Shipbuilding History

(YC) Built or Acquired Before WWII

Over the years, the Navy has built or acquired 1,685 open cargo lighters: the table below lists the first 694, which were built or acquired before WWII. When the designation was introduced in 1920, these barges were used for coal and YC signified a coal barge. As the Navy's use of coal declined, YCs were used for anything that could be carried in an open lighter. Many YCs were converted to other uses, sometimes more than once, and not all those links may be complete in these tables. Relatively few YCs were acquired from the commercial world and one of the revelations of this table is the astonishing number that were built by naval shipyards. Creating this table has also revealed the existence of a bunch of small shipyards that I had never previously come across. Although almost every barge has been identified, there are still a few gaps in the data: in particular, it is not clear what happened to many of these barges at the end of WWII.