Shipbuilding hiStory
Oceans, FOrts and Parks For most oF us in the u.s., the topic of merchant shipbuilding in World War II immediately brings to mind the phenomenal effort involved in the construction of 2,700 Liberty ships, 400+ Victory ships, 500+ T-2 tankers and a bunch of other ships of different types and sizes. So, who remembers the Oceans, Forts and Parks? The British Technical Merchant Shipbuilding Mission which came to the U.S. in September 1940 brought with it the detail design of a 10,000-dwt tramp steamer called the Dorington Court, which had been designed and built by John L. Thompson & Sons, Ltd., in their yard in the North Sands district of Sunderland. This was the design which, after a lot of modifications, became the basis of both the British Empire Liberty class and the U.S. Liberty class. What is not so widely known, however, is that the mission contracted for 86 of them before it went home, 60 with two U.S. yards and 26 with three Canadian yards. The first group of ships was called the Ocean class and was evenly split between two brand new shipyards, Todd Bath Iron Shipbuilding, in South Portland, ME, and Todd California Shipbuilding, in Richmond,
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CA. The first of these was a joint venture of Todd Shipyards, Bath Iron Works and Kaiser Corp., which later became New England Shipbuilding, after Todd and Bath bought out Kaiser. The second was a joint venture of Todd and Kaiser, and later named the Permanente No. 1 Shipyard, after Kaiser bought out Todd. The shipbuilding contracts were signed in December 1940, the first ship was delivered in October 1941, and all 60 ships were delivered by November 1942. The contracts effectively gave these two yards a flying start for their subsequent careers as builders of Liberty ships. The second group of ships was called the Fort class and was divided among three long-established Canadian shipbuilders: 14 at Burrard Dry Dock, in Vancouver, BC, six at Canadian Vickers, in Montreal, QC, and six at Davie Shipbuilding, in Lauzon, QC. The first of this batch was delivered by Canadian Vickers in December 1941, with all 26 delivered by the end of 1942. Three months after executing the initial contracts, the Fort-class program was increased to 89 ships. The contracts for these ships were spread across nine shipyards and all the ships involved were delivered by March 1943, by which time the program had been enlarged again. Ultimately, Canadian yards built 348 of these ships, 200 of the basic design and 148 variants. Of these, 199 were to be transferred to the U.K. and were acquired by a Crown Corporation called Wartime Merchant Shipping, Ltd., later replaced by Wartime Shipbuilding Ltd. The other 149 were acquired by a separate
company, the Park Steamship Company, which was set up by the Canadian Government to buy ships for use in Canadian trade: these were generally of the same design as the Fort class, but were designated as the Park class. At the outset, the basic design of the Forts and Parks was the same as that of the Empire Liberty class being built in the U.K., but with none of the modifications that were made to the Oceans, the most significant of which involved welded hulls and oil-burning propulsion. The Forts and Parks had a very simple hull form with minimal complex curvature and a structural arrangement that was designed for riveting; it had a deadweight of 10,300 tons, was 425 feet by 57 feet by 35 feet, with a loaded draft of 11 feet, and was propelled by a coal-burning steam plant of 2,500 shp, providing a service speed of about 10.5 knots. The leading shipbuilder on the program, Burrard Dry Dock, produced 108 of the 348 ships. North Vancouver Shipyards built 53, West Coast Shipbuilding 46, United Shipyards 45, Marine Industries 30, Victoria Machinery Depot 26, Davie Shipbuilding 19, Prince Rupert Dry Dock 13, Canadian Vickers 6 and Yarrows 2. As in other emergency programs, their improvement curve was striking: while the first ship from each yard took an average of 307 days, a year later the average was 163 days. Canada’s emergency shipbuilding program may have been a lot smaller than that undertaken in the U.S., but it was still a significant achievement.
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