Admiral Ben Moreell (September 14, 1892 – July 30, 1978) was the chief of the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Yards and Docks and of the Civil Engineer Corps. Best known to the American public as the father of the Navy's Seabees, Moreell's life spanned eight decades, two world wars, a great depression and the evolution of the United States as a superpower. He was a distinguished naval officer, an engineer, an industrial giant and a national spokesman.
Early life
Moreell was born into a Jewish family on September 14, 1892, in Salt Lake City, Utah. His family settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where he graduated from St. Louis's Central High School at the top of his class and was awarded a four-year scholarship to Washington University in St. Louis at age 16. After graduating with a civil engineering degree from the McKelvey School of Engineering in 1913, he joined the navy during World War I. In June 1917, he was directly commissioned as a lieutenant junior grade in the Navy's Civil Engineer Corps.
First World War
During the First World War, he was stationed in the Azores, where he became acquainted with assistant secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, and afterwards served at navy yards and installations in Massachusetts, Haiti, Virginia, and Washington.
Interwar period
Moreell was sent as a lieutenant commander to the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris to study European military engineering design and construction practices. In 1933, he returned to the States to supervise what would eventually be called the David W. Taylor Model Basin in Carderock, Maryland.
On December 1, 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt selected Commander Moreell to be the Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks and the Chief of Civil Engineers of the Navy. This advanced Moreell to the rank of rear admiral, although he had never been a captain. Moreell proposed the construction of two giant drydocks at Pearl Harbor and initiated naval construction projects on Midway Atoll and Wake Island, long before Japanese bombs began to fall on December 7, 1941. The docks were completed in time to repair battleships damaged at Pearl Harbor, and the facilities at Midway were completed in time to play a strategic role in the navy's first significant victory over Japanese forces.
World War II
World War II requirements for advanced bases strung throughout the Pacific called for construction crews to be able to drop their tools and take up weapons at a moment's notice. Moreell believed a militarized Naval Construction Force to build advance bases in the war zone would fulfill this need. On December 28, 1941, he requested authority from the Bureau of Navigation to recruit men from the construction trades for assignment to a Naval Construction Regiment composed of three Naval Construction Battalions; the bureau granted the request on January 5, 1942. On March 5, permission was granted for the construction battalions to use the name "Seabees". Moreell coined the Seabees motto: Construimus, Batuimus (Latin for "We Build, We Fight").
Moreell's Civil Engineer Corps was given command authority over what would become an organization of 250,000 people that built $10 billion worth of facilities to support the war effort. In 1945, Moreell became the Chief of the Navy's Material Division, and at the request of Vice President Truman, he negotiated a settlement to the national strike of oil refinery workers. When the government seized the nation's strikebound bituminous coal industry a year later, Moreell was designated the Coal Mines Administrator.
Military advancement:
June 1917 – lieutenant (junior grade) commissioned
October 1917 – lieutenant (temporary) June 1925 – lieutenant commander jumped grade of captain December 1937 – rear admiral February 1944 – vice admiral June 1946 – admiral
Later life
On June 11, 1946, he became the first staff corps officer to achieve the rank of admiral, and was transferred to the retired list three months later. He became the third Jewish American to become a four star admiral. For the next 12 years, Moreell turned his attention to industry, serving first, briefly (October 1946 – March 1947) as president of Turner Construction Company then as president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of Jones and Laughlin Steel Company, one of the nation's largest steel manufacturers.
Moreell wrote articles for The Freeman, a publication of the Foundation for Economic Education, a group that advocates free markets and a libertarian philosophy.