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US Shipyards and Navy Ship Asbestos Exposure


This page lists 31 United States shipyards and the Navy ships built at each one, drawn
from a roster of fourteen Navy ship classes. It covers 678 named ships in total,
8 naval shipyards and 23 private yards. It exists because a veteran or a family member
researching asbestos exposure usually knows the ship, or knows the yard, but rarely finds the two
connected in one place.

Liberty ship sliding down the ways at Kaiser Shipyards as shipyard workers look on, World War II
A Liberty ship launch at Kaiser Shipyards. Public-domain photo.

How to use this index

If you know which ship someone served on, find the ship’s class in the table below and the yard
that built it. If you know where someone worked, find the yard and see which ships passed through
it. Yards with a detailed page have a link on their name, covering that yard’s operating history,
the work performed there, and its documented asbestos and environmental record with sources.

Two things are worth knowing before you read the table. First, the ship counts come from a
roster of fourteen ship classes, so they are not a complete count of everything a yard produced.
Second, several of the yards with the heaviest asbestos exposure history built very few ships,
because their work was repair and overhaul rather than construction.

US shipyards and the ships in our roster

Shipyard Location Type Ships in our roster Classes Commissioned span Ship classes represented
Electric Boat Company Groton, CT Private 81 2 1941 to 1946 Gato-class, Balao-class
Bath Iron Works Bath, ME Private 79 4 1942 to 1961 Fletcher-class, Gearing-class, Allen M. Sumner-class, Charles F. Adams-class
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Kittery, ME Naval 58 2 1941 to 1944 Balao-class, Gato-class
Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company Kearny and Newark, NJ Private 57 3 1942 to 1949 Fletcher-class, Allen M. Sumner-class, Gearing-class
Consolidated Steel Corporation Orange, TX Private 39 2 1942 to 1949 Gearing-class, Fletcher-class
Bethlehem Steel, Staten Island Staten Island, NY Private 36 3 1942 to 1946 Fletcher-class, Gearing-class, Allen M. Sumner-class
Avondale Shipyard Westwego, LA Private 29 2 1962 to 1974 Knox-class, Charles F. Adams-class
Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company Manitowoc, WI Private 28 2 1942 to 1945 Balao-class, Gato-class
Bethlehem Shipbuilding, San Francisco San Francisco, CA Private 27 3 1943 to 1947 Fletcher-class, Allen M. Sumner-class, Gearing-class
Todd Pacific Shipyards, Seattle Seattle, WA Private 25 4 1944 to 1971 Gearing-class, Knox-class, Allen M. Sumner-class, Charles F. Adams-class
Bethlehem Steel, Fore River Shipyard Quincy, MA Private 23 4 1943 to 1946 Baltimore-class, Cleveland-class, Essex-class, Gearing-class
Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation Seattle, WA Private 21 1 1943 to 1944 Fletcher-class
Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company Newport News, VA Private 21 4 1942 to 1957 Essex-class, Cleveland-class, Forrestal-class, Midway-class
Bethlehem Steel, San Pedro / Terminal Island San Pedro, CA Private 19 3 1943 to 1945 Fletcher-class, Allen M. Sumner-class, Gearing-class
Mare Island Naval Shipyard Vallejo, CA Naval 18 2 1941 to 1948 Balao-class, Gato-class
New York Shipbuilding Corporation Camden, NJ Private 18 3 1942 to 1963 Cleveland-class, Charles F. Adams-class, Baltimore-class
Boston Navy Yard Charlestown, MA Naval 16 2 1942 to 1945 Fletcher-class, Balao-class
William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company Philadelphia, PA Private 15 2 1943 to 1958 Balao-class, Cleveland-class
Charleston Naval Shipyard North Charleston, SC Naval 10 1 1942 to 1943 Fletcher-class
Brooklyn Navy Yard (New York Naval Shipyard) Brooklyn, NY Naval 9 4 1943 to 1959 Essex-class, Forrestal-class, Iowa-class, Midway-class
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard Bremerton, WA Naval 8 1 1943 to 1945 Fletcher-class
Todd Shipyards, San Pedro San Pedro, CA Private 7 1 1969 to 1971 Knox-class
Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation Chickasaw, AL Private 7 1 1943 to 1944 Fletcher-class
Philadelphia Naval Shipyard Philadelphia, PA Naval 7 3 1943 to 1946 Essex-class, Baltimore-class, Iowa-class
Lockheed Shipbuilding and Construction Company Seattle, WA Private 5 1 1970 to 1972 Knox-class
Defoe Shipbuilding Company Bay City, MI Private 4 1 1960 to 1962 Charles F. Adams-class
Puget Sound Bridge and Dredging Company Seattle, WA Private 3 1 1963 to 1964 Charles F. Adams-class
Norfolk Naval Shipyard Portsmouth, VA Naval 3 1 1944 to 1945 Essex-class
Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard Baltimore, MD Private 2 1 1941 to 1942 Liberty Ships
Permanente Metals Corporation (Kaiser Richmond Yards) Richmond, CA Private 2 1 1942 to 1942 Liberty Ships
New England Shipbuilding Corporation South Portland, ME Private 1 1 1943 to 1943 Liberty Ships

Shipyards with a detailed page

Repair and overhaul yards

These yards built few or none of the fourteen ship classes tracked above, so they do not appear
in the index, but they ran decades of repair, overhaul, and conversion work. That work generally
produced heavier asbestos exposure than new construction did, because it meant tearing out
insulation that was already in service. Each has a detailed page.

About this data

The ship roster covers fourteen Navy ship classes: Fletcher, Gearing and Allen M. Sumner class
destroyers, Gato and Balao class submarines, Knox class frigates, Cleveland and Baltimore class
cruisers, Essex, Forrestal and Midway class aircraft carriers, Charles F. Adams class destroyers,
Iowa class battleships, and a sample of Liberty ships. It was compiled from published class
rosters, which are themselves compiled from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships and
NavSource citations. Four classes were spot-checked directly against the Dictionary of American
Naval Fighting Ships and matched on hull number, builder, and commissioning date.

Builder names were recorded as they appear in those rosters and then normalized here. That
matters for one group in particular. Bethlehem Steel operated several separate yards, and an
exposure history depends on which one a person worked at, so Fore River in Quincy, Staten Island,
San Francisco, San Pedro, and Fairfield in Baltimore are listed separately rather than merged.

What this data does not cover. It does not include auxiliaries, amphibious
ships, most of the 2,710 Liberty ships built during the Second World War, or any ship outside
these fourteen classes. It does not include yards that only repaired or overhauled ships without
building any, even though several of those yards have a heavier documented asbestos record than
the construction yards do. A yard showing a small number here may have been an enormous employer.
Kaiser’s Richmond yards appear with two ships in this roster and built hundreds of Liberty ships
that the roster does not track.

If you find an error in this table, or you have a primary source that corrects or extends it,
we would like to hear about it so the record can be fixed.

Why the yard matters as much as the ship

Asbestos exposure in shipbuilding was not evenly distributed across the work. Installing
insulation in a new hull happened once, on a fixed schedule, in a space that was still open.
Repair and overhaul work meant opening up machinery spaces, boiler rooms, and piping runs that
were already in service, and tearing out old, degraded insulation before new material went in.
That is dustier work, it happened in confined spaces, and it exposed trades who were not doing
insulation work at all but were simply present while it went on.

This is why the naval repair yards matter so much in exposure histories even when their
construction numbers are small, and why the yard and the years someone worked there can matter
more than the name of any single ship.

Next steps

If you are working out what a person was exposed to and where, these pages may help: