Holland Torpedo Boat Company Station

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.

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 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 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.

Rice and Frost had been at odds with the irascible Holland, and the move to New Suffolk did have an element of a Machiavellian business move to it. However, the prime reason for the move was that the previous testing areas for the Holland boat had been in Raritan Bay off Staten Island, NY and Perth Amboy, NJ. Inevitably, the trials of the submarine garnered tremendous interest from the press and the 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 fairly private operating area to test the boat in, and it kept it from the bulk of the prying eyes of the press.

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