Western Pipe and Steel Company
| Defunct (1945) | |
| Industry | Manufacturing & shipbuilding |
| Founded | About 1907 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Products | Ships, iron and steel products |
| Services | Ship repair |
The Western Pipe and Steel Company (WPS) was an American manufacturing company that is best remembered today for its construction of ships for the Maritime Commission in World War II. It also built ships for the U.S. Shipping Board in World War I and took part in the construction of the giant Grand Coulee Dam project in the 1930s.
The origins of the company are somewhat obscure. It appears it was organized in Los Angeles, California around 1907 by two brothers named Talbot and possibly a partner named T. A. Hays. Hays, a businessman with 21 years experience in the steel industry, was at some stage appointed Vice President of the new company, which in this period was a small-calibre steel pipe and metal casings manufacturer. An early President of the company was James A. Talbot, later to make and lose a fortune as the head of the Richfield Oil Company.
Western Pipe & Steel quickly began to expand its operations. In 1910 it established a factory in Taft, California for the supply of pipes and containers to the oil industry. Another factory was opened in Fresno in 1913. In 1915 a third new factory was established in Phoenix, Arizona to serve the agricultural and oil industries in that state.
The company made its first move into San Francisco in 1910 with the purchase of a local riveted pipe manufacturer, the Francis Smith Company, whose own origins dated back to 1854. Shortly thereafter, WPS purchased land in the Richmond District of San Francisco, and moved the Francis Smith plant to the new location.
In 1917 Western Pipe & Steel bought out another local San Francisco company, the Schaw Batcher Pipe Works. Schaw Batcher had frontage on San Francisco Bay and had just received a contract from the U.S. Shipping Board for the building of 22 merchant ships in accordance with the Board's strategic goal of developing a naval auxiliary and merchant marine fleet. With the purchase of Schaw Batcher, Western Pipe & Steel inherited these contracts, thus gaining its first foothold into the shipbuilding industry.
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