingat, a veteran in West Coast steam and sail, once said of her, “Hercules, she was the best we had!”

Long Tows and Open Ocean

Hercules was one of two nearly identical tugs designed and built in 1907 by John H. Dialogue and Son, of Camden, New Jersey. She was built for the “Red Stack” fleet of the San Francisco-based Shipowners’ and Merchants’ Tugboat Company, a business combine set up in 1885 to break the Spreckels monopoly in the San Francisco Bay towing business.

Upon completion, Hercules towed her sister ship, Goliah, through the Strait of Magellan to San Francisco, and then went to work towing barges, sailing ships, and log rafts between various Pacific Ocean ports. Because prevailing northwest winds generally made traveling up the coast by sail both difficult and circuitous, tugs were often used to tow large sailing vessels to points north of San Francisco. On one such assignment in 1916, Hercules spent six days towing both C. A. Thayer (now berthed at Hyde Street Pier) and another sailing vessel, Espada, north to Port Townsend on Puget Sound. On trips back down the coast, Hercules often towed huge log rafts, made up of millions of board feet of Northwest timber, to southern California mills. She also towed barges laden with various bulk cargoes between West Coast ports, as well as to Hawaii. During construction of the Panama Canal, Hercules towed a huge floating caisson to the Canal Zone, where it was destined for use in one of the canal’s locks. Later, she passed through the canal on a voyage to Jacksonville, Florida, with the dredge San Diego in tow.

Life on Board

Out through the Golden Gate, the most beautiful harbor in the world. North, towing this barkentine to Port Washington in Canada. Thence south, empty, to Astoria where we picked up six million feet of timber in a raft to tow south to San Diego. Long, slow lazy days, making no more than three knots. Even the patent log would not work. We rigged a fishing line on it and caught beautiful king salmon on the way.

In her deep-sea days, Hercules usually carried a crew of fifteen—enough manpower to work three watches while under way: four hours on and eight off. Life on an ocean-going tug could be uncomfortable for the crew because the deep, narrow hull rode so low in the water that the main deck was awash much of the time. There were, however, many advantages to the trade. The food was good, and, for an experienced hand, the work was steady. Tugboat captains were generally well paid and highly respected, for it took considerable experience and judgment to safely bring a tug and a heavy tow through high seas in bad weather, or to get them in and out of West Coast ports that were characterized by shallow bars and narrow entrances.

Hercules Becomes a Bay Tug

In 1918 the “Red Stack” fleet was acquired by Crowley Tug and Launch Company. Crowley in turn sold Hercules to the colorful Mayor of San Francisco, James A. “Sunny Jim” Rolph, Jr. In 1923 Hercules was acquired by the Moore Drydock Company of Oakland, and in 1924 was sold once again, this time to the Western Pacific Railroad Company.

Her ocean-going career at an end, Hercules was put to work moving barges loaded with railroad freight cars to and from various ports on San Francisco Bay. In 1933 she rammed the McCormick steam schooner Point San Pedro in a heavy fog. Hercules’ bow was smashed, and an eight-foot hole was opened up near the waterline of Point San Pedro. Both vessels were repaired, however, and put back in service.

In 1941, Hercules’ foremast was removed and her wheelhouse was raised, so that her helmsman could better see over the railroad cars on the barges she towed. With these exceptions, she remained little altered from her original appearance. Hercules continued to move barges around the Bay until 1962, when a diesel powered, self-propelled barge finally made her obsolete, thus ending a busy, 55-year long working life.

Although kept from the scrapyard, the old tug languished in the Oakland Estuary until she was acquired by the California State Parks Foundation and brought to the Hyde Street Pier for preservation. Later transferred to the National Park Service, Hercules was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986, in recognition of her exceptional significance as a tangible link to America’s maritime past.

Assets, $805,759.50 and liabilities, $287,642.61, is the showing made, according to the experts appointed to appraise the property of the John H. Dialogue Shipbuilding Company, as a result of the involuntary bankruptcy proceedings brought against the big South Camden concern by anxious creditors.

