Keep Boston Ship Repair busy

Dockside crane on wide-gauge tracks at Boston Ship Repairs’s Dry Dock Number 3

— Photo by ArnoldReinhold

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

New England obviously has a rich shipbuilding-and-repair tradition, as well it should considering that the region’s first great wealth came from ocean shipping.

But there’s only one major operating drydock left in our regional capital --– Boston Ship Repair’s facility in South Boston. Much of its business has been shifted to docks Down South with nonunionized workforces that are cheaper, if not necessarily as good as those in Boston.

Just as a matter of diversification, and thus national security, the Boston facility should stay open, especially in order to work on Navy ships.

(I remember the excitement of going by the huge Fore River Shipyard, in Quincy, on my way to Boston for summer jobs. Gone.)

Ships being fitted out at the Fore River Shipyard, in Quincy, Mass., in 1918, during World War I.