Pictou Shipyard

The Pictou Shipyard is a Canadian shipbuilding site located in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, Canada and made famous by its use as an emergency shipbuilding facility in World War Two where it constructed twenty-four 4,700 ton Scandinavian class freighters. At its current site it was founded as The Pictou Iron Foundry in 1856 by William Henry Davies and through many business booms and busts as well as several changes of ownership it continues to operate today under the ownership of Aecon Atlantic Industrial Inc.

Although the official founding by W. H. Davies occurred not until 1856, Pictou’s ship registry began in 1840. Shipbuilding and ship repair began in Pictou in various places near the town a few years after settlement in 1773 via the Hector (ship), with the first cargo of squared timber leaving Pictou in 1774. Other than the current site itself, the most significant site in the shipbuilding industry was located on Windmill Point, Pictou where Captain William Lowden first settled in 1788. He eventually moved into the town of Pictou and continued his ship work. Captain Lowden is traditionally considered to be the father of shipbuilding in Pictou County as he was made famous by he’s construction of the Harriet (ship) built in 1798. At 600 tons she built with room for twenty-four guns and was supposed to be the largest and finest ship built in the province at that time. He was not the first builder however as there is a record of a small one-mast vessel being launched in Pictou Harbour in 1788 by Thomas Copeland, and the county’s first schooner named the Anne was built in 1788 at Merigomish, Nova Scotia. Shipbuilding and work continued throughout the early 1800s’. Before the age of steam the types of ships built were schooners, brigs, and brigantines, barques and barquentines and full rigged ships. Most notably was the yard’s work on the SS Royal William on her fully steam powered voyage a crossed the Atlantic.

W. H. Davies who left the Albion Iron Foundry in 1854, completed and managed his own foundry on the Pictou waterfront in 1856. William H. Davies’ sons George and Charles, carried on the foundry’s operation until the late 1800s until they sold it to Joseph Robb and Douglas Hannon. In 1906 Allan A. Ferguson bought out the interests of Robb and the business was renamed to the Pictou Foundry and Machine Company. In 1910 Douglas Hannon died and Allan A. Ferguson became the sole owner and head of the business.

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