by Kaye Lin, Director of Communications & Marketing

The Man Who Cut Ships in Half

It was a bright Spring afternoon when I found myself staring at a plaque tucked on the wall of Webb’s Couch Academic Center. At first glance, it looked like any other recognition of alumni generosity, but if you leaned in a little closer, right there at the bottom, were the quiet words that summed up the entire Webb experience, at least through the eyes of Gene Schorsch.

It didn’t talk about his rocket division, the ships he reimagined, or the lawsuits he pursued. It spoke about the challenge, and what Webb does to the students who rise to meet it.

Gene didn’t start his Webb story with fanfare. In fact, he revealed that he didn’t get in on his first try. Or his second. But on his third. He lacked a year of foreign language – German or French – a small technicality that closed the door to his dream. But Gene wasn’t the type to walk away.

In 1948, after his third try, the doors opened – and from that moment, he never stopped building. Not just ships and systems, but principles, trust, and a way of thinking that would change everything he touched.

After graduating in 1952, Gene went to work at Sun Shipbuilding. He was young, but not the type to play it safe. When the team was asked to build six old-fashioned breakbulk ships, Gene thought, “What if we don’t?”

Instead, they did the unthinkable. They cut ships that were already in the water in half, extending the ships by 125 feet and deepening their hulls by nine feet, then redesigned them into something more forward-thinking.

Containerization was coming, and Gene could see it before most.

“We cut ships in half and made them longer,” he recalled with a smile. “That’s how bold the thinking was.”

Faced with a contract to build six outdated cargo ships, Gene and his team convinced the client and the government to approve a radical overhaul: extending the ships by 125 feet and deepening their hulls. It was a massive structural shift, but a necessary one as containerization transformed global shipping.

SNAME Photo 10/21/77 – New Flexible Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Facilities

From Ships to Space Space

It wasn’t long before a man walked into the shipyard asking for help building… rockets.

Most people would have laughed him off. Not Gene.

“We didn’t wait for the contract. We built a fake rocket case with ship steel to prove it could be done.”And it worked.

The mock-up impressed Aerojet enough to award Gene the contract for the largest solid rocket casings ever built at the time. At just 34, he was featured in Fortune Magazine, but you’d never hear that from him unless you asked.

Webbies of the graduating class of ’52 in 2019. Gene Schorsch, John Sims, Tom Gillette

Integrity in the Details

Gene shared many great stories, and all of them led to the important themes of integrity and that the devil is in the details.

When two ships he helped design, lost their propeller blades at sea, most blamed it on underwater collisions. Gene wasn’t convinced. He went to Amsterdam, inspected the damage himself, and quietly ran tests using dye-penetrant methods. He realized the problem was in the casting – flaws hidden deep inside the metal.

“You don’t learn this stuff in the classroom,” he told me. “You learn it when you’re responsible for people’s lives.”

He pushed for replacements, even when manufacturers resisted. He was young. They were powerful. But in the end, he was right. The ships sailed again, and safely it did.

Gene wasn’t just an engineer. He was a systems thinker. A builder of ideas.

Redesigning the Industry

When oil companies in Alaska’s North Slope needed to move crude oil across the Arctic, Gene pitched something radical: he would design the tanker, build it, own it, and operate it. All they had to do was pay a daily charter rate. For us nowadays, think of oil tankers as Uber rides.

And when delays in the Alaskan pipeline left one of his tankers idle, he turned it into a grain carrier, and (because of course he did) he invented a vacuum system to unload it, earning a U.S. patent along the way.

Webb Always

Through all of this – every design, discovery, and decades-long lawsuit against corporate fraud – Gene remained, at his core, a Webbie. He and his wife Ruth gathered every year with three other Webb couples for a three-day weekend. He returned to campus. He mentored. He remembered.

Now, going back to the original question I had asked him at the beginning of our meeting, “What made Webb students so extraordinary?”

He told me about a time at Webb when he sat in the basement of Stevenson Taylor Hall with his roommate, sipping Cokes at midnight, wondering why Webbies were built the way they were. They landed on this:

“A lot of us came from hard beginnings. Webb took that raw material and made us better.”

That’s what he believed, and that’s what he lived. He didn’t just walk through Webb’s gates; he carried the place with him for the rest of his life.

The Small Print

If you ever find yourself in the Ruby Lounge, take a moment to lean in close and read what’s engraved on Gene’s plaque.

You won’t see a list of accomplishments. You’ll see a message that only someone like Gene could leave behind – a message about challenge, courage, and what happens when someone believes in you enough to expect everything from you.

Because for Gene Schorsch, Webb wasn’t just a school. Webb was where everything began.

Ruby Lounge plaque. The quote at the end of the plaque states, “Unimaginable achievements await you. Embrace the challenges.”