Pennsylvania has a fascinating industrial history, ranging from wood to coal to steel (and more!). I recently had the opportunity to visit the National Iron & Steel Heritage Museum in Coatesville, PA. The photos and descriptions on their website, especially of how Lukens Steel Company contributed to part of the construction of several maritime vessels, only scratches the surface of the rich history and role the steel industry played in this region and beyond.

The guided tour through the property was full of information and displays. And if you are interested in learning about how plate steel has been made, chemists will be fascinated by the process (we were fortunate to hear from a former employee that worked as a chemist in the research laboratory). We were also shown this historical documentary made by Lukens Steel before our tour.

So why am I doing a blog post on a company that made steel plates? It is certainly worth giving a shout-out to Rebecca Lukens, the first female American industrialist who also had a Liberty ship named in her honor (SS Rebecca Lukens). But this location, in the Greater Philadelphia Region, Lukens Steel distributed their steel plates for the manufacturing of significant maritime vessels. The SS United States was constructed with steel from Lukens. The submersible HOV Alvin had its sphere constructed from Lukens steel. And I’ve mentioned in a previous blog post that some of the hull material for JOIDES Resolution (then SEDCO/BP 471) was acquired from Lukens Steel.

So let’s take a moment to review a submersible that is sure to bring a smile to your face – since you can’t help but see a smile when you look at it! Introducing, the GUPPY.

This exhibit sign provides some of the details about GUPPY.

Formerly on display at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, you can now see GUPPY during a tour at the National Iron & Steel Heritage Museum, located on the 120″ Mill Complex Property where the Motor House building is being used for large exhibits. You can read about GUPPY’s “coming home” to where its steel heads for the pressure hull were made, in the Spring 2018 issue of the Museum’s BoilerPlate Magazine.

Sun Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company, where GUPPY was constructed, is not far away from Coatesville (~30 miles). Lukens was a big provider of steel for ship construction at the Sun facilities in Chester, PA, such as Glomar Explorer. You can view a series of historic images from GUPPY’s construction and early testing at the NISHM website.

As I have found no information or videos online through numerous Google searches about GUPPY, I wanted to share this little submersible here. She must have made some incredible contributions to the operational safety for rigs and platforms. I hope you have enjoyed learning a little bit about this piece of maritime history as well as Pennsylvania steel history!