Background

Ben Moreell was born on September 14, 1892, in Salt Lake City, Utah, the son of Samuel Moreell and Sophia Sossnitz. After living in New York City he was raised in St. Louis, Missouri.

Education

Moreell graduated from Washington University in 1913 with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering.

Ben Moreell received 12 honorary doctoral degrees.

Career

From 1913 to 1917, Moreell worked for St. Louis's public works department. In 1917 he was appointed a lieutenant in the navy's Civil Engineer Corps (CEC).

After serving during World War I in the public works office of the naval base at Ponta Delgada, Azores Islands, he was the plant engineer at the destroyer and submarine base at Squantum, Massachusetts (1919 - 1920).

He served as a public works officer in Haiti (1920 - 1924) and at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia (1924 - 1926).

He was then assistant design manager in the Bureau of Yards and Docks (BuY&D) (1926 - 1930) and a public works officer at Bremerton and the Thirteenth Naval District (1930 - 1932).

He planned and constructed the ship model basin of the Admiral David W. Taylor Model Basin, Carderock, Maryland (1930 - 1932). In 1929 he published the widely acclaimed Standards of Design for Concrete.

After studying in France in 1932 and 1933, Moreell served as project manager of shipbuilding and repair facilities in the storage and submarine base section of BuY&D from 1935 to 1937, and as the public works officer of the Naval Base and Fourteenth Naval District at Pearl Harbor in late 1937.

That December, President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated Moreell to a four-year term as chief of BuY&D with the grade of rear admiral, making him the first non-Naval Academy man and one of the youngest to fill the post. In addition to inspecting facilities in the Atlantic and Pacific, he had two large graving docks built at Pearl Harbor and devised the sectional dry dock, sections of which could be connected to form docks of any desired size. He also obtained permission to form skilled craftsmen into Naval Construction Battalions (CBs or Seabees), who could be sent overseas.

Moreell helped the navy's expansion after 1940 by building bases at Samoa and the Aleutian Islands and by providing training and housing facilities for enlisted naval personnel, whose numbers were augmented from 125, 000 in 1941 to 3 million in 1945. After the Lend-Lease bill became law in March 1941, he had bases built on sites from Newfoundland to British Guiana that the British rented or gave to the United States in exchange for fifty destroyers. On November 3, 1941, President Roosevelt nominated him for a second term.

During World War II, Moreell found substitutes for scarce materials and increased his CEC force from 125 men in December 1941 to 10, 860 by the end of the war. These men supervised construction at naval and Marine Corps facilities was well as any required by the other naval bureaus. For example, the nineteen naval air bases of 1941 grew to eighty with many satellite fields. Most of Moreell's construction work was done by Contractors, Pacific Naval Air Bases, a separate organization that involved naval personnel and eight large construction companies.

He saved money by using cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts rather than cost-plus-percentage-profits contracts. Most of the $9. 25 billion in spending that Moreell supervised was for the naval bases and facilities in the Pacific theater, but he used Seabees worldwide.

Early in the war, the Seabees were unarmed civilians who could not legally defend themselves if attacked. But with building sites often in war zones, Moreell in January 1942 showed that advanced base construction could proceed only with military personnel under military command. Volunteers were given military ranks and training, and he had to promise organized union labor that they would either work overseas or build only while training; the rest of the domestic work would be done by private contractors and civilian labor.

The first Seabee Battalion was composed of 3, 000 men representing some sixty skills. They disregarded organized trade lines and did whatever work was assigned to them. After being trained at major camps such as those near Little Creek, Virginia, at Davisville, Rhode Island, and at Port Hueneme, California, they went overseas. Special groups were formed to build and maintain air bases and fire director bases. Also trained were thirty stevedore battalions. Seabees involved in amphibious landings, often as integral parts of Marine combat divisions, built naval bases and airfields from which the next operation could be launched. To use as building blocks for barges, piers, and even floating dry docks, they built sheet steel into five-by-seven foot cubes. At their peak, the CBs included 360, 000 officers and men, 83 percent of whom worked overseas.

