Philadelphia Naval Shipyard

Images of America: Pennsylvania

by Joseph-James Ahern

The first government-owned navy yard in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the nation and the largest city in the young republic, was started with two docks in 1798. The area was enlarged and shipbuilding at this site increased, notably during the War of 1812 and the Civil War. The yard's area was not dramatically increased, however, until the federal government purchased the 800-acre League Island and closed the former facility in 1868. The golden age of the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard came during World War II, when it built fifty-three ships and converted or overhauled some twelve hundred more. Workers at the yard numbered seventy thousand at its peak. After the 1970s, however, shipbuilding was discontinued. The yard continued to serve its country through the modernization of existing craft, but it was closed by the government in 1990 and officially decommissioned in 1996.

128 pages, Paperback

First published July 6, 1997

Reviews

[Paul Lunger · Rating 5 out of 5]

From 1997 out of the "Images of America: Pennsylvania" series comes the entry from Joseph-James Ahern on the now decommissioned "Philadelphia Naval Shipyard". Closed in 1990 & formally shut down in 1996, Ahern goes through the history of this port and the importance this facility was to the Navy and the world from the Revolution to the present. For a book in this series for this timeframe, I appreciate the detail that goes into the various segments of this book describing the shipyard itself and the various things it did in its existence as well as understanding the various vessels that would come out of this piece of history.