Vulcan: the Offshore Experience

Everyone has an experience in their life that they count the greatest. Corporations do, too. For Vulcan Iron Works, that experience was its involvement in offshore oil development.

Vulcan’s Executive Vice President, Pembroke M. Warrington, in front of a Vulcan 5150 for his customer, Brown and Root, April 1979. It arrived from Chicago on the rail car, waiting to be offloaded. Equipment of this size was almost commonplace in the offshore oil industry. Twelve years later Pem stated that Vulcan had been “the experience of a lifetime,” and equipment like this was a large reason why that was so.

Vulcan 5100 hammer driving pipe pile in the Gulf of Mexico. This photo graced offshore literature in the late 1970’s and again in the 1990’s.

Come join us as we take a look at Vulcan’s involvement offshore, which follows a fascinating (and very profitable) saga of American commercial history. You can click here to start or pick one of the topics below:

• The Work: The Installation of Conventional Platforms
• Early Hammers Offshore
• Where the hammers began: The Manufacturing Facilities and Offices
  • The Chattanooga Plant
  • The West Palm Beach Office
  • The West Palm Beach Plant
  • The Chattanooga Plant Expansion
• Sales: Meeting the Customer’s Needs
• Service: “Have Hammers, Will Travel”
• It’s in the Details: Product features that make the difference
• Vulcan Offshore Tips: Service Advice for Vulcan Offshore Hammers
• The Offshore Technology Conference
• Offshore Hammers In Action
• The Saga Continues
• And meanwhile onshore…Vulcan wasn’t completely inactive onshore during these years.
  • Vulcan 106: the “Switch-Hitter,” a hammer with many innovations but little long-term effect on the product line
• Prototypes and Concept Hammers:
  • Internal Pile Hammer IPH-16, Vulcan’s attempt at revolutionising steam hammers offshore.
  • Sea Water Hammer, Vulcan’s last design of a hammer for underwater use.
  • Underwater Hammers, and Hydraulic Impact hammers, a look at early underwater hammers and of the company that ended up with Vulcan’s air/steam line for a few years.
  • Proposed Hammers During the 1960’s and 1970’s
  • The “Last Hammers:” Proposed designs during the 1990’s that were lost with the end of the Vulcan corporation
• Special Pieces
  • A Few Words About the Telex
  • Construction Assistance Vehicle (CAV.) Not an offshore oil and gas product, but an underwater craft Vulcan fabricated for the U.S. Navy.
  • Herman Hasenkampf: A Tribute. Vulcan’s most successful sales person perished in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; this is our farewell to him.
  • A Fistful of Yuan: Vulcan in China, 1981-1983. An account of the most interesting offshore sale Vulcan ever made, with many details of hammer start-ups and offshore procedure.
  • Anatomy of a Letter of Credit, an example of the way Vulcan generally was paid for international sales.
  • Vulcan Presentation, and Menck Offshore Steam Hammer Data. A presentation prepared by Vulcan’s Executive Vice President, P.M. Warrington, for use at sales presentations for offshore customers during the mid-1980’s. Also contains valuable and additional information on Menck offshore steam hammers.

About the Photos

When putting together this collection, we wanted to tell the story of both the construction of conventional platforms. It’s tempting just to surf the web and take “stock photos;” however, we chose to use something closer to home. Virtually all of the photos in this section were either taken by Vulcan employees or were commissioned by Vulcan and taken by professional photographers. Many of these photos were rescued from destruction when Vulcan sold its Chattanooga facility; they are a priceless legacy of a great endeavour.

For their part Vulcan’s employees were not photographers; they were service, sales, technical and management people. The photos weren’t always the best, but they told the story better than just about anything else we can think of, and modern digital processing has improved many of these shots. Most of them are named in the narrative.

Although there may be others, three professional photographers are known to have their work in this collection:

• Sam R. Quincey of West Palm Beach, FL, who took the outside photos of Vulcan’s Florida executive office;
• Bill Blakeney of Palm Beach Gardens, FL, who took some of the better photos offshore; and
• Jim Wilson of Hixson, TN, who took those of the plant expansion dedication.