Todd Shipyards Corporation was started in June 1916 with the backing of the three financiers: Bertron, Grecisms & Company; White, Weld & Company; and William H. Todd. The organization itself was a product of the incorporation of three established companies: Robins Dry Dock & Repair Company, Tietjen & Long Dry Dock Company, and the Seattle Construction & Dry Dock Company. The namesake of the company is the late William Henry Todd.

William H. Todd joined the primary Erie Basin shipbuilding operators, the John N. Robins Company, in 1895 as the boilermaker. Todd's diligence and business prowess landed him in the president's seat of the company on December 31, 1909.

With the help of loyal supporters, Todd purchased the Erie Basin yard from Thomas Clyde family, the owners of Robins Dry Dock & Repair Company, to keep the yard from traveling into the hands of the British suitors. Todd intended to expand his newly formed William H. Todd Corporation, and in 1916 the corporation gained two more yards. Todd took a strategic step with the incorporation of Eric Basin's biggest competitor in the New York Harbor: Tietjen & Lang Dry Dock Company. The other addition was on the west coast, a strong iron and steel shipbuilding-company, Seattle Construction & Dry Dock Company. This new corporation would grow and merge many more yards at each American coast and even yards abroad. These yards were located in Washington, California, Texas, Alabama, Maine, Louisiana, London and many other water-driven industrial locations.

Todd Corporation has experienced much success over the years. However, being in the shipbuilding industries many of its yards have encountered the ebb and flow of maritime and naval demands. The war times always brought much action to Todd shipyards usually calling for expansion. This expansion and incorporation of new yards somewhat decreased the family aura that William H. Todd encouraged and worked so hard to maintain. In flourishing years Todd Corporation put out publications about the shipyard including the magazine The Keel which, between 1918 and 1944, was in print for over twelve years. The Todd Daily Maritime and The Bridge are other such publications that Todd distributed over the years and that during the bad times Todd abandoned to cut costs. In the early years there were many celebrations embracing the whole "family" with parades and social events to honor long-time employees among other celebrations.

William H. Todd died in 1932, leaving behind a strong company in financial strain due to the stock market crash. The company did not go under after the crash; though the Great Depression was one of the most trying times in the company's history, Todd was rescued by repair work and eventually massive orders on the onset of the Second World War. Between December 7, 1941 and August 31, 1945 Todd yards were busy with building, converting, or repairing ships: 23,450 ships were handled among the five shipyards and five repair yards. Of the many ships that saw the docks of Todd, there were large and small and over forty military and commercial types. The most impressive statistic was the aggregate tonnage, measured at 117,500,000.  John D. Reilly followed William H. Todd, after his death, as a second president. During Reilly's term the corporation grew and flourished immensely. In the mid-1940's there were in-plant schools established to train and instruct the inexperienced employees. The corporation experienced diversification into non-shipbuilding industries including examples such as Todd Insectisidal Fog Applicator (TIFA).

Further diversification took place under the third president Joseph Haag, Jr. who came into the head office in 1953. Haag's term saw a peacetime lull in shipbuilding. Yards, starving for work, looked into other building projects to keep up revenue. An upswing in Todd ship repair resulted from the navy's policy of assigning work to private yards. Conversations and repair became the main business in the 50's. At the end of the decade, 1958, John T. Gilbride became the fourth president of Todd Corporation. Todd celebrated its 50th anniversary on February 17, 1966 in the middle of a decade where Todd was making contributions to the space program along with continuing the thriving conversation and repair business. During peacetime, the government was a crucial component with maritime and naval repairs and with governmental orders such as the Merchant-Marine Act of 1970 and the Patrol Flight program in 1972. However, in 1975 Todd Corporation saw some of the hardest time since the Depression. These dire straits were mainly contributed to inflation in addition to bad luck in its diversification investments. In that same year Arthur W. Stout, Jr. was named president. With refinancing, the corporation was set back on its feet.¹ Today Stephen G Welch, president and CEO, presides over Todd Shipbuilding Corporation as it continues to strive on in a narrowing industry.²

Todd Los Angeles Division

Late in the fall of 1945 a new division joined the Todd Corporation, Los Angeles Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Corporation at San Pedro, California. The Navy put this yard under Todd control when it had been in a financial struggle two years prior. During this time the San Pedro yard was a part of the short-lived Todd Pacific Shipyards, Inc. before becoming its own entity. Coming to the Todd industry in the postwar period, the Los Angeles yard took on various building projects to substitute the decreased shipbuilding interests. In the early fifties the Los Angeles Division underwent a large project for the amusement park Disneyland. This project included the construction of the park's steam flagship Mark Twain, the 18x5.5-foot gates for the park's graving docks, the parts for the 17th -century pirate ship attraction, the steel clad square-rigger Columbus, and eight 100-ton diesel-electric passenger submarines.

Since the times of peace called for conversion instead of construction, the Los Angeles Division executed some rebuilding projects. In 1956 the yard converted a standard wartime Landing Ship, Medium (LSM) to a wholly self-contained, self -sufficient offshore drilling barge for the expanding oil drilling industry of the West Coast. Another project, in 1958, resulted from the Navy order to convert the Mariner-class cargo ship Diamond Mariner to then the nation's largest and fastest attack transport, the USS Paul Revere (APA-248). These projects' being assigned to the private Todd yard was most likely due to the Navy's return to allotting repair work to private yards; this change in Naval policy was celebrated in the other Todd yards as well. The Los Angeles Division encountered jumboizing projects in the late 1950's. The Outcome of one jumboizingDavid E.Day. project was the launching of the largest hull in the Los Angeles area since the end of wartime shipbuilding. This famous hull was a new midsection added to the Richfield tanker

In 1966 Los Angeles completed the first postwar naval construction project in delivering the last of the ordered destroyers, the USS Fox (DLG-33). Over the years the Los Angeles Division has continued repairing, constructing, jumboizing, and converting ships. In 1970 there was a "homecoming", of a ship built in 1944 at the San Pedro drydocks, when the Navy repair ship Hector (R-7) returned for overhaul and upgrading. A financially uplifting construction project was finished in 1977 at the Los Angeles Division when the last of the three Zapata tankers was launched. In the 1981 the corporation anticipated much more success at the Los Angeles Division and due to this confidence Todd planned for the construction of a 12,000-ton syncrolift at the yard. Attention was turned on public relations and advertising to increase the yard's business.³⁴  Yet, due to the competitive nature of the shipbuilding enterprise, the yard was starved for business and was closed by the middle of the 1980's.

Types of ships constructed, repaired, and converted at Todd's Shipyards (1930s-1970s):