Shipbuilding History

In both world wars, the U.S. Government stimulated the creation of a large number of emergency shipyards. Some were devoted to naval shipbuilding, others to merchant shipbuilding. In addition to the large yards that built oceangoing naval and commercial ships, there were many more that built small ships, boats and barges. Some were repair yards which only built ships for the duration of the emergency. Many built the simpler types of ships required by the Army and the Coast Guard, as well as the Navy. The civilian agencies involved were the USSB, in World War I, and MARCOM, in World War II. Most of the emergency yards closed and were liquidated at the end of the war, or soon thereafter, or returned to their pre-war activities. A few took on a new life and are listed in other categories of this collection. The 90 tables presented here are generally far from complete, most only documenting wartime construction. The wartime construction programs are themselves not well documented and there is very little information on what happened to these boats at the end of the war.

EMERGENCY BOATBUILDERS IN WWII