U. S. Maritime Commission

The U.S. Maritime Commission was a federal agency created in 1936 to rebuild the American merchant marine and oversee the design, construction, and operation of commercial and military cargo ships. During World War II, it directed the largest shipbuilding program in history, producing thousands of vessels (including Liberty ships, Victory ships, and tankers) in shipyards across the country. The Commission specified the materials and insulation used in these ships, which routinely included large quantities of asbestos.

Origin

Established by the Merchant Marine Act of 1936 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Commission replaced the earlier U.S. Shipping Board. It was dissolved in 1950, with its functions transferred to the Federal Maritime Board and the Maritime Administration (MARAD).

Significance in Asbestos Context

The Commission's wartime specifications required asbestos insulation, gaskets, packing, and fireproofing throughout ship engine rooms, boiler rooms, and living quarters, exposing hundreds of thousands of shipyard workers, Navy sailors, merchant mariners, and civilian crews to airborne asbestos. Many mesothelioma and asbestosis cases today trace back to vessels built under Commission contracts between 1936 and 1950. For patients with shipyard or shipboard exposure history, Commission records, ship construction specifications, and yard employment records can be powerful evidence of the asbestos-containing products used aboard a specific vessel. These records also help identify which insulation manufacturers, gasket makers, and boiler companies supplied materials for a given ship, which is often central to identifying liable defendants.

Related Terms

Liberty Ship, Shipyard Exposure, Merchant Marine, MARAD, Navy Asbestos Exposure, Boiler Insulation

Notes

• If you or a loved one worked in a shipyard or served aboard a merchant or Navy vessel between 1936 and the 1970s, document the ship names, hull numbers, dates of service, and job duties. These are essential for identifying Maritime Commission-era vessels.
• Request service records from the National Archives (NARA) in St. Louis for military service, or the U.S. Coast Guard National Maritime Center for merchant mariner records.
• Ask your legal team to obtain ship construction specifications and material lists from NARA's Maritime Commission archives, which can identify specific asbestos product manufacturers used in the vessel.
• Merchant mariners who served during WWII may also qualify for veterans benefits in addition to asbestos-related compensation; both should be pursued in parallel.

In our library

4 documents in our library name U. S. Maritime Commission, by collection.

In the Union Carbide documents

U. S. Maritime Commission is named in 1 Union Carbide document dated 1946 (1 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. All are published in our collection.

• Fleischer, Viles, Gade and Drinker, A Health Survey of Pipe Covering Operations in Constructing Naval Vessels, Journal of Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology, Vol. 28 (1946) UC-4093 (mentioned)

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for U. S. Maritime Commission, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: U.S. Maritime Commission.

Where this comes from

This page brings together every document in our library that names U. S. Maritime Commission, across collections. Titles and affiliations are taken from the documents themselves, and units and subsidiaries are grouped under the company they belong to.