Mordecai T. Endicott

Class of 1868
Civil and Naval Engineer
1844-1926

Known as the “Father of the Civil Engineering Corps,” Mordecai Endicott was the first of many distinguished Rensselaer graduates to lead the Navy’s civil engineering efforts.

He was commissioned as a civil engineer in the U.S. Navy in 1874 and by 1890 was posted to Washington, D.C., and given control of all civil engineering projects. The Navy yards were undergoing extensive modernization and Endicott introduced electronic appliances and steel and concrete dry docks.

He was the builder of the floating dry dock Dewey, at the time the largest built.

Immediately before the Spanish-American War, President McKinley broke precedent and appointed Endicott chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, a post always before held by an officer of the line.

Later he was given the rank of rear admiral, the first of more than 50 Rensselaer graduates to attain the rank of admiral.