DUANE
Get the App
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker says about this stretch of the Rockport waterfront. Now, you're lookin' at a place that knew how to build big. Shipping industries had been flourishing on this waterfront all the way back to the 1880s, so the bones for something grand were already here when October 1917 arrived and the Heldenfels Shipyard opened up on 12.9 acres right along this shore.
The job was serious business: four wooden cargo vessels, each one stretching 281 feet, to be built for military use in World War I. Four ships. Each one a small city of lumber and ambition.
At the height of construction, over 900 men were working this yard. Nine hundred men. You could feel the ground hum.
The first of those vessels, the Baychester, was launched on July 31, 1919. The Zuniga followed on September 9, 1919. Two ships in the water.
Two more to go. And then the world shifted. The war ended, and with it, the urgent hunger for new ships.
But this story wasn't done complicating itself. Just five days after the Zuniga hit the water, on September 14, 1919, a hurricane came calling and took its toll on the shipyard. Now here is where the marker asks you to hold two things at once: damage, yes, but not defeat.
The Jasper and the Manchester, they were completed. Not as the cargo vessels originally planned, but as barges, finished out in 1920, closing the books on what the marker calls this vital war contract. Four vessels started.
Four vessels finished. The shipyard's moment was brief and loud and hard-worked, and this quiet stretch of Rockport waterfront is where it all happened.
What the marker says
Shipping industries flourished on the Rockport waterfront by the 1880s. Heldenfels Shipyard was established here on 12.9 acres in October 1917. Four 281-foot wooden cargo vessels were to be built for military use in World War I; the "Baychester" was launched on July 31, 1919, and the "Zuniga" on September 9, 1919. At the height of construction, over 900 men were employed at the shipyard. The need for ships fell as the war ended. Despite hurricane damage to the shipyard on September 14, 1919, the "Jasper" and the "Manchester" were completed as barges in 1920, ending this vital war contract. (1996)