When oil products became scarce in World War ll, Orange went bananas.
The fruit was used for launching ships.
The three main shipyards, Levingston, Consolidated Steel, and Weaver brought in tens of thousands of employees to supply the Navy with a variety of war vessels.
Ship launching ceremonies became common. The ceremonies were full of dressed up women holding bouquets of roses, bands, and champagne. But getting the vessel in the water took a major engineering effort. The ship could be damaged from the force of tons of steel hitting the water. Also, the men working to remove blocks and cut cables faced danger.
The Orange Leader on March 2, 1942, reporting on the first World War II ship christening (U.S.S. Aulick), wrote “the climatic moment of the last steel block being burned in two by an acetylene gas torch to permit the thousands of tons of steel to slide down the heavily greased ways to to slide into the water of the Sabine River.”
“Heavily greased” meant petroleum products in early 1942. Petroleum products, though, were needed to move all the ships, tanks, and trucks for the military.
That’s where the bananas became handy. Like a cartoon of a person slipping on a banana peel, the mushy, slippery fruit was used to slide the ships into the Sabine.
Hundreds of pounds of bananas would be laid out on the slipway. As gravity pulled the ship down into the water, the bananas were crushed into a slippery mush. The mess was biodegradable at a time when most people had never heard the word. The smashed bananas could be swept into the river.
In a 1992 interview with The Orange County News, published by the Beaumont Enterprise, Merle Stewart talked about the dirty work of ship launching. He rode some of the Consolidated Steel ships into the water.
“It gives you a big toss around if you’re not tied or braced,” he said.
The first 24 ships built at Consolidated were launched the traditional straight way, which Stewart called “in-ways.” Then the yard switched to a sideways launch, with the long side going into the water.
He said the side launchings caused less stress to the ship’s hull when it hit the water.
All ship launchings were dangerous for the men who had to remove the blocks that were holding the vessels on land. They had to move quickly to get out of the way.
One story told by a Levingston employee was about a ship launching that went awry. The ship went into the river fine, but the force drove it across to the island, where it became stuck.
Ship launchings were a reason for celebration and a party, especially for the shipyard executives and VIPs attending. They kept partying for a couple of days until the stuck vessel was freed and able to sail away.
For people in Orange today, the Consolidated Steel shipyard developed into American Bridge, and then through the past three decades has been sold several times. It is at the far east end of Front Street and Simmons Drive. Westport now owns the yard and it is still in operation. Parts of the original World War II yard stand today and are in use.
Levingston, a local yard that dated back to the U.S. Civil War, closed in the early 1980s when the oil market crashed. The yard was along Front Street west of Consolidated across from Lamar State College Orange.
Weaver Shipyard was on the south crescent of the river near where the Port of Orange administration building is.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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