The appraisement, just completed, is said to be a most conservative one. It was conducted by Frank Bancroft, an expert engineer; Crawford Hillman, a marine architect and expert, and Adam Sloan, a Camden lawyer and real estate expert. According to their report, filed with Referee in Bankruptcy S. Conrad Ott, the property, which has a frontage of 850 feet on the Delaware River, is worth $322,120, while the buildings are valued at $36,876. The real estate held by the bankrupt in this and other New Jersey cities is valued at a total of $760,650, while the machinery of the plant is placed at $44,287.

The total amount of debts is $287,642.61, out of which $137,888.98 is fully secured. Judging from the showing made on the appraisement the company should be able to meet all of its debts and have a neat balance left after the adjudication is ended.

Present developments in the trustee’s sale of the plant and lands of the John H. Dialogue & Son Shipbuilding Company, which took place December 8th, further establishes foundation for the rumor that the Reading Railroad has really been the purchaser of virtually all of the Dialogue plant. This rumor was strengthened when Attorney Hepburn, of Philadelphia, denied that he was representing a company of bondholders, and refused to disclose the identity of the firm or corporation for which he was bidding.

Hepburn purchased the lands which contained the real plant and factory buildings for $196,000, while Attorney D. E. Dallam, of Philadelphia, who openly admits being a representative of the railroad, secured the meadow lands for $111,000. It was said that the Reading had secured the entire Dialogue belongings for virtually one-half their value.

The Reading Railroad did not interest itself in the purchase of machinery, which was left to private bidders. This, according to Trustee in Bankruptcy Henry F. Stockwell, will amount to about $25,000. In all, it was calculated that the entire sale brought about $330,000, or about one-half of what the whole thing is worth.

It was further rumored that there had been a combination of bidders organized for the purpose of preventing the bids on the land from rising high. If this had not been the case, it was asserted that the money brought for the plant would total half a million dollars.

Another important fact brought out shows that the sale must first be confirmed by Referee in Bankruptcy S. Conrad Ott and by the Court of Chancery. If the report that the Reading Railroad has purchased all the property is authentic, it dispels all possible rumors that the plant was being purchased by a company intent upon manufacturing war munitions for the countries in Europe now engaged in war. Before Hepburn announced positively that he was not representing the bondholders, this appeared to be the common belief.

When the superintendent of the Reading Railroad here was asked what he thought would be done on the property, he professed to have no knowledge of the sale outside of what he had read in the newspapers.

It was first suspected as soon as this rumor became current that the railroad would announce its intention of erecting a huge terminal, rivaling in importance the one now owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad. This, however, was dispelled.

“If they agreed upon such a move,” a prominent person connected with the sale declared, “they would have no fear in announcing it to the public, for it certainly would meet with favor.”

On the ground purchased by Hepburn are piers, wharves, docks, office buildings, pattern shops, together with about a dozen buildings devoted to manufacturing purposes.

The sale was continued in the Machine Shop wharf, in what is known as the Riggers’ Loft. Although the bidding at first seemed rather brisk, the smaller men began to drop out as the bids rose. Spirited bidding was the feature of the smaller pieces of machinery, in which several local manufacturers were engaged.

Mr. Dialogue was born in Camden, New Jersey, August 30, 1862. At an early age he entered his father’s shipyard at Kaighn’s Point, Camden, New Jersey, and learned the business of iron shipbuilding “from the ground up.” After serving an apprenticeship in practically every department of the yard, he became his father’s partner, the firm name being John H. Dialogue & Son, and thus continued for many years. Until the advent of the New York Shipbuilding Company’s plant farther down the river, there was no shipyard on that side of the Delaware so large as that of the Dialogues, whose plant covered 34 acres and had a water frontage of 2,000 feet.

A generation ago the yard was rated as one of the four largest in the country, and at present there is hardly a principal port on the east and west coast in which one cannot find craft that was constructed there. No firm in the country excelled it in the construction of towboats of all sizes, and “Built at Dialogues” was long a hall-mark for this class of vessel. While the firm confined itself mainly to the building of towboats, vessels of other types were occasionally turned out, the largest being the Lewis Luckenbach, of 3,905 tons, which was launched in 1903. The famous old frigate Constitution was reconstructed by this firm in 1876 and the U.S. gunboat Princeton built by them in 1895. After the elder Dialogue’s death, Mr. Dialogue carried on the business for a long period but eventually gave it up, and the yard was sold to the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad to be used in the extension of its Camden Terminal.

