Allied Shipbuilders

Allied Shipbuilders Ltd is a privately held shipbuilding and ship repairing company established in Canada in 1948.

Company profile

Founded in 1948 by Arthur McLaren (1919-1999), Allied Shipbuilders is one of the older continually operating commercial shipyards on the Pacific Coast of North America. Located at the mouth of the Seymour River in North Vancouver, the company provides shipbuilding, ship repair, and engineering services to ferries, fish boats, tugs and barges that operate on the Pacific Coast. It was fully owned by the McLaren family from 1948 to 2012. Majority ownership was purchased on February 1, 2012 by Chuck Ko, who was, until then, the company's vice-president of operations. Mr. Ko is now president.

Other organizations sharing Allied's property are Western Machine Works (providing hydraulic tow pin units for tug boats), and Coast Engineering Works, which builds and services marine propulsion shafts and rudders. Located on site, but not owned by Allied, is Osborne Propellers.

History

Allied Shipbuilders grew from the demise of a predecessor company, West Coast Shipbuilders Ltd. The demand for wartime cargo-ship orders provided the incentive for a group of Vancouver businessmen to set up a four-berth shipyard in False Creek, Vancouver, British Columbia,[1] on a site where the J. Coughlan & Sons shipyard had operated during the First World War and where the Athlete's Village for the 2010 Winter Olympics was built between 2006 and 2010. W. D. McLaren was hired as general manager. His son, Arthur, joined West Coast after completing his engineering degree at the University of British Columbia. West Coast Shipbuilders was set up in 1941 and launched the first ship, the Fort Chilcotin, in March 1942. By war's end, West Coast Shipbuilders had launched 55 Fort and Park ships—the Canadian equivalent to the Liberty Ship.[2] After the war, West Coast built a number of fuel barges for Northern Transportation Co. Ltd. for service on the MacKenzie River to the Arctic and the M.V. Anscomb ferry for service on Kootenay Lake before closing in 1948. By that time, Arthur McLaren had become shipyard manager.[1]

Ferries

Between 1949 and 1992, Allied delivered 252 vessels. Since 1993, it has constructed seven.[4] Internally these are numbered hulls 253-259.

• Hull 72 M/V North Island Princess - 1958
• Hull 108 M/V Quadra Queen - 1960, now the MV Spirit of Lax Kw'alaams
• Hull 117 M/V Garibaldi - 1961, now the MV RJ Breadner.
• Hull 164 M/V Tachek - 1969
• Hull 165 M/V Quadra Queen II - 1969

• Hull 253, designed by Robert Allan Ltd., is a 2,400-horsepower, z-peller berthing tug for C.H. Cates & Sons, which is now part of Seaspan Marine.
• Hulls 255 and 254 are the forward-hull sections of the two Spirit Class ferries, the Spirit of British Columbia and the Spirit of Vancouver Island. The ships are also part of the BC Ferries's fleet. Both sections measure 59.1 by.

Ships of steel

Allied's founder, Thomas Arthur (T.A.) McLaren, a Professional Engineer and Fellow of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, worked with Vancouver author Vickie Jensen and his son, Malcolm McLaren, to publish the book Ships of Steel, a British Columbia Shipbuilder's Story. The book provides an overview of steel shipbuilding in British Columbia from the view of a typical shipbuilding firm, and includes personal recollections contributed by T.A. from his years in the shipbuilding industry. The book was published after T.A.'s death in 1999.

External links

• Allied Shipbuilders Ltd.
• Ships of Steel, a British Columbia Shipbuilder's Story