Watson moved to a 60-acre farm in East Braintree in June 1883 with his bride, the
former Elizabeth Seaver Kimball of Cohasset. The farm featured a half-mile frontage
along the Weymouth Fore River, an arm of the sea.
Soon a friend told Watson about a new rotary steam engine that needed a machinist's skills.
Watson hired young machinist Frank O. Wellington to help him on the project, which was
completed in the spring of 1885. The steam engine failed, however, because some of its
moving parts could not be made steam-tight. Desiring to keep the machine shop open and
Wellington in his employ, Watson decided to build marine engines for yachts and tug boats.
The Fore River Engine Company was born and Watson brought Wellington on as a business partner.
Several years later, after the battleship Maine was sunk by an explosion in 1898, the U.S.
Navy gave the Fore River Engine Company a contract to build two 400-ton torpedo boats,
the Lawrence and the McDonough. In November a year later, Watson's shipyard won the
contract for the 3,000-ton cruiser the DesMoines, primarily because earlier that year
Watson had purchased a 100-acre site of waterfront land at Quincy Point on the Fore
River, where the Fore River Shipyard operated until 1986.
While expanding his ship-building business—and during the illnesses and subsequent
death of his two sons—Watson became a central figure in important town issues,
namely creation of a municipally owned
electric light company and improving the
public school system.
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