Rowland, Thomas Fitch

SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology

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b. 15 March 1831 New Haven, Connecticut, USA

d. 13 December 1907 New York City, USA

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American engineer and manufacturer, inventor of off-shore drilling.

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The son of a grist miller, Rowland worked in various jobs until 1859 when he established his own business for the construction of wooden and iron steamships and for structural iron works, in Greenpoint, Long Island, New York. In 1860 he founded the Continental Works and during the American Civil War he started manufacturing gun carriages and mortar beds. He fitted out many vessels for the navy, and as a contractor for John Ericsson he built heavily armoured war vessels.

He continued shipbuilding, but later diversified his business. He devoted great attention to the design of gas-works, constructing innovative storage facilities all over the United States, and he was concerned with the improvement of welding iron and steel plates and other processes in the steel industry. In the late 1860s he also began the manufacture of steam-engines and boilers for use in the new but expanding oil industry. In 1869 he took out a patent for a fixed platform for drilling for oil off-shore up to a depth of 15 m (49 ft). With this idea, just ten years after Edwin Drake's success in on-shore oil drilling in Titusville, Pennsylvania, Rowland pioneered the technology of off-shore drilling for petroleum in which the United States later became the leading nation.

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Principal Honours and Distinctions

American Society of Civil Engineers: Director 1871–3, Vice-President 1886–7, Honorary Member 1899.

Further Reading

"Thomas Fitch Rowland", Dictionary of American Biography.

1909, "Memoir", Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers 62:547–9.

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