The Liberty Ships of Wilmington
Near Wilmington, North Carolina
One mile west of here, the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company transformed the Cape Fear riverfront into one of the most productive wartime yards in the country. The Maritime Commission purchased the land in nineteen forty and broke ground in February of nineteen forty-one. The first ship launched was the Liberty vessel S.
S. Zebulon B. Vance, which slid into the water on December sixth, nineteen forty-one, the day before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
The timing was almost prophetic. At the height of production in nineteen forty-three, the yard employed about twenty-one thousand workers and could complete a ship from keel-laying to launch in twenty-five days. By the time the war ended in nineteen forty-six, the company had delivered two hundred forty-three vessels, including one hundred twenty-six Liberty ships, to the Allied war effort.
The Vance itself survived a mine strike, served as a hospital ship, then returned to carry war brides home to America. The yard is gone, but the ships it built crossed every ocean.
