Marinship

The Maritime Commission telegraphed the W. A. Bechtel Company on 2 March 1942. The Sausalito site — a Northwestern Pacific Railroad repair yard on Richardson Bay — was chosen the next day, Washington approved the proposal within ten minutes of receiving it on 9 March, and construction began on 28 March after forty-two families were moved off Pine Point. The first Liberty ship, William A. Richardson, launched about six months later.

The yard built ninety-three vessels in roughly three and a half years and set a record that still stands: the tanker Huntington Hills, built and delivered in thirty-three days in 1945. The workforce peaked around twenty thousand across three shifts, and was integrated by both race and gender at a time when little else in American industry was.

What matters here is what happened afterwards. Black employment collapsed at closure and, because of redlining, many former workers settled in the federally built Marin City rather than Sausalito itself. The emptied waterfront filled instead with surplus barges and hulls converted into houseboats — the beginning of the community Don Arques presided over. Spaulding Marine Center, the Arques School and Hank Easom's yard all sit on ground that was Marinship.