Since 1915, Mr. Dialogue had been employed by the Luckenbach Steamship Company as its Consulting Engineer, a position for which his wide experience and intimate knowledge of the technical as well as the practical side of shipbuilding and marine engineering particularly fitted him and, in conjunction with Mr. J. L Luckenbach, he supervised the designing and construction of ten of the vessels built for the company.

In addition to being a charter member of this Society, he also belonged to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He died April 19, 1924.

By Gordon Mackay

By Kenneth Kogan

Skeletons of steel are all that remain of Camden’s shipbuilding industry, at one time a center of American maritime ingenuity, innovation, and design. A moving force in this industrial revolution on the Delaware River was John H. Dialogue, who was born in Philadelphia on May 13, 1828. His father, Adam, had invented and manufactured the riveted leather fire hose found in pictures of horsedrawn firewagons racing through city streets. By the age of twelve young Dialogue was an orphan living with his uncle, a machinist. After graduating from Central High School in 1846 he was apprenticed to his uncle and became a self-taught draftsman in his spare time.

A forty-eight-year career on the Delaware River commenced in 1850 as Dialogue, at just twenty-two years of age, began his first enterprise at Second Street and Bridge Avenue in Camden. Here, at the southern terminus of the thriving Camden and Amboy Railroad Company, he employed approximately 100 men in the repair of locomotives and Delaware River ferry boats. The company prospered and in 1859 moved to the thirty-four-acre riverfront site at Kaighn’s Point that would house the Dialogue works until its demise. While marine and railroad repair work continued as the company’s mainstay, Dialogue entered the vanguard of industrial innovation via a licensing agreement to manufacture the Corliss stationary steam engine. George Corliss, a largely self-taught engineer, had patented two important innovations—a special engine governor and a new valve design, both of which greatly increased a steam engine’s efficiency. His most famous creation was the huge engine that powered the machinery displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. Its flywheel was thirty feet in diameter.

In 1862 Dialogue became associated with the newly formed National Armor and Shipbuilding Company, also in Camden. The first vessel built by National was the thirty-five-ton Lookout which, after a 1942 diesel engine installation, was still operating in 1973. National’s history is obscure but the company failed within two years of its founding. The firm of Wilcox and Whiting took over their works with Dialogue possibly continuing as a subcontractor. As no records attribute ship launchings to the Dialogue works during the period from 1865 to 1870, the yard presumably continued to rely on general repair and engine building. This approach may well have reflected a sound business judgment as the immediate post-Civil War shipbuilding industry was buffeted by inflation and experienced an almost complete lack of military orders. During this lean period other yards went so far afield as to produce paper-making machinery and railroad cars to ride out the shipbuilding doldrums.

In 1870 the Dialogue works expanded in size and importance when Randolph Wood combined his adjoining land with Dialogue’s and became a partner in the firm of Wood, Dialogue and Co. (The various names used by the Dialogue yard are a source of confusion. The 1870 Camden County Census of Industry listed “Wood and Dialogue” as the owners but gave “National Iron Works and Shipbuilding Company” as the name of the business.) As of June 1870 the partners employed 100 “males above 16 years” and 15 “children and youth.” Their business capital was given as $200,000. The first iron vessel launched by Wood and Dialogue was probably the cutter Colfax for the United States Revenue Cutter Service. This was followed by the forty-eight-ton iron tug Frank G. Fowler and the icebreaker City Ice Boat No. 3 for the city of Philadelphia. In 1874 they built one of the first compound-engine tugboats, the George W. Childs. The compound engine was a more compact and economical design than previous engine types and this early marine installation preceded those of many larger, more established yards. Another first of a sort was the March 14, 1876, delivery of the venerated, and neglected, USS Constitution from the League Island Navy Yard. After years of on-again, off-again repairs Wood and Dialogue was selected to restore “Old Ironsides” for exhibit at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. There is no record of the exact work performed in Camden. In any event the ship missed the Centennial, remaining in Camden until December 31, 1876, and was placed back in active commission a month later.

