ABSTRACT
The history of commercial shipbuilding in the Second World War is the history of the Maritime Commission which planned the entire effort and saw it through to the end. The commission, the forerunner of the present Maritime Administration, was created by Congress to administer the Merchant Marine Act of 1936. The record of the Maritime Commission can be summed up in a single sentence: during the Second World War, the United States built far more merchant ships than anyone had thought possible. Machinery prices had started to rise quickly, and the fact that the navy had obtained priorities for critical items made delivery of these to yards producing merchant ships more uncertain than before. Added to the Herculean task of building the wartime merchant fleet was the problem of how it was to be manned. US merchant shipping was crucially important in the British campaigns in the Middle East, the Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf.
