Noecker, Rickenbach and Ake Shipyard
Foot
of North 27th Street
This is a copy of a page from Rootsweb. I have reproduced it, and will in time ADD to it because at one time I had another link to a very good page that at one time was on the University of Maryland Baltimore County website, that is no longer there. Given the rather disgusting state of the Academic-Indoctrination Industrial Complex, one can only imagine why. -
Phil
Cohen
January 23, 2020
As the canal era came to an end, James
Rickenbach's drydock was closed down probably around
1895. The closure was prompted in the short term by a coal miners strike which
severly crippled canal commerce, and by a large flood in May 1894. Wilson Rickenbach left Tuckerton likely in 1895, and
moved to Camden N. J. to look for work in the shipyards along the Delaware
River. Wilson dismantled his house at Rickenbach Station and ferried it via
canal boats down the Schuylkill Canal to the Delaware River. He reassembled his
home at Cramer Hill in Camden. Explore this district where he, his family and
brothers lived and worked by clicking here.
Then, according to his daughter Anne (from a
letter dated 1972), "Due to the fact that the Rickenbach boatyard had
built many boats for concerns in Philadelphia, his reputation preceeded him so
had no trouble locating himself. Before long he started his own yard and
expanding into a corporation with my uncle Morris
Noecker (Wilson's brother-in-law) and (later) a Mr. Ake (possibly a
cousin). Yard became known as Noecker, Rickenbach and Ake.". Wilson's
brothers Howard, and James
were also part of this company. The company, known originally as the Noecker,
Rickenbach & Ake Shipbuilding Company, was incorporated on March 17, 1905.
The incorporation statement gave the company’s address as 419 Market St. in
downtown Camden. However, the shipyard was built in the Cramer Hill section of
Camden, near 28th St.and Harrison Ave, along the Delaware River across from
Petty Island, just down the street from Wilson’s
home. Ironically, this is directly across the river from Port Richmond in Philadelphia, where in 1894
Wilson's older brother Edwin was struck by lightning
and killed while his canal boat was being tugged in a convoy.
The yard specialized in building barges and
other wooden ships. In 1908, Wilson sold out of his share in the company, and purchased
land in the Rickenbach Station area adjacent to his brother Adam’s
farm. Accordingly, the company shorted its name to the Noecker and Ake
Shipbuilding Company on 29 December 1908. It is not clear whether Wilson
remained in Camden with the company after selling his interest, or returned to
live on what was the Herbein farm that he and
his brother Adam had purchased. William
Howard also left the company around that time. Wilson’s brother Curtin
lived in downtown Camden and started his own tugboat company across the river
in Philadelphia.
The shipyard built and repaired small and
medium-sized wooden boats and ships. In 1918 the Noecker and Ake Shipbuilding
Company sold a wooden patrol craft called the S. M. Goucher to the
U.S. Navy, which probably represented one of many military contracts for the
firm. They built a strong reputation during World War I (1914-1918), and by
World War II (1939-1945) the yard employed about 250 men and had built boats
for entities as far as Great Britain. You can view a painting of the shipyard
in its heydey by clicking here. By 1928,
the yard stopped building ships and instead limited activities to ship repair.
Perhaps around this time, Mr. Ake divested from the company, which became the
Noecker Shipbuilding Company.
By the 1950s, the company was in financial
dire straits, because steel was by this time favored over wood in the
construction of commercial ships of all sizes. At this time, the company was
owned by Samuel M. Noecker (son of Morris Noecker), who served as its president
and was a major stockholder (only four others held stock in the company).
Samuel Noecker died on 1 October 1959, and soon thereafter the company stopped
all business because of lack of demand for wooden ships. A court appointed
Robert E. Gladden as the receiver for the financially strapped corporation.
In 1961, Samuel Noecker's widow Marjorie E. Noecker
filed claim for a large sum of money that her husband had put into the company
between 1944 and 1953 to keep it afloat. She was granted compensation by the
superior court of New Jersey, though only for funds back to 1953 due to a six
year statute of limitations. Included was the testimony of Mr. Fred Brock, who
was employed as a bookkeeper for the company around that time. Anthony J.
Schunk was a director and vice-president of the company. This was all part of a
suit filed in March of 1961 by Annie V. Rickenbach (Wilson's widow), as
executrix of the estate of Wilson B. Rickenbach, to
claim a portion of the remaining assets of the company.
Source: 66 N.J. Super. 580, 169 A.2d 730
(Annie V. Rickenbach v. Noecker Shipbuilding Company), George Wagner (personal
comm.), Camden Courier-Post (1942), Phil Cohen (personal comm.).
Below is a view of what might be the
shipyard, with the steamboat "Prudence" in the foreground. Behind the
brick factory is a watertower on which may be written "Camden". If
so, this would strongly suggest that it is actually the shipyard.
The photograph below, probably from the 1880s
or early 1890s, shows what may be the construction of a boat on land near the
drydock (when the drydock was empty of water in the winter or spring). The
boats seem large for canal boats, so it is equally possible that this picture
may show construction at an early incarnation of the Noecker, Rickenbach, and
Auk Shipbuilding Company at Cramer Hill, Camden, NJ. If so the photograph would
probably have been taken between 1897 and 1908.
