Century stories: Month 6

6.28.99
Three years, 63 ships at Fields Point

By S. ROBERT CHIAPPINELLI
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Sometimes as Bill McDonough salvaged scrap steel and wood inside one of the mammoth Liberty Ships being built at the Walsh-Kaiser Shipyard, nearby riveters began with a startling suddenness.

``Bbrriitt. Bbrriitt. Bbrriitt,'' McDonough said, simulating the pulsating, machine-gun style of their guns. ``They'd scare the dickens out of you.''

Other times, acetylene torches ate through steel too close for comfort for McDonough, doing cleanup work on the other side of a wall.

McDonough, retired now and living in Haines City, Fla., was a teenager then, working the summer of 1944 on an overnight shift, traversing the belly of the behemoths by following lights strung through the superstructure.

``The hard part was eating lunch at 3:30 in the morning,'' he recalled. Sometimes he would fall asleep on the bus ride home and miss his stop.

Fields Point bustled round the clock with a work force larger than the entire state government of today.

The yard straddling the Cranston-Providence line employed 21,264 people at its peak in January 1945. Storekeepers and housewives, clerks and youths fresh out of school worked side by side, turning out ship after ship.

``I can remember going there and I was so impressed with the size of everything,'' McDonough said. ``Those cargo ships were so huge.''

Back then, with war raging across the Atlantic and the Pacific, the shipyard loomed large even on a grander scale. Enemy bombs and torpedoes had riddled the United States merchant fleet, necessitating construction of the giant Liberty Ships that ferried troops and critical supplies to foreign arenas.

In 1942, the national Maritime Commission chose Fields Point for its latest defense shipyard.

Construction began March 28, 1942 and swallowed Kerwin's Beach, which drew thousands to the shores of Providence River at the Cranston-Providence line. Leo Max, of Pawtucket, says closing the beach represented little loss.

``They called it `the inkwell,' '' he said, ``because of the uncleanliness.''

Rheem Manufacturing Co. was to run the defense yard, a moderately sized one with six ways for launching ships.

According to Providence Shipyard 1943 - 1945 , one million cubic yards of fill from a nearby hillside failed to stabilize the area mud flats and equipment often bogged down in deep mud. On New Year's Eve 1942 the plate shop -- 255 feet by 643 feet and the first step in the production process -- burned.

Despairing of Rheem's ill luck, the Maritime Commission in February 1943 turned to Walsh-Kaiser, a combination of a successful construction company (Walsh) and a shipbuilder (Kaiser) with considerable West Coast success.

The yard quickly grew from 9,000 workers in February 1943 to 14,000 four months later. Eventually, seven miles of road wound through the area, which offered four canteens and an around-the-clock hospital.

In a whirlwind three years, Walsh-Kaiser built 63 ships of 3 different types -- 10 Liberty Ships, 21 Frigates and 32 Combat Loaded Cargo Vessels.

According to Providence Shipyard 1943-1945 , Liberty Ships were 441 feet, 6 inches long and contained 34,400 rivets. The single screw vessels made 11 knots, contained 81 compartments, had a complement of 80 men and bore 10 guns. The yard turned out 10 of those so-called Ugly Ducklings.

The yard's next assignment, frigates modeled after the Canadian twin-screw Corvette, were nearly 304 feet long, did 20 knots, contained no rivets and carried a complement of 143. They packed guns, depth charges, gear for underwater detection and radar to track submarines.

The final jewel was the new Combat Loaded Cargo Vessel, 425 feet long with a complement of 280 and room for 267 troops. The yard produced 32 and production peaked in 1945 when Walsh-Kaiser delivered 22 in eight months.

Wages generally were excellent but layoffs occurred occasionally because of the ebb and flow of government contract work. Still, workers from around New England moved to Rhode Island to take advantage of the boom time. The AFL served as sole bargaining agent at the yard.

Leo Max, who had worked in a clothing store, doubled his salary in his new shipfitting job. Married with two children, Max faced little threat of being drafted, but relished the satisfaction of helping the war effort.

``Before I was hired we went somewhere in Providence and they gave us two weeks training to introduce us to what we would be doing,'' he said.

Shipyard work posed demands Max never faced in a clothing store.

``The first time I crawled up a high ladder my knees started to shake,'' he said. ``So I went up and down, up and down until I got that out of my system.''

