The Chester Rolling Mill was a large iron (later steel) rolling mill established by shipbuilder John Roach in Chester, Pennsylvania , United States, in 1873. The main purpose of the Mill was to provide metal hull plates, beams and other parts for the ships built at Roach's Delaware River Iron Ship Building and Engine Works , also located at Chester.
41-468: Amongst the mill's notable achievements, it manufactured the steel plates for the first steel- hulled steamship built in the United States, Alaskan , and for the U.S. Navy 's first four steel ships, the so-called "ABCD ships". Production of the latter vessels drove Roach's shipbuilding empire into receivership after the government unexpectedly repudiated the contracts, and Roach was forced to sell
82-503: A landing craft . In a typical modern steel ship, the hull will have watertight decks, and major transverse members called bulkheads . There may also be intermediate members such as girders , stringers and webs , and minor members called ordinary transverse frames, frames, or longitudinals, depending on the structural arrangement . The uppermost continuous deck may be called the "upper deck", "weather deck", "spar deck", " main deck ", or simply "deck". The particular name given depends on
123-408: A deck. Atop the deck may be a deckhouse and other superstructures , such as a funnel, derrick, or mast . The line where the hull meets the water surface is called the waterline . There is a wide variety of hull types that are chosen for suitability for different usages, the hull shape being dependent upon the needs of the design. Shapes range from a nearly perfect box in the case of scow barges to
164-418: A hull. Hulls come in many varieties and can have composite shape, (e.g., a fine entry forward and inverted bell shape aft), but are grouped primarily as follows: At present, the most widely used form is the round bilge hull. With a small payload, such a craft has less of its hull below the waterline , giving less resistance and more speed. With a greater payload, resistance is greater and speed lower, but
205-466: A lower-horsepower engine but will pound more in waves. The deep V form (between 18 and 23 degrees) is only suited to high-powered planing boats. They require more powerful engines to lift the boat onto the plane but give a faster, smoother ride in waves. Displacement chined hulls have more wetted surface area, hence more drag, than an equivalent round-hull form, for any given displacement. Smooth curve hulls are hulls that use, just like
246-400: A needle-sharp surface of revolution in the case of a racing multihull sailboat. The shape is chosen to strike a balance between cost, hydrostatic considerations (accommodation, load carrying, and stability), hydrodynamics (speed, power requirements, and motion and behavior in a seaway) and special considerations for the ship's role, such as the rounded bow of an icebreaker or the flat bottom of
287-502: A politically motivated act, the new Cleveland administration found reasons to void Roach's contract for Dolphin . With another three Navy ships still unpaid for in his shipyard whose contracts might also be declared void, Roach was unable to secure loans to continue his business and was forced into receivership. In the subsequent liquidation of assets, the Chester Rolling Mill along with the rest of Roach's companies, with
328-613: A reliable supply of raw materials. The Houstons also controlled Chester's only newspaper, the Chester Times , and they in turn shared business interests with Samuel A. Crozer, whose extended family—the wealthiest in Chester—owned the city's largest textile mills . Collectively, the Roach, Houston and Crozer families employed 25% of Chester's working population and accounted for 35% of its payroll, their partnership ensuring dominance of
369-405: A whole consumed 1,400 tons of iron ore, 600 tons of limestone and 1,000 tons of coal per week. The workforce was also expanded to 500 people, with a weekly payroll of $ 6,000. A notable achievement for the company following the addition of the steel milling facilities was the production of steel plates for America's first steel-hulled ship, the cargo ship Alaskan , built by the Roach shipyard for
410-429: Is rolled or forged into narrow strips and ready to be made into pipe or tubing by being bent (into a cylindrical shape) and welded . The word is most commonly used in the traditional terminology of smithing and in the iron and steel industries. Before the 20th century, the welding was likely to be forge welding . In the 20th and 21st centuries, it has been likelier to be arc welding or gas welding . In
451-423: Is easily unsettled in waves. The multi-chine hull approximates a curved hull form. It has less drag than a flat-bottom boat. Multi chines are more complex to build but produce a more seaworthy hull form. They are usually displacement hulls. V or arc-bottom chine boats have a V shape between 6° and 23°. This is called the deadrise angle. The flatter shape of a 6-degree hull will plane with less wind or
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#1732775603524492-525: The Combination Steel and Iron Company made John Roach & Sons one of the first large companies in the United States to adopt the vertical integration model. The Chester Rolling Mill was incorporated with a capital of $ 300,000 on March 10, 1875 by John Roach and a number of partners including Roach's sons John B. and Garrett, and local Chester business identities John Q. Denny and Charles B. and David Houston. The elder Roach became President of
533-464: The Damascus method —wrapping the skelp around a mandrel to make spirals which were then hammered and forged into a tube. The mandrel was then removed, the interior reamed , and the exterior filed until a finished tube was complete. The tube was then polished and breeched . This method of fabrication was used because it was difficult to cast a solid barrel and then drill it out without
