The Frigate U.S.S. MANITOWOC – Summer 1988

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The Great Lakes… 84% of the continent’s fresh water… a different story in every drop.

By Lawrence Carroll Allin

Ninety-eight of them left the shipbuilding ways. Some sailed for Britain. Seventy-seven sailed for the United States. They were the “PFs,” the frigates. On their quarterboards they wore the names of smaller American cities which contributed in specific ways to the winning of World War II. One, PF-61, honored a city with a great shipbuilding tradition, Manitowoc, Wisconsin. l

That frigate, the U. S S. Manitowoc, was one of 678 warships built by twenty-five Great Lakes shipbuilding yards during World War II. The frigate’s construction demonstrates some of the problems faced by the war- pressed builders. Getting her to sea reflected long-standing difficulties of the shipbuilding business on the Lakes. There was no egress for large vessels to open water. The Manitowoc also represents some of the historical aspects of Great Lakes shipbuilding and some of the contributions Lakes-built vessels have made to the nation’s commercial, maritime and naval well-being. The vessel’s history is a part of the larger tale of changing national and international modes and patterns of shipbuilding, naval employment, and peaceful enterprise. Her story also illustrates some of the facets of the too- often neglected maritime and naval history of the inland seas.

The Manitowoc had to be built because, during 1941 and 1942, Admiral Karl Donitz’ German U-boats were sinking Allied merchantmen faster than they could be built. The cargo ships needed escort vessels. Yet, and ironically, the freshwater city of Manitowoc, on Lake Michigan, derived its greatest fame from building a fleet of submarines for the U.S. Navy to use against the Japanese in the great salt waters of the Pacific Ocean.2

In the Atlantic Ocean during 1941 and 1942 the U.S. Navy could not protect the merchant ships on which the logistical support of the war depended. A cry went out to build escorts to defend the cargo vessels. The frigates had to be had quickly. The long-established shipyards of the nation had order books full of Navy and Maritime Commission contracts. Other yards capable of building commercial vessels, had to build the relatively simple frigates. The Maritime Commission had experience dealing with the commercial yards and it, rather than the Navy, gave contracts to the private yards to construct the vessels. Most of the shipbuilding yards which received the contracts were either newly-formed or had no experience building vessels to naval standards. These yards could not weld to the exacting requirements of the Navy for its destroyers, cruisers, carriers and battleships, but could make the frigates tough enough to withstand the shocks of their own depth charges.3

The frigates were originally designed by the British as the “River” class corvettes. The first two, the U.S. S. Ashville and the U. S.S. Natchez, were built to the British design in Canada by Canadian Vickers. Modification of the class for building in American yards was entrusted to Henry J. Kaiser, an industrial prodigy and supplier of many of the tools of World War II. He gave the task to one of his many shipbuilding organizations: Kaiser Cargo, Inc. Kaiser’s engineers discarded the British practice of riveting in the vessels’ construction and replaced it with welding to make their hulls stronger. Welding also allowed large sections of the ships to be built and joined together in an assembly line fashion and, most important, quickly.

Kaiser Cargo’s West Coast location caused some difficulties in coordinating the work with the yards on the Great Lakes. Experience helped overcome most of these difficulties and, as the design and building of the vessels progressed, the differences between the British concept and the American modifications became pronounced. The vessels became slightly larger than the corvettes and had a greater fuel capacity. In the end, the Americans had created a distinct variant and its designation was changed from PG (Patrol Gunboat) to PF – patrol frigate.4

Tacoma Class Frigate PF-61 USS PEORIA. Image courtesy of Wikipedia. The USS MANITOWOC is identical to the USS PEORIA in build and design.

The Bangor (Maine) Daily News reported the Manitowoc and her sisters as being “larger than a British corvette and smaller than an American Destroyer.” The company which built her said she was “as tall as a four-story building and as long as a football field.” She came “complete with power plant, plumbing system, water works, electrical plant and (though her crew may have disagreed) ail of the other features of a self-contained hotel”5

Her technical statistics gave the Manitowoc 1430 tons displacement and measurements of 304 feet in length, 37 feet 6 inches on her beam and a draft of 13 feet 8 inches. Triple-expansion engines drove her at 20.3 knots and her enormous fuel capacity let her cruise for more than 3,500 miles. Her crew numbered 214 officers and men. Built for war, the Manitowoc mounted three 3-inch guns as her main battery. Nine 20-millimeter cannons gave her anti- aircraft protection and numerous depth charge racks and K-guns equipped her for her principal task: beating down the German submarine threat.6

