Holland Torpedo Boat Company Station: Difference between revisions

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The site stayed in the Tuthill family and continued to operate as a boatyard and eventually an oil distribution site. The family sold off the oil business in 1976. Mr. J. Arthur Kenniff had purchased the boatyard portion in 1960 and built and repaired boats there until at least 1983. Eventually the site came under the ownership of the local Cuthogue/New Suffolk government. There was a plan at one point of developing the site with condos, but that never came to pass. Today, the site is called "The New Suffolk Waterfront", with the old Holland basin the mooring site of several small yachts and boats.
The site stayed in the Tuthill family and continued to operate as a boatyard and eventually an oil distribution site. The family sold off the oil business in 1976. Mr. J. Arthur Kenniff had purchased the boatyard portion in 1960 and built and repaired boats there until at least 1983. Eventually the site came under the ownership of the local Cuthogue/New Suffolk government. There was a plan at one point of developing the site with condos, but that never came to pass. Today, the site is called "The New Suffolk Waterfront", with the old Holland basin the mooring site of several small yachts and boats.


Today, New Suffolk has reverted to its pre-Holland 1899 ideal. The town is charming and quaint, with modest but stately homes gracing the hilly streets. Life seems to run at a slower pace there, and the approximately 500 residents seem to like it that way.  
[[File:New Suffolk 2024 waterfront.JPG|275px|thumb|right|<small>Photo by Dave Johnston, May 2024</small>]] Today, New Suffolk has reverted to its pre-Holland 1899 ideal. The town is charming and quaint, with modest but stately homes gracing the hilly streets. Life seems to run at a slower pace there, and the approximately 500 residents seem to like it that way. As far as can be determined, no buildings from either the Goldsmith & Tuthill days or the HTBC residency remain. However, this is one building at the northern corner of the basin that bears a resemblance to the old machine shop building.


   
   

Revision as of 20:13, 18 June 2024

The Holland Torpedo Boat Company Station

In late 1898 American inventor and submarine pioneer John P. Holland was exhausted from the nearly unrelenting activity needed to get his submarine, the Holland VI, ready for U.S. Navy trials. Needing an influx of capital to continue to fund the tests and realizing that a full production capability was needed to build follow-on units should the Holland VI be accepted, Holland agreed to have his Holland Torpedo Boat Company acquired by the newly formed Electric Boat Company. EB was the brainchild of Isaac Rice, a New York City capitalist who was eager to explore the potential of submarines in naval operations. HTBC was to be a wholly owned subsidiary of EB with John Holland as its general manager and financier Elihu B. Frost as Secretary-Treasurer. The corporate offices were at 100 Broadway in New York City.

Holland under tow to the New Suffolk station, summer 1899
Holland, never the savvy business man, was further exhausted by all the machinations of the business world and decided that he needed a break to rejuvenate his energies. He set off for his native homeland Ireland, looking for a good rest. Nearly as soon as Holland's passenger ship cleared New York Harbor, Rice set in motion a plan to move the Holland VI and most of the HTBC subsidiary to a new facility on Little Peconic Bay, Long Island at a little town called New Suffolk. Rice leased the Goldsmith & Tuthill Boat Yard along First Street in New Suffolk and set up a dedicated maintenance and storage facility, along with a machine shop and a draftsman's shop. The new yard had a hook shaped stone rip-rap breakwater that formed a small protected basin that would provide docking space for the Holland VI and any potential follow-on sister craft. Accommodations were acquired in the town for the company's personnel, including Holland and Frost. The new facility was not a construction yard, as it lacked the space for building ways. The Holland VI's construction had been sub-contracted to Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard at Elizabeth, NJ, and it was likely that follow-on boats would be built there as well. The New Suffolk station was for final fitting out and testing.

HTBC employees in front of the machine shop, circa 1900. Note how the rooftop sign was worded here. Compare to the later picture below.
The move of the HTBC subsidiary to New Suffolk without Holland's knowledge was actually one of a series of Machiavellian business moves by Rice, who sought total control of the company and was seeking to move Holland out of the way, literally and figuratively. Holland had already signed over his patents to Electric Boat in a move to raise capital for continued tests and future construction. However, there was also a very practical reason for the move as well. The previous testing areas for the Holland boat had been in Raritan Bay off Staten Island, NY and Perth Amboy, NJ near the Crescent building yard. Inevitably, the trials of the submarine garnered tremendous interest from the press and the New York City public alike and the submarine was often accompanied by a plethora of pleasure craft, making it potentially dangerous to operate the boat submerged. The move to rural New Suffolk gave the company a reasonably private operating area to test the boat in, and it kept it from the bulk of the prying eyes of the press.

