The Alexandria Marine Railway

The Alexandria Marine Railway Company was founded in 1849 at the site of the former Keith's Wharf. Until the Depression of 1857, the firm refitted and repaired the sailing craft that plied the harbors of Alexandria, Georgetown and Washington. The marine railway used an engine to pull small to medium-sized craft up onto a track and was an alternative to a dry dock., As the local economy slowly recovered after the Civil War, the Alexandria Marine Railway and Ship Building Company was founded in 1874 to reestablish the earlier marine railway and shipyard. The company constructed new shipways and tracks and rebuilt or reused features of the old yard and military wharf. The company [unreadable] fleet of schooners carrying coal, [unreadable] building materials [unreadable] and other bulk [unreadable] on the Potomac. The company also repaired [unreadable] and constructed an average of [unreadable] vessels a year. The first large ship built was the [unreadable] of 632-ton, three-masted, oceangoing Robert Portner, launched in 1878. Purchased by a New England syndicate in the 1880s, the shipyard began producing still larger schooners, including the four-masted William T. Hart, the largest vessel built in Alexandria. The company also produced some steam vessels, including tug boats. The shipyard operated into the 20th century, constructing and repairing river work boats like the George, a 50-foot Potomac longboat designed for hauling cordwood and stone., Archaeologists uncovered and recorded sections of the railway, the foundations of shipyard structures and several 19th century boats and barges during excavations of this site in the early 1990s. The [unreadable] resources remain in place beneath the Ford's Landing development.