574-553: The Standard Steel Casting Company , had recently begun production. Delays in production of the steel along with additional unexpected delays prolonged construction of the ships past the 1884 Presidential election, and by the time Roach was ready to deliver the first ship, Dolphin , the new Democrat administration of Grover Cleveland , who became President on March 4, 1885, hostile to the staunchly Republican Roach, had assumed office. In what many regarded as
615-615: The Yngling and Randmeer . Hull forms are defined as follows: Block measures that define the principal dimensions. They are: Form derivatives that are calculated from the shape and the block measures. They are: Coefficients help compare hull forms as well: Note: C b = C p ⋅ C m {\displaystyle C_{b}=C_{p}\cdot C_{m}} Use of computer-aided design has superseded paper-based methods of ship design that relied on manual calculations and lines drawing. Since
656-422: The bit coming out the side. In many regions and eras, especially before the 20th century, gunsmithing has been achieved without the help of advanced machine tool practice, such as gun drilling or advanced boring methods. In such contexts, advanced smithing and filing skills have often made up for the lack of machine tools. Damascus barrels were generally designed for black powder charges. The breech end of
697-627: The Chester Rolling Mill and most of his other companies to satisfy creditors. The Chester Rolling Mill later became part of the Wellman Steel Company. Roach established his shipyard, the Delaware River Iron Ship Building and Engine Works, on the Delaware River at Chester in 1871. He had two reasons for establishing the Chester Rolling Mill. Firstly, the locality of Chester lacked facilities for
738-576: The Mill included two puddling mills with 11 furnaces and a total output of 50 tons per day, a mill for boiler and ship plate with a capacity of 45 tons per day, and a mill for angle, beam and skelp iron with a daily capacity of 35 tons. Included in the above were two large gas-operated furnaces and a mill which could produce plates from ⅛ to 6 inch thickness and 27 feet wide. Roach's milling machines incorporated both vertical and horizontal rollers which allowed plates to be finished with parallel edges, eliminating
779-657: The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company and delivered in August 1883. On July 2, 1883, John Roach & Sons won the contracts for all four of the Navy's first steel ships— Atlanta , Boston , Chicago , and Dolphin —or the "ABCD ships", as they came to be known. The only bidder with his own steel mill, Roach was able to undercut the other bidders by a total of $ 270,000 on the price of steel alone. The final contracts were signed on July 23 and Roach began construction of
820-431: The Wellman Steel Company. This venture proved unsuccessful, and Wellman dispensed with his holdings in about 1896. 39°49′51″N 75°23′14″W / 39.8307°N 75.3873°W / 39.8307; -75.3873 Hull (ship) A hull is the watertight body of a ship , boat , submarine , or flying boat . The hull may open at the top (such as a dinghy ), or it may be fully or partially covered with
861-408: The chine. More than one chine per side is possible. The Cajun "pirogue" is an example of a craft with hard chines. Benefits of this type of hull include potentially lower production cost and a (usually) fairly flat bottom, making the boat faster at planing . A hard chined hull resists rolling (in smooth water) more than does a hull with rounded bilges (the chine creates turbulence and drag resisting
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#1732775603524902-499: The city's politics. The Chester Rolling Mill was established on the site of an old bridge and steel works at the foot of Wilson and Hayes Sts., Chester, incorporating the area between Townsend to Highland Ave., and from Front St. to the Delaware River. Construction of the main rolling mill, a building with dimensions of 160 x 185 feet, began in 1875. In 1879, the building was doubled in size, from 160 to 320 feet. Initial output
943-412: The context of traditional gunsmithing , one way to make gun barrels has been to make them from skelp, like one would make other pipe or tubing. Barrels made from skelp have typically been thought of as having inferior quality . (Pipe made from skelp can be perfectly acceptable in quality, but a gun barrel must withstand much higher pressures than most pipes.) Cheap gun barrels could be made this way in
984-414: The context—the type of ship or boat, the arrangement, or even where it sails. In a typical wooden sailboat, the hull is constructed of wooden planking, supported by transverse frames (often referred to as ribs) and bulkheads, which are further tied together by longitudinal stringers or ceiling. Often but not always there is a centerline longitudinal member called a keel . In fiberglass or composite hulls,
1025-523: The curved hulls, a centreboard, or an attached keel. Semi round bilge hulls are somewhat less round. The advantage of the semi-round is that it is a nice middle between the S-bottom and chined hull. Typical examples of a semi-round bilge hull can be found in the Centaur and Laser sailing dinghies . S-bottom hulls are sailing boat hulls with a midships transverse half-section shaped like an s . In
1066-401: The early 1990s, a variety of commercial and freeware software packages specialized for naval architecture have been developed that provide 3D drafting capabilities combined with calculation modules for hydrostatics and hydrodynamics. These may be referred to as geometric modeling systems for naval architecture. Skelp Skelp (sometimes spelled scelp ) is wrought iron or steel that
1107-622: The exception of his Chester shipyard and the Morgan Iron Works in New York, were sold to pay off creditors. After selling their shares in the company, Roach and his sons resigned from their positions in February 1886, and the Chester Rolling Mill appears to have been taken over by Roach's former partner Samuel A. Crozer, who became the company's new President. In 1890, the Mill was purchased by Samuel Taylor Wellman, becoming part of
