To the Editor:

Everyone, including writers with a strong political bent, is entitled to an opinion. But writers like Doug Rooks, who professes to have been a State House writer for 29 years and writes op-ed columns for The Times Record, are expected to understand what they are writing about and be factually accurate (OpEd: “Shipping Out at BIW,” Dec. 2, Page A6).

Distorting facts and misrepresenting maritime history can be risky especially in the Bath area, where hundreds still have a clear recollection of an unprepared country on Dec. 7, 1941 and thousands of Bath Iron Works employees remain who built merchant ships in the 1970s and 1980s.

Doug could have encountered container ships, tankers, roll-on/roll-off ships, a sugar barge or a power generating barge if he had boated up the Kennebec back then. Twenty large merchant ships on a small river, and BIW was working on combatant ships at the same time.

In fact, BIW still ranks among America’s last major merchant shipbuilding companies, because today’s huge merchant ships are built abroad. If BIW had relied on merchant shipbuilding, the business would never have survived the turn of the century.

After a long, proud and impressive history as a frigate-, destroyer- and cruiser-builder, BIW stands today as the most capable surface-combatant shipbuilder in the world — and one that continues to improve. In BIW, we are blessed to have the world’s best, staffed by Maine people.

The U.S. Navy was building toward 600 ships in the early 1990s to stay competitive with the Soviet Union. Today, that arms race has ended and our Navy has fewer than 300 combatants.

For me, that is a change for the better, as long as Americans never forget that the best way to deter aggression and war is to remain strong. Up to a point, smaller numbers are acceptable, as long as best quality and greatest capabilities remain our Navy’s goals. In the Zumwalt class, meeting those standards of excellence are the clear objectives.

Doug Rooks may believe it is a waste of money to build a few expensive Navy ships which are never called upon to fight. In my view, that outcome is the best of all worlds.

Those who build BIW ships and others who demonstrate outside the shipyards gates all pray for peace. Perhaps we only differ on how to best keep the peace — with justice and freedom for all.

Bill Haggett
former CEO
Bath Iron Works
West Bath