The Brown Shipbuilding Company's Rise During World War II

In the early 1940s, the Brown Shipbuilding Company in Houston, Texas, was awarded government contracts to build destroyer escorts, submarine chasers, and landing craft for the U.S. Navy.¹ The shipyard faced many obstacles building naval vessels beginning with no shipbuilding experience, operating from a remote location on a narrow waterway, and recruiting and training a largely unskilled workforce. It was criticized in the treatment of female and minority workers and faced other labor problems such as absenteeism, turnover, and labor strikes. Despite these challenges, Brown Shipbuilding developed a workforce of skilled shipbuilders that ultimately helped boost Houston’s postwar industrial economy.

Brown Shipbuilding was established in 1941 by George and Herman Brown of the Brown and Root construction company. It was the second-largest employer in the Houston area during World War II. (The Houston Shipbuilding Corporation, which built Liberty ships, was the largest.)² 

Texas Congressmen Albert Thomas and Lyndon Johnson were influential in Brown and Root getting Navy contracts—the Brown brothers had dedicated large sums of money to the reelection campaign of President Franklin Roosevelt.³ Indeed, author Dan Briody argued that the Brown brothers were able to get into shipbuilding “because Herman Brown’s money had put more politicians in office in Texas than the Democratic National Committee.”⁴ The Navy approached Brown and Root about constructing submarine chasers at a time when the company had no experience building vessels. The Brown brothers did not see the company’s lack of sector-specific experience as a deterrent, stating, “With the right men a contractor can build ships, dams, roads, or anything else.”⁵ 

Building Different Types of Naval Vessels

Brown and Root had earned a good reputation after constructing the $25 million dollar Marshall Ford dam (known now as the Mansfield dam), which was completed in 1937 in central Texas.⁶ George Brown became a principal investor of the Platzer Shipbuilding Corporation after the small shipyard started experiencing financial difficulties, and the Navy awarded Platzer a $2.2 million dollar contract to build four submarine chasers, based on Brown and Root’s ability to get things done.⁷ The Navy also was impressed with Brown and Root’s part in building the huge Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, which was completed at a cost of $100 million dollars in just nine months in 1940.⁸

George Brown transferred the Platzer contracts to the new Brown Shipbuilding Company in August 1941. Brown and Root received no federal dollars in constructing their expanded shipyard, and with their “can-do” attitude, they were able to keep costs low and complete construction on the submarine chaser PC-565 in less than seven months.⁹ The shipyard’s construction site sat on part of the narrow Greens Bayou off the Houston Ship Channel, which forced the shipyard to launch vessels in sideway slips. In addition to building their own shipyard on Greens Bayou, Brown and Root was also the primary contractor in building the Houston Shipbuilding Corporation shipyard, a project headed by the Todd Shipyards Corporation, which built Liberty cargo ships.¹⁰ The completion and delivery of the submarine chasers soon led to additional Navy orders—for submarine chasers, but also for larger destroyer escorts and landing craft.¹¹ 

Brown Shipbuilding utilized an assembly line technique whereby steel was delivered by rail and fabricated into sections of a vessel before being hoisted by crane to the hull. The completed vessel would then be launched sideways into the narrow Greens Bayou. The shipyard at its peak employed more than 25,000 workers starting in late 1942.¹² Brown used special trailer buses to help these workers travel from Houston directly to the shipyard. 

Construction time for destroyer escorts started out at about 30 weeks but tapered down to 20 weeks, with an average delivery of one ship per week at $3.3 million per vessel.¹³ The company was so productive that it was awarded the army navy "E" production award in December 1942.¹⁴ 

Brown built 12 PC-461-class submarine chasers and 61 destroyer escorts, including 38 Edsall-class and 23 John C. Butler-class. The shipyard also constructed 32 Landing Craft Infantry and 254 Landing Ship Medium amphibious assault landing craft.¹⁵ These vessels participated in almost every major naval engagement during World War II, including the Battle of the Atlantic, the D-Day invasion, the Battle off Samar, and campaigns in the Marshall Islands, Marianas, Tinian, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Philippines.¹⁶

The most famous Brown-built destroyer escort was the USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413), which played a pivotal role during the Battle off Samar in October 1944 when it helped turn back a Japanese naval task force. She sank with 90 crewmembers killed after being hit repeatedly by Japanese warships, including the battleship Kongō. The Roberts received one battle star and a Presidential Unit Citation.¹⁷

