Detail Detective Flash Game
Shipbuilding requires tremendous attention to detail delivered at a breakneck pace. See how well you work under pressure in our Detail Detective Game.
Chris Allen (The Art of Shipbuilding)
Shipbuilding in the 1930s
The Mold Loft, 1930-35
On the floor in a building the size of a football field, the ship's blueprints are used to create wooden templates. These wooden templates are then used as patterns for each of the steel plates used in the ship’s construction. Each steel plate is marked and numbered to correspond to its numbered position in the construction plan. Once each plate is completed, holes are drilled for the rivets. The accuracy and precise shape of each plate demands both skill and attention. Any error in the plate’s measurement could prove costly and difficult to correct during construction.
The Mold Loft (8mb)
Making Molds and laying off the steel plates from the Art of Shipbuilding in the 1930’s. Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company Newport News, Virginia
Shopfitters use wooden templates to create the steel plates that form the hull and bulkheads of the ship. On the left side of the painting, men with hammers are striking a punch to outline with prick marks the shape to which the metal will be cut. Once all the plates are cut, each is labeled with information to identify its exact position on the finished vessel.
Laying Off Shop, 1930
The Machine Shop, 1942
“The machinery department is a magnificently equipped machine shop, 100 x 500 feet, perhaps the largest, costliest and best appointed in America. There are vertical boring machines, immense lathes, drill presses, slotters, shapers, and tools. Here castings and forgings, such as bed plates, shafts, cylinders, condensers, pistons, rods, and other parts are machine fitted and engines erected. All materials are handled by electric traveling cranes that travel the entire length of the building. Some of them had the capacity of 50 tons.”
-New York Sun, March 17, 1912
Many types of castings are made from iron, steel and brass in the foundry. In this painting, vapor rises from heavy cast iron structures that support the mold. Steel is heated to a temperature of 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit and poured from the ladle into a mold, timing is critical. In the background a furnace from which the molten metal has just been drawn can be seen. After 24 hours the casting is “shook out.”
The Foundry, 1930-35
The Angle Shop, 1930-35
“Adjacent to the ship shed is the bending shed…where bars of iron, sometimes seventy feet in length, are heated and then bent into various shapes used in the ship construction. The material that is worked into the ship is stored near these ships and is handled by traverse cranes. Every piece of iron is closely inspected and tested before it is worked up for the vessel.”
-New York Sun, March 17, 1912
The Angle Shop (9mb)
Bending a beam and shaping the propeller shaft from The Art of Shipbuilding Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company Newport News, Virginia
In the Forge Hammer Shop, a mechanized heavy forge is used to shape a hot ingot similar to those seen in the foreground. Each ingot weighs approximately 16,000 pounds. The massive forge is capable of exerting a force of 1,200 tons.
Forge Hammer Shop, 1942
