Southeastern Shipbuilding
Savannah, Georgia
source: Sawyer & Mitchell

©
Georgia

Just prior to the United States' entry into the war the Maritime Commission awarded shipbuilding contracts to Savannah Shipyards Inc., this company having made good progress in building its own three-slipway yard without Commission aid. But these contracts carried many special provisions, for both the management and the capital structure of the company had not given the Commission much confidence. The firm was required to recruit a full staff, show full capital and to complete their facilities within thirty to sixty days. In normal times failure to comply would have meant cancelled contracts and nothing more. In fact, these builders did fail to meet these conditions and the 'intervention' of Pearl Harbor enabled the Commission, as per the contract, to take possession of the yard, complete the site to a six-way yard and award management of it to a new company.

In January 1942 a leading construction company was given the task of completing the yard and in the same month management was vested in a team of experienced ship equipment manufacturers, who organized the yard, now renamed Southeastern Shipbuilding Corporation.

As a boost to the shipbuilding program, the yard was considered on the same basis as all the other, new six-way yards. The half-built facilities acted as a spur and the yard finally delivered more ships during 1943 than any of these rivals, but fewer vessels in 1944 due to a rather poor use of man-hours. The 1943 contracts for the future delivery of ships allowed 573,700 man-hours per ship, but in fact the actual delivery time of these vessels averaged 706,600 man-hours each - one of the highest figures of all the yards.

In April 1943, contracts were awarded to the yard for the construction of C1-type vessels and AP-type transports.

The Commission's seizure of the yard raised many legal complications; the case subsequently went to trial and Savannah Shipyards Inc. was awarded a very substantial compensation.

Liberty ship output: 88 vessels at an average cost of just over $2 million each.

USMC Numbers	Yard Numbers
341- 352	1-12
1051-1074	13-36
2432-2447	37-52
2863-2898	53-88
2899-2907	89-97 Cancelled

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World War II Construction Records of the Southeastern Shipbuilding Corporation