A few years after the partnership’s formation, Wood’s suicide in April 1874 left Dialogue in sole control of the company, although Wood’s widow retained ownership of her husband’s portion of the shipyard real estate. Business was further complicated by a serious fire in 1877. If past performance is any measure it may be inferred that Dialogue surmounted the setback with his usual aplomb. The yard’s founder apparently decided to concentrate on the building of tugboats rather than larger commercial and military vessels, while the general repair business continued as before. Perhaps Dialogue felt this an ideal niche, preferring to remain on the sidelines as Philadelphia’s William Cramp and Chester’s John Roach fought for the large vessel orders.

Specialization, whether intended or not, bore fruit as the yard’s reputation for first-class tugboats spread throughout the industry. Dialogue-built tugs, or “towboats” as they were popularly known (the term “towboat” deriving from their early use in towing sailing vessels and canal boats), did yeoman service in major United States and South American ports. From about 1880 onwards the proportion of iron-hulled versus steel-hulled vessels rapidly reversed with the Dialogue works completing its own conversion to the latter by about 1890. The year 1890 also saw the Dialogue firm included in an area fire insurance survey undertaken by E. Hexamer & Son of Philadelphia. It noted the employment of “500 men and a few boys” in the manufacture of “Ship Building, Engines and Boilers, Machinery in general.” By the time of the survey twenty-eight year-old John H. Dialogue, Jr., had become his father’s partner after serving apprenticeships in nearly every department of the yard. The firm was now renamed for the last time as John H. Dialogue & Son.

The senior Dialogue passed away on October 23, 1898, at age seventy. During his forty-year Camden residence he had served three terms on the board of education, presided over the Camden City Council, and been elected president of the New Jersey Electoral College. His obituary was front-page news in the Camden Daily Courier. Eight foremen of the shipyard’s various departments served as his pallbearers.

Dialogue’s son subsequently assumed proprietorship of the yard and under his supervision fifty-three ships, mostly tugs, were launched. Anxious creditors forced the younger Dialogue into bankruptcy in late 1913. An auctioneer’s brochure describing the yard’s real estate and equipment ran fifty pages and is a unique record of the variety of tools and machinery that a modern yard required. The property’s buyer was the Reading Railroad which, through hidden buyers, obtained the real estate for little more than half its appraised value. In short order the yard’s buildings were demolished to make way for an extension of the Reading’s Camden terminal. The shipbuilding business has traditionally been one of boom and bust cycles, a relatively modest capital return, and an uncertain future. Perhaps these factors, combined with the absence of the man who had begun the enterprise, caused his son to lose the mettle that had carried the yard through its first thirty-eight years.

Dialogue found employment as a consulting engineer for one of the yard’s old customers, the Luckenbach Steamship Company of New York City, and oversaw the construction of ten of that company’s vessels. He died on April 19, 1924, bringing to an end the Dialogues’ fifty-five-year association with the shipbuilding industry of the Delaware River. In its years of active operation the Dialogue yard had pioneered in the adaptation of new materials and technology to shipbuilding—the first marine compound engine, the first steel-hulled steamer with twin screws and rudder posts, and the construction of one of the earliest of the federal government’s all-iron ships. The firm’s displaced work force took their skills to the six yards still operating on the Delaware River’s New Jersey waterfront. Of these, the burgeoning New York Shipbuilding Company would become the shipbuilding equivalent of Henry Ford’s River Rouge Works—a self-contained industrial empire of almost limitless capacity. It was also the last to die, existing at least in name through the 1970s.

Figure 1. Chronology of John H. Dialogue’s Business Names

Notes: The firm name was listed as “National Iron & Shipbuilding Company” in the 1870 Camden County Census, but this name seems never to have been used. During the partnership’s duration the company is also referred to as “Wood, Dialogue & Co.” and “Dialogue, Wood & Co.” The date of the name change to include John H. Dialogue, Jr., is presumed. In 1885 the younger Dialogue, at twenty-three years of age is assumed to have completed his shipyard apprenticeship and become a principal of the firm.

Thanks to Harry Kyriakodis and Kenneth Kogan for their invaluable assistance in creating this page.