Ben Moreell

1892–1978 · U.S. Navy admiral, civil engineer & founder of the Seabees

Ben Moreell was a civil engineer who took a commission in the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps in 1917 and, as chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks from 1937, created the Seabees — the Navy’s militarised construction battalions, for whom he coined the motto Construimus, Batuimus (“We Build, We Fight”). In 1946 he became the first staff corps officer to reach four-star rank. After leaving the Navy he led Turner Construction and then spent roughly a dozen years as president and chairman of Jones and Laughlin Steel, writing free-market essays for The Freeman alongside his industrial career.

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“The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease”

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