Loading…
2
Found out my grandpa helped build the boilers on a WWII ship in 1943, and I never knew until last week
I was going through some old boxes at my mom's house in Norfolk last week and found my grandpa's union card from Local 45. Turns out he worked on the boilers for a Liberty ship at the Bethlehem Steel yard in 1943, and I had no idea he was even in the trade. He passed before I got into the work, so I never got to ask him anything about it. The card shows he was a helper on tube rolling for 14 months before he shipped out. Kinda blows my mind that the same hands that rolled tubes back then are the ones I got my torch touch from. Any of you ever find out a family member was in the trade way back like that?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
allen.cole3d ago
Small correction but Liberty ships didn't have the same kind of boilers you're probably picturing. Those were oil fired triple expansion steam engines running on 220 psi or so, not the big high pressure drum boilers you see in power plants. Tube rolling is still tube rolling though, that part carries over no matter what the fire side looks like. Fourteen months as a helper before shipping out sounds about right too, the yards were pushing people through fast back then.
7