Recruiting and Training Shipyard Workers

Most workers at Brown Shipbuilding were white males, although African American and Hispanic employees also worked at the shipyard. Historian Ernest Obadele-Starks stated that at one point during the war “Brown Shipbuilding employed approximately 14,395 workers, 1,150 of whom were nonwhite.”¹⁸ Both East- and West-Coast shipyards offered better economic opportunities for minorities, especially because of the presence of Jim Crow laws in the South.¹⁹ Minorities at Brown were often denied entry to higher-paying positions despite intense pressure for shipyard workers in all classifications.²⁰ S.B. Byres, the director of the Houston Negro Training School, a training facility set up in November 1941, asked the personnel director at Brown Shipbuilding for assistance in employing school graduates. The director at Brown replied, “The time was not ripe for integration due to friction with first-class welders.”²¹ Byres then attempted to gain employment at Brown for his graduates through the Houston United States Employment Service but was unsuccessful.²² He eventually found employment for them “at Higgins in New Orleans as well as shipyards in Massachusetts and California.”²³ 

Brown Shipbuilding hired Hispanics in equally small numbers. Most were employed as common laborers, although a few did find work in skilled positions such as welders and pipefitters. John Herrera with the League of Latin American Citizens (LULAC) fought against racial discrimination. As he stated on his resume, “from 1939 to 1943, acting on protest from Latin-Americans and negros, the Houston Shipbuilding Corporation and Brown Shipbuilding Corporation were discriminating in employment matters.”²⁴ In addition to LULAC, the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) fought against discrimination.²⁵ 

Women were more readily accepted into shipyard positions at Brown, which in 1942 was among the first Southern shipyards to hire and train women in “mold loft, in layout work, as welders, burners, chippers, shipfitters, bench electricians, material expeditors, sheet metal workers, tool room clerks, field checkers and painters.” Brown Shipbuilding had a Navy inspection office, since the shipyard was building naval vessels, and women filled many of these civil-servant positions, which previously had been held by men. 

In 1942, Brown Shipbuilding created training units in 14 Texas towns. Private and government-funded schools were also established across the state. New hires at Brown attended classes two hours a night, three nights a week for four weeks to complete basic courses such as shipfitting. Upon completion, the worker received a diploma and pay increase. Wages ranged “from 67 cents an hour for helper to $1.20 for the first-class ship worker. Women draw the same pay as men or will when they get the same jobs. Foremen and leadermen top $1.20 an hour.”²⁶ 

Shipyard workers sponsored vessels and bought war bonds. Brown reported that “ninety-eight of every 100 workers in the big Brown Shipyards at Houston turn 16 cents of every dollar they make into bonds.”²⁷ Speakers were brought in to boost worker morale. These included the testimony of a doctor who delivered a baby in a lifeboat after their ship was sunk, and a speech by an English Labour Party member who shared the story of British workers who stayed on the job even during the German Blitz in 1940 and 1941.²⁸

Women were typically given the honors in ship launchings. One such occasion was reported in the Austin American in 1942: “Another navy submarine chaser, the USS PC-611, was launched Monday at the Brown Shipbuilding corporation plant here, with Miss Jean B. Berkendorfer, daughter of a shipfitter’s helper, as sponsor.”²⁹ 

Launch ceremonies were especially moving when the ship was named after a loved one, such as the christening of the destroyer escort USS Douglas A. Munro (DE-422). On 9 March 1944, Edith F. Munro christened the Munro, which was named after her son—the only Coast Guard service member to be awarded the Medal of Honor during World War II. Munro joined the Coast Guard after her son was killed in action.³⁰

Unions and Labor Relations

Numerous unions represented shipworkers at Brown. These included the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, the Iron Ship Builders and Helpers, the Houston Metal Trades Council, and the United Brotherhood of Welders, Burners, and Cutters. Black shipworkers were often discriminated against by unions that refused to train them. The Houston chapter of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers “refused to hire blacks in any skilled occupations, segregated their work environments, and placed them in the dirtiest and lowest-paying jobs” such as janitors and common laborers. ³¹African American laborers could even be charged fees if they requested pay equal to whites.³² 

