World War II Database

Contributor: David Stubblebine

ww2dbaseThe United States Maritime Commission started the Emergency Shipbuilding Program in 1940. In the fifth wave of shipyard expansion in 1942, the W.A. Bechtel Company, along with five affiliates, were awarded a contract to build a new shipyard on the western shore of San Francisco Bay at the northern edge of Sausalito along an inlet known as Richardson Bay. Built upon the former maintenance yard for the Northwestern Pacific Railroad, nearly a million cubic yards of earth were moved to fill in the marshlands and create the spaces needed to construct six shipways and the accompanying yard.

ww2dbaseKnown briefly as the "Marin Shipbuilding Division of W.A. Bechtel Company," this was soon shortened to Marinship and the name stuck. Originally intended to build Maritime Commission oil tankers, the shipyard was approaching completion before designs for the tankers were finalized and so Marinship began with a contract for fifteen Liberty ships. Within three months of Bechtel receiving authorization from the Maritime Commission to build the shipyard, Marinship's first keel was laid on 27 Jun 1942. That ship would become the Liberty ship William A. Richardson, named for the founder of Sausalito, and was launched only three months after keel laying and six months after the shipyard groundbreaking.

ww2dbaseOn 7 Dec 1942, the keel of the first tanker was laid at Marinship. This ship would become the USS Escambia, the lead ship in a new class of fleet oilers (civilian companies called them tankers; only the Navy called them oilers). As with all of the war production taking place in the San Francisco Bay Area, Marinship drew thousands of workers to the yards with its force reaching 20,000 workers at its peak. Housing, hospitals, and schools sprang up around the area even more quickly than ships slid down the ways. Marinship also boasted a better workplace safety record than most shipyards of the period.

ww2dbaseLike every other war industry in the region, the labor force benefited from Presidential Executive Order 8802 prohibiting discrimination in defense industries and the resulting migration that brought thousands of workers from all across the country to California, including many African-American workers from the southern states and many women. The California local of the powerful and well-established Boilermakers and Iron Fitters Union, however, signed a broad Master Agreement that was binding upon all Maritime Commission shipyards in California. Among other provisions, the agreement required all shipyard workers to be union members in good standing. Separately from the master agreement, the union also excluded membership to African-American workers. The two restrictions taken together combined to disallow employment to Black workers, except with a severely limited auxiliary union membership. African-American Marinship welder Joseph James filed suit in Marin County Superior Court. The case rose all the way to the California Supreme Court where a unanimous 1944 landmark decision ruled in James' favor and struck down the practice. Notably, the Court did not strike down a union's prerogative to exclude Black members, just the practice of simultaneously excluding Black members and requiring union membership in order to work. Among the attorneys arguing the case to the Supreme Court on James' behalf was Thurgood Marshall, then of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

ww2dbaseThe Marinship yard also hosted its share of dignitaries. In Apr 1945, San Francisco was hosting the United Nations Conference on International Organization, also known as the first San Francisco Conference. In a break from that conference, HRH Prince Faisal Ibn Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia and his party toured Marinship and were hosted by Company president Stephen Bechtel, Sr. The Prince witnessed the launching of one tanker and received a lavish lunch on the decks of a different recently completed tanker. (In the postwar years, Bechtel and Faisal would nurture a long and mutually lucrative relationship developing Saudi Arabia's oil.)

ww2dbaseThe neighboring but distinct Sausalito Shipbuilding had been building Army barges since the war began. As the flow of Maritime Commission shipbuilding contracts began to taper off in 1945, Marinship also began building barges while construction on their remaining ships was completed. With the war's end, shipbuilding at Marinship stopped after almost 41 months of operation. During that time, Marinship built a total of fifteen Liberty ships and 78 tankers. The 93rd and last ship built, the fleet oiler USS Mission Los Angeles, was completed on 29 Oct 1945. Seven would-be tankers had their contracts cancelled and were never completed.

ww2dbaseAfter the war, the land was transferred to the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Many acres that had not existed before the shipyard was built were sold off and are occupied today by a variety of private businesses and small boat marinas. Marinship's largest warehouse was retained by the Corps of Engineers and became home to the San Francisco Bay Model, a working hydraulic model of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento - San Joaquin River Delta System. The model served for years as a working research center studying how water flows into and through the bay and is still operating as National Park Service attraction.

ww2dbaseMarinship Ships in Order of Completion

Ships Constructed at Marinship Shipbuilding

Marinship Shipbuilding Interactive Map

Photographs

Maps

Marinship Shipbuilding Timeline