Page 30 - Port of Baltimore - Issue 4 - 2024

PORT VIEW 1972 | FAIRFIELD
1972
BY TINA IRGANG LEADERMAN
A Look at Ship Conversion
in Baltimore’s Harbor
These two images — one likely taken in the mid-1960s and one from 1972 — show work being performed at the Maryland Drydock Company. Originally founded in 1920 as the Globe Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company of Maryland, the company owned land along the Patapsco River in Fairfield, across from Fort McHenry. Despite the word “shipbuilding” in its original name,
Maryland Drydock specialized mainly in ship conversions, upgrades and repairs. For example, during World War II, Maryland Drydock converted numerous ships built at other yards for the U.S. war effort.
The 1972 image shows ships in the drydock. “When these ship conversions happen, they literally cut a section out of a ship and pushed it into another drydock,” according
to a Baltimore Museum of Industry archivist. “After that, it was joined with the other pieces.”
The other image shows a tug moving a cut-out piece of a ship in the process of conversion.
Maryland Drydock survived a post-war downturn in the shipbuilding industry, but was purchased by the Fruehauf Trailer Corporation in 1970 (or 1968, depending on the source) and eventually closed in 1984. One of its drydocks was preserved and used by another company for ship- scrapping through the 1990s. 
c. mid-1960s
The display image above is provided by The Baltimore Museum of Industry. Visit the museum for exhibitions and collections that document the lives of the workers who helped to propel this city to greatness. thebmi.org
[28] The Port of Baltimore ■ ISSUE 4 / 2024