The Kaiser Company (Portland, Oregon), commonly known as the Swan Island Shipyard, was a shipyard on
Swan Island in
Portland, Oregon
Portland ( ) is the List of cities in Oregon, most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the Pacific Northwest region. Situated close to northwest Oregon at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, ...
, United States. It was constructed by the
Kaiser Shipbuilding Company in 1942 as part of the
U.S. Maritime Commission's
Emergency Shipbuilding Program
The Emergency Shipbuilding Program (late 1940 – September 1945) was a United States government effort to quickly build simple cargo ships to carry troops and materiel to allies and foreign theatres during World War II. Run by the U.S. Maritim ...
in World War II.
The Swan Island yard was one of three Kaiser shipyards in the Portland area, along with the
Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation
Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation was a World War II emergency shipyard located along the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, United States. The shipyard built nearly 600 Liberty ship, Liberty and Victory ships between 1941 and 1945 under the E ...
and the
Vancouver Shipyard.
Before the opening of the shipyard, Swan Island was the location of the
Swan Island Airport. The
Port of Portland leased the airport to the U.S. federal government in March 1942. The completed Swan Island yard began production in July 1942 with eight
shipways.
The Swan Island Shipyard was one of four shipyards in the United States specifically designed to produce
T2 tanker
The T2 tanker, or T2, was a class of oil tanker constructed and produced in large numbers in the United States during World War II. Only the T3 tankers were larger "navy oilers" of the period. Some 533 T2s were built between 1940 and the end of 1 ...
s. It produced 147 tankers over the course of the war, all of them of the T2-SE-A1 design.
References
Further reading
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External links
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{{Authority control
1942 establishments in Oregon
Shipyards of the United States
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United States home front during World War II
Henry J. Kaiser
Shipyards building World War II warships