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AsbestosAsbestos Industry

Job SitesShipyards

Norfolk Naval Shipyard

The Norfolk Naval Shipyard has served American interests over the course of multiple generations. Since colonial times ship repair facilities have existed at the shipyard's site at Portsmouth, Virginia. In 1767 Andrew Sprowl, a Scottish merchant, opened a large ship repair yard at the site that was to become the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on the western shore of the Elizabeth river. Sprowl, loyal to Britain, named the location Gosport after the British town. When the American Revolution began in 1775, Sprowl retreated on a British flagship and left the marine yard's cranes and facilities in the hands of the Colony of Virginia. Though subsequently burned by the British, the newly formed Congress, concerned with piracy and eager to defend the coasts of the fledgling United States, authorized President Washington to fund Gosport as a warship-producing shipyard. Following the second war with Britain in 1812, the yard was poised to assume major shipbuilding and ship repair responsibility on behalf of the United States Navy.

The first dry dock in the western hemisphere was completed at the yard in 1833 and has remained in operation until the present day. With completion of the dry dock, Gosport became one of the leading federal shipyards. By the mid nineteenth century, it acquired many small shops for metalworking with iron, tin, copper, ship rudders, and timber; the yard also had many storehouses for oil, coal, and tar. In 1846 the yard's property was expanded to include part of the opposite shore of the Elizabeth River, called St. Helena. An inventory during 1960 showed the yard's more than fifty buildings, including timber sheds, ship houses, coal houses, an engine house, a saw mill, a blacksmith shop, a joiners' shop, a cooperage, a foundry, machine shop, and paint shops, as well as cranes and a railway.

During the Civil War the naval yard at Portsmouth, while in the hands of Confederate forces, repaired and converted the USS Merrimack into the CSS Virginia. This new iron clad ship fought the Union's USS Monitor at the famous battle of Hampton Roads. The duel between these partly submerged armored vessels revolutionized naval technology around the world.

The first flight deck build on a ship belonged to the yard's USS Birmingham, and the US Navy's first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley was converted from the USS Jupiter in 1922.

The yard reached a peak employment of 43,000 during World War II, during which over one hundred ships were built and thousands more were repaired. Three famous Essex-class carriers built during this time were the Lake Champlain, the Shangi-La, and the Tarawa. The end of the war caused steep drops in unemployment, bottoming out at 9000 workers.

The principal mission of the yard afterward was fleet modernization and repair. In 1964 Newport Naval Shipyard used 811 acres of land and contained over 400 buildings, 300 cranes, two shipways, and seven dry docks. The shipyard gained nuclear capability in 1964 in order to accommodate the modern submarine, the USS Skate.

Types of ships constructed at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard (1920s-1980s):

Names of Ships Constructed, Repaired, and Remodeled at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard: