Giants from the past in Boston Harbor
Before the arrival of English and European settlers. Local Native Americans fished and planted crops along the coasts of the 30 or so Islands that dot the Harbor. In the early 1600’s the Massachusetts Bay Company, a small band of Puritans led by John Winthrop, landed and began settling the area, clearing land for livestock and firewood. Boston Harbor quickly became a busy trading port. By 1660 almost all English imports to New England came through these waters. As a British colony, Boston began to grow in size, laying the scene for the beginnings of the American Revolution one hundred years later.
During World War II the Harbor’s entrance was guarded with mines and an underwater torpedo net.
The cranes most likely were updated versions or original chasis from the Fore River Shipyard that settled further down the harbor near the war.
The Fore River Shipyard, more formally known as the Fore River Ship and Engine Building Company, was a shipyard in the United States from 1883 until 1986. Located on the Weymouth Fore River, the yard began operations in 1883 in Braintree, Massachusetts before being moved downstream to its permanent location in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1901. The shipyard helped build early U.S. submarines and many ships commissioned by the United States Navy, including the World War II battleship USS Massachusetts (BB-59) and aircraft carriers USS Wasp (CV-7) and USS Bunker Hill (CV-17). In the 1960s, the yard was purchased by General Dynamics. It continued to produce ships for the Navy until being converted to LNG tanker production before finally closing in 1986.
The yard built the Thomas W. Lawson, the largest pure sailing ship ever built and ARA Rivadavia, one of two foreign battleships built in the United States. It was home to the “Goliath” crane, for a time the second-largest shipbuilding crane in the world. - via wikipedia
by Dave
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