Seatrain Lines - History - Seatrain Shipbuilding

Seatrain Shipbuilding

In 1967, Seatrain Lines announced it would establish a new shipyard inside the former New York Naval Shipyard. Seatrain Lines had no shipbuilding experience but planned to build and charter out 5 VLCC's & 7 container ships for themselves. Seatrain Shipbuilding built 4 VLCC's, 8 barges, 1 Ice Breaker Barge. They started work on the burned out hull of the Sea Witch {Newport News finished} turning it into a chemical tanker.

The Federal Government by way of the Economic Development Administration of the US Department of Commerce advanced Seatrain $5 million in direct loans and guaranteed 90% of $82 million in loans from Chase Manhattan Bank. Seatrain Lines injected $38 million of its own money into the project. The union chosen to represent the shipyard production workers was the United Industrial Workers of North America.

Seatrain built four 220,000-ton Very Large Crude Carriers (supertankers), eight barges, one ice breaker barge and two roll-on/roll-off (Ro-Ro) ferries. One of the Ro-Ro ferries was never finished and was scrapped. Seatrain Shipbuilding also had a contract to rebuild the burned out hull of the Sea Witch into a chemical tanker. January 20, 1975 Seatrain Shipbuilding started to lay off half of its 3,200 workers for an indefinite period of time. A few days later, the rest of the shipbuilders would receive their layoff notices, as well. The mass layoff was due to President Gerald Ford's pocket veto of the cargo preference bill. Twenty of the largest shipyards in the U.S. would experience similar layoffs.

The cargo preference bill would have required over time 20% of all the oil transported into the U.S. be transported on U.S. Flagged Tankers. President Ford called the bill inflationary. The cost of a gallon of gas would slowly rise by 20 cents over a few years. A few weeks later President Ford called for a $4 per barrel tax on imported oil. This would have increased the cost of gas and heating oil by over $1 per gallon. New England complained people would no longer be able to afford heating oil. The $4 tax went nowhere!