1148-412: The high drag, hull forms are narrow and sometimes severely tapered at bow and stern. This leads to poor stability when heeled in a sailboat. This is often countered by using heavy interior ballast on sailing versions. They are best suited to sheltered inshore waters. Early racing power boats were fine forward and flat aft. This produced maximum lift and a smooth, fast ride in flat water, but this hull form
1189-407: The hull's outward bend provides smoother performance in waves. As such, the inverted bell shape is a popular form used with planing hulls. A chined hull does not have a smooth rounded transition between bottom and sides. Instead, its contours are interrupted by sharp angles where predominantly longitudinal panels of the hull meet. The sharper the intersection (the more acute the angle), the "harder"
1230-470: The large-scale production of iron plates and frames as required by his shipyard. Secondly, by establishing his own rolling mill, he could dispense with ironmaking subcontractors and thus reduce his overall costs. Roach's ownership of a network of companies supporting his shipyard, which included the Chester Rolling Mill, the Chester Pipe and Tube Company and later the Standard Steel Casting Company and
1271-456: The necessity of shearing ragged edges to size. Some of the new machinery was capable of rolling steel as well as iron ingots. Power to operate the milling machines was provided by four large Corliss steam engines and eight smaller ones. A five-ton steam hammer was also installed. After the expansion, the mill could produce 300 tons of steel plate a day in addition to the 300 tons of iron plate and 700 tons of pig iron already produced. The mill as
Chester Rolling Mill - Misplaced Pages Continue
1312-574: The new company, and Charles and David Houston were made general manager and paymaster respectively, while their brother Thomas also received a management position. Roach and his sons held the majority of shares. The connection with the Houston family was of particular importance to Roach as the Houstons had investments in Pennsylvanian iron and coal mines, virtually guaranteeing the new company
1353-469: The rolling motion, as it moves through the water, the rounded-bilge provides less flow resistance around the turn). In rough seas, this can make the boat roll more, as the motion drags first down, then up, on a chine: round-bilge boats are more seakindly in waves, as a result. Chined hulls may have one of three shapes: Each of these chine hulls has its own unique characteristics and use. The flat-bottom hull has high initial stability but high drag. To counter
1394-487: The s-bottom, the hull has round bilges and merges smoothly with the keel, and there are no sharp corners on the hull sides between the keel centreline and the sheer line. Boats with this hull form may have a long fixed deep keel, or a long shallow fixed keel with a centreboard swing keel inside. Ballast may be internal, external, or a combination. This hull form was most popular in the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. Examples of small sailboats that use this s-shape are
1435-599: The ships shortly thereafter. Roach was initially confident that he would have no difficulty supplying the steel for the four ships. To ensure the minimum of delay, he subcontracted with several other steel manufacturers, including the Norway Iron and Steel Company of South Boston, the Park Brothers' Black Diamond Works of Pittsburgh, and the Phoenix Iron Company of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania , for
1476-424: The shipyard. In 1880, Roach embarked on a substantial upgrade of the mill's facilities. A second blast furnace was constructed above the original rolling mill, along with new buildings covering about 1 + 1 ⁄ 4 acres, including a new 90 x 140 ft steelworks. The new furnace commenced production on November 1, 1881. In order to pay for the expansion, the firm was recapitalized at $ 600,000. By this time,
1517-467: The standard ship plate size of 12 x 4 feet (48 squ. ft) and rolled larger plates of 14 x 5 ft (70 squ. ft). This simple innovation reduced the time spent in planing, punching and chipping plates by 40%, reduced handling times, and had the added advantage of producing a stronger ship with fewer butts to strain. Roach also endeavoured as far as possible to roll plates to their finished dimensions, saving time which other companies spent on reworking plates at
1558-502: The structure may resemble wooden or steel vessels to some extent, or be of a monocoque arrangement. In many cases, composite hulls are built by sandwiching thin fiber-reinforced skins over a lightweight but reasonably rigid core of foam, balsa wood, impregnated paper honeycomb, or other material. Perhaps the earliest proper hulls were built by the Ancient Egyptians , who by 3000 BC knew how to assemble wooden planks into
1599-418: The supply of various steel parts. So exacting were the specifications however, that a third of all the parts produced were rejected by Navy inspectors, leading to cost overruns which eventually persuaded the subcontractors to renege on their agreements with Roach. Roach was left having to manufacture all the steel parts himself, although the situation was somewhat alleviated by the fact that another Roach company,
1640-411: The tube was much thicker than the muzzle end, and this held the initial impulse pressure from the black powder. By the time the bullet reached the muzzle, the pressure had dropped quite a bit, so muzzle reinforcement was not needed. This gave a better weight distribution through the length of the weapon. Smokeless powders burn more slowly than black powder, thus maintaining high pressures throughout
1681-597: Was 700 tons of pig iron and 300 tons of iron ship plate. Pig iron, beams, and hull and boiler plates were produced both for Roach's main shipyard in Chester and for his other shipbuilding facility, the Morgan Iron Works in New York City . With the establishment of the Mill, Roach was able to introduce a number of innovations into the industry which reduced time and cut costs. To begin with, he rejected