Happy Ending

Like a horse whose race was run and won, the speedy Bethlehem shipyard on Hingham Bay, 17 miles from Boston Common, was coasting to a stop. It had had a short life, and a happy one.

Hingham was born late, when other New England yards had drained off all the skilled labor in sight. On February 19, 1942, its ground-breaking day, the 140-acre site contained an archery course, a bumpy little airport. The rambling grey buildings of the new yard were still going up when the first LCI keel was laid.

But by that year's end Hingham had launched 34 ships. It went on, at cookie cutter speed.

The Navy scheduled 60 destroyer escorts for 1943; the yard ground out 90. On the Reynolds, whipped together from keel up in 24 1/2 days, it claimed a world's record. (It reminded Hingham's 34-year-old General Superintendent, Samuel L. Wakeman, of how his father, a Bethlehem Steel vice president, had turned out a four-stacker in 45 days at nearby Squantum during World War I.)

Hingham's 277th and last hull, the fast destroyer transport Francovich, left the ways last month. By mid-August the yard will be through. Last week most of its heavy machinery was gone, and so were most of its people: from a peak of 23,882, employment had dropped to 4,959. Soon only a caretaking staff would be left.

In the main, they had come from metropolitan Boston--from selling jobs, grocery stores, housewifery. Only 1% came from outside Massachusetts.

Laid off at a rate of 500 a week, they were absorbed easily; Boston's other war plants still called for 20,000 more. Of the yard's 2,702 women, 95% went back home, to get their breath. Watching this painless tapering-off process, manpower men wished it could be repeated when other war towns finish the production race. But there was small chance of that: Hingham was one industry that was closed down while others were still crying for help.

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