Berg Shipbuilding Company


Berg Shipbuilding Company was a prominent shipyard in Seattle, Washington during the early 1930s. It built several important vessels for arms of the United States government before going out of business in 1935.

Organizational history

Berg Shipbuilding Company was incorporated on 3 January 1930 and opened its shipyard a few weeks later. It was located at the foot of 26th Avenue NW in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It was founded by Andrew B. Berg, H. A. Schurman, and Oscar Pripp. It was originally capitalized at $30,000. Berg was president and Schurman was secretary of the corporation.
In 1933 the company's capitalization was increased to $80,000.
The construction of USLHT Hemlock proved to be the company's undoing. Berg was inexperienced in the construction of steel vessels of Hemlock's size and lacked the capability to produce major parts of the ship. It relied on subcontractors to produce these, and then assembled them. Andrew Berg disagreed with his own employees and the government inspector overseeing the construction on how to build the ship. Berg and Schurman both left the company in late 1933. George Nelson, a general contractor, took over as president and became the owner of the company. Hemlock was finally delivered 238 days late, for which Berg Shipbuilding Company was assessed $38,000 in liquidated damages. Litigation around this contract went on for over a decade, but the company went out of existence. The corporation failed to pay its license fees for three years and was automatically dissolved on 1 July 1938.
Andrew Berg went on to found similarly named Berg Shipbuilding Corporation in Blaine, Washington. Berg's shipyard in Ballard was taken over by Seattle Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in 1936.

Ship building history

Its first contracts were for two purse seiners, but Berg Shipbuilding Company built boats and ships of all sorts from wooden sailboats to steel trollers.
ShipPhotoOriginal OwnerLaunchedType
MartinvilleLouis Sandstrom28 June 1930Purse seiner
MamalaUS Army Corps of Engineers1 September 1931Wooden survey vessel
USMS North StarBureau of Indian Affairs18 January 1932Wooden freighter
DiscovererHeine Berger28 February 1933Freighter
NenanaAlaska Railroad15 May 1933Riverboat
USLHT HemlockU.S. Lighthouse Service20 January 1934Steel lighthouse tender
Cheechako1935Wooden sailboat