The trials of the Holland VI on Great Peconic Bay were entirely successful and after a haulout for minor modifications and repairs at Greenport, NY and one more trial run the boat was finally purchased by the Navy in April, 1900 and commissioned as the Holland in October. Electric Boat, however, was already looking to the future. Entirely at their own expense they contracted with Crescent Shipyard to build a larger and improved version of the Holland, with the intent of using her as a demonstration model for seven copies that Rice was working diligently to get the Navy to purchase. This new boat, called Fulton, was quickly moved to New Suffolk for testing and demonstration trials. The Fulton trials were entirely successful and they cleared the bureaucratic logjam around the authorization for the seven Adder-class submarines, five of which quickly followed the Fulton to New Suffolk (two of them were built in San Francisco).

Fulton, Adder, Plunger, Moccasin, Porpoise, and Shark were joined in New Suffolk by a company owned tugboat called the Kelpie, which accompanied the boats as they made their initial trial runs in Great Peconic Bay. In addition, the hulk of a never completed steam powered submarine contracted to Holland's company in 1895 (also called the Plunger) was towed up to the station and moored to the quay wall inside the basin. Sleepy little New Suffolk became a busy and prosperous place for several years, with the new Adder-class submarines arriving regularly and trials being run out in the bay. New Suffolk was far enough away from New York City to keep the public and press at bay, but Rice was savvy enough to understand the advantages of getting favorable publicity and thus selected members of the press were often invited out to view the comings and goings around the station. The nearby southern shore of Long Island was also becoming a popular destination for summer vacations of the New York elite, and thus viewing the submarine movements became a favored pastime for Rice's urban colleagues. In addition, many high ranking Naval officers visited the site to see how the boats performed. Of course, the town played host to the incoming crews of the new submarines.

Another view from the middle of the quay wall. The new Plunger (Submarine No. 2) is alongside another boat on the right. The Fulton is just visible on the left. She was not purchased by the USN and was eventually sold to Russia under clandestine circumstances.
The heyday of New Suffolk as a center of submarine activity was short. The last of the Adder-class boats (Shark (Submarine No. 8) was commissioned on September 19, 1903 and New Suffolk quickly grew quiet. Submarine technology was rapidly advancing and Electric Boat was moving on to the much larger and more capable Viper (Submarine No. 10) and Octopus (Submarine No. 9) classes and these boats were too big to be adequately moored in the small New Suffolk basin, whose water depth was also not sufficient for the bigger boats. In addition, Rice continued with his business maneuvering and had been slowly but surely forcing Holland out of the company that he had founded. Holland, though a brilliant engineer, had always been an irascible and stubborn man and had frequently been at loggerheads over technical matters with Rice, company engineer and trials captain Frank Cable, the new chief engineer Lawrence Y. Spear, and eventually even his friend Elihu Frost. Holland's contract with EB came to an end on March 31, 1904 and he resigned from the company. Rice, Spear, and Cable were eager to see him go and they figuratively held the door open for him. Seeking to divest the company from any remaining Holland image, Rice and Spear contracted with Fore River Shipbuilding in Quincy, MA for the Viper and Octopus-class boats, cutting out Holland's preferred Crescent. The New Suffolk facility was closed in 1905 with facilities reverting to their former owner Goldsmith & Tuthill.

The site stayed in the Tuthill family and continued to operate as a boatyard and eventually an oil distribution site. The family sold off the oil business in 1976. Mr. J. Arthur Kenniff had purchased the boatyard portion in 1960 and built and repaired boats there until at least 1983. Eventually the site came under the ownership of the local Cuthogue/New Suffolk government. There was a plan at one point of developing the site with condos, but that never came to pass. Today, the site is called "The New Suffolk Waterfront", with the old Holland basin the mooring site of several small yachts and boats.

Photo by Dave Johnston, May 2024
Today, New Suffolk has reverted to its pre-Holland 1899 ideal. The town is charming and quaint, with modest but stately homes gracing the hilly streets. Life seems to run at a slower pace there, and the approximately 500 residents seem to like it that way. As far as can be determined, no buildings from either the Goldsmith & Tuthill days or the HTBC residency remain. However, this is one building at the northern corner of the basin that bears a resemblance to the old machine shop building.




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