The FEPC intervened to assist black workers who had been replaced by white workers at the shipyard, as well as forwarding complaints that they were paid less than whites for the same work. The federal agency had to call upon the U.S. Navy to help them examine Brown’s payroll records after the shipyard failed to hand over its employment records. The FEPC wanted to make sure that Brown complied with proper pay, hiring, and layoff practices for minority workers. The National Labor Relations Board also assisted the FEPC in successfully speaking to “the refusal of unions and management at Brown to include blacks on an equal basis or vote in union elections.”³³ Hispanic workers also pointed out unfair treatment. John Herrera at LULAC sought answers from E.L. Hausler, personnel director at Brown, regarding reports that Hispanics were not allowed to train as welders.³⁴ Herrera reminded Hausler that Hispanics had fought at Pearl Harbor, Luzon, and Bataan in defense of the United States and were not given an equal opportunity to work on the home front. Hausler denied that Brown Shipbuilding had anything to do with selecting certain welders for training and stated that some Hispanics trained at the school were hired at the shipyard.³⁵  

Herrera later brought up concerns over the firing of 11 Hispanic women from Brown shipbuilding on 23 July 1944 up with Carlos E. Castañeda, the Southwest chair for Roosevelt’s FEPC. The women’s complaints were centered on the fact they were being replaced by non-Hispanic women.³⁶ The shipyard claimed that the layoffs were a result of attendance records and not race discrimination. The FEPC ruled in October 1944 that the women be allowed back to work.³⁷  

Absenteeism, Turnovers, and Labor Strikes

Absenteeism at Brown Shipbuilding was a big problem starting in 1943. L.T. Bolin, vice president and general manager at Brown, blamed the problem on temperatures, stating, “Our average is about seven and a half percent of our men absent daily. That is a little below the national average. The rate climbed about 10 percent during the coldest weather and dropped again when warm weather returned.”³⁸ 

Supervisors were required to make daily reports on those absent, along with their excuses for missing work. Corrective steps such as suspension or discharge were taken if they failed to report for two days out of the week for two consecutive weeks. Bolin went further, declaring, “No workers had been reported to their draft boards for absenteeism, but that workers quitting their jobs were being reported.”

Turnover was a major concern, even though shipyard workers were being paid higher wages than they received before the war. Reports indicated that “during the last six months of 1943, between 8.2 percent and 12.0 percent of shipyard workers left their jobs every month.”³⁹ High wartime inflation rates and housing issues were among the reasons workers sought higher paying jobs.⁴⁰

Labor strikes also hindered ship construction. One such labor dispute centered on the Houston Metal Trades Council in June 1945. Union drivers with Magnolia Airco Gas Products refused to cross a picket line to deliver welding and burning gases, an action that threatened shipyard operations from Brownsville, Texas, to Charleston, South Carolina. During the strike, some 30 veteran combat sailors clashed with picketers, stating, “Anything that stops ship production is a shame and a disgrace” while the country was still at war. The sailors were crew members of two LSTs that participated in the Normandy invasion, and their intervention occurred while their ships were berthed at Brown for repairs.⁴¹ 

The Eighth Regional War Labor Board ordered all picketing at Brown Shipbuilding and Magnolia Airco Gas Products to cease, and all workers to immediately return to work.⁴² The Brown brothers issued a statement that “the heart of the situation is the insistence of the Metal Trades Council on contracts which would force on the Brown Shipbuilding Company a closed shop and which would force everybody at the war plant to join a union.”⁴³

The End of Houston’s Naval Ship Construction  

Massive layoffs were just over the horizon that would affect thousands of workers. Prospects for new work from the Navy were diminishing. In August 1945, it was reported that the shipyard had received no new orders for naval ship construction.⁴⁴ In September 1946, Navy Secretary John Sullivan confirmed that the Navy planned to pay off 40,000 civilian workers by the end of the year, with the most serious reductions occurring at the shipyards.⁴⁵ Brown Shipbuilding did have smaller jobs repairing Navy vessels at war’s end and planned relatively fewer cutbacks to personnel.⁴⁶ The shipyard stated that “normal quits from day to day are expected to reduce the working force as jobs under contract are completed.”⁴⁷

Brown and Root continued to grow after the war as a major engineering construction company building refineries, chemical plants, and offshore oil platforms, all of which helped spur Houston’s industrial postwar growth. In 1949 the Brown shipyard was leased to the Todd Shipyards Corporation as a ship repair facility. In 1984, Brown and Root took over the shipyard for use as an offshore fabrication yard. In 2004 it was gradually sold off to what is now known as the Brown Shipbuilding Industrial Park.⁴⁸ Perhaps the greatest legacy for the Brown Shipbuilding Company was its “can-do” attitude in building naval warships despite the challenges the shipyard faced.