Shipbuilding in Savannah During World War II

Savannah and Chatham County, Georgia, are designated an American World War II Heritage City. During the war their shipyards turned out Liberty cargo ships and Navy minesweepers, and civilian workers, including women and teenagers, kept them running. This account draws on a National Park Service lesson built around wartime Georgia newspaper articles.

A boom on the river

In October 1941, before the United States entered the war, The Atlanta Constitution described work starting on a $20,000,000 shipbuilding plant east of Savannah, on the site of an old World War I shipyard. W. R. Crowley, president of Savannah Shipyards, Inc., promised the first keel in December and ships coming off the ways regularly after that. He described them as a big improvement on the "Hog Islanders," the cargo and troop ships built in World War I at the Hog Island emergency shipyard in Philadelphia:

• all steel, 424 feet long with a 58-foot beam, welded rather than riveted and assembled entirely on the ways, so they could be built in half the time;
• cargo carriers able to hold 10,000 tons, armed with a five-inch gun aft and four heavy machine guns against dive bombers;
• more comfortable, with four men to a room instead of eight, and bigger berths.

Crowley expected the ships to form the core of a great American merchant marine after the war, and the plant to go on building oil tankers. He put the plant at about a $10 million investment, building at least 25 Liberty ships for about $44,000,000 and employing about 2,500 people at first and later around 4,000. Upriver, the Savannah Machine and Foundry Company, a boat repair firm, had built a $1 million plant to make nine minesweepers for $15 million to $16 million, employing about 1,900 people when running at full speed.

Workers from six states

By September 1942, the demand for trained workers had outrun the local supply. The Atlanta Journal reported that labor induction centers had opened in Savannah and Brunswick, modeled on the Army's system for funneling recruits, to supply shipyards with young welders, sheet metal workers and riveters, both boys and girls. The only other center in the Southeast was in Mobile, Alabama. Run by the National Youth Administration with the War Manpower Commission, the U.S. Employment Service and the shipyards, they drew workers from six Southeastern states.

When the Savannah yards asked for more than 100 welders one week, the centers supplied young men from Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi almost at once. Recruits were tested before being cleared, and the whole process from arrival to shipyard usually took under a week, sometimes three days. The center's youth personnel officer expected to supply as many as 100 young women the next week, and the paper predicted that women, already working as productively as men, would become the main source of labor if the draft age were lowered. The average recruit was about 17, which the project manager said the shipyards now considered the "golden age": with the draft age at 20, a 17-year-old could give three productive years before being called up.

"Ocean brooms"

In September 1944, The Atlanta Journal visited what it called one of the country's few "ocean broom" factories. The Savannah Machine and Foundry shipyard was starting its 21st minesweeper since November 1941, and Savannah-built minesweepers had helped clear mined waters for the Allied landings in North Africa, Italy and Normandy. One was so close to shore during the invasion of Italy that German troops on the beach fired on it.

A minesweeper took four months to build and could be destroyed in a minute. The yard's 3,000 men and women worked two 10-hour shifts, and had won the Army-Navy "E" award three times in a row. Rain stopped outdoor welding and wiring because of the danger of electrocution. Each ship was different, from 180 to 220 feet long, and all began in the Plate and Angle Shop, where women and men worked in helmets, heating steel sheets red hot to shape them. The ships got their names from the Navy after delivery; until then they were known by hull numbers. One of them, the USS Implicit, slid down the ways into the Savannah River.

A shipyard scandal

Not every wartime venture was sound. Savannah Shipyards, Inc., never launched a ship. After safety and operational failures and a failure to meet its contract, the U.S. Maritime Commission took over the yard in January 1942 and handed operations to another company. In February 1942 the commission announced a contract for 36 Liberty freighters at the Savannah yard, up from the original 12, with a base fee of $110,000 a ship and a possible $30,000 bonus or $50,000 penalty for speed and efficiency.

At a condemnation hearing in May 1942, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Littell charged that only one of the company's seven executives had shipbuilding experience, that it had paid large legal fees across the country and charged the government outrageous expenses, and that its owner had turned $5,000 of starting capital into millions in federal contracts, comparing him to the fictional con man "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford." Engineers had reported that no ship could ever have been launched from the yard as built: the ways were badly constructed, floors sagged, the mold loft was poorly built, the pilings did not go deep enough, and defective machinery had been installed. The company was asking $2,187,000 for its property.

The company's attorney called the charges unfounded and misleading and said that if they were true, the Maritime Commission itself should be investigated for awarding the contracts. In August 1942 the company was awarded $1,285,000 in compensation for the takeover.

Questions to consider

The Park Service lesson asks learners to think about why Savannah's location made it valuable for shipbuilding and defense; how the yards affected the local economy and jobs; how induction centers met wartime labor shortages; what the work reveals about women in jobs traditionally held by men; and how shipbuilding in Savannah contributed to Allied victory.

Sources

• National Park Service, "(H)our History Lesson: Shipbuilding in Savannah and Chatham County, Georgia, World War II Heritage City," written by Sarah Nestor Lane under the National Council on Public History's cooperative agreement with the Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/h-our-history-lesson-shipbuilding-in-savannah-and-chatham-county-georgia-world-war-ii-heritage-city.htm
• The lesson reproduces articles from The Atlanta Constitution (October 26, 1941) and The Atlanta Journal (July 20, 1941; February 8, May 5, May 6 and September 20, 1942; September 10, 1944), which are paraphrased here, along with newspaper photographs that are not reproduced.
• The lesson names the company that took over the yard both "Southeastern Shipyards Corporation" and "Southeastern Shipbuilding Company," and the original company both "Savannah Shipyards, Inc." and "Savannah Shipbuilding, Inc."; this page uses the name that appears most often, Savannah Shipyards, Inc.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.