New technology helps-such as numerically controlled machining centers and laser cutting systems-but shipbuilding remains a labor-intensive activity, and the labor needs to know what it is doing. The pool of skilled workers capable of assembling or modifying large vessels gradually contracted so that today, one of the biggest challenges faced by surviving yards is finding competent workers to fabricate parts and assemble vessels. shipbuilding was exacerbated by the Navy’s consolidation of its ship maintenance and repair facilities after the Cold War ended. in commercial tonnage by a ratio of 100-to-1. What had been the biggest such industry in the world, with 70 oceangoing vessels under construction in the nation’s bicentennial year, ebbed away to nothing. We were resilient.Within a decade, commercial shipbuilding in the U.S. “I think they had a better sense of our mission … “I think it meant sailors had more of a sense of our ship and what goes into it,” Carmichael said.

Taking on tasks that sailors don’t usually do meant more work - but it had a payoff, too, he said. “It’s pretty old, and it needs more maintenance,” Carmichael said. They also worked on Bataan’s steam plant. The long run at sea also meant tasks that deployed ships’ crews haven’t had to do in years - like the time Bataan anchored off the United Arab Emirates so sailors could climb up its masts to makerepairs usually handled by contractors in port. “For sailors, it can feel like coming back the day after you left, But you leave in December and come back in July and things have changed, the kids have grown … you have to think about reintegrating with family life,” he said. Since the Navy’s usual practice of dispatching family and fleet support specialists to a deployed ship’s final port call to conduct “return and reunion” sessions wasn’t possible, that was a chore Isbell took on. “I was caught up in COVID, moving my family from Memphis to Norfolk, trying to figure out how to get out to Bataan,” Isbell said. Sailors who joined the ship during deployment, including Master Chief Isbell, had to be quarantined. The four at-sea replenishment of supplies - when two ships sail side by side while cargo is swung over from one to the other - had to be handled with an eye for possible infection. The crew didn’t need to wear masks, as other sailors deploying from Norfolk or Little Creek later that year did. The Bataan was considered a bubble - because it had left home, and then Bahrain before COVID hit, there was no risk of exposure as long as the ship didn’t stop elsewhere. “They were ready … after all that, deployment’s really the fun part,” he said.īut by March of last year, and their first two port calls in Europe and Bahrain, things weren’t quite as much fun. Most of the crew was on its first deployment after joining a ship that was finishing some 18 months in the shipyard.Ĭarmichael had led crew members through “the usual crawl-walk-run,” of learning their jobs on the ship, learning how to operate in a amphibious strike group, practicing the challenges of landing Marines on hostile shores - and getting them off safely to head home when the mission is complete. Bataan set out from Norfolk a few weeks before COVID-19 became news.

Nassco shipyard labor strife 1981