Plate Shop Training, photograph by Guy Nicolas, New England Shipbuilding Corporation, South Portland, Maine, March 1943. Courtesy of the Maine Maritime Museum.
Plate Shop Training, photograph by Guy Nicolas, New England Shipbuilding Corporation, South Portland, Maine, March 1943. Courtesy of the Maine Maritime Museum.
Jim Flaherty of the South Portland Shipbuilding Corporation is pictured training Arlene Bryant of Saco and Dorothy York of Lewiston to paint precise marks from a ship's blueprints onto steel plates. In the next stage of production, welders will cut the lines to create ship components. Single and married women with or without children worked all three shifts at shipyards in Maine. Arlene Bryant had two teenage boys at home in the years she worked in the South Portland shipyards.