Shipbuilding History

Tampa FL

In 1942, Matthew McCloskey developed a shipyard at Hookers Point in Tampa, on land owned by Tampa Port Authority. The yard had 13 building ways, for the construction of concrete ships of the C1-S-D1 design: MARCOM provided $7 million towards its development. Although not unsuccessful at building concrete ships, it later switched to building steel ships, but closed after the war. The site was acquired by the City of Tampa from the War Assets Administration in January 1948 and leased out on an annual basis. The first significant operator was known as Tampa Ship Repair & Dry Dock Co., which included a subsidiary called Tampa Fabricators.

This company was acquired in 1972 by George Steinbrenner's American Ship Building Company, after they had closed their yards on the Great Lakes, and was subsequently renamed Tampa Shipyards, Inc. American Ship Building expanded it by converting the neighboring shrimp boat dock into two Panamax graving docks, to supplement the two existing graving docks, but the company went bankrupt in 1995. The lease was then briefly held by a subsidiary of a Greek bulk carrier operator, who renamed it Tampa Shipbuilding, but in 1997 it was transferred to a new entity called Tampa Bay Shipbuilding & Repair Company, which was jointly owned by Tommy Bender, who owned Bender Shipbuilding & Repair, in Mobile AL, and Aaron Hendry, who owns Gulf Marine Repair, in Tampa. Bender bought out Hendry in 2002 but sold the business to Edison Chouest Offshore in 2008. Chouest renamed it Tampa Ship. The shipyard is still primarily a repair facility, but has much more fabrication capability than most repair yards and under Chouest's management is now building PSVs. Visit the shipyard at tampabayship.com.