He became a ``lead man'' directing small crews on specific projects, then became assistant foreman on the swing shift that ended before midnight.

``When we worked in the inner bottoms the noise was tremendous,'' Max recalls. Chipping tools attacked welding droppings, cleansing them from a ship's surface with a zealous thunder.

``When you're down below that and that's pounding above you. . . .,'' Max said, ``I think I'm paying the price for that now.''

Some frigid days his hands froze to the ship's steel and sweltering summer days exacted their toll, but Max loved his work.

``It was a completely different world -- different people. I got a lot of new friends.''

After the war he returned to the Pawtucket clothing store where he had worked, then ran Slater Clothes shop for about a dozen years. Later he worked as an investigator for Family Court, the job from which he retired.

During the war years he recalls many times passing through Providence late at night on his way home and seeing the city bustling. And he still remembers the thrill of watching a ship that he worked on being launched.

``Needless to say,'' he said, ``when you saw it floating on the water it was a good feeling.''

The yard employed nearly 3,000 women and 60 percent worked production jobs, donning overalls and working side by side with men. Many learned skills and performed jobs unimaginable for women just a few years before.

``Women you couldn't tell them apart,'' McDonough said. ``They pulled their weight and did a great job. It was really a whole new ball game for that period of time to have women in there doing that job.''

Many women also contributed office and secretarial skills.

Laura (Marshall) Sprague, a June 1941 graduate of Nelson W. Aldrich High School in Warwick, proudly recalls her stint at the shipyard, which began in the Payroll/War Bond Department of Rheem.

``Patriotism was at an all-time high,'' she said, ``and virtually all employees bought war bonds. They were meticulously typed, and employees collected them when paid for, on payday at a long line of windows with outside counters running along the office side of a long porch. Employee numbers were indicated at each window, and it was all amazingly well organized.''

The country had never seen anything quite like those war years.

``There was a dedication at this time beyond anything Rhode Island and America had ever before experienced,'' she said.

``At home, families were rationing sugar, meat, butter and gasoline. We were issued rationing stamps, and all this was carefully monitored by city officials. Almost everyone who could were growing `victory gardens.' My family had a large one and also raised chickens to supplement our family's food. This was done to show support for the sacrifices our men (and women) were making in service to their country in remote and different parts of the world.''

Her brother, Gordon, served in the Merchant Marines aboard ships that carried essential materials to Russia and Europe and brother, Bud, served as a mechanic for B29s in Guam.

On the home front they sang ``Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition,'' ``Bell Bottom Trousers,'' ``There'll be Bluebirds Over the White Fields of Dover,'' ``Sentimental Journey,'' ``Chattanooga Choo-Choo,'' ``Any Bonds Today?,'' ``Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else But Me,'' ``It's Been a Long, Long Time'' and ``Far Away Places.''

Laura Marshall Sprague, who passed out doughnuts and coffee at a Providence USO, lives today in Sebastian, Fla., but recalls those days fondly.

``There is a bond that ties us together: being an American at a time when our country was at war, with the firm belief that God would bring us to victory,'' she said. ``Our century since then has placed our men and women in the line of duty; but World War II -- if ever any war can be justified -- gave a grateful nation the opportunity to prove its loyalty and love. There was never a question that it was the right thing to do.''

Hilda (Stamp) Lord of Warwick knew the feeling.

``Around 1943 everyone that I knew was heading to the Kaiser shipyard to work,'' she recalled, ``and the spirit was so great that I just quit my job.''

Her brother-in-law and two sisters-in-law went to work for Kaiser, too. Hilda, a former hairdresser, worked with up to 100 others in the quiet of a large office area, her identification badge affixed to her blouse.

``It was a busy place,'' she said. ``Everybody was working and they all did their jobs. I typed all day long.''

Her husband, Edwin, an MIT graduate, was overseas on submarine duty and the rare correspondence she was allowed came heavily censored, with whole sections blacked out for security reasons. But she understood.

``There was a great feeling of wanting to do for the country,'' she said. ``It was very strong and a wonderful time to live.''

Donald Hainey's late father and many of his Olneyville neighbors worked at the Walsh-Kaiser Shipyard where Hainey landed a summer job in June 1944.

The size, noise and industry of Walsh-Kaiser impressed the teenager.

``It was really humming,'' Hainey said.

The yard was completing American versions of the Canadian twin screw Corvette frigates, able to detect underwater activity and track submarines. Next came sophisticated Combat Loaded Cargo Ships.

Hainey remembers huge 43-ton whirley cranes hoisting half a ship. His mind still hears the sizzle of welders' torches and the bark of jackhammers.

``Tons of noise,'' Hainey recalls. ``All the noise you want.''

And any trade you could imagine. He served on a cleanup crew and says there always was plenty of work. He gave his earnings to his mother and that September he returned to Central High School.

``Three months was plenty for me down there,'' he said of his summer job.

Hainey, 72, a retired Quebecor Printing foreman, lives in East Providence now, across the water from his summer job of long ago. It's been years since he went back to the area, but he has never forgotten the experience.

Horace Knight in a Providence Journal column written in 1987 said that shipyard wages caused a boom. He was earning $14 for a 44-hour week in December 1941 and thought that he was doing well, he wrote, but the shipyard soon was offering 85 cents an hour for common laborers. Unemployed workers from around New England moved to Rhode Island to take advantage of the high-paying jobs. Knight worked the 3-to-11 shift, unloading and stacking lumber from freight cars and earning a princely $40 a week.

Not everyone was as industrious as the people cited here, though, and the yard dismissed some workers for excessive absenteeism or poor performance.

``On several occasions,'' Knight wrote of his later experience as a clerk, ``I had to crawl through the innerbottoms of the ship with a flashlight, looking for men who had not rung out at the end of the shift.

``I usually found them sound asleep, deep in the bowels of the ship. They had been sent there with a flashlight to sweep debris out of the far, dark corners with a dustpan and brush.''

By 1944, banners such as ``Heed the need for SPEED!'' and ``10 Or more in '44'' fueled the fervor as the yard raced to turn out ships faster and faster.

As one of the last yards built during the war, the local facility learned from others' mistakes and productivity and employment steadily increased. The yard employed 18,767 on Sept. 30, 1944. Three months later the payroll included 20,879.

The yard became efficient in scrounging hard-to-get material and at innovation. Workers layered grease over a special wax in preparation for launching their finished products. Using these greased skids, ships slid by gravity down steep ways and hit the water at nearly 15 knots.

Tugs then nosed the ships to the outfitting pier where Navy specialists would arm and equip them for their specialities.

With improved planning, problem solving and increasingly adept workers, production at the yard soared to nearly three times the original pace.

The push in 1944 was to turn out 10 Combat Loaded Cargo Ships, far more complicated projects than the original Liberty Ships.

On a Saturday, two days before Christmas in 1944, the 10th ship departed for its sea trial, according to Providence Shipyard 1943 1945 . Those 8-to-12-hour shakedown cruises tested whether equipment was operating properly.

Workers had been promised their first Sunday off in three months if number 10 passed her trial, the book said. That evening the ship returned with banners waving and a symbolic ``clean sweep'' broom topping the foremast, an indication that the trial had gone well. Thousands of workers cheered.

The next year they would more than double production of that ship.

So adept did the shipbuilders become that they averaged only 136 days from the keel laying to delivery of the Combat Loaded Cargo Ships. The fastest turnover was a mere 82 days.

With a work force nearly as large as the population of Westerly or Bristol today, the yard fielded baseball, football and basketball teams. The baseball team won the New England League championship in 1943.

Noontime entertainment buoyed workers' spirits. A shipyard orchestra that played at large functions surprised many with the depth of its ability.

War heroes sometimes addressed rallies and ``The Yardarm'' newsletter was distributed free and sent around the world to ex-workers in the service.

President Harry S Truman escorted by Gov. J. Howard McGrath toured the yard on one local visit.

The yard's products downed German and Japanese planes, scuttled enemy ships and delivered troops and supplies to hot spots around the world.

Navy Secretary James Forrestal on Sept. 1, 1945 wrote to T.J. Walsh, the head of the company, praising the work of the local yard and saying that it was preemintent in building the great arsenal that helped save the world.

With the end of the war, the shipyard's majesty faded.

The payroll dropped nearly 3,000 in three months during 1945.

Today, Johnson & Wales University's culinary arts campus covers some of the Fields Point area. Other parts are largely unused.

Two large rusting cranes dominate the skyline -- remnants of a failed cargo container port plan -- but reminders, at least in their towering girth, of a half century ago when other massive cranes roared and the shipyard's 20,000 plus employees labored mightily to protect freedom.