N.C.'s Liberty Armada-- Part 2: Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co.

From Colonial times through the Civil War and during World War I, the Great War, the Cape Fear River had been the site of shipyards and construction.  Bit no new ship had been built there since 1918.

Now, the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company set up shop on the east bank of the Cape Fear River.  It is a subsidiary of the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company.  Wilmington had won a battle with Morehead City, N.C., to get the company.

The Newport News Shipbuilding Company is renowned for its craftsmanship and the teamwork of its shipwrights, but it is notoriously anti-union and right away ran into trouble from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).  The company's president, Homer Lenoir Ferguson, was the son of a Confederate veteran and has a fierce work ethic and an abiding respect for those who work with their hands -- including Blacks.  He routinely hired black workers for skilled positions such as machinist, riveters, engineers and welders.

He becomes the head of the company when his predecessor, A.L. Hopkins, died when the Lusitania was torpedoed in the Great War.  Ferguson is 68 years old, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate who studied naval architecture in Glasgow, Scotland -- the nation that produced revolutionary fast blockade runners used by the Confederacy during the Civil War.  Many of them came to Wilmington.

--GreGen

North Carolina's Naval Section Bases-- Part 3

The incomplete Morehead City base was commissioned on March 17, 1942, right as the Battle of the Atlantic off U.S. shores went into hyperdrive.  It  quickly became the most important reception and processing centers on the North Carolina coast for the survivors of sunken and damaged merchant vessels.

Over the course of the war, both U.S. Navy and Coast Guard personnel used the base, whose primary duty was to serve the vessels patrolling the coast on the lookout for German U-boats.  They operated with the larger vessels from the State Port of Morehead City and the Fort Macon (Civil War fort) Coast Guard Station on Bogue Banks.

They aided  in minesweeping and in maintaining a submarine net across the entrance to the ship channel in Beaufort Inlet.

The need for the base diminished after 1942 when the U-boat attacks diminished.  It was designated a Naval Frontier Base on March 15, 1944 and closed down on June 30, 1944.  After the war, the base was declared surplus property.

In the fall of 1946, North Carolina bought it and built a marine fisheries research institute..  By the early 2000s, it was occupied by the North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences.

Next Time there.  --GreGen

North Carolina's Naval Section Bases-- Part 2

The 58-acre Morehead Naval Section Base was purchased by the Navy in 1941 for $15,000 on Bogue Sound, just west of Morehead City.  Construction began November 14 and consisted of a two-story, multi-winged building housing the administrative offices, mess hall and barracks.  Other buildings held additional barracks, machine and repair shops, a medical facility and heating plat.

In a remote area north of this, eight concrete magazines  for ammunition, depth charges and explosives were constructed.  A pier with two extensions could dock eight patrol vessels and subchasers.  Total price for the base was more than a million dollars and it was located about five miles from the entrance to Beaufort Inlet and the Atlantic Ocean.

Stuff You Usually Don't Read About In the War.  --GreGen