"We did it before and we can do it again!"
(American popular song during World War II)

The Liberty Ship
"Built by the mile and chopped off by the yard..." -- and delivered at the rate of one a day. When American ingenuity and can-do faced a global challenge, the nation turned shipbuilder and produced more than 2,700 Liberty ships from 1941 to 1945 to move men and mat‚riel to the front. Here a small armada of Henry J. Kaiser's "Liberty Fleet" awaits delivery.

"We did it before --"

The Liberty ships -- a vast fleet for the war effort was built in a national "Virtual Shipyard" that harnessed skills, resources, and facilities right across America. From 1941 to 1945, the United States increased its shipbuilding capacity by more than 1,200% and produced over 2,700 Liberty Ships, 800 Victory Vessels, 320 T-2 Tankers, and various other commercial and naval auxiliary vessels for a total of 5,200 ships for the period.

This accomplishment required a revolution in shipbuilding - more precisely ship production. Under the ingenious leadership of Henry J. Kaiser, yards were laid out along revolutionary principles as assembly plants for the 30,000-plus components, produced in thousands of factories in more than thirty-two States, that went into the making of a Liberty Ship. Modular construction techniques were created which forever changed the face of shipbuilding, portable units for continuous welding were developed, conventional tools and ways were abandoned. Shipbuilding technology was advanced by at least 20 years during this period and man-hour requirements were reduced by about one-third of those previously required in construction of similar ships.

Perhaps most remarkable was the diversity of the Americans who built Kaiser's "Liberty Fleet" - "probably only one in 200 had seen a shipyard before and 25% had not ever seen the sea. Many of his executives had not previously faced ship construction problems, and so they approached their new tasks - as indeed the whole organization did - with open minds and no preconceived theories about conventional shipbuilding, but with the determination to get things done quickly, efficiently, and with the minimum wastage of time, materials, and labor. ...a group which considered no task to be too difficult."
[The Liberty Ships, 2d Ed., L.A. Sawyer and W.H. Mitchell, Lloyd's of London Press, 1985]

" --and we can do it again!"

Once again Americans are called upon to bring open minds to the task; to re-evaluate conven- tional approaches; to harness American talent, teamwork, and technology to reclaim the nation's historic share of ocean trade; and to translate it into economic growth, job creation, positive trade balances, tax revenues, and strategic security.

And they are doing it!

Americans from diverse industries and regions are mobilizing, working together to accept that challenge, to create the first of a fleet of new American passenger ships, and to reap the rewards for themselves and for the nation - from aluminum rolling mills in Iowa to laboratories in Minnesota and Delaware, from fiber plants in the Carolinas to a fiber optic plant in Georgia, from engine foundries in New England and the Midwest to sprawling shipyards along our coasts sorely in need of commercial work, to our largest hotel construction contractors, to suppliers of every kind of product in every state, to our educational academies, to the network of seaports that will be homeports and destinations for the ships that are built.

Their varied talents, resources, and facilities are coming together to create what will be the largest ship production network in the world -- a virtual shipyard -- to create a series of the largest ships in the world, and once again plant the Stars and Stripes firmly on the oceans of the world.