Office of the Supervisor of Shipbuilding and Consolidated Steel Corporation

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Office of the Supervisor of Shipbuilding and Consolidated Steel Corporation in Orange County. Now, Orange, Texas sits at a bend in the Sabine River, and for a long time that geography was pure gold. Those immense virgin pine forests of southeast Texas made the town an ideal site for shipbuilding.

But by 1930, all of that easily obtainable timber was exhausted, and the sawmills closed up. Then the Depression of the 1930s came along and weighed heavily on the population of Orange. The town had seen better days.

Then comes 1940, and things start to move. In July of that year, Congressman Martin Dies and Vice-President John Nance Garner attached an amendment to a large general appropriations bill — the kind of legislative maneuver that sounds quiet on paper but echoes loud in real life — to build twenty-four surf-landing crafts and twelve destroyers right there in Orange. Thirty-six crafts in all, and somebody had to be in charge of building them.

So the Office of Supervisor of Shipbuilding, USN, Orange, Texas was established at that time, with CDR E.B. Perry as the first supervisor. Perry's job was not a small one.

He was responsible for directing construction of all thirty-six crafts, and also for getting a full shipyard up and running in Orange to support the endeavor. The facility went up on sixty-five acres at a bend in the Sabine River. Levingston Shipbuilding's tugboat and barge operation took up a small portion on the west side.

The rest belonged to Consolidated Steel Corporation's steel fabricating plant, and that's where the Office of the Supervisor was located as well. Now here is the date you want to remember: May 14, 1941. That is the day construction began at Consolidated Steel on two destroyers — the USS Aulick and the USS Charles Ausburne.

The first two warships constructed on the Gulf Coast for the U.S. government. Think on that for a moment. First.

On the entire Gulf Coast. And those two ships were just the beginning. By the time World War II was over, thirty-nine destroyers and one hundred destroyer escorts had been built at the Consolidated Steel Corporation yard.

That is not a small operation. That is a town that had been down on its luck deciding it had something left to give. After the war ended, the Naval facility didn't just go dark.

It turned to preparing ships for storage in the Naval Reserve Fleet, operating as the United States Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility. A different kind of mission, but still the river, still Orange, still that same bend in the Sabine where it all began. From exhausted timber to thirty-nine destroyers.

That bend in the river had a long memory — and a longer future than anybody in 1930 could've imagined.

What the marker says

Orange's location at a bend in the Sabine River, adjacent to the immense virgin pine forests of southeast Texas, made it an ideal site for shipbuilding. However, by 1930 all of the easily obtainable timber was exhausted, and the associated sawmills closed. The Depression of the 1930s also weighed heavily on the population of Orange. In July 1940, Congressman Martin Dies and Vice-President John Nance Garner attached an amendment to a large general appropriations bill to build twenty-four surf-landing crafts and twelve destroyers in Orange. The Office of Supervisor of Shipbuilding, USN, Orange, Texas, was established at this time, with CDR E.B. Perry as the first supervisor. The supervisor was responsible for directing the construction of the thirty-six crafts, and also the establishment of a shipyard in Orange to support the endeavor. The facility was built on sixty-five acres at a bend in the Sabine River. Levingston Shipbuilding's tugboat and barge shipyard occupied a small portion of the west side, and the remainder was occupied by Consolidated Steel Corporation's steel fabricating plant, where the Office of the Supervisor was also located. On May 14, 1941, construction began at Consolidated Steel on the Destroyers USS Aulick and USS Charles Ausburne, the first two warships constructed on the gulf coast for the U.S. government. In total, thirty-nine destroyers and 100 destroyer escorts were built at the Consolidated Steel Corporation yard during World War II. After the war, the Naval facility prepared ships for storage in the Naval Reserve Fleet as the United States Naval Inactive Ship Naintenance Facility. (2008)