A view overlooking the Todd-Bath Iron Shipbuilding yard in South Portland in 1942. Note the Ocean ships under construction in the basins and Spring Point Ledge Light in the distance. Contributed / Photo from Library of Congress

On Saturday, March 15, South Portland Historical Society will hold a lecture about South Portland’s World War II shipyards at the Community Center at 2 p.m. From 1941 to 1945, South Portland produced 244 Liberty ships and 30 Ocean ships at two shipyards on its eastern waterfront. The shipyards covered a massive area that today is home to Port Harbor Marine, the Breakwater condominiums and townhouses, the Sunoco fuel terminal, the Packard property along Madison Street, and Bug Light Park.

When the war was first taking place in Europe in 1939 and 1940, Great Britain was fighting a losing battle on the water as Germany’s U-boats were sinking British ships faster than they could build them (at shipyards that were under attack by air). Although the United States was not in the war yet, in December of 1940, a contract was signed to build 60 cargo ships for Great Britain. The contract for these “Ocean-class” ships was divided and awarded to two shipyards, one of them being the new Todd-Bath Iron Shipbuilding yard in South Portland.

William “Pete” Newell was the president of Bath Iron Works in Bath. Newell had been looking at the South Portland waterfront as the ideal space to build a shipyard of a new kind – one with watertight basins where ships could be constructed in a dry space, on a flat surface. Up to this point, dry docks had primarily only been used for ship repair; ship construction was traditionally done on a slanted ship way. Bath Iron Works teamed up with the Todd Corp. from New York to create this new shipyard.

As soon as the contract was awarded in December 1940, construction of the new Todd-Bath Iron shipyard began at the end of Broadway. The remains of the former Cumberland Shipyard were cleared away, a cofferdam was constructed to hold the tide back, and a giant concrete basin was constructed. The basin could accommodate the construction of seven ships at a time. The shipyard also built an outfitting pier where ships could be moved to complete the installation of their engines and equipment.

A few months after Todd-Bath first started creating its shipyard, the U.S. Maritime Commission undertook the creation of a second yard next door, to build Liberty-class cargo ships for the United States. This yard, which consisted of six traditional sloped ship ways, was run by the South Portland Shipbuilding Corp. In addition to building the basins and ship ways, the two yards also constructed a large number of buildings to support the production. Roughly 30,000 men and women were employed at the shipyards, in three shifts, running 24 hours a day. To put that in perspective, the entire population of South Portland in 1940 was only about 15,000.

After the Todd-Bath yard launched its 30th and final Ocean ship in late 1942, the South Portland Shipbuilding Corp. took over the basins and began constructing Liberty ships there, too. In the spring of 1943, the two yards were merged under a new name, New England Shipbuilding Corp.

Liberty ships were critical to transporting desperately needed resources and supplies to our European allies during the war. Since Portland was the closest geographic port in the U.S. to Europe, convoys would gather in Casco Bay before sailing across the North Atlantic to deliver supplies to Great Britain and the Soviet Union.

The convoys consisted of Liberty ships, oil tankers, and troop transports along with escort destroyers that protected the convoys from the German submarines. This theater of war was known as “The Battle of the Atlantic.” Allied convoys fought against German submarines that worked in tandem to identify and attack Allied shipping. The escort destroyers would patrol the outside of the convoys using their sonar to try to detect enemy submarines. The mid-Atlantic was the most dangerous region for convoys to pass through since land-based air support couldn’t protect the convoys from either the U.S. or the British Isles.

South Portland Historical Society’s Kathy DiPhilippo and Seth Goldstein will have much more to share about the shipyards at an illustrated lecture on Saturday, March 15, at 2 p.m. The event will be held in the Casco Bay Room of the South Portland Community Center. The lecture is free for current South Portland Historical Society members, or $20 for non-members. Annual family memberships are $25. Please arrive early if you wish to join at the door. Our speaker series is brought to you with the financial support of Bristol Seafoods. The society can be reached by phone at 207-767-7299 or by email at sphistory04106@gmail.com.

Kathryn Onos DiPhilippo is executive director of the South Portland Historical Society.