Chester Rolling Mill

Firstly, the locality of Chester lacked facilities for the large-scale production of iron plates and frames as required by his shipyard.

Collectively, the Roach, Houston and Crozer families employed 25% of Chester's working population and accounted for 35% of its payroll, their partnership ensuring dominance of the city's politics.

With the establishment of the Mill, Roach was able to introduce a number of innovations into the industry which reduced time and cut costs.

Included in the above were two large gas-operated furnaces and a mill which could produce plates from 1⁄8-to-6 in (3-to-152 mm) thickness and 27 feet (8.2 m) wide.

[3] A notable achievement for the company following the addition of the steel milling facilities was the production of steel plates for America's first steel-hulled ship, the cargo ship Alaskan, built by the Roach shipyard for the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company and delivered in August 1883.

[9] On July 2, 1883, John Roach & Sons won the contracts for all four of the Navy's first steel ships—Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, and Dolphin—or the "ABCD ships", as they came to be known.

So exacting were the specifications however, that a third of all the parts produced were rejected by Navy inspectors, leading to cost overruns which eventually persuaded the subcontractors to renege on their agreements with Roach.

[12] Delays in production of the steel along with additional unexpected delays prolonged construction of the ships past the 1884 Presidential election, and by the time Roach was ready to deliver the first ship, Dolphin, the new Democrat administration of Grover Cleveland, who became President on March 4, 1885, hostile to the staunchly Republican Roach, had assumed office.

[13] In what many regarded as a politically motivated act, the new Cleveland administration found reasons to void Roach's contract for Dolphin.

With another three Navy ships still unpaid for in his shipyard whose contracts might also be declared void, Roach was unable to secure loans to continue his business and was forced into receivership.