History
The company’s history began in 1940, when the U.S. government saw the acute need to build a large fleet of Merchant ships, both to fulfill commitments to the British and, if The United Kingdom fell, to strengthen its position for war. The Maritime Commission decided to allow established shipyards to build new facilities and operate them for the government. Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company agreed to build a shipyard in Wilmington, adequate to deliver 25 Liberty ships by March 15, 1943. The new company was organized with Newport News executives at its head.
Read more about this topic: North Carolina Shipbuilding Company
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)