Venus Dean helps launch S.S. Nehalem

Each ship built and launched from the Oregon shipyards during World War II was assigned a sponsor, who attended the launching ceremony and christened the ship by breaking a bottle of champagne on the bow. This good-luck ceremony is thousands of years old in some countries, and the United States shipping industry and military adopted the practice.

A launch was a time of celebration, but it also caused some anxiety. The process necessary to safely manuever a new ship--some of which displaced over two thousand tons of water--out of a dry dock was an engineering challenge. The launching sequence was carefully choreographed and each shipyard employee had a specific job to do (sometimes as many as 150 workers were needed to launch a ship).

On January 5, 1944, Kaiser Shipyards on Swan Island launched its first ship of the year, the S.S. Nehalem. In acknowledgement of the many women who had joined the company's workforce, the company staffed the launch with women only. Venus Dean was a shipwright's helper for the Kaiser shipyards; she assisted the master shipwright--a master builder who constructs and repairs ships. For the Nehalem launch, she was assigned to the underside of the ship to watch over the placement of the wedges, which are hammered into place under the ship to lift it up above the ways (the timbers upon which a ship is built), and the removal of the dog-shores--struts that hold the ship in place before launch. Dean is on a phone, likely speaking to the people above so they would know when to break the champagne bottle. 

Written by Amy E. Platt

Oregon Shipbuilding Corp. photographic collection, Org Lot 686, Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Portland.

Bo's'n's Whistle 4:2 (January 18, 1944).

Popular Mechanics Magazine 80:5 (November 1943).