Last Look—Shipbreaking, 1940's Style

May/June 2004
 
In 1948, Dave Needle & Son, a Huntington Park, Calif., recycling firm with 35 years of experience in the scrap iron business, “took a gamble in an unknown field that scrap dealers were just beginning to explore ... ship-salvage,” as shipbreaking was called in a February 1949 article in Scrap Age. The company’s maiden voyage in shipbreaking involved a 520-foot tanker that had exploded and burned in Los Angeles Harbor in June 1947. After submitting the winning bid of $73,465 to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Dave Needle & Son went to work, as described below by A.M. Gonzalez:

“The half-sunken tankship rested quietly at the Shell Oil Co. dock of the Los Angeles Harbor. She was awakened from her deep slumber on February 3, 1948, when men, pumps, derrick, cranes and barges started the transformation of the wrecked tanker to scrap.

“The restoration of the S.S. Markay to life in the form of scrap iron by the salvagers brought many complications, as is always the case when a newcomer breaks into a new field.

“The pumping operations were successful. There was the first thrill when the sunken midship was raised ten feet above the water and the dejected feeling next morning when it was found back down on the bottom. But in spite of all handicaps, on April 28, 1948, we find the ship all cut down to the hull; the turbines, pumps, motors and ship equipment which were sealed in the engine room at the time of the explosion and suffered no damage, safely hauled away. When the hull is ready to be beached, new difficulties are encountered. The operations are at a standstill for a few days due to certain technicalities of this new game which the amateur salvagers overlooked, as well as the marked interference of professional jealousies, but Dave Needle & Son, ship-salvagers, completed the contract before due date and what was the giant tanker S.S. Markay has now turned into scrap iron prepared for the mills.

“And so it was that with two divers, a crew of thirty-six men and an operating cost of about a quarter of a million dollars, a tankship was restored to a new life in the form of a 5,000 ton scrap pile and a number of items of ship equipment, but above all, Dave Needle & Son have gained a million dollars worth of experience in ship-salvage and the great satisfaction of a job well done!”

In 1948, Dave Needle & Son, a Huntington Park, Calif., recycling firm with 35 years of experience in the scrap iron business, “took a gamble in an unknown field that scrap dealers were just beginning to explore ... ship-salvage,” as shipbreaking was called in a February 1949 article in Scrap Age.