In the midst of the deepest economic downturn since the Depression, one venerable Tacoma business is busier than it’s been in 20 years.

The company is hiring. Its backlog of major projects now lasts through at least 2011, and several of its new proposals are on potential customers’ desks.

For Tacoma’s J.M. Martinac Shipbuilding Corp. this rush of activity stands in pleasant contrast to the first years of this decade when the 85-year-old shipyard sat idle for five years with no new construction work.

On a recent sunny fall day, Joe Martinac Jr., the third generation president of the family-run ship construction business, surveyed the activity around him from the deck of a tugboat nearing completion.

Two new Martinac tugs were tied up to shipyard docks, one for an East Coast company and the other for the U.S. Navy. In the shipyard ways, two other Navy tugs were being built, and materials for a fourth Navy tug were arriving in the yard for preliminary fabrication work.

“It’s a welcome relief,” said Martinac. “We’ve got work in the yard.”

Martinac workers swarmed over the more finished of the two boats already in the water, the MV Justice, a 98-foot-long, 5,400-horsepower tug being built for Boston Towing and Transportation Co. Workers were connecting bundles of wire to their terminals, and the tug was being readied for its first fueling. Within a few days, the high-tech tugboat would be going through sea trials testing whether it was working the way it was designed to perform.

The Justice is one of two tugs being built primarily to serve a new liquified natural gas tanker terminal off the Massachusetts coast. A Connecticut shipyard is building the other tug.

Martinac’s workmanship and quality has impressed its clients.

“We were sufficiently impressed by the finished product that we considered it was well worth making the 6,700-mile trip from Tacoma to Boston to get one of their boats,” said Bill Skinner, marine superintendent for Boston towing.

Skinner, who said Martinac was recommended to Boston Towing by the boat’s architect, said the quality of construction was “superior to anything that we’ve seen anywhere in the country.”

“We’re very happy to have found them,” he said.

The Navy tug tied up nearby, the YT-802 Valiant, is less advanced. Once the Justice leaves the yard in October for its four-week voyage to New England, the focus will shift to Valiant in preparation for its debut for the Navy later this year.

For Martinac, tug construction has become its salvation. The shipyard from the ’60s through the ’90s made its money building huge tuna seiners. During that era, Martinac become perhaps the nation’s most prominent tuna boat builder, creating new vessels, some as large as 250-feet long, for the Southern California tuna fishing industry. At its peak, the yard employed some 350 workers and was launching a tuna seiner every three months.

But that seiner-building business died off abruptly as the tuna fishing business shifted to Southeast Asia, South America and the South Pacific.

That left Martinac, a skilled but specialized boat builder, without a niche where it could flourish. The yard took on repair work and some smaller projects, but until 2007, the flow of jobs dried up.

That was the year when Oregon’s Sause Bros. came to Martinac to build two 128-foot line-haul tugboats.

Those were the first of 10 tugs the shipyard has built or is now building. Employment has risen to 150 craftsmen, including workers laid off at other industrial companies.

Martinac said a combination of factors besides the shipyard’s reputation for building quality boats is behind the sudden surge in business.

Hurricane Katrina, a disastrous event for the Gulf Coast, played a prominent role in making opportunities happen for Martinac.

That storm temporarily damaged Gulf Coast shipyards, but it was the hurricane’s other after- effects that brought new opportunity to Martinac.

The cleanup and rebuilding of New Orleans and other cities in the region attracted workers who normally would have worked in the relatively low-wage shipyards there to higher-paying construction jobs, he said, leaving the shipyards short of labor.

At the same time, the runup in oil prices prompted energy companies to begin new offshore oil exploration activities, prompting the need for new tugboats.

A third factor was simply the development of new technology in tug design that caused ship assist and towing companies to consider replacing their fleets with high tech tugs.

After the Sause tug order, Houston’s Signet Maritime ordered two 98-foot ship escort tugs from Martinac.