The Manitowoc was built several hundred miles away from her namesake community in the city of Superior in northern Wisconsin on the shore of Lake Superior. She was the sixth frigate built there by the Globe Shipbuilding Company. Only thirteen weeks passed between the laying of her keel and launching, a remarkable record for a newly-organized shipyard.7

A new creation of wartime emergency, the Globe Shipbuilding Company almost ended before it began in late 1941 because of difficulties in obtaining capital. The Globe incorporators contacted the Soo Line and Great Northern Railroads and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation for loans with which to build their yard. They had no success. Dejected but determined, they met at Milwaukee’s Hotel Nicolett and decided to go ahead with their project. They elected a furniture-builder, Charles Skamser, to be their business manager. They bought Skamser a round-trip ticket and sent him off to Washington to obtain a shipbuilding contract which would invite financial backing.

Weeks passed. Finally, Skamser called Vic Nelson, the company’s president and its treasurer, Scotty Williamson. Skamser had obtained their first contract. They were to build five ocean-going tugs. Money followed.8

The ideal site for their new yard sat on the Superior waterfront – the town dump. However, another shipyard bought the dump. Dismayed but dogged, the Globe incorporators then purchased an unused coal dock on the waterfront. They constructed permanent concrete building facilities and erected “the White House,” their administrative headquarters. It soon became known, with pride, as “the smallest office of any shipbuilding company in the U.S.“9 Globe’s organizers then went to work and eventually launched twenty- nine vessels for the war effort. They employed over 2,000 shipbuilders, male and female, in the task.

With the war’s frenzied work-pace, gasoline shortages, and with food and many other goods rationed, poor morale could have hurt production at the Globe yard. To forestall this possibility, the yard’s workers organized to maintain their own spirits. They formed a band to play at launchings, published their own monthly newspaper, Around the Globe, and fielded a softball team, the Globe Flashes.10

With its hurried organization, quick creation of its yard and the need to make unskilled laborers into craftsmen, Globe could have expected some difficulties. There were some. But, working under a plan devised by Kaiser Cargo’s engineers, the yard’s new workers built prefabricated vessel sections and put them on the ways with cranes. Inexperience, the wartime plague of material shortages, and late shipments of materials hurt production and delayed the launching of the first frigate for a month. But these problems did not severely affect the Manitowoc or her launching.11

Mrs. Martin Georgenson probably knew that a launching is important. She was the wife of shipbuilding Manitowoc’s mayor and sponsor of the frigate. A launching and its ceremony are significant for it is then that the vessel leaves the ways and feels her natural element, the water, for the first time. In a sense, a launching is a birthing ritual. l2

The Manitowoc and the other Globe-built frigates, went into the water in an unusual way. They were side-launched. Side-launching was and is important for several reasons. First, a vessel can be side-launched into a narrow river obviating the need for a large turning basin. Not needing a turning basin, side-launching demands less area of expensive land on a crowded waterfront than conventional stern-launching. This means less cost and more profit. As with conventional launching, side-launching also allows a shipyard to use assembly-line construction methods and to be more efficient. Too, some of the Great Lakes shore is flat with little declivity or slope. Conventional stern-launching requires a slope of 5/8’s of an inch per foot of vessel which the Lakes can not supply. Too, the Great Lakes have no tidal action. The absence of tides allows the launching ways to be built close to and parallel to the water. l 3 This meant that the frigates could be built on even keels and that they could slip into narrow rivers and bays.

The permanent launching ways consist of 24 by 18-inch timbers laid perpendicular to the shore every ten feet. Between them are set the sixty keel blocks on which the vessel’s backbone is laid. On the permanent ways are sliding ways or cradles with a coat of wax and grease applied to lubricate the cradle’s slide into the water. At the right moment a hundred men with giant sledge hammers drive wedges under the sliding ways to lift them to the keel and take the vessel off the keel blocks. Dog shores to hold the vessel on the ways are put in place and the triggers set. Six 4 or 5-inch hawsers run from anchor posts or “dead men” on the inland side of the ways through electric “guillotines” to the dog shores. As the wedges go in and the ship rises to the sliding ways, the keel blocks are knocked out and the launch crew scurries from beneath the vessel. Only the six hawsers hold her in place.15

