Large Wartime Shipbuilders

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.  Some were primarily repair yards which also built a few ships.  Many of the commercially oriented shipbuilders also built some of the simpler types of naval ships.  The civilian agencies involved were the U.S. Shipping Board, in World War I, and the U.S. Maritime Commission, in World War II.  All these emergency yards closed at the end of the war, or soon thereafter, although a few took on a new life and reappeared later under a different name.  The tables in this section cover those yards that built oceangoing naval or merchant ships, including LSTs: these types of ship were also, of course, built by the  shipbuilders covered in the lists of Major Shipbuilders, Large Shipbuilders and Naval Shipyards.  The yards that built small ships, boats and barges are covered in the lists of Wartime Boatbuilders, Small Shipbuilders and Small Yachtbuilders.  The tables presented here are generally complete, at least as far as the emergency contracts are concerned, because the construction programs are well documented, as are the fates of the ships that were built.