Emergency Shipbuilding Program - The Early Years

The Early Years

With the defense of both the U.S. and its overseas possessions along with a very strong national interest in assisting Britain in its struggle to keep its supply lines open to both North America and its overseas Colonies, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced what was to become known as the Emergency Shipbuilding Program on January 3, 1941 for the construction of 200 ships very much similar to those being built for the British. He designated that the Program be implemented and administered by the Maritime Commission which since 1937 had been the Federal government department tasked with Merchant Marine development and which had worked very closely with the British Mission in placing its 60 ship order. Immediately the Commission authorized that the two yards building for the British build ships for the U.S. upon completion of their current contracts. The Maritime Commission also funded the yards to add building ways and realizing that more than two yards would be needed for the program they were expecting to enter into contracts to build new shipyards on the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coasts of the U.S. In this first wave of expansion seven additional yards were added to those in Maine and California and like those yards were to be for the sole purpose of building only the Emergency type of ships. While all the yards were to be built by private contractors and operated by commercial shipbuilding companies, the new yards were financed by the Maritime Commission with funds authorized by Congress and thus owned by Federal Government. One of the new yards planned for construction was to be in Baltimore, Maryland by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation. That facility became known as the Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyard for the Fairfield section of Baltimore where it was located. Bethlehem Shipbuilding was one of the nation's largest shipbuilding companies having construction yards on the East Coast in Quincy, Massachusetts, on Staten Island, New York and at Sparrows Point, also in Baltimore. On the West Coast it had yards in San Pedro and San Francisco. Another was to be in Wilmington, North Carolina and managed by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company of Newport News, Virginia, which had one of the largest commercial yards in the U.S. and by 1941 was exclusively building large combatant ships for the Navy. That yard was to be called the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company.

Additionally, yards were authorized to be built on the Gulf of Mexico coast at Mobile, Alabama which was to be operated by the Mobile based Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company, in New Orleans on the Industrial Canal to be known as the Delta Shipbuilding Company and operated by the American Shipbuilding Company of Toledo, Ohio, one at Houston, Texas on the Houston Ship Channel to be operated by Todd Shipyards and called the Todd-Houston Shipbuilding Corp. On the West Coast, one yard was contracted to be built in Los Angeles at Terminal Island and managed by the Bechtel/McCone Company. That yard would be called the California Shipbuilding Corporation or CalShip for short. The Kaiser Corporation itself received a contract to build a new yard on the Columbia River at Portland, Oregon which would be known as the Oregon Shipbuilding Corp.