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Northwest Steel was a small shipyard in Portland, Oregon. Little is known of its background or owners, but during World War I the yard built cargo ships for the United States Shipping Board (). Some 37 of the 46 ships ship built at Northwest Steel were the West boats, a series of 5,500 gross register tons (GRT) steel-hulled cargo ships built for the on the West Coast of the United States as part of the World War I war effort.
It was headed by Joseph R. Bowles, who was indicted for bribing a government official in about 1918 and then convicted of contempt of court. He was later described as a "greedy, domineering and difficult person, with no sense of civic responsibility."
The first ship built at Northwest Steel was the cargo ship War Baron, originally launched on March 31, 1917 as the Cunard Line ship Vesterlide, a British-flagged ship sunk by German submarine U-55 in January 1918. The final ship built was the 8,200 GRT tanker Swiftwind, completed in June 1921.