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Historical Resume of the Work of the Detroit Dry Dock Company During the Past 23 Years. EGINNINGS of great enterprises are not always marked, and information as to the commencement of the ship building industry in Detroit about fifty years ago is indefinite, although it is known that on the site occupied at present by the Detroit Dry Dock Company, Campbell & Co., in 1852, launched the first large vessel built at die port, which has furnished more vessels of the fleet now in commission on the great lakes than any other lake city. Not much is known of the work during the next ten years, but at the end of that time Mr. Owen came into the partnership. Capt. S. R. Kirby succeeded to the Campbell interest in 1870, until in July, 1872, the Detroit Dry Dock Company, with a capital of $300,000, was organized. So that two more seasons in the ship building business on the lakes will mark the completion of a quarter of a century of operations, the magnitude of which is shown in statistics in foregoing pages, and the integrity of which is proverbial and recognized by competitors. In all these years jvessels'built by this company have not shown the slightest weakness. Wyandotte is the location of the steel ship-building plant of the Detroit Dry Dock Company. In 1877 the small plant at that place was absorbed by the Dry Dock Company. It was put in operation five years previous to that by Capt. Eber Ward, who was interested in the rolling mill there, engaging a young engineer just graduated from an eastern technological institution. He was ordered, with his brother, to make preparations to build an iron tug. The tug, which measured 550 tons, was launched in August of 1872, and named the E. B. Ward, Jr. The conclusion then reached: "To buy the best and build the best," seems to have become the standing order of the company for all time, for their specifications for steel plate and other material are so rigid that the company has to pay a higher price than its competitors for material. These requirements are not copied from some register, but exact more in many respects than Lloyd's rules and embody what long experience has determined necessary for the construction of a staunch steel vessel. The next vessel built at Wyandotte was a side-wheel passenger steamer for the Detroit and Cleveland Steam Navigation Company.