World War II Database

1.  David Stubblebine says:
19 Jun 2024 02:14:20 PM

There is a lot going on in this photograph. Within the shipyard itself, starting in the lower left of the photo, several warehouses are seen. The largest flat square warehouse covers 130,000 square feet and survives today, housing the Army Corps of Engineers San Francisco Bay Model. The warehouses fed the finishing docks where eight Type T2 tankers are seen going through their final fitting out. All six of the yard’s shipways are clearly visible and have ships under various states of completion. Beyond the shipways are the massive pre-fabrication sheds where many ship components were produced before being moved to the shipways. At the water’s edge even with the pre-fab sheds is the ferry slip where many of the yard’s workers arrived to start their shifts. Behind the pre-fab sheds, what looks to our 21st century eyes to be a large parking lot was, in fact, the rail yard and a staging yard (workers did not drive cars to work in WWII; they took the bus or the train or, as many did at Marinship, the ferry). The staging yards also extended across the roadway. At the far end of the yard, almost into the shadow of Waldo Hill, is the shipyard’s administration building; the first building built at Marinship (Waldo Hill was originally Waldo Point but the point was cut way back to provide fill during the shipyard construction). The road passing behind the shipyard was, at one time, Redwood Highway, the principal highway along the northern California coast. With the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937 (3 miles to the south, or left in this picture), Redwood Highway was re-routed and is barely out of view in this image as it cuts through the hills crossing the center of the photo. The original road was renamed Bridgeway and remains the main throughfare through Sausalito. Directly across Bridgeway from the shipyard, about even with Shipway No. 1 next to the pre-fab sheds, was the American Distilling Company, but more commonly called the Whiskey Factory (despite also distilling gin and vodka; burned to the ground in 1963). Taking up the upper center part of the photograph is the expansive government housing that primarily housed wartime production workers, mostly at Marinship. This neighborhood was initially known as Waldo and later as Marin City.