On February 2, 1944, President Roosevelt nominated Moreell a vice-admiral, and he subsequently became the youngest vice-admiral in the navy and also the first CEC officer to hold that rank. The postwar demobilization of Moreell's personnel was swift. They were reduced to 400 officers and 20, 000 men by June 30, 1946.

In his last naval billet (1945 - 1946), he served as director of procurement and materials, and at President Truman's order he controlled the petroleum and coal industries when their workers struck. He was able to bring owners and workers into agreement. He was retired on October 1, 1946.

He headed the Turner Construction Company for a short time, was board chairman and chief executive of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation (1947 - 1958), and in the 1960's was board chairman of the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action, a group devoted to anti-Communism and inculcating patriotism. He died on July 30, 1978, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Achievements

• Ben Moreell, the first Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks not to have graduated from the Naval Academy, was the founding father of the Navy's famous Seabees and was largely responsible for overseeing the Bureau’s vast construction programs, both domestic and overseas, during the Second World War. Admiral Ben Moreell's life spanned eight decades, two world wars, a great depression and the evolution of the United States as a superpower. Ben Moreell's life was punctuated by accomplishments, awards, and well-earned recognition. In 1957 Moreell was awarded The John Fritz Medal, referred to as the highest award in the engineering profession. In addition, he received the Distinguished Service Medal (2 awards, United States), the Legion of Merit (United States), the World War I Victory Medal (United States), the American Defense Service Medal (United States), the American Campaign Medal (United States), Asiatic–Pacific Campaign Medal (United States), the World War II Victory Medal (United States) and the Order of the British Empire (United Kingdom). The Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) Moreell Medal is named in honor of Moreell. In Moreell's honor the Seabees named their Kuwait facility Camp Moreell, a military compound in Kuwait, Southwest Asia. Moreell Avenue in Quantico, Virginia is named in his honor. There is a housing area in the Norfolk, Virginia naval complex named for Adm. Moreell.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Can Do! The Story of the Seebees

    (A history of the navel construction battalions started in...)

  • The Admiral's Log II: In Search of Freedom: a Compilation of Speeches and Articles

    (Ben Moreell is a naval engineer who became one of the mos...)

  • The Powers That Be: Case Studies of the Church in Politics

    (Foundation For Social Research.)

  • Our Nation's Water Resources-Policies & Politics

    (Book)

  • Government and Moral Law
  • Our Strategy for 1964
  • The Role of American Business in Social Progress
  • Religion in American Life: A Layman's Appraisal
  • Freedom... Triumph of the Uncommon Man
  • J and L: The Growth of an American Business, 1853-1953

Views

Quotations: "If the benevolent ruler stays in power long enough, he eventually concludes that power and wisdom are the same thing. And as he possesses power, he must possess wisdom. He becomes converted to the seductive thesis that election to public office endows the official with both power and wisdom. At this point, he begins to lose his ability to distinguish between what is morally right and what is politically expedient. "

Membership

Ben Moreell was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Connections

On October 23, 1923, Ben Moreell married Clara Julia Klinksick; they had two children. Six years after the death of his second wife, he married Cecilia Anderson, who died in 1971. Moreell married Jesse Grimm later that year.

Father:

Samuel (Simcha) Lieb Moreell

Mother:

Sophia (Zelda) Mushe Moreell (Sossnitz)

Sister:

Caroline Moreell

Sister:

Anna Smith (Moreell)

Wife:

Cecilia Frank Anderson Moreell (Kaplan)

Wife:

Jesse Gray Moreell (Grimm)

Wife:

Clara Wilhelmina Julia Moreell (Klinksick)

Daughter:

Marion Gammon (Moreell)

Daughter:

Patricia Moreell

Brother:

Max Moreell

Brother:

Fred Moreell

Brother:

Samuel Moreell, Jr.