🚢 How did they build 93 ships in Marin?

Long ago, not far from here in Marin, there was a giant ship-building place. It sat by the bay in a town called Sausalito, and it was called Marinship. How long do you think it took to build one huge ship? Sometimes just a few weeks!

That is faster than one summer vacation! Lots and lots of workers came to help build the ships. When a ship was done, it slid down a ramp into the bay, whoosh! Like the biggest bathtub toy ever!

There was a big war far away, and these ships carried food and supplies. They built almost one hundred ships, and some were oil tankers!

You live in Marin, and down in Sausalito, by Richardson Bay, there was once a giant shipyard. A shipyard is a place where people build ships, like a workshop for boats as big as buildings. So how do you build a whole ship really, really fast? Long, long ago, when your great-grandparents were little, there was a big war. The country needed lots of ships, and it needed them fast. So a shipyard was built in Sausalito.

They called it Marinship. The spot used to be a yard for fixing trains, right by the water. But building a ship usually takes a very long time. So the workers worked hard, and they worked fast. Guess how long one ship took? Some were finished in just a few weeks!

That's about as long as a school vacation, and that's for a whole giant ship! In about three years, those workers built 93 ships. That's a lot of ships! The shipyard is gone now, but a street in Sausalito is still called Marinship Way, so everyone remembers.