Having a hand in history: The Bay Area’s WWII shipbuilding frenzy

The San Francisco Bay Area’s massive shipbuilding activity during World War II – constructing about 1,400 vessels – will be detailed by author and historian Nicholas Veronico in a Nov. 15 talk on Mare Island – where 386 Navy ships were launched during the war years. The discussion, sponsored by the Mare Island Historic Park Foundation, will be held in St. Peter’s Chapel on the island, the location of the Navy’s first West Coast base that opened in 1854 and remained in operation until 1996. Veronico’s extensive writing on U.S. military history includes “World War II Shipyards by the Bay,” a book focusing on a government-industry collaboration that included dozens of yards, machine shops, and fabrication plants centered in San Francisco, Richmond, Mare Island, Sausalito, Oakland, and Alameda and extending to Napa, Stockton, Sacramento, San Jose, and Sunnyvale. WWII shipbuilding on the West Coast, with Navy and U.S. Maritime Commission budgets totaling nearly $9 billion, stretched from So