N.C.'s Liberty Armada-- Part 13: North Carolina Shipbuilding Company Closes Down

The ships launched by the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company's ships are considered among the best and most efficiently built vessels of the war.  But on April 16, 1946, the last ship, the SS Santa Isabel, sled down the ways.  The company shutters its operation and releases most of its 25,000 workers.

The site sat vacated.  But, after nearly five years of negotiations, on November 15, 1949, the state port authority was created with a fifty-year lease on the northeast section of the yard.

Part of the site will be developed into the Port of Wilmington, a modern deep-water port -- planned but never realized after World War I.

The Liberty Ships at last retired from the high seas.  But two of them are still operational.

--GreGen