Back when the 1849 Gold Rush days had passed their peak and the residents of the San Francisco Bay Area were settling down to a normal life, several leading citizens saw a pressing need for the establishment of some sort of ship repair facilities. Bonanza king William Chapman Ralston decided to put a graving dock on the Bay where previously only marine railway-type drydocks had been available. He commissioned A. W. Van Schmidt, a noted civil engineer, to build a 490-foot drydock at Hunters Point. On 1 September 1865, fifteen men started work on this project.
The 490-foot drydock was designed to be 462 feet long at the keelson, 97 feet wide at the gate top, and 56 feet wide at the sill. Midship width was to be 117 feet at the top and 56 feet at the bottom. The forward 75 feet and the after fifty feet were to be constructed of concrete with flights of steps, or wooden altars, throughout. The pump house, located fifty feet from the forward end of the drydock on the port side, contained one rope-drive, 4,520 c.f.m. (cubic feet per minute) pump. The dock could be emptied in two hours.
First ship to use the new $1,200,000 drydock was the sidewheeler Ajax, docked 22 October 1868. Naval vessels also used this drydock; the battleships Oregon and Wisconsin, and the cruisers San Francisco and Olympia were drydocked at Hunters Point before 1900. The drydock was a busy place, since sailing ships of all types—fishermen, transpacific, and coastal liners—were docked here. Indeed, every house flag that flew in the Pacific was seen at Hunters Point drydock at one time or another.
By 1900, it was obvious that Drydock No. 1 was getting too small, so it was decided that a new dock would be built on the port side of No. 1 and slanted at an angle so that there would be only sixty feet of clearance at the forward ends. A new pump house to service both docks would also be needed.
Work began on Drydock No. 2 on 9 January 1901. The new dock had an over-all length of 750 feet with 712 feet at the keelson. It was 122 feet wide at the top amidships and 74 feet at the keelson. It was built of concrete with a depth of thirty feet over the sill at high water. It was filled through its steel caisson by thirteen 30-inch culverts. The first ship to use Drydock No. 2 was USS Ohio which came in on 1 February 1903. The pump house, finished in 1907, contained 1,275-h.p. water tube boilers which supplied steam to three 350-h.p. high-pressure steam engines and turned 38-inch centrifugal pumps through an endless rope drive. The pump pit was so arranged that either dock could be pumped out by a 55,000-gallons-per-minute pump by using either of the two 8-foot hydraulic valves.
During the visit of the U. S. Navy’s Great White Fleet to San Francisco in June, 1908, 23 ships were dry-docked in 28 days in the two drydocks, a record which still stands today for single dockings.
On 11 November 1908, the Bethlehem Steel Company bought the Hunters Point docks and immediately announced that it would build the largest drydock in the world. The new dock, Drydock No. 3, was to be 1,050 feet long—170 feet longer than the current world’s largest at Glasgow, Scotland, and 225 feet longer than the big Alexandra dock at Belfast, Ireland.
Work on Drydock No. 3 began on 3 June 1916. Specifications were 1,020 feet long at the top, 153 feet wide at the center and 134 feet wide at the caisson. Clearance over the sill at high water was forty feet. Capacity was 43,400,000 gallons. Four 750-h.p. pumps of 572,000-g.p.m. capacity and two smaller 100-h.p. drainage pumps were installed to service Drydock No. 3. Since this drydock was started at the forward end, it was not until 15 September 1916 that Drydock No. 1 was cut in two, thus ending its usefulness after 51 years of service.
Three destroyers, Chauncey (DD-296), Ingraham (DD-111) and Hart (DD-110) were drydocked at Hunters Point on 11 October 1918. After construction of Drydock No. 3, all of the capital ships of the U. S. Pacific Fleet had their interim drydockings here, beginning with Mississippi in 1919. The battleship California was drydocked at Hunters Point immediately after being launched at Mare Island Navy Yard in 1921 and in 1928 the carriers Saratoga and Lexington came in for docking. In 1939 a fire occurred and the Union Oil Company’s first wooden oil tanker, Santa Paula, was burned. Contractors working on a new steam test plant to be added to the Inside Machine shop in 1956 unearthed her stern frame and rudder assembly.
During 1938 and 1939, local newspapers reported that the U. S. Navy would buy the two drydocks at Hunters Point. Final agreement was reached on 4 January 1940 for the Navy to take possession in 1943 or 1944. Congress authorized almost $4,000,000 to buy the docks and had earmarked another $2,000,000 for reconditioning and improvements.
Oklahoma came into Hunters Point for drydocking in November 1941 just before she left for Pearl Harbor. The subsequent events there on 7 December 1941, speeded up considerably the Navy’s timetable for taking over Hunters Point. A crew of thirteen workers from the Mare Island Navy Yard arrived on 15 December 1941, and on 18 December 1941, the installation officially became U. S. Naval Drydocks, Hunters Point. After expanding tremendously during World War II and sending damaged ships back to battle, Hunters Point had proved itself as a repair facility to be reckoned with. The Secretary of the Navy declared on 6 December 1945 that it would henceforth be known as the San Francisco Naval Shipyard.