The company was founded in 1914 to continue shipbuilding operations of W:m Crichton & C:o which had bankrupted in the previous year.

At the end of the 19th century the main owners were Saint Petersburg investors and local businessmen, brothers Ernst and Magnus Dahlström.

[2] In order to maintain its position in the Russian market, the company leased premises in Malaya Okhta, Saint Petersburg, in 1896 for building ships for the navy.

Due to poor management, wrongly calculated prices and delay payments, the new branch caused such significant losses, that the whole company bankrupted in spring 1913.

[1] Ab Crichton hired Sten Harald Stenovich Lundsten, the former financial manager of the Okhta shipyard, to represent the company in Saint Petersburg.

The Russian economy was in upswing and the newly founded shipbuilder received orders for 12 tugboats with 140-hp engine power for 1913–1914.

[1] The most important customer of the preceding company, the Imperial Russian Navy, did not place any orders in 1914, although Europe was under threat of war.

However, Ab Crichton got an order through detour for eight motor cutters for Nikolayev shipyard at Black Sea.

[1] Probably the reason for the outsourcing was that Andrée & Rosenqvist did not have experience about steel hull vessels powered by a compound steam engine.

[6] The outburst of the First World War in August 1914 made all companies cautious and subsequently they reduced headcount drastically.

Ab Crichton fired the whole personnel, but after the situation had stabilised within a few weeks, the company started hiring the workers back, albeit for a 20% lower salary.

The reduced salaries caused anger amongst the workers – they believed the previous dismissals being just an excuse for cutting down the wages.

The order led to shortage of workforce, and in May Ab Crichton published an announcement on newspapers, that the company sought for numerous sheet metal workers.

One third of the shares were transferred shortly after to a consortium formed by Freiherr Carolus Wrede and Ernst, Edgar and Berndt Grönblom.

The four patrol steamers were transferred to the state of Finland; two of them became gunboats Turunmaa and Karjala, and two others were sold to the Polish Navy in 1920.

The company managed to sell some steam engines in Finland, but for a long time there were no orders for new ships.

The very last ship order for Ab Crichton came on 29 February 1924 from city of Turku; the vessel was an icebreaker-tugboat with a 380-hp engine output.