CAMDEN'S GOLDEN ERA OF SHIPBUILDING
Exhibit Details Daily Life at New York Ship During WW II
By Hoag Levins ...| ...March 1, 2001
CAMDEN, N.J. -- A Camden County Historical Society exhibit celebrating the region's major role in the shipbuilding efforts of World War II will be extended until May.
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| Photo: Hoag Levins. |
John Seitter: 'Camden County is a different place because of New York Ship.'
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Currently open to the public at the Pomona Hall library and museum complex, "In Harms Way: New York Shipbuilding in WW II" offers a comprehensive look at life in Camden's New York Shipbuilding Corp. during the war.
The exhibit, which opened in December of 1999 was scheduled to close at the end of 2000 but will now remain open into the spring.
'Touched so many'
"There are thousands of people who have strong ties to New York Shipbuilding," said John Seitter, Acting Director of the Camden County Historical Society. "It was so large and touched the lives of so many that Camden County is a different place because of it. Entire towns were established just to house the huge number of people needed to man the place. The yard's military output helped change the course of the war at the same time it changed the economy of this whole region."
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Photo: CCHS. |
New York Ship Corp.'s covered ways were a Delaware River landmark.
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Curiously misnamed, the New York Ship Corporation -- which never had operations in New York -- sprawled along a two-mile curve of the Delaware River in Camden. During the 1940s, it was the world's largest private shipbuilding facility; a thriving city within a city that employed more than 35,000 people.
Originally established in 1899, New York Ship went out of business in 1967, leaving behind a legacy of maritime accomplishment that today surprises many who are unaware that Camden was once a world-class shipbuilding power.
Maritime engineering pioneer
The company was started by industrial magnate Henry G. Morse, backed by financial barons Andrew Mellon and Henry Frick. Morse pioneered the concept of a shipbuilding yard organized around the same production techniques -- on a gigantic scale -- used by earlier industrial visionaries to mass produce mechanical items like watches, rifles, and railroad locomotives.
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Photo: Hoag Levins. |
One section of the larger 'In Harms Way' gallery display with 'Rosie the Riveter' poster in foreground.
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The enormous metal ship sections were prefabricated from templates in closed shops and then transported to, and assembled in, twelve-story-high, covered ship ways. The covered ways allowed assembly to continue regardless of the weather. A chain of massive cranes served as a conveyor belt system across 180 acres of factory complex. The unique ship ways were a landmark in the history of maritime engineering as well the geography of Camden County.
By the late 1930s, as war exploded across Europe and tensions increased between the U.S. and Japan, New York Ship had become one of the pre-eminent centers for the construction of battleships, aircraft carriers, seaplane tenders, battle cruisers, patrol boats, destroyers and specialized military landing craft. During the global conflict, the ships of Camden played crucial roles in naval battles ranging from the invasions of northern Africa and Normandy to the liberation of Philippines and conquest Iwo Jima.
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Photo: Hoag Levins. |
The exhibit includes original shipyard signs.
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Dirty, demanding, dangerous
Driven by a sense of patriotic zeal as well as steady salaries, tens of thousands of Camden County residents toiled round-the-clock in the yard constructing those craft. The work was frenzied, dirty, demanding and dangerous. And it was performed by a tight-knit community that kept its eyes and ears ever cocked to events around the world; that kept a constant watch for which vessels had been sunk or crippled, what battles had been won or lost, and which relatives or friends had died or been wounded on distant battlefields that week.
For most yard employees, the war years constituted the most harrowing, exciting and memorable period of their lives -- an event that gave each life a larger meaning.
"In Harm's Way" was designed to recreate the essence of that experience with a mix of museum artifact displays, videos, oral histories, documents and a collection of rare photos that provides a comprehensive and compelling view of the gritty, clanging reality that was the shipyard in full-capacity war-time operation.
Air raid badges
Displays include daily personal logs kept by workers,
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| Photo: Hoag Levins. |
New York Ship workers were prepared for Japanese or German bombing attacks on Camden.
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local newspaper accounts of yard events, propaganda posters, signs from the yard, and items like employee badges, including the "Air Raid" badges that authorized workers to enter shelters in the event of a German or Japanese bombing attack on Camden.
"There is very little published on the history of New York Shipbuilding, even though it was such an extraordinary place that played such an important role in the history of the last century," explained Seitter.
Seitter and his wife Joanne first began compiling the exhibit material as a school project when they were graduate students in the public history program at Rutgers University.
A dying generation
They feel a need to continue their research before the rest of the subjects pass away.
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| Poster: CCHS. |
1940s posters portrayed shipyard workers as a key to victory.
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"The war-time generation is going fast now and they're taking their invaluable memories with them. We've recorded 50 interviews so far, and we'd like to do a lot more," said Seitter.
Because of those interviews, the black and white photos are the most important part of the exhibit for Seitter. "When you interview people in their 70s and 80s and 90s and then see those same people in photos at the ship yard in their teens and 20s, it brings the whole thing to life in a really touching way," he said.
"In Harms Way" is open to the public at the Camden County Historical Society's headquarters located behind Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center at Park Boulevard and Euclid Avenue in Camden.
Once the exhibit closes in May, Seitter does not expect it will ever be displayed in full again. Some of the material will remain at the Historical Society while other parts are likely to be dispersed to other facilities, like the USS New Jersey Museum currently planned for the Camden waterfront, he said.
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