Marsh's Maritime Media

LIBERTY FACTORY by Peter J. Marsh: The first full account of the achievements of Henry Kaiser’s Portland and Vancouver shipyards.

Liberty Factory was published in the UK by Seaforth in January 2021 to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII. It describes the achievements of the three Kaiser shipyards in the Pacific Northwest. Two were in Portland, Oregon on the Willamette River: Oregon Ship Co. in St, Johns, Portland that famously constructed 324 Liberty ships and 99 Victory ships, and Kaiser Swan Island where 142 T2 tankers were launched. The third was Kaiser Vancouver on the north shore of the Columbia River and was known as the “Short Order Yard,” where 10 Liberties, 35 LST’s, 50 CVE’s (escort carriers) and 30 C4 attack transports were delivered in just three years.

These yards employed over 100,000 workers, about one third women. Very few of them had any experience in this type of work, but they learned quicker than anyone expected! They all became part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Arsenal of Democracy” working around the clock to the supply the Allies in the war against the Axis powers.

The NW yards engaged in a friendly rivalry with the Kaiser shipyards in Richmond, California as both teams pioneered revolutionary methods to modernize the traditional world of shipbuilding, allowing them to set many production records that have never been challenged.

The book was based on the archive of Portland photo-journalist Lawrence Barber (1901-1996)–the last marine editor of the Oregonian newspaper. During WWII, he kept the readers informed of weekly progress at the Kaiser yards, and four smaller local yards, reporting on all aspects of the workers’ lives from sports events to launch ceremonies.

(N.B. The first and only printing of Liberty Factory was sold out at the end of 2025 and this book is officially “out of print.”)

“Liberty Ship Factory” Lecture Series

My “Liberty Ship Factory” lecture program began in December 2022 at Fort Vancouver National Monument during Pearl Harbor Week. The large and enthusiastic audience of almost 100 encouraged me to try offering the talk in the Portland area, but I was met by a total lack of interest. After a year of rejections, I discovered that it was the smaller county museums and libraries along the lower Columbia River that would welcome me.

That is how this forgotten local story has continued to attract audiences into 2026 starting in Vancouver, where I have spoken four times to a full house. The last three talks were given in small communities down river where there is a strong connection to the history of the Columbia going back over 200 years to the arrival of Lewis and Clark.

2024 Lectures

• Fort Vancouver, Wash. U.S. National Monument
• Kelso, County Historical Society
• Clatskanie History Series
• St. Helens, Columbia County Historical Society
• Vancouver, Wash. Clark County Historical Society
• Astoria, Columbia River Maritime Museum
• Warrenton Library Writer Series
• Tacoma, Washington State Historical Society

2025 Lectures

Kaiser workers gather for the launch of the famous “10-day ship” in 1942 by President Roosevelt.

The Kaiser workforce consisted of over 70,000 men, most with no prior experience in steel fabrication and 30,000 women. All were quickly and efficiently taught to perform most of the necessary semi-skilled tasks in 1-2 week crash courses! Organizing this huge labor force required the use of new ideas and methods in training and division of labor to enable the first true mass-production of large ships.

This was the first step towards today’s modular system using CNC (computer numeric control) steel cutting and assembly now used world-wide. Kaiser also pioneered social services for his workers including canteens serving three-course meals and child care centers, both open 24-hours a day. His team also developed a complete low-cost medical service with a complete hospital a mile east of the Vancouver yard. In 1946, this became the non-profit Kaiser Permanente Corp, the west coast’s leading health care insurer.

The book and the lectures also cover the activity of the four smaller existing shipyards in Portland. They had barely survived the Depression years repairing local tugs, barges and ferries, but rapidly expanded their capacity and delivered hundreds of smaller naval vessels like the 173-foot PC-461 class subchasers, minesweepers, and hundreds of landing craft like the 56-foot long LCM-6.

Other local engineering companies converted their factories from manufacturing logging and industrial equipment to marine machinery like the Iron Fireman Co., which began making 2,500 hp steam engines for the Liberties. Smaller shops cast propellers, anchor winches, and many of the specialized fittings needed to equip vessels from 50′ to 540′ in length.

Overall, around 1140 ships over 150′ long were launched in the Portland-Vancouver area in just four years. Their combined length was about 75 miles and had a significant effect on the outcome of WWII.

Here are two examples of the skill and determination shown by local companies that helped turn the tide of war.

About the Author: Peter Marsh was educated in Greenwich UK, immigrated to the USA in 1972, and spent 40 years as a freelance marine reporter covering the nautical news on the lower Columbia River and Pacific Northwest. His interest in the Kaiser yards began in 1992at the Portland boating paper Freshwater News, when Barber reprised one of his 1942 wartime columns for the paper titled “When Portland Was Liberty Ship Capitol of the World!”

Another 25 years passed until Marsh was inspired by the news that a special celebration was planned in 2019 to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France in 1944. That convinced him to begin reviewing the Barber archive that he had inherited to compile the full story of the three Kaiser “emergency” shipyards in the Pacific NW. Hiis goal was to publish the book at the end of 2020, to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII in 1945.