Lawrence & Foulks

Lawrence & Foulks was a 19th-century American shipbuilding company based in New York. Established in the early 1850s, the company built 144 vessels of all types over the course of some fifty years, but is best known for its production of high-speed wooden-hulled steamboats and steamships. Notable vessels built by the company include the record-breaking Hudson River steamboat Chauncey Vibbard, the luxury Long Island Sound steamer Commonwealth, and the fast oceangoing steamships—later U.S. Navy gunboats—Bienville and De Soto. In addition to the domestic market, the company also built ships for service as far afield as South America and China.

Lawrence & Foulks was one of the few New York shipyards to survive the post-Civil War slump, but was either unwilling or unable to make the postwar transition from wooden to iron shipbuilding, and closed its doors around the turn of the century.

In 1850, William Foulks, a British-born ship's carpenter then aged 37, partnered with a young engineer named Humphrey Crary to build a steamboat in New York, which was named Catherine after Foulks' wife. Foulks received contracts to build several more vessels over the next two years. At this time, his shipyard was located at the foot of Cherry Street, Manhattan.

By 1852, Foulks had established a partnership with Herbert Lawrence, and the company was renamed Lawrence & Foulks. Lawrence, then barely in his twenties, was the son of Herbert Lawrence Sr., former co-proprietor of the prominent early New York shipbuilding firm of Lawrence & Sneden. By 1854, the Lawrence & Foulks shipyard had relocated to North Fifth Street, Williamsburg (now a part of Brooklyn), where it would remain for the next 17 years.

While the specific plant and equipment utilized by Lawrence & Foulks is not known, wooden shipbuilding firms in this era could be established for a remarkably small outlay—as little as $11,000, and rarely more than $20,000. Tradesmen at this time mostly supplied their own tools, so a shipyard needed little more than a waterfront property large enough to hold a timber yard and a slipway or two, a derrick to lift heavy components, a large crosscut saw and a few other tools.