Not many North Carolinians are aware that a Wilmington shipyard was a major force in the Second World War. It built 243 ships to carry military cargo. Named the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, the company’s workforce reached 21,000 in 1943. In addition to contributing to the war effort, it gave a big economic boost to Wilmington as workers came from around the state.
The shipyard was shut down in 1946. Eventually taken over by the State Ports Authority of North Carolina, the space is used to assist trade, but not for shipbuilding.
Background
World War II began in Europe in 1939. Although the United States did not enter the war until Dec. 7, 1941, the Roosevelt administration helped Great Britain by treating merchant ships as vessels necessary for defense (skirting the Neutrality Act of 1935). One goal was to create more ships to carry cargo between the U.S. and war-torn Britain. In January 1941, the U.S. Maritime Commission announced an emergency expansion of ships. And that meant building new shipyards.
As Julian M. Pleasants writes [1] :
“Roosevelt decided to build many of the shipyards in the South partly because he wanted to aid the economic development there. He realized that the region lacked skilled managers, skilled workers, and machine shops, but the South had a warm climate for year-round construction, adequate supplies of lumber, and large numbers of unskilled workers whose hiring would reduce unemployment in the area.”
While a North Carolina shipyard was likely, it was only after competitive lobbying that Wilmington became the site, rather than Morehead City. The new company was a subsidiary of the Virginia firm Newport News Shipping and Dry Dock Company.
More than half the ships built by the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company were cargo-carrying Liberty vessels. Why were they called Liberty ships? Simon Gonzalez writes that when “the president christened the S.S. Patrick Henry . . . he referenced Patrick Henry’s famous ‘give me liberty or give me death’ speech. These ships, he said, would bring liberty to Europe. Thus, the name Liberty ship was coined.” [2]
During the war, the shipyard built 126 Liberty vessels and 117 Victory vessels. The Victory ships started to be built in 1943. They were designed to go faster than the Liberty ships, enabling ships to better avoid submarines and bombing—and to be more efficient when used for trade after the war.
The Workforce
About thirty percent of the workers were black. Many had skilled jobs, working as riveters, drillers, and shipwrights. “While some tasks were relegated to black crews,” writes Ralph E. Scott, “still the majority of blacks worked side-by-side with whites according to their tasks. This was in contrast to the other yards in the South that remained segregated.” [3]
The company named one of its Liberty ships the S.S. John Merrick, honoring a cofounder of the North Carolina Mutual Life, a black-owned insurance company located in Durham, North Carolina.
About 10 percent of the workers were women. “Their performance went a long way toward changing men’s attitudes toward women as war workers,” writes Pleasants. [4]
Not only was the shipbuilding industry important to the war effort, it affected Wilmington. “The sleepy post-Depression coastal town was transformed into a major state industrial center,” writes Ralph E Scott.“The wartime building program was a unique and monumental national effort that we will probably not see again.” [5]