Then the launch-master signals the sponsor that she can speak the christening words and break the traditional bottle of champagne on the vessel’s bow. After the champagne breaks, the launch-master pushes a button which drops the guillotines on the hawsers or slings. With the slings cut, the vessel moves slowly on the ways and slides into the water, pitching up a huge wave. l6

Mrs. Georgeson spoke the christening words and broke the champagne bottle against the frigate on November 30, 1943. Every bell and siren in sight began to clang and howl. The cacophony followed the frigate during her seven- second trip into the water. The happy noises lasted until the vessel was taken in tow by a waiting tug and brought to the wharves for additional work.17

After almost a year of additional work on her below-deck spaces and machinery, the escort set sail on an unusual seven-hundred mile voyage and made an interesting port call. She traversed Lake Superior, passed through the Sault Ste. Marie ship canal into Lake Huron and headed South, down Lake Michigan. Then, at 9:00 a.m. on October 3, 1944, she tied up at the foot of South Sixth Street in her namesake city – Manitowoc.

Mayor Georgeson and a local delegation boarded the town’s frigate. They met the officers and half the crew received liberty and the keys to the city.

The frigate left her namesake city the following morning but was not yet close to the ocean and there was still major fitting-out to do before she was commissioned and ready to fight. The finishing touches would be put on the Manitowoc in New Orleans because the Atlantic Coast yards were full with battle-damaged or newly-building vessels and, because the locks in the St. Lawrence River were too small to accommodate her. Another means had to be found to get her to open water.19

The problem had been assessed and the means found before the frigates were laid down. The Navy and the Maritime Commission studied the possibility of taking the frigates and other Great Lakes-built warcraft through the Lakes and down the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers to the Gulf ports. The Army’s Corps of Engineers helped the sailors. They found that the Chicago Drainage Canal, which connects Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, could be modified. The canal’s bridges were too low and some of their draws were inoperable. As well, the nine-foot controlling depth of the downstream rivers was too shallow to accommodate the machinery-laden sterns of the frigates.

The canal problem was solved by hinging the Manitowoc’s mast so that it could lie flat while passing under obstructions, loading her with ballast to stabilize her and to sink her lower in the water and by reworking the bridges. After clearing the canal her deep sitting hull had to be raised in the water for the down-river trip. At Lockport, Illinois, four pontoons, cylinders 20-feet long by 9-feet in diameter, were welded to her stern to lift it clear of the shallow river bottoms.

Pusher-type towboats, common on the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, nudged her through the 600 by 41-foot locks which lowered the frigate into Illinois’ Des Plaines River. She then began her incongruous ten-day sail through Illinois corn and wheat fields into the locks at Alton, above St. Louis, and down the Mississippi. After leaving the Alton locks, the new vessel continued on to New Orleans where additional fitting-out and commissioning would take place. When she arrived at New Orleans her mast was stepped, the ballast removed, her screws refitted and the pontoons were removed and taken upstream to be used again.

The Manitowoc and twenty-five of her sisters served as weatherships in the North Atlantic. They had to be modified for this duty. From New Orleans, the frigate sailed to Boston and its historic Navy Yard for her modifications and final commissioning. Her after 3-inch, 50-caliber gun was taken off to make room for a balloon hangar.

After their modifications and before departing for duty at Argentina, Newfoundland, the frigates usually underwent five days training in Casco Bay, off Portland, Maine. However, the Manitowoc and her crew did not undergo this training. But, with Lieutenant Commander J.A. Martin of the Coast Guard, her captain and her crew of Coast Guardsmen, she did as the other frigates did and took her shake down cruise off of Bermuda.

All seventy-seven of the frigates carried Coast Guard crews. They did so because the Coast Guard came under naval command at the outbreak of the war and because the Coast Guard had experience training crews of small vessels for demanding duty in the North Atlantic. After their training and shakedown off Bermuda, the Manitowoc and her crew reported to Escort Division 34 at Boston. From there, they proceeded to Argentia, Newfoundland where they arrived February 5, 1945.

