The S.S. Arthur Newell Talbot

World War II concrete steamship named after Talbot

The history of American concrete ship building through the end of the Korean War is documented in an article "American Concrete Steamers of the First and Second World Wars" by Jean Haviland that appeared in the magazine The American Neptune 32(3), July 1962, 157-183. ...

McCloskey and Co., of Philadelphia, was given a contract to build 24 concrete ships in 1942. The ships were "launched" in batches of three with the Arthur Newell Talbot being one of the first two ships floated on July 15, 1943. She was documented at Tampa on February 14, 1944, and used initially by the Army as a training ship on the West Coast. With the war's end she returned to the Gulf Coast and was laid up at Mobile, Ala., on September 15, 1945. She was sold for use as a breakwater at Kiptopeke, Va., in 1948, where she was still located in 1962. I know that the C. W. Pasley and Francois

Hennebique are still used as wharves in Yaquina Bay, Newport, Ore. In Haviland's article it is reported that the average price of the concrete ship of World War II was $2 million, which can be compared favorably with the $1.82 million cost of the steel Liberty ships.

On a broader scale the concrete ship program of World War II involved the U.S. Bureau of Standards, the Office of Public Roads, Department of Agriculture, Lehigh University and the University of Illinois. In this University's case we loaned testing apparatus, equipment and staff for that effort. Our staff was headed by Prof. Frank E. Richart, who worked with Professor Talbot, and many of the World War I ships on which the World War II ships were based used information developed by Professor Talbot.

-- Neil M. Hawkins, Head, Civil Engineering, UIUC