Those tugs used a so-called “z-drive” propulsion system that gives the boats turn-on-dime maneuverability and versatility. Those two tugs were subsequently leased by Foss Maritime.

Such tugs have no rudders, but instead rely on propellers that can be instantly turned to face any direction to drive the boats forward, backward, sideways, in a circle or in an infinite number of directions in between.

They acquire their “z-drive” name from the path the driveshaft takes from the engines to the propeller. The horizontal driveshafts connect the engines to a gear box that directs the rotating force vertically to another driveshaft.

That shaft connects with another horizontal shaft that drives the propellers.

Because the tugs can move equally well backward and forward, the tugs Martinac is building have a wheelhouse that’s structured like an aircraft control tower with windows in all directions.

Besides enhanced agility, the new generation of tugs offers other significant advantages over older tugs, said Martinac. They’re far more fuel efficient and reliable than the older boats, and they offer a complete integrated suite of satellite navigation, communication and control functions to the skipper.

“Many of the tugs in towing company fleets are approaching 30 years old, and it’s time for owners to consider updating them to more reliable, more able boats,” said Martinac.

One common thread among the eight tugs that Martinac has built or has on order since the Sause Brothers order is that all employ a version of the “z-drive” system and all were designed by Vancouver B.C. naval architectural firm Robert Allan Ltd.

The Allan company is a world leader in tug design, said Martinac. Allan-designed tugs are used all over the world in ship assist, towing and escort work.

The Navy order for four boats is particularly significant for Martinac. Because those vessels are essentially identical, the yard expects to become more efficient with each copy.

With a one-off boat, there are always issues that come up during construction that aren’t evident even with computer assisted design, said Martinac. With a series of identical boats, those issues are solved before construction begins on subsequent copies, cutting down construction time and labor hours.

Martinac hopes that this run of new business is not just an aberration. It has proposals for further tug projects pending with other potential customers.

Martinac is not the only Washington shipyard with business during an otherwise depressed economic era.

Anacortes’ Dakota Creek Industries has three tugs on contract for Crowley Maritime. Whidbey Island’s Nichols Brothers Boatbuilding is building a high-speed ferry for San Francisco Bay, and Seattle’s Todd Pacific Shipyards is working on the 67-passenger state ferries.

Martinac is part of a team that is supposed to build the next series of Washington State 144-passenger ferries. Under the preliminary concept planned by the State Department of Transportation, Todd will build the ferries’ hulls, and Martinac will build the superstructure.

That superstructure, when finished, would move to Seattle by barge and be mated to the Todd-built hull.

But Martinac, a longtime critic of the ferry system’s boat building procedures, says he has doubts whether the state will carry through with ferry construction as planned. Budget shortfalls and other issues, he said, could create problems for the ferry system’s plans.

The state is rushing to augment its aging fleet with a series of smaller ferries patterned after ferries built for service in New England. Those 67-car ferries ultimately will replace four boats the state was forced to retire because their hulls were rusting away.

The new 67-passenger boats will use conventional propulsion systems with fixed propellers. Martinac championed a design that used the steerable propeller system as used in the tugs the yard is now building, but the state didn’t adopt that design.

John Gillie: 253-597-8663

john.gillie@thenewstribune.com

Martinac-built tugboats

YearNameOwner Dimensions Horsepower

2007MV MikionaSause Bros.128’ x 35’3,750

2007MV CochiseSause Bros.128’ x 35’3,750

2008MV AmericaSignet Maritime98’ x 40’6,600

2008MV Stars & StripesSignet Maritime98’ x 40’6,600

2009MV Seaspan

ResolutionSeaspan98’ x 40’6,000

2009MV JusticeBoston Towing98’ x 36’5,400

2009YT 802U.S. Navy90’ x 38’3,600

2010YT 803U.S. Navy90’ x 38’3,600

2010YT 804U.S. Navy90’ x 38’ 3,600

2011YT 805U.S. Navy90’ x 38’3,600