John T. Gilbride, a former chairman and chief executive of the Todd Shipyards Corporation, once the largest independent shipbuilding company in the country, died on March 17 at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 90. The cause was lung disease, his son Frank said, as reported in the New York Times. Gilbride, who started as a pipe fitter’s helper at the Todd shipyard in Brooklyn when he was 14, was president of the company from 1958 to 1975, and its chairman and chief executive until his retirement in 1986. Founded by William H. Todd in 1916, the company built destroyers, cargo carriers and troop ships during both world wars. In World War II, it had 150,000 workers, most at its yard in Brooklyn. Well into the 1980s, more than 80 percent of the company’s business was with the Navy.