Liberty ships were a class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II. Though British in concept, the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost construction. Mass-produced on an unprecedented scale, the Liberty ship came to symbolize U.S. wartime industrial output.
Union Iron Works, located in San Francisco, California, on the southeast waterfront, was a central business within the large industrial zone of Potrero Point, for four decades at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.
USS Farragut (DD-300) was a Clemson-class destroyer built for the United States Navy during World War I.
Concrete ships are built of steel and ferrocement instead of more traditional materials, such as steel or wood. The advantage of ferrocement construction is that materials are cheap and readily available, while the disadvantages are that construction labor costs are high, as are operating costs. During the late 19th century, there were concrete river barges in Europe, and during both World War I and World War II, steel shortages led the US military to order the construction of small fleets of ocean-going concrete ships, the largest of which was the SS Selma. United States Maritime Administration (MARAD) designation for concrete ships-barges was Type B ship. Few concrete ships were completed in time to see wartime service during World War I, but during 1944 and 1945, concrete ships and barges were used to support U.S. and British invasions in Europe and the Pacific. Since the late 1930s, there have also been ferrocement pleasure boats.
USS Fuller (DD-297) was a Clemson-class destroyer built for the United States Navy during World War I.
USS John Francis Burns (DD-299) was a Clemson-class destroyer built for the United States Navy during World War I.
Potrero Point in San Francisco, California, is the location of the earliest and most important industrial facilities in the Western United States on the eastern extension of San Francisco's Potrero Hill, a natural land mass extending into San Francisco Bay south of Mission Bay. Potrero Point, the point of Potrero Hill, was systematically blasted and cut, its serpentine cliffs removed. The work yielded two square miles of rock for fill and hundreds of acres of flat industrial land east of Illinois Street between 20th Street and Islais Creek.
The West Coast lumber trade was a maritime trade route on the West Coast of the United States. It carried lumber from the coasts of Northern California, Oregon, and Washington mainly to the port of San Francisco. The trade included direct foreign shipment from ports of the Pacific Northwest and might include another product characteristic of the region, salmon, as in the schooner Henry Wilson sailing from Washington state for Australia with "around 500,000 feet of lumber and canned salmon" in 1918.
The Port of Redwood City is a marine freight terminal on the western side of the southern San Francisco Bay, on the West Coast of the United States. This marine terminal is situated within the city of Redwood City, California. The port was developed from a natural deepwater channel discovered in the year 1850, at the mouth of Redwood Creek. From the early use as a log float port, commercial use expanded to a variety of industrial commodities; moreover, it is considered the birthplace of shipbuilding on the North American west coast. As of 2004 the annual freight shipments have reached about two million metric tons. The Port of Redwood City provides berths for dry bulk, liquid bulk, and project cargoes, along with certain recreational opportunities and public access to San Francisco Bay.
Redwood Creek is a 9.5-mile-long (15.3 km) perennial stream located in San Mateo County, California, United States which discharges into South San Francisco Bay. The Port of Redwood City, the largest deepwater port in South San Francisco Bay, is situated on the east bank of Redwood Creek near its mouth, where the creek becomes a natural deepwater channel.
William Leslie Comyn was a Californian businessman, shipbuilder and builder of one of the first large concrete ships.
Wapama, also known as Tongass, was a vessel last located in Richmond, California. She was the last surviving example of some 225 wooden steam schooners that served the lumber trade and other coastal services along the Pacific Coast of the United States. She was managed by the National Park Service at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park until dismantled in August 2013.
USS West Coast (ID-3315) was a cargo ship for the United States Navy during World War I. The ship was laid down as SS War Dagger but launched in July 1918 as SS West Coast and reverted to that name at the end of her Navy service.
The SS Monte Carlo was a concrete ship launched in 1921 as the oil tanker SS Old North State. She was later renamed McKittrick. In 1932 she became a gambling and prostitution ship operating in international waters off the coast of Long Beach, California and was relocated to Coronado, California in 1936. The Monte Carlo was grounded on Coronado Island on New Year's Day 1937 during a storm and her wreck remains on the beach.
Ozette was a steam cargo ship built in 1918–1919 by Seattle North Pacific Shipbuilding Company of Seattle for the United States Shipping Board as part of the wartime shipbuilding program of the Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC) to restore the nation's Merchant Marine. The vessel was largely employed on the East Coast to Europe routes during her career before she was laid up in and eventually broken up for scrap in 1936.
SS Empire Chamois was a 5,864 GRT cargo ship which was built in 1918 by Ames Shipbuilding and Drydock Co, Seattle. She was ordered by the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique but was requisitioned by the United States Navy and commissioned as USS West Mount with the pennant number ID-3202 in 1918. She was decommissioned in May 1919 and passed to the United States Shipping Board (USSB) as SS Westmount. In 1927 she was sold to the Dimon Steamship Corporation and renamed SS Pacific Redwood. She returned to the USSB in 1932 and passed to the United States Maritime Commission (USMC) in 1937. In 1940, she was passed to the Ministry of Shipping, passing to the Ministry of War Transport in 1941 and being renamed SS Empire Chamois. She was sold to Astral Shipping Co Ltd in 1946 and renamed SS Granview. In 1949 she was sold to the Compagnia Maritime del Este, Panama and renamed SS Chamois, serving until 1958 when she was scrapped. She was the last Ames-built ship afloat.
SS California was one of the first steamships to steam in the Pacific Ocean and the first steamship to travel from Central America to North America. She was built for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company which was founded April 18, 1848 as a joint stock company in the State of New York by a group of New York City merchants: William H. Aspinwall, Edwin Bartlett, Henry Chauncey, Mr. Alsop, G.G. Howland and S.S. Howland. She was the first of three steamboats specified in a government mail contract to provide mail, passenger, and freight service from Panama to and from San Francisco and Oregon.
SS Mariposa was a steam cargo liner which served in the Pacific Ocean from 1883 to 1917.
Eagle Oil and Shipping Company was a United Kingdom merchant shipping company that operated oil tankers between the Gulf of Mexico and the UK. Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray founded it as the Eagle Oil Transport Company in 1912 and sold it to Royal Dutch Shell in 1919. It was renamed Eagle Oil and Shipping Company in about 1930, and remained a separate company within the Royal Dutch Shell group until it was absorbed in 1959.
Steamboats operated in California on San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, and Sacramento River as early as November 1847, when the Sitka built by William A. Leidesdorff briefly ran on San Francisco Bay and up the Sacramento River to New Helvetia. After the first discovery of gold in California the first shipping on the bays and up the rivers were by ocean going craft that were able to sail close to the wind and of a shallow enough draft to be able to sail up the river channels and sloughs, although they were often abandoned by their crews upon reaching their destination. Regular service up the rivers, was provided primarily by schooners and launches to Sacramento and Stockton, that would take a week or more to make the trip.