At Argentia, the frigate reported to Rear Admiral Edward H. “Iceberg” Smith, the Coast Guard’s famed Arctic explorer, who commanded the weatherships which were a part Task Force 24. The day after her arrival at Argentia, the Manitowoc went to a weather station in the North Atlantic and then fought hurricane winds, mountainous seas, ice, sleet, rain and bitter cold. From her hangar, six-foot diameter helium balloons went aloft to 60,000 feet to obtain weather data. The sacrifices her crew made helped supply vital weather information which enabled a stream of bombers to cross the Atlantic on its way to pound the Axis.

The Manitowoc returned to Boston in February of 1947, was loaned to the Coast Guard, continued on active service for five more months and was decommissioned at New Orleans in September of 1947. She rode at anchor in reserve until March 25, 1948. Then, she was sold to France.

The frigate entered French service as a weathership on March 26, 1947 and took the name Le Brix, (F-l 5).

To 1952, the weathership made twenty-two meteorological cruises, spent 630 days at sea and cruised 57,000 miles. After years of service under the Tricolor, Le Brix, ex-Manitowoc, met the end of most of her sisters. She went to the shipbreakers who dismantled her and salvaged her metal.

The frigate’s long service deserves to be remembered.

  1. James C. Fahey, Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, Victory Edition, (New York: Ships and Aircraft, 1946), 40 and Geraldine Strey, State Historical Society of Wisconsin to author of 10 July 1985,
  2. Samuel Eliot Morison, Supplement and General Index, Vol XV, History of United States Naval Operations During World War II (Boston: Little, Brown and Co. 1962, p. 69; Robert L. Schiena, S. Coast Guard Cutters and Craft of World War II (Annapolis, Naval Institute Press, 1979.) , pp. 301-302. and CAPT M.H. Gluntz, USN, “Naval Construction on the Great Lakes,” The Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute, 84 (February, 1957), p. 139.
  3. —–, Ships’ Data: S. Naval Vessels, Vol. II (Washing ton, D.C. : Navy Department, 1945) pp. 106-113 and All The World’s Fighting Ships, 1922-1 946 (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1980), pp. 148-149.
  1. All The World’s Fighting Ships (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1980) 148-49; Leathem
  2. Smith, “War Shipbuilding on the Great Lakes, ” INLAND SEAS®, July, 1946, pp. 149-150 and The New York Times, November 18, 1942 and January 1, 1943 .
  1. Bangor Daily News November 3 , 1943, 3.
  2. Ships’ Data, 106-113.
  3. Schiena, S. Coast Guard Cutters, pp. 301-302 and Fahey, Ships and Aircraft, p. 40.
  4. Andrew Jarosh “Superior Shipbuilding, ‘Globe’s Golden Years’,” Lake Superior Port Cities, Vol 1. No. 4, p. 45.
  1. Jarosh, “Globe’s Golden Years,,’ 49.
  2. Jarosh, “Globe’s Golden Years,,’ 49.
  3. Jack Bauer, “Inland Seas and Overseas: Shipbuilding on the Great Lakes During World War II,” Part II, INLAND SEAS®, 28 Fall 1982, p. 167; Superior Evening Telegraph, March 2, 1943,
  4. 4 and July 15, 1943; Kentucky Times Star, July 17, 1943, p. 4; “Maynard Will Try Launching Again,” and “Covington is Launched in Wisconsin,” unattributed newspaper clippings from Covington, Kentucky Public Library.
  5. The New York Times, September 21 ,
  6. R Christianson, Door County Maritime Museum to author July 1985.
  7. “Technique of Side Launching for S. S. Racine Explained,” Racine Journal March 14, 1944, n.p.
  8. “Ticklish Task at Launching, Another Frigate Ready,” The Milwaukee Journal, August 22, 1943, p. Ml. James H. Fahey, “Side-launching on the Great Lakes: Model Experiments and Practice,” The Society of Naval, Architects and Marine Engineers Transactions, 50, 1942,
  9. 81-125.
  10. “U.S. Bangor, New Frigate For The Fighting Fleet To Hit Water Saturday,” Bangor Daily News, November 2, 1943 .
  1. Superior Evening Telegram, 30, 1943, p. 1.
  2. Deleted
  3. John Larson, Those Army Engineers: A History of the Chicago District, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (Chicago: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1979.), pp. 211-231 and 264.
  4. Harlan Hatcher, Lake Erie, (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1945) , pp. 360-361 and Kathleen Warnes, “The Submarines For WWII,” INLAND SEAS®, 42, No. 1, Spring 1986,
  5. 17.

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